One of my favorite pieces of fundraising advice to offer nonprofits is my “To Don’t” list. This is more than a reminder to avoid some of the common mistakes nonprofits make, like not thanking donors properly or being vague about impact. Instead, it focuses on things I honestly believe most nonprofits can stop doing.
My core “To Don’t” list looks like this:
- Don’t chase down a new impact story for every campaign. Refine, reframe, and reuse your best stories to really stick.
- Don’t plan more than one fundraising event a year, unless you have a really compelling reason.
- Don’t continue producing material your donors don’t engage with. Use shorter, more frequent messages to meet people where they are.
- Don’t keep pursuing donors who’ve shown little interest in increasing their support.
- Don’t make your donor communications too polished. Authenticity connects better than perfection.
Saying no to lower-return tasks frees you up to say yes to more impactful strategies. I recently worked with a nonprofit that had applied for around 20 grants in the prior year and received three. While this isn’t a terrible rate of return, the three foundations that approved them had one thing in common: They’d all funded the nonprofit before. The rest were cold applications that seemed like a good fit for each foundation’s interests but somehow missed the mark.
I advised them to stop submitting applications to any foundation they weren’t able to have a conversation with in advance in order to confirm they were a good fit. Instead, they focused on building stronger relationships with the three funders who already appreciated them, which led to increased support at the end of the year. They’re receiving more funding with 75 percent fewer applications.
Of course, the phenomenon of accomplishing more by doing less doesn’t just apply to fundraising, or only to nonprofits. In my own work, moving from full-time employment to part-time teaching and consulting increased both my own satisfaction and, I hope, my impact on the nonprofit sector. When I switched my business’s every-other-week newsletter to a monthly schedule, click rates went up. When I stepped off most social media five years ago, my ability to focus went up.
It takes courage to move items to the “To Don’t” list, or even a “Do Less Of” list, but the payoff is worth it. Letting go of lower-return tasks and activities frees up time, energy, and resources for more valuable opportunities. When I’m working with a leader whose schedule is already too full, I like to ask two questions: What are you continuing to do out of habit that you wouldn’t start today? And f you stopped, who would actually notice?
The “To Don’t” list isn’t about doing less for its own sake. Rather, it makes room for the work that makes a bigger difference. In the nonprofit world especially, where we always seem to stretch ourselves too thin in service to our missions, that kind of clarity is its own form of impact.
