Photo by Jessica Alves on Unsplash

Writer: Craig Meerkamper

Fundraisers believe in the power of community. They believe in the charity of the individual and the power that can come from harnessing many individual donations to cause large-scale social impact. But it’s in proving and communicating the impact of contributions that many fundraisers struggle.

When you make a donation you aren’t buying a service or a product, you’re buying a promise. The promise is that your contribution will have a bigger impact when pooled than it could have individually. Fundraisers attract donations from large and diverse audiences of donors, each with differing levels of investment in the cause and familiarity with the structure of pooled funds. Getting too analytical risks alienating donors who are focused on the big picture impact from those who want to know how their personal contribution specifically had impact.

It’s extremely difficult to quantify how much impact each individual brings to the project, and the danger arising from this is donors becoming apathetic to the necessity of their individual donations. When discussing your successes, bring clear and honest examples that can be understood by anyone. Leave your audience feeling that their donations are well cared for and have made the difference they hoped.

When hosting presentations for donors, a fundraiser’s job is to demonstrate success. Nothing convinces people that their money is being used effectively more than tangible results. This is of course easier said than done when a fundraiser is tasked with conveying complex data in an accessible and engaging way. If your presentation is long-winded or caught up in the nuanced details of research, the data itself may indeed be crucial to explaining how you arrived at the breakthrough, but to avoid risking donor disengagement you must focus first and foremost on the breakthrough itself. 

The magic of keeping donors engaged and willing to continue contributing lies in an effective balance between factual reporting and understandable success stories. Exploring how an individual was affected by your research, or how their life specifically changed due to the funding, is a great way to give a face and name to donors. It provides a case-study of how your organization seeks to help other similarly struggling individuals, and can remind donors of where they would be if the organization was not able to help them due to a lack of funding.

Fundraising must carefully balance its messaging between emotional calls to action, and the factual results of their research. So be strategic with your presentations, charts, and graphs. Make the most crucial takeaways the most memorable, and don’t spend all of your time getting caught in the specifics. Broad change happens thanks to a broad base of support, and that requires building a longstanding trust in your organizations purported goals, and in proving your efficacy at achieving them.

With these struggles and tips in mind, Blast is excited to offer a new course, “How to Build Powerful Presentations”. The program is designed for professionals facing diverse audiences, looking to improve the clarity and impact of their presentations. By taking the course, participants learn how to structure a clear, powerful story. They also learn proven methods to build impactful slides that reassure and inspire audiences very time.

Upcoming Fundraiser Sessions: January 20 & January 22 2025 4pm-7pm EST.