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March 2015

Fundraising the SMART Way

SMART

I just got back from sunny Miami, where I attended a workshop that was a real eye opener.  Fundraising the SMART Way, a training and coaching program by Bristol Strategy Group, shows a way out of the blind, hair-on-fire, tin-cup method of donor cultivation employed by most nonprofits. The coaching program helps organizations create ideal donor profiles and scorecards, conduct comprehensive prospect analysis that is customized to the organization’s values and priorities, and develop a pipeline system of relationship management that allows you to move prospects through a clear continuum of engagement.  The major principles of Fundraising the SMART Way are:

  • Focus on your strengths.  Take the “S” from your SWOT analysis and put it on your chest, like a superhero.  Your strengths are what you use to make the case that you are worthy of funding.
  • Define your ideal donor, then go find them. Create a picture of your dream donor in the same way that you envision your dream house, car or vacation. Give it detail, so that you have a standard to measure prospective donors against. Use your favorite current donors as examples.
  • Do more research and less reaching.  It takes more than money to become a donor. So why limit your research to giving capacity?  Dig deeper to find out what might motivate someone to give to your organization.
  • Ask, don’t tell. I’ll cover this in more detail in a later blog. They best way to learn more about what your donors want is to forget about what you want for a moment and just ask them. Open-ended questions will get you very far in learning a prospective donor’s value sought.
  • Establish shared values.  Once you know what your donor is looking for, now you can share information about your organization – mainly, the common ground that you share in what you are trying to accomplish.
  • Attract, don’t chase.  This is more about mindset than anything else.  If you approach funding from a deficit-based mindset (PLEASE help us or we’ll go out of business!), you will appear to be desperate and therefore much more likely to repel than attract donations.  Put away that tin cup!
  • Be ambitious! Your organization has many strengths, as we have already established, and you have big ideas and a grand vision that is worthy of support. So don’t be afraid to pursue big numbers.  Try to target three times as many dollars as you are trying to raise. You can always adjust your targets and expectations along the way if necessary.

For more information on Fundraising the SMART Way, visit  the Bristol Strategy Group website.