Getting More—With The Same Tactics

A dependable revenue stream that grows—ah, paradise!

Have a fundraising challenge you want to crack? Weary of doing the same old, same old yet hoping for different outcomes? Do you want the over-the-top results that come from superior strategy?

Email me with your particular problem and I’ll arrange a quick consultation offering you a practical solution you can implement. I may even use your situation to share with my readers. Names are changed, of course!

A common theme in the queries I receive from executives and development officers runs something like this: “I’m just a one-man shop. There’s so much to do. How do I raise more money while keeping my head above water?"

Sound familiar?

I’ve had conversations with three people in the past week alone with this concern.

The solution? In every one of these cases it’s about growing the capacity of the fundraising system, not increasing production.

A number of years ago, Stephen Covey popularized the concept of the “P/PC” balance. To grow an organization or program in a sustainable way requires strategically dividing your resources—time and money—between those activities that produce more and those activities that create a greater capacity to produce more.

The folks I’ve been speaking with are totally focused on simply generating more revenue. How? By merely doing more of what they are already doing.

One wanted to raise more but felt their current success demotivated donors to give more. More from the same in the same way?

Another person stated simply that they wanted to know what additional small events they could be holding that wouldn’t require much time but would bring in more.

Both of these people begged the capacity issue. The solution to their challenges does not lie in attempting to grind more out of the same machine.

Know what happens when you overwork any device or system? It eventually breaks down. Computers are only so fast. Automobiles are designed for only so much use. People have only so much time.

When I spoke of capacity to these folks, the immediate response was, “So, you want me to hire more people so I can raise more (the way we’re currently raising) money.”

No. Emphatically, no!

To enlarge the capacity of any system requires rethinking the assumptions, creating new processes and retooling current processes.