I don’t want to “pester” my donors, want to make sure I can offer some sort of concrete service or product in appreciation for their donation. There is a fear factor present when I compose a donation letter. Plus, money is extremely tight, so actual physical mailings are a real challenge with regards to printing and postage.

I’m also trying various ways to fundraise without dipping directly into wallets, such as ink cartridge recycling; getting companies on board to do this seems like a lot of work, most are strangely skeptical of this or don’t follow through with a collection box, etc. I’m trying drop-boxes at various locations around town, as well as cold-calling companies in the area to see how to make this program work for them, with regular pick-ups and maybe a write-up in the papers to thank them. Other than that, I’m stumped!

We have a great cause and everyone agrees that mental health counseling is a “good thing” but while our satisfied customers might be our best donors, we consider it unethical to try to tap this group. After all, many people don’t even want others to know that they received counseling – getting a “satisfied” testimonial is not easy. Add in the fact that we are supported by churches (who recognize the need for counseling) and so are faith-based and I sometimes feel like a pariah/leper. The people we are helping most do not necessarily want to publicly admit their support which makes marketing for this organization a real challenge.

As the Executive Director and lone staff member of a small youth arts organization, I spent most of my time with programming which fortunately is a children’s theater so we do bring in revenue. While I have learned much “in the trenches,” I don’t have fundraising expertise per se (my background is as a performing artist/instructor) and have not located board members or volunteers who are fundraising saavy and I feel as though we keep spinning our wheels. Our programming is excellent and runs itself but there is a lack of funding for operations and staffing. Since we are a children’s program, our volunteers last as long as their child takes part in the program. I have limited time for grant writing which is frequently successful but once our programming starts up there is no time for that. We have never lauched any type of regular fundraising campaign simply because I cannot handle the extra workload. On top of that I live in an area that is still recovering from a huge man-made disaster and have an hour long commute to the theater which I didn’t have prior to the catastrophe. I keep doing what I’ve been doing and getting what we’ve been getting which is a program that the kids LOVE with limited community support.

I find that getting bogged down in “tradition” is a huge blockade to stepping up fundraising efforts.

Many times have I run into the statement “It’s our tradition to do this” or “We’ve always done it this way.” And then in the same breath, the frustration that we can’t raise more money is expressed.

Doing the same thing , the same way, over and over, and yet expecting different results is not going to improve the situation at all. However, change is a very uncomfortable thing for people. Trying to get your administration, board, etc., to accept any change is a challenge that is not easily overcome. When there is a possibility that you might NOT make as much as before, people retreat into their safe zone — familiarity and tradition. And you can expect to have the same results as before. You can count on that amount coming in, but it is still not enough.

We probably have two areas that slow down our fundraising. First of all, we spend too much time on the small annual fundraisers that we know will work, but only bring in limited amounts of money. We should be spending more of our time introducing ourselves to local businesses/foundations and forming lasting relationships with them. That leads to the other area in need of more attention. We should include and encourage our board members to make the initial contacts and help them communicate our needs to the grantors. The board members of the non-profit usually have a “louder voice” when forming these relationships with the business people of the commmunity. After that relationship is formed, we need to spend more time seeking and writing grants to bring in the “real money”

What keeps me from being successful in fundraising is lack of a strategic plan (can’t fundraise when you don’t know what to fundraise for), no understanding that development work is not a “SILO”—that it involves everyone from the Executive Director, Board, and staff to help with fundraising efforts. When all the principal players in a nonprofit think that now that they hired a professional fundraiser “that one person” will raise all the money, they are sadly mistaken. The fundraiser does not have the “cache’” in the community to recruit new board members or raise money from peers. Also, not being able to state what makes an organization “stand out” as best among similar nonprofits, or having information from program staff about how the programs make an impact on the community, or outcomes/evaluative tools to show that donors’ money is being used to create good results. As a colleague said in one of the above posts, unless everyone in the organization is committed to doing their part to create/implement change, there is much resistance to change. If individuals are not educated in what development is, not interested in being educated, and feel it is the job of 1 person, then it’s a Herculean task for the development person to make a change—which will be met by much institutional resistance. Lastly, being a one person development shop–where you are doing fundraising work, administrative work that supports the fundraising efforts, and other “catch-all” work assigned to you where there is no-one else to do it (human resources, staff recognition projects, website development, etc.) does not leave enough time to do a solid job as a fundraising professional.

Despite having an amazing and unique animal shelter, ultimately I believe it is a lack of resources that hurts our fundraising efforts: no volunteers, no time, no money.
We do not have enough volunteers to put together or help with the fundraising programs. Or we run into an even bigger problem of volunteers offering to help, but never following through. This leaves a huge burden on those volunteers that are still left helping.
Then for those volunteers that can help, they are restricted on the amount of time they can help due to their full time jobs and other personal commitments. Often due to the lack of volunteers, those that do volunteer quickly get burnt out and move on because there is too much for them to do.
And finally the lack of money. We do not have enough money to hire staff to work on fundraising projects. So we must rely completely on volunteers; which brings us back around to the first obstacle. Plus because of the lack of money, it takes more time and energy from volunteers to become creative in ways to cut costs from fundraising activities in order to give the animal shelter the largest gain.

I am the director/manager/administrator of a “clinic for the working poor”. We provide health care to people who would otherwise either go without care or end up in the ER without money to pay the hospital bill. Our biggest obstacles seem to be a lack of time on my part and a lack of willingness on the part of most of the board members. We have several board members who are very passionate about our mission and have their “elevator speech” available at all times. We manage to survive because we slowly are building our donor base of small, regular gifts. However, major gifts are a very real problem. Our most significant benefactor passed away a couple years ago, and we have not found a replacement… or even several replacements who can cumulatively fill that gap. In addition, I am now battling the “stinkin’ thinkin”/poverty mentality with the board. I’m more of a Pollyanna, myself! However, at the moment, I’m teetering on burnout, which makes it difficult for me to convey passion or a “rah! rah!” cheerleader attitude!

While I feel I have all the training and expertise needed to bring in the donations and grants, I just don’t have the time to cover everything that I need to cover!

As the sole being in the development “department”, I can’t believe how much time is spent reporting to my supervisor and following up on requests for input/information from program staff. I think the reason for the constant reporting is that I don’t have any buy-in with the Board and do not attend management meetings. Those two things alone could increase my productivity.

I don’t get any sympathy, just “it’s part of your evaluation, so you need to get it done”.

More than anything else I believe the answer is ADVERTISING….or actually the lack of it. We’ve had some great ideas and actually some great fundraisers, but I don’t believe we’re good at getting the word out. Newspaper ads are too expensive and have to be run more than once to be effective, making and printing flyers is expensive but more doable, but just getting flyers out is where we drop the ball. I can’t run all over the county posting flyers and just don’t seem to have enough help to do it. I’m away for the winter right now, but have an idea I’d like to try when I get home. I’d like to have an advertising plan where we have one volunteer assigned to a certain town in our rural county. It would be their job to post 10-20 flyers for every event we want advertised. Getting better coverage and getting it out early should help make our fundraisers more successful. If we can get flyers out into locations where sooner or later almost everyone in that town will see them, I think we have a good shot at increasing our participation.

I started in January and before me there was no development department to speak of, whatever came in came in. Now I need to start a program that will fund a new Urban Education Center. Grants seem to be the popular idea of the committee and we will try that avenue, but individual and corporate donors will need to be found and I am development. Sometimes I feel I am going in circles, researching, creating plans, attending programs to learn more ideas on how to be successful. I need to touch base with the current donor base, but I will need more than that. I am hoping what I read, people are more apt to continue to help organizations that help marginalized children, which this will do by instilling a desire to learn and to show families how to succeed. There are days . . .

I need help, and I need it rather expeditiously. I have been trying to fund a project myself, and it is not having the charitable affect I had planned. Briefly, my mom past several months ago and I am her only son. I am therefore in charge of her small estate. The most significant is a one-family home that has a very small mortgage left. I was originally going to sell; however, while having some friends help me clean out the house a rather melancholy topic arose. Some of my friends asked if they could stay in the house. I knew the reason why. They were both out of work, and were unable to sell their home because of the economy.
I was rather excited to do this for my friends and his family. A week later, another request came along. Again, I had no problem with the request, and this time, tears actually flowed. Tears knowing how many of my friends were losing everything, while I also out of work did not have the overwhelming concerns of a family. Anyway, while sharing our nightly dinner, I had the idea to lightly fix the house and continue supporting these families.
I started with the small and obvious first. I wanted the families that stayed to feel secure and safe, and I wanted them to have a sense of space. Of course with any kind of home improvement, it does not stay small for long. Granted the labor is not a problem as everyone at the house is more than willing to do a full days work. The problem I am foreseeing is financial.
I know this is probably way off topic for this blog, but I figured with the information on fund raising, I felt assured someone would be able steer me in the proper direction. My two key variables are time; I am leaving the state in June for employment reasons and a total of one hundred and sixty thousand dollars. For that amount, I will be able to complete the plans suggested by the families and put loosely planned by the engineer.
In short, I apologize for the long-winded introduction. I however, cannot discuss this topic without excess enthusiasm and child like eagerness. Regardless, I am open to any suggestions, comments, and criticism, but please, keep the latter to a minimum. I don’t care if I fail. I have done so many times in my life., but failing on this project means families, and now friends will have to worry about something no one should have to—that is, how to tell their kids that they do not have a place to sleep.
A brief note: I have already tried the loan route. Apparently banks, even ones that are failing themselves, do not like to lend money to people who are not working. Hmm. Go figure! Thank to all.