29. Rob Woods - Seven ways to increase income through more supporter conversations

Too often, charities encourage their fundraisers to focus primarily on money, rather than building great relationships with the kinds of people who care about their cause. But even if you agree that relationship-focus rather than money-focus makes sense in theory, how do you do it in practice? In major donor, trust and corporate fundraising, a great way is to deliberately spend more energy in seeking conversations with people who care, as a valuable end in itself. We have found that achieving more informal chats or attendance at your (on-line) events builds relationships and leads to gifts and partnerships. In this episode, Rob explores why focussing on conversations ahead of money (the power of oblique goals) makes such a stunning difference to your high value fundraising results. Luckily, there are many different ways to crack a nut. To help you find ways to increase your own results in this area, he shares seven examples of how shrewd fundraisers on Bright Spot’s Major Gifts Mastery and Corporate Partnerships Mastery Programmes have achieved fabulous results in this area, using both courage and creativity. Which of these ideas could you borrow to deepen relationships with your corporate and major donors? If you want to share your ideas or share this episode because you think it will help others – THANK YOU! - do get in touch through Linked In or twitter, where my handle is @woods_rob. And if you’d like more powerful strategies to help you raise funds during the pandemic, then there are lots of different approaches in my new free E-book: Power Through The Pandemic – Seven ways to raise money with major donors, corporates and trusts, even now. You can download it for FREE here: www.brightspotfundraising.co.uk/power