Expand your Fundraising Strategy

I want to share with you today another topic that seems to flood my LinkedIn inbox and also comes up very frequently whenever I am speaking, especially to non-profits. I often ask, "What is the goal of the non-profit?", "Where are you going?", "How are things with the non-profit?", "What is the health of your non-profit like?", and many are saying, "All our efforts are focused on fundraising." So I say, "Okay.”

When I ask "What are you fundraising for?", many just stare back at me blankly or say that they don't know, to simply have some money in the bank. It is never an effective strategy. If you are fundraising, you need to know exactly what you are fundraising for. Simply going to stores and doing bag-packing, flag days, or shaking cups and boxes, whilst it worked in the old world, the pre-COVID world, it is certainly one that is not going to work very well now. 

Due to the COVID crisis, we have mass unemployment and business closures. Having traditional fundraiser-type events is off the table. So, it leaves two alternatives. The first alternative is you become very clear on what your fundraising strategy is. You work out what you are fundraising for. Even looking at online sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, Crowdfunder you’ll see that it is outlined very clearly as to what these businesses or nonprofits are fundraising for. 

If you don't have that, then it is going to set back your chances of receiving any public funding. Even businesses that have got through the COVID crisis, many of them have a lot of financial scars and staff losses. Nonprofits around the world are finding that their corporate sponsors are pulling out, and donations are getting less and less. As a result, that only leaves one true path, which is going towards self-sustainability, where it is a nonprofit taking control of their future, and deciding, "This is the direction that we're going to go," because it so happens that nonprofits tend to have various committees, which are  all talking about different subjects and meeting at different times. 

A lot of the time, especially when it comes to mainly corporate sponsors or government funding, the funders are often in control of the nonprofit more so than the committee. Because if the expectations of the funder or the donor are not met by the nonprofit, that will mean that the funding may not come. In plain English, "If you don't do this, we will not give you money." The way around it is to become entirely self-sustainable, whether you are selling training, courses, apparel, merchandise, or services. That is the way of the future for nonprofits. 

Nonprofits need to enter an entrepreneurial age in order to survive, because government funding is going to be harder to get. Huge sponsors are going to be hard to get, and the public is saving money now more than they ever have before, probably since the great depression of the start of the 1930s. 

So it is something that I would like you to think about. If you are fundraising, then what are you fundraising for? If you feel that you do not have any control over your nonprofit, then why is that? Are you at the mercy of donors and corporate sponsors? Should you really think about taking control of your project back?

Jude Morrow

NTI

www.neurodiversity-training.com