I woke up this morning to my Twitter stream being filled with tweets about the royal wedding–both people watching it and people tweeting about people watching it!
Those tweets got me thinking about fundraising…because that’s just how I am. 🙂
3 Ways the Royal Wedding is like fundraising
- The royal wedding involved mutual vetting
Just like in fundraising, both parties needed to do their research and engaging to vet each other. In fundraising, donors want to back a winner. For nonprofits, they want to receive gifts from donors that don’t have lots of strings attached (so they don’t run into people wanting multi-million dollar “gifts” back). - The royal wedding involves the entire community
I’m amazed at how the royal wedding has captured the attention of so many. I remember being enamored with the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. It was all over the TV. But now it’s all over all sorts of media. Nonprofits can do that too. Nonprofits should be inviting more than just the donor and staff to the fundraising party. They should communicate and celebrate in as many ways as possible. - The royal wedding required an ask.
There wouldn’t be a wedding if William didn’t ask Kate (or Kate ask William…I haven’t been following it too closely!). So to in fundraising. Not asking virtually guarantees not receiving a gift. Someone’s going to have to ask.
Love this! Didn’t think I was being impacted by the royal wedding, but then this morning my husband turned it on. Not sure why I got all teared up – but wedding do that to me :-).
Great tie-ins to fundraising too! At some point, we have to ask.
Thanks!
I get teary at weddings too. 🙂
Commitment. There should always be commitment and dedication in doing fundraising and even in doing other stuff. You really have a great insights on the royal wedding Marc..
Keep the smiles,
Lynne
Lynne, GREAT comment!
Thanks for posting.
I think your 3rd point was the most impactful to me. Things can never get off the ground without the initial courage to ask. That’s the great thing that helps get it all started.
Great post. You’re going to probably get some more posts as your article is linked on Chris Brogan’s latest post!
Thanks Rick!
Isn’t is amazing how we just “assume” people will do things? But we really do need to ask!
Hey Marc!
Absolutely. It reminds of the book ‘The 4 Agreements’. We assume people understand us and we assume we know everything about everyone else.
What an assumption! And the source of a lot of hurt feelings…
Asking can be scary, but it’s so incredibly useful and usually better than the alternative (pining about what could have been).
Those are so true AND those are ENORMOUS assumptions to make.
Asking is definitely better than pining. 🙂