Divisions a danger to your donations
Posted on 14 Mar 2024
By Adele Stowe-Lindner, general manager, Institute of Community Directors Australia
A core responsibility of the professional and board leadership of any not-for-profit is fundraising.
The received wisdom – that board members should give (money), get (money), or get off (the board) – powerfully summarises a board member’s responsibility in that regard.
Researchers behind the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer observed, “Australia is on a path to polarisation, driven by a series of macro forces that are weakening the country’s social fabric and creating increasing division in society.”
These divisions, which can be seen in sport, the arts, education, the community sector and beyond, are set to continue to create challenges for NFPs in garnering broad fundraising support.
Successful fundraising is aligned with a compelling and clear vision. As a board member, you have a duty to keep an eye on the organisational mission, and thereby to prevent mission creep rather than enable it.
If the organisation’s conversation and branding drift away from the mission, an impact on funding sustainability is inevitable. You want your organisation’s mission to be clear to donors: what you do and why you do it should not be confusing.
According to Funding for Good (2023), there are many potential consequences of mission drift for fundraising.
These include “overall funding challenges as funders fail to understand an organisation’s impact, reduced impact overall because leaders are distracted and resources not strategically allocated, increased conflict between staff, board and stakeholders, thinly stretched staff leading to burnout, underfunded programs which fail to reach goals.” That is quite a list of hazards!
"The way in which your board communicates the brand will affect who chooses to support you, from philanthropic trusts to individual donors."
A board’s responsibility for the financial sustainability of its organisation is complex. Boards must navigate a safe passage between holding true to their mission and being able to respond in a nimble way to contemporary issues around them.
On the one hand, a board must keep up with the times to avoid becoming irrelevant, and on the other hand, diving headfirst down a rabbit hole that is not part of the mission can prevent the organisation from achieving the mission it was set up to achieve in the first place.
How will your fundraising strategy survive in a rapidly changing world? It is important that your fundraising strategy is a part of your organisational strategy as a whole and not operating in parallel.
It’s important that decisions about how to engage with new causes are made holistically, with consideration given to your beneficiaries, your branding, your fundraising, and how each cause intersects with your mission.
The way in which your board communicates the brand will affect who chooses to support you, from philanthropic trusts to individual donors.
There is no one right answer to this sticky dilemma – precisely what is the shape of our mission in each new context and what does that mean for our fundraising? – but your board needs to be confident that its decisions reflect the organisation’s mission, because you may lose some stakeholders whichever way you turn.