Open the Door
Why almost everything that scares us about fundraising comes from being closed.
I remember receiving a gift that made me cry.
It wasn’t anything the donor said or did. My tears came later, in a private moment, with no one around to see them. I cried because that gift arrived at exactly the moment my organization needed it most, and because it represented something bigger than the dollars. It was faith. Trust. A tangible sign that someone believed in what we were doing. That is what a gift can be, when we let it.
I have been fundraising my entire nonprofit career. It came easily to me, and as I got older, it became something I genuinely enjoyed. So I’m always a little surprised when someone tells me, “I could never do what you do.” To me, it always made sense. I was working on something I believed in, and the donors believed in it too. They showed me that through their giving, and in a hundred other ways that had nothing to do with money.
Over time I came to understand something. It isn’t fundraising that people are afraid of. It’s their own beliefs about money and relationships that get in the way. A decade ago I wrote a book to try to demystify the process for artists, to free them from those fears so they could be more successful in their work. Writing about artistic process these last few weeks got me thinking about that book again, and I realized something I hadn’t seen so clearly before.
So much of what ails the arts comes from a single instinct: we close up. We’re afraid to share too much, to let people in, to be seen before the work is ready. We do it with our process, guarding the rehearsal room like a secret. And we do it with our fundraising, hiding our needs as if needing were something to be ashamed of. But in both cases the cure is the same. Open the door.
Look closely, and you’ll see that nearly every fear we carry about fundraising is really a fear of opening up.
We tell ourselves, “I don’t know any donors.” But underneath that is a reluctance to let our own community see what we need. I think the megaphilanthropists feed the illusion, the MacKenzie Scotts and Bill Gateses signing away their fortunes, making donors feel like a rare and separate species. Yes, they are donors. Most giving comes from the people already around us. We need to widen our thinking to include everyone already engaged with our work, and open the door and invite them in.
We tell ourselves, “All they really care about is the tax deduction.” I used to assume this too. But this is a way of closing off, deciding in advance what other people care about. Most donors aren’t giving for the write-off, they’re giving because they want to support something they believe in.
We tell ourselves, “There are only so many donors to go around.” This is a scarcity mindset, the sense that there is one pie and we’re all fighting for a slice. It closes our imagination before we’ve even begun. The reality is that potential supporters are everywhere, all at different stages of knowing and caring about what we do. The work isn’t to fight over a fixed pie, it’s to open more doors, so more people can discover the work in the first place.
And we tell ourselves the big one. “If I ask, they’ll be offended.” We carry so much fear around the ask because we’re afraid of the no. Sure, a no is possible. But the elaborate rejection we build up in our minds almost never matches reality. This fear, more than any other, is the fear of opening up. And here’s the good news: we don’t have to guess what someone is thinking. We can simply open that door, have the conversation, and find out.
When I went back and reread my old book, I was struck by something else I had written, beyond the fears we carry. A list of who donors actually are.
Donors believe in your work.
Donors want your project to succeed, and they want to know they helped.
Donors share your vision of the world.
Donors need to give.
Donors come from all walks of life.
Donors want to feel close to you.
Notice the difference. The fears all live inside us. The truth about donors lives out in the world, in real people who are waiting for something to believe in. A decade ago, I led with the fear. Today I’d rather lead with this. When we open the door, we stop listening to the fear and start meeting the people.
I am leaving this writing today carrying one idea with me. Most every problem we have with asking begins the moment we close up. So I won’t. I encourage you to be equally open.
Believe in what you’re doing, open the door, and let people in.