Subject: The Fairy Tale of Corporate Fundraising
Once upon a time...
There was a group of corporate fundraisers living happily and peacefully in
times of 'traditional' media.
When trying to raise funds, they would use a letter, advertisement in a newspaper or would simply call and/or visit the companies they wished to attract as donors, sponsors or partners.
Money was not impossible to raise as donors remained
loyal and did not need much to be kept entertained.
Stories told by the fundraisers were easily accepted, as there was not much
media to contradict their messages.
Then suddenly
everything changed...
The Information Era kicked in: our current age in which individuals have to
ability to transfer information freely, and have instant access to knowledge
that previously would have been hard - if not impossible - to find. Our current
economy is based on sensation and manipulation of information.
The poor fundraisers experienced an increasing amount of trouble trying to find
supporters for their cause. Their prospect donors and sponsors became a though
crowd, hard to convince to give and even harder to retain, as they were a lot
less loyal then they used to be in the old days. Their old letters, calls and
visit did not do much good, as they were overruled by powerful new media like
Twitter, Facebook and other online social networks, blogs etcetera.
The villain called 21st Century had taken control of the fundraising kingdom,
creating very demanding, hard to get interested, easily bored potential donors.
The villain also got control of the most important target group of these fundraisers:
the companies. They turned the companies into very critical institutions who
hardly ever gave something away and were even pickier on whom to give their
precious support to.
The corporate fundraisers became more hopeless and desperate everyday...
Until a fundraising hero stood up!
One of the corporate fundraisers had been sitting in his office for days and days in a row, just thinking really hard how to solve this all. Then, finally, after many hard days, he came up with a plan: if we simply adjust our strategies and make the 21st Century our ally, we can actually turn this into a positive story for ourselves!
He ran off to tell the other fundraisers and they decided to learn all about their supposed enemies, the new/social media, and started using these tools to get the attention of their prospect corporate donors in a fun, attractive way.
Once they learned how to deal with the 21st Century potential donors and sponsors by using new tools and methods, it all worked out,
And they all lived happily ever after...
Moral of this story:
It is nowadays increasingly harder for non-profit organizations to attract new funds, especially in the corporate field. This is most likely due to our changing society: everything is fast; changing all the time; information is available everywhere and to everyone; people become more demanding, therefore harder to attract and less loyal, this goes for individual donors as well as corporate donors (who are probably even more critical on who to give money to these days).[1]
I would really like to know from all of you who read my Fundraising Fairy Tale what your opinions and ideas are on: how exactly has our modern society influenced the process of corporate fundraising, according to you?
I am sincerely looking forward to your contributions to my story!
* Kind regards from the author *
Thanks for your post Lisa, and I agree with you.
Nowadays its more about what you as a nonprofit have to offer than what the donor has to offer to you.
Nice quote from Kay Grace: ''in good times and bad, we know people give because you meet needs, not because you have needs.
However, one more question: do you consider this as a change due to modern society, was this different in the old days or...?
This comment was last edited on May 05, 2010
thats a good point - i guess its due to modern society - as nowadays in this society everything is about oneself and not about other people, so how can what I do, look good. I think this was not the case before, i also think religion has to do a lot with it. In the past, people gave because the bible said so, nowadays people give because society says so, and because it looks good in the company profile. But then again I could be wrong.
I think the modern society has changed the corporate fundraising a lot!! As others have already stated, companies do not give away money anymore. They always want something in return. People have become more individual because of the modern society. Helping yourself instaid of helping others. Most of the things a company does, they do to make themselves better and gain more profit. Not to help other companies. Moedern society has also made it possible for companies to adversite for free with facebook or other social networks. This way they gain more brand awareness and they do not need other companies anymore. (less other companies). I think it is a very interesting topic because there are so many examples of things that modern society has changed!
I also believe that modern society has changed not only companies, but also human behavior. We are all more driven and sometimes even forced to engage in complex situation, and persuade/ convince others of our believes, or in case of working for a company, our products & services. The whole society is based on persuasion, and convincing others of our own rights, or just in order to earn money. This has both advantages and disadvantages. As fundraisers are forced to learn more about persuasion techniques, and furthermore are able to present their organizational objectives better. However, this is not their general objective, as they often need the money to do their actual job! This makes it in most cases even harder to function their own jobs, as it might become a daily task assigned to a person, to raise funds in order to support the organizational goals, and most important in order to survive! This is in my opinion a disadavantage!
plus a short movie on online fundraising techniques:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbGKcZ3TMrI
and an article on new, online fundraising tools, a short and practical one:
http://www.netwitsthinktank.com/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=ifINKZOzFmG&b=4487123&ct=6926607
What does mean by modern society? Maybe society has changed but not human being or our emotions. There might be some other back reasons behind this decrease. For example, decrease in corporate fundraising might be due to fewer profits of the businesses or lack of trust in an NGO could be a reason.
I believe NGOs should involve donors in planning of spending not only earning from them.
I know few NGOs from England raising funds for India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, but neither I nor any of my friends have heard about them or seen them active in Pakistan.
So, I think gaining trust of companies is also another big factor to raise funding. They should inform about the way their money has been spent. Certainly, it will motivate them to offer more money.
Hi Maartje, great topic! Interestingly enough I'm just doing studying complexities foreign aid faces to achieve development for my masters. I think that besides the dynamic society we live in today and obviously the financial crisis, part of the issue is also the fact that there are simply TOO many funds. The multiplicity of donors and aid funds, programs and projects makes it extremely complex to envisages and govern these projects. Especially as we are trying to control these projects through a top-down approach -instead, we should be looking from a micro-level at where the funds would be going in order to be efficient. Another possible issue with fundraising for non-profit purposes is the fac tthat we are trying to look for resources in the donor country only (this is called "tied funds") where the purchase of goods and services for these projects are a lot higher. These distortions are caused by the strategic and commercial interest of the donors, who stand too far from the actual project.
Hope this helps at all but please contact me if you need any clarification... Good luck with your research, very interesting topic!
I agree: the financial crisis is indeed another major factor of influence on the corporate fundraising sector, making companies more critical on who to give their money to, and also companies giving more non-monetary support (knowledge, skills, products, volunteers) instead of money, because when the economical situation is not stable, there is simply less money in the corporate budget to give to charity.
I also totally agree on the fact that you say there are to many fundraising parties nowadays, many of them with same goals. The supply has become bigger than the demand! I was on a congress yesterday, called Civil Society 2010 (a congress where all important parties in the philantrophy sector come together) and the conclusion of the day there was that there should be a better cooperation/organization amongst non-profits. If these organizations start working together, more donors/supporters could be reached!
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