Sales Experience Helps Nonprofit Fundraising

As an account manager in enterprise sales, I loved making customers successful and thrived on aligning their needs with our telecom products and services. Another aspect of being in sales and a successful salesperson was learning to manage your productivity and annual revenue quota.

I was “top performing,” and I did this, in part, by taking my annual sales goal in January and mapping a path to achieve 100% of the annual sales target by June 30th. With my annual goal behind me, starting in July, I could focus the rest of the year on the “strategic products” that helped my customers transform, paid me the highest commissions, and helped me win the trip to Hawaii.

When I became a nonprofit CEO and consultant, I adopted the six-month “semester” approach, with both semesters culminating in a campaign such as a calendar year-end or fiscal year-end. While many in the social sector would bristle by mentioning this commercial sales technique, whether you have to raise $50m annually or $500k for your cause, the strategic activity of breaking the year down into monthly, quarterly, and six-month chunks enables a greater likelihood that you can reach and exceed annual goals. This is especially critical if your organization depends on a large event, gala, or concert; this approach helps manage the risk associated with event revenue timing.

Example: In my first year as  Tournament Director of a Senior PGA Tour event (now Champions Tour), I planned the budget with my team, and, it rained during tournament week, wiping out the revenue I planned to earn on-site from single tickets, concessions and souvenirs, not to mention the expense of course repair from heavy tv cameras gouging ruts in the beautiful Donald Ross-designed golf course.

The following year, I frontloaded the calendar of events and revenue attainment to ensure I had generated my annual revenue target BEFORE we moved out to the course. Whether you have a big event or are planning an annual and multi-year campaign, this calendering technique works, and I urge you to consider dividing your year into strategic segments to ensure you meet and exceed your annual fundraising goals.

Send me a message at mgleason@alignphilanthropy.com, and we can speak for 15 minutes to see if this approach can help you far exceed your 2024 Development goals. Put 2024 Discussion in the subject line.