So many fundraisers work for organizations that do not value fundraising. Are you in one of them? Do you go to work, have your hands tied, get thrown into a padlocked trunk, tossed into a pool and then told to go raise millions? If this sounds like your fundraising experience, here is a hot tip from Carla Harris that might just help you begin to turn the situation around.
Why Fundraising?
There are many reasons why fundraising gets discounted. One situation might be that the dollars raised are a small percentage of overall revenue. Healthcare is an obvious example of this. If the organization’s balance sheet is the CEO’s number one indicator of success, fundraising as a source of revenue could be way down at the bottom, so why invest much in it?
We all know the answer to that question – mission! Fundraising makes our organization’s mission achievable by adding and expanding services to the community for which there is no other source of revenue. For example, the needs of cancer patients and their families dramatically increase as the disease progresses, which coincides with a decline in their ability to meet those needs emotionally, spiritually and financially. No insurance or government payment covers that!
Carla Harris was a keynote speaker at the 2011 Planet Philanthropy conference put on by the AFP Florida Caucus. A Wall Street banker, she overcame confidence squashing early in her career and has had tremendous success on many levels. She is a banker, gospel singer, mentor and volunteer.
When You are Not in the Room
One of the many fine points she made during her presentation and in her book, Expect to Win: Proven Strategies for Success from a Wall Street Vet, was that most of the decisions made about your career happen when you are not in the room. So true, right? Think how decisions are made about promotions, pay raises, and new hires. I bet that most decisions on fundraising budgets, staff size, office space and more are made when you, the development staff, are not in the room.
Three Adjectives
She advocates deciding on three adjectives that you wish other people used to describe you when you were not in the room. Once you have your adjectives start using them! Use those specific words in your own speech. You need to eat, breathe and sleep like those adjectives. Doing this trains others (and hey, maybe even yourself) to see you like those adjectives – because you *are* those adjectives.
Why not do the same thing for your fundraising department? The adjectives should be based on the skills required to fundraise with excellence. However, if fundraising is not being valued in your organization, first find out what *is* being valued and why. Listen for the words your own CEO uses frequently to define her and the organization’s success. Then you can use those words and demonstrated actions to begin positioning fundraising as the successful, revenue-generating, mission-achieving engine that it is!