Developing the Donation

Jul 28, 2011 | Simplenonprofit | 0

The Donation

Getting a donation for your organization can be a daunting task. However, I believe anyone can learn how to make a nonprofit more appealing to donors with just a few adjustments. It is your responsibility to assure you have the right things in place to when someone wants to give your nonprofit a donation. As discussed in the article, titled Donations, not only do you have to attract the person who can give a donation you have to convince them you are the right nonprofit to give to. Let’s take a look at how a donor thinks and then the things you can do in your nonprofit that will convince them you are the right organization in which to place their financial support. I believe you can attract all the donations you need and will show you how.

Donation Questions

Here are the questions many individual donors, corporations and grant makers wrestle with when they are considering to give a donation:

1. What charitable purposes do I personally place importance on?

2. In my opinion what do I trust is right to give my donation to?

3. What is my individual life’s purpose and entrusted to focus on?

4. What charitable purpose will excite me to be involved in?

5. How do I measure which organization focused on a charitable cause will use my donation the best?

6. How do I gauge the effectiveness of an organization who wants my donations?

7. How will I decide how much of a donation will make the correct impact on an organization?

These are real questions and as a nonprofit who would like to receive their donation, you must provide a potential donor with similar answers to those questions. Funding will be much easier to obtain if you will assert the same effort to appeal to donors as you did to developing your nonprofit solutions to the challenges you address with your nonprofit.

Donation Appeal

Your organization must look professional on paper, the web and in person if you expect to get the donation. There is a cost to be in business and nonprofits are not exempt. It is likely that there are many nonprofit organizations that address the same concerns as yours. The single most important thing that will cause your nonprofit to stand out in comparison to the others is its corporate image that your organization adopts, good or bad. In reality, no one wants to give hard earned money as a donation to an organization that looks shabby and gives no hint to its stability to be in business tomorrow. Without a solid corporate image, attracting successful donors is going to be tough. Unless you have experience in this field you should leave this to an expert who knows how to make you look good. Click here for Nonprofit Design Services. Don’t skimp on this.

The Donation Answers

Next, you must give attention to the donors’ concerns and the questions above that are important to them. If you do not get these questions right, you will not get that person’s donation. Sure you might get a “pity check” once, but they are not going to become a long-term donor. It is not going to do much good if you have the greatest nonprofit on the planet if you can’t get the donations you need to accomplish its mission.

Take a look at each of the questions above and determine that your nonprofit must address the concerns of individuals, corporations, and grant makers. Granted, there are thousands of answers to each question based on a person’s thinking. However, addressing some answers is better than ignoring all of them. This exercise is much easier if you are just starting a new nonprofit as you can address the questions as you develop the nonprofit. If your nonprofit is already established, the best course of action is to reconstruct the nonprofit from the ground up while addressing the donor side of things. Chances are many of your programs or methods just need a little tweaking to meet the challenge.

Set aside several days or, if you have a large nonprofit, several weeks. Don’t hurry though this, and come up with legendary quality answers. First and foremost you should answer these questions yourself. This will put you in the donor’s position and help you to understand what they wrestle with. Next, brainstorm these questions by taking each one and developing 20-30 answers for each one that are possible ways people might answer them. We will call these donor answers. Once you have your list for the first question, narrow it down to the 10 answers you think are the most common. Continue on until you have 10 great answers for each one.

Armed with your list, develop a reason to each of the 10 donor’s answers as to why your nonprofit is the right nonprofit for the donor with that answer to give their donation to. When you finish the list you will have 70 reasons that answer the 7 questions that donors have when deciding who to give their support to.

With that fresh in your head, look over your entire organization and develop and tweak your image, your programs, and the way your nonprofit operates to meet as many of the 70 answers as you can. Yes, it is a long exercise, but not as long as year is without a donation. While you may think your nonprofit is the best in the world, once you complete this exercise you will understand why your organization is not attracting the funds it needs. Because I believe anyone can learn how to attract donors, I developed a resource to help you develop your donor program and fundraising called the Nonprofit Starter Bundle. Spending equal time thinking about the people that can give you a donation as you do focusing on the cause your nonprofit helps will help your nonprofit attract the finances it needs.

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