Building Relationships February 12, 2007

This past weekend, one of the nonprofits I work with asked me to help them raise funds--urgently. It's something I really believe in, and I've worked hard for over three years on the issue. The fundraising has never been organized, and has never taken off. Yet we're accomplishing most of our goals. Still, we need to fund the Executive Director's salary; he just started in November, and we're run out of the startup funds.

I'm not in charge of fundraising, but I feel I need to drive it now that we're so close to the edge, and because I pretty much started the whole thing in the first place. So first I'm starting with my closest relationships--my friends and families (not co-workers; I have close relationships with most of them but we have a rule about pushing causes within the office). I'll call them individually, and ask them based on what I know their ability to contribute without pain is.

After that, I'll hit my email list--a broader list of people I've met over the years around politics or causes, and ask them for smaller amounts. The link will be to the online donation page of the nonprofit, which, sadly, doesn't have online donations working yet. Which leads me to this: execution is everything. Without the online donations page there, the conversion rate will be a lot lower.

Next, I'll send out a letter appealing for support. The letter will be simple, short, and direct. I'll include an informational page. We'll see how well it does--I expect to get this done over the next 2 weeks. I'm using GiftWorks to do this, too, so I'll let you know how it goes.

The bottom line is this: people aren't going to donate to the cause alone. They are going to donate because they know me, and I'm asking them to support something I am endorsing. My relationship with them is more important to them than the cause itself. In other cases, they'll contribute because they agree that the cause is critically important.

Either way, they'll enable the heroes of our movement to continue to move the issue forward. But it doesn't happen in a vaccum. It's all about the relationships.

Comments

A few months ago I heard a person who had raised funds for a retirement community say: " When you want ask people for money, you don't go up and ask for money... you ask for advice, and eventually they'll end up giving you money. " :) It's true that you first and foremost have to get people emotionally invested in the cause before you ask them to contribute. Doing it the other way is putting the cart in front of the horse.

That's right, Mike--thanks for posting. It's interesting in our case, because there are a lot of people emotionally invested, but unfortunately most of them have low incomes and aren't able to contribute more than 20 or 30 bucks. But we're working on attracting supporters from a broader range of people, and we'll definitely take that approach. Good to hear from you!