From fear to fearless fundraising
We’ve never seen a crisis like this before. Everywhere we turn, there are more grim statistics, spanning every aspect of our lives.
A panic is starting to take hold on our sector, too. Our services may not resume any time soon. We may lose our jobs. Our organizations may not make it through. People we care about will suffer.
Our fear is natural and healthy. We’re in the eye of a perfect storm, so it makes sense that we are on alert. Our bodies and minds are hard-wired to protect us, and fear is an expression of that impulse.
But unchecked, fear is also crippling. Over time, it affects our physical health, including weakening our immune system. It impairs our memory, decision-making, emotional regulation, and overall mental health.
And it paralyzes our teams.
Fortunately, research shows that people have tremendous capacity to move through fear and turn it into action. We can leverage our fear to access courage, take bold steps, and plan for the future.
As fundraisers, we are the ones who hold the keys to our organizations’ future: the dollars that sustain and grow our mission. We have the power to take action today to bring in dollars that help our organizations survive. And we have talent to build relationships today to secure partnerships that help our organizations thrive. We can move from fear to learning to growth.
Understand your fear zone
We’ve all experienced fear since isolation began. And for most of us, it’s still there—either front and center in our days or simmering below the surface.
The first step to moving forward is getting to know yourself in your ‘fear zone.’
Sometimes we enter the fear zone by choice. We feel it when we do that one thing every day that scares us, when we stretch ourselves, learn a new skill, make a big ask. In those cases, the fear zone is the natural set out of our ‘comfort zone.’
What’s unique about this moment is that none of us chose to get pushed out of our ‘comfort zone’—and we all got pushed out at the exact same time.
In this context, I find my ‘fear zone’ includes a lot of spinning my wheels. I start living and working reactively, wiling away my days doing non-urgent and non-important tasks like organizing my email inbox—all the while ruminating on bad news and uncertainties and worries. I think a lot about what needs to be cleaned in my apartment, but I don’t clean it. I need support from others, but shy away from social interactions.
This type of reaction to fear is called ‘fright’—a kind of paralysis that sets in when we are overwhelmed by fear. In this mode, our fear makes every new piece of information feel even more scary, until everything is stretched to its most extreme implications. When we stay here too long, we feel helpless, hopeless, and even depressed.
What does your ‘fear zone’ look like?
Let go of your fear zone
A major reason that most of us have been pushed into our ‘fear zone’ is that our comfort zone is no longer available to us. Personally, we are stretched in previously inconceivable ways. And professionally, we are operating in uncharted territory.
The biggest myth in fundraising right now is that, in a few weeks, ‘things will go back to normal’ and we’ll all be able to return to our comfort zone—planning events, writing soft-ask appeals, creating awareness campaigns, celebrating major gifts when they happen to arrive.
The reality is: there is no going back to that comfort zone. The ‘playbook’ that was passable 6 weeks ago is wholly inadequate for the months and years ahead. We don’t know when in-person events can resume or how successful we will be. We can’t expect donations from people who are not loyal to our organizations already. We can’t rely on some of the ‘shiny objects’ that have pulled our attention away from the fundamentals of talking to donors and making personally meaningful asks.
As we work our way out of this crisis and its myriad consequences, nonprofits will need to take a much more bold and less apologetic approach to fundraising.
To get out of our ‘fear zone,’ we need to recognize that the path out is not backward to a comfort zone that is no longer viable. It is forward through learning and growth.
It’s time to move from ‘fright’ to ‘fight’—from paralysis to action. It’s time to take steps to move from our ‘fear zone’ into our ‘learning zone’ and, ultimately, our ‘growth zone.’
Boost your confidence
Confidence is a powerful antidote to fear. When we feel secure in the steps we can take to move through fear, fear has less of a grip on us.
Every fundraiser has a lot to be confident about.
First, the steps we need to take to make our organizations resilient are doable right now for every organization.
Building resilience is challenging, but it’s not complicated.
What it requires more than anything is the courage to connect and talk to our donors. If we’re honest with ourselves, we recognize that we spend a lot of our fundraising working on things besides talking to our donors. We pour hours into planning events and testing new technologies and writing perfect appeals. Our time and attention for 1:1 interaction gets squeezed.
Today, we need to bring those 1:1 interactions front and center—no excuses, no distractions. If you’re a fundraiser of any kind—major gifts, foundations, corporate, events, direct mail—you should be spending at least 6-7 hours a day personally interacting with donors. Ideally, pick up the phone.
The good news is: you already have everything you need to do this. You have a list of supporters. You have some form of contact information for all of them. You can ask caring questions. You can listen genuinely. You can share your own story. You can make them feel part of your mission—and help them find ways to deepen their impact.
Second, the key to resilience sits in our hands.
The path out of a crisis involves collaboration between staff, volunteers, supporters, and clients.
Fundraising is the spark that gets that flame going and breathes new life into it an organization.
Early gifts during a crisis provide an organization with the flexibility to adapt programming for the new environment. Continued funding provides the resources and confidence needed to sustain efforts. Growing partnerships fuel growing impact beyond the crisis.
Third, overall nonprofits are much more resilient than we think they are.
Many of us are looking back to prior crises to see what we can learn from them. Often, comparisons are made from a place of fear—calling out negative consequences and things that went wrong.
To be sure, every recession, natural disaster, and major crisis has been challenging for nonprofits and the communities they serve.
But they not only survived, they rose to the challenge of the moment, adapting to an evolving landscape. It was expected that the 2008 recession would force the closure of many nonprofits—and, indeed, we remember it that way. In fact, in the years following the recession, the nonprofit closure rate increased from 4.3% to 5%—a statistically significant increase, but nowhere near the calamity that was predicted or remembered. Organizations over $1 million were no more likely to close than prior to the crisis.
This crisis is not only a recession, but we can take heart: we can rise to this challenge too.
Get learning and get growing
What do you hope for? How do you personally want to live and feel? How do you want your organization to operate?
What will it take to get there?
Fear can be harnessed to kickstart action in a healthy way. There is new urgency to forward-thinking, planning your work, and working your plan. That urgency doesn’t need to lead to overreaction, obsession, and panic. It simply puts you back in the driver’s seat of your life and your organization—despite the chaos around you.
What are steps you can take today to secure short-term funding for your organization?
What emergency funds from cities, foundations, companies, and philanthropists will you apply for?
How will you engage volunteers to serve as your ambassadors to these funds and other donors considering special gifts?
Who are the loyal donors you will approach for bridge funding?
How will you strengthen your case for support during this time?
How will you incorporate that case for support into all communications?
What are steps you can take today to secure sustainable funding for your organization?
How will you personally interact with all your top donors? All your long-standing donors? All new donors? Volunteers?
How will you care for your donors and volunteers?
How will you thank donors and volunteers for their generosity and loyalty?
How will you bring your mission to your donors and volunteers virtually?
How will you tell stories of hope that inspire donors and volunteers to keep working toward your mission?
Break your plan up into doable steps. Make tangible, achievable plans for every week—a certain number of donors to call, a stack of thank you cards to get through, a meaningful project to complete. Celebrate your successes. Be kind to yourself if you fall short.
Take actions despite your fear, not because of it.
Ask for help
No one can fundraise well alone.
We need the support of other people in our organization—program staff to share mission stories, leadership to chime in on key relationships, colleagues to brainstorm moves management plans with, and work-friends to serve as our champions and cheerleaders. This kind of collaboration makes us more successful because it brings our organization’s best offerings to every donor. The donor gets to have a relationship with a community, not just a single fundraiser.
We also need the support of fundraisers in other organizations. None of us has been through this type of crisis before. The only way we can understand what’s happening, what it means, and how to move forward is by talking to each other.
Nonprofits have the wherewithal to lead the world through this crisis—and fundraisers hold the keys to resilience. By moving out of our fear zones toward learning and growth, we fundraisers not only make ourselves feel calmer and more confident, we move our organizations forward—as only we can do.