Fundraiser Education

Your job as a fundraiser is an important one, and it’s vital to realize that you are making an impact on your organization. 

All of us should constantly provide acts of kindness and share the concept of pay it forward with others.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A career in the nonprofit world was not one that, early on, I knew existed — let alone one that I thought I would be interested in pursuing. There were no college degrees or people I knew then to even ask.

Do you have a billion and one things on your mind? Is your way unclear? Are the problems in your organization happening because other people and other departments messed up big time? Do you and everyone else have long stories they can tell about everyone else and how all the chaos happened?

While universal “cost-to-raise-a-dollar” metrics can be debated, one thing that cannot be debated is how funds are used by nonprofits to benefit the communities they serve. What are the actual outcomes? Did the nonprofit improve lives through a variety of verifiable factors?

When I opened the email, I cringed. It was from one of my alma maters, but I still wanted to throw the fundraising penalty flag.

In this Truth Talks episode, T-Shank dives into evaluating the way we are receiving feedback. Feedback can be scary, which can cause us to shut down. She encourages you to be open to feedback and think about what you can learn from it. 

Philanthropy comes in many shapes and sizes. I applaud the Girl Scouts for having a revenue model that has been sustained for more than 100 years. You always want to remember a charity immediately for something that is top of mind. If you think of Girl Scouts, it is always Girl Scout Cookies.

Achieving new-charity doesn’t mean only doing an annual crowdfunding campaign. It’s a complete shift of perspective, one of shared responsibility and accountability between the nonprofit and its donors. It means giving the average micro-donor the same level of transparency as is given to the mega-donor.

On the heels of celebrating Labor Day, don’t forget to include yourself as a fundraiser. What you do as a fundraiser brings quality education to inner-city students that need it most. It improves a local animal shelter, where pet adoptions give animals a second chance and make families whole.