Raising funds from major donors: three essential points

Daniel D'Esposito
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

The context of this article is to help human rights NGOs get started in raising funds from major donors (also referred to as high net worth individuals).

Why is this a challenge? Well most human rights NGOs get their funds from the same small group of 10 or 15 institutional donors. This inevitably leads to problems, as there is a finite amount of foundations, and they will rarely fund over 10 years. So as they start to drop away over time, the NGOs face a decline in the amount and quality of their funding, leading to crisis.

The logical solution is to start raising funds form wealthy individuals and families. Yet many NGOs have trouble accessing these types of donors… Its a whole new world of fundraising … so how to get started?

Well, Alejandro Bautista, the deputy director of CEJIL, a leading Latin American human rights NGO, we have been asking this question to a number of specialists, to get to the essential points below.

Please note that they are indeed essential — neglect any one of them and your fundraising will fail !!!

1. Fundraising from major donors: its a full time job for someone

It’s a full time job for the person taking on this project. If you cannot guarantee someone working at least 20 hours a week, over the long term. It cannot be done marginally, it’s a core task for whoever is doing it. Two options: to hire someone to do the job, or to hire someone to do your job to free you up for it.

2. The organisation needs to be fully engaged

Needless to say, the chief executive of the organisation will beed to work on this fundraising, and spend perhaps 20% of their time networking, talking to major donors or writing up thought-pieces to use for communications.

But it doesn’t stop there:

Board members make the mistake of thinking that they can hire a fundraiser who will bring in new contacts to raise new money. But actually the fundraiser will come with a methodology and not contacts, expecting to build on the existing networks of the nonprofit.

This means that board members need to help, by using their contacts, to make an introduction to a foundation or a wealthy individual, or someone who knows such people, for example someone who works in a publicity firm. If fundraising is done without such introductions.

It may help to invite people on the board, who can help with fundraising because of their contact network and “social capital”, or who can advise the organisation in key institutional aspects… strategy, planning, leadership development, communications, governance, succession planning, thought leadership.

Beyond the board, the whole staff need to be aware of what is being done so they will know how to help.. in particular with contacts.

3. Communication will need to change… dramatically

This kind of fundraising will require a change in the way an nonprofit communications. The issue, is that the organisation’s existing communication team may be geared towards “advocacy” and comes accross as technical “B2B” communication that will not work for fundraising.

What is needed:

  • In the language of the target audience (English).
  • More emotional than technical.
  • Telling the purpose and impact of the organisation through stories and talking about the problems you are addressing.
  • Simple short, concise, less text and more images.
  • To communicate in the channels your targets audiences use: op-ed in a newspaper, blogs such as Huffington Post, a Ted talk.

So how to get started:

Hire a fundraiser. You’ll probably start by recruiting someone a person with at least 4–5 years experience in individual donors fundraising, with really good communication skills for this type of fundraising, able to organise events really well, and with nurturing contacts to keep donors happy on the long term and make them feel special.

Inventory your contacts. The starting point is the people you know. Describe your target audience, inventory your existing contacts to see who could be of relevance:

  • Former staff or interns who are now in interesting positions, the “alumni”
  • People the organisation has partnered with through projects… lawyers, academics, officials.
  • Personal networks of the staff and board.

Define Relationship strategy. Set up an affiliation plan, which will define how you will engage with the your new donors, and nurture the relationship with them, so they don’t become one-off donors but give over the long term.

  • Example: you are organising a commemorative event an invite a set of contacts, and you request a donation. Some give, some don’t. OK, what do you do after the event, to develop the relationship with those who gave, and and find other ways to engage with those who didn’t.

So here we are — three essential points to succeed in major donor fundraising, and three tips to get started.

A big thanks to Céline Amet — Hacker, independent fundraising consultant, and Jacqueline Geis Chief Operating Officer at Videre Est Credere, for contributing their experience for this article.

Other articles to read.

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Daniel D’Esposito & Alejandro Bautista

Daniel D'Esposito

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Exploring new models for funding human rights nonprofits.

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