from the desk of
Jane DiFolco Parker | Partner

Don’t Forget the Nuts and Bolts
The work of fundraising is challenging, complicated, gratifying, and inspiring – all at once. It is a complex effort that involves many moving parts, including:
 

• Identifying potential benefactors.

• Assessing their capacity to make a significant gift.

• Developing a strategy to engage them in ways that are meaningful to them and could inspire them to support your cause.

• Making the case for support once you’ve earned the right to invite them to invest their philanthropy in your organization. 

• After securing the gift, you should appropriately thank them and steward their gift in ways that demonstrate the positive impact of their support.

These steps take time and require creativity, persistence, a strong belief in your organization’s mission, and some fire in the belly to motivate you to keep going despite inevitable rejections, even when your best efforts and firm conviction in your cause are not enough. 

One of the most important parts of our work in philanthropy is the basic details that support this activity. We understand that it is these details that hold a machine together. A missing or loose nut or bolt can lead to the machine breaking down or failing, or at best, producing faulty or less efficient results. This is just as true in philanthropy as it is on a factory floor or under a car’s hood. If we ignore the fundamentals, we can’t expect to maximize our fundraising results, and we may cause serious harm to our organization by damaging its relationships with current or future supporters. Many of the “basics” of the philanthropic process occur in the area referred to as Advancement Services or Operations, and include the following:

• Timely and accurate recording and receipting of gifts (preferably within 24 hours of receipt).

• Timely generation of personalized gift acknowledgment letters.

• Regular, annual production of personalized and transparent stewardship reports.

• Timely and accurate creation and maintenance of constituent records in a CRM or other database system (because good data are the lifeblood of philanthropy).

• Effectively managing, analyzing, and leveraging data to support strategy.

• Safeguarding the confidentiality of constituent records to the extent permitted by law.

• Effective, appropriate, ethical, and diligent use of research tools to support the fundraising process by identifying potential prospects and enhancing strategies to cultivate, engage, and solicit them. 

These functions serve as the essential foundation—like the glue or the nuts and bolts—that helps ensure a highly effective and productive fundraising effort. Therefore, it is vital to invest in these core aspects of the fundraising operation, continually monitor their effectiveness, and support the professional development of our colleagues in advancement services who underpin the work of our fundraisers.