Another Six Reasons for Lackluster Fundraising Results
Will you reach your funding goal in 2013? It's a matter of your creativity, openness, and persistence.
Be creative about how you describe your program. Think of the different
benefits or issues surrounding it and then write about each one on different occasions
Accept awards and declinations
evenly. Don't make a the declination letter the final word. Return to
the prospect to get specific reasons for the decision. If you make the necessary changes, do so and resend at the next scheduled submission period. Keep at the job
of fundraising. Don't let the effort drop off.
More Reasons for Lackluster Fundraising Results:
- Fear of rejection.
Does asking for something and not getting it have you feel you're not
good enough? Perish the thought. Funders have deadlines, budgets, and
changes in funding priorities without giving the public advance notice. Motivate yourself to move past the fear by giving a high-five to yourself or someone else in the organization or quietly thank yourself for submitting the proposal or making the call.
- No follow through on requests.
Don't let money slip through your fingers because you didn't submit the
requested additional information or didn't schedule the visit. Write it on your wall calendar and input in your smartphone.
- Lack of stamina to do repeat requests.
The sources of stamina in this work are confidence and optimism. See #1 and
put on the calendar or funding software the date of the next deadline
for that prospect. Low stamina may also be a nutritional issue. Reduce the sugar, dairy, caffeine, and wheat; Increase the fruits, vegetables, water and sunlight.
- There's only one message-and that's limited. Think like a marketer and study the facets of your program; then describe each facet in many ways.
- Over reliance on few sources-even Sugar Daddies get tired of their sweet things. In short, diversifying your funding base is crucial. Make it a practice to uncover the supporters of programs similar to yours. Then do prospect research to learn whether whether that supporter's funding guidelines cover your project.
- You don't make it easy to give.
Some people write checks; others want to use PayPal, a credit card, or
send a text that get's charged to the telephone. Explore the payment
options and learn the demographic most likely to use each one.
Labels: advertising, brand recognition, capital formation, donations, ego, fundraising, nonprofit
From the Ground Up PR
Time flew by since the last entry due to an emergency PR project. It requires a combination of conventional promotional tactics and using social media.
It's quite incredulous how you learn the real deal once a colleague asks for help. It's a longstanding human service organization that didn't get the knack of community and government relations. My task is to develop a rolodex and automatte contact database of community service providers and the elected. Flyers in English and Spanish were designed to herald an Open House and a staff and customer satisfaction survey need to be administered. Employees are so disgruntled that they're considering letting the ship sink.
After a couple days of focusing on newspaper, TV and radio media relations, it occurred to me that we needed to head to the blogosphere for higher impact. The client is sitting on a hot topic that folks would rally around (child care services) if they'd only get attention. Of course that's why I was called at the last moment to handle that.
Let me head back to the client. If things work out, I'll state the name.
Labels: government relations, media relations, nonprofit, PR firm, Web 2.0 crisis management
Interacting with Your Peeps
It started with being "online, real time." Being on the Internet assured the latest information for you and from you. This computer science adjunct at Pace University chanted "online, real time" during the term of his course. This was in the early 1980's. Though I learned COBOL, I never quite got the meaning of it. Maybe I was somewhat of
a deer blinded by the headlights of a car. The good thing is I did jump over to the other side of the highway before the car hit me.
In 2007, it's "interactivity." I got it as soon as I heard the phrase. Making a website engaging enough that people responded to it. It was more than sending an email or completing a poll, though these are first steps. Interactivity can include changing the look of a website--just for you; revealing only the information that interests you; selecting the shape of the cursor; or choosing whether the website is a static experience or dynamic one using Flash.
George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic fame gave you that choice: static or dynamic.
Level Wing Media, an interactive agency, displays its interactive capabilities as soon as you enter the home page. You choose the pages that come up on the screen. The choices cover mission, services, case studies, executive profiles and the press room. Instead of many web pages, Level Wing uses PDFs. That's sleek, minimal and fun. It's on the line of the "all about you" mentality.
For many, letting go over the brochure website is a hard thing. Time was spent getting the right photographs, color background, and text to explain who are and what you do and your added value and all the rest. I understand because my website is still brochure style. This interactivity bodes well for social cause agents. There's the reality of an
eNonprofit. What does that look like? Similar to a bank's website, an eNonprofit has services to offer and they can be offered 24/7.
The eNonprofit offers downloadable city agency forms, official instructions and insider suggestions for application completion. Community calendar of events are regularly updated. FAQs responding to the departments of the organization allow people to get answers anytime of the day. This means a housing group's FAQ provides Q & A for responding to a 72-hour notice of eviction. A merchant association's FAQ explains web marketing or discounting merchandise.
If getting people out to a meeting is a challenge, then try teleconferences.
Queen Afua's Heal Thyself Center has weekly City of Wellness conference calls and monthly Global Village Sacred Woman calls. There are people all over the country are "bridging onto" the calls.
The key issue is seeing that you need to change how you communicate and, then, being willing to do a couple of changes. Sometimes the headlights keep us blind, so blink.
Labels: interactive, nonprofit, social media, teleconferencing, web
