How Do You Create a ‘Survival Blanket’ for Your Nonprofit?

Snow. The cold white stuff. It’s been falling steadily for the past few hours, and there’s more to come.

It reminds me of the time when my husband and the boys attended a special winter scout camp called The Klondike Derby.

It was all about learning to survive in cold weather (and, of course, lots of fun). The worst thing that could happen was to get wet socks or clothes because you would not be able to dry up.

You’d have to find ways to use what you had with you to stay warm. With enough snow, you could do just that. The snow started acting like a winter survival blanket.

Well, if you think about it, monthly donors are like little snowflakes. And flake by flake, one by one, they create a winter wonderland.

They also create that very special “survival blanket” for your organization—money that’s coming in no matter what, even if people can’t get their mail because it snows.

So, the next time you look at the sky and you see those snow flakes coming down, think about how many monthly donors you already have and how much they’re worth on an annual basis. Then look at that revenue compared to your other income and see how far you’ve already come.

For example, if your monthly donors give $12 on average, and you get four new ones from an email you just did, that little campaign is worth $576 for the first year. How about doing that again? You raised $1,000!

Then think about what you can do with what you have to “collect” more snowflakes to create an even bigger survival blanket, one snowflake at a time.