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1. Thinking your major donors want to hear less from you.
Don’t make this mistake!
Your major donors (unless they’ve told you otherwise) want to hear more from you. Call them up! Email them. Text them. Ask them to coffee.
When someone gives you a major gift, it’s part of a good relationship you have built. Now you have so many ways to thank them. Don’t thank them by getting silent and weird about it! Don’t go assuming that they don’t want to hear from you! They do. So show them you care. Get to know them.
2. Not calling foundations to find if there’s a match before submitting your proposal or LOI
Okay, who HASN’T done this? Show of hands? This is the classic rookie mistake. You need to start figuring out your connection to a foundation, and if you haven’t got a connection, could you start one by calling and asking if there’s a fit? This can save you so much time. And if there’s not a fit, ask if they know if there’s another foundation you should connect with. A good place to start finding these natural connections? Your local community foundation.
3. Putting off your e-newsletter because no one is making you get it out every month
I used to do this! At one of my old nonprofit jobs, I had no one telling me to get the newsletter out. Consequently, it didn’t go out very much. But it should have, because every time we communicated, it was another chance to build a relationship with a donor.
Even when I started my business in 2009, I was not good at getting my newsletter out. Consequently my list grew very slowly, and I didn’t even really understand the significance of building a list or having an engaged list.
Now I email my list once a week like clockwork. Why? Because consistency shows potential donors (or community members) that you can be trusted. You’re there, every week, looking to help them. Maybe you’ll make them laugh. Give them a good recipe. Maybe you’ll tell them a surprising piece of information that they’ll share with someone else. Whatever you share, make it memorable. Play with it.
4. Not starting your spring appeal in February because hey, you’ve got two months, right?
Oh snap! You think you’ve got time? No you jolly well don’t! Why? Because the post office will take 10 days to 2 weeks to send your appeal if you send it bulk mail rate. Yeah, and the envelope stuffers-may not be reliable! They’re volunteers, right? You’ve got to coordinate them. And recruit them. That’s going to take some time. PLUS! You have to make sure you have enough envelopes! letterhead! stamps! Strapping! and that your printer works! Enough money in your nonprofit mail account at the post office! Or make sure that your mailing service has enough room in their schedule for your spring mailing. Not to mention actually writing the damn thing, and fighting with people internally to get them NOT to make it 10 point font and 1 page long. This will take two months. So plan ahead. Start now.
5. Being afraid to ask questions (you have to pretend to know everything!)
Because so many of us fall into fundraising, we pretend to know everything. We’re afraid of being found out that we don’t know something, and then someone’s going to come up to us and take our jobs away! You don’t know planned giving? Major Gifts? Capital campaigns? How to find grants? How to write an appeal letter? It’s OKAY! Nobody starts their careers knowing these things. But the only way you’re going to get less ignorant is by reading and asking questions. You MUST do this. If it’s not safe to ask questions at work, ask them in our community! Ask them from your local fundraising association. But you must ask. You’ll never rise in your field if you don’t.
Here are some more mistakes I made on my fundraising journey
I hope you’re not making these mistakes, but if you are, don’t worry. I’m here! And so is Fundraising Mastermind Elite. This community will be growing every month to help you have all the fundraising resources, webinars, e-courses and more that you could possibly want!
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The first one caught my attention. Indeed, the donor wants to hear from those people whom they have helped. The needy people who have great donors must be responsible enough to thank them and to update them about their latest status.