Sign-up for The Technopath Way Weekly Newsletter here: technopath.ac-page.com/the-technopath-way-sign-upWe’re so excited to welcome Cindy Wagman, fundraiser extraordinaire, of The Good Partnership to the Technopath Way this week! She brings a wealth of knowledge about how to make fundraising less intimidating and more fun, what tech she has found helps lessen the overwhelm and some quick, actionable tips to supercharge your fundraising right away.Cindy’s Tips for Taming Fundraising Overwhelm:* The more we repeat things, it becomes second nature and you become less hyper-aware and more on ‘auto-pilot’* The most important thing we can do to improve our relationship with fundraising is adjusting our perceptions around it* The typical messages we hear about money, who gives and the value of our work over-all, are negative* We need to adjust this messaging about who gives, what it means to have money before we can effectively change how we feel about fundraising* What are the best steps to take to over-come the overwhelm right out of the gate?* What are the short-cuts or messaging in your own brain about money?* How do I feel when I hear the word ‘fundraising’? We can’t change what we don’t recognize.* How do I start to prove those assumptions wrong? * The best way to do this is by talking to the clients about the impact and donors about why they give. Why is it important?* What do the current donors get from giving to your organization? A sense of helping their community directly? Making a positive impact on a group they have a special connection to?* We need to listen and understand before we ask.* We need to re-wire our brains to understand that fundraising is safe. The people around us deeply understand and support our mission.* We often rush to the ‘tactics’ without thinking about how the donors are on our team and want the same things we do* Build relationships with your donors who are not just large corporations - it helps you connect with who is giving in a way that will help you see the fundraising funds as a tool to move the mission forward* Spend time working or volunteering in your organization’s programs so you are truly bought into the organization’s mission, have the stories of the impact on your clients to share with potential donors* The fundraising ‘pitch deck’ is holding you back. It is a crutch so many fundraisers use to put off connecting with donors. Connect and listen before you worry about tactics.* Donors have already made the decision to give or not based on the stories you tap into from your organization before you ever put a pitch deck in front of them* All humans make assumptions about what others are thinking and we’re almost always wrong. Ask a donor about their thoughts before you assume it will be a ‘no’.What tech will help with fundraising?* Always have systems in place - they’re crucial for scaling* Systems and CRMs can be cheap to free these days* Small to medium nonprofits almost never need the huge, expensive systems* Tax receipts should be automated* Once you have systems and know your donors, the sky is the limit on how many individual donors you can build relationships with* Your system should* issue tax receipts automatically* integrate with your tools to accept donations* automatically assign tasks or alert stakeholders to donations at or above certain levels* Email options built in* Send video thank you’s personalized 40 second video using:* bonjour* vidyard* loom* You don’t have to go for the big name brand CRMs, there are many different options* Salesforce is good for more beyond fundraising and it doesn’t have to be expensive* If you have many metrics to track* Need to collect multiple data points* Organize a large amount of records both client and donor