Let's talk about fundraising fails
Failure - what a difficult word, right? It’s definitely something I’m uncomfortable with, admitting, facing...all of it. In general, we give ourselves (or our employees, teammates, partners, children) so little room to fail that we 1) end up playing it safe way too often and 2) don’t get the MASSIVE reward that comes from failing - learning.
To me, Sara Blakely, the amazing female entrepreneur who started Spanx is the definition of going for it regardless of the risk of failure. She often tells the story of how in her house growing up, her family really celebrated failure.
“My dad used to invite my brother and I to share our failures at the dinner table. Instead of being disappointed or upset, he would say, ‘Yes! I love it. What did you learn?’ What it did was reframe my definition of failure. Failure for me became not trying, versus the outcome.”
I love that so much. What if for all of us, failure became not trying verses the outcome?
So today, I want to talk about failure. I’ve done some outreach and collected some stories from the field from fundraisers who have at one point or another failed: #fundraisingfails is what I’m calling it.
Here’s to going into 2020 with the hope - the expectation - that YOU WILL FAIL. And by failing - you will get better, stronger and faster. You will also get to practice that it’s not what happens to you, but how you react from it that matters most. To failure. I’ll start.
“My greatest failure in 2019 was a mistake I’m always telling my students to not make: the importance of nurturing a pipeline. In late 2018 and the first half of 2019, I became SO busy with client projects that I was giving ZERO time to my own client pipeline. The result? Projects wrapped and I found myself with NO work and worse, NO pipeline since I’d basically stopped cultivation for the last 10 months. I became super stressed and felt like such a fool for falling into the trap I’m constantly telling my audience to not get themselves into. I’m slowly pulling myself out of the hole, but it would have been so much better if I had just stuck to what I know works - consistent and thoughtful touch points.”
“At my client’s big fundraising event, we let people who arrived a little early go in the ballroom and let them loose, free-range. The caterer put out the food for the buffet before the actual event began and the early birds just began serving themselves before the event even started! By the time the other guests arrived - there wasn’t any food left!”
What is a fundraising fail you can now look back on? I’d love to hear plus, I think we can all learn from one another.
Looking forward to jumping into this next decade armed and ready to take on big challenges, fail massively and get better along the way.
Wishing you a Happy New Year.
xo,
