The time in between when you make a fundraising ask, and when you start to receive gifts, is tough.
You’ve completed your work. You’ve thought it through. There’s nothing you can do to make it better and then of course you start to worry. What if there’s a typo? What if the link goes to the wrong page? What if, as the people at your event pick up their giving forms, they aren’t inspired?
But also, it’s a time of excitement and expectation. You can’t wait to have people react to it, to hear what questions they have, to see the money start to come in.
And you never know whether it’s going to work. (Well, when it’s the 15th time you’ve done a Back To School campaign and they all work great, you are pretty sure. But you still don’t know.)
And after the “in between” tension of waiting, there’s the first gift that comes in 3 minutes after you send the e-appeal. There’s the long-lapsed major donor who calls after receiving your letter. And sometimes it’s middling results and a realization of what you could have done better. Every once in a great while it’s just mostly silence.
Always exciting. Sometimes a little stressful.
This tension and expectation “in between” will always be a part of trying to grow your impact. Because if you want to grow, you need to talk to more people than you can talk to one-to-one. Which means that for the life of your organization you’re always going to be making asks of groups, and sending out letters & emails, and then experiencing the “in between.”
Embrace it.
Steven Screen is Co-Founder of The Better Fundraising Company and lead author of its blog. With over 30 years' fundraising experience, he gets energized by helping organizations understand how they can raise more money. He’s a second-generation fundraiser, a past winner of the Direct Mail Package of the Year, and data-driven.
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
- Steven Screenhttps://betterfundraising.com/author/steven/
