A Simple Fundraising Formula
A Simple Fund Raising Formula
Nonprofits work if you work them; if you don’t then they die. Nonprofits rely on funders to fund their efforts and if you don’t get your message out, then no one knows about it. We are going to show you how, as a nonprofit, you can put a very simple, effective, and stable fund raising formula in place. This formula works for the brand new or mature nonprofit, so read on and get the basics in place. If you know or can get to know 10 people and work the formula, you should see fund raising success. If you follow the 6 basic steps below you can raise stable funds for your nonprofit.
Fund raising for a nonprofit is the life blood of whether your nonprofit is a success or a continual struggle. Many who start nonprofits forget that a nonprofit finds success in many of the same ways a company for profit does. The difference between the two is the product. A company for profit produces a product, markets the product and consumers buy the product. A nonprofit also has product; it just looks a little different. The most successful product a nonprofit has is its story. Hopefully, the work and help a nonprofit does produces a great story. If a nonprofit is not producing a great story- its product, that is the first thing that needs to be reworked until it has a great story that people can relate to.
As an employee or owner of a nonprofit, you just became the world’s best storyteller. Whether you are the executive director, the administrative assistant or a volunteer your main job is to be the best story teller you can be. Remember, if your nonprofit does not have a story you don’t have a product. Your product is your story.
1st Step- Develop Your Story
When you first start a nonprofit, before you even do your first project, your story is why, how, when, and who you are going to help. We will get to the project stories in further steps, but this first story is important. The founder can develop this story the easiest because they have a passion for something they wanted to do to help people or things. For an example, see the “About” tab on the Start a NonProfit | Ocean Grand site. Your story (product) should be compelling and give a brief background of how the passion for this nonprofit was birthed. In addition, it should include why the nonprofit was started, who or what the nonprofit is going to help, and how you’re going to help.
Once the story is developed, it should be able to be told in different lengths. You should have an “elevator” version (one that could be told in 15 to 30 seconds), a longer 3 minute version that has more detail, and a 5 to 8 minute version. These versions should accommodate you to tell your story in a variety of situations from meeting someone for the first time to the last version that you could tell in front of a group of people at a dinner or luncheon.
Now that you have your story (product), everyone in your organization, including volunteers, should be able to recite the versions of your story exactly. You may want to practice this in front of each other. When a new volunteer signs on their first volunteer action should be to learn your stories.
2nd Step- Get Your Story on Paper
Now that your story is developed, it is imperative that you get it on paper in a way that anyone could understand and would be compelled to get involved because of it. There is NO substitute for a great looking brochure and business card. If your organization is going to be successful you must put the energy and funds into great looking marketing and storytelling materials. These materials are not the ones you create and print on your home computer. If you run your nonprofit like a home hobby it will be just that, a hobby and never more than that.
There are millions of nonprofits, and people want to be involved with a nonprofit that is going some place. Just like buying stocks, they want to know that if they invest time and money into a nonprofit, that nonprofit will actually succeed and their money and time was invested well. The key to finding the initial donors and volunteers is to look and act like you are already successful and great looking marketing materials say that you believe enough in your nonprofit to invest money in its image. This way it has already achieved a level of success, its story and great looking image, that many nonprofits do not achieve until months or years down the road.
Not only is image important, but a great brochure, web site and business card retells the story just like you want it to be told. Remember your story is your product so you need a “sales flyer” and something you can equip people with to retell the story. You want the story you have worked on so hard to be retold exactly right. Now that you are equipped with a great story, others that can retell the story, and a successful looking image, you simply want to duplicate that thousands of times. We will tell you how in the next steps.
Step 3- Duplicate Yourself and Your Story
Fund raising by yourself can be a daunting and laborious task. However, in a short amount of time (weeks), thousands can be telling, retelling and promoting your story. Now that you have a story and marketing materials that support the story, your job in fund raising becomes very easy. You now simply and easily need to duplicate yourself over and over. Don’t get overwhelmed now, this is the easy part and the piece of the puzzle that is going to make all the difference for your nonprofit’s fund raising and financial stability. Most of the work is already done by constantly training and telling the story to those that work and volunteer with you to retell the story. Now the fun part…
- Start with finding 3 people per day that you can tell your story to in person. Tell friends, co-workers, people at your work, at your child’s soccer game or even a stranger your “elevator” version. If they seem interested expand by going into your 3 minute version. Give every person you tell your story to 10 brochures and business cards and ask them if they would promise to give them to 10 people they know that they think would be interested in what your doing. Once you can easily accomplish 3 per day, advance to telling 5 people and eventually get to 10. Even three per day equips 21 people to retell the story to 210 people. With this method alone your story can be retold to 1,000 people in just 5 weeks. Make a decision that you are going to continue doing this for the rest of the time your nonprofit is in existence.
- Decide on a date two weeks from the time you start telling your story for a dinner at your house or someone’s house that would host your event. You’re going to cook a meal for 10 to 15 people. This could be as easy and as inexpensive as a spaghetti dinner (3 boxes of spaghetti, sauce, 2 loaves of garlic bread, and salad for 10 -15 will run you less than $20). As you tell 3-5 people today your story, if they seem at all interested in hearing more choose those people and invite them to your house on the date you have chosen for your dinner. In addition to inviting those people, find and talk with 12 of the most influential people that you know or that those you are acquainted with and invite them by phone or in person to the same dinner. Follow those invitations up with handwritten invitations on your nonprofit’s stationary. Keep inviting until you get 15-20 definite confirmations. If you see that you are getting more than 15-20 confirmation set another dinner date two more weeks out and start filling that one up, don’t over crowd the house. You will also want to have a limited amount of guests because you want to be able to build relationships with them before and after dinner.
The Dinner:
Plan to have too much food and be able to give your guests all the food and helpings they want. You might think about wine if it is appropriate. Make sure you prepare a meal (spaghetti or Lasagna is perfect) so that you can have it mostly prepared in advance of your guests arriving, and just simmering or cooling on the stove. You need to greet your guests and spend the time before dinner building relationships with them. A couple of volunteers in the kitchen would be a big help, however, with good timing and an easy meal you can pull it off by yourself. Spend 10-15 minutes, depending on if you have wine or drinks, talking before the meal and letting people get to know each other. Invite everyone into dinner and be your wonderful self. You can be sure that someone will ask you all about your new nonprofit. Don’t worry about explaining your nonprofit at dinner, instead have fun, the work comes later.
After dinner, retire everyone into the living room or the place you choose, with coffee, tea and dessert. Now is your time to shine! This is the time you present everyone with your longer in depth version of what your doing. Don’t bore them; keep it within 10 minutes. Make sure you “lightly” include your needs and desire for them to be a part. You want to personally hand each person 10 brochures and 10 business cards and get their promise to give them to 10 people they know that they think would be interested in what you’re doing. End the evening light and let people linger as long as they would like. Have a sign-in sheet so people can add their name and contact info, including email address, consenting to allow you to keep them updated. Add that they are invited to an “event” (see below) and you are currently taking donations and sponsorships for that event if they, or their company. are interested.
Follow-Up:
The following day write a handwritten and hand-addressed thank you on your professionally designed and printed nonprofit thank you cards. Tell them how much you appreciated their attendance, meeting them and anything you can think of that would add a personal touch to the thank you.
In a week contact each of the people that were at the dinner and ask them if they have had success handing out your brochures and if they would mind you contacting each of the people they gave brochures to to invite them to an event your having in a couple weeks. If they oblige, contact these people, tell them that you were given their name by the person who gave you their name and wanted to see if they could attend an event.
Consider inviting interested people to:
- A chat over coffee
- A talk over dessert
- A long lunch meeting
- an afternoon of cards
- drinks after work
Sidenote:
You are going to plan an event 3 weeks from the time you start your first dinner that will be on a much larger scale than this dinner. This event will be for all those you have already had at a dinner, those of who you talk to (at least 3 everyday) that are somewhat interested, etc, etc. You are targeting around 100 people to be at this event. You are going to need to find a restaurant that will donate you the space, a church fellowship hall, Lion’s Club, etc. to hold the event in, preferably with a kitchen. We will cover this event in more detail below under “Your First Big Event”.
If you can only “pull off” one of these dinners that is fine, you will be able to find enough people for your large event through your daily storytelling. However, if you can fit (and afford) two or three of these dinners before your first large event, by all means do it.
Step 4- Your First Big Event
You should be having some success by now and quite a few people should be very interested in donating money and volunteering. If you’re not seeing success then either you did not follow this formula or you need to give the storytelling a little extra time. Are you doing your daily storytelling and your dinner exactly like above? If you got busy and attacked your fund raising, storytelling and image branding as described above you have only been hard at work for a couple weeks. Just start again from #1 and follow this to the letter then see where you’re at in another week. Don’t worry if your not getting donations yet, you are looking for people who are interested in being a part of your story. Interest is what we are after at this point, not money.
The Event:
There are a couple different ways you can plan and afford this event. A donated space and a simple menu is the easiest. However, if you have some donors that are willing to pitch in financially, a donated space in a restaurant and greatly reduced price on a group event for the food is always a great option. If you know some restaurant owners who like and want to be a part of your nonprofit they might let you just pay for food at their cost or even donate the space and the food. If you have these relationships, it never hurts to ask and they can write the whole thing off on their taxes. Don’t forget you can always pitch the tax write off for items that people donate.
Whether your event is elaborate or simple it will accomplish the same purpose so don’t feel bad about going the simple route. Simple keeps your time freed up to do more small dinners, tell your story to more people during the weeks preceding it, etc. I am going to give you some additional ideas below that might enhance your event but it will also complicate your evening so when in doubt keep it simple.
Just like the small intimate dinners in the home, your larger event has some very simple goals. We want people to see that there are a lot of people interested in your nonprofit. People like to be involved where others are involved. We want you to have a chance to meet and build relationships with as many people that evening as you can. You want to have an opportunity towards the end to present your longer version of the story. Lastly, we want everyone there to leave with at least 10 brochures and 10 business cards promising to hand them out to 10 of their friends that they think might be interested in what your nonprofit is doing.
There is one big difference in what you’re going to be doing during dinner at this event. Eat ahead of time because you are going to continue to mingle for short two to three minute “stops” at each table, meeting and building relationships with people as they eat. You’re the host and they are the guests of honor, you want to meet every single one of them. You don’t have to give your “elevator” version to each table but instead ask them about themseves, the evening, what they do, etc. Just be personable and thank them for coming.
That is the larger event. Build relationships, tell your “elevator” version to as many people as you can that ask, give them the long version of your story at the end, ask them to be a part, then get their commitment to hand out their 10 brochures.
Your brochure and business card will have the information on how people contribute financially and especially at this event you need to mention that.
A Couple Of Things You Want To Make Sure Is At Your Larger Event:
- Have a sign-in sheet so people can add their name and contact info, including email address, consenting to allow you to keep them updated
- Have plenty of food- you do not want to run out or be skimpy
- A powerpoint running about your nonprofit at the front of the room during dinner is a plus
- A list of conversation starter questions for you to use as you visit before and during dinner
- A way to take credit card donations and write tax deductible receipts for checks and cash
- Plenty of brochures and business cards
- Name tags for everyone to fill out and wear
Things you might want to consider:
1. You could have a silent auction of things donated by businesses in the community
2. If you know a celebrity who is on board with your nonprofit vision, invite them and give them 10 minutes to encourage others to get involved.
More ideas are at the post “Fund raising Ideas” on the Ocean Grand blog.
Sidenote:
If everyone gives out their 10 brochures from this event, well over 1,000 people will know and possibly be involved with your nonprofit inside just 3 to 4 weeks. That is the best case scenario, so lets say it takes you 6-8 weeks to get all the above accomplished. One thousand people involved in a nonprofit inside of two months is phenomenal and as you can see very easy.
Step 5- Follow Up and Follow Up
There is no substitute for follow-up and now you have hundreds or even a thousand or more that are now great prospects to be continued donors. If each of those gave you $20 that is $20K, but experience confirms that there will be some within that group that will give much more. Make sure you are still telling your story to everyone you meet and especially the 3 or more new people a day that you have committed to for the year. Then the rest of your day follow up with each of those that attended your large event and get the names and contacts they gave their brochures to; don’t forget to follow through on them. If you run across potential big donors or those whose companies can become major donors, schedule lunches, dinners or meetings with them. It is worth the cost of lunch or dinner to gain a committed larger donor.
You will most certainly want to schedule some more dinners at your house and larger events to get face to face with those you talk with and those you’re introduced to that have interest. From your personal storytelling you will have a potential 21 or more people that will need to get some food in their stomachs and hear your longer version story. Just because you’re having success with fund raising, don’t forget or abandon your simple beginnings and what worked to get you there. Keep doing the daily storytelling, small dinners, and larger events until you get a huge donor base of committed supporters.
Step 6- 3 to 6 Months or Even a Year
Now that you’re into your third month, you may have thousands of donors and you’re wondering why I have not mentioned when to actually start doing the work that your nonprofit was established for. There will always be time to do your program. You don’t even need to worry about grantwriting at this point, what you do need to be concerned with is continuing to establish a great financial base in which to do the work on a continual base when you start doing it. See, once you start doing program activities, you are going to have to split your time between your program activities and fund raising activities. The more focused time you spend getting a good financial base established, the better the chance that you can do your nonprofit work full-time because you can pay yourself a salary.
I suggest that any nonprofit that is serious about doing sustained projects and work to concentrate the first 3 months to a year on building up a stable base of individual and corporate supporters. Then with a good base you can be assured that you have ongoing financial support, to grant write, and run your program while continuing to gain even more individual and corporate supporters.
Step 7-Â Duplicate and Continue Telling Your Story
After you have completed the above programs you have become quite a storyteller and it should roll off your tongue with eloquence. You need to continue to train and equip anyone else that is interested in your nonprofit to be able to tell your story as well as you. Successful fund raising for your nonprofit does not need to be any harder than this. Starting with one person who can tell tell the story of your nonprofit and recruiting and training hundreds or even thousands that can tell your story will assure your story gets to those that will support you.
Step 8- Continued Story Development
Once your nonprofit starts having success in the charitable activities you have chosen to pursue, your story can be updated to include some success stories of your accomplishments. The main story stays the same and now you can add some short, “Here is an example of what we did.” These are especially good in the longer versions of your story. Simply update the versions of your story and continue telling them while equipping others to tell the story. Once there are successful stories, you may find updating your brochures and media to reflect these stories is a good investment.
Step 9- Grant Writing
The final piece of fund raising that I am going to briefly cover in this chapter is grant writing. More about grant writing and how to grant write is covered in the Grant writing chapters and posts. Grant writing can supplement the financial ability of your nonprofit. Notice I wrote “supplement.” Grants can be far and few between and getting ongoing grants can be very time consuming and unpredictable. That is why I have spent so much time on developing a story to establish a strong donor base of individuals and corporations. Grants are the “gravy” where individual donors and corporations are the “meat and potatoes.” Nothing, other than independent wealth, is a substitution for a strong donor base of these individuals. It is more likely and possible to run a well funded nonprofit with a strong donor base than hoping to fund it on grants. Once your donor base is well established, learning to grant write in a simple and direct way to funding organizations that are committed to your cause is a great way to expand and grow your nonprofit, but not at the cost of losing a strong and ongoing donor base.
Seeking and using grants has benefits but they also require intense tracking of the funds and reporting to the grant maker. Grants are not funds that can be counted on and should not be looked at as an ongoing source of income. Instead, in sports terms they should be viewed as a “hole in one.” You might get one now and again but your funding efforts should concentrate on your individual and corporate donor base.
When you have a well established donor base then learning to grant write could be worth your time. Let us show you a simple and easy way to learn the process, find the donors and supplement your nonprofits fund raising efforts.
Conclusion
Nonprofits work if you work them; if you don’t then they die. Nonprofit rely on others to fund your efforts and if you don’t get your message out there, then no one knows about it.
If you are not seeing the success in your nonprofit that you dreamed of. Let us help. Get in contact with us and let’s see what we can do to get you on the road to finding the funds and success that you need so your nonprofit can help the people you have a passion for.
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Ocean Grand Great article we’ve posted on our site.