Advice for fundraisers from fundraisers
“What I know, as someone who gets to spend all day talking to changemakers across the country is this: There are more people out there who feel the way you do than you realize. There are more people who believe what you believe than you realize. There are more people who hope for what you hope for than you realize.”
If I’m being honest, I’m exhausted. Not just I-need-a-good-night’s-sleep-exhausted. More like I’ve-spent-my-whole-life-fighting-for-a-world-that’s-suddenly-unraveling exhausted.
Like anyone, I am only beginning to process the events of the past two months, much less what they mean for our sector, our missions, and our world. Much less where to find hope and a path to realizing it.
Luckily, I am not doing it alone. Nonprofit leaders and fundraisers across the country have shared their experiences and ideas with me, including during our recent informal ‘coffee chats’.
What a gift to spend time with such passionate, creative, and talented people. I have learned so much—and it’s only fair that I share it back with you.
Here are four pieces of advice from your community…
1. Give yourself permission to grieve.
It’s important to name the intensity and scale of loss that we have experienced. Loss of funds, loss of programs, loss of jobs, loss of momentum, loss of possibilities, loss of certainty—and loss of life across the world.
In a lot of ways, we have lost the world that we used to live in. Even if all funding, policies, and institutions were restored to what they were a few months ago, the world would still be changed, irrevocably. We are living in a new era, and none of us knows yet that what that means—for our hopes, our ideals, our global community, or our lives.
Five years ago, we experienced another moment like this. We were sent home for a couple weeks to wait out the pandemic. We left our desks thinking this was a temporary blip. Instead, that memo, that meeting, that email turned out to be the moment that everything changed. When we eventually returned to our desks, they seemed like time capsules, artifacts of a past life we could never go back to.
Today, like five years ago, it’s hard to believe the news coming our way is real or durable. Every morning, part of me expects to open my news app and find everything reversed, everything back to normal. That false hope—denial really—has gotten me through more than a few days.
But as time passes, it’s important that we let the truth sink in. It’s important that we don’t run away from the feelings of loss, from the grief. We need to look our shifting reality in the eye and really understand what it means.
When we give ourselves space to mourn what was, we free up space to imagine what could be.
2. Know that you are not alone.
Many leaders and fundraisers have shared with me that the hardest part of recent months has been isolation. Part of it is the isolation we all feel in divided communities. But for leaders and fundraisers, much of it comes from inside their organizations, where suddenly everyone cares deeply about revenue strategies—but nobody trusts the expertise of revenue-generating professionals. Reactivity is driving many boards and leaders to chase shiny objects, thrusting distracting work onto the plates of fundraising teams. Tried and true strategies are overlooked and ignored.
Everywhere, it seems, reality is up for debate. Facts are up for debate. Expertise and experience count for nothing. Little disagreements feel totally alienating because we’re all so tired of trying to find common ground on something we used to take for granted: the truth.
What I know, as someone who gets to spend all day talking to changemakers across the country is this: There are more people out there who feel the way you do than you realize. There are more people who believe what you believe than you realize. There are more people who hope for what you hope for than you realize.
They may be in shock, processing, quiet, getting organized, and not visible to you yet, but people across our sector are ready to imagine, create, and fight for a different version of the future. They care about other people. They want to create a country and a world where everyone can live the life they choose to live. They know that nonprofits, as vehicles for communities’ hopes and dreams, will lead the way.
3. Trust that the work is happening, even if not out loud.
It’s obviously an understatement to say that we’re living through a period of intense backlash against the work many of us do. Many organizations face real risks for openly advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Efforts to dismantle systemic oppression feel utterly taboo. Even the basic underpinnings of our sector—providing access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, human rights—suddenly seem controversial.
In one of our coffee chats, a fundraiser remarked: “It feels like the room for doing good in the world is shrinking.”
That took my breath away. That is exactly what it feels like.
But it’s less true than it feels. If I could summarize this moment in one sentence I hear every day, it’s this: “We’re not changing what we do, but we’re talking about it differently.”
Across our sector, organizations are moving forward doggedly with critical missions. They are giving voice to our communities, providing resources, solving problems, finding cures, and, yes, chipping away at systems of oppression. They are, step by step, working toward world in which everyone can live the life they want to lead.
All they are changing is their marketing.
Is that scary? Yes. Widespread, pre-emptive self-censorship should worry us all.
But it should also give you hope: The work continues.
4. See the way your work matters.
Small, frustrating, and futile as it can seem sometimes, the work we do as nonprofit leaders and fundraisers matters.
Every conversation you have breaks down barriers. Every relationship you advance builds bridges. Every story you share creates actionable hope. Every ask you make creates a path for someone to make the difference they want to make in the world. Every gift you secure builds the coalition of people invested in a better future. Every dollar you raise advances critical work.
All of this takes courage, grit, and determination—especially in a noisy, reactive, and scary environment. But trust the process, trust your profession, and trust yourself. Stay true to the heart of our work. Create your list, make your plans, and work those plans. Have the conversations, make the asks, and inspire the investment in your mission.
More than anything, hold fast to your imagination: A better world is possible.
Together, we can create it. We are creating it.