Nonprofit Fundraising

Fundraising Tip — “Raise More Money”.

The tip isn’t to raise more money. It’s more about how to react to this statement in our fundraising world. And to remember.

Author meeting with a donor. Photo credit: Author

“I need you to raise more money.”

Back when I first entered the nonprofit fundraising world, it was a common practice for nonprofit leaders to add revenue to their budgets by simply telling their fundraising team to raise more money.

$75,000 short of what we need to meet the expense budget? No problem. We can simply add that amount to the “individual giving” budget line item and worry about it later. This way the budget is good and of course we trust that our fundraising team will be able to accomplish this increase.

Along with the $100,000 we already increased the revenue budget to in the “individual giving” line item.

Even though we missed that budget goal by $50,000 last year.

Does any of this sound familiar?

There are of course problems with this, especially from the perspective of someone who believes that fundraising is not about money.

It’s about relationships. This is the reminder I mentioned above.