How your big, bold fundraising vision keeps your reality small

Have you heard (or said) something like one of these?

• We want people to fall in love with our vision for the future.
• We want to connect with our donors in a deep and transforming way.
• We don’t just want donors. We want people to join a movement.

Bold. Inspiring. Big.

And limiting.

That’s according to the Better Fundraising Blog, at True Believers, Casuals, and Onramps:

… organizations that feel this way often create fundraising messaging and programs that are only attractive to true believers.

Guess what: there are far fewer “true believers” in your cause than there are “casuals” — people who generally are with you, but they aren’t fanatics. They might be moved to donate. Maybe they’ll even donate repeatedly and/or a lot.

When you aim only for true believers, you create narrow path into your donor base.

Widen the path! Invite everyone in who wants to come in. Even the casual allies. Because there are so many of them.

Here’s the cool thing about that:

[Successful fundraisers] have learned over time that most of their true believers are people who have come up through their donor pipeline; they started as $50 donors, upgraded to mid-level, then became major donors, often (but not always) going deeper in relationship with the organization.

You can actually develop true believers from a larger pool of casual supporters.