Stop Looking for New Donors, Activate the Ones You Have

Nonprofit leaders often tell me they need to find new donors.

When we start looking at people already in their world, they aren't starting from zero.

Who already knows about the organization? Who has attended event, volunteered, donated? Who do we already know? Sometimes we think getting new donors is getting people we don't know to know who we are.

Like, who is aware? Who's shown interest? Who feels connected? You remember the model: awareness, interest, connection, action.

Who may be ready at, to re- to act but hasn't received a clear invitation? I think that's the biggest, the biggest thing is that there are people who are, want to act.

They just haven't been asked.

Most people give because they've been asked, right? That's why that connect to act stage is so important.

Honestly, you don't really need to find a new audience You maybe already have the people you need already in your orbit.

You just need to activate them and move them through the donor flow.

And a lo- people think, you know, I work ...

I love email.

I think email is so important and such a great communications tool, and a lot of folks, right, don't really utilize their email and they wanna go find donors on social media or even like buy a list or things like that.

Like, no, your donors, you already know them, that you're, they're on your email list, right? You already have what you need to be successful.

Many years ago, I had a call with this woman, and she was just lovely.

And you know, sometimes [laughs] I have calls with people and they wind up enrolling in my program, and sometimes I have calls with people and I give them some wisdom and they're off, they're good.

Right then and sh- they're good.

Like, I, I wish they would need me more, but they honestly don't.

They just needed one little bit of push, right, of motivation, of guidance, just a one little bit.

And I think it's really interesting because as somebody who coaches and trains, you know, that's part of it is just giving value.

Like, I give value to them, and she got it and she was off.

But the thing that she was off about is that she was kind of new to nonprofit.

She had founded this organization, and she was saying she, they gave computers or taught kids computers, something like that, something around computers.

And she was like, "How am I gonna raise this money?" Da, da, da.

And I said, "Well, start with who you know.

I believe that you already have what you need to be successful.