Fundraising Tip: Four Fundraising Actions That Have Worked For Me This Year

Each week in June, I’m going to share one. This is week three.

Strong relationships with those doing the mission work are vital in nonprofit fundraising.

One of my fondest memories of my nonprofit fundraising career takes me back to my second day at what would become one of my favorite jobs ever.

The organization was Urban Peak, a Denver nonprofit serving youth experiencing homelessness. My office was across the street from the building where many of our services were provided, including meals for youth, a drop-in center, education and employment services, and street outreach.

On my second day, the person who led our street outreach team told me they were having a team meeting and invited me to introduce myself. I was ecstatic.

I didn’t know this in that moment, but the people I was about to meet would become some of the most inspirational people I would meet while there.

Some not involved in fundraising may think that so early on in my time there I should have been spending every minute in fundraising, seeing how things work there.

Relationships with everyone who is doing the actual work of the nonprofit are part of fundraising. For many nonprofits, the fundraising team lives in what I call “the white tower”. They are completely separate from those in programs, with very few interactions, let alone relationships.

This is the opposite of how I want to work, and as I walked over to meet the team, I became even more excited. After all, the people I was about to meet were doing the work the donors I would later meet wanted to support. My co-worker’s work was how our donors saw, that by supporting it, they could help make the world a better place.

I was introduced to about five team members. I then took a couple of minutes to introduce myself, mainly focusing on how excited I was to be there, to work with them, and how much I loved being in fundraising.

I then asked about their work, their challenges, and what they loved about doing the work they do.

The next hour was filled with me being fascinated by their answers. I wanted to hear more, to learn more. Their entire jobs were our mission, directly serving unhoused youth.

It was well past time to start their meeting, and the team leader walked me out. As we walked out, he let me know how grateful he was for me spending so much time with the team. Then he told me something that I will always remember and share: that I had just spent more time with the team than anyone in fundraising had before that, in all of their time at the organization.

I would go on to spend two and a half years there. The amount of committed, inspirational, and rock-star people I met during that time, uber-focused on serving youth and constantly thinking of how to do that better, is a long list. There is seldom a week that goes by, now almost eleven years since I left (to move to California), that I don’t think of one of those amazing people doing the program work at Urban Peak.

Build relationships with those on your program teams doing the work.

—

Take a risk. Be of service. Support your friends and colleagues. Be kind.