Ep. 216: You’re Already Fundraising. So Why Does It Still Feel This Hard?
EPISODE 216
You’re Already Fundraising. So Why Does It Still Feel This Hard?
About the Episode:
No one works in this sector because they feel lukewarm about the mission. So where does all that belief go when it's time to ask for money?
In this episode, I'm talking about the fight, the nerve, the conviction, the inner fire that brought you into this work, and what happens to it over time. For newer fundraisers, fear sounds like "I don't know what to say." For established leaders, it sounds like donor-centric stewardship, more data, more awareness, not the right time. It speaks fluent nonprofit, and it's just as expensive. I share what it looks like when an organization has an espresso mission and decaf fundraising, why revenue is always a lagging indicator, and what it actually means to fight for your donors' yes before they've had the chance to give it.
I also share what we do inside The Purpose & Profit Club® to reconnect leaders with that fight, and point it somewhere productive.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
Why the fight that got you into the sector goes lukewarm, and what it costs when it does
How fear gets a very good nonprofit vocabulary in established organizations, and how to recognize it
Why revenue is a lagging indicator, and what it means to act before you have proof it will work
The difference between rejecting yourself on the donor's behalf and giving them the chance to say yes
Why fundraising and communications working in silos is killing donations, and what integration actually looks like
What The Purpose & Profit Club® does differently, and who it's built for
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:
“No one is going to fight harder for funding the mission than you.”
“What used to work 5,10, 15 years ago does not work anymore.”
“Fear gets a really good nonprofit vocabulary as your organization grows.”
“Revenue is a lagging indicator.”
“If you want an unrealistic outcome, meaning you want to grow up to 50% this year, you have to take unrealistic action.”
“Do we need to do more with the donors we already have?”
“So many of you could raise a significant amount of money more from the people who are already in your orbit.”
“The stories, aka the communications, are where your donors are going to go from sleepy and lurking to I want to donate right now.”
“Fundraising and communication should not be passing assignments back and forth. They should be working in tandem.”
“If you are doing fundraising out of comfort, you're going to see your revenue decline.”
Episode Resources:
Why Being Realistic Is Keeping Your Nonprofit Small: The Healthy Delusion™ Effect
The $16K Fundraising Campaign That Brought in 100+ Donors [Client Case Study]
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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 00:14Today, we're going to talk about your fight. Your fight to fundraise, to lead, to ask bravely your fight to keep going your stamina in this sector, in this work, so you can create more impact and impact more people, and you can't do that without more unrestricted dollars. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Before we get into today's episode, I want to invite you to apply to join the club. The club is my high-touch coaching program for nonprofit leaders and teams with a solid foundation who are ready to build a stronger year-round fundraising and communications engine. Not just run another campaign, but really have them all work together in harmony. You should apply if you want experienced strategy on your side and bonuses built to help you move faster now and do the highest value work right now while we're in the most important fundraising season of the year. So lately, I've been thinking about this idea of who works in our sector, who works in social impact, why they choose to do this work. No one works in this sector because they feel lukewarm about the problem, right? About the communities, about the mission they serve. But where does all that belief go when it's time to ask for money. No one is going to fight harder for funding the mission than you. But where's your fight? We're going to talk about where that fight has maybe dwindled or lagged behind, and you used to have the fire, and you used to have the fight, and now it's gone lukewarm. Because this is something that I'm seeing happen all the time, a nonprofit leader will fight like hell for the mission, defend the program, advocate for the people and communities they serve, fight for another staff person, fight for the budget, sit through a three-hour board meeting debating one line of the strategic plan like you've got heart and purpose in this work. Then it's time to fund the thing, and suddenly it's we don't want to bother people. We already emailed them. She hasn't responded. Maybe we should give her some space. You know, it's a it's a tough economy. It's really challenging times. I'm not sure we can ask for that much. The board probably won't go for it. Maybe we need more data. Let's just like let's look at the data. Let's like crunch some numbers. Or you know you should call the donor. You know you should, but you wince at picking up the phone. You'll do anything but do that, right? So you send an email instead, or you tell yourself, you know, I called her last time. She's probably out of town. She's probably busy. Or you need the board member to make an introduction. You mentioned it once. You don't want to sound pushy, or you don't really know what else to say, so it dies there. You never get that warm intro, and the the the cost of missing out on that warm intro is 1000s, 1000s, 10s of 1000s, maybe even 100s of 1000s of dollars. Or you launch the campaign. You made a few ask. You watched the numbers for four days, and you decided the data has spoken. The people have spoken. Our donors are tapped out. It's a tough economy. People are tired of hearing from us. They've heard from us enough. Maybe the goal was too high. I don't think it's working. Let's go search for an. Maybe we should go back to the event. Based on what? Based on what? So many organizations have an espresso mission. You know that jolt of espresso, like a double espresso mission, right? And then decaf fundraising. And sometimes the problem isn't the lack of fundraising knowledge, right? That's there. It's that you've lost the nerve, you've lost the power, you've lost the fight. But there's another version of this. If you're not in year one, you're not in year two. You are an established nonprofit.
Christina Edwards 05:40
I'm really speaking to you in this episode. You could be five years in, 10 years in, 15 years in. Maybe you're the third executive director leading a 30-plus-year-old nonprofit. You've made the calls. You've written the emails. You've run the campaign. You've chased the board. You've followed up with the donors. You've tried the event. You've reimagined the event. You've changed CRMs, hired people, lost people, celebrated campaigns that crushed it, survived campaigns that did not, and somewhere along the way, that fight starts to sputter, and maybe that fight is some exhaustion. And most definitely, that fight dwindles when donor habits have changed and your strategy has not. It feels exhausting because what used to work 5,10, 15 years ago does not work anymore. Now I want to normalize that, but it doesn't mean that you don't believe in this anymore. It may just mean you've been carrying a lot for a long time, and you need some support. You need new systems, and I don't mean like a tech overhaul. I mean you've been carrying a lot of this for a long time, and the fundraising energy in year 10 is not something you're going to necessarily feel that fire, like that belly fire that you had in year one, right? Year one is novel, and our brains love novelty. It is new. You're providing something. You're proving something to yourself. The adrenaline is high. The dopamine is responding. You can run far on that belief. Many of you, you're 5 or 10. You feel like you've asked the same people 47 times. Board members keep promising those things that never happen. You've weathered the staff changes. You've tried things that have worked. You've tried things that haven't worked. That sputter, that pause, doesn't mean you've lost the commitment to the mission. It means you have outgrown the place you are in now, and it's time for an identity uplevel. It's time for a strategy uplevel, and this may seem like a random metaphor, but I want to give this to you. If you've lived in the same home for 10 years, I'd say 10 years is kind of the sweet spot for this analogy. So whether you live in a home, an apartment, a condo, anything, Townhouse. Think about if you've lived somewhere for 10 years. Have you found that you haven't done much to change it? You know, when you first move into some to a new place, you're like, "What color do I want to paint the walls? Where does my favorite painting go? Where am I putting the bed? Right. You have this like fire, this enthusiasm, this energy, and I've found that a lot of people, their home looks approximately the same 10 years later. Right now, I'm not talking about like redoing the kitchen. I'm with the stuff you have. Have you had an up level? Because you end up going with rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse. And repeat, and that gets kind of boring to your brain, and that gets boring to your life. And sometimes we need an up level. We literally just did this in our house in the past like year ish, where working with the things we have, realizing is this still my taste? Do I still want this there? And we have reimagined almost every room in our house, and it's been really fun for me. It's been really fun for our kids. It's just been really fun to be like, why do I? I love changing around art on the walls. Why do I have that painting there? I'm in love with these paintings here. So think about that metaphor as I'm going through today's episode, and hopefully that will resonate with you because your fight got you into the sector, it drew you into the sector, right? That sort of heart-centered purpose, and you watched it dwindle. You watched your kind of nerve dwindle, right? Or maybe you have that that that nagging feeling, or you're like, I know I'm capable of more, but I feel stuck or I feel scared. Let's talk about that fear.
Christina Edwards 11:21
When you're newer to fundraising, fear sounds like I don't know what to say. I'm nervous to call. I hate asking for money. Those are easy to spot. A lot of my Sprint™ students, this is where they start. Right, super normal. It's so scary because you've never done it before. You've never had the tools, the strategy, the system, the support to do it before. It's all new. It's literally like getting on a bike, and you're like, "I'm gonna wipe out, right?
But fear gets a really good nonprofit vocabulary as your organization grows. You ready? This is what the fear sounds like as you have an established organization. We're being donor centric. We don't want to fatigue our donors. We wanted more stewardship first, right? We want to protect the relationship. We need more board buy-in first. We need more awareness. We just need more people. So we're not going to fundraise right now. We're just going to work on more awareness, more community partnerships (air quotes). We need more data. And listen, sometimes those things are completely true. I'm not saying, you know, ignore donors, steamroll your board, email people daily indiscriminately, right? Calling somebody a bajillion times before lunch, right? But when you look at, is this actually a strategic decision, or is this what we're telling ourselves because the next move makes us nervous?
Those are two very different things. One of the biggest mental shifts in fundraising is that revenue is a lagging indicator. So think about this: the donation comes after the ask. The major gift comes after the first conversation, the follow-up conversation, the follow-up to the follow-up, right? It comes after those introductions. It comes after the reminders. When the donor says, "Let me think about it, you don't know yet whether that's a yes, no, maybe. You don't know. You have to go have that fire, that fight, to boldly follow up and find out. And you can't do that when you're stuck in that rinse and repeat cycle. You have to take action before the result proves it true, proves that it was worth taking. Now I call that healthy delusion. This is the title of a book I'm writing this year. I am 75% of the way through the time I'm recording this. You have to have the belief before the data gives you much reason to. So believing it's big enough to act before you have proof it's going to work. There is always some space between. I think this is the right move. This is what we should do next. And look, the result proved it, and it starts and stops with your belief as the executive director, as the director of development, as the communications lead. You have to have that first before your board or your programs person or extra staffers will agree with you. It has to start with you. That middle gets uncomfortable, and that's where so many leaders lose their nerve. The calls stop. The follow up gets tentative. It goes lower on the to do list. Right. The asks get softer. Campaign energy drops, and then the mediocre result is proof the strategy failed. You cannot decide the strategy failed before you actually executed the strategy with with fight, with nerve. Like my one client Antoine says, where you hit the gas on it. Now at the club level, I see this happen with a lot of organizations. You actually have a lot of strategies. You have like 17 of them, right? You can run another campaign, major gifts, monthly giving, last donor reactivation, new donors. You want to acquire new donors, corporate sponsorships, partnerships, email, get that CEO and more donor meetings, peer to peer, board intros, like matching gifts. There's so many strategies you could do. We didn't get into grants. We didn't get into events. We didn't do any of that, right? Should you do all of it? No, please don't.
Christina Edwards 16:50
But that is where organizations get stuck because some of this will keep you from doing the the hardest thing, the best thing, the strongest ROI activity, having that nerve, having that fight again. I think about one of my clients in the club, We were talking about her goal for the campaign and the strategy to achieve that goal, and one of the things she said is, I just I don't know if this is realistic. Like, can I get there? Right? Can I hit that goal? And I laughed and I was like, Oh no, we don't do realistic here. And she was like, That's right. Of course we don't, y'all. If you want an unrealistic outcome, meaning you want to grow 10,20, 30, 50% this year. You have to take unrealistic action. That is healthy delusion, right? If you want to be realistic, the best thing that will happen for you is that you will break even from last year's funding. That's it. What will most likely happen, given the fact that donor habits have changed, is your revenue will dwindle when you're being quote unquote realistic. So we don't do realistic in the club.
Part of what we do is we decide together what is your highest leverage move right now. Okay, sometimes it's staying in the campaign, right? Sometimes it's doubling down on that. Sometimes it's pouring your energy into the next five donors that have been on the bottom of your to-do list for three months. Sometimes the strategy isn't the problem; the messaging is. Sometimes your development director should not be making that ask alone, and I want the ED involved. Sometimes it's that communication needs to get behind this for the next three weeks to support you in this fundraising campaign. Sometimes it's stop adding things, and it's we're not doing that right now. That is going in the future ideas list. That's strategy when you really get laser focused and you say, "I'm clicking in, like put me in, we're gonna fight. We have the nerve. We have the conviction. We have the motivation. I'm not talking about a physical fight. I'm talking about that inner fire. Okay, I literally did like put my dukes up, which is me just clicking in, but not physically Fighting, so this is where I want you to think about where to focus your energy, right? Your fight, your fire needs somewhere productive to go, and when it doesn't have somewhere productive to go, it tinkers, and when you tinker, so does your. I don't want my revenue to tinker. I don't want your revenue to tinker. And when you fight without strategy, you get burnout. Okay, so I want you to think about this. You've got the fire, you've got the fight, you've got the motivation, but you don't have somewhere productive for it to go. You don't know the answer to who needs to who needs a call today. What am I asking them for? What does the ask look like? Who needs a follow up? What does that follow up look like? Gosh, I've already followed with them three times. Maybe I just give up. What donor deserves more attention? Right. Where am I? Where am I focusing my energy? Should we push this campaign now or later? When do we pivot? Right. When does our executive director step in? Should we be list building and and lead generating right now, moving into year end? These are important questions that every single one of my clients in the club know the answers to, right? These are the questions we just had a power hour where we talked about this. How many of you need to lead generate? How many need to build your donor pipeline before year end? Because the answer isn't everyone, not 100% do we need to do more with the donors we already have, this is so important for established organizations. I've been thinking a lot about that, and I'm seeing a lot of evidence that y'all are leaving so much money on the table with your existing donor base.
Christina Edwards 21:36
So belief keeps your heart and your head in the game, but strategy tells you where to put the fight, the nerve, the conviction, the energy. So major gifts is another example of this. Don't reject yourself for the donor. Major gifts are a huge exercise in doing things before you know how they'll turn out. Right? You don't know if the donor is going to say yes, no, maybe. Especially if it's a new donor. Especially if it's a donor who's been giving the same $10,000 year after year after year, and you're asking them for more. Right? So you have to work on that relationship in a way where you're holding that belief, and instead of moving from that high energy expresso energy, and I don't mean you have to have like hummingbird energy, I just mean belief, right? And instead of going to decaf energy with that donor because you're like, I'll just take the $10,000 gift, I should just take what I can get. It's having that fire, having that commitment, staying in it, so that the donor has the opportunity to say yes or no before you reject yourself and just go quietly and into the night where you just don't follow up with the donor and you decide that's the no, okay. Oftentimes, I see so many organizations stuck in this where you've rejected yourself on the donor's behalf, and that can get very expensive. Because so many of you could raise a significant amount of money more from the. People who are already in your orbit, the people who already know you, already care, who have given it one time, who have given multiple times, who have given steadily for years and years and years, but you don't need to wait for the next year, doubling your audience, bringing in that new staffer, a whole new donor acquisition strategy, or a donor acquisition list you buy, a new wealth screening tool. The funding is available now, but you have to have that fire. You have to have that nerve. Now, one of the other pitfalls that I see organizations get stuck into is the silos. If you have a fundraising staff and a communication staff, even if it's just one person, or maybe you yourself are handling fundraising and then you have a communication slash marketing person, right? Those silos are killing donations, right? So one of my favorite shifts inside the club is where we weave in the development and communication strategy together, because the stories, aka the communications, is where your donors are going to go from sleepy and lurking to I want to donate right now. But that starts at the fundraising point. That starts with development. That starts with leadership. That starts with who's owning fundraising. So fundraising and communication should not be passing assignments back and forth. They should be working in tandem. And this is so much of what we do inside the club. Even if it's one person owning it, to own it together in harmony, so they work together. Fundraising is not just asks, and communication is just impact stories. You with me? Fundraising is also stories. One of my clients, the source, they came into the club really heavy in marketing design communications, right? And so we shifted into how do we take what you're already doing well and turn up the volume on your fundraising revenue, on your donations, right? We worked on an active fundraising campaign and developing a strategy for them so they knew what to run to raise money online and in person? They have both. How often to communicate? The messaging that supports that asks, right? Really drilling into the people within the organization, not the ominous brand.
Christina Edwards 27:31
They have seen increased donations, of course, increased responses, meaning people actually responding, increase of people saying, "Hey, I look forward to your next email, or you tell me to open my wallet. I I want to donate, right? Your communications has the ability to be your fundraising pipeline in that way, and we've seen it again and again and again. Now, a stronger fundraising engine, which is the backbone of what we do inside the club, gets built when development, communications, and leadership understand that their work connects, because your donor is not thinking about you nearly as much as we think, right? Your donor has a job, caretaking maybe, 27 unread texts, that dentist appointment they're dreading slash forgot to make and is tomorrow. Oh my gosh, right? Something weird tinkering in the dishwasher. They got to figure out, right? They're not sitting there thinking how many times has a nonprofit contacted me this quarter. No, so frequency matters, stewardship matters, relevance matters, but you can't make those strategic decisions based on an imaginary conversation you're having in your head, and that's why I truly believe the organizations that thrive now in the next 10 years understand that fundraising, communications, leadership-this is a mindset skill for you to hone in. You need the strategy. You need the system to raise money. You need the donors to ask. Yes, you need that part, and you need a mindset that is going to push you forward instead of back and holding you back. You need a mindset, a growth mindset that is going to have you go. I'm picking up the phone today. I'm creating that. Even when you're 5,10, 20 years into this into this role, into working in this sector, Because I want you to ask yourself: Am I leading this organization? Am I fundraising for this organization based on what we need, based on what we need to bring in more unrestricted donations in today, tomorrow, this year, or based on what me and everybody else feels comfortable doing? Because those are different standards. If we are doing this out of comfort, you're going to see your revenue decline. When your revenue declines, the people and communities you serve are also going to decline in impact. This is really important to hone in, and this is a really important piece for you to understand about yourself. Number one, it's normal. See it all the time. That's why I'm recording this. And number two, you can right side this, right? You can right side this. You can turn this around at any time. The goal cannot, however, be we're going to build a fundraising strategy where everyone feels uncomfortable 100 of the time. That is not what I'm asking you. I am not asking you to white knuckle your way to your organizational growth, but discomfort cannot be your sole evidence that a strategy is bad and didn't work. That's not it. So early on, sheer commitment, sheer fight can take you surprisingly far. Your fight though needs to become organizational, right? The organizations that learn how to carry some of that fight to grow. The leaders who say we're going all in, we're going to hit the gas on this, even when I have that part of me that's like, should we? Should we? Should we? I'm nervous. Yes, you should. You have to fight for the people and communities you serve. No one is going to fight harder than you. And when you start fighting, just watch your ambassadors, your volunteers, your street teamers, your donors will all start fighting too. Seriously, that courage, that fight, that healthy fight is infectious, right? That's how you build a fundraising engine. So the club is a great place for you if you're ready to like refind that fight, that motivation, that courage to have the support of knowing which system and strategy to implement now versus six months from now versus never, right? To know how to get your board on board so you're not the only one fundraising.
Christina Edwards 34:34
How to weave in your communications plan, right? So you can raise more unrestricted funding. It gives you the support, the structure, the guidance, the oversight, the mentorship to say, let's weave in, let's drill into your voice a little more. You're holding back. I'll say that sometimes. I can hear it. You're holding back. I want to hear more of you in this. I want to. More. This is sounding a little formulaic, I literally go through this process with my clients in the club, where they're getting very specific feedback based on their capacity, their staff size, their messaging, their mission. So I can create very specific feedback tailored to them. So then, instead of saying "What do we do? and it's throwing spaghetti at the wall, you are deciding which thing matters most now? Is this campaign failing, or are we just nervous? Right? Is the donor ready for how much? I've never done this before, but I'm going to come get coaching for that donor upgrade, right? Or are we thought or are we ready to list build? Do we need to generate more leads in our pipeline? It's about making better decisions and then having support to implement those decisions, bringing that fire back. Right.
So, if you have donors, campaigns, maybe a small team, a board, some revenue coming in, some monthly donors, but you wish you had more, the club is the place for you. We have applications open now for a limited time. It is my ongoing strategy and coaching program for nonprofits who want to build a stronger fundraising and communications engine. Think about this as a full service, 360 degree accelerator. We work across campaigns, major gifts, donor strategy, email, digital communications, leadership, year round revenue growth. That's recurring donors, right? This is not here are 47 ideas. Pick one. Good luck. This is me looking very closely at your organization, your donor base, your audience, your numbers, your team, your opportunities, and asking myself where is the revenue opportunity right now that they have right here that they can run with today in the next two weeks, who should we prioritize talking to? What should we prioritize talking to? What should we ask for? Where does leadership need to step in? Where can development and communications work together? Where is the lowest hanging fruit here? What should we stop doing? What's the next move? Where do I need to coach my mindset to implement that next move, because I believe you can raise more right now with the audience you have, with the donors you have, with the relationships you have right now, not next year, not someday, not after your list triples, not after you get that Mckenzie Scott money. Right, you get the funding, the support, the opportunity. So go apply. It'll take a few minutes to apply. When you apply during this open enrollment period, you will save $2,500 off a full year in the club. You will also get a private one on one jumpstart call with me because it's easy to go. There's so much I could do. What should I do? So we will prioritize your biggest near term revenue opportunities and I'll give you a plan for your top fundraising activities for the next 90 days. So there are programs and courses and and consultants and ways you can quote unquote grow out there, but a lot of them are here's a bunch of stuff you could do. Pick one, right? So we're not doing that. It's here is where to put your energy. Here is how to relight that fire, that fight, that motivation. Here's how to be magnetic with your asks. Here is how to get more yeses. Here is how to fail forward. Here is how to get the momentum to get back up, keep going, and bring in other people to support you. Those audience amplifiers. So then you have the support the entire year, so you can execute, adjust, bring your the rest of your team on if you want, keep fundraising. Moving forward, you have a mission worth fighting for. Don't stop the fight. Don't stop and do that decaf fundraising, that decaf communications.
Christina Edwards 40:09
It's so boring, right? We want a better strategy. We want to see that fire as donors. We want to see that as lurkers, right? As not yet donors. So if you go to splendidcourses.com/ apply, you'll see the application right there for you. Go apply. Let's make sure your fundraising strategy knows exactly what to do with your fight, with your belief. You've got this. I'll see you in the next one.