What is Donor Appeal?
donor appeal
(noun or verb)
1. that thang that raises money.
“How did she raise all that money? With her donor appeal, that’s how. She has donor appeal for days!”
synonyms: attract, allure, persuade, take a donor’s fancy, entice, lure, draw, wet a donor’s whistle… but most importantly; fundraise.
I like to think of donor appeal as the fundraising-swag only those few who work in philanthropy will truly understand. Some days you’re Rico Suave, being showered with attention at your fundraising gala; other days you’re Wylie Coyote and completely missed your mark. When I was fresh on the fundraising scene I spent most of my days shooting in the dark, hoping for Mr. Suave, but only getting Mr. Coyote. That’s why I have decided to create Donor Appeal; to provide guidance to new fundraisers to help develop their fundraising-mojo.
I remember graduating college, ready to conquer the world when I got my first job as an events coordinator for a local non-profit. Young and eager, I knew I was going to be the best fundraiser the organization had ever seen. But the reality of the situation is that I didn’t really have any experience outside of an internship and a few campaign courses I took in college. Additionally, I also didn’t have any mentors I could learn from. During the short time that I was there, I had went through three bosses due to the high turnover rates that sometimes happen in the non-profit sector. I didn’t really have a strong and consistent influence to teach me fundraising strategy.
I spent nearly three years “winging” my ideas and crossing my fingers hoping the dollars would come rolling in. I had some major successes and I had some major fails. The problem is that without the proper training and tracking I never knew what the outcome was going to be until it was already written in stone.
I also struggled to find the basic information I needed to help decode all the fundraising terminology that was being thrown around at conferences and meetings. It is one thing to look at a young fundraiser and ask her what the donor retention rates are; it’s a complete other thing to expect that she would know what you are talking about if she had never heard that phrase before.
All to often this happens with non-profit organizations; in order to keep costs low, salaries also have to remain low as well. This means a lot of the fundraising positions are filled with young college grads who are looking to make a name for themselves, but they don’t always come with the strategic planning skills that you learn after years of working in the field.
Fast forward a few years. I had landed my first fundraising job in higher education and with it came the mentor I had been looking for. Terms like, LYBUNT and SYBUNT actually began to make sense to me, and I learned exactly how to use these targeted segments to my advantage.
I still constantly reflect on my early days in fundraising and think to myself, “If I only knew then, what I know now.” In fact most of this blog will probably consist of phrases and concepts that I so graciously learned from my boss and mentor. It isn’t my intention to steal her knowledge and coin it as my own. I consider this paying it forward and hope it serves as the biggest compliment I can give her.
This is why I created Donor Appeal. I want to serve as a mentor to fundraising newbies out there who are two scared to ask, “what the heck are you talking about?” I also want to serve as the reminder to the seasoned veterans who continue to grow their programs into vast machines and sometimes lose sight of the basics. And, I want to have a little fun while we are at it! Together we can harness our donor appeal and use it strategically to raise some money and make this world a better place.
