Ep. 210: 5 Signs You’re Overcomplicating Your Fundraising Campaign
EPISODE 210
5 Signs You’re Overcomplicating Your Fundraising Campaign
About the Episode:
Most nonprofit leaders don't have a strategy problem. They have a complexity problem.
In this episode, I'm breaking down the 5 signs your fundraising campaign has gotten too complicated to actually launch, and what to do instead. From planning that never ends, to waiting for the perfect story, to campaigns so exhausting that nobody wants to do them again, these are the patterns I see most often in small and solo-led organizations (and every single one of them is fixable!). If your campaigns feel like a production, if your board needs to approve every subject line, or if the last fundraiser left your team too tired to run another one, this episode will show you exactly what's getting in the way and how to get out of your own way before year-end arrives.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why planning can quietly replace actual fundraising
What happens when you build the graphics before the message is clear
How too many opinions weaken the campaign
Why waiting for the perfect story keeps you stuck
The sign that your campaign is too exhausting to repeat
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“You can always negotiate with yourself to prepare more.”
“If your dream is to raise more money for your mission, at some point you have to go take action towards that dream.”
“Your fundraising campaign should not require six different meetings, months of planning, approvals, rounds of edits, unanimous board approval before you can go ask somebody for money (especially online).”
“Complexity doesn't make the campaign more strategic.”
“You can raise more from your laptop.”
“Collaboration can strengthen a campaign.”
“There is no perfect. Perfect is not coming, and when it does, it doesn't guarantee donations.”
“If you do not have an easy way you can raise five figures every time you fundraise, then you're missing an essential.”
“The real fundraising growth doesn't come from running one successful campaign. It comes from knowing how to do it again, how to repeat the process.”
Episode Resources:
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
FREE SIGN UP: $10K in 10 Days: The Campaign Plan You Can Run From Your Laptop (Live Thursday, August 20th at 12 PM ET)
Easy Emails For Impact™ - Turn Your Inbox into an Income Stream
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 01:29Welcome back to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast. I'm so excited to be back in my office here in Atlanta after spending the summer in Greece, and I'm going to give you a teeny tiny little short update on that, but first I want to share a thank you. Thank you to my listeners. Many of you have been replying to my emails or sending me a DM on LinkedIn, just saying, "Hey, your podcast is really resonating with me. I really needed you in my ear today, or you talked me off the ledge. And I just want to say thank you. It's easy when it's a one way conversation. Putting out a podcast is a one way conversation, so it's easy to be like, "Hello, is anyone out there? And there's been so many voices lately that have said, "Yes, we are out here and keep going, and we need you. And that's really affirming for me to hear. So, a big thank you for all the responses and replies, and please keep them coming because I love our conversations in my inbox. It's really, really keeps keeps my heart full and also gives me ideas for future episodes of like what you really, really need. And if you haven't left a review or a rating on the podcast, I have a goal of having 15 more reviews this year, so if you haven't done that, take like two seconds. Go to Apple, go to Spotify, where we're listening to, and hit the rating and leave me a review. I would be so so grateful.
So we just got back from a summer in Greece, and this is the third year where we sort of threw out the rule book on summer camps and just doing it how we always did it, and it started with an idea where I was like, "What if? What if we just do something different? What if we take our remote work and we actually work remote over the summer? And it started with that itch, that kind of needling idea. The first year we went to Panama, the second year we went to Greece, and then this this summer too we went back to Greece for a longer stretch. And I want to offer like anything, like anything, the learning curve gets easier the more you do it. So the learning curve the first year felt like a big leap. It was like, are we doing this? Are we doing this? Is this a good idea? Oh my god! And leap we go. We packed the most the first year, and by packed I mean overpacked. So we learned, and we sort of simplified the second year, and we simplified even more this year. And one of the through lines that I've seen just in this practice, in this goal to travel and to see family and to spend more time with my kids over the summer, and to really work remote in a very remote way is you can always negotiate with yourself to prepare more. Right? I need more time. There's too many complicated logistics. The what ifs, right? And at some point you have to decide you're doing it, and you don't need to look at TripAdvisor again. Or for you, dear dear listener, you don't need to, you know, have another sales call with some sort of shiny new tool or a new social media scheduler or a new contractor. At some point, we leap and we go right, and we get the help and the support along the way in the implementation process, which is the work we do in my coaching programs. Because if your dream is to raise more money for your mission, at some point you have to go take action towards that dream, you have to take big, bold, decisive action, and you have to stop tinkering with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, right? Because time is your most essential and precious resource. And for me, my time over the summer, I said, "How can I do this?
Christina Edwards 5:36
There was a million reasons why I was I could have talked myself out of it, and instead, I talked myself into it, and I simplified, and I said, "I don't have to figure everything out. I got to figure out the essentials. I laughed because I was looking at. I have my notes app in my phone, and I had like a trip to do list. And by the time I got home, it said, and it left unchecked. It was like book third rental car, and I laughed because I was like, "Oh, well, we figured it out. We booked a car. You know, at some point we just go.
So we're gonna dig into fundraising today, and this episode I really have my smaller organizations in mind for. I'm really speaking to you. So if you're a solo led organization, maybe you have a small team. I'm thinking about you in this episode because your fundraising campaign should not require six different meetings, months and months of planning, approvals, round of edits, unanimous board approval before you can go ask somebody for money, especially online. We're going to talk about digital fundraising today, and for a lot of nonprofits, that's exactly what happens. There's a lot of minutia. There's a lot of thinking about thinking about, and somehow the ask, the fundraising ask, gets pushed further and further down the road. So today I'm breaking down the five signs you're overcomplicating your fundraising campaign and what to do instead, because complexity doesn't make the campaign more strategic. It's like how many times do we need to think about thinking about it, or could we research another way, another way, another way? Usually, it just makes it harder, harder to execute, slower to scale, like slower to get out, and much, much less likely to be repeated. That's arguably the most important piece. If it is arduous for you to raise $10,000 or more in a short two-week digital campaign, that is a sign that your blueprint to do this is too complicated. Most nonprofits are not coming to me because they don't know a good fundraising strategy. Y'all know there are so many out there at your fingertips. There are plenty of strategies: peer-to-peer campaign, a gala, a grant, an event, a 5k, an auction, a walk, a giving day, a matching challenge, a sponsorship campaign, a direct mail appeal, a social media birthday fundraiser. Right? There's so many. I just scratched the surface, but the problem is, is that every idea completely turns into a big production. You know what this sounds like? It's like, it's like what started as oh, we have this need. Let's create a quick fundraiser suddenly gets bloated or overcomplicated or has too much buy-in, and once it ends, everyone is exhausted. No one wants to do it again. That is not a fundraising system. That is not something you can scale and do again and again. So inside the sprint method, I teach you how to sprint, how to raise $10,000 or more. Most of our clients do it in 10 days. We have clients who join the sprint method and they have their first campaign up and going in less than two weeks. It doesn't take a lot of time. It's that you haven't been following a system, a proven system that is literally step one, step two, step three, and so the first time you do it, you're like, "Whoa, this feels different. Yes, it's supposed to. The second time you do it, you actually find yourself going, "This feels easier. Much like my travel, it was like, "Okay, it gets a little easier the second time. It gets a little easier the third time. And I see inside my more advanced program, the Purpose and Profit Club, I see the same thing happen where my clients in there can run a campaign very very quickly because it's not the first time, it's not the fifth time. This is something they do on a regular basis. And fundraising, if you are an executive director, if you are a founder, if you are a director of development, if you're in any fundraising space, if y'all are in comms or marketing too, fundraising is an essential part of your job, right? It is essential, so it should be something that you're able to do very, very quickly.
Christina Edwards 9:47
But when you have that idea of in order to raise more, to bring in more funding, we need a more complicated plan. We need more complicated. Complex strategies to bring in more money-that is such a myth. You do not. You can raise more from your laptop. Period. Full stop. Without more staff, without more things, y'all. We don't want swag. We don't want a hat or a tote bag or a pen. We want to support the mission. We do, but we need a reason to support and act now, and that's what sprints give donors. They give donors a reason to act now. So more moving parts does not automatically create more donations. It's just more complexity. And maybe you're chasing foundation funders. You're like, ooh, let's go after this grant. You know, the grants are out there, Christina. The money is out there, and so many founders are sold this lie of like, go trace the grant funding. But the truth is that very small nonprofits, nonprofits who are emerging, which over 60% of all nonprofits are in this category of very small, are far less likely to get foundation funding. Very small nonprofits account for 60% of organizations, but get less than 0.5% of funding. This is from Candid.org. Why are we chasing point 5% of funding? Unrestricted individual donations is how you are going to scale your organization. That's how you're going to hire your first hire. That's how you're going to increase your program from one day a week to two days a week. It's with that unrestricted funding.
So let's dig into the five signs.
Sign number one: You've been planning longer than you've been fundraising, right? You have eight weeks of quote unquote your simple fundraiser, and it's gone sideways. That plan matters. You don't want to decide to fundraise on a Monday and launch it on a Monday night necessarily right. You want to have some plan, but at some point planning becomes avoidance. Planning becomes treading water. You keep thinking about thinking about it. You keep discussing the campaign instead of giving donors the opportunity to respond. You're refining the theme or when to launch or what tool to use or let's get one more meeting. Somebody has some marketing advice. Meanwhile, the urgent need still exists over here. Donors have not been asked for help. Do you see how that is showing up in your organization? A lot of times, too, I see this as fear. You'd rather plan the thing than launch the thing, and that fear is real because you're worried about asking donors again. You're worried about asking too much. You're worried about fatiguing. That is a real fear that exists. I hear you, and that is how you keep your funding small. The fear is not a reason not to launch the campaign. The fear, what overcomes that fear is when you have a sprint campaign that has the clear. We have a clear framework for it. When you have that clear framework, those essentials in a sprint, the donor is like, hell yeah, let's go donate. The donor is excited by the invitation, the opportunity to give. They're not annoyed. They're not feeling like God. All they do is ask, right? The other piece that can come in is perfectionism. You keep planning because you want things to be just right, just perfect. Spoiler alert: It will never be just right, just perfect. There is no right or perfect. There is the campaign you get out into the world, and donations will come in. That's it. That's it. The biggest, most like your most north star organization, where you're like, I wish we could be that big. I wish that we could be that successful. I promise you, they never had perfect behind the hood, they were like, "Oh my God, we were scrambling on this, or we weren't sure this was going to work. They were willing to be bold and brave and ask. That is the process, and repeat.
So, sign number two is you've created assets, but before you've decide what you're saying. So, this is a little bit like starting in the middle. So a sprint campaign has some essentials in it in order to raise $10,000 or more in every digital campaign. So in order to do this, there are essentials, and what happens sometimes is you sort of start in the middle.
Christina Edwards 14:54
Someone's maybe working on some social posts, or someone's got an idea over here. They're working on. And siloed, and none of it actually goes together. They're a little more patchwork, and again, they don't have a cohesive theme, a cohesive goal, a cohesive why. Maybe the executive director is working on a video series because somebody said, "Let's let's do a video. Videos are great, but there's no central message, and there's no central backbone to the to the campaign. and so I end up looking at organizations who are doing something like this. I'll go to your page, and I'm like, show me the last time you ran a fundraiser and it feels like patchwork. It feels like hodgepodge. And so donors are not inspired to give. You do feel siloed out, and you don't have a replicatable workflow you can use again and again and again. You get kind of five different versions of the campaign. Some people will put more into it, and some people will put less into it versus you in the driver's seat creating a campaign very quickly. So we teach you how to have a have this workflow from from start from the planning phases to launch to closing out that launch to retention. Remember your donors. Remember retention. We need that. We need the retention piece. So we teach you that whole process in my program.
All right, sign number three. This might be the sign that gets me the most fired up. Like I get the most salty about the sign. Too many people have to approve every decision, y'all. Collaboration can strengthen a campaign. It can, but consensus can kill it, And I know y'all have sat in a board meeting where consensus is killing any momentum. Just waiting for that consensus. Okay, so if every subject line, image, email, story, ask anything, content piece has to pass through multiple people, the campaign will be slower, weaker with every round of feedback. It becomes a game of telephone where the story had heart and soul and a real reason to give, and then it passes through five people. By the end, I'm like, "What did you say, huh? What? Something about dinner tonight? I don't know. Everyone adds a sentence, removes a sentence, right? Everyone wants their program mentioned. Everyone has a slightly different opinion. This is why we teach CEO time inside Sprint because I have a lot of founders and solo operators, and specifically for them, running the campaign, owning the campaign with that CEO energy is a game changer. You need clear roles in order to get this campaign not only out the door, but for the campaign to be successful. You're the boss, applesauce with me.
Sign number four. You're waiting for the perfect story, theme, or moment, nonprofits lose a lot of fundraising time waiting for the perfect story. This could also be fear in a costume, right? Fear in a cute outfit. You're like, listen, I don't have a strong enough reason to fundraise now, or let's just save that for year end, right? It's a lot of that, or like, you know, we just ran something over the summer. I'm going to wait for the perfect person to interview the perfect photo. You know, a meeting with that donor later. Maybe they could be a match later, so I don't want to do anything now. That is all of everything I just listed is the quickest way to be underfunded, understaffed, overwhelmed, and out of business. If you're waiting for the perfect match, the perfect campaign name, the perfect moment to launch, the perfect right time, there is no perfect. Perfect is not coming. And when it does, it doesn't guarantee donations. Right? A clean, clear, honest story now will outperform perfect that never gets published, right? So you can launch a campaign without a perfect video, without an award-winning theme, or the most dramatic story your organization has ever told. Those are really some serious things that I see people getting stuck in. Of like, well, I don't really know how, or I can't. Do the video myself.
Christina Edwards 20:00
Why are we doing a video to begin with? You can launch without a video. Well, I don't have a good story right now. You do. You just need coaching to come go through our framework. Come get coached. The story is there. Or I've already told that story. I promise you haven't told it the way I have. Or our donors are tired out. Or I just already fundraise. Everyone who tells me I just ran a fundraiser, it's too soon. I'm like, when was the last fundraiser? And it's very funny, y'all. It is not too soon. It is not too soon. I want you to everybody have a north star of an organization that you would love to grow to be the size of or be most known for, right? And it could be any organization. It could be something in your cause area or not. And you can stack up some of these BS thoughts against that. So one of the ones I will sometimes say is like Charity: Water, Habitat for Humanity is something that's a big name. I'm like, y'all know how often they're fundraising. Go get on their email list. Get on their mailing list. They are fundraising often. They have different needs to different segments. This is how you scale up. It starts with you doing the work right now. That I'm telling you.
Okay, sign number five. You couldn't easily repeat the campaign. This is the biggest one. If your campaign works, could you run it again? Could you run it again this year? Could you run it again next quarter? Could someone else on your team follow the same process? Do you know what emails were sent, what asks were made to what donors, which messages converted, which partners helped, what donors really responded to what you would keep, what you would change. Are you evaluating? We teach an evaluation process in both of my programs. So, with this, having a repeatable way to fundraise online, this is the backbone to fundraising, to to scaling up your funding. If you do not have an easy way you can raise five figures every time you fundraise, then you're missing an essential. I want you to think about it like I've got water but no food for my organization, or I've got food but no water. You're missing like an essential life force for your organization. This is essential. So many organizations-they come out the gate, they're doing events and they're doing grants. Those two things are not essential in the first 100k, 200k, even 300k for your organization. They're not. Do you want to know what's essential? Individual unrestricted donors. That's the essential, really, to your first 500k. You heard me say that to your first 500K. The reason why is when you focus on unrestricted individual donations, every single action you take moves you towards getting funding you need that pays to keep the lights on, the programs operated, and go straight to the service, the recipient, the impact. So it funds everything. It doesn't put you in a box with grant funding where you spend time on grants you may never get, probably won't, based on that stat, or you get awarded the grant, but you guess what? You're not allowed to use it for operational costs. That is why we love unrestricted donations because operational costs overhead are programmatic costs. Okay, so when we focus on unrestricted individual donors, beautiful things come out of it. You get monthly givers, you get mid level donors. You can then upgrade and work on to become major donors. Focusing on the major donors is essential again in that foundational piece. We do this in sprints. Your major donors will donate to your sprints, and you will find major donor leads through your sprint campaigns. Now we are opening up sprint very soon. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that date while it's fresh in my mind, august 20 with a webinar. If you go to splendidcourses.com forward slash 10k, you'll get the details on joining that webinar. Special bonus when you join Sprint on the call.
Christina Edwards 24:32
We did this last time, and people scoop them up very quickly, as well as $500 savings when you join. Okay, so you are going to want to sign up for that, but let's talk a little bit more about this repeatable campaign. A repeatable campaign means you are not just waiting for two things that I see organizations do. One, we have our year-end fundraiser, Giving Tuesday, blah blah blah. That's one of our campaigns, and then we have one. Other signature way we fundraise. Sometimes it's an event in the spring or a fall gala, and that's it, y'all. There are nine more months, even 10, out of the year, you could be fundraising even half of those and double, double your fundraising revenue, but you're not because of the time it takes for you to fundraise.
So a successful campaign, a successful fundraiser should leave you with more than just money, more than just unrestricted funds. It should leave you not feeling overwhelmed, not feeling stressed out. It should leave you with a process that you can repeat again, a campaign calendar, stories you can reuse, a list of donors to follow up with. I wrote in my notes, leads in all caps. When you fundraise online in this way, you're going to see an influx of new donors, y'all. That's your new lead list. that is your gateway to those major donors you've been wanting those $500 gifts, $1,000 gifts, $5,000 gifts, and beyond. The real fundraising growth doesn't come from running one successful campaign. It comes from knowing how to do it again, how to repeat the process. This is the shift I see all the time inside the sprint method. Someone comes believing they need more time to prepare, or more people power, or more something else to prepare, right? A better website, social media, better board, more board participation. Then we simplify, simplify following the framework, defining the urgent need, the urgent problem, sharpening the ask, making sure their donation assets are set up for high conversion. So when a donate a donor lands on their page or gets their email or gets sees a social post, they're a yes quickly. The goal is not to throw something together. The goal is to put your time into pieces that actually can influence giving again and again and again. So if you're thinking our organization is too complicated, we have lots of programs, we have multiple audiences, our board needs to get more involved. I'm not asking you to simplify your whole organization. You just simplify your campaign so you can do it quickly and simply again and again. The campaign doesn't have to explain all 10 programs or all 10 ideas, right? The organization may serve 1000s of people, but the campaign can focus on one. The donor still needs a clear reason to act and make the next step today. That is what we create inside of Sprint. So we have clients. There's so many clients in there who are like, I had no idea we could do it this way. Like, dang, I've been doing the grant event thing. I had no idea my audience would donate this much this quickly, and again, we ran a sprint earlier this year, and then people donated again. I have people reaching out to me saying, "Can we run a fundraiser for you?
Christina Edwards 29:13
We have clients inside my in my both my programs who have that exact experience, right? Where people are saying to them, "Hey, I would love to run a fundraiser. There's a Mary inside of Sprint who recently had a high school or high school boys say, "Hey, we want to run a fundraiser on behalf of your organization. How cool! Where you're sure set them up, throw it over the wall. They've got it. So the goal is not to pour your blood, sweat, tears late nights in order to raise $10,000 in a few weeks. The goal is to create a better, scalable way to fundraise-one that your donors are understand or excited about, one that you can execute with your current organization size. We have founders, part-timers who have day jobs. Who are running sprint campaigns? We have clients who recently experienced a big grant cut and who are creating sprint campaigns because they have to raise money for for money they had earmarked coming in from a funder that pulled out.
So if you've recognized yourself in any of these five signs, this is what we fix together in Sprint. Sprint is where you turn one urgent fundraising goal into a focused campaign without that months of planning, dozens of assets, time, time, time, and without being an expert fundraiser. I created this program for small and emerging organizations, right? So organizations who have small teams who are solo led, who are part time. We open up on august 20. You're going to want to go to splendidcourses.com forward slash 10 k1 0k in order to sign up for our launch webinar. And if you're like, that sounds cool, and I'll join later this year, right? I'll join when it's not so busy, or I'll join closer to your end. I want you to think about what happens between now and then. Another month of kicking the can and not fundraising. Another month of trying to piece something together, DIYing. Another month of rewriting or second guessing or trying to get buy-in from other stakeholders, and then November arrives, and you're still DIYing. Come in, go through our curriculum now. Run a quick sprint. You're allowed to run a quick sprint now, and to do another sprint for year end. You can do this. I promise you. We have so many clients inside who are doing exactly that. Every month you delay is just doing it the slow way, and one of the things inside of Sprint to give you a little peek about the if you're curious about the elements inside of Sprint, it's a year long program. There is a full curriculum that you can access 24/7, so you can go through and access it at your own pace. We have an entire module on that leadership CEO time, an entire module on the fundraising, the sprint campaign process, and then an entire module on major gifts. So starting to seed those major gift relationships as well as donor retention. Most of our sprinters add on on my email course because sprint does not cover email. So most of our our sprinters add on our email course at checkout at a very very like steal of a price. So you can look out for that as well. I just don't want you to go in saying I'll figure this out when you could have someone and a group and a community of like minded people who are doing this with you and who are like, hey, I just tried this. Try this, or to have my eyes go through your campaign page on one of our calls before we launch. Before you launch, we meet we meet monthly for coaching, and then occasionally we will have some pop up bonus trainings as well. So before you launch, you can have your campaign reviewed. You can have your assets reviewed, or maybe you're going into a conversation trying to secure a matching gift, or maybe you're not sure how you can squeeze another fundraiser in, or what you would fundraise or fundraise for? You don't have an idea.
Christina Edwards 33:43
Those are all things you can come bring to coaching, or maybe you are not sure how you could raise 10k because you've only ever raised $2,500 in a campaign online, and your big signature event is an in person event. Those are all reasons to come figure out this problem, get coached, use our system now. So, I hope to see you in our August webinar, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.