You stopped a project again
Every Monday, I set aside for marketing. Today, I was really excited. I had made some tweaks to my group coaching program to make it faster, and more valuable for everyone in it. And then I faced a significant challenge. I couldn’t attend the upcoming meeting of a nonprofit board I was supposed to present it to. So I had to pitch this new offer via video. I’ve done lots of videos before. So I wrote my outline, fired up the camera and…blech. The more I talked in the video, the less I liked it. I was less than 3 minutes in and had already done a half dozen retakes. And you get that familiar pit in your stomach. “This isn’t going to work” “How am I spending so much time on this” “Maybe there’s another way” Everything in me told me to stop. Maybe that’s you, too. Maybe you have a good fundraising idea…and then you tell a few people or go to write that email, and decide it won’t work. So you put that one on the shelf, pick up another, and run excitedly with that one for a week or two… Or maybe you dive into your other responsibilities and think “you’ll get around to it later, when you’ve had some time to think….” Until you put that one on the shelf, too. With not a single one of those projects ever seeing the light of day, or meeting the real test: The first time you put it out there and get rejected. See, we are our own best arguers. We have decades of experience arguing with ourselves. Whatever we come up with as the reason it will work, we can easily come up with another, better reason it won’t. It’s not until we put it to the real test – offering it to someone else and having them make a decision on whether it’s right for them, that we actually know. So I remembered a paper I put on my desk. And I completed the video. I edited a few sections. And I sent it off. Will it work? I’m going to find out. Instead of sitting here with another good idea to add to the stack. Because none of your ideas will make a difference while they’re just sitting there. And if you want this on easy mode, you can watch my video this week. On how you can get your project validated by people before you launch. So you can finally get that great fundraising idea off of your stack of ideas and out in the world. Who knows, it might change it. Join my email list and you’ll get resources just like this all year round.
Why Your Nonprofit’s Powerful Story Isn’t Turning Into Donations
Video Do you have a powerful story, but donors still are not giving? If so, you are not alone. Give me a few minutes and I will walk you through exactly what you need to do to turn those “that’s amazing” and “you go” responses into actual gifts for your organization. If you want examples of nonprofit projects that have inspired donors to give, and continue to get funded, leave the word IMPACT at the end of this post and I will share them with you. If you don’t know me yet, my name is Dan. I am a 4x nonprofit founder, I have raised over three million dollars for small nonprofits, and I take a no-BS approach to teaching people how small nonprofit fundraising actually works. If you have a powerful story, you are probably telling it. You are talking about what you struggled with, or what you watched someone else struggle through. You explain how you saw a problem, realized no one was fixing it, and decided to start or join a nonprofit. That story matters. It opens doors. People listen. But it usually stops there. What Donors Actually Need Before They Give Stories alone do not close gifts for small nonprofits. Small nonprofits are a risk. And at the end of the day, donors want clarity. They want to know what their money will do. They want some confidence that their gift will actually help people instead of disappearing into good intentions and overhead. Emotion may get attention, but clarity is what creates trust. And trust is what leads to donations. This is where many nonprofits get stuck. They keep telling the story louder and more often, hoping that passion alone will move people to give. It rarely does. Stop Asking for Donations and Start Funding Projects If you want to raise more money, stop asking people to donate to your nonprofit. Instead, ask them to fund specific projects. Here is what I mean by that. You should come up with three projects that meet a few basic criteria. Each project should cost fifteen thousand dollars or less, so it feels like a manageable bet for a donor. It should be something your organization can complete in ninety days or less, not a multi-year promise. And it should create a numerical result for the people you serve. For example, imagine you are based in Andover, Massachusetts, and your nonprofit works with families experiencing food insecurity. Instead of asking people to donate to your food insecurity nonprofit, you ask them to help thirty kids get access to free school lunches on weekends, something they do not currently have. That is a project donors can understand. Validate Before You Ask for Money This is where a lot of nonprofits fall into the confidence trap. Just because you think your project is good, doesn’t mean your donors will. So we need to create at least two alternatives to get solid feedback on all three. Once you have three projects like this, take them to your existing donors. Ask what they think. Ask which project they would be most likely to support. When five to seven donors clearly lean toward the same project, you move forward with it. At that point, you stop asking people to donate to your organization in general. You ask them to help thirty kids in Andover get access to free school lunches on weekends. This small shift changes everything. You are no longer relying on feel-good language and emotion alone. You are offering a clear outcome, real accountability, and something donors can point to and say happened because they gave. That is how trust is built. And that’s how you get bigger checks. Want Examples of Nonprofit Projects That Get Funded? If you are putting together your own impact project and wondering what other nonprofits are actually getting funded for, leave the word IMPACT at the end of this post and I will share real examples with you. Join my email list and you’ll get resources just like this all year round.