What Makes Your Organization Great?

By Richard L. P. Solosky

Competition in the for-profit world has always driven companies to create better and better products in the interest of creating an edge for increasing sales. This drive to be the best has always benefited the consumer with faster, lighter, smaller/bigger, cheaper and often exceptional products. In the nonprofit world, this concept of competition can greatly benefit the community as well and serve to focus programs and deliver greater outcomes to those in need.

Don’t Neglect These Tried-and-True Fundamentals

In building relationships and creating engagement and energy around your exciting plan for the future, there are several fundraising principles that provide you leverage. Here’s a list of some of those basics that we often forget, but really shouldn’t.

Giving is mostly emotional and always personal: Donors need to feel personally connected to the mission and your shared vision of the future.
Giving is a social act that makes people happy: They are more likely to participate if they see other people participating.
When it comes to problems, the bigger the numbers, the less people care: People are hardwired to understand their world through emotions and stories, more than through statistics.
People are more easily persuaded by people they like, but more importantly by people they trust: A great brand works to cement that trust.

How you communicate your importance and your value to the community makes all the difference; you need to demonstrate success in a way that your target audience understands, through both stories and numbers.