You don’t have to look very hard to find fundraising advice.
Just go online and you’ll see that almost every fundraiser or fundraising agency (even Oneicity!) will have a TON of advice for nonprofit organizations.
Advice on how you should be fundraising.
Advice on what you should be doing.
Advice on what you should be saying.
And there’s a lot of good advice, examples, and case studies on the internet.
However, there is some fundraising advice out there that you should probably ignore. In our opinion these aren’t helpful, they’re misguided, or even untrue.
Bad Advice #1: Do what the big guys do.
“Here’s what BigFamousNonProfit did. Just find your version of that.”
This advice is usually directed towards a smaller or midsize nonprofit organization. And while it’s meant well, it’s not actually very helpful.
Why?
One, because the smaller nonprofit probably doesn’t have the resources or infrastructure to do what a large nonprofit does. The large organization has staff and budget to do what they do, whether it’s a fundraising event or email strategy.
It would be like saying, “Go copy this five course meal that someone served. Yes, they had a professional chef, but here’s $5 to buy groceries and cook it yourself.”
Those meals are not going to be similar… at all.
Two, because we don’t really know how successful that particular strategy is for the big organization. Maybe it was a really cool idea, but the ROI was pretty small and it didn’t raise a lot of money. Or maybe it was hugely successful. . . unless you have insight to their results and financials, it’s hard to know.
Bad Advice #2: Plan your mailings around the in-home date.
This one makes people in print production cringe. But if you’ve never worked on that side of the direct mail process, then you might not know why this is bad advice.
In-home dates refers to the actual date that a donor receives a piece of mail from you. It’s the date the mailperson places the letter in the mailbox or shoves it through the mail slot.
There are some people who will say, “We can guarantee the letter will be delivered on XX!”
But unless you’re mailing first class or Amazon Prime, you can’t guarantee that date.
Why?
Because you can’t control the post office. As soon as you drop the piece in the mail to be sent via your nonprofit postage permit, it’s up to the postal service. You have no more control.
In fact, the post office can even hold mail for up two weeks (though they rarely do this.)
What you can control is the date you drop it in the mail. That is up to you and your processes and team.
Bad Advice #3: Use a demographic overlay to find potential major donors.
An income or wealth overlay is similar to getting general demographics for a certain group of people. It’s often used to show organizations the average income and wealth of donors.
Theoretically, knowing how much someone earns will then tell you how much someone will donate. Or, how much they could donate if you sent a major gifts officer to meet with them.
Except…it actually doesn’t do that. At all.
Overlays don’t factor in intent and behavior.
Yes, this donor may earn a million dollars a year. But that doesn’t mean they’ll donate to your nonprofit organization. Or maybe they will donate, but this won’t tell you how much they’ll donate. Will they be a major donor? Who knows!
Some people really like these studies.
And that’s okay, we aren’t saying they’re stupid or wrong.
But, we are saying not to put too much power in them.
They can’t tell you everything you want to know about your donors or potential donors—no matter what charts or dashboards they have.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve ever acted on any of this bad advice, please don’t feel bad. Most of this advice is well-intentioned, and we learn it’s bad only through experience. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Remember, if you ever have questions you can email us at: howdy@oneicity.com
Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash
