2 questions never to ask about fundraising

In fundraising, it’s smart to get more than one pair of eyes on anything you plan to send out.

But not everything you ask people will give you useful or accurate information. Here are two questions fundraisers often ask others that often lead to fundraising failure:

1. Do you like this? Fundraising isn’t meant to be liked. It’s meant to connect and persuade. Those are not at all the same thing. In fact, it’s common for the most effective fundraising to be disliked. And when nonprofit staff “like” the message, it is very likely to do poorly with donors. They are the wrong audience entirely. Good fundraising will often rub them the wrong way.
2. Would you give to this? This might seem a more on-target question. But it’s not. Because rationally thinking through whether or not you’d respond is radically unlike encountering a message, paying attention to it, and following through with a donation. Those two situations are so different, there’s no correlation between the two. If there’s a correlation, it’s the strong negative correlation between insiders saying they’d give and donors actually giving.

If you’re hoping to improve your fundraising, don’t ask anyone either of these questions.