I love the beach and last week, I had 3 days of meetings at Myrtle Beach. (I know, life is tough!)

And of course, I managed to get some time actually ON the beach.  I love digging my toes in the sand and playing in the water.

I noticed some little mussels digging themselves back into the sand every time a wave took the sand off their top.

And it got me to thinking — How many things do we do because that’s how we’ve always done it?  How much stuff do we do have in our fundraising plan, in our nonprofit, and in our lives, because of habit?

Check out this video I shot and edited (hey, Steven Spielberg I am NOT!).

 

I remember when I was a new Development Director, I did a lot of things because that’s what had been done the year before. In other words, my nonprofit had some established fundraising habits. fundraising habits

It took me a couple of years to WAKE UP and start doing things because they worked or because they gave me a specific result.

Once I snapped out of the haze, I stopped doing some stuff that didn’t work. I ditched the old fundraising habits!

The biggest thing I did was to stop an annual event because it was more trouble than it was worth, and didn’t bring in enough money to cover all the costs and staff time. (That’s a killer isn’t it?  We don’t usually count staff time on events.)

I challenge you to take a hard look at everything you’re doing to raise money and make a conscious decision about whether or not it should be done again.  My guess is that you’ve got some fundraising habits you can stop doing.

I’d love to hear from you if you decide to give something up.  Would you post a comment here and share? (I personally read all the comments.)