Does your nonprofit have a “part-time” fundraising problem?
As an ED, I learned the hard way that hiring well-meaning but inexperienced junior development folks often wastes precious resources. 💸 Their lack of strategic chops yields scattershot efforts and little ROI…leaving us with a half-baked revenue recipe. 🍳
But Cindy suggests a secret ingredient to bake up some major gifts – fractional fundraisers! 💡 These seasoned specialists bring targeted plans and efficient implementation to quickly elevate fundraising. It’s like adding an entire strategic department without the burden of permanent staff. 😍
For small shops stuck in survival mode, fractional fundraising could fast-track stability and growth. Cindy explains what to expect, how to track results, and why it beats blowing your budget on the wrong hires. 💥
So who else wants to take their fundraising from fractured to fully funded? Let’s level up together! 🙌 Hit play to explore fractional fundraising now.
Important Links:
https://www.fractionalfundraising.co/
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today is a fan favorite, my friend, Cindy Wagman, founder of Cindy Wagman Consulting. And today we are talking about fractional fundraisers. What is that? We don’t know. We’re going to find out. Cindy, welcome back to the show.
CINDY 00:29
Thank you for having me.
It’s always a pleasure to be with you.
RHEA 00:33
It is just so delightful. Actually, don’t know if you know this the episode that we did with you, me, Jess and Brooke in the car is one of the top fan faves of 2023.
CINDY 00:43
Amazing. That was so much fun to record.
RHEA 00:46
Yeah, the second time. Because I screwed up recording the first time.
CINDY 00:49
Oh my god, I wiped that part from my memory. Oh, sorry. Never mind. Listen. It’s all good.
RHEA 00:55
Yeah. Sometimes things, don’t go exactly as planned and we just roll with it. Exactly. All right, Ms. Wagman, before we get into the details of a fractional fundraiser for folks who are not familiar with you, tell us a little bit about yourself and your non profit career.
And you are the rare person, I must say, on this podcast who said, I actually set out to be a development person.
CINDY 01:17
Oh yeah. Okay, I’ll take you way back. So I was in university. Okay. In my undergrad, I did not like school very much. My favorite part of school were the extracurriculars. I ran the Women’s Empowerment Committee.
We hosted fundraising events for local women’s shelters. Actually, one of those events was the Vagina Monologues, which I produced five times. That was me, that was little like me in university, and I didn’t know that fundraising was a career until one summer I met two people who were professional fundraisers, and I was like, oh, okay.
So I wrote a thesis on feminist fundraising, and the rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been a fundraiser my whole career since then. like right Out of university. And then over the past couple of years, I started consulting about eight and a half, almost nine years ago, still doing fundraising, but over time I realized that there was a, another gap in the market that I wanted to fill, which was helping other nonprofit consultants build their business because.
We see this in organizations where you take like practitioners and you promote them into manager or different leadership positions. We don’t train them on how to be a leader. The same thing, you take a lot of like practitioners, whether they’re fundraisers or strategy or, program evaluation, all these people do the work, but then when they become consultants, no one’s teaching them how to run their business.
So that’s what I do.
RHEA 02:50
Oh, Cindy, you’ve said a mouthful, like you and I. And Jess and Brooke and Tanya and Rachel are in a little mastermind where we talk about our business, which is so fun. But I think it’s a rarity among nonprofit consultants. Like I, like you probably get a million calls a week being like, Hey, can I pick your brain?
Like why aren’t people out here teaching people how to run a business? Okay. Let’s talk about fundraisers in particular. So what I noticed. And look, I had this problem too when I was an ED is trying to find a development director is like a needle in a freaking haystack. I just, everyone is looking for one.
Nobody can find a good one. And if you do find a good one, you probably can’t afford them. And or they leave after 18 months. So let’s talk about the pain point. First of all,
CINDY 03:38
Okay. So this is a big pain point. And this is something that for me has informed, like my experience with this has informed so much of what I’ve done in my business.
So I have seen so many small organizations, specifically small ones, cause that’s where my heart is, but they will squirrel away their money to afford a fundraiser. Usually it’s like a fundraising manager or something like even coordinator. And they have some budget, but it’s not a lot. And what happens is if they’re lucky enough to find someone, they find someone who doesn’t have a whole lot of experience because that’s just what their budget’s aligned with.
And when they hire someone. In a small organization where the executive director really doesn’t know much about fundraising, the board really doesn’t know much about fundraising, and you hire someone who is early in their career where they really don’t know much about fundraising, that person is set up to fail.
And What happens, what I’ve seen over and over again, six, eight, maybe 12 months later that person leaves or is let go because they’re not getting the results. And in the meantime, and trying to get the results, they spend a lot of time doing busy work. That’s not moving the needle work. That’s not effective.
Chasing trends that are not relevant, listening to all the people tell them you have to write a letter to Oprah or Mackenzie Scott, or, what have you. And It just is this nothing happens. And then the organization’s Oh we let this person go where they left. Maybe we’re not right for a fundraiser.
Maybe we shouldn’t prioritize this or invest in it. Maybe like they just get really gun shy. And so they don’t fundraise. For 6, 12, 18 months and then they’re like, Oh, we really need to do this again. So all of this takes two years where they’re not raising money and. Wasting any money that they have invested.
Okay. Wait. And that is a problem.
RHEA 05:43
I’m like feeling this problem so deep in my soul right now, particularly for a cash strap nonprofit, because to be honest, Hey, you don’t want people learning on your dime, which is essentially what you’re doing when you’re hiring these early career folks. Not that there’s anything wrong with early career folks, but they haven’t.
They’re learning as they’re going and so many things here. So one thing I’ve been thinking about is we use the term fundraiser or we use the term development professional, but the truth is that can mean a lot of very different things. And I think let’s start there because I think, especially if you’re an ED who doesn’t really know.
I’m much about fundraising and the board doesn’t know much about fundraising. It’s almost like you’re going to the doctor, but you don’t actually know which doctor you should be going to. Like some fundraisers are really good at grants. Some are really good at individuals. Some are really good at communications.
So how do I know as maybe an ED who doesn’t know much about fundraising, what I actually need?
CINDY 06:42
To know that you don’t know, I think, is the first thing. The reality for small organizations is you need a generalist, because there’s some grant writing, there’s some annual giving, there’s some major gifts hopefully there’s no events, but sometimes there is, no big events, so you, the reality is You actually need a little bit of everything if you’re a small organization and you need someone who can evaluate where to focus the time.
And that’s the problem. You need to recognize that you don’t know and that your board doesn’t know. I can’t tell you, first of all, I’ve been, when I introduced myself as a fundraiser people will say, Oh, so you host events or like you run events. No, I do not. That is. Not the best way to fundraise for most organizations.
Or I people say, oh, so you do corporate, right? Like you and boards are like, I don’t know why actually I do know why, but they’re so focused on corporate because for them, it feels a little less risky in terms of their personal relationships. And people think companies have all this money and we don’t want to ask people because we don’t want to make them uncomfortable.
They don’t have as much. So all of these, first of all, acknowledging that you don’t know, right? If you’re on a board and you have an RFP for a fundraising consultant or if you’re hiring for a fundraising staff person, acknowledge that you Need someone who can come in and do the strategy as well and get your hands out of there or even better, let learn to take direction from the people you do hire, because chances are, they’re still going to do a better, even if they’re early in their career.
I was like this when I first started fundraising. I would go to a conference, I’d get really inspired, this was back in the day when printed direct mail was it. We didn’t have email campaigns, okay? And, I was hearing from like world leaders how best practices are four page letters, storytelling, All this stuff include the PS, that’s the most important part.
That’s what people read. Okay. So I’d write these great fundraising story based letters with a PS and I’d take it to the chair of the fundraising committee who take a red pen and cross it all out. She’s it can only be a page and a half. Let’s drop the PS, drop the stories. People want stats. I was like, No, but this is what happens and we burn people out this way, or they feel like they’re not successful because we’re not supporting them and trusting even if they are learning on our dime, we got to trust what they’re learning.
I could rant for a very long time on a soapbox about this, but the bottom line is, Especially in small organizations, the vast majority of the time, the best thing the executive director on board can do is trust who they hire to give them direction and recognize that if you’re hiring someone junior, they’re going to be learning and they might not know all the things.
RHEA 09:41
As you were talking, I was just thinking of very many instances I can think of where people try to write fundraising letters by committee and it never works or you have folks like who are on the board who don’t actually understand fundraising, have never done fundraising, but because they have a corporate job, think that they know fundraising.
And it makes me a little bit crazy. Like I would never walk into your company to tell you how to do your job. Why are you In my company trying to tell me how to do mine?
CINDY 10:11
and there’s so much evidence in our sector around what works and they just don’t have access to that information and to be honest, I have seen people with fundraisers, even fractional fundraisers, where they’re like, give me the stats.
I wanted the evidence. Tell me why that’s better. Just stop. Just trust the people you hire. And if you can’t trust them, they’re the wrong hire, but you gotta let them. At the end of the day, the margin of error is probably very low, right? If they send out one extra email and you’re like, Oh, we can’t send an extra email, people are gonna complain.
Come on. Yeah. You’re fine. Trust the people you bring on board.
RHEA 10:50
Okay, so I was thinking about you and this conversation, because earlier, I think it was last week? Last week. I was on a phone call with a bunch of executive directors, and one of them was talking about Promotion. Oh, she was talking about someone that wanted a promotion, but wasn’t quite ready for development, but, was threatening to leave if they didn’t get the promote, like all of the things.
And so this ED was like bending over backwards to try to accommodate, even though this person didn’t have the skills, didn’t have the experience, but. It was in a place of, I need someone to be in this seat right now. So I get think so many questions, but you and I talk a lot about this concept of 10X is easier than 2X.
And we talk about who, not how. And I think as EDs, we spend so much time thinking about the how and not enough about the who should be figuring out the how. So talk to me a little bit about fractional fundraisers and why that might be a really good answer to the who.
CINDY 11:49
Exactly. So for so many people, it’s not just about filling, especially with certain roles, any role in an organization.
It’s not just about filling the seat. And I do want to preface this by saying you might find someone who’s not super experienced, who I was that person, I just stepped into the role and I learned and I did great, but that’s not the majority of how people work right now, and that’s just not the majority of most organizations experiences.
The question is, yeah, who, and really it’s okay, what are the constraints? We have this much budget, we need someone who can bring strategy and implementation, and we need them to be a generalist, to be able to do all the little things. And that’s really hard to find traditionally when you look at staffing models.
What a fractional executive and in particular a fractional fundraiser does is combine all of those, right? So what it is basically you are contracting or or you’re hiring as a consultant a fundraiser who typically if you Come to me with my fractional fundraising network. These are all highly experienced fundraisers.
They’ve been working in the sector as fundraisers, usually 10 plus years. They know what they’re doing. Okay. So they have that experience. In fact, they have so much experience that you couldn’t afford them full time, but because they have all that experience, they’re super efficient. And strategic and focused and so what they’re going to come in and do is they’re going to come in.
They’re going to create a fundraising plan for your organization, even if you’ve done a fundraising plan in the past. Even if that was fairly recently, I can tell you it’s still worthwhile for them to come in, create a fundraising plan, and then they will implement the plan. So it’s like a staff person, but you’re paying a fraction of what this person’s fees are for a fraction of their time.
Typically, the fractional fundraisers I work with have, I would say like a full time workload is about three clients. Now, doesn’t mean you’re 100 percent getting like a third of their time. It means some weeks you’re getting no time and some weeks you’re getting 90 percent of the time. But as a whole, it washes out.
So you’re getting a fraction of their time. for a fraction of the cost and their expertise and efficiency to bridge or combine the strategy and implementation.
RHEA 14:15
That sounds brilliant. And I wish that I had known about this when I was an ED, but let me push back for a second because I can hear all of the EDs out here and be like, what’s the catch?
So what if I, come to you and I say, Cindy, I only have budget for what would be a full time development manager position. I could use that budget instead for a fractional fundraiser that has a lot more experience and expertise. What’s the upside and what’s the downside for me? Because I think the other thing is there could be this idea that someone really has to be on the team to be able to talk about the work in a way that is going to be compelling enough for donors.
CINDY 14:54
The skill to be able to talk about the work in a way that is compelling is not tied to being a staff or not. That is a skill that people have or they don’t have. You definitely want to find the people who have that and absolutely experience helps with that. But so the upsides and the downsides, the upside, what I’ll say is the, a fractional fundraiser is really well positioned to help an organization through a period of transition or growth.
So if your organization is. You’ve gone through that. You want to stabilize your fundraising. You’re feeling like, okay, we have a track record. Things are smooth. We want to see incremental growth, but we’re not rocking the boat. Things are good, and we want them better, or we’re, our organization is big enough that we want in house, then great.
I would say. Once you get more than one fundraising staff person on team, you’re probably going to want to start building a proper fundraising team, right? And that requires more in house. But if you are like, we have no one fundraising, we need that first fundraiser. That’s where a fractional really bridges that gap or helps that organization.
The downside is. Like I’m trying to think of a downside. I think really the challenges that we see with organizations is where they don’t trust, where they’re try to micromanage that person. That’s not what a fractional fundraiser is there for. You need to trust their experience and expertise and their strategic oversight.
If you don’t do that, then it becomes. It’s not a great experience, but if you can trust and let them run with things and let them push through with the work, there’s only upside.
RHEA 16:43
If I’m sitting here listening to you and thinking that maybe a fractional fundraiser might be a good option for me, what are the considerations or Maybe I should say readiness, because I’m just also thinking about small organizations who are like, Hey, we don’t even have a database, like we should, or we haven’t kept track of our records well, or, our board doesn’t fundraise or we have no track record of individual donations.
Like who would be a good candidate for a fractional fundraiser? Because I’m also thinking about the fact that if you’re working with a very experienced, high level person, they’re probably not going to be. Content like data entering and mail merging for you, right?
CINDY 17:21
Some of them do, I call it from strategy to stepping envelopes because that’s sometimes what happens and that’s okay.
That’s part of, that’s part of the package. I would say if you’re not raising anything, it’s a big investment. The way I talk, cause everyone also wants to know about ROI, right? That’s everyone’s question when it comes to fundraising. When you look at fundraising growth. It is typically looking at percentage growth year over year.
How much more did we raise this year than last year? Healthy organization. The numbers change right now. They’re not actually raising that much more every year, right? Maybe I’d say like good is 10 percent more. Exceptional is probably 20 percent more unless you’re seriously investing in fundraising growth, like adding new staff or new programs and stuff like that.
Small organizations, it’s usually less. Usually they’re pretty flat year over year. If you want someone to come in, you might like success, super successful organizations. You’re getting, yeah, maybe 20, 20 percent growth, 20 percent on 10, 000 is very different than 20 percent on a hundred thousand, which is very different than 20 percent on a million.
And so your starting point. makes a difference in your results. You’re not going to go from not raising any money or raising like 3, 000 to overnight raising 300, 000. That’s not going to happen. It has happened once or twice, but mostly through grants. And it’s just, and it’s not sustainable. So if you’re not raising anything, you have to have.
A willingness to invest most of the fractional fundraisers that I train and work with. They charge between four and 5, 000 a month on 12 month contracts. So that’s 48, 000 ish a year. Okay. You have to be willing to look at the first year as an investment. If you’re raising two, 3, 000, it’s a big stretch to get to 50, 60, 000.
Aside from that. Like the other sort of readiness things databases are nice to have, but if you don’t have one, expect that part of the fundraising plan that this person will be creating and implementing will be around the back office. It will be setting up the database, migrating some of the data. If it’s a lot of data and it’s really messy or unclean data, then they might suggest you hire a data expert.
But if it’s simple and it’s easy for them to set up, it’s reasonably within work or within scope. That’s one area, but really I think it’s this idea of you have some track record, you have some information. And you need to mature your program.
RHEA 20:16
So one question I have is you and I have both consulted and I think sometimes there’s some unrealistic expectations around Oh, I’ve hired a consultant and now magic will happen and overnight money will fall from the sky.
So if I’m an ED thinking about this as an option for me, what are some. Ambitious but realistic KPIs that I should be thinking about in order to track whether or not this is a successful hire.
CINDY 20:43
The, how I’ve structured the fractional fundraisers that I work with is to address some of this. And address some of the structural challenges that fundraisers have.
So the first thing is we work on 12 month contracts. It takes that long to start to see a return. If you want six, three months, six months, nine months, it’s too soon. You’re wasting your money. So go all in. for the 12 months. That’s the first thing. So it requires some patience. It’s not a KPI, but it’s just like structurally looking at when you can even start to look at the KPIs.
So you need 12 months at least, which is why I like to talk about the first 12 months as an investment. Any startup with fundraising is an investment because it takes time. thEn the first thing the fractional fundraiser will do is create a fundraising plan, which hopefully includes some of those KPIs, because for every organization.
It’s going to be a little different, right? It really does depend on so many different factors. And we know as fundraisers, I can’t tell you, I can’t prescribe advice to you. I can’t be like, okay, your organization focus on this. You’re going to write like that is that comes from doing the work of the strategy.
And so The reason we start with strategy is so that early on the organization can get a handle of what to expect in terms of outputs and ultimate outcomes and how to measure those so typically those shake out in the first couple months. But again, because every organization is so different, it’s hard to be specific with what they can expect.
That’s fair.
RHEA 22:33
Can you give us an example of some of the kinds of KPIs that we might look at in the first couple months? Because I’m just also thinking about, again, putting my ED hat on. Sure, Cindy, I hear you. A year, I’m willing to invest a year and I would like some milestones in between to make sure that things are moving in the right direction.
CINDY 22:53
Yeah. So part of it will depend on when they start. So the first thing is a fundraising plan, right? They’re going to create a fundraising plan. You get to look at that and say, okay, does this feel ambitious enough? Is it realistic? Again, you got to trust them because they know more than you.
And I would say just for all the skeptics out there, this is someone’s business. Your business is only as good as your reputation. So if the, or if a fractional fundraiser is coming in and they’re like, we’re not going to really raise much more this year. I would actually advise them to just. Not not continue the work because it’s a waste of money and that’s not what they’re in the business of doing and so they’re going to want, you are going to want to see some financial positive ROI, some growth in that by the end of that 12 months as indicated in the fundraising plan, the other part of the fundraising plan process is engaging with stakeholders and donors.
So you’re going to see really early on that a lot of their work is meeting with people virtually or in person, but it’s getting to know and understand all the different perspectives of the organization. If someone’s coming in and they’re not engaging with your donors. Especially if there’s someone who’s outside of the network that I’ve trained, like big red flag, any fundraiser who comes into an organization and doesn’t actually engage with donors in the first two to three months.
Red red flag, unless they’re writing grants, but even with that they should be connecting with grantors. So that to me would be the first like having meetings, getting to know the supporters. And internal staff understanding programs, creating the fundraising plan and the fundraising plan. If you’re working with someone, they start in September, you’re going to have a year in campaign in there if individual giving this part of your work, if they are doing, if they’re doing corporate, it’s going to look very different.
Typically, fractional fundraisers will have Two or three areas of focus. But what that looks like and their fundraising plan will have timelines. So it will say we are going to do this campaign here or this many, we’re going to reach out to this many corporations. In a month create, if they’re working on corporate or grants, you should have a pipeline being developed, to see, okay, how many prospects do we have? All of that stuff will still happen. It’s not that different to hiring in house in terms of KPIs. So yeah, it’s really understanding the KPIs that are aligned with the work that they’re going to be doing.
RHEA 25:25
So as I’m hearing you talk, I’d love for you to chat a little bit about the relationship between the fractional fundraiser and the executive director and the board, because as we know, it can be, when it works, it’s great.
And when it doesn’t, it can be terrible. And I think this is more broadly a question about the relationship between DODs and EDs versus not fractional per se. But what are your thoughts?
CINDY 25:49
Yeah. So executive directors will very easily get pulled into the same relationship they have with in house staff because fractional fundraisers do a lot of the day to day work.
The dynamic can be similar. And I spent quite a bit of time coaching my network on this dynamic because this is the thing. And this is why I mentioned before about trust. For some reason, executive directors have a really hard time letting go and trusting people. And it’s really scary when you’re investing that much money in a fundraiser to wait 12 months to trust their process.
And then what happens is because a fractional fundraiser is doing a lot of the implementation, they, the executive director might start delegating other stuff, right? Or oh, can you do this too? Or all that kind of stuff. And so I constantly, not constantly, but often am coaching the fractional fundraisers in my network to come, like to really pull out of that implementation and reinforce the strategy or the reasons behind the implementation.
So it doesn’t feel like you’re just another set of hands. Because that is what happens when we work in nonprofits. If you’re fundraising or anything else, right? Other duties is assigned. We laugh at that all the time. It’s not funny. So we need to understand that we specific and I have had, when I was doing this work as well, which I did before I trained this network I said to clients.
I know you don’t want to do that, but you hired me because I’m going to push back when I think you’re making the wrong decision. And that’s why you hired us and not someone in house. So we’re going to do it and it’s really hard, but that dynamic is so critical to making a fractional fundraiser work in an organization and helping them be successful.
RHEA 27:57
Okay. As we wind down here, I’m going to switch tacks a little bit. So I’m listening to this and I’m a development director and I’m like, Cindy, this sounds great. I might want to be a fractional fundraiser. What might I consider before taking the leap?
CINDY 28:12
Okay. I love this because I think everyone should be a fractional fundraiser.
No. Okay. I would say there’s a lot of benefits. You get paid more money. Usually, if you’re in a small, mid size, or even sometimes like a large organization, but not in a leadership role, chances are you’re going to make more money as a fractional executive. You can do the math. I’m super open about pricing and stuff like that.
So if you have four clients, three clients, which is a full time workload at 4, 000 each month, you’re making like, I think it’s 144, 000 a year. Not bad for being your own boss. And you only need three clients. So from a, if you’re curious about entrepreneurship, it’s a really easy launch into being your own boss.
I train people on, on, on the business side of things. , I will plug, if you want to be a fractional fundraiser, go to fractional fundraising.co and there’s a button. Just say there’s a wait list or if we’re open you can apply. But yes, for so many reasons, it is. Great for fundraisers. A lot of the time you have control.
Not a lot. You have control over your time, your schedule. a Lot of people in our network are parents with younger kids, and so they go pick up their kids at three o’clock every day, or what have you. Also, you get to choose. I had a conversation yesterday with one of our fractional fundraisers.
She’s one and a half clients. And that’s all she wants. she is a two year old and a six year old and that is what she chose for herself and her family right now. She’s making good money, but has all the flexibility and just enough work to keep her busy and doing things and getting paid.
Without sacrificing a family. So I also have fractional fundraisers. You have one client and then do a bunch of other kinds of work. So you get a little, I think being your own boss is fantastic.
RHEA 30:10
You’re here, friend. Yeah. Once you taste freedom, you can never go back. You can’t go back.
CINDY 30:14
You could, you cannot go back, but it’s not without risk. And so some of the challenges are some of the things that you have to say, okay, is this right for me? I call it the least risky way of being a consultant, but you’re still, chances are going to be, you still have to do business development. Which I teach you all like how, but you still got to do it.
You still have to be willing to, understand that, okay. If something doesn’t work out for a client, yeah, you’re going to have to replace them. So if you have no interest in running your own business, probably not right for you. aNd yeah, just being willing to take on some risk again, it’s not a lot, but.
And that’s also 12 month contracts, retainer pricing. Like it is a really smooth way to enter entrepreneurship.
RHEA 31:05
Yeah. And I love that 12 month contract thing because I think it smooths out the revenue for folks.
CINDY 31:11
emember having a conversation with one of our fractional fundraisers. She was already consultant before she joined, but she was saying one December.
She had her best month ever, ever, ever. Like just, pinch myself things are so good. And January she had zero revenue. I’m such a huge fan of monthly retainers. It just, it makes things predictable. So I started consulting when I had a six month old and a three year old and I’m a primary yeah, at the time I was a primary like earner in our family too, and I still am.
So I had very low risk tolerance, but having an extended contract gave me the security that I needed to be able to take that.
RHEA 31:56
And I just want to say this to all the consultants out there who might be listening or thinking about consulting. Please do not charge an hourly. That is the quickest way to be poor.
CINDY 32:07
Yes.
I Do some other coaching with non profit consultants. And this comes up a lot. Pricing is one of those really challenging things. And hourly pricing is not your friend. It really isn’t, but that is a much bigger conversation, but definitely like some, sometimes people like you’re experienced you’re going to figure out how to manage the three clients, but I definitely provide. I’ve tested all of this, we were doing this in house and my business for years before I started teaching other people how to create this business model. So like in terms of how much to charge, what questions come up, how to handle the board in the discovery process, and understanding the multiple ways that, that organizations make decisions, like all of that, we stress test over years so that it’s. It’s faster for everyone who joins our network, basically.
RHEA 33:00
Very cool. And is there, I know that you said this already, but just to reiterate to folks, so you can expect for a fractional fundraiser to pay in the neighborhood of four to five thousand a month on retainer.
Is there a threshold of budget size that you would recommend?
CINDY 33:17
Not budget size. Typically, I would say for organizations that don’t have a full time fundraiser right, because overall organizational budgets vary significantly and even fundraising budgets with grants can vary significantly, right? I mentioned there was an organization we were working with where we like quadrupled, if not more, I can’t even remember how many times we grew their revenue.
But it was because we were really successful with one or two really big grants. That’s definitely not the norm. So the work can vary significantly. But if you’re thinking about we really do need a fundraiser. If you’re like, okay, the executive director cannot be writing appeals anymore because, Half the time they don’t get done and when they do get done, they’re not very good.
But we’re raising a little bit of money. We really need to level up. That’s the sweet spot.
RHEA 34:10
Very cool. So where can we find you again? And I’ll make sure to put it in the show notes for folks, but fractionalfundraiser. co. Is that the one?
CINDY 34:18
That’s it. And I’m anytime you can reach out to me if you are an organization.
I will match you with the fractional fundraiser from our network, or you can find them all on our website, fractionalfundraiser. co. If you want to be a fractional fundraiser, we’re opening the doors to the academy in the spring. At the end of April. So there’s a wait list. Go to fractional fundraiser.co.
Fractional fundraising.co. Sorry. And you will find a link to be a fractional fundraiser, and that’s where the wait list is.
RHEA 34:53
Fantastic. Cindy, thank you so much as always, and we will talk with you soon.
CINDY 34:58
Yay. See you soon.
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