If you've been in fundraising for more than a few years, and you work in an agency or consultancy -- meaning you're in touch with a lot of different nonprofit organizations -- you start to notice some patterns.
One of the most discouraging of those patterns is the things organizations do that crush their fundraising results. There's a handful of common activities that flatten revenue every time.
Sean Triner has seen the pattern too, and blogs about it at The first of two great ways to destroy your individual fundraising.
That first way to destroy fundraising? Investing in brand.
Really? Investing in brand hurts fundraising? That's exactly opposite what it's supposed to do! How can that be?
According to Sean, it's not so much that branding hurts fundraising, but that money is diverted from fundraising to branding activities that's the problem: "... the cost of achieving increased awareness is simply not worth it compared to investing that money in good fundraising, that in turn, increases awareness."
Think of it this way: Would you rather get a large number of people vaguely aware that you exist -- or get a smaller number of people to actually make a donation?
If a charity struggles with fundraising, then brand and brand awareness may well play a part, but spending money on building that awareness is not an effective solution. There are plenty of case studies of charities with no, or little brand awareness, succeeding in fundraising.
If you need to raise funds, you're going to have to do fundraising. There really is no substitute.
(Sean's second way to destroy fundraising income is to reduce your fundraising budget. Unfortunately, he's all-too-right about that.)
