Who Are You Going to Ask? Start With the People Who Already Know You

One of the first questions in any fundraising campaign sounds ridiculously simple: Who are you going to ask? For a small nonprofit, the immediate answer is sometimes "everybody," but everybody isn't much of a fundraising strategy.

Before searching for wealthy strangers, corporate executives, or some mythical philanthropist who is going to discover your organization and write a huge check, take a good look at the people who already know you. Who donated last year? Who bought tickets to your events? Who volunteered? Who participated in your programs? Who sponsored something? Who regularly shares your social media posts? Who gave three years ago and hasn't given since?

Then there is your board. Ask each board member to think about people in their own circles who might care about the mission. This isn't necessarily a demand that they immediately call their friends and ask for money. An introduction can be valuable. So can an invitation to an event, a personal note, or simply sharing the organization's story with someone who might want to know more.

This is why your donor list matters so much. A spreadsheet sitting on someone's computer that hasn't been opened since last December isn't a donor-relations program. Neither is a box of old checks, a stack of event registrations, or somebody's memory of "the people who usually give." Bring that information together and start looking at the relationships behind the names.

Look for patterns instead of sorting people simply by the size of their last gift. Someone who has given $25 every year for five years may represent a very important relationship. Someone who stopped giving two years ago isn't necessarily a lost donor, either. Perhaps their circumstances changed, but perhaps nobody ever asked them again or told them what happened because of their previous support.

Small donors matter for the same reason. A healthy nonprofit needs people who believe in its work at many different giving levels. Today's $25 donor may eventually become a monthly donor, volunteer, board member, advocate, or larger contributor. Even if none of those things happen, that person's $25 and decision to support the organization still matter.

The objective isn't to create a list of people from whom you can extract money. It is to identify the community of people who already have some reason to care about what you do. Fundraising begins with relationships, and a small organization's strongest prospects are often much closer than anyone realizes.

Start This Week

• Pull together your donor, volunteer, participant, ticket-buyer, sponsor, and supporter information from the last two or three years. 
• Identify three groups: people who currently give, people who used to give, and people connected to your organization who have never been personally asked. 
• Once you put those groups together, you may discover that your prospective donor list is considerably larger than you thought!