Jason Roberts is an entrepreneur and writer who has a simple idea he calls “luck surface area.” It’s a useful tool for how to think about your organization’s fundraising, and here’s the gist:
The amount of good luck that comes your way is roughly equal to how much you do, multiplied by how many people know about it.
Doing × Telling = Amount of Luck
I love this idea because it names something we all already intuitively know: the more you do, and the more you’re out there, the more things tend to happen. (And it’s good to mention that some of those things that happen are good, and some are bad.)
This aligns perfectly with something we see in fundraising all the time: when organizations increase the amount of fundraising they send to individual donors, they receive more “unplanned” (lucky) gifts.
But there’s one thing to watch out for: you can’t just “tell” people what your organization is doing. That results in the kind of awareness that’s not particularly valuable. Make sure you are asking people to get involved.
The asking is where the lucky breaks come from:
- The donor who upgrades her gift because your e-appeal happens to land on a good day for her
- The board member who forwards your appeal letter to a friend who’s been looking for a cause
- The lapsed donor who comes back because you invited her to get involved
- The major donor who finally takes the meeting because she missed the first three messages
None of those things happen if your organization stays quiet. They only happen if your organization shows up – often, and on purpose.
(And yes, I know what some of you are thinking: “We don’t want to bother our donors.” I’d gently suggest that your donors are less bothered than you fear, more forgetful than you’d like, and far more tolerant of additional asks than you think. But that’s a different blog post.)
So if you want 2026 to be a luckier year for your nonprofit, that means one more email in October. It means an ask at the end of your spring newsletter, along with a reply card, instead of a hint and a URL. It means sending a new mailing in February. It means picking up the phone and calling a donor you haven’t heard from in a while.
Each one of those actions is a small expansion of your surface area. Each one is another chance for something good to happen.
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 Screen
- Steven Screen
- Steven Screen
- Steven Screen
