Fundraising Phenomena A fter 30-plus years in the fund- raising and marketing world, I have found that when it comes to raising money, many people want an easy answer. They want to have great fi- nancial results without investing time or effort, as if they could snap their fingers and money should fall out of the sky. I’m not exactly sure why this kind of thinking permeates the fundraising world, but I have a hunch. I think it’s born out of the unusual phenomena that occur and grab our attention. We see an organization put up a CrowdRise page and raise $1 million, and we think that’s normal. We gaze with wonder on the Ice Bucket Chal- lenge and think, Wow, that was easy! Let’s do our own. Or at a fundraising confer- ence, a CEO hears of someone who met one time with a wealthy person and walked away with a $500,000 check—and then he tells his staff, “Drop everything else. You just need to meet 100 wealthy people and our problems are over.” What every CEO, major gifts officer, and development director needs to realize is that these are phenomena. They are not the new normal. They never have been and they never will be. They’re good sto- ries. Conference speakers love to lead with them. They get a lot of buzz and attention. But they’re not normal fundraising. Fad Distractions I ’m fond of saying that “the biggest distraction to fundraisers is distrac- tions.” We get our attention pulled away from the necessary to chase the silver bullets that are forever flying by trying to grab our attention. Many a good strategic fundraising plan has been scrapped because a CEO or development director has decided to pursue the fundraising “flavor of the month.” This week it’s mega-donors; last week it was Millennials. The month before it was the “generational transfer of wealth.” For many years it has been social media. If I had a dime for all the ideas I have heard about raising money from Face- book, Twitter, and Instagram, I would be able to retire already! I recall back in the 1990s, another fundraising fad came along that was widely written about in all the develop- ment tabloids: the giving club or giving circle. These were people who met, talked about philanthropy, and pooled their money to give “grants” to charities. Most were focused around a single interest. These were touted as the next big thing in giving, and every charity better gear up. No longer would you be approaching individuals and asking for money. No, you would be lining up to speak at giv- ing circles or finding some connection so you could get noticed and get funded. It was going to be a revolutionary change in how people give and how fundraisers get money. Where are giving circles today? I can- not find an article written about them after about 2008. They may still be out there but they didn’t change the world, nor did they change the fundamental nature of fundraising. In fact, online giving has been around now for about 22 years and, according to the most recent Blackbaud study of digital giving, the average nonprofit only gets 7.6 percent of its donations from online sources. And yet, if we let ourselves get distracted, we can easily spend 75 percent of our time on a channel that only delivers 7 percent of our income. Focus on What Works S o what is the answer to avoiding so-called quick fixes? First of all, we have to realize and acknowl- edge that fundraising is hard work. Richard Perry, one of the founders of The Domain Group and now the Veritus Group, used to say, “95 percent of fundraising is grunt work, and if you don’t do it you will be in trouble.” I have found that to be so true. It takes discipline. It takes time. It means not listening to all those voices that call us away to the idea that there is a shortcut to raise the budget. As Christians, most of us would acknowledge a life theology that is based upon faith in God and working hard. Faith without works is dead. But equally valid is the teaching that the just shall live by faith. Is the Christian life easy? Is a life of holiness a piece of cake? No—we are all works in progress and we must apply diligence and deliberateness to our spiritual lives if we’re going to live a life of faith and holiness. Is fundraising any different? Nope. Fundraising is hard work because it’s built upon relationships. And relation- ships take time to build. The major-gifts officer who thinks she can just write letters once a year and the money will appear is not going to get anywhere. We have to relate to donors as people with 42 WWW.CITYGATENETWORK.ORG MARCH/APRIL 2019