Category: Consulting

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Fundraising Continuity

Naked Spectrum Consulting - Fundraising Continuity

Fundraising and grant writing are a necessary function of the work we are so driven to do. But have you ever just sat back and thought, how can I do this better? How can I write a year end appeal that is actually appealing? How can I incorporate Giving Tuesday in a meaningful way? How do I reach more donors on my social media? And the BIGGEST question, how do I get my Board to do their part? With Covid-19 changing the way you raise money, its time to start thinking more intentionally about how you ask and what you are asking for.

Having a fundraising plan is an essential part of doing the work. Figuring out what that plan looks like is an adventure in calendars and post it notes, and I mean the BIG post it notes. I always like to start with a message, what am I trying to convey, and how can I carry that throughout the year? How do I frame all of my campaigns so that they steward the message for the entire year? How do my grants fit in? For me, this has always started at the end of the year, in my appeal. I set the tone for the upcoming year, state my goals and aspirations. I tell my donors and hope they want to follow the journey with me. It can be as simple as following the adventures of a shelter dog from intake to adoption, or following a teammate throughout the year and the ups and downs they face.

What it cannot be is exploitative. We as a sector have to stop branding the “misery” we perceive our clients go through. We have to stop raising money on the backs of the people we serve. Focus on the good, focus on the positive, focus on the impact your mission makes, your agency makes. Look inward and highlight the difference your team makes. It’s definitely a change. I recognize that it’s one I myself have had to make ( and believe me, my most successful campaign had an element of this in it) and it isn’t easy, but there is going to be a way.

Tell me you fundraising dreams over a hot cup of something, I want to know (unless your dream is that Oprah answers that letter that someone on your Board of Directors told you to write…I don’t live that life). and if I’m honest with both of us right now, I want it to be a cold drink.

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Leveraging Tech

Moving my way through the non-profit world over the last 20+ years has really opened my eyes to something. Technology, in most non-profits, is sacrificed for the work of the mission. For many, the choice of buying a program participant a bus ticket to safety takes precedence over that lap-top we know we need. Being able to pay for another week’s worth of food for the shelter is more valuable than upgrading our Windows software.  We’re building our websites for free on software like Wix and Weebly because we really just want to have  a presence, but are we really considering the impact of that on clients, donors, and most importantly, on the image we are creating for the community we serve?

But what does having a web presence mean?  And what really is the harm in not updating our hardware and software? Well, let’s unpack these things and how they relate to our work, our missions, and the people and communities we serve.

Websites

Non-Profit websites have spent years playing catch up to the for-profit world. Relying heavily on free, or nearly free website design sites like Wix, Weebly and others. Not that there is anything wrong with using those sites, they certainly have their place in the sector. But as non-profits, what exactly are we leaving on the table by not designing EXACTLY what we need.  Well, I’ll tell you. We are walking away from:

  • Donors
  • Volunteers and ambassadors
  • Engagement
  • Meaningful Giving Tuesday campaigns
  • Annual appeal donors
  • Clients
  • Vendors
  • Potential board members
  • Future employees
  • Foundations

Having a website that is not optimized for today’s user means we are also leaving on the table the future of our missions.  Okay, well maybe it’s not that drastic, but when we neglect to take into consideration that as our society’s demographics are changing, so are their demands for how our websites perform. We now need them to be mobile friendly, incredibly fast, and easy to navigate. Millennials (and younger) want to be able to find things quickly, they want to donate with a text, and they want to be able to share your content, their donation and your information in a few taps on their phone.  Getting here, to this magical place of optimization, delightful user interfaces and fast loading mobile sites can feel overwhelming and over budget. But if you have clear goals, a set of audience priorities and stand behind the mission of your organization it can happen (on time and under budget).

So, what about that hardware and software?

We have to stop starving ourselves. Non-profit Executive Directors, frontline staff, and volunteers all deserve a good chair! and a computer that works! and software that was released in the same decade we are working in! Don’t let yourself believe anything different (don’t do it!) Let’s take a stroll back in time.. to a time when you were in school, doing that 20 page history paper in your college computer lab. Everyone used the same computers, inserting disks, saving, printing, taking their disk and leaving. Hell, we even had to format our own disks before we could use them! Do you remember that feeling when your disk corrupted and you couldn’t get ANY of your work? Do you remember last year when your hard drive crashed in the middle of your annual appeal? Or that time when your computer was SO SLOW that the donor who wanted some 990 information couldn’t get it? How about that virus? Did you lose control of any donor or participant data? I’ll wait while you think of the million other things that go wrong with our computers when we turn them on.

It’s hard to tell ourselves we deserve nice things, but we do AND we should plan for them. It’s ok to start with a small plan, maybe upgrade one computer and software a year as your budget allows, and make an intentional plan to replace all of it, and make an intentional plan to continue to upgrade every few years and soon enough everything in the room is working like this run-on sentence is.

PK