Fundraising Mistakes that Bedevil All Boards (And Staff Too) (Revised and Expanded Edition)

Over the past seven decades, literally hundreds of fundraising techniques, tactics, and strategies have been employed. Some have succeeded beyond expectation billion dollar capital campaigns attest to that but more than a few approaches have careened, crashed and burned.

Yet, strangely enough, many of these failed methods, because they seem commonsensical, are repeated to this day. Over and over again.

In Fundraising Mistakes that Bedevil All Boards (and Staff Too), Kay Sprinkel Grace seeks to end this prodigal state of affairs once and for all by exposing these misguided approaches for what they are: insidious and sometimes beguiling time wasters, if not money pits.

And there are more trapdoors than you might imagine. Grace has identified 44 in total, many of them tantalizing, especially to board members and other volunteers:

Here s just a sampling:

-Donors are drawn to organizations in need.
-You have to be a household name to attract support.
-We can t raise much because our cause makes people uncomfortable.
-We can t raise big money we don t know any rich people.
-Wealth is what mostly determines a person s willingness to give.
-You need a powerful board to have a successful campaign.
-You need a stable of annual donors to have a successful capital campaign.

In short, lively chapters, Grace skewers every one of these faulty notions.