Everytime We Say Goodbye I Cry a Little

Most of us in fundraising spend some nauseating percentage of our time on funding situations that produce small returns, or worse.

For example, a little theater group I know used to (perhaps still does) spend weeks each fall mailing out (by hand) a multi-thousand piece fundraising appeal signed personally by the artistic director.  Even though the same handful of donors respond each year.  (They are fantastically good at doing theater though.)

For example, at some point in our careers we've all spent days or weeks trying to get $150 worth of wine donated for a reception because we "can't afford" to spend money on wine. (But somehow we can afford to maintain full-time staff who spend their time trying to find wine donations for receptions.)

For example, consider the email exchange I read recently about a slew of online appeals for end-of-year funding, each of which yielded in the hundreds of dollars for the multi-million dollar organizations in the conversation.

I'm convinced that we need to get better at refusing to spend our time on fundraising situations where the likely yield does not merit the effort.

Even if saying goodbye to the money makes us cry a little.

Today, a colleague and I decided to say goodbye to a grant we've been getting for many years. This colleague is not a fundraiser -- he's on the programming side of the organization. (I'd like to mention that he's also very smart, charming and handsome. And I'm not just saying that because he's offered to help me improve the design of this blog.)

Anyway, we decided to break things off with this funder. No hard feelings. We still want to be friends, we just don't want to, you know, "cash their checks" anymore. So we won't be sending them an application this year.

It isn't them, it's us.

The problem is that this particular grant represented less than 2% of the budget of my colleague's department, and necessitated a program that probably took up something like 10% of his department's time.  (And which cost at least as much as the grant money provided.)*  Nine more grants like that and we'd be out of business.  Plus, organizations can't grow when they're tethered to these small and perpetually underfunded projects.

It is hard to say goodbye to a grant like this. Why? In large part because we are neurotic and superstitious, I believe.  Even if we aren't all Jewish (I am), we can hear some imaginary grandmother somewhere saying "Now you're picking and choosing your grants, Mr. Bigshot? At the end of the fiscal year, when all your funders have abandoned you, you won't be such a Mr. Bigshot anymore."

But when we sober up from our chicken soup stupor, we must remember that fundraising (and nonprofit management generally) is a business. And saying goodbye to mass appeals to the same dead list, barely break-even fundraising events, in-kind treasure hunts and wag-the-dog grants is good business.


*(I'd like to mention, since I'm superstitious and neurotic, that we are delighted to receive other kinds of grants from this same wonderful funder, which are extremely helpful and for which we are very grateful. It's just this particular grant program that no longer makes sense for us.)