Fundraising Directors- Were you hired to save the day?
So, you are the Development Director or Head of a Department. The person the charity has hired to bring in the money. Your job is to grow the income, grow the donor base and either get the charity out of financial trouble or keep it from getting into it. You may be like the majority of Development Directors who have been hired to save the day, the person the rest of the senior management team and the Board can now hide behind as its your job to generate the cash. In fact, when they say it’s your job – what they really mean is it is NOT theirs, they have hired their way out of trouble. Hello you.
If the charity is in trouble or just simply needs “fast” cash generation, your sole job will NOT be to diagnose what put it in this situation in the first place. It will not be to spend time planning how to course correct or how to get your ducks in line to create a sustainable and donor focused fundraising entity. Your job WILL be to ignore that and just focus on the immediate need and immediate growth. As fast as you can, raise new money (there will be an obsession about new income and zero appreciation of existing donors, retention or growing commitment to the charity). If your case of support is weak to non-existence don’t worry. If your turn around time means short term, low value and transactional donations don’t worry. If you have a churn problem don’t worry no one has noticed (it’s never measured) and as long as you hit this year’s target it’s all good. If your impact data is the work of fiction, non-existence or patchy don’t worry everyone marks their own homework. If your staff have left or are leaving (either mentally or physically) it was a poor hire and typical of those millennials (they leave right - the sector doesn’t drive them out).
In fact, although all of the above is the stuff that is probably keeping you up at night, the overwhelming obstacles that stand between you and success, the stuff you cannot stop thinking about in or out of work - none of it is your REAL problem. You have one REAL problem, but because you are wading through the murky day to day mire it’s practically impossible to see it. What you think are problems that need to be tackled one by one, are in fact symptoms. Don’t tackle the symptoms tackle the cause.
The problem is your charity’s culture. Your Board and senior management team have a scarcity mindset to some degree which creates a whole host of problems. Chances are your leadership have no idea, or certainly did not intend to create the gun that is shooting them in their own fundraising foot. They just genuinely want to run the charity. But as you are the “foot” taking the bullet, you need to look at your culture problem first and then work to address it. Phrases like there’s a lot of competition out there, money is tight, or we cannot afford to address resources is how your leadership speak their mindset. Rather than believing there is plenty of opportunity out there. What is your target as a percentage of the UK’s £48bn voluntary income for example?
Moving from a scarcity mindset/culture to an abundant one moves the charity from seeing fundraising as something you spend as little time and effort on as possible – the necessary evil/we “only” spend 10p in every pound boast. To embracing the concept that fundraising is core to your charity being able to fulfil its mission, investing time and resources in fundraising is not a diversion or distraction from the “real” work, but instead the fuel that makes it all possible. And that it is not the sole job of one department or one person but an organisational collective effort to help move the mission.
Moving from one culture to the other, fundamentally recognises the donor as a stakeholder and partner and not just a source of cash, someone to have a genuine engaged relationship with over the long term. This shift helps grow income and stability, but more importantly embraces the whole donor in terms of skills, networks, influence and time.
But how do you deliver on raising money, opening the Board and senior management’s eyes to the impact of their collective mindset and efforts - and start to address the culture?
You need a plan.
Full disclosure, having worked as a Development Director for organisations with strong abundant cultures to moving to one with a shocking scarcity mindset (and all the problems that came with it). I created a one-page framework which I intend to share as a series of on-line webinars as of 20th June for 5 weeks followed by a one to one coaching call, Registration will open on 11th June and close on 14th June.
I developed the framework to help Fundraisers make “human friendly” fundraising plans. In short, I think we need to put the human firmly back into our planning. Let’s set goals people believe in, let’s set schedules people can consciously commit to – as much for themselves and their own development as the charity’s ability to fundraise. After years of fundraising, for big, medium and small charities I have seen the same “bolt on” fundraising approach over and over. Frustrated leadership that keep asking where the money is while creating the very internal spaghetti that keeps its fundraising bogged down. But in recent years, something new started to happen, the internal spaghetti went digital, and the more digital it has become the more the human in our “planning” and conscious thinking has been squeezed out. But as the plans are still implemented by humans for humans – our interactions with them just got messy and sometimes even nasty. So, 20 years of fundraising with some high performing teams and Boards, a few dud ones and one so dysfunctional it gets its own category. I have stepped back and created a framework that can help fundraisers plan their fundraising using all the advantages of digital but putting the humans firmly back in the driving seat. But this time, lets also really pull in all our colleagues (Trustees, staff, donors, volunteers) and tools to genuinely bring everyone onto the fundraising bus with us and for us. The framework is simple, zoom out to see the big picture, zoom in for the detail BUT make it human friendly first. You are making plans for real people to interact with, understand (inside and outside the Development Dept) and breathe life into.
I am opening registration for my training webinars on 11th June and closing it on 14th June to limit the numbers.
The webinars will be an hour a week for 5 weeks from 20th June, all participants will be sent a recording of the live webinar (so don’t worry if you miss the live versions). The webinars will be followed up by a one to one coaching telephone call with myself to help further tailor your plans (hence the limited numbers).
You can JOIN THE COURSE HERE
You don’t “have to” put the human into your plans – but register for the training and you “get to” 😉
