Why crappy fundraising is a problem for everyone

I got a press release the other day. (Don't get me started on the blustery folly of emailing press releases to bloggers without knowing what they actually blog about!)

It was from a flack who thought I'd be interested to know that a certain retail brand was doing some cause marketing for Children's Miracle Network. So far, so good. I hope it works for everyone.

The piece reminded me of an important truth: If you want to raise funds, ask a fundraising professional. Because nonprofessionals can get it so spectacularly wrong.

This press release, trying to persuade readers to make a donation to Children's Miracle Network through this particular retail chain, raised this question: Why is this donation important? and answered it with this series of facts:

• 62 children enter a Children's Miracle Network Hospital every minute
  
• By the time you've read this email, more than 100 sick or injured children will need your help
  
• Children's Miracle Network Hospitals support 170 children's hospitals across North America
  
• 1 in 10 kids in North America is treated by a Children's Miracle Network Hospital each year
  
• Since 2011, [Retail Brand] has raised over $6 million for CMN Hospitals
  

Not one of those things is a reason for someone to give. They tell us that the need is really, really big. And that the retailer has given a ton of money.

Those are both reasons not to give.

Which his what you're likely to get when you put a nonprofessional on the job.

Now if you gave me the job of repairing a nuclear power plant, and told me to do whatever seems to make sense to me to make the repairs ... we'd soon see another Chernobyl. Because I don't know anything about nuclear power plant repair. My instincts would tell me absolutely nothing useful about what I should do.

Fortunately, almost nobody is foolhardy enough to give me that assignment.

But a of people are exactly foolhardy enough to give the job of fundraising people who are no more qualified to do it than I am to keep a reactor on line.

Okay, bad fundraising doesn't exactly blanket the region with deadly radiation. But there's so much crappy, unprofessional fundraising everywhere that a lot of would-be donors rarely encounter real fundraising: The kind that helps them care about an issue and to see how they can put their values into action and be a hero by donating.

So they never give. Worse, they learn to ignore fundraising in general because it's seemingly always irrelevant. So causes don't get the support they need. And would-be donors never fully actualize as the heroes they long to be.

So if you need some fundraising, get a fundraiser involved. Because it matters.

from Future Fundraising Now http://ift.tt/2cIW7w4