Everyone At A Nonprofit Is A Fundraiser: Whether They Know It Or Not; Fundraising The Nonprofit FunderLand Way

By Ron Lahr

What does ‘Fundraising the Nonprofit FunderLand Way’ mean?
Of course, it means a lot of things. For the founders of Nonprofit Funderland, ‘Fundraising the Nonprofit FunderLand Way’ can be summed up in two words: Creativity and Communication.
You will find creativity and communication are the bedrock of the fundraising strategies outlined in the chapters. The book will also show you how to incorporate your whole team to breeze by your fundraising goals.
There are many tactics that spell out how to turn your nonprofit into an organization more capable of raising the money you need to accomplish your mission.
The book is broken into five sections:
•Creativity
•Communications and social media
•Boards and Leadership
•Donors
•Events
In each section you will see that everyone at a nonprofit truly is a fundraiser whether they know it or not.
This book is a product of the Nonprofit FunderLand blog. The Nonprofit FunderLand blog is a growing community of fundraising experts from around the world who their share their knowledge and experiences, both good and bad, to help educate nonprofit professionals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Lahr
• Release date: Aug 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311897039

Ron Lahr

Nonprofit FunderLand Co-Founder, Chief Content Editor and ContributorRon has been fundraising since he was in grade school and sold his first roll of wrapping paper in hopes of winning a prize.Since then he has raised money as a volunteer, employee, contractor and consultant for dozens of nonprofits of all different flavors.He has also served on the board of directors for many nonprofits and is currently on the board of his local Chamber of Commerce.Ron pioneered the use of Money Murals tm as a fundraising tool. Ron also does fundraising consulting and training. Call him at 509-435-6349 for more information.When he’s not working he is with his family, doing chores, playing foosball and basketball or cooking.

Book preview

What does ‘Fundraising the Nonprofit FunderLand Way’ mean? Of course, it means a lot of things. Holding all the people involved with a nonprofit accountable, being smart about your use of social media, attempting to constantly improve everything you do, continuously educating yourself so you can help people more effectively, and much more.

But for the founders of Nonprofit FunderLand, and its companion podcast Nonprofit FunderCast, ‘Fundraising the Nonprofit FunderLand Way’ can be summed up in two words: Creativity and Communication.

You will find those words, and those concepts, discussed often in this book. There will also be plenty of advice on how to turn your nonprofit into an organization more capable of raising the money you need to accomplish your mission.

We believe that the role nonprofits play in our society is a vital one. That’s why we got involved with nonprofits in the first place. That’s why it is important that we keep getting better all the time. And that is definitely why we started the blog and podcast and wrote this book.

We originally envisioned the Nonprofit FunderLand blog (www.NonprofitFunderLand.com) as a place to answer questions we were frequently asked by clients and prospective clients. Basically, it was going to be a big Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) website so we could refer people to a place where their questions were answered and that they could refer to, from time to time, to refresh their memory.

As we mentioned our plans to people in the nonprofit field we realized there was a much greater need that it could fulfill. A place where lots of different people could share their knowledge and experiences, both good and bad, to help us all learn more and become better at fundraising, and even at running and growing our nonprofits.

The response has been much bigger than we expected. We’ve received a lot of email and social media messages and comments with people sharing suggestions and questions. We’ve also had a lot of people submitting guest blog posts. We say: The more the merrier! To truly build a Fundraising Education Community we need a lot of people to participate.

So please enjoy this book, which is made up of expanded versions of some of our posts from the blog, with additional context before and sometimes after, as well as new material that was never on the blog.

We also hope you’ll visit www.NonprofitFunderLand.com and check out the new content. We try to post every single weekday so the site is growing quickly.

We’ve also started a podcast named Nonprofit FunderCast which you will soon be able to find at the iTunes store or at www.NonprofitFunderLand.com.

There are a lot of ways for you to participate in the Nonprofit FunderLand: by reading, by listening, by commenting, by sharing on social media, or by emailing us at rlahr, bnansel, or rbilliau @NonprofitFunderLand.com with your suggestions, comments or questions.

We’d love to hear from you!

Ron, Brian & Rob

Section One: Creativity

In every nonprofit we’ve ever been involved with there were always plenty of areas where improvement was possible, even easy. A lot of low hanging fruit, in other words. Without exception, the area with the largest potential for positive impact was creativity.

Sometimes, doing everything right, or even doing everything better than all of the other nonprofits in your area, isn’t enough. Creativity can help you stand out and break through all of the nonprofit noise around you so that you can build real relationships with your current donors, as well as a large chuck of all of the potential donors.

It’s very hard to build relationships with people if they aren’t even listening to you.

Chapter Two - The Importance of New Revenue Streams – Ron Lahr

(This was one of the half dozen or so posts that I wrote before we published the blog so there would be some content for people to see when they visited the site. It was one of the most popular right off the bat.

I think that was the case because it is so easy for us to just keep doing what we’ve always been doing. We may try to do it better but it is apparently quite difficult to focus on that while also thinking up new ways of doing things. And it you want to transform your results you can’t normally do it by incrementally improving. You have to think outside the box and add that new plan to your current results to see really big gains.

The post is still generating good views on the blog and this more in-depth, expanded version has even more on the subject.)

I was once in a fundraising situation where there were a lot of constraints and we were basically forced to figure out new ways to raise money. Since there are only two places to get fundraising revenue from: the places you’ve already gotten it from and the places you haven’t, we knew we would have to find new places.

As you may know, one of my favorite things to do is brainstorm with creative people and that’s what I recommend anyone in a new, or tough, situation do. To maximize the chance of a brainstorming session succeeding people need to embrace the idea that saying stupid things is not only okay, it is absolutely necessary. I can’t count the number of times someone has said something stupid at a brainstorming session and it sparked something amazing in someone else. You have to try not to censor yourself, or even to consider if an idea is bad or good. Just blurt it out and see if someone else can make something of it. This can require a high level of trust.

That’s what we did. That’s what we almost always do because we are such strong proponents of brainstorming.

Everyone Is Different

I can’t tell you what your new revenue streams could, or should, be without knowing what your current revenue streams are but I can share a few new revenue streams that have been identified on projects I have been a part of.

One nonprofit I worked with approached their local elected officials as well as family members of people who had won awards from the nonprofit over the years. This worked particularly well for them because they were placing the names of the donors on something permanent at their facility so the politicians did it to help their future campaigns and the families did it to honor a loved one.

Another example was a newly built elementary school. The Parent Teacher Organization (that I was an officer in) went after four new places no PTO in the district had ever gone after.

Each PTO in the district did two big fundraisers per year utilizing the school children as an army of salespeople selling mainly to parents, grandparents, or other family and neighbors. The PTOs also raised money from the children themselves, selling popsicles, popcorn, hot cocoa and candy during some school days.

They just kept hitting up the same group of people over and over. The district wouldn’t let them use the children as their salespeople more than twice a year but we were a new school built in the midst of the great recession and we needed a lot of things for our classrooms. It was going to take us over a decade to raise the money using only the traditional methods. So we asked the district if we could do another fundraiser as long as we didn’t use the children as salespeople and didn’t just ask the same old people for more money. After a lot of discussion they allowed it.

First, we approached the businesses that built the school such as the architects and various engineering firms, as well as the company that made the gym floor. Next we asked businesses that supplied the school each month such as the food supply company, the supplier of cleaning supplies – basically everyone on the list of vendors for the school. Third, was local businesses that the families who had children attending the school frequented. The last place was directly to the tribal casino that by state law had to donate a portion of the casino’s earnings to educational purposes.

It was the most successful fundraiser any school in that school district has ever had. Since then, no school in the district, including the school that tried the things mentioned above, has approached any of those sources again. That can be an issue with nonprofits of all kinds but it is particularly common with PTOs as kids quickly grow up and leave the schools, taking their parents with them: a very short institutional memory.

Many times as a part of