Why would anyone be a professional fundraiser? Asked that question David Martin who has worked for four charities – including large Christian ones – has a good answer. “It’s one of those things where if you’re someone that doesn’t have necessarily many funds to contribute yourself, but you want to make a difference about a cause, then fundraising is a space where you can use your interest, your passion, to make a difference, to be able to bring finance in to support the causes,” he tells The Other Cheek.
After doing the hard yards in those charities, he says three things hold charities back.
1. Are your donors ATMs?
“Commonly, what I see is the organisation focuses its efforts on building its brand and achieving its projects,” Martin said. “And fundraising’s supporters are almost seen in a transactional point of view.”
“Just unpick that; what is a transactional point of view?” The Other Cheek asked
“Well, it means we treat them a little like ATMs. Go and push the buttons through another appeal.
“So the transactional side of things is treating donors like we can send out another appeal, and they’ll respond, we’ll get more money and get on with our project. Often leaders of charities will say to fundraisers, ‘Well, we’ve got this big project coming up; can you just give us some money for it?’
“I think it’s a considerable cultural shift for a charity’s leadership, no matter where you sit in the leadership, to see that donors are an essential part of a mission.”
Martin’s view is that the CEO of an organisation should not see the fundraising function of the organisation as something they delegate.
“If you ask the question, why does the charity exist? A charity exists for two reasons.
“One of those reasons is that there’s a need that requires help, which creates a noble cause.
“Secondly, a group of people are willing to support the charity to achieve the goals of this noble cause. And charity cannot accomplish its purpose without the people who support it, whether through time, talent, or funding.
“And that’s why I want to see the CEOs taking a more holistic view of the charity’s existence: the need and the support. So bringing those two together, that’s the mission.”
2. The dreaded silos
Work in a charity, and you come across a visual metaphor: the four pillars of fundraising.
“There is direct mail, middle donors, major donors, and bequests. And those four pillars then become silos because their KPIs focus on achieving their goals.”
Key performance indicators often expressed as financial goals, get in the way of fundraising teams looking after each pillar working together.
Martin gives an example of how it often goes wrong. “One reason you have a “middle donor” program is to retain a group of people who give whatever figure you decide as the middle donor figure. And a second [reason] is growth, which is growing them towards a certain amount of people to becoming major donor prospects.
“The problem with the KPI setting is if the middle donor is set with ‘you need to raise a million dollars – just to pull a figure out of the air. If they hand any of their donors on to major donors’ team, that impacts their ability to achieve their financial KPI of a million dollars.”
He has another example. “Direct marketing – most of us would have the idea is if we send out 1000 letters, you’re gonna get a 10% response rate or something like that – so they don’t want to stop sending letters to everyone they can send letters to.” Taking people off their list to have another fundraising look after them impacts their financial KPIs.”
Martin says if you “get each (fundraising) department work collaboratively, so your focus is less on just the dollar bottom line, but more on building the relationships with the donors over time, you will achieve your financial and better financial outcomes. And work collaboratively together.”
Crude KPIs can be self-defeating.
3. Internal competition
Martin gives the example of marketing and fundraising teams competing. For example, did a donation come from a social media campaign because a fundraiser reached out, or did a presentation at a church?
And everyone is busy. The leaders are busy, and so disengaged from their fundraisers. A program staffer is busy, “don’t bother me with trying to get stories and things. I’m too busy trying to achieve this program.”
“And so you have these unhealthy siloed aspects,” Martin concludes. “It always seems to come back to silos.
“And it is not for bad reasons. People want to achieve great, great outcomes, and they’ll want to do well.
Getting Better
“You don’t have to spend a fortune to improve the outcomes for your charity in the financial area,” Martin told the Other Cheek.
“It’s about engaging across three areas, Seeing the donor as (part of) the mission, setting some more collaborative KPIs and eliminating that internal competition, and you could have much better outcomes.”
His message for charity staff, please be kinder to your fundraisers!
David Martin’s contacts.”
435 952 192