A Donation That's Hard to Ask For...?
Fundraisers often don't want to ask for money for ops and maintenance, at their peril.
Asking for money is hard. I get it. That’s why there are so many unfilled job postings for good fundraisers.
Good fundraisers (“development professionals”) raise millions, even billions, for their organizations. However, per a recent article in the “The Chronicle of Philanthropy”, only 31 percent of fundraisers feel comfortable talking with grant makers about the need for general operating support. So 69% of fundraisers don’t feel comfortable doing so? That seems a bit crazy, no?
Let’s suppose that these numbers apply to all fundraisers and all donors, and try to understand this issue.
If the fundraisers won’t ask for funding that includes administrative/operations costs, it seems that something is very wrong. (Here are some reasons I can think of:
1) The fundraiser got shut down by one or more donors when asking for a donation to include overhead, and now the fundraiser is shell-shocked from the incident(s).
2) The fundraiser is embarrassed to ask for funding for ops — which includes their salaries, and that feels uncomfortable. (So the fundraiser wants the donor to think that they feel so strongly about the cause that they work for free?)
3) Someone taught the fundraiser to not touch the overhead issue, because the conversation will then go to the percentage of funds going to overhead, which then puts the fundraiser in a defensive position (which can ruin the “pitch”).
4) The fundraiser is just not a “numbers person”, and doesn’t feel comfortable talking about costs of any kind. Maybe they don’t actually understand operating budgets at all, so they don’t feel competent to engage in the discussion. (This is a problem.)
5) It just feels icky to talk about administrative costs, when the story (pitch?) is much more fun if it talks about the cause itself, and how the donor can help effect change. Talking about overhead costs can be boring and/or a downer, which negates the exciting story about changing the world.
My guess is that all of these come into play. But they don’t have to.
Pitching a donor on contributing to your organization and specifically skirting the issue of overhead is missing an opportunity. While overhead doesn’t need to be discussed at every conversation, it certainly shouldn’t be an area to avoid. (In fact, donors know that the operating cost issue is super important and needs to be seriously discussed — witness Stanford’s Social Innovation Review’s work on this, as an example.)
Know this — donors are typically pretty smart people, and avoiding certain topics will almost never work in the non-profit’s favor. In fact, most donors will sense that the fundraiser is avoiding a question or issue, which makes the donor feel uncomfortable and not listened to — eroding trust in the organization, which might kill the prospect of a donation.
The opportunity is this. Being forthcoming, honest, and even matter-of-fact about the costs of raising money will show the donor that the non-profit is run professionally and incorporating appropriate business principles. It suggests that the organization — as the old adage goes — understands that it takes money to make money (or, in this case, it take money to raise, distribute and monitor money.)
P.S. In case you’re still worried that your charity is being scrutinized inappropriately by perspective donors, you might want to read my recent article “How NOT to measure your charity”.
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- Lisa