What Fundraising Skills Are You Lacking?

January 12, 2017      Tom Belford

I just sent a short article to my daughter, a newbie working at Saatchi & Saatchi.

She has a very good intuitive sense of how to go about sizing up the ‘market’ for various brands, products and services, but I’ve gently urged her to match her instincts with a deeper capacity for analytics.

So this article about customer data, Most marketers consider data analysis skills more important than social media skills, gave me a bit of welcome ammunition.

I’m biased, though; I love to sift through numbers.

When it comes to ‘most important’ skills, what gaps are you trying to fill in yourself? And in your fundraising operation?

  • Getting the metrics right?
  • Deeper analytics?
  • Using predictive tools?
  • Getting on top of — then applying — decision science?
  • Better story-telling?
  • Building a donor retention culture?
  • Separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of social media?
  • Getting serious about planned giving?
  • Mastering the mobile platform?

Any of these could yield big dividends — for your personal advancement and for your organisation’s fundraising performance. Is there some other skill set you would add or recommend?

This is the time of year when many of us have resolved (once again) to (start to) fill such competency gaps.

What gaps are you pledged to fill this year in your own skills? In the competency of your fundraising operation?

Tom