Become a Good Fundraiser to be Fully Funded

Maybe you’re someone who sees fundraising only as a prerequisite, obstacle, or pay-to-play kind of thing. In that instance, it's something you have to do in order to do what you really want to do. Even if your full responsibility is fundraising for your organization, there’s a statement we’ve found to be true:

The dirty little secret about fundraising: people don't want to be good fundraisers, they just want to be funded.

This statement may be true for you, and it’s killing your motivation.

What this does to your attitude about fundraising, among other things, is it caps your involvement. When you believe this to be true, you'll always aim only for good enough, rather than what's amazingly possible. You cut yourself off from really, truly being fully funded, because all you're really working toward is getting the minimum amount of money to be finished with fundraising right now.

It's impossible to be fully funded if you're not committed to being a good fundraiser. It's kind of like saying you don't want to live a healthy lifestyle, you just want to be healthy.

THE GOOD NEWS

For most people, their other responsibilities are geared toward serving people. Fundraising is no different, we just have to realize the truth about what we’re attempting to do - impacting people.

Becoming a good fundraiser is all about becoming good at helping people. It's a service, a ministry.

If you can learn to believe fundraising is serving others, then you can begin to enjoy it. As you’re fundraising, you can infuse hope into your financial partner’s life by giving them a vision of making an impact in this world alongside you.

It’s not about the money, it’s about the people. You’re working hard to raise the money so you can impact people; the money was never an end in itself anyway.

Kiley Hawkins, Co-Founder