One of the reasons its hard to connect with donors is we build walls between ourselves and our donors. The commercial world has the same problem, as noted in the Logic+Emotion blog at Walls of Separation.
There are nonprofit versions of every one of these walls. And each of these walls diminishes the fundraising effectiveness of those nonprofits.
I can think of a couple more walls that many nonprofits put up:
- Unrestricted funds. Many are so hell-bent on raising only unrestricted funds from their donors that they can't even think clearly about connecting with donors about how donors can and should and want to make the world a better place. Fundraising becomes an exercise in evasion.
- Silo mentality. Too many organizations can't align their direct mail, their online marketing, their public relations campaigns, their events -- because those all happen in different (often mutually suspicious or even hostile) departments. That guarantees a confusing experience for the many donors you have that cross your departmental lines.
Tear 'em down!
Technorati Tag: fundraising
Very true. We are working on identifying campaigns of a new target audience here and we are thinking in many of these ways. Thanks for illuminating it so concisely for us at UCP.
Posted by: Will Hull | 27 March 2009 at 13:12
Love David Armano's work and it's adaptable for nonprofits. I think one way to bring the ROI wall down is to use his "listen learn adapt" methods
I remixed for nonprofit
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/02/riffing-on-listen-learn-and-adapt-need-your-organizations-adaption-stories.html
Posted by: Beth Kanter | 21 March 2009 at 16:37
V. true ... and half the time we don't even realise we're doing it.
Posted by: Tamsin | 19 March 2009 at 03:37