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Transcript

Three Time-Saving Tips Every Catholic Fundraiser Needs to Know

It’s time to learn my three best tips on how to save time and still maximize your fundraising efforts. I’m Brice Sokolowski, founder of CatholicFundraiser.net, a website completely dedicated to helping Catholics — just like you — with their fundraising.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to save time while still running an efficient and successful fundraising campaign. Because let’s face it, fundraising can eat up a lot of time and distract you from staying on track, which is how I learned three tips for how to save time and still raise where you want to raise.

Now, before we do that, I just want to make sure that you have downloaded (absolutely for free) a copy of my 10 Commandments to Catholic Fundraising. These are 10 recommendations I offer every Catholic when fundraising because, well, it’s helped my fundraising and it’s going to help thousands of Catholics like you to fundraise, too. These 10 commandments are pretty much the gathering of the best of what I think Catholics should be doing when they’re considering fundraising. Please download it. The link is going to be right below wherever you’re watching or listening to this podcast or vlog.

Okay, let’s dive into my three best time savers. First, automate attention. What do I mean by automating attention? Well, one of the most important responsibilities of fundraising is getting the word out. Now, you could get the word out about what you do by going to different parishes, meeting with groups, and speaking individually to people. But all of this takes time, and the whole point is to save time. So how do you get the word out without having it cost your own time? The best way is by automating the effort. Get on the Internet and definitely find a way of getting the word out through posts!

My biggest time-saving recommendation for publishing online is by placing advertising. Yes, it costs a little (or a lot if you have the budget) but most of all, it’s a real time saver because you don’t have to go out and constantly spread your message. Advertising does the legwork for you.

So my recommendation is to consider using ads, whether that’s CatholicAdNet, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter or whatever. I really recommend investing in advertising. If you’ve never used advertising before, relax and stick with me. My website has lots of advice on how to build an advertising campaign. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

First, focus on automating attention. Then, my second time-saving tip is to organize your contacts, whether that’s by email, phone, or postal mail, you want to consolidate all that contact information and stay updated on at least a weekly basis. My big recommendation is to keep everything in one place and here’s why:

All too often I have seen a Catholic nonprofit, religious order or apostate decide it wants to run a campaign. So then, they have to put all this effort into gathering together contact information, and that eats up a lot of time that could otherwise be spent welcoming donations. So my second recommendation is… stay organized on a regular basis.

My third time-saving tip may sound counterintuitive but it still proves itself true: You should be asking for more donations on a one-on-one basis. I have two reasons for sharing this lesson. One, it’s still proven to be the most successful way of fundraising, and two, it really doesn’t take a whole lot of time. You meet the potential donor, sit down, and have a conversation.

Think about it. When it comes to appeal letters, email campaigns, social media, you know you’ve got to be writing a script, writing copy, getting pictures, putting something on a website, getting your donation page up (and maintained), etc., etc., etc. That’s a whole lot of moving pieces to keep juggling at once. In comparison, when you are one-on-one with someone, all you really need to be doing is either speaking with them on a phone or in person.

I really believe that one of the greatest and most under-utilized time-savers is the one-on-one appeal. Obviously, it can be a little nerve-wracking. But if you can get over that, if you can overcome your fear of asking (which you’re going to have to anyway, regardless of how you ask), this is the best and most time-saving choice.

These are my three tips on saving time when it comes to fundraising. I hope you have found them encouraging and please, share them with other Catholic apostates that might benefit from the same. And if you have a comment or question, please let me know because I love hearing from you.

May God bless you and I’ll speak to you again next week. Thank you for listening and be sure to subscribe to the CatholicFundraiser.net podcast so you never miss an episode on how to fundraise in the Catholic context. And be sure to go to CatholicFundraiser.net for more free resources so you can keep doing what you do best: saving lives and saving souls.