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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Unlock new growth opportunities by transforming your organization's approach to fundraising
In Great Fundraising Organizations, renowned nonprofit consultant Alan Clayton delivers a proven blueprint for charities and non-profits worldwide to scale their fundraising efforts and their effectiveness. Based on data gathered over twenty years of work with more than 500 organizations including Unicef and WWF, this book explains exactly what works and why, revealing to readers the rigorously researched mindsets, strategies, and practices in use by Great Fundraising Organizations (GFOs)—rare organizations that have the ability to unlock the fundraising revenue they need to meet or exceed performance and mission goals.
Accessible, confident, and infused with Clayton's signature style of observational humor, this book delivers everything readers need to fundraise more effectively with certainty, clarity, and confidence. Some of the ideas explored by Clayton include:
- Evidence to explain why some non-profits dramatically grow their revenues whilst others don't.
- What makes leadership for a Great Fundraising Organization different.
- That a precise set of internal behaviours are more important in driving growth than external factors.
- Why some fundraising communications drive growth and why some don't.
Great Fundraising Organizations earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of nonprofit CEOs, directors of fundraising, board chairs and members, and all fundraising professionals seeking to apply tried-and-tested methods for fundraising success and growth to their organizations.
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Seitenzahl: 362
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction: “How Can It Be So Hard to Save a Child?”
Learning from the Best
Research on the Great Fundraising Organizations
Discovering the Red Dot
Turning Intuition into Methodology
What You Can Expect from This Book
The Delight of Doing a Good Thing
Part I: Triggering the Red Dot
Chapter 1: Two Businesses, One Mission
Two Businesses
Three Conflicts
Be the Best at Both
What Can You Do?
Chapter 2: From Governance to Growth
The Trifecta Is a Leadership Issue
Shifting Mindsets: From Governance to Growth
Chapter 3: Alignment Begins with the New Ambition
Cascading Effect
Communications Hierarchy
Purpose Versus New Ambition
“We Have a Problem. You Can Help Solve It.”
Chapter 4: Not Any Ambition Will Do
Pragmatism to Idealism
Why, What, How
Checklist for a Good Ambition
Chapter 5: Investment and Ambition
Deciding Your Financial Aspiration
The Power of Long-Term Thinking
Understanding Investment
Types of Investments
Sources of Investment
Calculating Investment
Chapter 6: Culture and Ambition
Why a Donor-Conscious Organization?
What Stops Great Fundraising?
Creating a Donor-Conscious Organization
Part II: Striving for Emotional Excellence
Chapter 7: You Are in the Emotions Business
Prejudice Against Emotions
Truth Well-Told
The Science of Storytelling: Focus Your Emotion
Find Your Magic
Note
Chapter 8: Identifying Donor Needs
Identifying Versus Changing Needs
Why People Give
Identifying Your Donors
Identifying Your Donor’s Needs
Chapter 9: Meeting Donor Needs
Meeting Donor Needs
Exquisite Stories
Creating Great Fundraising Communications
Where Does Brand Fit In?
Chapter 10: Financial Leadership
Understand Lifetime Value and Growth
Test to Make Ideas Work
Be Proactive
Get on the Front Foot
Chapter 11: Leadership Decisions
Hierarchy of Purpose
Fear of Criticism
Chapter 12: How to Get Going
Eight Steps to Success
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure I.1 The Red Dot.
Figure I.2 Growth charts for a selection of Great Fundraising Organizations....
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 One set of customers.
Figure 1.2 Two sets of customers.
Figure 1.3 Two sets of customers, explained.
Figure 1.4 Trócaire growth chart.
Figure 1.5 The nonprofit culture clash.
Figure 1.6 Giles Pegram’s study.
Figure 1.7 Two businesses, different communications.
Figure 1.8 Royal Flying Doctors Service growth chart.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Guide Dogs growth chart.
Figure 2.2 Feenix growth chart.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 WWF Norway growth chart.
Figure 3.2 Communications hierarchy.
Figure 3.3 Triggering multiple Red Dots.
Figure 3.4 Children’s Hospices Across Scotland growth chart.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 International Justice Mission growth chart.
Figure 4.2 Stichting het Gehandicapte Kind growth chart.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Compound growth (or decline) based on marginaldevelopments.
Figure 5.2 Growth charts for a selection of Great Fundraising Organizations....
Figure 5.3 Donor pyramid.
Figure 5.4 Børns Vilkår growth chart.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Lutheran World Relief growth chart.
Figure 6.2 The building blocks.
Figure 6.3 Meeting reciprocal needs.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Claire House Children’s Hospice growth chart.
Figure 8.2 The space where the “why” of the nonprofit intersects with the “w...
Figure 8.3 Always, maybes, and nevers.
Figure 8.4 Animal charities.
Figure 8.5 Children and youth charities.
Figure 8.6 Armed forces charities.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 The Royal National Lifeboat Institution growth chart.
Figure 9.2 Building out your fundraising communications.
Figure 9.3 Sliding door story.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 How front foot are you on the following?
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 Macular Society growth chart.
Conclusion
Figure C.1 The master graphic.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction: “How Can It Be So Hard to Save a Child?”
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for Great Fundraising Organizations
“A very simple idea morphed into a 10-year program of research, the most exciting scientific project I have ever been involved with, and the generation of literally billions of dollars for nonprofits around the globe.”
—Professor Adrian Sargeant,Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy
“Being part of this journey has been a privilege – I wholeheartedly endorse Great Fundraising the book, the training, and the people at Revolutionise International Ltd. This has underpinned my approach to building teams, engaging donors, and influencing my organisations to achieve growth every year for the last 10 years.”
—Jayne George,Director of Fundraising, Marketing and Media, the RNLI, UK
“Unrestricted income means sustainability, independence, and innovation for any INGO. At Lutheran World Relief, we have practically doubled our unrestricted revenue in five years since implementing the Great Fundraising programme that this book lays out so clearly. We now have an organisation which is united behind our vibrant fundraising culture.”
Vice President for External Relations,Lutheran World Relief, USA
“There are many good ideas but there are a few great ideas. The challenge is to know the difference. And with fundraising, it is Great Fundraising that propels your organisation towards enabling the great ideas to happen. The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia is a great organisation with great services underpinned by great fundraising thanks to the principles and practices in this book. We at RFDS have grown our service capacity exponentially by placing the “business of fundraising” at the core of organizational survival and growth. There is no mission if there is no money, and this book enables the board and staff to achieve the ambitions every organization has for the people it serves.”
—Scott Chapman,CEO, Royal Flying Doctors Service, Australia
“Great Fundraising Organizations provides the key missing piece to achieving practical, sustainable, fundraising growth in the real world. By taking a deep dive into what makes an entire organization effective, it represents an important milestone in fundraising research. These proven strategies can transform your organization as they have done for so many others around the world.”
—Russell N. James III, JD, PhD, CFP®Professor & CH Foundation Chair in Personal Financial PlanningDirector of Graduate Studies in Charitable PlanningTexas Tech University
“This book is magnificent. It’s the book the charity sector needs right now! It needs to be seen by every staff member, board member … and donor! Anyone interested in working for or giving to a charity should read this – a wonderful insight into how charities do, and should, work. Early career fundraisers will get a blueprint for success. Senior, experienced fundraisers will feel seen and validated. And everyone will feel empowered, inspired, and energised for success!”
—Alex Hyde-Smith,Chief Marketing Officer, Alzheimer’s Society, UK
“What I love most about this great book is that it isn’t only about theory, it’s all about practice. Alan Clayton knows how to achieve great fundraising results because he’s done it, over and over again. Great Fundraising Organizations defines the essential ingredients, shows how to assemble them, then guides us through the process that makes the dream a reality. The result is Utopian fundraising success.”
—Ken Burnett,author, Relationship Fundraising and other books.
“Alan is my favourite fundraising expert and this book will make him one of yours as well! His hard-won vast knowledge and worldwide experience is passed onto you to help change the basic way you think about people, organizations, and creating world-beating fundraising ideas, processes, and results. Make no mistake he will change the way you see the world!”
—Pat Dade,Founder Director, Cultural Dynamics Strategy and Marketing Ltd.
“We really truly believe we will beat macular disease now because of being a Great Fundraising organisation, and those with macular disease believe it too. Macular Society was an early adopter of the practice detailed in this book and we have seen tremendous growth as a result.”
—Emma Malcolm,Director of Fundraising & Marketing, Macular Society
GREAT FUNDRAISING ORGANIZATIONS
WHY AND HOW THE WORLD’S BEST CHARITIES EXCEL AT RAISING MONEY
ALAN CLAYTON
Copyright © 2025 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved, including rights for text and data mining and training of artificial technologies or similar technologies.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:
ISBN: 9781394278251 (cloth)ISBN: 9781394278268 (ePub)ISBN: 9781394278275 (ePDF)
Cover Design and Image: WileyAuthor Photo: Revolutionise International, 2024
To Wee Kenny Burnett, who took a chance on a long shot
Foreword
Many good things spring from fundraising conventions. There are usually a sprinkling of educational sessions that really resonate, and the plenary sessions can be genuinely inspiring and uplifting. But by far the most value conventions offer is the networking and the conversations they engender. And so it was with the Great Fundraising project. Born of a post-conference gin and tonic, what was initially a very simple idea morphed into a 10-year program of research, the most exciting scientific project I have ever been involved with and the generation of literally billions of dollars for nonprofits around the globe.
This is a book about how to achieve growth in fundraising, but not just growth per se – massive growth. Even back in 2012 we were beginning to understand a little of what made for good fundraising and best practices in a plethora of different channels and media. But no-one had very deliberately focused on organizations that had excelled in a more strategic sense: identifying an audacious goal, creating whole organizational buy-in for that goal, and then doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling income as a consequence. Just what was it about this handful of organizations that drove their success?
When Alan Clayton first commissioned the research, I thought we might end up with the seven habits of successful fundraising leaders or some such, a sense perhaps of how great fundraising leaders behaved and the pattern of actions that these leaders took to deliver success for their organization. There was certainly an element of this, but we ended up with much, much more.
There did appear to be some characteristics shared by our great fundraising leaders. They were certainly passionate about the causes they were working for, defining success not as their personal success but rather in terms of what the organization had achieved. They also had a steely belief that their audacious fundraising goals could be achieved and spent the majority of their time focused internally, getting the organization to the point where it was truly “fundraisable” and shared that belief too.
Our great fundraising leaders were uniquely focused on their teams, investing in their personal development, building their confidence, and in the case of more senior folks, grooming them to be great fundraising leaders in their own right. This approach to leadership engendered a high level of motivation, belief, and loyalty. Because of this, great fundraising teams did not suffer the churn that plagues most nonprofits. They were typically in place for five to seven years. They desired to see things through.
We also learned a lot about the culture of philanthropy built by our outstanding leaders. Notable here is the celebration of philanthropy. In my experience, most nonprofits are very good at celebrating mission success and what they achieve for the communities they serve. But they are less good at celebrating the philanthropy and the fundraisers that made those successes possible. Our great fundraising organizations were, and there was also a broader sense that their fundraisers would be acknowledged, valued, and rewarded for being the professionals they are. Key, too, to the notion of a philanthropic culture was a strong, unifying, and deeply emotional case for support. As I write that sentence it sounds so simple, yet of course it is not. Many organizations have a plethora of programs all of which are deemed important. So picking the right project, or more typically finding a way to synthesize the right projects to arrive at an appropriate case, can be laden with emotional baggage and fear of internal conflict. One of the central contributions of Alan’s Great Fundraising project is that it teaches a process for making the right choices and developing something so powerful it can be transformational for both team members and donors alike. All want to be a part of making it a reality.
We’ve certainly come a long way in the past decade, looking at great fundraising in multiple countries and through a variety of different lenses. We’ve also looked at the relationship between branding and fundraising, offering a new take on what adds value and how it might be enhanced. And our most recent project has looked at fundraisers, their well-being, their experiences of fundraising, and the things that most inspire (or demotivate) them in their roles. Great fundraising, as I have already explained, requires teams that see it through, so understanding what makes those teams tick is hugely important.
You’re about to read a very personal take from Alan on the implications of all this research. Having data is one thing, but interpreting that data and turning it into something practical, quite another. In my experience, gathering data is the easy part. I will be forever grateful to Alan for allowing me to be a part of this project. It was certainly fulfilling to be given a window into so many great fundraising organizations, but I’m most grateful to have been witness to how the learning could then be leveraged to help others aspiring to that greatness – and to see the massive expansion of philanthropic income that resulted. In case study after case study, Alan continued to hone the best way to use these results and craft them into a unique yet simple process that could be adopted by all.
He also introduced me to the emotional space and the power of that in breaking down barriers between fundraising and other functions, creating buy-in right across an organization. You’re about to experience a little of that emotion and to feel its power in a very intimate way as Alan tells the stories at the core of this project. It is important to reflect on how he makes you feel and why that feeling was so powerful for the focal organization and its stakeholders. As neuroscience now affirms, it is emotion that drives action, while logic leads only to conclusions. In all individuals’ fundraising, emotion is important. In great fundraising, it is both fundamental and core.
Enjoy your journey in great fundraising.
Professor Adrian SargeantInstitute for Sustainable PhilanthropyJune 2024
Introduction“How Can It Be So Hard to Save a Child?”
This book is about growth.
The charities mentioned in these pages are part of a set that has raised billions. They have done so by implementing big-picture insights based on our research of the Great Fundraising Organizations to create transformational growth across the long term. These numbers are no exaggeration. The data exists and is in the public domain. More importantly, each organization has used its share of the billions to advance its mission and increase its services.
It is my earnest hope that by the end of this book, you will be on the path to raising billions too. Or millions, or thousands – whatever growth your organization’s purpose demands of your fundraising.
But this story starts in another place entirely – it begins with a person I failed. Years ago, I knew a man who was an excellent aid worker in the Global South. He’d given up a very prestigious job in the United Kingdom to deliver aid at the front lines in some of the most devastated parts of the world. His work was phenomenal. But there came a point where he wanted a more settled life while still working and helping children, and so he decided fundraising might be the career for him.
At the time, I was the manager of a small but very effective fundraising team. We were looking to expand, and we got an application from this man. I was thrilled. This person was a pure-born fundraiser. He was a storyteller extraordinaire: he could meet people and tell them exactly what problem the nonprofit was addressing and what their donations could achieve. Plus, he was lovely to spend time with; he was one of the most present and caring but determined individuals you could come across. Soft-spoken but steely.
When he joined our organization, his work was great. Donors loved to spend time with him, and he generated significant gifts because his relationships with the donors were so powerful. But over time, I watched his morale drop.
As his line manager, I did what I could to support him. But each week, when we began our routine meeting, I could tell his faith and enthusiasm in fundraising was fading. He was finding it difficult to survive on the salary he was on. He couldn’t get what he needed from the other departments in the organization to tell the donors the right stories to make them feel connected to the nonprofit. He was consistently being told off for his personal approach to fundraising and for how he communicated the organization’s stories. He was being criticized by his peers despite his achievements. He was spending more time dealing with the internal politics of the organization than raising money.
Even now, after 25 years, it is gutting for me to tell this story. It was my responsibility as a fundraising leader to help him, and I was entirely unable to do so. I took him out to coffee one day to try to talk some faith into him, and he was depressed. I remember him sitting across from me, shoulders slumped, drinking his coffee slowly. He said, “Alan, all I want to do is a good thing. How can it be so hard to save a child?”
I was young and inexperienced in leadership at the time; I didn’t have answers. Two weeks later, he left fundraising and moved back into aid work, where he’s had a brilliant career. But here’s the thing: he should have been the greatest fundraiser the world had ever seen. He had all the makings of one. Except I failed him. I didn’t know how to give him what he needed to change the world.
It was the first time I had been directly in charge of someone with immense talent, and it was horrifying to me that he quit. He was lost and confused, struggling in a broken system, desperate to raise more money to do good and unable to do so, and I couldn’t give him any answers.
But it became the catalyst I needed to go look for them.
Learning from the Best
For the next 25 years, I went on a quest to understand why it can be so hard to save a child and what we as fundraising leaders can do about it. Following my failure, I left the organization and decided to learn from the best. So I reached out to whom I considered to be the very best, Ken Burnett.
I was fortunate enough to be mentored by Ken for a decade, which probably makes me one of the luckiest fundraisers alive. He helped me grow from an angry young man to a somewhat immature but more stable middle-aged man. More importantly, he taught me that fundraising at its heart was about donors and not the organization. As he wrote in his 2002 book Relationship Fundraising, fundraising was where everyone could win, which meant it wasn’t a necessary evil but a good thing in its own right. These were revolutionary insights that changed the way I approached my profession.
During that decade, I established my own agency. We had clients that were spectacularly successful, and we had some that struggled. Both successes and failures were important because I learned by comparing the two and finding patterns. I discovered that the differentiating factor between my clients that succeeded and those that struggled was the internal culture of the organization and their relationship with my agency. Clients that didn’t do so well were often mired in internal conflict and kept us at a distance as a vendor. The ones that succeeded had a different approach. We were very much a part of their team, rather than just a supplier of communications and data.
This observation was confirmed by the very first bit of research I did. At the end of the decade, I was moving out of the agency and wasn’t sure what to do next. So I sat down with each of our clients that we had worked with for a significant period of time and interviewed them about what they considered to be the critical success factors in their relationship with our agency. None of them said it was the creative communications or the analyses or the strategy work. Instead, they said it was mood, energy, focus, and chemistry: the symbiosis of our agency team and their people that created an effect on their internal culture, confidence, and the pace they could work at.
It was an incredible insight. I realized that people were not necessarily looking for another supplier of high-quality communications and data. They were looking for someone who could help them build the capacity, energy, and focus of their fundraising teams. I decided to not set up another agency and instead began to research acceleration. Since then, I have spent the last decade building Revolutionise International so we can accelerate people with purpose.
There are not a lot of books in the fundraising sector about acceleration, but there are plenty in the private sector. The more I learned, the more I could distinguish both parallels and differences between the private sector versus the nonprofit sector. We began to apply some of these insights to organizations with immediate effect and saw quite a few successes. More importantly, at this stage, we uncovered the primacy of emotion, both as a driver of growth and a blocker of it. I was still working with Ken Burnett at the time, and we ran a highly successful seminar series called “Emotional Fundraising.”
I didn’t know it then, but I was circling closer and closer to a unified approach and methodology. I couldn’t see it as yet – the answers were fragmented, disjointed, the thesis unformed. That would change once I met Professor Adrian Sargeant.
Research on the Great Fundraising Organizations
Professor Sargeant was the foremost academic on fundraising in both the United Kingdom and the United States. He had been a professor of fundraising since 2001, and I’ve long regarded him as the go-to academic on the subject. We had never managed to have an in-depth chat until now, but I had extraordinary respect for his work.
I met Adrian for a single gin and tonic – one of the last drinks I would have, actually. We talked about his research for a bit, and then he asked what we were up to.
“Well,” I said, “I think we’ve identified that the biggest driver of fundraising growth is behavioral.”
Adrian put his glass down on the table and looked at me through the top half of his eyes. “Really?” he said.
“Well, we have no official research,” I said, “so I cannot say we’ve identified it. But let’s put it this way: it is more than a hunch.”
“Any interest in getting that research?”
We had looked for existing data, of course, but there were no studies on the behaviors of the Great Fundraising Organizations. If we wanted scientific research and data, we would need to go out and conduct the studies ourselves.
Turns out Adrian was very keen to research the behaviors of the Great Fundraising Organizations compared to organizations that struggled or flatlined. The problem, he told me wryly, was getting funding for that kind of research.
So I went home and thought about it on my commute. By the end of that train ride, I had decided to fund the research. I had to pay the first installment of it personally because I didn’t have a company vehicle at the time, but I knew it was important. This could change how we understood fundraising. It could be the catalyst that finally answered the question I had been asking these many years: How can it be so hard to save a child, and what can we do about it?
This first research study that we commissioned from Professor Sargeant, his partner Professor Jen Shang, and their team provided the insights that form the foundations for this book. Since then, over the years, we have commissioned several more rounds of academic research from Professor Sargeant and his team: into leadership, branding and communications, legacies, fundraiser recruitment, retention, and inspiration (i.e. fundraising team motivation). All our research reports can be downloaded on our organization website, Revolutionise International (revolutionise.com). We have also internally carried out a large set of action research: over 400 interviews with successful and unsuccessful organizations to understand what works. This action research is informal, but it was hugely insightful. Lastly, we have done detailed casework of more than a hundred organizations in over 20 countries.
Our first round of academic research focused on the Great Fundraising giants in the large Western economies, but since then, we have been diligent about looking at a wide range of organizations across a whole spectrum of causes, sizes, and geographies. We’ve worked with organizations from the Philippines to India to Argentina and from Serbia to Ethiopia to Namibia, with global UNICEF to regional Strømme Foundation fundraising in the southern tip of Norway, from the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, to L’École Polytechnique de Lausanne, Switzerland, to St. Labre Indian School in Montana, United States, and from Feed the Children, United States, to Ikamva Labantu, South Africa. We’ve partnered with museums, research institutions, INGOs, social entrepreneurs, gastroenterologists, and civil rights movements – and a lot more in between these extremes. From this varied research, we have collected hard data that forms the source material for everything you will read in this book.
So what did that first study reveal?
Discovering the Red Dot
According to our parameters, a Great Fundraising Organization fulfills three criteria:
Transformational growth: To qualify as a Great Fundraising Organization, it is not sufficient to inherit a big fundraising program and be good at managing it. The growth we were looking at was growth with purpose; this means the organizations were expanding at a significant enough level to impact the purpose or mission of the organization. In other words, growth that simply covered existing liabilities did not count; it had to be growth that went toward making the world a better place.
Sustainable growth: We were looking for growth that lasted, not a one-hit, one-year wonder. There are often brilliant fundraising initiatives, the most famous of which is the ice bucket challenge that raised $250 million or more. We are not dismissing the incredible impact of these initiatives on an organization, but we wanted to measure long-term and sustainable growth rather than one-off.
Purpose-driven growth: Great Fundraising Organizations engineer and experience growth that is driven by the purpose of their organization, i.e. the problem they were established as a nonprofit to solve. This means that the people donating to a Great Fundraising Organization have fully bought into the nonprofit’s mission. There is another form of fundraising, which is to annoy people until they give you money, but we were looking at those organizations that managed to attract true believers.
So Great Fundraising Organizations, according to our parameters, experienced transformational, sustainable, and purpose-driven growth. The first question we asked ourselves was, How did that growth happen?
When we looked at the numbers and data, we realized that Great Fundraising Organizations experienced what we called surges of growth. It was never a straight line or smooth graph of upward expansion when viewed across a long-enough timescale. There would be periods of rapid growth, then a period of flatlining or modest decline before another surge of growth.
It is interesting to note that these periods of flatlining or decline did not coincide with economic factors. They weren’t caused by economic instability or recession. Likewise, surges were not created by economic booms. There was no correlation with the state of the economy. This pattern seemed to be solely organization driven.
Similarly, the timescale of the growth or flatlining was unique to each Great Fundraising Organization. The bigger organizations could have a growth surge that was 10 years long before flatlining, mid-size organizations usually maintained a growth surge across 4 to 5 years, and the smaller organizations flatlined and then surged again within 2 years. But the shape was always the same: surge, then dip or flatline, and then surge again.
So we asked ourselves: What was the difference in the organization when it was growing versus when it was flatlining? We were lucky enough to study the growth of some of the Great Fundraising Organizations for a substantial period, about 20–30 years, which allowed us to examine continuity, and we interviewed people at these organizations to understand what was changing between the growth and decline phases. It rapidly became obvious that the difference between when the organization was growing versus struggling was the internal state of the nonprofit. During a surge, they were focused and energized. When the nonprofit was flatlining, they were tired and confused.
Every time a Great Fundraising Organization came to the end of a surge and began to struggle, the great fundraising leaders, intuitively, began creating focus and energy again to create another surge. When you look back over the research, it becomes very clear that all these leaders were using an extremely consistent but not realized methodology. They hadn’t articulated this methodology to themselves; they were simply executing it based on instinct, shaped by their experience and abilities.
The data shows there are two key elements to creating this shift in mood:
When an organization was flatlining (i.e. tired or confused), they tended to look inward, at their structures and processes. When an organization was growing (i.e. focused and vitalized), they got their energy from having a single, external goal or dream that helped them focus on solving the bigger problem they wanted to eradicate in the world (i.e. their purpose).
When the mood shifted from confused and tired to focused and energized, it switched in a single moment. We called this moment the “Red Dot.”
The Red Dot is crucial for Great Fundraising Organizations. The dots you see in Figure I.1 are all Red Dot moments, each signaling a switch from decline to a surge of growth.
The Red Dot is a moment in time. It is a board meeting where the board makes three key decisions that are required to create a massive surge of growth. But what leads up to that board meeting is an in-depth set of internal changes in the organization that give the board the confidence to make these three decisions, and that gives the organization its focus and energy back.
This is what this book is about. Throughout the following chapters, we will show you how to change your organization to create focus and energy so you can trigger that Red Dot moment and create a surge of growth – and then, exactly like the Great Fundraising Organizations, once that surge has ended, do it all over again.
Figure I.1 The Red Dot.
Source: Revolutionise International Limited 2024.
Turning Intuition into Methodology
The methodology you will encounter in this book has been created by turning the instincts and insights of the great fundraising leaders, along with research, data, and testing, into a process that any nonprofit can follow. Creating this methodology was an iterative process over the years.
In early 2013, I knew the question we were asking was: How do you trigger transformational growth in an organization? So I took the research that Professors Sargeant and Shang did for us into the desert in Arizona for a month, and I sat and studied it so that I could put it into a format that would be useful for fundraising leaders based on experience and casework.
Since then, for 12 years, our team at Revolutionise International has put that format into action. We have worked with many organizations, some of which stalled but many of which succeeded. Based on this action research, we commissioned further studies from Professors Sargeant and Shang (those several rounds of academic research we mentioned, plus the casework), and we have introduced a structured learning process into our own organization so we can add more detail to our learnings, month by month and quarter by quarter, which allows us to be granular about specific actions and behaviors. All our results have been guided by our academic research. You will read many of the client success stories in this book.
We learned that what distinguishes a Great Fundraising Organization from others is how the nonprofit behaves with regard to fundraising. Externally, the only limit on a fundraising team is their total market universe. Cancer, for example, has a very big market in most countries, while other causes, like macular disease, may have smaller markets. But excluding the total market universe, the key driver for growth was internal behavior.
It didn’t matter if the organization was big or small or what country they operated in. Despite cultural, linguistic, and local employment differences, there were certain key behaviors that triggered a Red Dot. These behaviors were universal; they applied to organizations as big as UNICEF and as small as a local community foundation in South Island, New Zealand. In every case, they led to growth.
Figure I.2 shows a sample of organizations we have worked with to implement our findings on the Great Fundraising Organizations. They are selected to show that the behaviors that lead to growth are independent of size, geography, or cause. In fact, the independence of country is such a significant insight that we have invested in Fundraising World (fundraisingworld.com), run by Howard Lake and Connor Seaton, to facilitate worldwide knowledge and skill-share and learning.
Figure I.2 Growth charts for a selection of Great Fundraising Organizations.
Source: Revolutionise International Limited 2024.
There are a few assumptions and decisions that can help you understand our data. Since this is a book about growth, most of our numbers are quoted in percentage growth of top-line revenue. There is no doubt that the profit created by fundraising – i.e. the absolute value of the money spent on the organization’s purpose – is the most important aspect of fundraising, but this is not what we are measuring. We are measuring growth, not profit, which is why our numbers are percentage growth of top-line revenue.
Secondly, most of the case studies in this book are at least five years old because otherwise we would not have been able to measure sustainable growth accurately. We have many more organizations working with us that are earlier in their journeys, but we cannot include their data because we need a good five years. Some of these organizations are rolling out at scale, such as Make a Wish International, which has provided their bespoke version of Great Fundraising education to their multiple country affiliates. Make a Wish Netherlands was the pioneer of this program before the international office picked it up and has achieved 315% growth in their monthly giving program in three years. Others are following their lead, with Canada poised to be the next mover.
What You Can Expect from This Book
If you are a fundraising director looking to plug a short-term deficit in your nonprofit or make more money by next month, then this is not the book for you. If, however, you are looking for a methodology on how to transform your nonprofit to break that fundraising ceiling and create long-term, sustainable, and transformational growth, then you are in the right place.
Transformational growth requires you to first transform your organization by bringing in energy and focus through behavioral change. The following chapters will not offer you advice on how to execute the details of fundraising, but they will show you how to systematically and culturally build a Great Fundraising Organization to trigger a Red Dot. Our focus is on the big picture, not on the minute.
This is also a book about leadership. Focus and energy in an organization come from behavior and belief, and the root of behavior and belief is good fundraising leadership. Ultimately, this is a book about how you can develop your leadership skills and abilities to create focus and energy to build a Great Fundraising Organization. It is about how you can create an environment and give your team the tools they need to change the world. I was given my first fundraising leadership job 25 years ago, and I failed at it. I never want you to feel the same.
Moreover, this is a book about emotions. One of the questions we had to ask ourselves when analyzing the research was, Is there a difference between leading a fundraising organization and any other commercial venture? The answer was a resounding yes, and the differentiator was the significance of emotions in fundraising. People donate for emotional reasons. The reason your organization was founded is emotional (someone wanted to make the world a better place). The reasons why people get focused and vitalized or tired and discouraged are all emotional. At the end of the day, a fundraising business is supported by data, logic, analysis, and structures, but it is driven by an emotional need and an emotional solution. So on top of the analytical work one needs to be trained in and excel at, you must also strive for emotional excellence. Emotions drive behavior, which drives growth.
This book is divided into two parts. Part I
