ProSpeak: Fundraising and the Economy

As charities attempt to secure more funds by opening additional fundraising channels, they increasingly demand that the consultants that serve them coordinate those activities. This demand presents charities with several challenges and opportunities. The challenges are:

• Training and developing staff that understands the strategy and implementation of multichannel programs and not just independently operating fundraising programs.

• Training and developing staff that can create, develop and implement coordinated strategies; secure appropriate metrics; and provide analytic information on all channels and how they work together.

• Coordinating staff and volunteer teams so each knows what the others are doing.

• Identifying high-quality, economically productive external services in each of the channels.

• Identifying and working with integrated database solutions so organizations can have one view of multichannel donors rather than operate from differing databases.

The opportunities include:

• Increasing net income.

• Securing a more demographically diverse funding base and diversified revenue sources, which lessen the charity’s economic dependence upon a single channel.

• Securing a larger market share and greater brand recognition.

• Putting a premium on economic productivity and not volume-based fundraising.

• Starting with current strengths (major donor, monthly giving, online, corporate and cause marketing, direct mail, etc.), but then expanding into other channels, thus reducing risk and increasing reward.

(To share your thoughts on how your organization is coping with fundraising in a down economy or adopting a more multichannel approach, e-mail mbattistelli@napco.com.)

Geoff Peters is CEO of CDR Fundraising Group. Reach him at gpeters@cdr-nfl.com