Wild Woman Fundraising

Jacket Photo by Ray Bidegain

What is The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising? The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising is an engaging, fun book which teaches you how to make your passion for a cause into your dream job. Topics include; Fundraising in a Downturn, Dealing with Conflict in the Workplace, Net-raising, Generational and Cultural differences in Fundraising, the Lean Development Office, and more.

Why Go Into Fundraising?
If you thrive on change, making a difference in the world, and constantly building your skills, fund raising may be the career for you! Be warned, a lone fundraiser is like a marketing department, grantwriter, events coordinator, copywriter, outreach coordinator, volunteer recruiter and designer all rolled into one.

Fundraising as a field will nurture your creativity, allow you to realize the concrete value of your efforts, learn the true meaning of gratitude, and help your cause succeed!

Why Now?
With a $1 Trillion dollar industry and 1.9 million nonprofits (as of 2005), and 12.9 million nonprofit professionals (almost TEN PERCENT of the US economy), there are only several hundred books on fundraising, and none of these are centered on young women or diverse fundraisers. I believe that making fundraising fun, and teaching more women to fundraise will help more women to succeed against oppression, and help our nonprofit sector survive this economic downturn. Our 1.9 million nonprofits all need effective, motivated fundraisers, and the Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising can get you started in this exciting field.

What can I do to succeed in fundraising?
Join the conversation on the forum. Buy the book, buy a chapter, or buy a resource from the book. It’s that easy!

The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising
Table of Contents

Intro: About Fundraising: What it is, what it is!
This chapter introduces the laywoman to fundraising. It includes common misconceptions, the traditional and nontraditional pathways to success, and more. All you have to do is keep asking, and keep learning!

Chapter 0. A Wild Woman Like You Can Fundraise!
Getting to know your family background, your history with money. Getting to know what makes you feel alive. Finding your passion, finding your cause. Finding your areas of comfort and challenge in fundraising tasks.

Chapter 1. Development is about communication.
This Chapter is all about how development professionals communicate with donors to build relationships. It includes successful examples of good donor and organizational communication. The message of this chapter is that “Attention is Power.”

Chapter 2. Landing the Job
Landing the first job can be tricky. This Chapter teaches you how to put your skills, traits and talents in the best light, including skill story creation, cover letter creation, how to measure your success, internet resources, and professional, high level networking tips.

Chapter 3. You’ve got the job, Girl! Now what?
The first two months are crucial. You will be under intense scrutiny to perform, especially if you have a boss who doesn’t understand development. This chapter will deal with interview questions for staff, board, and clients of the organization, and help you hone your next steps towards a development plan.

Chapter 4. Wild Women Building Relationships: How to find & cultivate donors
This Chapter goes over many ways to find and cultivate donors, on a broad scale, with average return on each method, before drilling down to Chapters with concrete exercises to help you succeed in each area.

Chapter 5: Volunteers! (Rope them, Harness them, and Ride Wild Woman!)
What do you need done? Maybe a volunteer can do it for you! Your volunteers are like gold to your organization. Here’s how to find volunteers, interview them, give them a job description, and get them working for you!

Chapter 6: Marketing your nonprofit (Talking points? Check! Squirting Daisy? Check!)
Development and marketing are NOT the same thing! This gives low or no cost tips on how to market your nonprofit, with what works and what doesn’t, including samples from new media, newspaper, magazine, outdoor advertising, radio, TV, and free snarky comments.

Chapter 7. Events! (AKA Kicking *ss and Throwing Parties!)
This Chapter covers fundraising, friendraising, and donor appreciation events, and how to have your fabulous taste in food and music be the toast of the town. Although events are the most inefficient way to fundraise, they combine the identification of your donors, cultivation and the ask all into one night.

Chapter 8. Appeal letters (Ever wanted to write beautiful letters for a living?)
Do you like writing email or letters? Do you remember the joy of receiving a beautiful letter, and sending one in return? If so, this Chapter is all about spreading your joy, and helping turn your writing skills to letters asking people to support your nonprofit.

Chapter 9. Grantwriting and Research
Keep It Simple! Dealing with jargon in the grant research, your first hurdle. We’ll jump this together, and then learn what appeals to private foundations and corporations. This chapter also deals with search words, where to look for grants, and how to successfully compete for grant money in a world with limited funders.

Chapter 10. Phone-a-thons (Wild Women, what’s your ring-tone?)
Phone-a-thons are perhaps one of the most maligned fundraising methods. And I can certainly understand if you’d prefer not to try them. Nevertheless, if you rehearse well, phone-a-thons can help you engage board members and volunteers and get the word out about your organization. Ringtones optional.

Chapter 11. Speaking engagements (or, How to Avoid Powerpoint Death)
You’re out in front of a big group of people, ready to show them why your issue is the most urgent. Wild Women, do not chicken out! Powerpoints should be as short and as funny as possible. This chapter deals with stage fright, how to give them the story, stats, and pictures to convince them to give, how to joke about the sacred cow, how to address oppressive comments or questions, and more.

Chapter 12. Internet asks (You’re the star!)
Most of the time, development professionals stay behind the scenes, letting the message or president speak for the organization (while secretly feeding all the lines). However, in this new age of internet transparency, we’ve got faces to organizations, on facebook, on myspace, on twitter, and more! This is a chance to do relationship building among your peers.

Chapter 13. Putting it all together: Your Development Plan! (Plan, plan and work the plan, Wild Woman!)
Here is where you REALLY want to avoid TL:DR! (Too Long, Didn’t Read) This Chapter will show the many-legged stool of a strong fundraising plan. Managing multiple streams of income will lead your nonprofit to success. This chapter will show you how to put together a one page development chart that will show everyone in your organization clearly what you are raising money for, what your goals are, when they will be met, and who will be responsible for the work.

Chapter 14. Generational and cultural differences (Listening to Wild Women)
What does it take to convince people to give to your organization? Well, it turns out it depends on their conversational (and generational) style. While you might be jumping ahead with your proposal, they might want to talk about the weather. Wild women will learn from this chapter about how to assess generational and cultural differences, and use this knowledge in fundraising techniques for planned giving and hip parties.

Chapter 15. Negotiating Conflict (Wild Women Buck the System!)
The skinny on what you’ll run into as a development professional, how to set boundaries, how to manage expectations, how to take power, how to look at different types of rank in the workplace Including boss and board profiles to help you skip through the conversational minefield with grace and alacrity.

Chapter 16. Your nonprofit in a downturn (The importance of being AWESOME)
What to do when the funding gets cut? This chapter is about staying positive in the face of incredible odds. Development is all about emotion, and your even keel keeps the ship afloat. Keep communicating, using cheap or free methods to keep your audience tuned to the right dial. Make newsworthy stories for traditional media outlets as well, and try strategies that conserve your energy while giving you the highest return, such as major donor identification, cultivation, and ask.

Chapter 17: Gold in the dust jacket: Lean Development (Efficiency is the new black)
This Chapter deals with an introduction to lean management techniques, gives concrete examples on how to do efficient development in the most inefficient sector of our economy, the nonprofit world, and makes a play for major donor cultivation strategies above all other strategies. Includes concrete examples of lean development in appeal letter batches, moves management, and more.