My Biggest Fundraising Mistakes: Just Because It Works Once....
Friday, September 10, 2010
Doesn't mean it will necessarily work again!
That's a lesson I quickly learned when I moved from Darlington to Peterborough.
As Corporate/Community Fundraiser at St Teresa's Hospice I'd had a lot of success (working with my boss) in selling various small items of merchandise in companies.
It was a simple, but effective strategy.
We got to visit people regularly in their workplace, got our faces known, made a profit on the merchandise and built relationships with a wide range of people.
The major payback from this was that we were always at the front of people's minds when they were deciding on a charity of the year, were having a dress down day. doing a sponsored event etc.
It also got us introductions to senior managers/decision makers if we had a sponsorship proposal, were holding a corporate event or wanted to work with the company in another way.
So, what do I do when I move 160 miles down the A1 to Peterborough?
I never want to see a flashing Christmas badge again!
Buy 10,000 flashing Christmas badges and a few thousand teddies on the assumption that we'd shift them no problem given how many more firms there were in the area and it would be the beginning of a wonderful new relationship with them.
How I was wrong!
Despite the best efforts of all the team, we just couldn't get rid of them. As many of the offices were larger, there was a lot more bureaucratic hoops to jump through, people had never done it before or were simply not interested. The upshot was that we were left lot's of stock and I had egg on my face.
In fact, whenever I've been back to the office to visit I get ribbed about it and they've presented me with various items of unsold merchandise on occasions!
It was back to the drawing board for corporates in Peterborough and, after another failure with corporate events, I eventually found a strategy that worked - attending lots of networking events. This was something I'd never even considered when in Darlington, but it worked (and continues to work) really well for the hospice.
Key Learnings:
Just because something works once, doesn't mean it will work again.
Do your market research before launching a new fundraising initiative.
Keep evaluating your successful fundraising and never stop looking for ways to improve it.
Don't be afraid to admit your mistakes, learn from them, and then try something different.
Get to know your audience and meet them where they are at, not where you want them to be.
This is the second in a series of posts, where I reflect on some of the biggest mistakes I've made in fundraising. Hopefully you can learn from some of the errors I've made over the years!