The Irreplaceable Constant
Ron Rescigno
Rescigno’s Fundraising Professionals / Author: The Process-Driven Annual Fund
If there is one thing that a fundraising professional must have it's the donor's trust. The same most certainly holds true for a fundraising department, don't you agree?
After all, your job is to get a donor to know, like, and, yes, trust you.
But how do you do that? How do you earn trust? It starts with consistently doing everything that you say you're going to do. But I feel like that's too simplistic.
There are many other ways that it can be earned. For example, demonstrating in your words and actions a connection to the values, interests, and priorities of donors.
The successful nonprofit works consistently to connect, communicate, and pay attention to donors.
Unfortunately, however, this isn't a linear activity. All it takes is one broken promise or mistake on your part to erase years of building trust.
That's part of why an understanding on the part of everyone who comes in contact with donors is essential.
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There is a story I go back to time and time again of the major donor (and I mean major) who had his name on the outside of the medical building where he came one day to pay the executive director a surprise visit. He said hello to the receptionist who had no clue who he was. With disappointment in his voice he repeated his name three times hoping for a glimmer of recognition from the receptionist. Modesty kept him from saying that it was his name that was on the building she was working in.
Long story short, she would not even let the executive director know that this donor was present and would just like to pop in to say hello. Her job was to protect the executive director from such "intrusions," no matter what.
Finally, patience at an end, the major donor revealed who he was and that he would be taking his support and allegiance to the competing medical facility down the road.
In short, his trust that there was a true partnership with this organization had just been erased in a matter of minutes.
Moral of the story: It takes a long time to build trust between donors and the organizations they support. But it takes much less time to become disenchanted and start supporting the competition (whose mission may be very similar to yours).