The Nonprofit's Dilemma: Abundance or Scarcity

You have a choice. That’s right, you do.

You can inspire people who care about your cause to give to you because you’re moving the needle of change forward, or you can scare them into action using statistics designed to create urgency.

You can share personal stories of people in need—the people you serve—that are dignified and show an appreciation for the systemic failures that led to their current situation, or you can show "poverty porn."

You can set meaningful fundraising goals that translate directly into tangible impact, or you can arbitrarily create unfounded and frantic campaign-asks every month until constituents, who once opened most of your emails, have since asked Gmail to mark them as spam.