Six Bad Habits of Ineffective Fundraisers

When fundraisers are ineffective, it’s almost always because they are the victims of their own mental habits. These bad habits are more harmful than lack of resources, bad economic times or even stupidity. Conquer these habits, and you’ll raise a lot more money.

Bad Habit No. 1: Being ashamed of fundraising
It’s odd, but many professional fundraisers have an insidious belief that asking people for money is annoying, embarrassing or disrespectful.

This puts them in confusing territory, where they need their donors to fund vital programs — but they don’t want to admit it. That bends their fundraising messages into pretzel shapes that look something like this:

“Maybe you’d be interested in giving. It’s OK if you don’t give. We’re a very well-run organization, and we have many other sources of funding. You’re a small fish anyway, to be honest. But, you know, if you think of it, a gift would be a nice gesture.”

That’s an exaggeration, but it’s not far from how shame-based fundraising operates. Besides its basic dishonesty, this type of fundraising fails to respect the reality of donors and their gifts.

Donors want to be wanted. They need to be needed. They intend to make the world a better place. Coming to the rescue makes them happy. So if you need your donors, go ahead and tell them. Let them know the urgency and the stakes. Be direct. Don’t hide your need behind a mousy veil of pseudo-politeness.

If you’re burdened with an attitude that asking for money somehow gets in the way of a real relationship with donors, you’re missing an important fact: For nearly all donors, giving is the medium through which they relate to you and your cause. Their gifts are the way they translate their values into action.

Philosophical musings or high-level theory about the cause is beside the point for most donors. Giving is the main event. Asking is a great service. Be proud of it.

Bad Habit No. 2: Talking to yourself, not your donors
This is a tough habit to break because it requires you to think outside yourself. Truth is … your thoughts, your experience, your education, your relationship with the cause, and (most likely) your demographic and psychographic profiles are very different from your donors’. The moment you do (or don’t do) something in fundraising because it would appeal (or not appeal) to you, you are on shaky ground.

Don’t create messages that would motivate you. Seek to understand your donors, and create messages for them. In fact, if something feels slam-dunk persuasive to you, take that as a warning sign that you’re missing your donors.

Bad Habit No. 3: Making decisions on instinct, not facts
Instinct can do you a lot of good in life, like warning you not to walk down the wrong street in a neighborhood you don’t know. But sometimes instinct is flat-out wrong. Here are some common instinctive beliefs that may feel true:

* Don’t ask someone who recently gave. Donors need to “rest” between gifts.
* Don’t call the donors; everybody hates telemarketing.
* Nobody reads long letters anymore.

I can almost guarantee you that all three of these statements are completely wrong. Your results, as they say, may vary. But overwhelmingly, the facts will show these instincts to be false.

When your instinct tells you something, use that as a starting point. Call it a hypothesis (that’s all it is) until you can verify the facts. You could end up shocked at how wrong your instincts were. That happens all the time. But armed with the facts, you’ll make much better decisions in the future.

Bad Habit No. 4: Basing decisions on fear
Bad things happen. And when they do, we often kick ourselves for failing to anticipate them. That’s why many people and organizations put prodigious energy into anticipating problems.

Trouble is, you seldom anticipate the actual problems that happen. Instead, you build walls that are better at keeping innovation out than keeping you safe. Decisions made in fear do far more harm than the things you’re afraid of. Cast out your fear!

Bad Habit No. 5: Being addicted to change
I know it’s boring to hear this, but a huge part of success in fundraising involves plodding along with proven programs, making changes in incremental and disciplined ways. It means saying the same thing over and over, even though you’re getting out-of-your-mind tired of it.

Many a nonprofit has set aside lifeblood fundraising programs because it got tired of them — and suffered crippling revenue losses as a result. Don’t let that happen to you. Stay disciplined!

Bad Habit No. 6: Being allergic to change
Discipline is an important part of success, but it’s not everything. We’re standing at the edge of a new era for nonprofits. Our old donors are inexorably passing away. Their demographic niche is being filled by a strange, new tribe: the boomers. Their motivations for giving are different from their elders’. The way we talk to them has to be different — and we’re only beginning to understand the difference.

At the same time, a powerful, new communications medium — the Internet — is crowding in on the print, broadcast and direct-response media. The techniques and tactics of the Internet are different in some surprising ways.

The electric combination of a new type of donor and its new preferred medium puts us in a scary position: Change or die. Some are going to die.

Yes, change is risky. New ventures fail more often than they succeed. But change is our only viable long-term strategy. Embrace change, and you have a long and hopeful future ahead of you.

The good news about all these bad habits: They are merely mental — less constraining than cobwebs. They can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The bad news: Mental chains can be the hardest to break. FS