How many times have you seen a non profit making a heap of non profit fund and using it for some creative community work? Probably you also wanted to create a big fund like your competitor? You may also ask yourself, how on the earth did that non profit pooled so much fund. Well, it is not too difficult! This big pool of fund was possible only due to some tricks or secrets adopted by that non profit. If you want to collect funds of a big magnitude, we have some of the most unusual secrets for you.
The way you run your fundraising campaign will decide the level of success in raising a reasonable amount of funds. To create a successful campaign is not as easy it feels, given its complications involved in first identifying those donors, then to contact all of them with your proposals, and finally getting success in winning a fund request. However with right strategy and tactics, anyone can get a reasonable level of success in their quest for funds.
Established fundraising techniques suggest us that fundraising effort is a complicated solicitation process of seeking funds from those organizations, who are seasoned donors, with different motives and goals. As these donors, be they big corporations or very small local groups, generally receive hundreds of funding requests every day, it is often very difficult for them to award grants and dominations to all of them.
Understanding how their minds work is too difficult and as result most of the fund seekers keep groping in the dark without any tangible results. As their priorities and objectives keep changing every year, you'll need to devise a mechanism of finding a good donor, who fits your non profit and its goals. Conventional wisdom says it is as difficult as finding a needle in the haystack. Bu it may not be necessarily so- that is if you know how to act!
Here are some unknown secrets, which we have learnt over the years:
1. Get to know how they work and act. Read their annual report and audit statement. Jot down all those activities for which grants and funds were awarded.
2. If you're careful, you'll also find out about their future goals and targets, printed on their annual report.
3. Though there are thousands of donors, and it is often difficult to locate a donor of your choice, you can still use the power of internet to access a load of database on different donors and their activities.
4. Pooling together a database for your non profit, is possibly the most required necessity, before you start looking for a donor (That's how we started to look for our own fundraising, with our entire database on thousands of donors across the world).
5. In spite of all those loads of database, you'll never expect to reach your goal, unless you create a system by which you can contact your donors. Automated fundraising software will completely enable you to increase your efficiency in reaching those invisible donors. Such software will also help you to organize your non profit. (Click here to know more about Fundraising Software)
6. Right communication provides you an opportunity to know the mind of your potential donors and their activities. A strenuous task that it is, communication is possibly your only lifeline between you and those donors. Get ready to compose one hundred different types of letters and proposals to shoot off to donors.
7. Here is a small tip: the proposal you send out to your donor, is a mirror that reflects your mind, goal, attitude and integrity.