Do Not Look to Experts

The rules for fundraising have not disappeared, but the game is changing. What worked for the greats of the past will not always work for us today, and holding on too tightly to their playbook could be the reason your organization falls behind.

It is a problem if you are still looking to the people who have been writing grants for decades to show you how to write grants and facilitate funder conversations in this moment in history.

I say that with the utmost reverence.

There are true pioneers in the nonprofit industry. People who shaped what capital campaigns look like. People who defined how grant writing works. People who built the systems for fundraising, donor relations, and resource management. Their work has produced incredible results and had an undeniable impact on communities.

But here is the truth. While the principles they lived by still matter, the way they applied those principles does not always serve us now. We need to figure out how to take those same virtues such as energy, integrity, efficiency, and strong work ethic and apply them in ways that work in the world we are in today.

When I was the capital campaign director for a nonprofit that supported houseless entrepreneurs, we had a bootstrap budget compared to larger organizations. We needed to raise a significant amount of money to buy a new building. We hired a veteran consultant with an impressive track record. This person had raised over one hundred million dollars in their career.

The gap between what they had achieved and what we were dealing with every day was wide. We assumed their methods would work for us. Over time, we realized many of their recommendations did not apply to our circumstances. The challenges we faced were different. The community context was different.

The biggest irony is that we did not start raising the significant money we needed until we stopped relying on their approach. That was a hard realization. It is tough when you have been taught to look to the people who came before you and say, show me the way. The truth is, how they did it is not how you are going to do it.

The way forward starts with honoring the people who came before us. They pioneered the processes we still use today. Not everything they built is going away. In the coming years, many elements of the traditional grant process will remain. There will still be foundations you apply to. There will still be major donor processes that work.

The rest of it, the new ways of gathering resources that will truly work for your community now, will only come from paying close attention to your unique environment. Listen to the pains, frustrations, and circumstances around you. Find the people connected to your community who have resources and have real, honest conversations with them.

From those conversations, create approaches that carry the core virtues you value but are shaped for the realities of today. This is not about throwing out the past. It is about taking what matters most from it and building something that belongs entirely to this moment. The organizations that do this will be the ones that gather the resources they need to continue making an impact.