Common mistakes fundraisers make  —

Over promising and under delivering

By Michael Bacon, CFRE

This month’s “Real Mistakes Fundraisers Make” focuses on the regrettable and all too common practice by fundraisers of making promises that we can’t (or don’t) keep to our donors.

At the June AFP meeting here in San Antonio, I outlined a number of mistakes that fundraisers make and this one is all too prevalent in our profession.  Because we care about our relationships with our donors, we want to make them happy and all too often end up damaging the connection instead.

This was true when one nonprofit offered complimentary tickets to an event and when Mr. and Mrs. Phil Anthropy came through the door, no tickets were available for them.  Ooops!  Another fundraiser told of mistakenly believing that a major donor to her organization only purchased a table for its annual gala to show support, never thinking the donor would actually want to attend himself and invite guests to sit at the table for which he paid!

All too often lack of attention to detail is the culprit, as was the case when one nonprofit fundraiser told me of her embarrassment when a corporate donor appeared at the annual gala and the corporate banner was nowhere to be found.  Telling a donor that his firm’s banner had been ‘misplaced’ is something none of us wants to do.

Instead, we should carefully adhere to our proverbial “event checklists” as well as ensure that when we promise donors an item or a service, that we can, indeed, deliver.  Sharing the planning among a cadre of volunteers or staff is helpful in making sure these all too common mistakes don’t happen to YOU.