I get that not everybody can read every blog every time one is published. I’m the same way with the blogs I follow, and though we mean to go back and read them… sometimes we just don’t get it done.
Sometime ago I wrote in one of my blogs that I was going to start putting the line “Join us” at the end of all my blogs.
From time to time, I get notes from readers that say, “Your blogs are different,” or more pointedly, “Why don’t you give more advice about how I can improve my fundraising TODAY?”
Our core message is that the very foundational approach… the social contract … between nonprofit fundraising organizations and those that support them must change. You cannot just keep improving your techniques or tinker around the edges and improve a fundraising model that is essentially breaking down. The current transaction-based fundraising model needs to be replaced.
But with what?
With a fundraising business model that is focused – first and foremost – on developing relationships, NOT generating a transaction (a donation).
Does that sound heretical to you? After all, your job today is ABOUT raising revenue.
Well, then we would ask why the title of your department isn’t “Revenue Raising Department?” It’s almost always “officially” Development or Advancement isn’t it? Yet it is almost always “un-officially” called the Fundraising Department…because THAT is what it does…and is.
So why the contradiction between the official and the un-official?
There’s a tension there.
And, truth be told, that tension has been there – in the organization – as long as anyone can remember.
Yet in our idealized world of who we are, it is about developing (hence the word Development) relationships.
At Browne Innovation Group we came to the conclusion five years ago that with today’s giving ethos of the Baby Boomer and younger generations, and today’s low-cost Internet-based online media and communications tools… there doesn’t need to be a tension or contradiction.
Focus on building relationships…REAL RELATIONSHIPS…and the money will follow. Donations will become a by-product of your relationship development.
Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?
A few of our friends and some clients suggested that our “change message” was more akin to a movement… as in a social movement. And, of course, when you are a part of a social movement, you always ask people of like mind to …
Join us.
-Mike
Welcome to BIG's Blog! Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com
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