How to Get Fundraising Ideas, Part 3

This fundraising post is about creative thinking, as we usually think of it. Last time I wrote about a systematic way to explore different elements of fundraising in a search for new ideas. This post is about an intuitive technique for creating ideas by using random concepts to spark new thinking about fundraising.

New ideas are often just concepts taken from another field and adapted to fit. The concept of a library has been extended to garden tools. You can lease a washer and drier in Europe, now or pretty soon. With those two examples in mind, take a few minutes to examine this list of concepts:

Coupon
Vending machine
Clearance sale
Holiday sale
Product recommendations (People who bought X also enjoyed Y)
Layaway
Buy One Get One (free, half off, et cetera)
Lease
Deposits
Refer-a-friend
Credit
Renting
Sharing (bikes, cars)
Fractional ownership

Think about a specific fundraising challenge your organization is facing and take another look at the list. Try working with each concept in turn until you get tired or get a great new idea.

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9 Ways Cognitive Bias Undermines Social Change Efforts

This is going to be the first of many posts on how cognitive bias might undermine social change efforts. Yeah, I know. I will do my best to keep this concrete and interesting. A number of quirks in how our brains work might lead to mistaken judgments in many areas relevant to social change: problem analysis, strategy, program design, and advocacy. Maybe fundraising. Taking effective action on a certain problem is what activists want to do, so we'll come back to fundraising later. 1.Confirmation bias may cause us to look for reasons why a certain strategy or tactic is the right one. Supportive evidence gets woven into the narrative, lending support to the need for more education for women or more gun control or whatever the topic might be. Negative information gets tossed out. 2. Bandwagon effect -This may be a real problem when the resources devoted to addressing an issue get all of proportion to the seriousness of an issue. Instead, bandwagon jumping siphons away money and v...

Using SWOT Analysis to Rev Up Your Fundraising

Strategic planning, including SWOT analysis, is for small nonprofits, giant philanthropic foundations, and every other nonprofit. Every nonprofit that seeks financial support of any kind needs a strategy. The point is to make a plan and work the plan. Business gurus have shared a bunch of strategic planning tools, some generic and some made for a specific purpose. This post is about looking at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats - SWOT. Knowing about your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is step one in planning your fundraising efforts. SWOT - A Quick Review This is not the best place to run through SWOT analysis, but an overview will make it obvious why we need to do it. First, however, you should write down your fundraising goal. Then, you can do some analysis. Here are the steps: Strengths - What about your financial resources? What about your reputation and your connections? How big is your audience on social medi...

Fundraising Ideas

Raising money is a perennial challenge for nonprofits. The Great Recession has made things tougher for some and nearly impossible for others. Your nonprofit may be working hard to deal with fundraising challenges. Traditional thinking about fundraising might lead to thinking like this - “We need to raise $600,000 more money third year. What do we need to do to make this happen?” A discussion of grant writers, fundraising consultants and mailing lists follows. There is nothing wrong with this approach. At least some of that discussion needs to happen. But, new thinking might also be needed. Lateral thinking may help you get better results. Lateral thinking is (from Wikipedia) “solving problems through an indirect and creative approach.” The point of lateral thinking is to move “sideways” to new ideas and different ways of thinking. The point of this little essay is to point out another way of approaching the subject of fundraising. Lateral thinking itself suggests a broader approach to ...

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