Here’s another reason to keep a fundraising campaign going even if you reach your goal: not all of your pledges will be fulfilled.
If you’re counting pledges towards your goal, you’re operating on faith that they will all be fulfilled – which doesn’t always happen.
One of Better Fundraising’s clients recently encountered this exact situation:
“One of our pledged donors who was planning to send $50k for the shortfall changed their mind and decided to consider a year-end gift instead. That $50k was part of our pledged internal total.
We continued fundraising since we hadn’t received it yet. I am so glad we followed your advice, if not we would still be short fundraising.”
I think we can all agree that it would have been terrible to stop a successful campaign but then discover that the organization was $50,000 short of the goal.
In capital campaigns, organizations are often told to expect a 90% pledge fulfillment rate for planning purposes. This means that if you’re trying to raise $1,000,000 and you’re receiving pledges, instead aim for $1,100,000 to cover yourself in case some pledges aren’t fulfilled.
The next time you’re running a campaign, don’t count all of your pledges towards your goal – remember that ‘life happens’ and keep going a little farther than you think you need to.