The Fairy Tale of Modern 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).
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: Maartje Natrop
PS: for more information on this topic ( interviews, movies, articles, surveys etc.) check the ‘background information’, on the top right, under ‘topics’!
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