Speaker 1: Think you got what it takes to be a great non-profit fundraiser? In this video, I'm going to share some of the top skills needed to be successful at fundraising for your non-profit or favorite cause. Welcome or welcome back. My name is Amber Melanie Smith and I am a non-profit founder and executive director and I've done my fair share of fundraising through my journey in the non-profit world. I love making these videos here on YouTube to help people who want to make an impact, whether that's through a non-profit or social enterprise or socially conscious business or just as a volunteer or leader in their community. As always, I hope that you find this video helpful and useful. Don't forget to give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more content like this. If you are starting a non-profit or designing a sustainable fundraising plan for a non-profit, be sure to check out my website founderoffulltime.com. I have some online courses there about those varied topics that might be helpful. Alright, so let's get into our topic today. Whether you are fundraising for a non-profit or cause that you care about as a volunteer or a board member or you are trying to raise money for a non-profit that you have started or you're trying to be a professional fundraiser, there are certain skills, soft skills and hard skills, that you need to be successful. In this video, I'm going to share seven skills in particular that I think all types of fundraisers need to be good at. And I also want to have the disclaimer that in an ideal world, everyone in your organization is contributing and helping with fundraising from all of your board of directors members, to your volunteers, to your staff in various capacities in different ways. So when I'm sharing these skills, you know, we can think about how other people on the team, even if they're not the designated fundraiser, might be able to use these skills to help with the bigger fundraising picture too. So let's get started. So I've broken these skills into two categories. The first is technical skills and knowledge and the second is soft skills. So starting with technical skills, the first skill that you need to be a great non-profit fundraiser is, of course, excellent writing and communication skills. Fundraising is basically 99% good communication, and by that I mean it's the way you talk about and write about your cause. It has to be simple, clear, and compelling enough to inspire people to give and, of course, understand it, because they probably won't give if they don't even understand what you do. So being able to be clear in that communication is very, very important. And if you're a good communicator and can understand how to translate a message or even a complex mission into something that people can easily understand, that's also going to translate into some of the more specific tasks that you will be expected to do as a fundraiser, such as grant writing, writing donor appeals, sharing impact reports with your donors, or creating marketing plans for fundraising campaigns. So it all feeds in together. The second skill that I'm going to talk about is computer skills, or you've got to be tech savvy enough to at least be able to navigate and properly use a CRM or a customer relationship management type of software. Fundraising requires excellent record keeping. As your donor base grows, you are most likely not going to remember the names and the details surrounding dozens or hundreds or maybe even thousands of people who might be supporting your cause or interested in one day supporting your cause if you can build a good enough relationship with them. So if you're not familiar, a CRM is a type of software used like a donor database where people store all of the information, the names, the contact information, email, phone number, mailing address, etc. about a donor or prospective donor, and it could include their giving information. So when was the last time they made a gift? How big was the gift? What amount of money was the gift? Do they have certain patterns of giving? Do they give at a certain time of year? Do they tend to give to certain types of projects that you're doing? And you can also usually input personal notes about your interactions with that donor, like the last time you met with them, something that they said that really stuck out to you that you want to remember. You can record it in your donor database or CRM. All of this is done so that you can go back and reference your notes about a potential donor and remember how to engage them further next time. A CRM is also helpful in engaging multiple team members in the act of fundraising because if you just have all the notes about the donors you're working with in your head, that doesn't help a board member over here or another staff member over here or a volunteer over there know what's in your head and be able to help you. So having people be able to access this CRM and work to schedule those meetings with donors and conversations with donors alongside you can really expand your fundraising efforts. The third skill I'm going to talk about is financial knowledge. Great fundraisers need to be able to both create budgets for programs and projects or fundraising or marketing campaigns and also be able to interpret and properly translate the organization's budget. A fundraiser needs to know what they're raising money for so a budget can clarify what are the dollar amounts needed in order to be able to execute this program or that project and that will be the incentive and the goal that they set to go raise that amount of money to meet the budget. So you've got to know how to read your budgets, you've got to be able to explain different aspects of the budget and make a case for some parts of the budget that might not be as exciting or inspiring to donors but you know that they're important anyway such as some of that infrastructure capacity building and overhead stuff. The fourth skill you've got to have as a great fundraiser is data and trends analysis and your CRM software that I mentioned before can usually really help you with this because you'll be able to identify various trends in giving. If you have a lot of donors who are giving in the month of December or in the month of May you can investigate why that might be the cause. If donors are responding really well to one appeal or campaign that you did but not another you can investigate that. Also organizations have to be accountable to the community and to their board of directors so being able to explain trends or data that is related to your organizations or your fundraising efforts is really important. Understanding these trends can also help you inform future efforts so when you are demonstrating oh look this interesting thing keeps happening over here or the donors are really responding to this type of campaign you can sit down with your team and collaborate and think about how can we replicate the success of this thing over here. The fifth skill is research and donor or sponsor prospecting which is the act of finding and identifying these potential donors or sponsors and then making a determination about if they're going to be a good fit. This is a little bit of an art form and takes some trial and error but the basics of it are that it's all about aligning your values and your interests. Most of the time if you find a donor who wants the same things for the world as you do they might be inspired by your cause. I talk a lot more about identifying prospective sponsors and donors in my fundraising course at my website foundertofulltime.com if you want to check that out too. Okay the sixth skill that I'm going to talk about under technical skills is event planning and I want to offer the disclaimer that not all fundraising does include nor should necessarily include fundraising events. I've talked in other videos about how events are very logistics heavy they take a lot of time to plan they might take a lot of resources to pull off effectively and that after all of that sometimes they aren't worth it financially and sometimes they are so just something to consider that events are just one tool in a fundraising arsenal. That said event planning is a great skill to have and there are other types of events besides fundraising events that a fundraiser might have to execute such as a donor stewardship event or a recognition event where you're thanking your top supporters. Skill number seven and the last one under the technical skills category that I'm going to share is some basic volunteer management leadership skills. You can greatly expand your fundraising efforts if you have a base of inspired knowledgeable and confident volunteers. So knowing how to manage these folks well is really key and that's everything from recruiting the people with the right skills to keeping them motivated throughout a fundraising campaign to knowing how to equip them with the right tools and information they need to be successful to help fundraise so definitely an important skill. Before I move on to soft skills I just want to share that if you are really serious about fundraising or perhaps you want to do it as a professional I highly recommend looking into getting the Certified Fundraising Executive Credentials or CFRE. There's some coursework and certification and some cost involved to get certified but it can be really worth it. All right let's get into eight soft skills now that are just so critical for fundraising professionals or fundraising people of any profession level. The first is resilience and agility because you are probably going to hear the word no a lot and you have to not let it get to you. Most people in the world are not going to donate to your non-profit and you just have to be okay with that. It's usually nothing personal. Your cause isn't a good fit or they aren't in the right economic position to make a donation at that time but maybe in the future. There are many reasons that someone could say no that have nothing to do with you as a person so just keep that in mind. As for agility there will be times when your donation campaigns or your appeals are not going very well or your fundraising events are something crazy is happening at them and it's a huge disaster and you're going to be needing to think on your feet and be agile and come up with solutions on the spot. Soft skill number two is being a great networker. Fundraising is all about relationships and math. I just commented a moment ago about how not everyone is going to fall in love with your cause and the math plays out. If you think about it you in order to have a good sized base of donors you have to know way more people than you have donors because not everyone that you know is going to become a donor, right? So you have to build those relationships and do a lot of outreach through networking, make a lot of contacts and connections. Then from all the people you know you've got to build relationships. You've got to find the people who might be interested or inspired by your cause. These are the people who might become future donors. That's smaller pool. Within that smaller pool then you have to find people who are able to make a donation and willing to make a donation. That's an even smaller pool. So you see it's kind of like a funnel, right? You've got to meet and know a lot of people to find the donors in the mix of all those folks to grow your donor database. The third soft skill is being a good conversationalist and actually introverts excel really well at this because donors are humans too and the more you're able to have an interesting and meaningful and deep connection with the donor the more likely they are to donate. So instead of the how's the weather questions or skimming across the surface level of a conversation being able to have a deeper conversation about values and life and philosophy can actually be very beneficial to your fundraising efforts. I once heard an amazing fundraising professional Gail Perry say the worst thing you can be to a donor is boring. So think about that when you go to have a conversation with a possible donor. Number four is being a great relationship builder and cultivator. I alluded to this earlier but fundraising is all about relationships. You have to be able to sustain those relationships over time though and that means being able to keep people engaged, keeping people in the know about your impacts and the work that your organization is doing. The fifth soft skill is being organized. Great fundraisers remember details. They remember a donor's birthday so they can say, hey happy birthday today. They remember when grants are due and if they can't remember all that stuff they're at least very very good at taking notes and setting up systems to remind themselves of those things. Soft skill number six is being a great observer, listener, and pattern finder. A good fundraiser is great at listening for and looking for opportunities for their non-profit or their cause. Perhaps you just heard about a new business opening up in town and they're going to need some good marketing and PR so partnering with your non-profit could be a great opportunity to achieve that. Maybe you were talking to a donor and they were talking about how they really love dogs and you happen to be a dog rescue non-profit or have an event coming up where dogs are allowed. Finding these little connection points can really help you build those relationships and find new donors. Seventh, fundraisers are great story finders and storytellers. They have to be able to listen for great stories that they hear that might relate to their cause and be able to share those stories with others and come up with their own stories because a good story is often the defining factor in someone making a donation. And the eighth and final soft skill talk about today is patience. Great fundraisers are patient. They know that fundraising takes time. It takes time to build relationships. It takes time to grow and they've got that staying power. All right, I want to hear from you now. What are some of your top skills or top superpowers and how do they help you with fundraising? Or how do you think that they could help you with fundraising after hearing about some of these other skills today? Share in the comments below. As I mentioned before, if you are starting a non-profit or developing a fundraising plan for a non-profit, I have some great online courses at my website foundertofulltime.com so I hope that you can check those out. I have a Facebook group also called Change the World or Bust where we have thousands of people from around the world making an impact and sharing each other their stories with each other and asking each other great questions. So I hope that you can join me there too. Finally, I also have a newsletter for change makers and non-profit leaders. You can find the link to subscribe to that below and opt in and opt out anytime you like. But it's there for you to get some great resources. As always, I hope that you found this video helpful and useful. Once again, I'm Amber Melanie Smith and I hope to see you next time.