Larry C. Johnson: The 8 Principles of Sustainable Fundraising

FS: Anything you'd like to add?
LJ: Outside of what's in this book, the fundraisers that I know, be they professionals or volunteers, they need to have a healthy relationship with money, a healthy understanding of that, especially in what we've seen over the last year in the popular media. There's a lot of prejudice over people who have versus have not, and there are a lot of assumptions being made. Money is often a taboo subject precisely because it's so personal. We as the ones going out to ask to invite others in to participate need to get beyond this. We need to question ourselves pretty closely when we go in to see a donor — do we have some of these preconceived notions or assumptions that we need to dispense with and just listen to see what's coming back to us? Realize that most of the anxiety that's associated with asking for money is really due to our own insecurities regarding money. We haven't worked through some of those issues ourselves. Once we move beyond these, we can ask freely. Money is not the object of fundraising. Fulfillment of the donor is. But money that's well-invested is the result of that.