What are you Fundraising for?

On January 12th, when a devastating earthquake shook Haiti, social media websites lit up with everyday people putting calls out for donations on behalf of the Red Cross and other aid organizations. Within hours of the news breaking, you had to wait in a call queue to talk to a customer service representative at the Red Cross in order to make a donation...and all before the organization had launched any major PR campaigns asking for help.

Why the phenomenal groundswell of (largely unsolicited) support? Primarily, we’d suggest, because there was such a great and urgent need that people felt compelled to help pro-actively, and not because a telemarketer applied the “overcome-3-objections-before-letting-the-person-off-the-phone” rule. People saw that their money would have immediate impact: it would clothe someone, feed someone, provide someone with water that would literally be life-saving.

In this way, the public response to the earthquake in Haiti is a strong illustration of the inextricable role that programming and service delivery play in fundraising. It calls into question the contention that a cracker-jack fundraiser or dynamic development team is the panacea for organizations that are struggling financially and, instead (or at least in addition), challenges organizations to assess their core activities and determine the urgency and relevance of current programming to their target audience.

We’ve witnessed first-hand the opposite of the Haiti experience where groups have had long-standing programs that have lost their relevance and timeliness and, if they are generating any revenue, are doing so based mostly on the history between the donor and the organization. Clearly, this is unsustainable...donor databases have to be replenished and, therefore, history with existing donors has its revenue-generating limits. In other words (to borrow an Oprah-ism) this is what we know for sure: relevant, effective, and efficiently-run programs that fill a gap in service delivery are critical to generating sustainable revenue. Even the most creative fundraising campaigns can’t overcome the challenges of tired or non-existent programming.

We’ll suggest a few starting points for assessing your current program or determining the potential appeal of new programming:

1. Does it meet a specific, identifiable, and important need?

2. Will this program or service have broad application or impact?

3. Can your organization effectively carry the program or service out with its available resources?

4. Is it an efficient use of resources? What will the program’s outputs be relative to the resources it will require (financial and human; in other words, what will be the return on investment)?

5. Does it avoid duplicating what other agencies are already doing?

6. Can the premise of the program or service you are delivering be easily communicated?

7. Is the issue you are addressing timely; are people (at least some people) reading/thinking/talking about it?

8. Is there the opportunity for multi-party or multi-sector collaboration?

9. Would you give your personal money to support this program or service?

If you answered “yes” to most of these questions, than your program or services are likely well-positioned to attract donor support. But, a one-time” yes” doesn’t mean resting on your laurels over time. There has to be ongoing evaluation of program/service relevance and persistent creativity and innovation that allow the program to evolve and change with the times and the needs of your clients. If you find that your answers to the questions above start to fall into some gray area, it’s time to re-think their relevance and applicability so that at any given moment you’ll have a clear, concise, and high-impact response when someone asks what you’re fundraising for.