Why A Balanced Fundraising Approach is More Important Now than Ever

Over my 25 years in philanthropy, a career which I am proud of and thankful for, I have worked with organizations where I was a development staff of one to a large healthcare system where we had fundraisers throughout the United States.

Each place I worked had a different strategy for fundraising. Some focused on events, others on individual giving.  What I am about to tell you might very well be the most important thing I have learned in my career other than saying thank you as often as possible.

Make sure your fundraising has a balanced approach.

Over-reliance on one source of income, whether that be events or government grants, puts you in a precarious position. What happens if we have another pandemic where people cannot gather together and your event income disappears? Or, as we have seen in the last few days, when government grants have been frozen, the important work you do every day cannot stop. The people we serve are counting on us.  

Relying too heavily on one source of income is like trying to sit on a one-legged stool. It is very unsteady and will lead to a crash sooner rather than later.  By having diverse fundraising streams you create a multi-legged stool that is able to keep you upright even if one of the legs doesn’t function well.  

Drawing from my personal experience as a fundraiser, I always recount a particular story. One year our events didn’t raise as much money as we hoped. That put a significant amount of stress on the whole team as no one wanted to cut any of our programs that were so needed.  At the beginning of December, I received notification that in two weeks, we would receive a planned gift that was $683,000. That was $33,000 more than the amount we needed to fully fund our budget.  It was one of the greatest days of my life as a fundraiser when I called my boss and told her we had a way to make up that shortfall and more. This only happened because we had a balanced fundraising model – one that included planned giving. 

A few suggestions to create that solid foundation::

1. Diversify your fundraising efforts:  No one area should dominate your fundraising. If you are event-heavy, try sending direct mail. If you are grant-heavy, develop a planned giving program that will sustain you in the years to come no matter what happens in the world.
2. Invest in staff training: Your frontline fundraising staff continuing to learn and grow will help your fundraising program diversify.  Providing opportunities and room to do new things keeps fundraisers engaged and raising money. There have been articles that have suggested cutting staff during these times. Investing in your staff benefits everyone you serve and your fundraising.  
3. Explore new ways to give: As the younger generations become our core donor base, how they give will be based on their experience. Adding options to give through PayPal, Venmo and cryptocurrency will provide more flexibility. 

We cannot control what will happen in the future, and boy have we been thrown some curveballs over the last few years.  I hope that this will not happen again.  But we can’t trust that; what we can do is balance our fundraising away from relying on one method of fundraising to multiple ways of revenue generation.