It was an insightful start of the week at UnLtd India.
Fundraising is a crucial pillar for NGOs. Thanks to Reshma Anand, CEO of Hindustan Unilever Foundation, Pooja Taparia, Founder and Chief Executive of Arpan and Purnota Bahl, CEO and Founder of Cuddles Foundation who generously gave their time and candidly shared their experience, learnings on Fundraising: How to fundraise, what makes it easy and what can make it challenging and how to avoid some common mistakes.
A glimpse of what the fully packed Fundraising Strategy session looked like on Zoom Meetings
Sharing our key insights from this week’s session.
Power of connection, network
- In your early days, Start with family and friends and known circles. Ask for references. You will be surprised at how little we know our friends and the least expected person may just open the right doors.
- From every connection made, ask for one of the five gifts: time, influence, wealth, goods and voice.
- Rather than focusing only on a set pipeline and certain time of the year, spread the word about the impact and intent of your work in different networks, with different people round the clock, throughout the year.
- Follow-up on every lead, connection made.
Build Relationships
- Don’t see your funder conversation as a one off transaction. Get to know them, invest time with them.
- Take their help in co-creating the solution
- Focus on building a mutually benefitting long term relationship.
Engage with Stories of impact
- Use power of 1 – Share one relevant and relatable story of the problem you are trying to solve and the impact of your solution. Human brain gets more engaged emotionally with stories.
- To engage the logical brain, compliment your story with numbers.
- Share your stories in conversations, videos, blogs, podcasts, social media channels.
Cold calling vs Research
- Build insights about the goals and objectives of your prospective funders.
- Ask questions to understand what the funder’s needs are and how funding your organisation can support their goals.
- Approach funders who are aligned to the cause of your organisation. It will be easier to convert them rather than cold calling.
- Use your networks to get an introduction.
Honesty and Persistence pays
- Your honesty towards your cause and it’s impact should come across in all communications.
- Being humble and persistent are key requirements of fundraising. There will be good days and bad. Don’t be disheartened, if you get a no now, it can turn into a yes or open new doors. The ‘yes’ can even take a year or two of persistence, hence periodically follow-up.
- There are no right rules to periodicity of follow-ups, however once a month is good unless contact has specified a follow-up date- then that should be honored.
Contingency planning for continuous cash flow
- Build a diverse pool of donor organisations to reduce dependencies on few.
- Do reference checks and KYD’s – Know Your Donor to ascertain the source of funds. It is important to receive funds from legitimate sources to stay on the right side of the law.
Mindset – Ask from a position of power :
Last but not the Least, Approach funder’s with a mindset of being equal not less of. As social entrepreneurs, you are creating opportunities for your funders to make a positive difference to the world through your work minus all the hard work.
With that, the UnLtd India family wishes you all Happy Fundraising. If you have any questions related to fundraising, please tag UnLtd India and post them below and we would be happy to respond.
