A fundraiser named Jason Lloyd nearly quit the profession on his first job. He called a lapsed $500 donor to thank her and ask if she’d give again. She told him, kindly, that she’d just lost her job and her husband was sick. He didn’t press.
Then he was coached to call her again, a few months later, with the same ask, “regardless of her personal situation.” He couldn’t do it. It felt heartless. So he walked away from fundraising altogether.
Years later, a mentor told him what fundraising should have looked like: “That wasn’t fundraising. Fundraising would have been asking her what groceries she needed to get through that month or offering to pray with her.”
His problem wasn’t that he lacked the guts to “close.” It was a system that was willing to sacrifice common decency for short term gain. And, ironically, turn many potential donors away.
The best fundraisers don’t pretend to care about their donors. They actually care. And caring means easing up when things are hard. You don’t badger someone through a layoff and an illness. You step back. Maybe you call again in a while, just to check in, never to pitch.
If her circumstances change, she’ll come back. People return to the ones who treated them as people. That, and not the second ask, is how you keep a donor for life.
Caring like this isn’t a fundraising “technique.” It’s fundraising like a human being.
