Latest / Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small, and Growing Nonprofits / Fearless Fundraising (Step 1): Start With the Problem (Ep. 66)
Transcript
- Matt Stockman (00:00) If I asked you right now, what problem does your nonprofit solve? How long would it take for you to answer? Could you explain it in one or two sentences? And more importantly, would somebody who knows absolutely nothing about your organization immediately understand why that problem matters? Because before we talk about asking people for money or before we talk about donation pages and fundraising campaigns, major donors, grants, monthly giving, we have to start. Here, you need to be able to clearly explain the problem that your nonprofit exists to solve. And while that sounds incredibly simple, I can tell you from coaching nonprofit leaders that it is a whole lot harder than most people think. So today we're going to work on step number one of the fearless fundraising framework, the problem. Matt Stockman (00:56) Welcome to the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for startups, small and growing nonprofits. This podcast exists to help you build your nonprofit from the ground up on a financially strong foundation by providing clear frameworks, practical tools, and the real world guidance that you can actually put into practice. I'm Matt Stockman. I'm a nonprofit growth coach. I'm really glad you're here. At Nonprofit Launch Plan, we believe that every successful nonprofit has to be operating at peak performance. Across six key areas. Those areas are leadership, fundraising, marketing, programs and services, operations and finances. So on every episode, we focus on one of these core areas to help you make lasting impact in your nonprofit. And before we dive into today's episode, fundraising is probably one of the biggest challenges you're facing as the executive director of your nonprofit. How do we get the money we need to do the work that we're called to do? It can feel really overwhelming when you're not sure where to start, what to say, or how to consistently invite people to financially support your mission. That's why I created the Fearless Fundraising Framework. It's a simple five-step approach that helps you clearly communicate the problem, solution, ask urgency and action, and gives you language you can use in one-on-one conversations, emails, your website, and the rest of your fundraising communication. And today we're gonna spend this episode working through just one piece of that framework, the problem. More to come on that. But if you're listening and thinking, you know, I'd rather really just have Matt help me build this out instead of trying to figure out all five pieces on my own. We can do that. I offer a complimentary 90-minute coaching call where you and I will build your nonprofits fearless fundraising framework together. We'll map out all five pieces around your actual organization so you leave with greater clarity about your message. And more confidence about how to invite people into financially supporting your work. Because get this, there are people who would gladly support what you're doing. But if the opportunity isn't clear or if you're hesitant or to confidently invite them or not, some of those gifts simply just won't ever happen unless funding ultimately means fewer people get to experience the impact your nonprofit exists to make. Imagine instead knowing exactly how to explain your work, knowing what to ask for, and having a steady stream of financial support that allows you to launch the programs you've been dreaming about and building a nonprofit that can make impact for years to come. So I'm going to teach you how to build one piece of that framework today. But if you'd rather work through the whole thing with me personally, go to nonprofitlaunchplan.com and click book a call. We'll spend 90 minutes together building your fearless fundraising framework around your nonprofit. Again, that's nonprofitlaunchplan dot com. Click Book A Call. Nonprofitlaunchplan dot com and click book a call. I want to do something a little different over the next five episodes of the podcast. The fearless fundraising framework has become one of the core things that I teach nonprofit leaders because I believe so much of the fear we associate with fundraising comes simply from not knowing what to say. You're passionate about the work, you know the organization needs money, and you believe there are people who would care about the mission if they understood it. But then you sit across the table from a potential donor, or you open your laptop to write a fundraising email, and suddenly you don't know how to turn everything you know about your nonprofit into a clear invitation. That's what this framework is designed to solve. There are five pieces to the fearless fundraising framework. They are problem, solution, ask, urgency, and action. And over these five episodes, we're going to take them one at a time. And today we begin with the problem. Here's why the problem comes first. People don't give primarily because your nonprofit exists, or because you have a need, or because you've been called to do something. They give because there is something wrong or missing or broken or unjust or underserved or unfinished in the world, and they believe that something can be done about it. Your nonprofit exists because of that problem, whatever it is. So before we spend a lot of time explaining our organization. We need to help people understand why the organization needs to exist in the first place, which is a really important thing to think through. A common mistake I see, especially with startup nonprofits, is that leaders become really good at explaining the organization. We started this nonprofit because of this. We provide these three programs. We have this incredible team. We're getting ready to expand into this other community. All of that might eventually be important. But you've started in the middle of the story. We all know how difficult it is to start watching a movie 45 minutes into after it started. The characters are running around, something super dramatic is happening, the music is swelling. Everybody on the screen seems concerned about whatever it is going on, but you have no idea why. You don't know enough of the story yet to understand why you should care about what you're seeing. That's what fundraising communication can feel like when we explain our organization before we've clearly established the problem. Before I care about your program, I need to understand why the program needs to exist. Before I can really appreciate your solution, I need to understand the problem. So let's talk about what makes a strong problem statement. The first thing is that the problem needs to be specific. One of the real common mistakes nonprofit leaders make is starting so broad that the problem becomes almost impossible for a potential donor to picture. Maybe your nonprofit works with children in foster care, and you say there are thousands of children in foster care who need support. Well, that's true, but what exactly does support mean? Or maybe you work with young men in Uganda and you say young people in Uganda face poverty in difficult circumstances. Again, probably true, but that's enormous. Maybe you're serving people experiencing homelessness, and your problem statement is simply homelessness continues to be a major problem in our community. Also true, but none of those statements give me something very clear as a potential donor to grab onto. the more specific you become, the easier it becomes for somebody to understand the actual problem that you are inviting them to help solve. So instead of just saying children in foster care need support, maybe the problem is that children are being placed far away from their biological families because there aren't enough foster homes available in their own community. That's different. Now I can start to picture the problem. I can picture a kid being moved away from their school, their friends, their family, maybe everything that's familiar to them. Not because anybody necessarily wanted that outcome, but because there simply wasn't a home available nearby. Or instead of saying young men in Uganda face difficult circumstances, maybe the problem is that adolescent boys are entering adulthood without consistent mentors who can help them develop the practical school skills, the Spiritual foundation and the healthy models of manhood. Again, now I understand much more clearly what we're actually talking about. Specificity makes the problem real for a potential donor. Now, bit of a warning that goes with this because specificity doesn't mean you immediately need to dump every statistic you've ever collected into somebody. Sometimes nonprofit leaders here explain the problem. And immediately begin giving me a research presentation. There are 17,428 people with this issue. That's 14.3% since 2022. Here's another statistic, and then another statistics. And there's absolutely a place for data. Your grant proposal might need it. Your case for support might include it. major donor who's considering a significant investment may eventually want to see it, but especially early in a fundraising conversation, clarity is more important than quantity of data. I don't need 10 stats. I need to understand the problem. One test I think is really helpful here is simply this. Can I picture a person experiencing the problem you were describing? because fundraising becomes much more powerful when something moves from abstract to personal. There's a difference between telling me that food insecurity impacts millions of Americans. And telling me that there are families in our community whose kids receive breakfast and lunch at school Monday through Friday. But when Friday afternoon comes, their parents aren't entirely sure where all the meals are going to come from over the weekend. That's different. The first statement gives me information. The second helps me see someone. I can picture that parent. I can picture the child. I can begin to understand what the problem actually feels like for real people like you and I. That's where stories become incredibly powerful in fundraising. Your stats can demonstrate the size of a problem, but your stories demonstrate what the problem feels like. There's a second question I want you to ask as you're working on your problem statement. And that is, is this actually the problem our nonprofit is equipped to solve? This matters because passionate nonprofit leaders will tend to care a lot about a lot of things, which is great. This is why you got into this work to begin with, but your nonprofit cannot solve every problem. Let's say your organization mentors teenagers. Those teenagers might might also deal with food insecurity and academic struggles and family instability and transportation problems and a dozen other things. And you can care deeply about every one of those issues without making every one of them. The problem your nonprofit is somehow now responsible for solving. You need to be clear about which problem your organization is actually built to address. Because when the problem grows too broad, the mission usually starts growing too broad with it. And before long, the nonprofit is running six unrelated programs, communicating six different messages, and asking donors to figure out how all of these different things somehow connect. This is one of those places where clarity and fundraising can actually create clarity throughout the entire organization. When you get really clear about the problem you solve, it becomes easier to decide which programs belong and which ones don't. It gets way easier to explain what you do on your website. It becomes easier to train board members to talk about the organization. Fundraising campaigns are easier, and it just is easier to measure whether or not you're actually making progress when you're focusing on that specific problem. So Developing a strong problem statement isn't just fundraising, although that's really what we're focusing on right now. It is a organizational focus exercise as well. Now there's one more piece I want you to think about. Describe the problem in language that normal people actually use. That sounds obvious, but nonprofits are really good at developing their own internal vocabulary with acronyms and industry terms and program names and phrases that make perfect sense to everyone inside the organization because we've heard them 500 times, but your donor hasn't heard it at all. So one of the best things you can do is take your problem statement and give it to somebody who has absolutely nothing to do with what you do. Don't explain it first. Don't give them any background. Just let them read it. And then ask a few really simple questions. What do you think the problem is? Who do you think we're helping? Based on what you just read, what do you think our ac organization actually does? And if their answer is completely different than what you had intended, that's super important and useful because clarity isn't determined by what you meant. It's determined by what the other person understood. And that can be different sometimes. So here's another coaching exercise I would encourage you to try. Ask three people on your board individually, what problem does our nonprofit exist to solve? Don't give them three days to prepare for it. Just ask the question and then listen to their answers. And if you get three dramatically different responses, that tells you something important. It probably means that the organization hasn't done enough work to clearly define and consistently communicate the problem. That's for the board. So likely it's even harder for donors to understand. And that matters because your board members, your staff, your volunteers, your existing supporters are eventually going to tell other people about your work. You want them telling roughly the same story. They don't have to say the exact same words. And I'm not suggesting everybody should sound like they just memorized some script, but the core problem should be clear enough that everybody inside the organization and around the organization can explain it. So here's what I want you to do once the episode is over. Finish this sentence. The problem we exist to solve is fill in the blank and then give yourself one sentence to finish it. Not a paragraph, not the history of the how the nonprofit started, not the mission statement from your website. One clear sentence. Then take that sentence and ask yourself some questions. Is this specific enough that somebody knows exactly what the problem is that I'm describing? Is it human enough that they can picture the person or the people who are impacted by it? Is it focused enough that this is actually a problem our nonprofit is positioned to be able to address? And is it understandable enough that somebody outside the organization could read it without needing me or somebody else to translate all of the terminology? If you can get those four things right, you've built the first piece of your fearless fundraising framework. Now, don't underestimate how important that first piece is because everything we're going to build in the next four steps. Hinges on this. If the problem is fuzzy, the solution will be fuzzy too. If the solution is fuzzy, the ask gets fuzzy. So on and so forth. Everything gets harder than it needs to be. This is one reason that nonprofit leaders will sometimes tell me, I just hate asking people for money. And when we dig into that a little bit more, sometimes the fear isn't actually about asking for money. The fear comes from not being totally confident about what they're inviting somebody into. And this clarity that we're getting with the problem statement can change that. When you can clearly explain here is the problem, here's who it affects, and here's why it matters, you're no longer beginning the fundraising conversation with money. You're starting with impact. And that's where good fundraising should begin. that's enough for today. Now, in the next episode, we're gonna take the second step of the framework, the solution. And there's an important shift. That happens there because your nonprofit may provide the programs, the services, the people, the infrastructure, all the things. But when we're communicating with a donor, I don't want your organization positioned as the hero of the story. I want the potential giver to see the impact that they can help create. We're going to talk about that. That is step two in the fearless fundraising framework. That's in the next episode. For now, your homework. Pretty simple. Write the sentence, the problem we exist to solve is, and then work on it until it's specific, human, focused, and clear. Fearless fundraising starts way before you ever actually ask somebody for money. It starts with knowing exactly why your work needs to exist. That's it for today. Thanks so much for listening to the Nonprofit Launch Plan podcast. And before you go, fundraising, no doubt, one of the biggest challenges you're facing is you lead your nonprofit. And I would love to help you build a plan for it. It's what we're talking about in these five episodes. I'm offering a complimentary 90 minute coaching call where you and I will build your nonprofits fearless fundraising framework together. We'll work through the five pieces every fundraising conversation needs to have. Problem, which we talked about today, solution, ask, urgency, and action. And when we're finished, You'll have a clear framework you can use in donor conversations and emails, your website, and the rest of your fundraising communication. Because there are people who would happily get involved and support the work that you're doing. Sometimes they simply need to understand the opportunity and be confidently invited into it. So if you're ready to get clearer and more confident about raising the money your nonprofit needs, go to nonprofitlaunchplan.com, click book a call. We'll spend 90 minutes together. We'll Build out your fearless fundraising framework one-on-one. Nonprofitlaunchplan.com. Click book a call, and I'll see you there. That's it for this episode of the Nonprofit Launch Plan Podcast for Startup, Small and Growing Nonprofits. Thank you so much for watching and listening. If you felt like this podcast episode is helpful, would you consider maybe sharing it with another nonprofit leader who might just be getting started? And who might need this clarity as well. Until next time, thanks again so much for watching and listening. Keep building your nonprofit wisely and keep making a difference.