Pamela Barden How to Succeed in the Fundraising Business

By Pamela Barden

Focus on what's measurable and meaningful. "Likes" on Facebook are great, but financial contributions make your programs possible. Smart managers set plans and budgets and monitor performance based on achievements that lead to accomplished goals and successful fundraising income.

Don't misinterpret here — I am a strong proponent of an updated Facebook presence, as well as the use of other social networks when time and staffing permit. I love to hear that records are broken in terms of attendance at events. I celebrate when someone I know earns an award for a really cool direct mail package.

But all those things are simply window dressing if they don't result in more net dollars for mission accomplishment. As Winston Churchill said, "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."

Change … but do it carefully. Some of us can't get enough of change; others of us want to slow down change. Regardless of which camp you are in (or if you are somewhere in the middle), change is simply a fact of life. It's going to happen. If you've been in fundraising more than a few years, you can probably point to some significant changes that spun your fundraising strategies around. I still laugh when I recall, early in my career, when the big fear was how to get the younger generation—baby boomers—to give since it looked like boomers would never be as generous as their parents. That's laughable today …

We may chuckle when a major company stumbles with a product change or even boycott that product like many of us did in 1985 at the introduction of New Coke. Yet, too often as fundraisers, we make major changes with the attitude that, "This is right and those donors just need to get on board." Sure, we don't say that, but it's the unspoken attitude when we decide to move everything online, cancel a longstanding event, cut back on sending receipts or anything else that may make perfect sense to us—but leaves some donors shaking their heads and wondering where their formerly favorite nonprofit went.