When did fundraising stop being about raising money?

When did fundraising stop being about… raising money?

That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Of course fundraising is about raising money, I can hear my teams yelling at me now.

Yet spend enough time inside the sector and you start to notice something. As charities grow, fundraising slowly becomes something else.

Not because people stop caring. Quite the opposite. Organisations become more professional, governance improves, specialist teams appear and processes are rightly introduced. Before long there are steering groups, approval panels, risk registers, legal reviews and sign-off chains. None of those things are inherently bad.

The problem comes when the process starts to become the purpose.

The late Peter Drucker once said: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

It’s a reminder that efficiency isn’t the same as effectiveness. We can become incredibly good at running meetings, refining processes and managing risk, while quietly forgetting the reason those processes exist in the first place.

Let’s get this clear. Fundraising has one job.

To raise as much sustainable income as possible so the charity can maximise its impact.

Everything else should support that objective. If it doesn’t, we should at least have the courage to ask why we’re doing it.

Over the years I’ve spoken to fundraisers who’ve spent longer debating the colour of a website button than they have discussing how to recruit another thousand supporters.

I’ve seen campaigns sit in inboxes for weeks because one more person wanted to “sense check” the copy, another presentation had been requested or someone, somewhere, wasn’t quite ready to make a decision.

Meanwhile, the campaign isn’t raising a penny.

That’s the cost we rarely measure. Every week spent debating is another week when new supporters aren’t joining, donations aren’t arriving and services aren’t being funded. Fear quietly becomes delay. Delay becomes inertia. And inertia becomes less income. We don’t usually put that on the board report, but perhaps we should.

Kicking it down the road means less lives are changed. Maybe saved.

The charities that consistently outperform the sector aren’t always the biggest or the richest. Far from it. But they’re usually the ones with remarkable clarity, passion and bravery. Every important conversation eventually comes back to a very simple question:

Will this help us raise more money for the cause?

It’s just so simple.

If the answer is yes, they get on with it. If it isn’t, they stop pretending it’s a priority.

Legacy fundraising is probably my favourite example of how we can disappear down the wrong rabbit hole.

A gift in a Will is one of the most extraordinary donations anyone can make. One decision can fund services for years, transform an organisation and touch thousands of lives. Yet I’ve lost count of the hours, days and sometimes weeks charities spend discussing the Gift in Wills guide.

Should it be twenty-four pages or thirty-two? Should the cover feature another smiling Shutterstock couple? Should we appoint an agency or commission another photoshoot?

Eventually everybody has had their say, months have drifted by and thousands of pounds have been spent.

The strange thing is that in all the conversations I’ve had with people who’ve chosen to leave a gift in their Will, I’ve never once heard anyone say: “It was the guide that convinced me. That was the clincher!”

People don’t leave legacies because of brochures.

They leave them because they believe in the cause. Because they want something they’ve cared about during their lifetime to continue after they’re gone. Because, if we’re honest, most of us like the idea that a small part of us carries on making a difference.

The guide matters, of course, but only after that emotional decision has already been made. It’s the instruction manual, not the reason someone bought the product.

That’s where I think we’ve got things the wrong way round.

Imagine if we invested as much time in telling unforgettable stories as we do discussing the cover of the guide? Wow. Imagine if supporters regularly heard about the family whose lives changed because of a legacy gift made twenty years ago, or the hospice wing that exists because someone quietly remembered the charity in their Will.

That’s where the fundraising happens.

The guide simply explains what to do next.

It’s not just legacy fundraising either.

They’d quite like to know what their donation achieved. They appreciate being thanked as though their gift genuinely mattered. They want to feel recognised as people rather than reference numbers, and they’d rather receive communications that make sense than another stream of generic fundraising emails. It’s exactly why we place so much emphasis on supporter retention and re-engagement, because recruiting a donor is only the beginning of the relationship.

None of that is particularly groundbreaking.

It doesn’t require another consultancy report or a strategy away day. It certainly doesn’t need a 12-month transformation programme.

It just requires us to spend a little less time looking inwards and a little more time looking at the people who make our work possible.

Perhaps that’s why donor retention remains one of fundraising’s biggest challenges. Investing in a considered regular giving strategy alongside meaningful supporter communications gives charities a much greater opportunity to build long-term, sustainable income rather than relying solely on new donor acquisition.

Across the sector, charities typically retain only around 43-46% of donors from one year to the next. In other words, more than half of the people who choose to support a charity this year won’t still be giving next year. Imagine what could happen if we invested as much time in strengthening those relationships as we do refining internal processes.

And finally… let’s talk about rebrands.

Every few years another charity unveils a fresh logo, a modern colour palette and a brand video explaining why everything had to change. Sometimes there are good reasons. Organisations evolve and brands should evolve too.

But let’s not kid ourselves that supporters give because they like a typeface.

They give because they trust you.

That trust has often taken years to earn, and changing the organisation’s look and feel is rarely the thing that persuades someone to make their first donation. If anything, it can make loyal supporters wonder whether they’re still looking at the charity they’ve backed for years.

The question shouldn’t be: “Does it look more modern?”

It should be: “Will this help us raise more money?”

That’s a much tougher question and probably a more useful one.

One thing we’ve learned at Reach Fundraising is that lifetime value isn’t built through process. It’s built through trust, communication and relationships. Whether that’s through digital marketing, face-to-face fundraising or helping internal teams develop through fundraising mentoring, the principles remain exactly the same. Emotion sits at the heart of every successful campaign.

The charities that consistently grow don’t necessarily have the thickest strategy documents or the busiest governance structures. They recruit well, communicate well, thank well, report back well and, when the time is right, ask again.

None of that is glamorous.

It won’t win many creative awards.

It probably won’t be the highlight of your next conference presentation.

But it raises money and surely that’s the point.

Every pound we raise allows a charity to help another person, fund another service or change another life. Every hour we spend should have a clear line back to that objective.

So perhaps charities should occasionally ask itself one uncomfortable question.

If we stripped away half the meetings, half the process and half the internal debate, would we raise more money?

If the honest answer is yes, perhaps we’ve become better at managing fundraising than actually raising funds.