Fundraising and Self-ManagementStrategies for nonprofit organizations - connecting funds and connecting people
Key Points
- Fundraising is not simply collecting donations. It is the vital process of bringing together the initiatives, the organization, and the finances in the right balance to sustain the organization’s ongoing activities.
- An organization that wishes to pursue fundraising successfully must first establish their cause and ensure that others empathize with that cause and their vision for the world.
- The individual growth of each staff member will allow the organization to grow. Individual growth requires self-management.
There is more to fundraising than simply collecting donations. Fundraising is the capacity to facilitate the growth of an organization and its sources of revenue, while managing all of the resources that an organization is equipped with.
Aya Hasegawa has worked as a consultant at Fundrex Co. Ltd. (external link), a leading consulting firm with a track record of over 380 projects assisting nonprofit organizations and other such entities in the social sector, since its establishment in 2008. We spoke to her about two aspects that are key to running a nonprofit organization — namely, fostering widespread support for the organization’s cause and the importance of the growth of individual staff members — in terms of how they are relevant to fundraising.
The fundamental definition: What is fundraising?
The Nippon Foundation Journal Editing Department: What does fundraising actually entail? In particular, how can it be defined and how is it significant?
Aya Hasegawa: Fundraising is the process by which nonprofit organizations raise funds to sustain their activities by using a suitable balance of the three main pillars of income — operational revenue, grants, and donations — in various forms.
I always describe it as the necessary process of sustaining ongoing activities by successfully bringing together a balance of the initiatives, the organization, and the funds. This concept is widely accepted among nonprofit organizations in the United States. As mentioned, fundraising tends to be understood in narrow terms as simply collecting donations, but as it is in fact a vital element of how an organization is shaped to sustain operations, it is essential that it is managed in such a way that takes into account the three pillars.
Journal: You mentioned that ensuring that people are able to empathize with an organization’s cause is a major element of fundraising. How can such empathy in fundraising be fostered and sustained?
Hasegawa: Fundraising is not merely collecting funds but requires empathy with the project in question. An organization first sets out how it wants to solve an issue and the vision for the world that it is seeking to create. There are the ideals that people support by providing donations and other such assistance. The ways in which an organization shares its message to encourage people to empathize with their cause are therefore extremely important.
At the same time, such empathy for a cause may also spontaneously develop among those who receive the organization’s message, and this is extremely difficult to manage. At times, information that is shared may even be interpreted negatively or critically. I personally think that management means addressing such negative responses by analyzing what points have perhaps been misunderstood and in doing so considering how best to communicate with the public in general.
In some cases, an organization will go looking for an audience to promote their cause to. Fundraising has much in common with making fans, so it also entails exploring how to find fans and cultivate a fan base.
The kind of approach that an organization actually adopts to share its message will depend on the vision for the world that the organization is seeking to achieve. Here an important factor is how strong and concrete the beliefs of those sharing the cause are toward that cause.
There is also the question of adjusting the method of communication to suit the target audience, such as whether to communicate with people directly or release information on social networking sites. The different approaches, whether they be posting on a YouTube channel or collecting donations in a commercial space or other such physical location, will have varying degrees of success from one organization to the next.
Once a person has identified with the cause, the organization maintains consistent contact. For instance, periodically sending out e-newsletters, regularly hosting meetings for supporters, or organizing events. Whatever approach is used, the key is to maintain contact to ensure that a supporter remains a fan indefinitely.
Journal: What specific approaches can an organization use to keep its fans?
Hasegawa: One fundraising theory is to establish a monthly supporter system. The aim is to ensure that people who empathize with the cause eventually become supporters who donate a certain amount each month.
There is a tool known as the “donor pyramid.” This involves devising how to communicate in such a way that gradually encourages people to progress to the next step of the pyramid like climbing the stairs – namely, encouraging the prospective donors at the bottom of the pyramid to become first-time donors, first-time donors to become repeat donors, and repeat donors to become monthly supporters.
Another approach is to analyze what kinds of stakeholders make up each level of the pyramid and take into account the personas of supporters in order to find ways of communicating that will resonate with prospective donors and existing donors. Such analysis of an organization’s supporters is also part of fundraising.
Hasegawa: It is also important for the organization to explain the initiatives it is pursuing. For instance, while the need to tackle poverty or support international cooperation is relatively self-explanatory, securing donations for preserving culture and the arts or similar areas may not be so straightforward. Some may suggest that such projects are not worthwhile if an organization needs to go to the extent of collecting donations in order to pursue them. In such cases, the potential for such initiatives with cultural or architectural significance to resonate with people is something that must be explained in order for it to be understood.
In order to explain what is important, it is vital that the message is communicated in a way that enables the general public to understand and accept it, using indices such as educational benefits, cultural heritage value, or the economic benefits of inbound tourism. Devising such a message is also very important. This is also a component of fundraising.
Empathy with the cause is the key to the growth of both an organization and its individual members
Journal: Can you give us an example of a project where empathy for the cause became the key to success?
Hasegawa: There is an example of successful crowdfunding by an organization that provides assistance for the impoverished. The nonprofit organization in question focuses on assisting the homeless and supporting the self-sufficiency of the impoverished. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid rise in people struggling socially and financially meant a sharp increase in the demand for support.
In this case, the organization was able to communicate the circumstances that those needing support were facing and the kind of support that was needed in such a way that resonated with many people. Empathy for the message spread widely, thanks to the use of social networks and the media, and content shared by celebrities. As a result, the crowdfunding raised over 100 million yen, a rare achievement for an organization in the welfare sector.
Journal: You just mentioned how important it is for an organization to first set out a cause defining the kind of world vision it wishes to achieve. How can a nonprofit organization build its cause as an organization and ensure that empathy for it spreads among staff and supporters?
Hasegawa: I think that in many cases, an organization is established by people with a strong belief, and people who strongly empathize with that belief join the organization. If an organization is solely made up of people who believe passionately in a cause, things will go well, but, like a company, when an organization expands, or has been active for an extended period, problems arise.
Namely, this is because the issues the organization is trying to solve cannot be solved in the short term — in say, one or two years. This allows room for doubts to arise among those in the organization, as they may feel that although they are giving their very best or, for instance, that although they recognize success in crowdfunding one year, they may be unsure to what extent their efforts are making headway toward solving the fundamental task. Managing such doubts is extremely difficult.
I believe that it is therefore ever more necessary for those involved to repeatedly reaffirm that the cause set out by the head of the organization is also a cause that they too are invested in. Even among those within the same organization, the vision may differ from person to person, and this is what makes such reaffirmation extremely important.
Journal: How do organizations ensure that their members reaffirm that they are invested in the cause?
Hasegawa: Organizations may adopt various approaches for doing this. For instance, there are organizations that hold camps several times a year and host regular workshops to help individuals to ensure that their goals are aligned with those of the organization. Alternatively, there are organizations where there is a chance at every meeting for everyone to check in, share their stance, and bridge any differences in opinion. Such initiatives allow each individual staff member to understand each other’s interests and for these individual interests to be reflected together in the cause set out by the organization.
Journal: What kinds of specific measures and challenges are there for ensuring that the organization’s cause is widely supported and for promoting greater solidarity within the organization?
Hasegawa: This is also something where organizations have devised various approaches. For instance, as I just mentioned, there are initiatives such as hosting overnight camps several times a year, where staff can reaffirm their own goals, align these with the contemporary developments, and lay out the organization’s current specific stance.
This approach allows all members to participate in consensus building and to reconfirm the significance of the organization’s current initiatives, as opposed to such decisions and developments being imposed upon staff from above.
Some organizations also use one-on-one meetings. These may also take various forms. While at some organizations a staff member must meet with their manager, at other organizations this is not considered so essential. The meetings are aimed at correcting any differences of opinion.
Journal: When it comes to the management of nonprofit organizations, what impact does the progress of each individual staff member have on the organization as a whole?
Hasegawa: The causes of an organization can only be achieved on a long-term scale. When engaging in something that requires a long time to be achieved, it will not necessarily help if an organization is chasing only visible results and immediate impacts.
People who are trying to achieve a cause through long-term initiatives must be able to adapt if they are going to be able to remain positive and continue to pursue their activities without being discouraged despite no immediate visible results. I believe that it is the positive developments amid change that constitute progress.
I also believe that a collection of individuals who are making progress equals the progress of the organization as a whole. Or in other words, in order for an organization to grow, each and every member that makes up the organization must be making progress.
Journal: Can you tell us about the specific initiatives that are pursued to support individual progress?
Hasegawa: To be honest, I think that there is still much room for improvement in this area. I fear that there are still many organizations that believe that individual progress is the responsibility of the individual. While of course not all organizations are like that, I think that on the whole, there are many that take such a stance.
There are various catalysts that prompt individual progress. For example, people may change and grow when they become aware of a point of view that they had not previously encountered in their work. In such cases, it is a point of view from a third party that may facilitate such progress. This is why many organizations incorporate coaching.
I also think that in a flat organizational structure, as opposed to a hierarchy, the staff will tend to carry the burden of such roles for each other. Relationships with others are a significant element of promoting individual growth. Facilitating relationships requires communication. Ideally progress will be generated by the efforts of staff who are enjoying good relationships as they work.
The various possibilities of fundraising for organization leaders
Journal: Please tell us about the future of fundraising and the upcoming challenges.
Hasegawa: As I said, fundraising is not simply collecting donations. Unlike those of a company, the achievements of a nonprofit organization are about not only raising profits, but also what kinds of changes arise in society. This is what we call the social impact, and an important element of fundraising is just how strong the awareness is of such impact.
In the case of nonprofit organizations, an organization is created on the basis of a cause. I believe this is a vision for how the world should be. If the activities are pursued in order to achieve this vision for the world, when the activities are devised, it must be clearly established how they relate to achieving the vision.
It starts with a cause, but the state of the organization that is to achieve that cause is also extremely important. As organizations create communities, communities and organizations in turn make up society, so it is highly important that the people that come together to make an organization are happy.
Journal: What kinds of projects would you like to be involved in and what kinds of goals would you like to achieve in the future?
Hasegawa: The themes of organizations and relationships which just came up are key topics of interest for me at the moment. I would like to assist in ensuring that people are able to make individual progress while also enjoying their work.
It may be starting small but, for instance, this could entail organizing a lunch gathering for people working in this sector as a forum for them to connect. As this sector is also seeing progressive mobility of human resources, I think it will help to promote easygoing relationships among people who work for nonprofit organizations, so that organizations can share their circumstances with each other. I would also like to share my insights into not only fundraising and operations, but also knowledge of personnel systems, labor management, and the management of an organization.
Journal: Could you share your suggestions for the kinds of direct action that nonprofit organization managers can take?
Hasegawa: I personally have neither experience running a nonprofit organization, nor experience starting a business. For this very reason I have great respect for people who manage nonprofit organizations or create businesses. In turn, I am strongly motivated to support those who are taking practical steps toward their goals.
Organizations are formed by bringing people together. I think I would recommend that they give consideration to relationships within the organization. By this I mean taking care to ensure that staff members have the kinds of relationships with each other that allow them to share their opinions frankly as equals. Managers have power, and I suggest that they use that power to ensure progress proceeds in a way that all staff are satisfied.
We can devise fundraising strategies and lay out plans, but as those who implement them are only human, things often go wrong. I believe that building positive relations where members feel satisfied as an organization allows all kinds of measures to be implemented effectively, or ensures that when things do not go to plan, the team can sum up the motivation to try again.
On the other hand, it is important for members of staff to give vent to their feelings. The idea is to take a step back instead of excessively controlling them and to allow each member to do as they wish, so that their efforts come together as a great force. Taking such a plunge is also a valid approach.
And as I mentioned before, achieving such goals requires a significant period of time. Some are likely to run low on energy before the finish line. If they do, they need to rest. At such times, self-management is especially important. Taking a break to recoup energy when needed, without comparing oneself to others or feeling guilty for taking time out, is crucial self-management.
Journal: Finally, please share your message of advice or encouragement for readers who manage nonprofit organizations.
Hasegawa: You have a vision for the world that you wish to achieve, so I truly hope that you will be able to achieve that vision. I hope that those heading up organizations and their staff combine their motivation together to keep pursuing activities toward achieving the world they strive for.
Editor’s Note
Government survey data on fundraising in Japan indicates that the amounts of money donated by individuals and the percentages of the population donating have been on the increase in recent years (Reference: “Overview of the Survey Report on the Development of Personnel Training Aimed at Strengthening Fundraising Efforts by National Research and Development Agencies” Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s; external link, in Japanese / PDF). Perspective donors choosing an organization to which to donate tend to place importance on having a clear outline of how funds will be used and being able to identify with the nature and goals of the organization’s initiatives.
Listening to Ms. Hasegawa, it became very clear that fundraising is not merely collecting donations, but advocating a cause and turning empathy with that cause into the source of energy for activities will surely have a great impact in the future upon achieving the visions for the world that nonprofit organizations are striving toward.
Text: The Nippon Foundation Journal Editing Department
Profile
Aya Hasegawa
Aya Hasegawa has been a consultant at leading consulting firm Fundrex since 2017. She provides consultancy, training, and operational efficiency services for organizations in a wide range of sectors, including international cooperation, environment, human rights, education, poverty, and arts and culture. In addition to strategy formulation and ongoing support of fundraising strategy, another area of her expertise is raising the efficiency of back-office operations. Her recent key focus is coaching and group coaching, with an emphasis on staff motivation. Through organizational leadership training, self-management, and other such human resources development, she explores the ideal forms of community and organizational structures in which people are able to maintain a positive outlook in their work.
