The Nonprofit Sector Cannot Afford a Scarcity Mindset

Is your Fundraising Team making decisions for your donors (and leaving money on the table)?

Can you guess where I see the most money left on the table?

Fundraisers making decisions for the donors, preemptively. But, I’m telling you, those donors are dying to give more. To really understand the need of your mission—and contribute to it.

How do I know? I see Advancement Teams’ eyes opened to this all the time. They are shocked to see how much money they’ve been leaving on the table for years.

Instead of predetermining what any one donor might give, and sticking to that, what if you could look at the process with the expectation of:

It takes more to do more…

…especially to solve the giant problems the sector is solving. 

Lean into risk. Pick up the phone. Let them tell you what they want to give, before you put up any preconceived boundaries about what you “think” they’ll give.

You must learn how to lead your donors through these investment-level conversations.

I get it; that’s not easy. Many of us are programmed to think in terms of what Bobbi Rebell calls “irrational frugality.”

Whether it’s spending $100 on a pair of sneakers in your personal life, or asking a donor for $100,000 in your professional life, it’s easy to get all tangled up in irrational thoughts about money. For many, frugality is like a squatter that digs into your psyche and is nearly-impossible to evict.

(The good news is that “nearly” isn’t “utterly”… It can be done.)

Frugality is one problem needing to be solved, but so is fear. 

There’s an inherent fear in all of us about “not knowing” the answer. Straight-A types even have recurring nightmares about this experience. This can be especially true when your fundraising staff has non-traditional backgrounds, either coming up through the programs team or entering the nonprofit world through corporate. 

An example of this? Well, I routinely talk to advancement teams who’ve told me they hope the finances/numbers/percentages of an organization don’t come up in conversations with donors, because they won’t know all the answers. 

Let me challenge you to think differently about this today. It’s the perfect opportunity to have a reason to call them back; to get back in front of them. 

There’s no harm in saying, “I love that question. I haven't been asked about it in a while. I'll circle back with you. Let me run the numbers and get back to you in a week or two.” 

You know as much as you can, but it’s a wonderful reason to be vulnerable and say, I love that question and let me understand why you're asking it.

Think about it this way: Is the root of the question perhaps what is going to keep that donor from giving their best gift later? 

So, solve that. Welcome it. It is going to help you raise more money.

(Then prepare yourself to know the answers to those questions the next time a donor asks them.)

One more thing before I go…

If you’re a front-line fundraiser reading this, it’s not all about you. 

Falling short of your annual goals can feel like a personal affront. What could you have done differently? Or better? What about you turned off a donor?

This is the reality (and often a mindset shift):

Your organization is just the structure that is stewarding a charitable asset. The IRS says! “A donor is giving their charitable asset to a mission.” Organizations are the structured group set up to steward that gift so the mission actually happens.

Still not sold?

Try this on for size the next time you get all up in your head… Say you’re running a literacy organization and a donor gives a $100,000 gift. If your organization goes out of business tomorrow, you can’t take that money and go build a water filtration system in another country. The donor has given that money as a charitable asset to achieve a specific mission.

Viewing it this way sometimes helps with the vulnerability aspect of fundraising. Your job, as the fundraiser, is to steward the gift to the best of the organization’s ability. 

So, if a donor asks you a question (that you either do or do not know the answer to), try not to get hung up on thinking such an inquiry is rooted in a donor second-guessing the mission’s worth.

It’s probably just a quest for clarity—not a “test” of your intelligence, or motivation, or dedication to the mission.

As the memorable Jerry McGuire said, “Help me help you.”

Here’s the bottom line: If you’re leading a team who’s already raising millions of dollars annually, but it’s still not enough revenue to fulfill your strategic plan or mission, there might be a fundamental shift that needs to occur. At this point in your nonprofit’s revenue trajectory, you can’t solve the problems by just doing more. You can secure the annual funds to accomplish your big vision, but it takes organizational shifts, a proper financing model, and up-leveling your fundraisers skills and mindset. All of it. 

—-

My clients who embrace this shift regularly add 7 figures of money to their bottom line. Real talk. When you’re ready . . . I teach my core methodology in three ways to help:

1. Follow me on LinkedIn for content and resources first
I give away trade secrets and insider info every week - the same lessons I teach my clients about what they can do to start attracting larger dollars and generate more unrestricted money for your nonprofit.

2. Read my WHITEPAPER to see if your overall approach to financing your mission every year might be keeping you from growing.
Here you’ll learn THE BIG FUNDRAISING SECRET that keeps organizations from having the funds to achieve what’s in their strategic plans. Click here to get it.

3. Work with me to reimagine your overall approach to revenue generation
If you'd like to add 7+ figures of charitable revenue to your nonprofit, just send me an email at Sherry@QuamTaylor.com with the subject line “grow.” Tell me a little about your nonprofit and what you need to raise this year. I’ll get you the details! 🎯