Fundraising is an essential part of many organizations’ financial plans. If you run a non-profit, senior center, amateur sports team or religious order, you’ll need to learn how to fundraise effectively in order to do all the things you want to do with your group. In this article, we’ll take a look at what makes a successful fundraising team so that you can maximize your donated dollars.
1. Select Motivated Team Members
To start the process of building a successful fundraising event, you’ll need to have a motivated team. These individuals should be excited about raising money for your cause and have plenty of ideas on how to get the job done. They should also have a variety of skills, including the ability to manage crowdfunding pages and social media. If you don’t have a website for your fundraiser, you’ll want someone who can build one. You’ll also want people who are good with multiple forms of outreach, including sending emails, creating snail mail campaigns and organizing and advertising fundraising activities.
2. Stress the Importance of Integrity
Once you have selected your fundraising team members, stress the importance of integrity. It’s important to note that this goes beyond professional integrity. Your team members will need to practice good personal integrity and good fundraising integrity. You can start by having your members read the Code of Ethical Standards and then the Donor Bill of Rights. These two documents outline how fundraising members should act and how donors should be informed and treated before they send money and after their contribution has been received.
3. Stress the Importance of Listening
Your fundraising team members must be able to actively listen. If some members aren’t good at listening and communicating, it may be a good idea to invest in a communications class or bring in a speaker who can do a short course on communication. This is because in order to successfully solicit donations, you’ll need to be able to inform the potential donor about your mission and cause and why these are important. You’ll also need to listen to the donor. Why are they donating? What’s important to them? How do they expect you to use their money? What recognition do they want after they donate? By listening and communicating effectively, you’ll understand your donor base and be able to fulfill their requests for their donated money, which will help your organization in its quest to become well-respected.
4. Don’t Be Afraid of Hard Work
Prepare your fundraising team members for long days and hard work. Fundraising isn’t a 9-to-5, 40-hour-a-week job. Members may have to work outside of their normal hours in order to meet with potential donors and advance the cause of the campaign through in-person and online outreach programs as well as special events, like phone-a-thons, car washes and bake sales.
5. Plan for Success
While any organization and individual can start a fundraising campaign, it’s not going to be a success without a plan. As you gear up to start your fundraiser, create a plan on how you will achieve your goals and what tasks must be completed to help you reach your goals. Then, assign people on your fundraising team that can complete those tasks. You may even want to employ the use of workflow charts and task and goal completion software to let you know who is doing what tasks and whether or not they’ve been completed.
6. Set High But Reachable Goals
Create tiered goals. Determine the minimum amount of money you need to meet your objectives and make your fundraiser a success. Then, create intermediate and high goals and list what else you can do with the money as you reach each goal. By creating tiered goals, you are helping to motivate the members of your fundraising team by providing them with reachable initial goals and then benefits or motivation for reaching the next levels.
7. Have Concern and Empathy for People
Make sure your employees, volunteer staff and managers do more than pay lip service to empathy and understanding. Many people gravitate toward places with causes they believe in and organizations that have helped them in the past. To better understand who uses your services, take a walk around, both physically and virtually. Spend time getting to know your regulars and your staff members. What motivates them? What are the most popular and least popular services in your organization? What are some of the hopes and dreams of both your staff and the people who use your services? By taking the time to get to know everyone who uses, works-at and volunteers at your organization, you’ll gain insight into the core of your non-profit.
8. Feel the Love
Do you love the work and believe in your cause? Do your fundraising team members feel the same? People perform better when they love what they do and are recognized for their hard work. As you put your fundraiser together, consider what everyone loves to do. Then, assign people to tasks who are highly skilled in them and love to do those tasks. As tasks and goals are reached, remember to thank everyone for their hard work and show your appreciation for each goal that’s met.
By putting the right people in the right places, practicing active listening and understanding your goals and what makes your organization tick, you’ll be giving yourself the best chance of success with your next fundraising event.
If you’re ready to take the next steps when it comes to raising money for your sport’s team, school outing or non-profit, contact Adrenaline Fundraising at 888-621-5380.
Be sure to also read some of our other fundraising idea articles.
