1. All Board Members Must Be Donors … to the best of their ability. Not all board members are wealthy, but everyone should give at the highest level possible for their circumstances. It is important to be able to say to the public that 100% of your board supports your mission to the best of their ability. If your board members won’t give, why should anyone else?
2. You must give people reasons that will make them want to give. That you need money is not one of those reasons. Show prospective donors how their giving will make a difference in people’s lives. And, more importantly, show them how their giving will make a difference in their own lives.
3. The best person-to-person fundraiser is a well-trained and well-motivated volunteer who solicits his/her peers, friends, family and colleagues. Professional fundraising staff or counsel can help you design and run your program and train your volunteers, but staff and counsel cannot usually do as good a job soliciting as can an impassioned volunteer. (And, remember, Board Members are volunteers.)
4. You must do Adequate Planning/Research before implementing any fundraising strategy — no matter the size of the gifts you’re soliciting or the goal you need to reach. And, you should, periodically, test variations of your methodology to ensure that your efforts are as (cost-)effective as possible.
5. You must have a means/method of tracking your fundraising and leadership prospects, your donors and your contacts with them. If you’re a very small organization and only have a few prospects/donors, you could probably use file folders and/or spreadsheets; but, once you have significant numbers of individuals to track, you must have the appropriate computer software.
There are many brands of such software, some are free, some are expensive, but don’t buy on the basis of cost. Select the software that will allow you the best use of the data you will collect. And don’t try to design your own — unless you’re a fundraising database expert, you don’t know what information to collect, how to arrange it, and how you’re going to use it.
6. Please, do not write your own fundraising materials … not until you have the required experience/expertise/perspective. And, if you insist on doing so, pay an experienced development professional to review and comment on your writing.
Writing for fundraising is an Art. Most fundraising letters, case statements, grant proposals, etc, are nowhere near as effective as they could be. Many fundraising letters (and you’ve probably gotten some of them) are really terrible.
7. You must diversify your sources of funding for your fundraising program to be successful over the long term. Every time the economy takes a hit, foundations, government and corporations reduce their funding of non-profits. The greater the number of individual major donors an organization has, the smaller the chance that an economic downturn will force you to reduce services to your community.
8. DO NOT assume that a special event will make everything better!! You can’t expect to create a special event and have it be instantaneously successful. An event most often requires a multi-year period to establish itself and begin generating enough income to do more than pay its own costs.
A great number of attendees at special events are paying for entertainment or to “honor” someone they care about. You can’t count on those people buying tickets every year. They may find an event that’s more entertaining or that has an “honoree” to whom they feel a greater connection.
9. All donors must be thanked/recognized for their gifts, but not every donor wants to be thanked/recognized in the same way. Some like seeing their names in print, some don’t; some like plaques, some don’t; some like old-fashioned letters, some prefer email; the better you know your donors, the more appropriately you can thank/recognize them.
10. A successful fundraising program should be designed based on the needs of your donors, not on the needs of the organization. Donors give to satisfy their own needs, and then, maybe yours.
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