Are fundraisers spending too much time chasing after new donors?

I was delighted to have Mazarine as a returning guest on today’s episode of The Fundraising Talent Podcast. Mazarine is the founder of Wild Woman Fundraising and the Nonprofit Consulting Conference. Mazarine also hosts the Asking for More podcast and she is the author of The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising and Get the Job! Your Fundraising Career Empowerment Guide. In today’s conversation we wrestle with whether, in light of the higher aspirations within the nonprofit sector, the social sector playbook is overdue for some twenty-first century revisions or perhaps even needs to be completely re-written.

Practically speaking, such aspirations seem to have overlooked how we expect fundraisers to spend their time. Mazarine and I talked about how many fundraisers are stuck in job descriptions that don’t afford them the opportunity to have meaningful conversations with donors and, instead, encourage them to spend the majority of their time tinkering around with new donor acquisition strategies. I find it to be highly disingenuous how often voices in our space advocate for bold ideas while ignoring the fact that most fundraisers are glued to their desk behind a computer screens. Conversations like this one leave me all the more convinced that, regardless of what is being said on the platform, most leaders in our space are quite content with cheap, arms-length fundraising practices that keeping our expectations of donors low while advancing nothing other than the status quo.

As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent Podcast. If you’d like to learn more about Responsive Fundraising’s sense-making retreats, email me for more information. If you’d like to learn more about the upcoming nonprofit consulting conference, visit Mazarine’s website here.