Donor Competition For Nonprofit Organizations & What To Do About It

Nonprofit GrowthDevelopment
Written By Sherry Quam Taylor
Image of a nonprofit leader meeting with a donor showing the importance of one-on-one meetings and solicitations.

A prospective client came to me last year unsure if I’d be able to help them…afterall, they felt the competition for dollars in their mid-sized city was fierce…

 

They hired me. And as I suspected…the competition for local dollars was at the bottom of the donor pyramid. 

 

You know, things like:

Giving days

Local sorority fundraisers

Annual Events

Raffles

50/50 tickets

Auctions

T-shirts

Applications

 

Yes, when your fundraising efforts are focused on these types of activities, it is a bloodbath for dollars.

 

So, what did I have my client do instead?  We:

🟢Doubled down on relationships w/major donors.

🟢Refined their story based on the true financial need.

🟢Started aligning their team’s hours with dollars.

🟢Stopped the activities that drained their team’s hours and energy

🟢Gave them cultivation/solicitation tools that stopped leaving money on the table

 

And, what does moving hours to the LESS competitive, TOP of the pyramid do?

🟣Revenue became more predictable.

🟣They confidently grew the budget by 40%

🟣5- & 6- figure gifts from donors who were giving a fraction before were secured

🟣Donors and Board Members 2-10X’d their gifts

🟣Created a clear multi-year strategy and methodology to fund their growth for years to come

 

The ED said, “This is one of the best decisions I've made in the last few years because [the work with you is] setting us up to grow in a way we would have never been able to grow if we were just continuing to rely on more grants and more events."

 

Competition…Yes, there’s competition in fundraising when you stay at the bottom of the pyramid in transaction land.

 

But up top? Where relationships rule and one-on-one solicitations occur? It’s smooth sailing once you learn how to do it.

 

How about you? Are you and your team ready to learn how to do this? You can apply to work with me here.

Whenever you’re ready, here are THREE things you can do next:

👣 Follow me on LinkedIn where I share insider info daily — the same lessons I teach my clients about attracting larger gen-ops dollars and diversifying revenue.

🍎 Grab FREE Guides + White Papers — download robust resources you can use to push against the sector’s misconceptions, equip your board, and shift your team into High-ROI fundraising.

📈 Work with me to diversify revenue & secure the gen-ops gifts you need to grow. If you’re a business-minded nonprofit CEO with big growth plans but need to make charitable revenue from investment-level donors a bigger part of your budget, you can apply to work with me here.

Sherry Quam Taylor

Sherry Quam Taylor works with business-minded Nonprofit CEOs whose Strategic Plans require expansive budgets and larger amounts of general-operating revenue for growth. To become investment-level ready, Sherry helps leaders see their revenue potential and helps them see what may be blocking donors from giving in this way. Sherry’s clients know how to attract larger donors by solving the funding challenges at the root of the issue.

As a result of learning her methodology, Sherry’s clients become sustainable, diversify revenue, and know how to add significant amounts gen-ops revenue to their budgets. But mostly, their development departments and board have transformed into high-ROI revenue generators – aligning their hours with relational dollars and set free from the limitations of transactional fundraising.

Sherry attributes the success of her business to her passion for modeling radical confidence to the future CEOs in her house - her two college-aged daughters.

https://www.QuamTaylor.com
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Will Nonprofit Donors Give in this Economy?