Are You A Fundraising Fabulist?

Just about 20 years ago, when I was a Vice President for University Advancement at one of the Cal States, I would go to our quarterly VP meetings and consistently go away amazed.  Few of our campuses were raising even close to $1M from individuals.  And yet, almost every VP would spend enormous amounts of time talking about their many million-dollar prospects and the things they were doing to cultivate those donors.  Generally it was “a guy” who had gone to their school, or whose wife had.  Why, I would wonder (too often aloud, which did nothing for my popularity) would someone want to make a gift larger than what the entire program was bringing in?

Maybe their first focus should be on getting to that million-dollar threshold. Then they could start cultivating these fabulous prospects.

It was wonderful that they were thinking big.  Big things don’t happen if you don’t have bigger goals.  But I honestly didn’t think that was what they were doing.

I often think of that when I talk with (some of my) clients who hire me to help with their fundraising efforts and then assure me (falsely) that are already doing everything I recommend.

Or the fundraising professional who talks about all the gifts they (presumably all by themselves) got.

Fundraising, we always say, is all about relationships.  Often times, it is the donor’s relationship with the organization that matters.  There are one-off gifts that come because the right person asked the right prospect for a gift, but to make that donor give again takes a deeper connection to the organization.

One of my colleagues started a new job recently.  After about a month they called me, very excited and proud. They had, they told me, closed 4 gifts equally well over $1M.  And yes, they had to do the right things to get those gifts, but I have to question how a new person to the organization managed to close them unless there had been serious cultivation/stewardship occurring long before they got to the organization.  In other words, this wasn’t thanks to them alone, but rather, thanks to a larger team—some no longer with the organization—who helped to move these gifts forward.

The other type of fabulist fundraiser is one I, alas, run into very frequently.  The organization is not quite sustainable and I am hired to help rectify that.  We (and like the fundraisers I am talking about, I don’t do these things solo but, rather, have an internal team I work alongside of) assess the organization’s capacity to raise funds, including reviewing what is currently being done, and develop a plan.

Too often I am then told “We already do that,” when it is clear that they do not.  This is actually more insidious though related to than the famous “We tried that, and it didn’t work.”

If they are actually doing what we are recommending, why isn’t it accounted for?  And if they are not, what is the purpose of saying they are?

Again, I think it is fabulism.

Note that some dictionaries define a fabulist as “a liar.”  But I think that these people are lying mostly to themselves.  And when you do that, it is almost impossible to move toward more successful actions.

Don’t be afraid to admit that there is much you could do better, and even much that you are not doing at all.

Success comes when you are clear about your goal and understand the best ways to get there.