In thinking about fundraising this week, I saw a lot about donor fatigue, which I think is an issue, but I think apathy is the bigger issue. Before you can expect people to donate something, be it time, money or good, first they must actually care. If they have no concern or connection with the issue at hand what is going to convince them to donate?
The problem here is that the majority of people don’t care. There are many more important things in their life that need their attention and resources. They have jobs to do, bills to pay, trips to go on, families to feed, clothes to buy, Apple might release a new trinket. THEY need their money. Why give it to someone else when they are the one that has to work for it?
Society as a whole has moved more towards a me-centric attitude. “Why should I care? This isn’t my problem.” We’ve become lazy. Why do any extra work if we don’t need to? Nothing bad is going to happen to us just because we don’t donate money to charity or don’t volunteer at the food bank. We won’t get punished for it.
And if a non-profit happens to luck in to someone that does care, they have to convince them to care about that specific issue. Some people might want to help, but why this non-profit rather than that one? Non-profits have to fight to get donations and they have to “battle” each other for donors. Is it fair? No, but that’s what happens when there are limited resources.
Donor fatigue and apathy are certainly major issues to overcome. However, in many cases, nonprofits are simply asking the wrong people, or they are asking people in a way that doesn’t drive the kind of donations they need. Many nonprofits could benefit by taking advantage of marketing tools and promotional ideas used in the for-profit sector. When Johnson & Johnson release a new product, you better believe they know who they are selling to and how to speak to them. They know who will buy their product, and they know who won’t. They know where their target customers are likely to live, what store they are likely to shop at, they know how much they would be willing to pay for the product, and they know how to construct the messaging in order to reach them. All of this information comes from in-house research.
In many cases, corporations are under more pressure to succeed than nonprofits. For-profit businesses have to reach a certain number of customers to stay in business, and they have to fight to keep them. Many nonprofits, however, get at least part of their funding from endowments, universities, and other relatively stable sources. This can lead to a different kind of apathy, where the focus shifts from seeking out new donors to letting *them* seek *you* out. If nonprofits want to see individual donations rise, they need to embrace some tools and practices of the for-profit world.