Fundraising Directors - Is your job success killing your fundraising success?

So, you are the Fundraising Director or Head of a Department. You have just opened your calendar to see what the week has in store for you this week:

• Firstly, it has the normal back to back meetings, but clever you, you have planted a couple of “fake ones” just to make sure there is some breathing space peppered throughout the week. Your whole team and various other people have access to your diary and boy does it fill up fast.
• There is the normal reoccurring stuff, Senior Team, one to ones with line reports, a few monthly ones with the wider organisation and then just a whole bunch of internal updates and whatnot. 
• There’s a meeting with a donor that seems to have appeared, which is good. You are not sure what it’s about, but the Account Manager has sent you an invite to brief you the day before.
• This looks like another week of “canapes for dinner” as there are several evening networking events you are down for (again). Luckily, you have a full wardrobe for every occasion packed into and under your desk - you’re not new to this fundraising game.
• Friday is a working from home day, your usual much needed desk time but you can see a few conference calls have been booked in with team members who struggled to fit into your diary during the week, which is fair enough.
• Thank God you manage to get a seat on the train most days as that is where you keep the emails at bay, otherwise they can suck up a big chunk of your Friday desk day, which is frustrating. You spend most of Monday to Thursday in meetings which creates an ever growing “to do” list so not having a full Friday desk day then impacts on Sunday night.

The problem is your diary is mainly filled up by others or at the request of others. It is heavily biased to internal meetings and practically all reactive. Your Friday can be proactive but is often sabotaged by the over spill of the meetings or emails that never found room during the week.

During the week you are on a continuous stop start loop, either because at your desk you are a prime target for the non-stop interruptions from passing human traffic (which you also enjoy so you don’t discourage). Or you are continuously interrupted or distracted by your phone, the email alert or trying to prioritise your “free for all” to- do list. Some clever bugger said you must identify 3 key things every day that must be done come hell or high water. That person clearly did not give the world and its whippet access to their diary. That bloody list is just a daily reminder of what you have failed to do each day. Then of course, there is the in and out of meetings, so you just switch from one subject to another on a permanent basis.

You also eat at your desk, but lunchtimes help to have another pop at the emails or grab a check in with the team. You have started to make a point of having a quick walk around the block each day for 15 minutes which helps clear you mind.

You do get out and meet the donors but not enough, and you have not met all of them, but your team certainly has. You have a nagging feeling you and your team are far too internal, but God knows the donors’ diaries seem as mad as yours so to a degree you get away with it. It wouldn’t be so bad if the younger fundraisers were not so email heavy, you are convinced the younger a member of staff is the more afraid they are of the telephone….or maybe you are now officially an old fart, who knows??

Most weeks this pattern is repeated, a non-stop reaction to a string of busy events. You are working hard at achieving “job success”; deadlines are met, emails are returned, meetings and events are attended, reports and plans are produced, problem are solved, fires are put out, money is raised, data is analysed. You are good at your job; you keep the money coming in and if targets are down you work hard to react, to find solutions to fill the short fall. You certainly cannot be accused of not putting in the hours or working hard.

Like the rest of the world your attention is spread thin and you try hard to protect it from additional distraction and interruption. Like a lot of people, I grew up watching 4 TV channels (definitely an old fart – no doubt here), today of course there are a zillion channels, streaming, catch up etc. the content has absolutely exploded BUT my consumption has pretty much stayed the same. We only have so many hours in the day and most of us are creatures of habit, so we tend to spend the same amount of time consuming however much social media, phone, TV or however we let the outside world in in. So as the amount of choice goes up and up, instead of consuming more and more we ignore more and more. Our attention is fought over harder and harder, companies try to buy or steal it. Everyone is after everyone else’s attention. Including your donors. Giving another person your attention is a very big deal. You have chosen to read this article amongst a sea of social media. I am grateful, thank you. Your attention is already precious and as the amount of content continues to explode the more precious it will become.

This fight for attention is also set to get harder as the old ways of getting it are going, no more cold calling or mass mailing, technology and the law are cracking down on that. We still need to try to leverage our efforts. Corporates, trusts funds and major donors are starting to shut their open application policies in favour of them (or external people they are now hiring) doing the chasing, amongst other more traditional routes all being cut off. 

As a fundraiser you need to win your donors’ and prospective donors’ attention as a welcome guest, so the need to build networks is becoming more vital. How are you doing? One way to think of that question is, if you were to stop fundraising tomorrow who would miss you and/or who would be relieved? 

To fight in this attention arena your “job success” ways will only carry you so far. You’re are already working flat out so piling on more complexity or changing the goal posts, is not going to make things any easier, in fact you need it like a hole in the head. 

You don’t need to read this article to know it is better to work in a proactive manner rather than a reactive one. You know when you have had a really good day at the office, and it was not because you cleared your emails or did a marathon run on the internal meetings front. You know when you finished that proposal, made that pitch, nailed a great event or whatever moved the needle – you know it. 

So why if you know you need to be proactive is it so easy to get sucked into the reactive, non- productive stuff that you keep allowing yourself and others to cram into your diary week after week??....Because my friend, all the reactive stuff chases, interrupts, demands or has another human at the end of it needing a favour. Whereas all the stuff that “gets the job done” doesn’t. 

To be a successful fundraiser you need to apply a consistent effort over an extended period. Fundraising success is proactive, because it is proactive it doesn’t chase you, it doesn’t interrupt you or distraction you. You must do the running. 

You have been so sucked into the busy – the very stuff you need to do to be successful is quietly and patiently sitting on the back burner waiting.

Proactive is focusing and prioritising time for your most impactful and most productive work. You eliminate the distractions; you delegate to create time and you say no to other people’s priorities (because they cannot be at the expense of your own). You schedule “focus time”.

Fundraising needs to recruit, retain, upsell and cross sell donors. The ultimate prize is a donor whose life-time value to your charity heavily outweighs the cost of acquisition, stewardship is equal to the value they donate, they attract more donors of the same calibre (or at least inform you what a look alike audience is) and acts as an advocate for your charity. But above all else they tell you why they support YOU – they validate what your value is as measured by them and other donors (especially the ones out there you have yet to win). 

Typically, 20% of your donors are generating 80% of your income. Who are these 20%, how did you get them, how are you retaining them, are you stewarding them up to the top of your donor ladder (do you even have a top rung and if so what does that look like) and how do you get more of them?

If the name of the game is to know who YOUR donors are, why they give to you, how to get their attention in a world where attention is getting harder and harder, pricier and pricier, GDPRier and GDPRier to get - are you on it? OR is it a no because this lark is not chasing you down or squeezing its way into that mad diary of yours?

Your most impactful and high productive work is to:

• Work on your “unique” case of support – why are donors interested in you, and what makes them say yes? - Your fundraising marketing.
• Work on your stewardship – how do you get them to stay, give you more, attract others and create leverage? - Your fundraising product.

In short, who do you serve and how do you serve them?

The downside to the attention economy is everyone is highly distracted, and it is becoming harder and harder to win attention. The upside is if you can win the attention the leverage is “your qualified pipeline on qualified steroids” – hence the dog fight. The playing field becomes much more level as small charities have equal opportunity to gain attention as large ones. It is not about money, brand or size. It is ALL about the perceived value of your case of support in the eyes of donors. Good old fashion fundraising in that regard, the more you know your donors, the more authentic you are, the more value you bring and not just take the better you stand out and stand to win. But if you want your case of support to get out there and do the selling for you, you better get exceptionally good at creating it. Long gone are the days of stringing generic messages together with a damn good shopping list attached. 

So, to really focus on high productive work think more like this:

My most productive time is spending time with donors to continuously work on developing my case of support with them (what is the value they see in my charity). And honing my stewardship to retain, grow and build networks. This is not a one-time exercise, donor interaction and developing the case of support/stewardship is on-going. The more I hone my case of support externally the harder it can work for me externally, which is becoming a more distracted and harder marketplace to win attention in. I need to start building networks BEFORE I need them, and my donors are best placed to help me achieve that. In short, I must be proactive in seeing and being seen. A consistent effort requires a consistent schedule, I need to carve out focused time and consciously be proactive. I need to recognise proactive works will not chase me I have to schedule it. If I decide who do I serve and how do I serve them, this simple reminder will help me stay in lane and help me focus on the big outcomes and not be led by or sucked into “doing a string of activities”. The more I react to or am pulled in by the internal needs of the charity the more I am pulled away from serving it well.

Do that and you can start building a fundraising engine inside your charity.

If you would like a copy of my "Fundraising Strategy On A Page" (template) - download it HERE

www.cultureofphilanthropy.co.uk

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