Fundraiser Education

Over the past year, researchers Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang have sought to answer the question, how can truly great fundraising flourish? One answer was that organizations with incredible growth in fundraising have achieved that with the right people. Successful organizations have strong fundraising managers who achieve desired change through a combination of will and personal humility. They “devote considerable attention to what they regard as the critical building blocks of success, namely building an exceptional team, structure(s) and culture.”

Everyone learns from their mistakes, and it's just as important to learn from the mistakes of others. In last month's print issue, Tom Harrison, CEO of Russ Reid and member of the FS Editorial Advisory Board, shared "15 Mistakes That Have Already Been Made for You."

Andrea Kihlstedt, author of "How to Raise $1 Million (or More) in 10 Bite-Sized Steps," recently spoke with her publisher about fundraising. GuideStar has published excerpts from Kihlstedt's book, and we're pleased to be able to share her additional thoughts with you.

We often measure our own success and that of other organizations by their fundraising income. Who raises the most? Which organization has the fasted-growing income? Nevertheless, the driving force behind a successful fundraising program is not so much the technique applied, but the fundraiser who puts this into practice. The talent of this fundraiser is thus of immeasurable value for the return of your program. The question is therefore: To what extent do you make the development of this talent the main focus within your organization?

On Sunday, the Association of Fundraising Professionals kicked off its 50th International Conference on Fundraising, and it kicked things off in style. How? With fundraising legend after fundraising legend … as well as Grammy Award-winning singer and songwriter John Legend.

Here’s a fundraising secret that will relieve a great amount of angst: resources flow. Resources like time, creativity, networks, ideas, passion and money. These resources are ours to leverage. Unfortunately, they can get stuck and stalled, in large part, because of the barriers we erect around them. And the bossiest of barriers: our problematic relationship with money. I work with people on every part of the economic spectrum and everyone — I mean everyone — has, on some level, a dysfunctional relationship with money.

Consumer Reports has been helping individuals make purchasing decisions in the United States since 1936. But we don’t have the same kinds of information sources to guide our giving decisions — whether they are personal donations or something much larger from a business or institution. We have passionate requests, vibrant stories, and an increasing number of ways to give money and volunteer time, but few comprehensive sources of hard data on the issues, the solutions and the organizations working to meet the tough challenges of our time. 

Last week, I started my list of 11 principles of fundraising. These are from the final lecture I give to students when I teach a class in fundraising — the very least I hope they remember as they enter the nonprofit workforce.

Which should be more important to your fundraising … efficiency or productivity? If you said productivity … gold star! If you said efficiency (sometimes expressed as ROI) … go to the back of the class! Or, more productively, read this piece by Tom Hurley at DMW Direct. As Tom sees it, the holy grail of fundraising is maximizing net revenue, and sometimes you need to sacrifice a spiffy ROI to do so.

During my career I paid thousands of dollars for career coaches that frankly ended up being a waste of time and money. While I wanted to explore opportunities in government and business, every indicator ultimately pointed me back to the nonprofit sector.