Making Relationship Fund-raising Work for Your Nonprofit or School

What's Relationship Fund-raising?

I want to take you on a journey to a new mindset about fund-raising and relationships. It's a mindset where the issue is never a lack of resources or competition for a limited amount of dollars. It's a mindset about abundance vs. scarcity. In fact, this mindset is about the ability to attract resources rather than chase or beg for them. Let me show you.

What Relationship Fund-raising "is" and "is not"

It's not about asking for money . . . at least not yet.

Relationship fund-raising is about welcoming people into your organization and inspiring them with your mission and how your work improves the futures of children or strengthens families for example.

One day, a woman showed up at our client's location – a school that serves low-income families in the inner city. This older woman arrived dressed in very messy clothes (she had been volunteering earlier that day). Apparently, no one was expecting her. It turned out that she was there to do a site visit for a foundation to which the school had applied. The principal graciously took the woman on a tour, allowing her to experience their unique approach to educating at-risk children. She didn't have many questions, but she was apparently blown away. She went home and told her husband, who happened to be the Vice President of a bank, about her experience, and then asked him to make a $5,000 donation to the school in lieu of giving her a birthday gift.

It’s not something you do only when you’re at the office or participating in a work event.

Relationship Fundraising is about seeing every moment of every day as an opportunity to “tell your story,” make a connection, build a relationship and identify opportunities that could result in resources for your school or organization.

This happens to us all the time. One of my team members was working out at Curves. She struck up a conversation (she’s an amazing relationship person) with a woman who had founded and volunteered for at least two separate nonprofit organizations. After being inspired by the woman’s passion for these causes, the conversation turned to what our company does. She excitedly said, “We need you!” In the past four years of knowing this amazing and generous woman, she has introduced us to countless organizations that have benefited by our services. It all started at Curves.

It's not about generating a "hit list" of people that have capacity to make a large donation.

Relationship Fundraising is about taking a genuine interested in people and recognizing that "you just never know." Listen to people talk about their interests rather than pushing your organization's story out.

At a recent seminar we asked attendees to think about people they had not connected with recently, that have similar values and might be interested in the work they do at their school or nonprofit. It didn’t matter if they could afford or want to give a donation. We just asked them to think about people that would find the work they do interesting and impressive. Right after that seminar we were asked to present the same seminar to 30 board members of three schools. When we arrived to present our seminar, one of the school's development people ran up to me and excitedly told me she took action on one of the people on her list (she had attended our seminar) – a man who had sponsored an event the year before for $500. She called him and said thank you again for his generous gift and invited him to tour the school. He was pleased to be asked and during the tour expressed his interest in the computer lab. By the end of the tour (which happened on the same day as our presentation), he shared that he was a financial planner and had a client that looked to him for ideas on charities that she might want to support. He thought this older woman would really be interested in making a donation to the school that could be as much as $18,000.

Next Time – How to Get Started

I hope I’ve convinced you that there’s plenty of money out there for good programs and schools. But it’s your job to welcome people in, inspire them with your story and vision for the future, be clear about what you need and how people can help and then genuinely and strategically cultivate relationships over time. The results will amaze you!

Next time, I’ll tell you how to get started, or email me for our handout titled The 10 Steps to Strategic Relationship Cultivation or the 7 Steps to Designing a Compelling Tour.

Also, share your success stories with us by commenting on my blog!

Should Public Schools Have to Raise Money?

Should Public Schools Have to Raise Money?

About a year ago I was explaining to an educator how my firm helps schools attract more resources. We were both attending a President Obama private event at a charter school in Madison, Wisconsin. She responded, "Schools shouldn't have to do that!" I've thought about her response many times since then.

Today I would have to say that it doesn't really matter if she or anyone else thinks schools should not have to raise money. The fact is that school budgets are shrinking all over the country, and at the same time people are less satisfied with our education system. Add to that a struggling economy and overall distrust of how government at the federal and state level uses tax dollars, and the writing is clearly on the wall.

The sooner public schools realize that they need to diversify their revenue sources, and that in order to secure new sources of revenue they will need to strategically cultivate relationships with community members, companies and organizations, the sooner they will have more control over their future sustainability.

You see there is no shortage of money or resources for good schools. It's just going to come from places other than government. And I think that's actually a good thing.

Is There a Downside to a Purely Government Funded Education System?

I think there have been two consequences of public schools being solely funded by government.

First, I think many schools have developed a mindset of scarcity and survival versus vision for the future. Every year they find out how much money they will get and then they budget accordingly, laying off valuable teachers and assistants if they have to. Instead, what they should be doing is thinking about what kind of school they want to be for children, figuring out how much that costs and then going out and finding the money to pay for it.

Second, many schools have developed a kind of entitlement mindset. They don't really have to be accountable in the truest sense, because they will continue to receive some amount of money to run the school. It could be a school that performs well, but there is no incentive to be cutting edge or really innovative.

So being dependent on one source of revenue results in schools being vulnerable when it comes to ensuring the quality of their programs, and it also causes schools to be insular and closed to real community engagement.

I believe if individul schools had to go to the residents and businesses in their neighborhoods and inspire people to support them, we'd see a lot more innovation and excellence.

So whether or not you believe public schools should have to raise money is sort of irrelevant at this point. If they don't, they might not be around for long.

Send me your thoughts.