Never Too Late

My husband, a university professor, has the same lament at the end of every semester:  Why do students wait until the last week to ask how to improve their grades?  It’s too late.  To make sure you get the best grade, you need to start at the beginning of the semester:  come to class, to office hours, do the homework, study.  In short, do the work.  But no.  They just want something—one specific thing—they can do in the last week of classes to improve their grade.

If this sounds a little familiar, you probably work at a nonprofit that is constantly deficient fundraising.  

Too many of the organizations I have worked with over the years come to me for one reason:  their expenses exceed their revenue, and they want that to change.  Some come willing to do the work.  Others want that one specific something.  They are the ones who keep coming back, asking for a fundraising plan—after we’ve written on, trained staff and board, and spent too much time (clearly) doing something they will pay no attention to.

It’s frustrating.  So I understand my husband’s pain.

Being successful has many components.  Luck is certainly part of the mix.  But mainly it is about doing the work, consistently and with care.  That care means that you take your resources into consideration and build a plan that fits them and the culture of your organization.  

It also means that you must be realistic.  This past week I was approached by someone who “has” a small nonprofit (and we could talk for hours about why you never have a nonprofit and whether you should ever consider starting one).  He wants to raise a significant amount of money to pay for it all for the next year.  OK.  Who, I asked, is in your donor pool?

Oh no one.  Didn’t I have any donors he could approach?  

I get asked this a lot and the answer is always no.  No, I am not the repository of donors.  That is the nonprofit’s job, not the consultants.  What I do is help you approach those donors and prospects in the most effective way, and give you strategies for keeping them and over time increasing their generosity to you.

Another person calls and wants some strategies for reaching wealthy people who will give their organization very large gifts.  

Do you have a robust annual giving program, I ask.

Of course not.  In fact, they don’t do any consistent fundraising at all.

They weren’t happy when I said that that—building consistent and loyal donors—was where they need to start.

When I fell into fundraising in the 1980s, a colleague told me in no uncertain terms that fundraising was not rocket science.  It was just a lot of hard work.  Reach out, connect, engage.  In short, show up, do your homework, study….do the work.  If you consistently do that, you are bound to get an A.