Simple Fundraising is Easy to Manage

“I don’t know what I’m doing” he said to me.

Andy Perkins has a red-hot desire to help the people of Liberia. His nonprofit is called BESTWA and he literally feeds starving children in Africa.

When we first talked, his nonprofit was young and he needed money to get more kids into their feeding program FAST. It was literally life or death for some of these kids because if they didn’t eat at BESTWA, they probably wouldn’t eat at all.

He was passionate about his work and so worried he wasn’t doing fundraising right. Yet he was.

He explained to me how he didn’t have many donors and most were friends. He had a background in sales and knew relationships were important, so he personally called each one of his donors every few weeks to update them on the nonprofit’s programs. It was his main method of donor communication, and of course, his donors LOVED it!

They loved the personal touch and the authenticity. The loved hearing first-hand what their donation had made possible. They loved knowing they were helping make a difference in the world.

Andy saw many of them make repeat donations and larger donations time after time.

This is donor-based fundraising at its finest.

It’s all about valuing the donor more than their donation. It’s about the relationship and helping the donor feel connected to your work. And it’s about treating donors as partners in the work, not just a money source.

When you use the principles of donor-based fundraising, fundraising gets simpler. People give easily because they love your nonprofit’s work and are eager to help.

You’re no longer scouring the internet looking for new ideas nor listening to dry webinars full of complicated theory, trying to apply it to your situation. You no longer chase every bright shiny thing that comes along because you KNOW what works.

Unfortunately, many nonprofits get so focused on the money that they ignore their donors. Or they use a broken funding model that doesn’t generate the kind of income they need.

“We have put more than $16 million into Liberia in the last 5 years which completely blows me away!”