Why do donors give?
One reason is they have specific interests, and they want to connect with those interests through their giving.
That’s why support our cause fundraising doesn’t work very well. It fails to connect with real life for donors.
The Veritus Group blog, talking about this in the context of major donor fundraising points at that Donors Care About Specific Things. They make the claim (and I can vouch for it) that when you go to donors with specific needs they can fund, you’ll raise a lot more money.
Donors have specific interests. And if you create and present a proposal to the donor that matches those interests, they can and will give way more than they have before. There is a direct cause and effect relationship between these two points. Try it, and you will see that it really does work.
If your fundraising is all unspecific, unrestricted, general support blah-blah — you aren’t serving your donors, and you aren’t raising as much as you could.
Give specificity a try!
Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.
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