This is the first post in a nine-part series on the beliefs that are quietly destroying your nonprofit's fundraising.

A few years ago, I walked into a small-town charity that was convinced it had hit its ceiling.

The board was exhausted. The volunteers were burnt out. And no wonder. The backbone of their fundraising program was a relentless calendar of bake sales, garage sales, and car washes. Every few weeks, another Saturday sacrificed to hauling tables, making change, and smiling through the grind. Everyone was working incredibly hard. The returns were enough to keep their doors open, but staff hadn't received a raise in years.

The prevailing assumption was simple: we're a small charity in a small town. This is just what fundraising looks like. We've maxed out what's possible here.

Within a year the number of active donors had grown more than five-fold. A loyal supporter who had been giving around $10,000 a year wrote a cheque for $100,000. And the organization's most significant donor more than tripled his donation, writing multiple six figure cheques.

Same town. Same cause. Same community. So, what changed?

Not the organization's programs. Not the economy. Not some flashy new campaign.

What changed were the beliefs.

The real problem isn't money. It's what you believe about money.

Here's the thing about fundraising that most nonprofits get wrong: it doesn't have to be complicated. The basic mechanics are remarkably straightforward. You identify people who care about your mission. You build genuine relationships with them. You invite them to give. You thank them well. You keep them close. You ask again.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

So why do so many good organizations, doing genuinely important work, struggle to raise money? Why do passionate, intelligent board members and executive directors preside over anemic fundraising programs year after year?

Often, it's because they hold a set of deeply ingrained beliefs about fundraising that feel true, feel obvious, feel like common sense, are yet are so completely wrong, that they're very nearly the opposite of the truth. And these beliefs don't just limit results. They actively prevent organizations from doing the simple, often low-effort things that actually raise money.

These beliefs are so common, so deeply held, and so rarely examined that most nonprofit leaders don't even recognize them as beliefs. They feel like facts. Like the way things are. Like the natural limits of what's possible.

They're not. They're stories organizations tell themselves. And they are expensive stories.

The nine beliefs

Over the next nine posts, I'm going to walk through the most common and most destructive of these beliefs. These are the beliefs I encounter again and again in my work with nonprofits. They cut across organization size, sector, and geography.

Here they are:

  1. "Fundraising is an embarrassing, unfortunate necessity." The Original Sin of fundraising. To one degree or another, the following eight mistaken beliefs follow from this pervasive, pernicious belief.
  2. "If we do good work, the money will come." The Angels in the Outfield Fallacy. Nonprofit staff are so immersed in the work that their organization does that they think it should be "obvious" to donors that they should give.
  3. "We need a big event." The belief that events are the engine of fundraising, rather than (as they often are) an enormously expensive and exhausting sideshow.
  4. "We have to give people something in return." The belief that donors need a transaction, not a relationship. The root of every bake sale, car wash, and rubber chicken dinner that ever consumed a Saturday.
  5. "Fundraising is complicated." The belief that you need secret knowledge, sophisticated systems, and opaque strategies to raise money.
  6. "We've already asked our supporters for money. We can't ask again." The belief that donors are fragile and will be scared off by being asked too often, when in reality consistent, thoughtful communication is what keeps donors engaged and giving.
  7. "That's the development office's job." The belief that fundraising belongs to one department or one hire, rather than being woven into the fabric of everything the organization does.
  8. "The executive director has more important things to do." The belief that organizational leadership is above fundraising, rather than understanding that fundraising is leadership.
  9. "The board's job is governance, not fundraising." The belief that board members shouldn't be expected to raise money, when in fact it is one of their most important responsibilities.

Why beliefs matter more than tactics

You can hand a nonprofit the best fundraising plan ever written. If the people in that organization believe that asking for money is embarrassing, or a distraction from the "really" important work, that plan will collect dust. If the board believes fundraising is staff work, nobody at the top will pick up the phone. If the executive director believes they're too important to sit across the table from a donor, the biggest gifts will never materialize.

Beliefs come first. Everything else follows.

That organization I mentioned at the top? The one with the bake sales and the exhausted board? Nothing about their external circumstances changed. What changed was that they stopped believing fundraising had to be a grind. They stopped believing their community had maxed out its generosity. They started believing that people actually want to give to causes they care about, and that asking them to give is not an imposition but an invitation. And they realized that they have to invest in fundraising. Not as an unfortunate necessity. But as a critical aspect of their operations.

And when the beliefs changed, the money followed. Not because of some clever trick. Because they started doing the simple, human work of fundraising that their old beliefs had made impossible.

That's what this series is about. One belief at a time, we're going to dismantle the ideas that are holding your fundraising back. And replace them with something better: the truth.