Our Approach & Values
As career fundraisers and fundraising consultants in the crowded nonprofit landscape of New York City, we’ve seen firsthand what can cause fundraising to go wrong – and we know what it takes to make it work in the long run. Read on to learn about our approach to fundraising and our values as a social entrepreneurship.
Fundraising is a support department
A nonprofit’s fundraising department is their equivalent of a sales department – with all of the baggage that goes along with that. Just as the sales team is often prioritized over other teams at a for-profit company, fundraising and development are all too often treated as being more important than programs. They may get better pay, better perks, and more respect from leadership. We fundamentally reject this idea.
Fundraising is, at its core, a support department. Just as there would be no need for HR without employees, no need for IT without technology, there would be no need for fundraising without programs to raise money for. This means:
- Fundraising does not determine program design
- The revenue that fundraising teams pursue should solve problems for programs without creating major additional problems
- Programs should have significant input regarding what funding opportunities to pursue and what to skip
Fundraisers are experts on revenue and funders; program staff are the experts on their programs. Fundraising exists in service to the programs and mission of the organization.
Fundraising’s mandate is to serve the mission
Regardless of what your organization does, or where you’re located, or how many people work with you, you are all working toward the same goal: serving your organization’s mission.
For program staff, this is a very obvious connection. They work directly with clients or on programs that carry out the cause and mission of the organization. But fundraising serves your mission, clients, and cause as well. Depending on your organization, your development department raises money to pay people’s salaries, rent your office locations, provide essential items to clients, and more.
When reviewing funding opportunities, it’s the fundraiser’s responsibility to ensure that the opportunity is aligned with your mission. Chasing the money – applying for any and all funding opportunities that your organization qualifies for, regardless of mission alignment – is always a mistake. The communities your organization serves should be your guiding star.
Always submit in good faith
On a related note, make sure you never apply for a funding opportunity for which you don’t meet the requirements. It might seem like the worst thing that a funder could do is turn you down, but it actually can get worse. Funders don’t want their time wasted, and they keep all applications on file. That means that they will know if you submitted something in the past that didn’t meet their requirements, and they won’t be happy about it.
We have seen it happen that an Executive Director or a Board member will get “stuck” on a certain opportunity that isn’t a good fit for your organization. In those moments, it’s important to be brave, and to straightforwardly tell your ED or Board about the consequences of taking on funding that isn’t a good fit.
Similarly, sometimes you inherit funding lines that weren’t the best idea for your agency. Be as transparent as possible with those funders about what you’re doing with their money and how you’re using it to meet your mission.
Fundraisers should be realistic and practical
There can be a precarious balance to fundraising. On one hand, you need to be an enthusiastic and convincing cheerleader of your organization. After all, most of our job involves asking people for money! At the same time, however, successful fundraising needs to be grounded and pragmatic, balancing ambition with practical realities.
It’s one thing to propose a grand new idea to solve a major social issue – but do you have the staff for that? Do you have the infrastructure? Do you have the necessary connections to other organizations? Will this opportunity give you enough money to achieve those lofty goals?
You need to be aware of your organization’s limitations and how to work within and around them. (A good rule of thumb in fundraising is to err on the side of under-promising and over-delivering.) Every organization has a few things that they excel at and a few things that they struggle with. If you come across a funding opportunity that would require hiring several people for a role that your organization usually has a lot of trouble recruiting for, that may be a compelling reason to pass on that funding. Getting money you can’t spend for goals you can’t accomplish is worse than not getting the money in the first place.
Sustainable processes and continuous quality improvement
In keeping with being practical, it’s important that the processes you have in place for major fundraising tasks are sustainable over time. For example, let’s say you create a new process whereby your Executive Director adds a handwritten note to the acknowledgment letter for every donation above $250. This would be a great way to recognize donors and incentivize them to keep giving – but not if it takes weeks and weeks for your ED to write them.
A good idea that you’re not able to execute consistently ceases to be a good idea, and a process that doesn’t produce reliable outcomes is not a sustainable process. Take a critical eye to your processes, approaches, and habits, and always be open to making improvements.
Client confidentiality and generalized stories
When your organization works directly with people, such as in human services, client success stories are often one of the best illustrations of the impact of your work. However, maintaining confidentiality and respect for clients is absolutely paramount in fundraising. What to you is a success story is someone’s life, and telling that story should happen on their terms or not at all. This means:
- Speak with program teams before approaching clients about success stories. They will be able to discuss the possibility of sharing success stories with their clients. Clients may also be more comfortable telling their story to someone they already have a relationship with.
- Explain to clients the purpose of gathering their stories and allow clients to set limitations on what parts of their stories you will use. This might mean omitting parts of the story or changing names or identifying details in order to keep clients safe and comfortable.
- Be clear about how you would like to use a client’s story. If you want to use it in widespread marketing – such as in an email newsletter or individual giving campaign – make that very clear, and make sure the client understands that they can decline or ask for changes to be made to their stories to avoid identifying them. Some clients may only be comfortable with their stories being used in more limited settings, such as grant applications.
If you take photographs or videos of clients, be transparent about how the images or videos could be used. Again, allow clients to set limitations; they may be comfortable having their photo appear in your annual report or on your website but not on a billboard. Be sure to have clients sign photo releases or consent forms and keep them on file.
One way to use client stories with less concern about confidentiality is to take stories from different clients that share some common elements and generalize them. In this way, you can illustrate a typical client journey with concrete details but without the risks that come with telling a single story.
Strategic, holistic fundraising
Everything we’ve discussed so far is part of our guiding philosophy of strategic, holistic fundraising. This philosophy, which guides all of our work as fundraisers and fundraising consultants, states:
- Collaboration is key to success. Every aspect of a nonprofit, from the programs to development to operations, is interconnected, and successful fundraising is dependent upon knowing how everything works together and fostering an environment of collaboration.
- You need to be able to solve problems before they arise, to prepare and frontload your work, to consider all angles, all possibilities, and run toward the danger.
- Prioritize creativity, kindness, and honesty in all of your work.