You Can’t Fake Greatness

Assuming your organization is truly remarkable, here are some things you can do to leverage your excellence into fundraising power:

1. Know your donors. Know who they are and what they care about. And remember — they aren’t you.
2. Find exciting and concrete ways of describing your work. Connect dollars to action. Make it clear to donors that they are changing the world through you.
3. Keep it simple. Even if it’s complicated.
4. Find the emotional core of your work — and don’t ever forget it. In the most human and tangible sense, what does your work accomplish?
5. Talk to donors. Know their language, their hopes, their dreams. Be one of them.
6. Have amazing spokespeople — famous or not, living or dead — who perfectly embody who you are and what you do.

In short, you need to be great and look great. Your fundraising and program functions must be part of the same circle, their excellence feeding and informing one another. Put Sisyphus to work for a remarkable organization. Donors these days demand nothing less.