HOW NOT TO RAISE MONEY!

Sure-fire ways to sabotage your fundraising!

Andrea McManus, ViTreo Group Inc
February 11th 2020

In the spirit of forgetting it is still winter, and it’s cold, dark and damp, and will be for some time, injecting some silliness into the fundraising sector can’t hurt and may even do some good. And of course, we are always about doing good in the world. So, we have come up with a list of Worst Fundraising Practices and we challenge you, our readers, to stretch yourselves and submit additions to our list.

Worst Fundraising Practices:

1. Focus only on MAJOR DONORS. The other donors really don’t matter. Go for the gold. Think Jeff Bezos, Bill and Melinda Gates… It doesn’t matter where you live or they live… go for it!

2. Appearances are everything. So to make your ROI look great, spend as little as possible on acquisition. Don’t provide PD for your staff, pay them super low wages, don’t invest in capacity building, take a charity tin cup approach to everything.      

3. Bombard your long-term donors with asks. If they don’t respond, repeat. Keep repeating until they give. Forget that gobbledygook about 6 – 8 times a year, keep your name in front of them every single month, better yet, several times each month.

4. Everyone recognizes how important it is to cut costs, so don’t waste time or money reporting back how funds were used.

5. Gaining attention is the objective here. You want to stand out, so change your brand. Use really bright colours and really small fonts that no one over age 55 can read on all your marketing collateral. Think font size 8 or smaller. Then you can say more on a one-pager!

6. People like to give, right? So why waste money creating ‘personas’ or ‘donor profiles’? It takes too much time and efforts and they’re either going to give or not.

7. Send everyone the same material — either they will support you or they won’t. And address it all to “Friend.” They’ll understand how much effort is required to keep your database up-to-date. And seriously, no one minds getting donation requests addressed to a spouse or partner who passed away several years ago. They get it. You’re busy!

8. Create so many calls to action on your website and marketing materials, no one will ever find the Donate button.

9. Stewardship — if people or organizations really require you to be thanking them and fawning over them for the gift, do you really want to encourage this? Truly loyal donors don’t require all that maintenance.

10. Offer only one method of giving. It’s best to keep things simple. There’s lots of advice on offering people multiple ways to give, but you don’t want to create more work for yourself and your staff than is necessary.

11. People are busy — don’t waste their time trying to build relationships with them. They get why you’re there. No need to pussyfoot around… Just make the ask and let them get on with their day. They’ll thank you for it.

12. Research is highly overrated. Qualifying your prospects is a time-waster and you’re better off asking as many potential donors as possible for a gift. Why wouldn’t you rather have a list of 100 “names” than a list of 10 qualified donors? It’s a numbers game, right?

13. Some organizations think donor recognition is critical. But really, most people are modest and don’t want others to know they provided a significant gift.

14. AND, remember. When budgeting, just add the revenue, not expenses… investment in fundraising is for chumps! Your Board and CEO will love you for it.

We’d love to see your contributions — please send them in! And tune in again next week for a guest blog from ViTreo’s own Vincent Duckworth, CFRE, on crowdfunding and later in February, we will begin a three part series on Family Giving, with guest blog contributions from Sharilyn Hale, Ed.D, C. Dir, CFRE, President, Watermark Philanthropic Counsel and Gena Rotstein, FEA, MA, Karma & Cents Inc.

Is your nonprofit thinking about starting an exciting capital campaign or funding program? Not sure how to plan a bold strategy that maximizes your strengths and opportunities? We can help. At ViTreo we know how to tap into your community and transform your fundraising from the inside out. Call us to learn more - (403) 210-3157.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrea McManus, Chair, Board of Directors, Partner
ViTreo Group Inc

Andrea McManus is a Partner with ViTreo with over 30 years’ experience in fund development, marketing, sponsorship and nonprofit management. A highly strategic thinker and change maker, Andrea has worked with organizations that span the nonprofit sector with particular focus on building long-term and sustainable capacity.