I get a lot of questions from leaders of small nonprofits about what fundraising practices they should invest in.

They ask: Should we be fundraising on Facebook? Should we use LinkedIn Pro for prospecting? Should we create a texting fundraising program? Should we purchase emails or data or swap lists with other organizations?

More often than not, leaders of small nonprofits have heard some fundraising recommendation that they should be doing all these things all the time, otherwise they are missing out on money.

The pressure is overwhelming to do everything in the fear of losing out.

But my answer is a hard “no.”

My answer isn’t “no” because these tools won’t bring in a few gifts here and there. They might.

It’s “no” because if you aren’t implementing your core fundraising programs well, all of these tools and tactics are just a distraction. 

I remember what it was like to run a small nonprofit, feel the pressure to build the fundraising program, and not know where to invest our limited resources to build our donor pool.

It’s hard to know where you actually see return on investment. 

So I spent time and money trying out different options. I looked into cookies and tried joint email acquisition ventures and Amazon Smiles and online tools that don't even exist anymore. And none of them returned nearly what I invested in them. 

And these options wouldn’t have had a return on investment for a small nonprofit. We didn’t have large enough geographic reach, a large enough pool of donors, or a large enough network of ambassadors who could connect us to new donors. 

Some of the tactics I tried actually reduced donor giving in the long run.

Many of the cutting edge fundraising tools are designed for larger nonprofits to take advantage of geographic breadth and donor pool depth and broad brand recognition. With large fundraising shops and staff to focus on each aspect of fundraising, large nonprofits have the luxury of experimenting. 

They also have the luxury of implementing sophisticated evaluations of each tool’s success.

Your small nonprofit probably doesn’t have any of those luxuries. 

But what you should have is a diversified core of fundraising activities: Individual donors, foundation grants, government funding (where applicable).

And you should be engaging with those donors in a variety of standard mediums: personal outreach, mail, email. Throw in mix your already chosen and established social media outlets, and you have your core fundraising tools.

The promise of new technologies as the silver bullet to growing your fundraising program may sound enticing. But as a small nonprofit, it’s unlikely you are implementing your existing fundraising programs as well as you should. 

Until you’ve built really, really strong core fundraising programs, branching off do try other mediums and other fancy tools is just nibbling around the edges. And costing you time and money you don’t have to waste.

You won’t see your fundraising program take off. You may see it falter.

Instead, retaining your current donors is your number one priority.

Perhaps you’ve heard that it takes a nonprofit 2-3 times more to recruit a new donor than they will give in their first gift. That’s a lot of resources to waste if you can’t keep donors investing in your organization.

And you’re likely already losing around 80% of the new donors that give to you for the first time. 

Ouch.

The organizations who achieve fundraising growth do so because they’ve kept their donors engaged and they’ve excited them to give more. These organizations communicate really well with their donors, appreciate their donors over and over again, and regularly share their impact.

But getting to that kind of fundraising program takes a lot of work and knowledge about your donors and fundraising best practices. 

And you have limited capacity. Which means you have to choose each year what revenue stream you want to invest in to grow.

Because as a small nonprofit, you can only realistically build up your fundraising program one revenue stream at a time. You have to prioritize your staff time and resources if you want a good outcome.

I’m sure you’ve also heard that prioritizing everything is prioritizing nothing.

And keep in mind that you won’t see those outcomes immediately. 

Patience is a virtue. It’s not my virtue, so I understand if it’s hard to implement big changes in your fundraising program and invest in donor retention when you can’t see return right away. 

But have faith. When your donors stay with you, return will be there. Year after year.