I’m surprised by how many nonprofit professionals see “marketing” as a bad word, a practice that is somehow beneath them. If that’s your attitude, a new book called Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits will help you move beyond that and become excellent at communicating your message. This book is packed with useful ideas, detailed strategies, and [...]

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If you’re going to ask people for money, you’ve got to learn to love objections. Or at least be comfortable with them! Working on a session for the APRA conference in Boston, I’m relearning how fun objections can be. Seriously, if there were no objections, we wouldn’t be needed. It would be so clearly self-evident [...]

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I originally wanted to call this fundraising secret: Don’t be a jerk—business people often don’t have liquid assets. That seems to get the message across more bluntly. I’m amazed at how poorly we treat business owners. Especially sole-proprietors. We approach them in ways we wouldn’t dream of approaching our other donors. With entitlement, bordering on [...]

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Last time we looked at the #1 fundraising secret: ask! Asking will always be #1. The rest of these fundraising secrets are in no particular order. That being said, the second secret is: brainstorm objections up front. Nine times out of ten, when you ask for money the prospect won’t say “yes” or “no.” They’ll [...]

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Today, I’m giving my Creating Donor Evangelists seminar at the annual conference of the New England Association of Healthcare Philanthropy. Part of that seminar involves posting the pictures of real people that are impacted by your mission. Your organization’s website and publications could always have a place with a powerful testimonial and a picture of [...]

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This past Monday, I had the honor of speaking to the enthusiastic members of the Georgia Independent School Association. They invited my in to speak on the three topics: importance of storytelling, how to ask for money, and how to handle objections. In this edition of Extreme Fundraising, I wanted to make the handouts available [...]

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Another great tidbit in Jeffrey Fox’s “How to Become a Rainmaker”: The Rainmaker always turns a customer objection into a mutual–customer/Rainmaker–objective. Let’s say a donor says, “Gee, I’d love to make a $25,000 gift to the campaign but both my kids are in college right now.” A rainmaking fundraiser would restate that as, “So our [...]

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We’ve spent the last couple of issues of Extreme Fundraising looking at objections. Before we go further, let’s use what we’ve learned. After reading this, see if you can use it this week. Those of you who’ve been subscribed for any length of time know that I err on the side of raising serious money [...]

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We’ve spent the last couple issues of EFE looking at objections. If you’re asking at high enough dollar amounts, you know they’re going to come. Objections pop up in just about any walk of life—sales, dating, family… By now you know that I believe objections are a great sign. It’s a prospect’s way of fogging [...]

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Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone said “yes” when you asked them for money? But they don’t, do they? Often, they come up with a reason they can’t possibly give at the level you’ve requested. Despite how it feels, objections are actually a very good sign. While a “yes” would be terrific, an objection is [...]

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