60 Ways to Improve Your Fundraising Immediately

by Katherine Wertheim, CFRE

1. Ask your vendors for donations.
2. Make it mandatory that all board members make a personal contribution.
3. Invite a fundraising professional to talk to your board about board responsibilities.
4. Add passion to your donor letters.
5. Add a P.S. to your donor letters, and make it very strong. The P.S. is often what people read first, because they turn over the letter to see whom it is from. It is better to have a P.S. that reads, “Jennifer is alright now, but it was very close.” Who is Jennifer and what happened? They have to read the letter to find out. That’s preferable to a P.S. that says, “Your donation is tax-deductible if you itemize.”
6. Send a year-end summary of donations in January. Donors appreciate it and include it in their taxes: it reminds the donor to give again when they get it, and again when they do their taxes.
7. Send a Valentine’s Day card to your top donors and volunteers, without asking for money. Have the people you serve make them and include a personal thank you, if possible. Many organizations send cards in December, but most people don’t get a Valentine’s Day card. It also pre-empts people who say, You only write when you need money.
8. Include a response envelope with every thank you.
9. Stop paying for BREs — Business Reply Envelopes with pre-paid postage. It only increases your costs and the number of people who write to say, “Take me off your list.” It also sends the message that you have plenty of money. Besides, every donor has stamps, at least until we’re all automated in a few years.
10. When you get someone’s card, add them to your mailing list, and send them a solicitation package as soon as you meet them.

11. Conversely, clean up your mailing list once a year, to remove people who haven’t donated or volunteered. You’ll always want to keep $100 and above donors, even if they miss a year, but you’ll want to eliminate people who have given lower amounts after a couple of years, lest you spend their entire gift resoliciting them.
12. Enter your organization’s information on GuideStar. Make sure you update the entry every year to indicate new organizational goals.
13. Ask for donors’ email addresses. Release your publications online, and let donors know your good news by email. Aim eventually to have all your information sent by email instead of snail mail.
14. Change your fax sheet to tell about your organization. Usually, fax sheets only need a couple of lines for a note. Use one-third of the page, perhaps the right-hand side, to tell what your organization does. Put in a quote from someone who has been helped, or from a newspaper article, or from a volunteer, as an endorsement.
15. Before you send out a mailing, create a focus group of people who will give you an opinion about your mailing. This can take just a couple of days if you conduct a survey by email.
16. Add a line in every proposal that 100% of your board gives money. If this isn’t true, tell your board members you want to add it, to increase the likelihood of receiving funding (grantmakers love to see this, so it indeed helps your fundraising).
17. Create an annual report, and list all your donors, even the smaller ones. People will upgrade themselves into the next category. Make sure you tell your board that their gifts will be listed. I know donors look to see how much board members have given.
18. Have a local lawyer hold a seminar on how to write a will. Have him or her include examples of how to make a bequest to a charity. Use your organization as the example.
19. Include a keeper article in your newsletter that will cause readers to keep the newsletter and pass it on. A keeper article can be anything that provokes thought or solves a problem: it should be broader than your organization.
20. Add an insert to every direct mail letter that shows a different angle to your organization. It can be: a thank-you note from someone who has been helped; a budget of what it costs to help one person; a list of testimonials from your volunteers; pictures from an event you held for the people you serve; or a list of ways you can use volunteers or donated goods. This insert, called a Lift Note, has been proven to increase response.

21. Develop a second ask. If the donor says yes to your initial request, know what you’re going to ask them next. Say thank you and make the second ask. For example, ask them for $1,000. If they say yes, ask them to also host an event at their home to which you will invite other donors and they can invite their friends.
22. Keep track of your rate of rejections. Make it a statistical game: how many people say yes, no or not yet? How does this differ on the basis of how you ask them, by mail, by phone, in person, one-on-one or two-on-one? This takes the sting out of a rejection: it’s just more information for your statistics.
23. Ask people for advice. Ask them to listen to your pitch, and tell you how to change it. You may not take their advice, but you’ll learn a great deal of helpful information.
24. Draft a local class to help you with your fundraising. A college journalism class can write your newsletter; an elementary school can prepare Valentine Day cards for your donors and volunteers.
25. Write down the things you would do if you had 300% more money. Make them tangible: not just help more people but write down how many more people, how you would help them, and what services you would provide.
26. Look at the checks that people send. If someone’s check is from a credit union at a big company or the government, send them a note asking them to include you in their United Way or Combined Federal Campaign pledge.
27. Also look for checks that come from trusts, which show that people have done advanced estate planning. Often, these will have the initials TTEE after the person’s name. These people are candidates for visits about planned gifts or bequests. They’re also candidates for larger donations, since most estate planning is conducted by people who are worth a million dollars or more.
28. Look for checks that are from major brokerage companies, such as Charles Schwab or Merrill Lynch. To get these accounts, donors must have at least $5,000 - $20,000 in stocks with that firm, and most have much more. These people are candidates for gifts of stocks that have risen in value.
29. Contact the foundations that support you now. Ask them to review the list of foundations you’re approaching. Is there anyone they can call to speak on your behalf? Is there anyone you should approach but haven’t Have a town hall meeting on fundraising. Invite everyone you know donors, volunteers, staff, and recipients of your work. Ask them to spend 90 minutes brainstorming with you about fundraising. Ask them for specific names of people you should contact to ask for money, how much to ask for, and what would be the best approach. The group task is to bring their rolodexes and give you as many names as possible. At the end, ask people to volunteer to help further, by coming to another meeting, by helping you meet people or by making phone calls or writing letters on your behalf.
30. If there is someone whom you would love to have on your board, but they won’t serve, ask them for the name of someone they would recommend. This is especially true if they are a top-notch business person, major donor or potential major donor, as they will keep tabs on you through the person they recommend, and they are more likely to give to that person when s/he asks.

31. If you receive money through United Way or the Combined Federal Campaign, you will get a list of people who have designated you for a gift. Send them a thank-you as soon as you know, and put them on your mailing list. Call or write them in September and ask if they can arrange for you to participate in an agency day where nonprofits come to their workplace and set up a booth to talk about their organizations. Often, the arrangers of these events change from year to year, so you may not get an invite unless you ask. You’ll also want to remind these donors to give again through their workplace campaign, where the average gift can total $250 or more.
32. If you don’t have donors at the major corporations or government offices in your town, just call up United Way or CFC in the fall and ask for the person/people in charge of agency days. You may have to drop off numerous packets of materials about your organization to reach the people who schedule the agency days, but it’s worth it.
33. Go through your old grant files, and make sure you continue to ask for money from past funders. So many organizations have a note in their files that says, “We are committed for this year, but please ask again in two years.” and that note is five years old!
34. Arrange for small open-house events in the areas where donors live. Ask a donor to open their house and sponsor a small event. It can just be coffee and bagels on a weekend morning. Ask them to ask their friends to come, and invite donors who live nearby. People are curious to see each other’s houses, you can make a quick visit and a pitch about what you’re doing, and raise hundreds or thousands of dollars very quickly.
35. Have a board member or other volunteer call donors who give larger amounts, just to say thank you. You can schedule this just after your main mailings of the year, or throughout the year. They can call the people who give over a certain amount, perhaps $100. It doesn’t take much time, it isn’t fundraising, but it will fix you in the donor’s mind forever. All they have to say is, “I’m a volunteer with ___________. We just got your donation, and I’m calling to thank you. We appreciate your gift very much. We’ll be sending a formal thank you by mail, but we wanted to let you know now how grateful we are for you support. On behalf of the people we serve, thank you.” Takes less than a minute, but very few organizations do it.
36. When you have a fundraising task, delegate it where possible. Think about someone who needs to improve her/his resume who can take on this job. For example, instead of writing your next proposal, think about drafting six people who want to consider grantwriting as a possible career. They might be new mothers looking for a career they can do from home, or college students who are looking to save the world after they graduate. In the time you can write a new proposal, you can teach them how to research and write proposals for you. It will take you some time to supervise them, but you will also end up with six times the number of proposals.
37. Another way to delegate fundraising is to ask one of the people you help to go with you on a fundraising call, whether to a major donor or to a foundation or corporation. It’s much more effective to have a recipient of your work talk about how they’ve been helped than it is for you to talk about it.
38. If you have a large fundraising task, instead of thinking about drafting 30 people, draft only five who each have the task of drafting five more people. When you meet, you just meet with the five people, and they each have meetings with their five people. They will keep each other accountable, and all the work doesn’t fall on you.
39. Learn to let people fail. If they know they can fall back on you, they will. If they truly feel responsible, they will step up their efforts and accomplish their goals.
40. Get testimonials, and more testimonials, and stacks of testimonials. When you help people, ask if they will help you with fundraising by writing about how you’ve helped them. Attach these to grants, to your website, to your letters to your donors, to your newsletter, and even on your fax sheet.

41. Put pictures in your office of the people you serve, especially in the waiting room, but also throughout the offices and the room where your board meets. If they’ll let you, put their names and a quote from them about how they’ve been helped.
42. Use the reverse side of your business card to explain what you do, in about 25 words or less.
43. Hold a prayer breakfast with local clergy. Ask them for one contact within their congregation who can be your connection. You will ask this person for a number of things: to put your list of needs or your wish list in their newsletter, to get you meetings with the missions committee, and to help you find volunteers. As you get to know these clergypersons, ask for a monetary gift through their discretionary fund and ask them to do an offering or fundraising event for you.
44. Make a list of your top donors, the 20% who give you 80% of your revenue. Work with a board member or volunteer to call each of these people and to meet with them. If someone gives you a gift by mail, they will multiply that gift 10 times over if you meet with them. Thus, a meeting will turn a $100 donor into a $1,000 donor, and a $1,000 donor into a $10,000 donor.
45. Check the readability of every document you send out. A ninth-grader should be able to understand it. You can do this through Microsoft Word, by using the Tools menu to re-set the options for readability statistics, and it will check how readable your work is every time you do a grammar check.
46. Add a signature line to every email you send, asking for contributions. It can be as simple as “It costs $28.40 to send one child to summer camp for a day. Please give now through our website.”
47. Find college graduates who will volunteer for you for a year for a stipend of perhaps $1,000 a month. You might find them through VISTA or through religious volunteer corps. Try the Mennonite Volunteer Corps, the Lutheran Volunteer Corps, or the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. If there isn’t a volunteer corps in your town, work with a local congregation to set one up. If the congregation can donate a home (and many have been the recipients of donated real estate), you can pull together five nonprofits who will each take one young person and pay them $12,000 a year. Five people living in a house making $60,000 a year can get by, although not lavishly, and they can offer support to each other. It’s not difficult to do, but you’ll need a committee of people to manage it, to recruit college graduates and to recruit charities as employers. It’s worth it, because you get an educated, willing employee for very little money.
48. Make sure that every staff member knows you need money. I’ve called agencies and asked, “Do you need a donation?” and been met by “Gee, I don’t know.” Surprising, but true. Talk to your staff and share with them your quick speech on how you use donations. Every staff member should be able to say something like, “It costs us $65 a month to help an elderly man or woman, and we’re helping 500 people a month. 83% of every contribution goes to programs and services.”
49. Make sure that every staff member knows how to transfer calls. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, “Can you call back? I don’t know how to put you through.”
50. You should provide a day of training in using all the technology in your office. I’ve found that many staff members don’t know how to send a fax, schedule an appointment with other staff through Microsoft Outlook, or add a name to the database (although you should carefully think about who has access to making changes in your database, since it’s easy to wipe out information). You can schedule it in sections, so that people who know how to do one thing but not others can work during those learning periods.

51. This is almost so basic I hesitate to mention it, but a key rule of fundraising is “Don’t lie.” Don’t lie, don’t mislead, don’t neglect to mention something important. Donors appreciate the truth, and they will discover a falsehood. I wouldn’t have put this in here except that I’ve seen it for myself.
52. When approaching a corporation for a donation, consider from their point of view how they will benefit. How will you publicize their donation? Are your donors part of the market of people they want to attract? How do you fit in with the corporation’s goals. If you can provide the answer to these questions, you’re more likely to get the donation.
53. If you want to become an expert on a subject, read seven books about it. After seven books, you’ll know almost everything you need to know.
54. Take classes, even if you think you already know 80% or even 90% about a subject. If you get one good idea, it makes the time worthwhile.
    There are two views of the world: scarcity and abundance. Scarcity is the idea that there are not enough resources to go around. Abundance means that there’s plenty for everyone, although perhaps we need to work more on distribution or sharing. It will be much more helpful to your fundraising abilities if you think of the world in terms of abundance. It helps to believe that there is plenty of money and plenty of people to help you, that you just need to find them. If you think in terms of scarcity, you won’t share with others and therefore won’t benefit from networking, and it will be hard for you to understand why donors want to participate in your work.
55. There are things you enjoy in your work, and there are things that only you can do. Even though you might enjoy something, if someone else can do it, let them. You need to focus your time on the things at which you are unique. For example, you might really enjoy doing the program work, but you are the best person to meet with major donors, so you leave the program work to others and you meet with the donors.
56. When you take a vacation, really take it. Don’t think about work. Don’t call in to the office. You need the time away to refresh yourself, to recharge your batteries.
57. To get more out of your staff, ask them to set their own goals and deadlines for their work. Chances are, they will be more ambitious about it than you would be for them, and they are more likely to do the tasks they have set out for themselves than if you just gave them the work.
58. The worst struggles you will face will occur because you don’t have enough people involved. Focus on getting more people to help you, and fundraising will become easier.
59. There is no perfection in fundraising. Don’t worry about making everything perfect, just get it done. Remember, 90% is an A. People can’t fund you unless you ask, so don’t delay until something is perfect. Just get it done.
60. Examine your emotions about fundraising. What is difficult for you? Why? Ultimately, the cause has to be more important than how you feel about fundraising. It doesn’t matter to the people you serve that you don’t like asking for money or feel that it’s begging. They just know whether you can help them or not. Keep focused on the needs of the people you’re working with. When you need courage, just picture someone who will be helped, and keep him/her in mind as you tackle difficult tasks.