What do you do if a donor or Foundation wants to give money to your non-profit, but has specific programs that it would like the money to fund? What if these programs do not fall 100% into your core mission, but in hard times money is money?

This article from the Harvard Business Review addresses the current decline in donor giving to non-profits ever since the beginning of the Great Recession in the United States - down 11% in 2010 alone equating to billions of dollars for social programs. 

Just bad luck and a poor time to fundraise? The authors of this study, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, tell us that there is another, perhaps more important factor at play contributing to the tough times for non-profits: poor strategic planning. 

THE PROCESS GOES LIKE THIS

The serious mistake that non-profits make is not focusing their efforts on a coherent set of programs and processes to achieve results. From the beginning the best advice that I received with CMI was to choose one thing to do and do it well. Since deciding on tree planting and micro-enterprises (okay, so we chose two things), I have personally felt the temptation to squeeze in activities related to the interest of a specific donor or Foundation when appealing for funds for one of our lending programs in Zambia. I get it. Fundraising is hard, most of us are not making much money personally (or are loosing it), and who isn't drawn to the possibility of funding if only you can sell yourself in a different light to different donors? The crazy thing is that I expect that this pressure to follow the lead of the funding rather than your core mission is even stronger in Zambia where attracting donors and keeping them is often a much larger mountain to climb. 

So get your buttons in a row non-profits. Focus on what it is that you set out to do, and do it well. Invest in both administrative and program activities which will increase your effectiveness over the long term, and sell your love for the cause in a creative manner to make it happen.