If you’re a fundraising professional who helps clients or organizations with fundraising, then at some point you’ve probably wondered, “Why is the client making these changes?”
Or maybe you struggled to understand why they want a particular point to be discussed in the copy. Or thought to yourself, “Why is this question coming out of left field?”
Maybe you just want to better understand your nonprofit clients. Because like we’ve talked about before, it’s all about relationships. And building a good relationship between a fundraising agency and nonprofit client is key to successful fundraising.
Whatever the reason, I think you’ll find these useful.
Here are 3 things that your client wants you to know:
- “Our organization is unique. No matter what the focus is—helping people out of homelessness or providing food to hungry kids—our work isn’t the same as others you’ve worked with. Even ones who are doing similar work are different than we are. So how you talk on our behalf and fundraise for us needs to be as unique as we are.”
- “After those our work is helping, our donors are the most important thing. We don’t want to treat them like an ATM, but actually have relationships with them that also raise funds for the work. Our fundraising and communication needs to respect that kind of relationship.”
- “Sometimes, it’s not about fundraising. Yes, as a fundraising agency, that’s your main goal. But it’s also important for donors to see and hear things from us that aren’t about fundraising. So when we want to highlight a program or project in an appeal or newsletter that won’t raise a lot of money, go ahead and tell us. That’s your part of the relationship. But remember that to us there is still value in sharing that, even if it’s not monetary.”
Obviously these aren’t the only things that a nonprofit organization would want you to know. Nor is this an exhaustive list of insights so you can know why your client is doing whatever they’re doing. (If only it was that easy.)
But, this is a start to help you (and us) think about it from their perspective, to “sit on their side of the table” so we can better serve them.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
