My six top tips for fundraising in no particular order
Hello! I’ve been thinking lately about my six top tips for fundraising, having now put together two publications on the subject for DSC: the book Fundraising Strategy (with Claire Routley) and the downloadable resource Charity Fundraising Templates. Without fanfare (which would always be tempting for me as a brass player), here they are:
1 Listen first
Tip 1: In all areas of fundraising, listening is almost certainly more important than talking.
I often think about that old saying “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak” and I think it needs to be the first rule of fundraising – and probably life too! We should always be listening hard, whether it’s to our supporters or to our potential supporters, and especially to our lapsed supporters, or to our colleagues and volunteers, both inside and outside our fundraising team bubble. What are they really telling us? What do they like? What do they need? How should we respond? What are we passionate about? Why is our cause important?
2 Involve and engage
Tip 2: Make sure you involve and engage as many people as possible when considering your fundraising.
To quote from the song Feel This Moment, by Pitbull ft. Christina Aguilera (!): “Ask for money and get advice, Ask for advice, get money twice”. This links to tip 1 when speaking to major supporters in particular – asking them what they think about your fundraising and make them feel involved is a good way to reinforce their support. But it runs deeper than that, of course. Whether it’s planning or implementing our fundraising, we need to involve and engage all our colleagues and volunteers when considering our fundraising, to get their buy-in and so that we have their support.
3 Show your working
Tip 3: Show your working when planning your fundraising, and keep it so you can check against it when analysing your performance.
If one early lesson from Maths at school has stuck with me in the many years since it’s “always show your working”. I’ve certainly seen a lot of fundraising plans and strategies where the targets seem to have been pulled from thin air, and even if there was some solid thinking and calculations behind them, they seem to have been lost in the mists of time. Show your working and be brave enough to keep it, so you can test your assumptions and work out what needs to change.
4 Document your processes
Tip 4: Establish strong processes and documentation to support all areas of your fundraising
I so often hear people say that when it comes to fundraising in their organisation, “not enough is written down”. What should you do if X [could be something bad, could be something good!] happens? What has to happen internally whenever you receive a donation? And by when? What do you do next and when? How do you ensure that Future You will thank you for signposting what to do? I don’t mean that you need lengthy tomes or even that you need hard copies but it’s so important for fundraising (both internally and in developing relationships with supporters) that policies and processes are written down.
5 Plan – Do – Learn … go again
Tip 5: Think about your fundraising as a continual cycle: Plan – Do – Learn … Plan – Do – Learn
I’ve written many times before about how fundraisers always seem to think in cycles or pyramids. But this is the key one, for me. It’s all about iterative process, as far as I’m concerned, if you want to use a flashier term. Good fundraising is about carefully planning what we’re going to do, actually implementing it, and then learning from you have done. If we’re thinking leanly, should we be doing anything that’s not in these three areas? Once we’ve learned our lessons from what we’ve done, get ready to tweak, overhaul or do differently when you plan your next piece of work. Plan, do, learn – go again.
6 Put it in a picture
Tip 6 Use charts or graphics to help you to communicate internally and externally
I think it really is true that “a picture really does speak a thousand words.” Certainly, we know that many people find pictures easier to process than text or numbers. So how can charts or graphics help you to communicate with your colleagues and with your supporters? A simple chart to illustrate your case for support, theory of change or organisational strategy, or to document your processes, for example, can help you so much internally. People won’t need all the detail that you do, and they won’t be able to commit it to memory either, let alone be motivated by it. And a graphic can, for example, really show to a supporter the impact you’ve achieved thanks to them. A picture, alongside words and numbers and with a human touch, can communicate so much.
So, and I told you there was no fanfare and I’d get straight to the point (there’s not enough time for waffle, is there?), here are my 6 top tips for fundraising.
- In all areas of fundraising, listening is almost certainly more important than talking.
- Make sure you involve and engage as many people as possible when considering your fundraising.
- Show your working when planning your fundraising, and keep it so you can check against it when analysing your performance.
- Establish strong processes and documentation to support all areas of your fundraising
- Think about your fundraising as a continual cycle: Plan – Do – Learn … Plan – Do – Learn
- Use charts or graphics to help you communicate internally and externally
