Broaden Your Pool of Potential Donors

“People do things for their reasons, not ours. So, find out their reasons.”

—Dale Carnegie

Fundraisers often believe, mistakenly, that donors are motivated by the same factors that inspire the organizations. For example, major-gift officers at a symphony may think all of their donors want to support great cultural events. But some people may be giving so they can be associated with others who give; they may not even like classical music. For others, the prestige of putting one’s name on a building may be more important than what happens inside the building.

The job of a development department involves many activities that can be viewed in business terms:

Nonprofits should think carefully about which segments of the donor market to target. Let’s explore that further.

Identify Your Donors

Many nonprofits suffer from “marketing myopia,” as the marketing guru Ted Levitt called it. In his classic example, Levitt observed that railroads saw themselves as being in the railroad business rather than the transportation business. As a result, they missed out on opportunities to expand into other forms of transportation, such as air transport and trucking.

Similarly, nonprofit leaders often think of themselves as being in the institution business rather than the business of providing services. This is especially true of educational institutions, which focus too much energy on raising money from alumni rather than seeking support from people who are interested in the services the institutions provide.

Who Has a Passion for the Services You Provide?

The first step in identifying your segment of the donor market is to ask: Who will benefit from the services we provide? Next, search for any potential donor who would gain satisfaction from, and is passionate about, seeing those services provided to the world.

For example, Caltech recently created the Center for Environmental and Microbial Interaction. Today, research on how microbes affect the climate and our oceans is quite limited. However, changes in the microbial population could trigger massive releases of methane, a greenhouse gas, or destroy the ocean habitat for fish and marine mammals.

If Caltech adopts a limited institutional view of its donor pool, it may seek donations primarily from alumni. But if it seeks to engage people who are passionate about supporting cutting-edge environmental research, the donor pool could be 100 times larger. Any philanthropist who seeks to advance environmental causes could be a potential donor.

Charities should think deeply about the benefits of their services and identify donors who would like to be associated with delivering those benefits. In other words, find people who believe in your “reasons.”

In summary, to broaden your pool of donors, think carefully about the social benefits your organization provides, search for major donors who are passionate about providing those benefits to the world, invest in pursuing those donors, and offer them the right giving opportunities or philanthropic products.

Bill Davidow, a former corporate marketing executive, serves on several nonprofit boards, and his new book, “The Autonomous Civilization: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines” will be published in 2020.