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The Most Important, Least Understood Fundraising Truth
You don’t raise more money by converting more prospects into donors each year, but by converting more current donors into deeper believers with each passing year.
Organizations that retain AND increase the confidence of their current donors year over year will always outstrip those that focus only on raising the most dollars from new donors in any given year.
If presidents, CEOs, and boards could grasp this one point, they would stop asking fundraisers, “Why aren’t you bringing in more dollars this year?” and start asking themselves and their senior administrative team, “Why didn’t we inspire more of our donors to have more confidence in our greater long-term potential?”
Advancement brings donors in but donors want leaders to reinforce their reasons for giving, to show them why they made a good choice, and to prove their commitment to continuous improvements in service delivery.
Jim Langley is the president of Langley Innovations. Langley Innovations provides a range of services to its clients to help them understand the cultural underpinnings of philanthropy and the psychology of donors, and with that knowledge, to develop the most effective strategies and tactics to build broader and more lasting communities of support. Jim has authored numerous books, including his most recent book, The Future of Fundraising: Adapting to New Philanthropic Realities, published by Academic Impressions in 2020.
Related Resources:
- Webinar: 4-Step Process for “Reimagining Fundraising Operations”
- The Power of Building Relationships: Why Donors Need Good Fundraisers
- The Way You Fundraise Matters
- Fundraising’s Worst Oversimplification
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Get the book!
Feeling like your job is getting harder because donor expectations have changed and competition for the charitable dollar is growing?
Finding that the old orthodoxies and conventions espoused by so-called experts in online echo-chambers and at conferences don’t work anymore?
Want to help more people make impact by facilitating their acts of philanthropy but feel like too many obstacles keep getting in your way?
Then this book is for you.
Engagement Fundraising was developed from the perspective of a donor who discovered firsthand that the impersonal, spray-and-pray approaches of his beloved charity were not only offensive but also wasteful and ineffective. So he took action. And now, you can too.
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