It’s obviously great to achieve one goal or have a good day at work, but an invaluable question to is, ‘what can we do to achieve momentum / ongoing progress in our fundraising?’
I shared ideas to help at the summer Breakfast Club for Fundraising Leaders. My keynote talk was about The Progress Principle and how we can deliberately make use of it in our fundraising.
I’ve noticed it’s tempting to focus most of our attention on either what we don’t want, or indeed, on our ultimate goal, for example hitting our target or receiving a large grant or major gift etc. But I’ve found that it’s usually more valuable to value, appreciate and cultivate progress towards the goal – even seemingly small steps.
This is usually a far more useful (and rewarding!) thing to focus your attention on each day.
My daughter has studied Japanese through Duolingo every day for the last 144 days. You may know someone who has done something similar, eg through Duolingo or an app like Couch to 5k. When you think of it, isn’t that kind of progress, with habits that are often really hard and elusive, amazing?
Why does she keep taking action, keep moving forward? Because she loves that sense of progress!
So, it is clearly possible for human beings to value progress, the small, regular steps forward, rather than only being happy when we ‘reach the top of the mountain’, for example when we are fluent in a language or pass an exam or win a charity partnership.
In training thousands of fundraisers over the years through our Team Training packages, our Major Gifts Mastery and Corporate Mastery programmes and Bright Spot Membership, I’ve noticed that when people harness the power of The Progress Principle, they build a wonderful momentum that is fun… and also makes fundraising much easier.
I mentioned the brilliant momentum built up during Corporate Partnerships Mastery by a fundraiser called Magda, which culminated in their successful application to Jingle Jam in 2024.
The event enabled her to raise more than £200,000 for her climate change charity. Asiya Parekh, another fundraiser who did the course also focussed on the many things within her influence, that help you achieve successful corporate partnerships. She too generated a fabulous momentum. At the start of the programme, the hospital charity she works for had one corporate partnership. In the next seven months she won nine new partnerships, each worth at least £10,000.
Of course, there are lots of reasons why Asiya achieved these wonderful results, but it’s clear to me that one of the major factors is that she generated momentum. She took small actions within her control, allowed herself to feel good about that progress (this part is often under-estimated)… and she got on a roll. That confidence made the next partnership and the next partnership ever easier to win.
So the (million dollar) question is, how do you build this kind of momentum in your fundraising?
My favourite technique is something I learned in an interview I did with a gold-medal winning paralympic athlete Karen Darke when she was training for the Rio Paralympics.
Karen has achieved many amazing things which seem to be impossible to many of us. She recovered from a devastating climbing accident and became an elite athlete, winning many medals including gold at the Rio Paralympics.
How does she do it?
Karen told me she has achieved these extraordinary things with these three steps:
Step 1. Wouldn’t it be amazing?
She asks herself (or chats with friends) about what adventure or difficult thing she’d love to do. Specifically, she asks ‘Wouldn’t It Be Amazing If…?’ She calls this a WIBA. Allowing herself to dream, and leaning into how brilliant it would feel, increases her desire to somehow get this good thing. This emotional fuel creates a pull which helps her with the third step, which would otherwise often be too difficult.
Step 2. Write down your favourite WIBA.
She told me that many people are reluctant to do this because rationally they can’t see ‘how’ it can be done. She told me the crucial thing she has learned is to write it down in spite of the rational brain sometimes finding it difficult to do this.
I dare you do try it, even if it feels uncomfortable! To encourage you, here is one of my favourite examples of what can happen when fundraisers do this…
A couple of years ago, a fundraiser name Lauren on our training used this progress and decided her WIBA was to inspire a seven-figure major gift. Five months later she told me she had just secured a donation of $1m for her university. She told me that simplistic though this process sounds, it had absolutely caused her to aim higher and follow through on ideas that she had not been doing before.
Step 3. Every day, do something that takes you closer to achieving that thing.
Even just a tiny step, every day, helps you keep up that ‘chain’ or ‘streak’ which is a major factor in how Duolingo helps learners build powerful momentum learning a language.
Use this to create a happy, rewarding career!
I also mentioned one of my favourite interviews for my podcast with the brilliant Liz Tait, who is Director of Fundraising at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital Charity. It’s all about how to conceive and achieve a happy, rewarding career in fundraising. I’ve found that her strategy is very effective. Like Karen’s WIBA approach, it overcomes some common challenges in building a great career by combining the emotional fuel of ‘pull motivation’ with the incremental gains / progress principle that helps you steadily keep moving forward.
Want to inspire your team?
If you’d like to build momentum in your fundraising, our team training sessions, Bright Spot Membership and Corporate Partnerships Mastery and Major Gifts Mastery programmes will help. Find out more today via the link, or request a chance to talk it through with a member of the Bright Spot training team.
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