Stop Judging Your Fundraising by the Last Check You Received

Dear executive directors, board members, and CEOs,

Nonprofits love a scoreboard.

We set campaign goals, watch thermometers climb, track grant decisions, compare this year’s gala to last year’s gala, and celebrate when the big check finally arrives. We should. Revenue matters. Payroll does not accept “increased donor engagement” as payment, and your landlord probably isn’t interested in hearing about the strength of your prospect pipeline.

But somewhere along the way, we started confusing fundraising results with fundraising health.

They aren't the same thing!!

An organization can raise a lot of money this month and have a deeply unhealthy fundraising program. Another can miss a campaign goal while simultaneously building the strongest fundraising infrastructure it has had in years. If we evaluate both organizations solely by the most recent revenue number, we’re going to draw some very bad conclusions about what is and isn't working.

That's the difference between transactional fundraising and a sustainable fundraising practice.

A Check Tells You What Happened. It Doesn't Always Tell You Why.

Imagine two nonprofits each launch a campaign with a $30,000 goal.

Organization A raises $35,000. Fantastic! Except $25,000 came from one longtime donor who has been carrying the organization for years. The board barely participated. There were few new donors. Nobody has a stewardship plan. The donor database is a mess, and leadership has no idea where next year's $35,000 will come from.

Organization B raises $25,000. Technically, they missed their goal. But they acquired 40 new donors, reactivated 15 lapsed supporters, converted five people to monthly giving, engaged eight board members in fundraising activities for the first time, built a prospect list for future major gifts, and now has a stewardship plan for every person who participated.

Which organization had the more successful campaign?

If your only metric is cash received, Organization A wins.

If you're trying to build a fundraising program that can sustain the organization for years, I'm much more interested in what's happening at Organization B.

That doesn't make the missing $5,000 irrelevant. Cash-flow needs are real, and organizations cannot indefinitely celebrate “building relationships” while failing to fund their work. But fundraising leadership requires us to hold two truths at once: we need revenue now, and we need to build the conditions that create revenue later.

Transactional fundraising tends to prioritize the first. Sustainable fundraising has to do both.

The Transaction Is the Outcome, Not the Entire Strategy

There is nothing inherently wrong with transactional fundraising activities. Sometimes you need to make an ask. Sometimes you need to push hard on year-end. Sometimes a grant deadline is Friday and everybody needs to get moving. Sometimes you need $50,000 and you need it now.

I love cash-flow fundraising. Queer For Hire literally provides it as a service.

The problem begins when an organization's entire fundraising model becomes a series of transactions.

Appeal. Ask. Event. Grant. GivingTuesday. Year-end. Repeat.

Everything becomes focused on the next revenue moment, and very little attention is paid to what connects those moments together.

That's where sustainability lives.

It lives in what happens to the first-time donor after they give. It lives in whether the event attendee ever hears from you again. It lives in whether the board member who made an introduction is encouraged to make another one. It lives in whether the Executive Director develops a relationship with the prospective major donor instead of waiting until the organization needs money. It lives in whether your grant calendar is actually managed throughout the year instead of rediscovered every time a deadline appears.

None of those activities may produce a check today. All of them influence the checks you receive tomorrow.

Fundraising Has Leading Indicators, Too

One of the challenges with fundraising is that revenue is incredibly easy to understand. You wanted $100,000. You raised $82,000. Everyone can immediately see the gap.

The indicators of future fundraising success aren't always as satisfying.

• Donor retention improved.

• Board participation increased.

• The major gift pipeline grew.

• More donors took a second action.

• A new corporate relationship developed.

• Monthly giving increased.

• The Executive Director completed more donor meetings.

• Grant opportunities were identified earlier.

• Former donors were reactivated.

• Your CRM finally contains enough reliable information to tell you what's actually happening.

Those results can sound less exciting than announcing a six-figure gift, but they're often the things that make the six-figure gift possible.

This is one reason I believe so strongly in conducting a Development Health Analysis before designing a fundraising strategy. If all I know about an organization is whether it hit last year's revenue goal, I don't know nearly enough to tell you whether its fundraising program is healthy.

I want to know where the money came from. I want to understand donor retention and concentration. I want to see whether revenue is diversified. I want to know how leadership participates, how the board understands its role, whether staff see themselves as part of a Culture of Philanthropy, what systems exist, what happens between campaigns, and whether the organization has the capacity to repeat its successes.

A revenue total is a snapshot. Sustainability is a pattern.

Sometimes the Best Fundraising Work Hasn't Paid You Yet

This is where sustainable fundraising can become frustrating, especially when an organization is under financial pressure.

You can do everything right and still have to wait.

You can build a corporate relationship that doesn't become a sponsorship until next year. You can cultivate a major donor for eighteen months before they're ready for the right ask. You can strengthen your grants pipeline only to discover that the best-aligned opportunities aren't due for another six months. You can engage a new donor at an event who gives $50 today and $5,000 two years from now.

That doesn't mean fundraising gets a free pass on producing revenue. It means fundraising has a timeline, and not every investment matures on the same schedule.

When organizations don't understand that, pressure starts distorting strategy. Every relationship becomes an immediate solicitation opportunity. Every campaign is expected to rescue the budget. Every fundraiser is judged against short-term revenue regardless of what they inherited. Long-term work gets abandoned because it hasn't paid off quickly enough, and the organization returns to whatever can produce the next transaction. Then six months later, everyone wonders why they're still scrambling.

Sustainable fundraising is specifically designed to break that cycle.

Ask More of Your Fundraising Results

So yes, after your next campaign, ask how much you raised.

Then keep asking questions.

Where did the money come from? How many donors were new? Who gave again? Who increased their giving? Who entered the pipeline? Who moved deeper into it? Which board members participated? Which relationships strengthened? What did we learn? What worked well enough to repeat? What depended too heavily on one person? What happens to these donors tomorrow?

Most importantly: Did this fundraising activity leave our organization stronger than it found it?

That's the question I wish more organizations asked.

Because a successful transaction gives you money. A sustainable fundraising practice should give you money and something to build on.

The donor becomes a relationship. The campaign produces better data. The event creates new prospects. The grant creates a funder relationship. The board activity builds confidence. The corporate gift opens another partnership opportunity. Each fundraising activity becomes part of a larger system instead of an isolated win or loss.

That's how fundraising begins to compound.

So stop judging the health of your fundraising program by the last check you received.

Celebrate the check. Deposit it immediately. Send a fantastic thank-you.

Then look beyond it.

Because the real test of sustainable fundraising isn't simply whether you can raise money today.

It's whether what you're doing today makes it easier to raise money again tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Queers

Queer For Hire provides fundraising support to Queer nonprofits, LGBTQIA+ cultural competency to straight-led organizations and corporations, and individual coaching for Queer professionals.

Learn about our Fundraising Services <here> – we’ll lead or support your fundraising efforts, whether you need general support or want to focus on raising money from and for the LGBTQIA+ community.

Learn about our Fundraising Trainings <here> – we can coach your board, staff, and fundraising team on how to fundraise and how to engage LGBTQIA+ donors.

Learn about our other services <here> or our resources <here>.