Of course you’re not sabotaging your fundraising on purpose. 

Self-sabotaging behaviors, however, are often hidden from our everyday thoughts. Fundraising is right up there with the things many nonprofit leaders would prefer not to think about. 

Summer can be a great time to think. I’m referring to the fun kind. It’s a time when leaders like you can take stock and think about new beginnings and fresh starts.

How might you re-frame or re-boot a project or program?

How can you make your life easier in the fall and increase the impact of your nonprofit?

5 ways to sabotage your fundraising

1. Don’t take time to think… or develop your nonprofit leadership skills.

If you’re a subject matter expert in social services, the environment, education, or the arts, chances are you keep up with the setbacks or progress unique to your field.

You may attend a periodic conference or seminar to stay on top of your game and connect with colleagues.

The big question is this: how much time do you spend developing your leadership skills?

Although the basic tenets of leadership (that we are all familiar with) are relevant across sectors, staying current and improving your skills as a nonprofit leader is vital to the long-term health of your nonprofit.

Your role in fundraising, board building and training, organizational development – and your journey as a visionary – are all a part of your job and need to be continually developed.

Otherwise, you’re stuck.

2. Lose sight of your organization’s greatest asset – your board.

Think about this: what’s your greatest asset?

Money? Connections? Your volunteers and donors? Maybe, but what comes before that is your time.

Your board gives you their most precious asset month in and month out.

Yet it’s not uncommon for ED’s or board chairs to complain about how the board isn’t engaged. Or they won’t ask for money or their attendance is spotty.

It’s the ED’s job to train and guide the board. Together, the ED and the board chair have the power to move mountains.

So you don’t have the time to train and support your board? Well, if you’re thinking long term, you don’t have time not to.

How can you develop a more structured relationship with the board chair and better utilize the time, connections, money and passion of these leadership volunteers?

What can you read over the summer or what workshop can you attend with your board chair to inspire this work?

3. Stay safe; play small

This is big. If you’re comfy in your role and everything is “good enough,” you’re not playing big.

Changing and saving lives takes strategic thinking, big ideas and leadership. Not just expertise in your field.

Read something this summer that boosts your visionary self.

4. Pick fundraising strategies with the lowest return on investment

This is probably the thing that’s stalling your fundraising efforts the most.

Given the high ROI of major gifts fundraising, all nonprofits should be pursuing it with abandon.

So how do you get there?

It’s not by doing another event or one more mailing. The fastest and most efficient way to increase your fundraising ROI is to adopt a major gift mindset. 

A recent study shows that “the cost spectrum for fundraising methodologies ranged from a low of $0.12 per dollar raised to a high of $1.50 per dollar raised.

• Major gifts is in the lower cost range,
• Special events and acquiring new donors is in the higher cost range,
• Direct mail to existing donors is in the medium cost range.

You are lucky if you get to keep half of every dollar you raise from an event (before allocating staff time), and the return on mailings will never get you to that 4:1 revenue to cost ratio you should achieve.

It’s not easy to adopt and effectively execute a major gift mindset throughout the organization. But it is smart. 

It takes leadership buy-in, patience and expertise.

Here’s more fun facts:

• It used to be that 80% of the money came from 20% of the donors. Now it’s 95%-5%.
• 85% of people say yes to a request for a major gift.
• Women are givers! Today they make up just under half of the nation’s millionaires. Over the next 20 years, through divorce, the death of a spouse, or inheritance, American women will control some $25 trillion dollars.

Do some thinking over the summer and figure out a way to chunk it down and take small steps to adopt a major gifts mindset on your board.

5. Whatever you do – don’t invest in infrastructure for fundraising – particularly a killer database.

Fact: you can’t fundraise effectively without a good database.

One that’s clean and allows you to collect the information you need to approach your donors with accuracy.

A good database will save you massive frustration, time and money.

Databases are truly one of the greatest assets of your nonprofit!

If you picked just one thing to think about during your summer walks, what would it be?