Fundraising is an increasingly credentialed field. Certified Fund Raising Executives, or CFREs, are now commonplace, and fundraising degree and training programs have proliferated on college campuses across the country. Yet, from our observations, volunteers with no professional designations are often more effective at convincing people to give than the development executives with multiple initials after their names.
Why is that? Personal relationships and trust are the bread and butter of raising money for a charity. And volunteers are often better suited to tap into those feelings and ask peers to give because they have firsthand experience donating time and money themselves to the organization.
Through our work in leadership and fundraising positions at the United Way of Central Maryland, we’ve come to believe that volunteers can teach professionals a lot about how to raise money. Especially during a time when nonprofits are struggling to attract volunteers, those who donate their time to raise funds should be valued more for the unique expertise they bring to an organization. They include parents dialing for dollars for the PTA, undergraduates cold-calling alumni for a university’s scholarship fund, anybody promoting a GoFundMe campaign, or a bell-ringing Santa outside a Target.
What such volunteers understand about fundraising, and what professionals sometimes forget in the race to meet an organization’s revenue goals, is that an individual’s relationship to money and the ability to stay connected to their donation may be the difference between making a gift or walking away entirely.
Charitable giving is a deeply personal and emotional decision, and volunteers are often in a better position to understand that complicated reality. Consider your own feelings and the times your underlying relationship to money — how you earn it, what you’re saving it for, where you’re investing it, and how you’re spending it — bubbled to the surface when asked to donate.
We’ve observed time and again that when volunteers are candid about their own feelings and motives about giving to charity, their peers mirror back similar sentiments and intentions. When a volunteer shares, for example, what her giving to a capital campaign means to her, a prospective donor is more apt to envision himself contributing to that same campaign. And in our experience, this donor is more likely to make a gift when approached by an engaged volunteer than if a professional makes a formal organizational pitch — no matter how artfully delivered.
Donor attitudes and behavior resonate differently with volunteers than they do with professionals. As donors themselves, volunteers have a unique vantage point on the needs and aspirations of both the nonprofit and those who support it. This extends to the perennial issue of giving time versus money.
Fundraising professionals know the importance of giving time, but they are uncomfortable with the prospect of time becoming a substitute for a financial gift. After all, time doesn’t show up on a balance sheet at the end of the fiscal year. Volunteers who give their time to raise money for an organization aren’t immune to this thinking; they just don’t see it as a fight worth having. Development staff can learn a lot from them about how to productively approach this perpetual conflict.
Take, for example, the volunteer who makes a nominal financial gift but spends her time promoting the organization to her network and, in the process, drumming up new donors and community partners. This loyal supporter has found a giving lane that makes the most sense to her — even if the nonprofit would prefer the donation came from her pocketbook rather than time marked off on her calendar. Continuing to prioritize more dollars over that gift of time risks alienating such a donor.
Volunteers have a great deal at stake in this game — more in many ways than a paid professional. They volunteer their time because of a personal and often urgent belief in the organization’s mission. But in asking for other people’s money, they put their own reputations and credibility on the line.
Keeping Promises
Development staff need to remember that and make safeguarding a volunteer’s reputation a top priority. They need to appreciate what happens when they don’t follow up on promises volunteers make to prospects, forget to thank new donors, or only engage with them superficially. Such behavior not only reflects poorly on the nonprofit, but also tarnishes the reputation of the volunteer who brought that donor to the organization.
Volunteers understand that everybody’s reputation is at stake when asking for money, and a successful request has just as much to do with how it enriches new relationships as it does with how much money comes in the door.
Our point here is not to pit volunteer fundraisers against professionals. Rather, we want to encourage more conversation and collaboration between the two about issues that often go unspoken. What, for instance, do volunteer fundraisers see on the ground that isn’t on the professional’s radar? What organizational realities must professionals contend with when asking for money that volunteers don’t consider? What gets cast aside when an organization treats the gift of time only as the cherry on top of a substantial financial donation? What’s being risked — personally and professionally — when volunteers leverage their networks and reputations for an organization?
For many, these conversations will feel risky and uncomfortable. But they are also necessary and long overdue. The collaboration between volunteers and professionals is mutually beneficial. Volunteers provide an authority and perspective that helps professional fundraisers engage more authentically with donors. And professionals facilitate the very opportunities that help volunteers use their own talents and networks — the assets that make volunteers such important partners in propelling an organization’s mission.
It’s time for these two groups of fundraisers to pool their collective knowledge and skills and work together for the good of the organizations they each aim to support.