Where Does Your School Rank on a Families’ Giving List?
Posted by Jim Berigan on 20 Mar 2008 in: Donor Development
When I was employed at the summer camp, we worked very hard to raise enough money to supplement our annual operating budget. Like a vast number of non-profits, the revenue we generated by offering services and products (i.e. the money we “earned”) did not cover our yearly expenses. Therefore, we had to turn to fundraising events. This is pretty standard these days in the 501(c)(3) world.
And while we always seemed to find a way to make just what we absolutely needed, there was rarely a surplus of cash that we didn’t know what to do with.
At one point, we started asking ourselves where we “ranked” in the fundraising priority list that most families develop, either formally or informally. We got thinking about all the organizations that families are typically involved with during the year and tried to figure out how they decided which ones to fund. continue reading
Having worked at non-profit organizations for years, I know from experience that product fundraisers can be very effective. There is a built-in sense of obligation for parents to at least “try” to sell to family, friends, and co-workers. If you hook up with the right company, you will get a quality product coupled with a respectable (50% or more) cut of the profits. Overall, product sales are safe, predictable, and reliable.
It is not uncommon that when you take a new job at a non-profit, you discover that at some point in the past, there was a donor or a group of donors who somehow became alienated from the organization. Perhaps thank you notes weren’t sent out in a timely fashion (or at all), a decision was made by the administration that didn’t sit well with the donors, or a long-standing tradition was discarded. Whatever the cause, you learn that there is a significant donor base that once gave generously to your group but now has nothing to do with you.
Everybody knows that you should send a thank you note to a donor. And, in a previous post, I have written about 
A couple of years ago, one of our auction volunteers entered a local electronics store to ask for a donation. She happened to be there on a day that the owner was manning the shop.
“Fundraising Fatigue” is a term that has cropped up in recent years to reference the feeling that individuals have been asked to make charitable donations to too many organizations too frequently. This has become particularly relevant after the Tsunami relief effort in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. So many people contributed to these two emergency needs, that it supposedly took away available dollars from local causes.
