The Balancing Act: How To Make Sure You’re Finding Aligned Donors

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Donors are increasingly using the power of their dollars to influence organizations. We’ve seen it most frequently related to college and university donors, but this moment provides an opportunity for all organizations to reflect on their donors and values to make sure they are aligned. This alignment creates the need for one of the most crucial balancing acts for social impact organizations: making sure your resources fuel your mission without compromising your values.

So how can you tell who your people are? It starts with defining who your organization is by being vocal and clear about who you are and what you value. 

Do You Recognize Your Organization?

Now is a great time to revisit your organization’s mission, vision, and values to ensure they are as comprehensive as possible. If any of these elemental statements were written pre-pandemic or 2020, you might want to ensure that any evolutions in your organization’s culture are reflected in external messaging. If your current mission and vision don’t reflect how your organization has evolved over the past few years, work with your board to begin the process to catch up.

Just ask

Now is a great time to do a supporter survey to understand why people engage with your organization. Helpful questions might include:

1. Why do you give to our organization?

2. What about our mission and vision excite you most?

3. Do you know what our core values are?

4. What is important to you about beginning a relationship with an organization?

Know When to Walk AwayDoes your organization have a clear gift acceptance (and rejection) policy? Now might be a good time to come up with a process for determining which partners help propel the organization forward and who might serve as a hindrance (i.e., does taking government dollars dilute your perceived effectiveness as an advocacy organization). We recommend that organizations prioritize the creation of a clear process for having these conversations internally as opposed to creating a broad policy. Having a process allows you to convene your team if you need to decide if a prospect is a good fit OR if an existing partner somehow begins to represent values or publicly display actions that could potentially do harm. 

Manifest Your Ideal Donors

If you want to find more or different donors that are aligned with where your organization is now, consider creating Donor Avatars. Our friend Rhea has a great blog post with “Steps to Finding Your Ideal Donor Avatar”.