You don’t need to feel shame for asking donors to give money to your cause

Over the weekend, I found a journal from December 21, 2014. Twelve years old. I’d scrawled “Blog Idea” at the top and circled two words underneath: Shame & FR.

It’s a great blog post idea. But apparently, I never wrote the post. So here it is, a dozen years late.

These beliefs make fundraising hard

On the page, I’d written a list of thoughts, self-talk, and self-limiting beliefs that make fundraising harder. Beliefs like:

• I shouldn’t need to ask for help.
• I shouldn’t need to ask for money. People should just give it to me.
• I should be self-sustaining.
• I should be able to do this on my own.
• Asking for help is weakness.

Typically, our beliefs about money and philanthropy are shaped by our family of origin and our faith structure.

But they can also be shaped by being hurt by others. Hurt that can lead us to, understandably, make a personal agreement like: I’ll never be dependent on anyone else again.

Do these sound familiar to you? If you listen, you’ll even hear these thoughts in the comments board members make at board meetings. I hear versions of these from executive directors, development directors, and founders constantly. Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up the idea that needing something from someone else is a character flaw. That asking is what you do when you’ve failed to figure it out yourself. That a healthy organization is a self-sufficient one…and that “self-sufficient” is the exact opposite of relying on philanthropy.

What’s particularly hard, and I’m speaking from experience, is being a director of development under an executive director who is governed by this inner self-talk. Fundraising is hard enough. But these beliefs actively sabotage your best efforts to raise money for your cause.

The worst part, these beliefs aren’t even true.

It’s not about you

Look at that list again. Every single line centers on you. Your inadequacy. Your dependency. Your failure to be enough on your own.

Successful fundraising doesn’t center on you. It never did.

Great things are happening at your organization, and because of your work, a donor gets to be part of that. Your donor gets to invest in something they believe in. Your donor gets to be one of the people who made it happen.

You’re not begging for a handout. You’re not putting a burden on them. You’re extending an invitation. You’re allowing them to join something amazing.

In the margin of the page, I wrote: fundraising is not shame, not guilt, not entitlement, but joy and gratitude. It’s like you’re watching a miracle and you want to let other people in on it.

That’s the posture. Not “I need something from you.” More like “come see this with me.”

One thing to try this week

If you want to feel the difference, try this on the next fundraising letter you write. Print the letter out. And then “weed” it. Circle every “we,” “our,” and “us” — including your organization’s name — in red. Circle every “you,” “your,” and “yours” in black.

Typical fundraising letters will have lots of red circles. Even as many as 37 on a one page letter. But the more red circles you have, the more you are trying to justify an ask. It’s signaling that you believe you’re starting from behind and you need to center that ask on yourself. The goal isn’t zero “we” — you’re allowed to exist in your own letter — but the more circles in black ink, the more the letter is actually about your invitation than about you.

This one exercise will do more to shift a fundraising letter, and your other fundraising communications, than almost anything else I know. And it has a nice side effect: it’s hard to stay in shame about asking when the letter isn’t actually about your need. It’s about their invitation.

You’re not asking because you failed to be self-sufficient. You’re inviting someone to be part of a miracle. Big difference.

Fundraising is one of the noblest activities on the planet. Don’t let anyone make you feel less than for being a fundraiser. Including yourself.