Getting someone to show they care is a much different piece of work than getting someone who already cares to show they care more.
If our goal is to get more folks to show they care, we should use donor acquisition metrics to gauge our success. How many donors did we add?
We should recognize that the fundraising results will be minimal but that the financial investment will be significant. Cutting through noise and capturing attention today is neither cheap nor easy.
Getting people to show they care is a fundraising investment that pays off tomorrow.
If instead, our goal is get current donors to show they care more, we should use dollars raised to gauge our success. How much more money did we raise?
We should recognize that our total number of donors may remain flat or even decrease. Taking the time to get into deeper relationships with those who are already supportive leaves little capacity to implement donor acquisition strategies.
It can be easy to focus our efforts on getting people to show they care more. The fundraising investment pays off today.
But tomorrow seems to always arrive sooner than we expect.
And tomorrow there will be more people we can invite to show they care more if, today, we get more people to show they care at all.
