The stock market had a record year in 2017. The right fundraising training will do the same for you. As it looks now, more of the same is in store for 2018.
Savvy fundraisers will be wise the watch the market very closely. But it’s the not the stock market I’m speaking of.
For fundraisers, it’s the philanthropic market. It’s a market of ideas—the solutions to achieving community improvement. Different nonprofits have different ideas. It’s those who successfully appeal to the philanthropists (hint: they’re the ones who invest, the ones who provide the funds) who will prosper.
Principle 2 of The Eight Principles™ is Begin at the Beginning. Playing the market means knowing how to present yourself because your’re thinking like your donors do.
A lot of fundraising training out there focuses on techniques. This kind of fundraising training—whether online or live—assumes you can manipulate the market to suit your needs. You can’t.
You want you to get fundraising training that focuses on ideas. The kind of fundraising training that shows you how to read and interpret the philanthropic market. When you have this sort of fundraising training you’re not manipulating the market, you’re navigating it.
The result? You go right to the philanthropic investors (some call these “donors”) who are ideal for you and your organization. With the right fundraising training, you learn quickly that generating more funds for your cause is about knowing the right donors, not just any donors.
Principle 2 of The Eight Principles™ is Begin at the Beginning. Playing the market means knowing how to present yourself because you’re thinking like your donors do.
No organization is universally liked or supported by donors. But there are donors who will support you. The good news? There more than enough. More than enough.
So how do I identify these, you say?
Getting fundraising training which develops your thinking skills. Thinking like donors. Understanding how their needs fit into your paradigm. Once you’ve been through fundraising training like this, you’ll never again want (or think you need) the cheap shortcut. You’ll have REAL skill, with REAL power. Besides—the cheap shortcut works poorly—if at all.
So how DO donors think? They think like people who are looking for something special. Special to them. They’re in the “market” because they WANT to participate.
Principle 1 of The Eight Principles™ is Donors are the Drivers.® Donors are driving the train with their ideas, their values and their visions.
The unfortunate reality is that most fundraising training takes as it’s starting point that donors don’t want to give anything—that they must be cajoled, bought or even duped. WRONG!
Can you raise money with these techniques? Yes, you can. But—using techniques from these fundraising training programs raise less, raise it less often, and raise it from a lot fewer donors. UGH!
Although donors don’t like to be manipulated, they do enjoy being led. Led to opportunities which interest them. Being offered opportunities that give them fulfillment.
Here again, it’s learning to think like your ideal donors. The right fundraising training helps you see who these folks are and then shows you how to think like them.
Once you and your donors are of one mind, the sky is the limit.
Raise more, from more people, for much longer period of time.
So we’re back where we started. Playing the market. The philanthropic market. The intelligent fundraiser is never a day trader. Never looking just for the “hot” commodity of the moment. They’re scoping out the blue chips—the donors which will give and keep on giving.
