Are you wondering: What's up with individual giving?
Guest post by Jim Langley
File under: Fundraising in higher ed (and elsewhere, of course)
"Practical Tips on Growing Individual Fundraising"
...by Jim Langley, Langley Innovations
(originally a LinkedIn post, reprinted here with Jim's kind permission)
I was asked recently to speak on this topic ... but I didn’t want to. I understand why I was asked. It’s what fundraisers see the need for and/or are increasingly expected to do: grow individual fundraising. It’s because the old ways are running out.
We’ve lost over 30 million giving households.
According to our State of the Development Profession survey, 53% of fundraisers say getting the first appointment with a prospect is their greatest challenge; no other challenge comes close to it in their minds.
Yet we’re losing 3 out of 4 donors after their first gift.
So, what’s the solution? Go get even more donors? Really? So we can put them through the same sieve – one small gift, if we’re lucky ... and then they’re gone? Really?
This is a big part of what concerns me about so much of fundraising. Too many fundraisers just nod their heads when handed mission impossible, and then set themselves up for frustration, burnout or failure. Perhaps some of us have rescuer's complex. “Sounds crazy but let me at it.” Oy. It's like saying, “Give me something that will waste my time, wear me out, cause me to be blamed, and leave me with little to show for it.”
There’s a double bind in this notion of “practical tips for growing individual fundraising.”
(1.) Fundraisers have very limited ability to grow individual giving. Individual giving grows in the soil of hope and real possibility. It usually grows from small seeds and progresses slowly, largely culminating after 15-20 years of giving. The fact that we’re losing 3 out of 4 donors after their first gift tells us there’s something wrong with our soil; the seeds are not taking, it’s not conducive to growing a root system.
(2.) There are no practical tips for achieving unrealistic purposes like turning mosquitoes into butterflies. Beware of any person, firm or product that plies “practical tips” to achieve impractical purposes even though the world is full of them and your colleagues at other institutions have been gulled by them.
Let’s step back, then, and ask how we create conditions that:
• Draw individuals to our door
•. Convert their attraction into investment
•. Make them feel good about that investment
• Cause them to continue to invest if not invest more
To learn more about how we can achieve these goals, please subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter. Go to https://langleyinnovations.com and scroll to the bottom for an easy sign-up.
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