Is Your Fundraising Built on Fear or on Friendships?
Halloween, with its spookiness and capitalization on fear, initiates the fall season, which also happens to begin the height of the fundraising season with discussions about end of the year solicitations. With endless streams of candy and eclectic costumes, Halloween has become more fun than scary, but philanthropy, particularly the part about soliciting for gifts aka fundraising, has continued to create fear in most people. If you understand that good fundraising is about making people feel special, then fun immediately replaces fear.
A common myth, especially among board members, is that foundations and corporations provide most of the funding for nonprofits. This reasoning enables the board members to delegate much of the fundraising to staff, who are primarily responsible for drafting grant applications and corporate proposals. However, it is not where most of the funding for nonprofits derives. According to Giving USA 2026, individuals gave an estimated $394.2 billion in 2025, which is about 64 percent of the $617.2 billion given nationally. Foundations gave $117.15 billion, or 19 percent, and corporations gave $43.67 billion, or 7 percent. Individuals were also the largest source ten years earlier, at 71 percent of the total in 2015 according to Giving USA 2016. While grant and corporate funding may be a major gift, it is not the primary economic engine for nonprofit sustainability and should not be the primary focus.
Another common misconception is the idea that hiring a professional fundraiser either as part of the staff or on contract with a large book of contacts, who can simply call in those favors is the most effective and efficient way to build an individual donor base. Not only is this factually wrong, it can also be unethical. The Association of Fundraising Professionals, the professional association of fundraisers, requires every member to sign a Code of Ethical Standards, which treats donor and prospect information as the confidential property of the organization that may not be taken or shared with other entities. As a result, effective philanthropy and fundraising do not function that way. Donors are not baseball cards to be traded or prized solely for their economic value. Instead, they are people, who want to prioritize a cause that they care about via a gift. Good fundraisers engage in understanding why a particular cause matters to them and demonstrate ways that their organization matches that purpose. Making the giver and not the gift the focus makes the work much less stressful for everyone.
One of the scariest aspects of fundraising and the most harmful is the idea that fundraising is solely about money or a transaction like exchanging money or financing (called pledges in the nonprofit sector) for a used car. The idea starts with the organization’s needs rather than the donor’s interest. In business, Simon Sinek describes successful companies understanding the why behind the need for their product as opposed to slick advertisements. Paul Schervish, professor emeritus of sociology at Boston College, provides a similar description for the nonprofit sector in describing demand and supply side philanthropy. The demand side begins with the needs of the organization and tries to “sell” donors on why that should matter, which Schervish references as a scolding or guilting method into convincing donors to give. In contrast, supply side begins with the donor including the circumstances, values, and purposes that motivate them to give. An organization that works from the supply side understands that a gift expresses the donor's priorities, which the organization has the privilege of helping to fulfill. Donors feel that shift and feel more appreciated and valued, because their participation matters more than the cash they are giving.
I experienced this firsthand as I attempted to help a nonprofit secure a gift from a prospective corporate partner. A company offered a youth shelter $100,000 to start an outreach program, but the shelter felt it needed more beds and resolutely held that ground, even after the prospective corporate partner offered to provide additional funds for beds and other capital needs after the outreach began. The agency refused to honor the donor’s goals and would not move from its position. As a result, the prospective corporate partner walked away choosing instead to host a community party for increased visibility. The youth shelter failed to listen to what the donor wanted, which was community visibility and goodwill, and they were willing to invest more than the initial $100,000, if they had just been heard and acknowledged.
In pursuit of profits over people, many nonprofits create barriers, which make fundraising harder; less appealing for staff and board leadership; and do not produce the results necessary for sustainability. Raising money does not have to be scary or especially hard, especially if you are honoring the needs and voices of others first.
Fullanthropy Perspective
Many leaders assume that they know where their fundraising, leadership, and communication stand, and that assumption can be as costly as any myth.
The Impact Index™ is a series of yes or no questions that uses all 11 pillars of the CLAIM Your Legacy™ framework to assess your organization’s fundraising capacity. Within a few minutes, you will receive a customized report you can share with your stakeholders, identifying where your organization is succeeding and where you may need some help. The goal is solely to help you work from evidence rather than myths. The assessment is complimentary, and it is far less frightening than not knowing or even worse assuming incorrectly what is holding back your gifts. Click here to access it.