Simple tweaks in the way you think and what you say can affect how people look at your cause or your organization:

  • Stop calling yourself a nonprofit, or a not-for-profit. Right off the bat you are defining yourself in the negative and limiting what you can accomplish. Define your organization as "for-impact". Define what you're for, what your impact and vision are, and the real message you are trying to spread.
  • Don't stop there -- how about getting rid of your mission statements, especially when it relates to spouting them off or having potential supporters read them? Mission statements are often lengthy, boring and altogether worthless. Again, define what your actual message is, what you want people to understand and what you want them to do.
  • There are only three reasons for a nonprofit, excuse me, a for-impact organization to exist. Those are to save lives, transform lives and change lives. It's all tied to helping other people. It's what you are doing everyday, and it is driving your existence.
  • That impact that you are making, what you are doing everyday, the message you are spreading, that is what drives your income, not the other way around. Your income should not and does not drive your impact. The size and scope of your impact determines the size and scope of your income. If you can effectively relate your impact to people in the community, your income will increase, thereby allowing you to have a greater impact, and so on.
  • That income is of course necessary though, so just ask. You always need to be asking, it won't happen by itself. Awareness doesn't equal action.
  • But just don't ask for money. Present people with the opportunity to help. Describe to them in human terms what they can do to help and show them how.
  • Take it one step further. Share a story when you present the opportunity. Everybody has a great story. A story of how your organization was founded or the people you help or the people that help you. Those stories inspire other people to take action as well.
  • Focus on relationships, not transactions. If the only time you speak to the people who help you is when you want money from them, you do not have a real relationship with them. Most people stop giving to a charity not because of financial concerns but because of the way they were treated. Remember that you are in the relationship business.

Source: Adapted by Jake Emen from Tom Suddes' Nonprofit 911 Presentation "33 Ideas that Change the Fundraising Game." For more information, please visit www.forimpact.org.