How To Be A Better Fundraiser In 3 Easy Steps, volume 2

Welcome to “How To Be a Better Fundraiser in Three Easy Steps,” in which I share actionable steps to not only level up your fundraising, but also protect your energy. My goal is to bring ease into your daily life as a development officer & leader.

I’ll also include resources to support you (scroll to bottom) and updates on upcoming events.

I hope this is helpful! I'm always SO HAPPY to hear from my colleagues--if you have questions or ideas for topics I should cover, send me a DM or an email: [email protected]

3 Steps to Create A High-Impact Giving Opportunity

You can totally sit in a room and create a giving opportunity all by yourself--and you may be in a situation where you need to make unilateral decisions.

But if you can lead the co-creation of a giving opportunity, you can seize an opportunity to strengthen your fundraising framework, build excitement about the initiative, recruit champions and close gifts that make a difference.

This last part is super important. It's one thing to close gifts. That's not especially challenging.

Closing gifts that advance a strategic priority and stand the test of time is another story.

This takes an investment of time and energy.

Emerging and under-resourced shops will have to pick and choose the principles below. If you have a full staff and you've been around for a minute, you can implement these steps pretty faithfully.

First of all, what defines a good giving opportunity?

• Advances a strategic priority
• Is visionary
• Is timeless
• An accurate budget and spending plan are in place
• ?It's appealing to healthy donor base
• Your lead donors have signed agreements in place
• It's intuitively motivating to internal and external audiences
• ?Does not require specialized knowledge to understand
• Solves a problem people care about
• Has champions--internal and external

Who needs to be involved with creating a gift opportunity and why?

• ?Fundraising leadership: solicit ideas, oversee vetting process, co-create strategy, endorse/champion the priority
• Frontline fundraisers: input on donor base, co-create strategy, lead focus groups, contribute to story, negotiate gifts.
• ?Planned and principal gifts colleagues: input on donor base, co-create strategy, manage gift negotiations
• President/Exec Dir/CEO/Dean/Dept Heads/Program Directors: subject matter expert, champion, "face", passion for the giving opportunity
• Lead donors & volunteers: vet project, champion, roll-out, give
• Research/advancement services: donor pool, reporting
• Project managers: coordinators, EAs, Asst Dirs, etc

Three mindset tips for development officers:

• Share your ideas without an attachment to the outcome--there are lots of forces at play and you're probably not the final decision-maker.
• That said, develop your well-reasoned "no" to giving opportunities that YOU KNOW won't fly with donors. You may need to be the unpopular opinion to avoid rolling out a lackluster initiative. It's hard to be the naysayer, but you might need to.
• Contribute unique perspective by generously sharing your findings from informal conversations. You'll be having informal conversations with your closest donors and trusted cultivation partners--they'll probably be more forthright with you.

I hope this helps you craft high-impact giving opportunities! It's so worth the time and energy. Promoting a really cool opportunity that advances your mission and stands the test of time is sooooo rewarding. You'll be making a tangible difference, and that's such an awesome feeling.

Your free resource just for being you!

Cut and paste this web address for your free LinkedIn mini-course, delivered right to your inbox.

https://bit.ly/5StepsLinkedInPresence

Here's what's coming up! December 6-9 on LinkedIn Live we tackle the big topic of fundraiser metrics!

Development Officer's Guide to Metrics

Schedule:

December 6: Fundraiser metrics, Defined

December 7: Ethics and metrics

December 8: What to do if you're not exceeding your metrics

December 9: You are more than your metrics

Join us! Contribute thoughts, gems, questions and input in the chat. Please add your perspective to this important topic!

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**LinkedIn Events can be tricky to find. The best bet is to go to my posts on my profile, scroll to the event, and click "attending." You'll then get reminders.

Thanks for being here! I hope this is helpful.

Warmly,

Anne