Creative

Your job as a fundraiser is to be the outside force that puts your donor in motion, emotionally and physically, so he or she cares about your mission and cares enough to make a gift. Here are six ways to jump-start the process.

I admit it — if you follow these six steps you won’t have a model fundraising program in place. But beating your head against the wall until you finally give up isn’t a good solution, either. Start small and make sure everyone on the team knows about the successes and sees the positive notes and emails you receive from donors. Be the best cheerleader for fundraising.

Most nonprofit organizations consider their donors "family." That means that every time you talk to a donor, send a letter or email, or see a donor face to face, it's much like a family reunion. And what happens in those few minutes or hours of engagement impacts the relationship for months, even years, to come.

Your job as a fundraiser is to be the outside force that puts your donor in motion, emotionally and physically, so he or she cares about your mission and cares enough to make a gift. Here are six ways to jump-start the process.

There’s nothing like a “proactive, hands-on committee” to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

If you’re ready to reinforce your fundraising foundation, these basic guidelines can help you transition to what can grow to be a strong and dependable base of support — individual donors.

No matter how skillful we become, it’s a good idea to dust off these prewriting skills because sooner or later they’ll come in handy.

It’s important to stand out in order to deliver your key message. Using humor in your campaigns can help catch the attention of people and leave a lasting impression, increase awareness for your mission, and eventually drive donations. There are three key areas of focus when considering your marketing strategy — the three C's — and these apply to humor too: consistency, creativity and consideration.

Creative is great. I see lots of beautiful newsletters, Web pages and email appeals. They have great design, colors, photos and even videos. But they have a problem. They tend not to be original. They tend to be the same old thing you always talk about. Yourself. They aren’t donor-centric.

Just dressing yourself up in pretty clothes and talking about your organization from your perspective won’t do it. No matter how pretty you make it. What are donors buying with their gifts after all? Donors purchase an impact they want to achieve. Through you.

In order for any fundraiser's words to resonate with donors and compel them to take action, those words must feel genuine — which is to say they must feel and sound like the type of passionate speak people use when they converse with one another. In March 2008, Willis Turner, senior copywriter at Huntsinger & Jeffer, shared "The Watergate Guide to Straight Talk," in which he wrote: "The Watergate Transcripts became a template for the kind of 'real' writing I wanted to do."