Naked fundraising

I recently did a training through Azusa Pacific University called "Major Gifts Fundraising".  It was a 12 week, online course led by the great J.Paul Fridenmaker. There were several books that we read as part of this such as The Spirituality of Fundraising, and The Third Conversion. The book that I took the most from was Getting Naked. 

It is mostly a business book but the same principles apply when we are fundraising. These are - 

1. Fear of Losing the Business (input donor) - Worrying about losing a client's (donor's) business (giving) may cause service providers and consultants to avoid the very things that ultimately engender trust and loyalty.
2. Fear of Being Embarrassed - Rooted in pride, this fear can lead service providers to withhold their best ideas from clients. (Or your best fundraising ideas)
3. Fear of Feeling Inferior - To avoid feeling irrelevant or being overlooked, consultants try to achieve and preserve a high level of importance in clients' minds. (donor and mission first). 

Fear, will hamstring any fundraiser. Have no fear, ask and you will receive seek and you will find. The whole idea of "Getting Naked" is to be humble in our approach, relationship based (not chasing money), and sincere about the cause (don't try to sell someone to it, unless you really feel it will be a blessing to them and the mission). 

At Children of the Nations, we always say we do not want your money we want your heart. Sounds trite, I know. But it is too easy in fundraising to not care about the giver and what they want to give to and just chase after their money - because we fear loosing the donor! Getting Naked, will say if the client is not into what your doing then direct them somewhere else - easier said than done. But, when we do this the giver realizes that we are just as interested in THEM as a person as we are in reaching some financial goal. 

A lesson I need to continue learning - fear not, and get naked.