Folly #36: Age
Snowballing towards elder status.
I’d planned to write about something completely different this week, but then I read this quote:
“The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball—the further I am rolled the more I gain.”
– Susan B. Anthony, 1896
It’s timely. Last month I celebrated a “milestone” birthday, followed by a Thanksgiving of family, friends, lots of food, and even more gratitude. Now that I’ve recovered from two weeks of celebrations, I’m reflecting on work. Or maybe age. Or maybe what work I want to be doing at this age that can have a snowball effect.
I’m working with a few small, social justice nonprofits led by elders. Often these are people who bring years of experience, community and funder relationships, and credibility. And then I look at politics and see so many old leaders: suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a great thing. So as I move towards becoming an “elder” fundraiser, I’m thinking a lot about what I can do to really move the needle in getting smaller nonprofits towards sustainable funding.
I’m an optimist, and I generally look forward. Yet my lens is shaped by my past fundraising roles:
Major gift officer for The Nature Conservancy, a reputable, enormous, worldwide conservation organization with a well-oiled fundraising machine, er, staff. Long term impact? Minimal. I got great training, but don’t think my individual contribution working with 100 donors made much of a difference in a nonprofit with one million members.
Director of Development for several nonprofits where I raised $2M/year. Long term impact? Solid, assuming the systems and relationships I helped build have been nurtured and have evolved. I’m grateful that this was most of my career.
Grantwriting consultant to small nonprofits. This has been the focus of my work at communitygrantwriters.us for the past three years. Long term impact? Questionable. I think we’re pretty darned good at researching funders that are a good fit (and digging into details, like their 990s, for evidence of similar grants), and you wouldn’t be wasting your time reading this if I were a crappy writer.
“Helping small nonprofits build their dependency on grants that, generally, last one year is the antithesis of sustainable funding.”
– Melanie Hamburger, 2023
In this next decade, I hope to focus my snowball effect on helping nonprofits that do amazing work to connect with individual donors. Talking with a human being about what they care about in the world – and then connecting them to an organization doing that work – is the easiest kind of fundraising. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of fundraising that most small nonprofits think they can do.
Not yet, anyway. Ask me in another 10 years.
Confused by why we call the business Community Grantwriters when we’re not all that keen on writing grants? It’s ironic, but every nonprofit knows how a grantwriting role might look, even if that’s not their best fundraising resource, but most would say they’re “not ready” for a major gift program.
But that’s a topic for next week’s Folly.
And if you know staff or board members who would like to learn more about growing individual donors and major gifts, I teach an online class to help make it feel do-able. The next one starts in February.
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