It’s far too easy to get fundraising wrong. But just in case you want a reminder of things to avoid, here’s a post from the Get Fully Funded blog, at How to Bore Your Donors to Tears in 10 Easy Steps:
- Be ego-centric. (After all, it’s all about you and or organization, not about the donor, right?)
- Show no passion.
- Leave out the stories.
- Use lots of mind-numbing statistics.
- Use lots of jargon, slang, and acronyms.
- Be predictable and safe.
- Use lots of big, fancy words and really long sentences.
- Omit the outcomes.
- Bury the lead.
- Leave them out of the club.
These are common mistakes that a lot of fundraisers make. Because every one of them is tempting. Or to less-experienced fundraisers these things seem like smart things to do. They aren’t. They’ll drive away your donors.
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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