12 Differences between survive and thrive fundraising

You are the Fundraising Director or Head of Department. You’re in a Senior Leadership Team meeting, about to commence item 3 on the agenda “The Fundraising Strategy”. Everyone is keen to hear from you as your charity has been in survival mode for years. You’re expected to show them how you’re going to absolutely keep a deficit at bay, grow the income and at least start the upward trajectory towards the dream world of “thrive mode”. Everyone around the table is thinking – please for the love of God let there be growth!

So, with resources low and expectations high you turn on the projector and dive into your presentation:

• The objectives are (as they are automatically every year) grow new income and retain existing business by increasing team targets. 
• You go through each income stream and show how you are going to increase activity which will in turn increase income.
• Increase staff numbers – but only in direct connection to increasing income.
• Introduce a new income stream - the theory is the more income streams/diversity the less risk.
• The presentation is heavily numbers based – the number of donors and prospects, size of average gift, conversion rates, number of proposals in circulation, number of meetings booked, number of events, number of fundraisers and income per head, retention numbers, attrition numbers, weighted pipeline numbers.....
• No presentation would be complete without the full pipeline making an appearance – the one that gets its own mammoth A3 spreadsheet and is like a dog whistle to every pair of reading glasses in the building with its own special “size bloody silly” font.

The general gist of the presentation is:

• More money is growth. The truth is there is churn, each year you’re over reliant on that one large donor or the one-off corporate adoption/legacy, invariably there will be at least one large multi-year grant coming to an end – God knows you are happy to see the income and reach the target, but the details usually mask the fact your fundraising is not necessarily replicable enough to deliver the year on year growth everyone would love to bank on.
• To move from survival mode into thrive mode you just need to do more survival mode stuff. Just keep doing what you’re doing and add more staff to push the numbers up and bingo once you hit a certain net income number you’re no longer living from hand to mouth. You automatically leave survival mode and enter more sustainable/thrive mode, where you can now continue to do what you do, add even more staff to increase your income and thrive.

The problem is survival mode and thrive mode are built on very different foundations. If you build on survival foundations you risk remaining there (as you will go up and down year on year – but the ups are not necessarily sustainable) or it's going to be hard work and definitely not a fun or inspiring journey (hello staff turnover, you're back). 

As you grow everything grows. Your problems grow with you. If you struggle to attract and retain staff now that will grow, if you struggle to find enough prospects that will grow, if you struggle to get in front of, retain or convert donors that will grow. If it’s pretty tough to raise funds now, doing more of the same in order to hit a tipping point or to get over some funding hurdle doesn’t stake up.  

If your fundraising is tough overall or even just in parts rather than focus on doing more of the same to grow, look at exploring new ways to grow that eliminate the crappy bits. You don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water, you can continue to do exactly what you are doing now – but add in testing new approaches to start the shift……or start loving those crappy bits!

Creating a more solid foundation/approach is how you can create a much BETTER version of your fundraising department. Rather than just grow a Bigger version of the one you have now - create one you can grow from.

To enter thrive or at least a more sustainable mode you need to lay a very different groundwork first.  There are key differences between the two models - here are 12:

1. Survival mode sets goals – thrive mode sets up a system before goals.
2. In survival mode staff are the engine of growth, in thrive donors are.
3. In survival mode “quick” donors are a priority, in thrive the “right” donors are.
4. In survival mode you reap one donor at a time, in thrive you sow a network first and reap with leverage.
5. In survival you adapt your case of support over and over one donor at a time, in thrive you create the ask once and ask over and over.
6. In survival each income stream has its own set of activities with complex “command and control systems, in thrive simplicity and focus are key.
7. In survival the charity sets up an income stream and then goes and finds donors to match (you create customers for YOUR PRODUCTS), in thrive you find the donor network and match your ask to it (you create products for YOUR CUSTOMERS).
8. In survival you sell your impact to donors, in thrive you are the solution to your donors’ needs.
9. In survival you think the low “cost” of fundraising is a badge of honour “only X pittance in the ￡/$ is spent on fundraising”, in thrive you think low investment in fundraising comes at too high a price.
10. In survival you are dedicated to the details, in thrive you are dedicated to the process of growth.
11. In survival you diversify into income streams that are already crowded with other charities because they are low risk/proven, in thrive you look for networks that you can add value to.
12. In survival your staff are pulled into job success in thrive your staff focus on fundraising success (See my article on this HERE).

If you are a senior fundraiser in charge of setting strategy, instead of starting with an objective to retain the existing and grow more donors, which is “do more of the same” and grow the department into a bigger version of itself. Start with a blank piece of paper and a silent space for at least one hour, and answer these two (ish) questions:

1.     What does THE BEST version of your department look like and why?

2.     How can you and your team be the difference that makes the difference?

You can go into fantasy mode, in fact go into fantasy mode – go nuts, what does bloody brilliant look like?

Really think about your charity and where you want to go - it's the thinking and reflection that gets squeezed out of our fundraisisng jobs the most - so go crazy and let "reflection be your direction".

If you struggle to know where to start with this, start with your three key money drivers:

1.     case of support (product)

2.     your best donor match (niche)

3.     ability to get in front of the right crowd via leveraged networks (marketing)

If you would like a bit of inspiration to help you think through this process please download a free copy of my one page framework illustrating "The 4 Stages of Fundraising Growth", and how one stage evolves into another. The 4 stages being:

Start - Survive - Systematise - Scale

(Thrive doesn't begin with S - so it has morphed into systematise...stay with me people).

If you would like your own copy of the framework - please download it HERE

Website: www.cultureofphilanthropy.co.uk

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FRAMEWORK