If you watch the same scary movie more than once, you may find yourself yelling at the screen, Don't go in that dark room! The monster is in there! He's going to eat you!
To no avail. He goes into the room and things don't go well. Every time you watch it.
Working with a lot of nonprofit organizations can be like that. You see them walk into dark, monster-filled rooms over and over. The difference from the movies is, they can hear you when you warn them. That doesn't mean they listen, though.
Tom Harrison knows about this, and writes about it in FundRaising Success magazine: 15 Mistakes That Have Already Been Made for You.
Here are some of them, the ones I find most vexing and common:
- Cutting acquisition quantity to improve fundraising ratios but destroying your future revenue stream in the process.
- Lazy cultivation. (Failing to thank donors, stay relevant to them, and use your resources wisely on them.)
- Letting brand dictate fundraising messages instead of mandating that brand reinforce fundraising messages.
- Being seduced by a consultant who claims to be able to acquire "higher value donors" and ending up getting too few donors to sustain your organization.
- Chasing blindly after the next big thing.
- Forgetting to test.
- Believing that you are the target audience.
- Being afraid to fire someone.
These things happen with shocking regularity. Again and again and again. But, as Tom says, you don't have to make the mistake. The outcomes are predictable: The monster has very sharp claws and very big teeth!
