Relationships Aren’t Transactions—This is Especially Important in Nonprofit Fundraising

Nonprofit GrowthDevelopment
Written By Sherry Quam Taylor
Image of two nonprofit leaders meeting together and building their relationship

“Make a habit of reaching out to people when you don’t need something.” —Justin Welsh

 

Relationships aren’t transactions. This is especially important in fundraising.

 

Let me be honest here.

 

In friendship, we don’t spend weeks wondering what reason we have to reach out to that person. What would I say? What could I show them? What story could I tell? What excuse do I have for reaching out?

 

We just pick up the phone and call them because we are in a relationship with them. We don’t need anything. It’s natural because we’ve taken that time for it to be like this.

 

But when the entire nonprofit sector has told us fundraising is events, appeals, applications, and campaigns it’s often confusing and hard to convince all parties to make the shift.

 

It can be the same way with donors. It’s practical relationship building:

☀️Playing the long-game

☀️Taking 12-, 18-, or 24-months to get to know someone

☀️Natural conversations

☀️Reaching out when you don’t need anything.

☀️Comfortably making the ask when it’s a win/win

 

But we chase, create urgency, and force deadlines. ← Let’s stop this by the way.

 

The inability to make this shift is often a skillset issue. Luckily, you can equip your team to make this shift. It’s not a fast shift, but it builds a truly sustainable organization.

 

This is what I help nonprofit leaders do every day. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch these shifts in strategy take place.

 

How about you? Apply here to get help with this shift.

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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