The Dreaded “No”

It’s the number one reason I hear from board members, executive directors, and even seasoned fundraising professionals about why they don’t do direct asks to their donors: “What if they say no?”

The dreaded “NO”! It stops us in our tracks. Rejection and failure and humiliation, oh my!

My response is often, “But what if they say ‘yes’?” I mean, come on! You’ve got a 50/50 shot that they’ll pick yes...and if you did good cultivation work, a “yes” is actually fairly likely. I’m a glass-half-full kind of gal, and if the power of positive thinking helps you, then you can stop reading now.

But you opened a blog post called “The Dreaded ‘No!’” So I’m guessing my “you can do it” attitude isn’t going to get you to make that ask. So let’s break it down…

There are three primary reasons I hear from clients that they aren’t feeling comfortable soliciting a donor. Here’s how I help them get over their fears.

1. You’re not sure how the donor will react = Do more cultivation

If you aren’t sure what a donor prospect will say when you ask, you’re not ready to ask. Period. If you can’t walk in and have a reasonable expectation that the person will be accepting of the solicitation and enthusiastic about being invited to more engagement with your nonprofit, you haven’t done enough cultivation. You don’t need to be sure they’ll say yes, you just need to feel confident that they’ll be receptive.

This is the number one mistake I see people make when soliciting donors. There’s someone in their network that knows the organization, the solicitor feels like the person *should* care about the nonprofit’s mission, but the solicitor admits they have no idea how the person would respond to an ask. 

My advice here is to do more cultivation. Meet with the prospect to talk to them about the nonprofit without asking. Invite them to open houses. Have them come see your work in action. Send them videos of your volunteers at work. A slow drip of personal updates over a few months primes a prospect to be excited to get involved...and also gives them a chance to voice this enthusiasm, ask questions, and engage further. 

Wait until your updates inspire enthusiastic responses. That’s when you’re ready to ask!

2. You feel personally hurt when you hear no = Assess your fear of rejection

This is a biggie. This has nothing to do with your nonprofit or your prospect...it’s all you. In general, we’re scared of rejection. It’s totally human, so I’m not at all judging you. I’m scared of rejection too! But you have to get over it for the good of your mission.

The best advice I have here is to remember that it isn’t about you. When you land a $1,000 donation, that doesn’t go into your wallet, it goes into your nonprofit’s awesome work. It goes toward changing the world, supporting your community, making your town a better place. That’s amazing! Focus on what will happen when you get a “yes,” not how you’ll personally feel if you get a “no.” (And if you follow my advice in #1, you should feel reasonable confident you’ll get a “yes.”)

This isn’t to say that your feelings aren’t valid, they are. But too often I see nonprofit professionals holding their missions hostage to their own fear of rejection. We’re doing our community a disservice with that. Focus on the positive. Or if you must focus on the negative, think about what your community loses out on if you simply don’t ask. If you don’t ask, you’ll never hear “yes.”

3. You feel asking makes you personally indebted to the donor = Examine your association with money

Here’s the other big one, especially with founders and executive directors. “When I ask for money I personally owe the other person something.”

This one always punches me in the gut because it’s so rooted in capitalist thinking. Money is power. Taking money means that person has power over you. Money allows people to dictate agendas. Gross, and false. I can and might write a million blog posts about that...but Vu Le and CCF are doing a pretty good job at that already, so I’ll stay in my lane for now.

But without deconstructing power structures in our country...sure, yes, for the sake of this argument, let’s say you owe that person something. Here’s what you owe them: You owe it to them to put their money to good use the way you said you would, not to use it to buy yourself lattes and chocolates. BUT YOU WEREN’T GOING TO DO THAT ANYWAYS!

Repeat after me: I am not beholden personally to my donors. Carrying out my stated mission the way I said I would is what I promised, so that’s what I owe them. 

If this is your hang-up, I want you to try this exercise: Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write down every word that you can think of that comes into your mind when you think the word “money.” After five minutes, look at what you have. Circle the positive things in green. Circle the negative things in red. When I lead clients through this exercise, it’s overwhelmingly red.

That doesn’t surprise me at all. Many of us go into nonprofit work because our world isn’t fair, inequity is everywhere, and money feeds inequity. (See my mini rant above.) Most of us nonprofit pros see the problems with money and we’re fighting for a more just and fair world, so we carry those negative associations with us. The exercise above doesn’t excise that from our world, but it at least makes you aware of what you’re carrying into the conversation.

The solution here is a bigger one. I encourage you to engage with the awesome folks leading the Commuity-Centric Fundraising movement and start re-shaping the system. But the solution isn’t to not ask because you owe somebody something. In fact, quite the opposite. I think the burden is on those with means to help lift the whole community. (That’s why I like to imagine fundraisers as modern-day Robin Hoods.)

When “no” means “not now”

But here’s the thing, these are all hang ups that stop you from asking in the first place. What if you get over all of these, get to the ask, and the answer is “no”? 

In my experience, when a donor says no, they more often mean “not right now,” so listen carefully. Did you hear “no, never”? Or did you actually hear “not right now?

That’s when I get curious and ask questions. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you have questions about our mission or our work that I can answer that might make you more interested or comfortable in supporting us?” (That’s my #1 go-to!) 

And here’s the thing, most of the time the donor tells me that they really love the organization’s work, they feel connected to the mission, I just asked them at a bad time. My favorite example is a donor I solicited right after his TWIN DAUGHTERS both got into private colleges. He was feeling totally tapped out. That had nothing to do with me or the mission or anything. It was a personal issue. He’d saved for them to go to state schools, but he wanted to make sure they could go where they wanted...he was being a wonderful dad! I told him I completely understood and that I’d go back to the office and make a note in his donor account to not solicit him for four years. He said “well, maybe just three...I can start giving again when I see the light at the end of the tunnel.” 

And you want to know what happened? His daughters got scholarships, they figured out cheaper housing, he didn’t end up owing as much as he thought. And want to know what he did with the savings? He donated them to our nonprofit! The check actually came with a note, “Thanks for the understanding. Here’s how I’m celebrating my daughter’s success!” The donation was in their honor. 

When “no” really means “no.”

Okay, I’m not a magical fundraiser, I have actually heard no before. But I’ve learned to make like a duck and let it roll off my back like water. When a donor truly means no. When the “Can I answer any questions you have to help you decide to give?” tactic results in “I just don’t really care about your mission.” It’s fine. Whatever. 

I’ve learned to see it as sorting my wheat from my chaff. My mission isn’t for everyone, that’s fine. Just as I won’t ever care about some nonprofits’ missions, not everyone will care about mine. The sooner I know that, the sooner I can move on to other prospects.

Cultivating a donor is a lot of work, and sooner or later you have to cut the ones who are never going to give. So once you’ve done good cultivation, make sure you ask...even if you’re scared you’ll hear no. Because knowing you can stop cultivating a donor who is never going to give to you is actually saving you time, money, and effort. 

I have really bad anxiety. I’ve had it all my life. When I was a kid, and I was scared to do something, my dad would always ask me, “Kelly, what’s the worst thing you can think of that will happen here?” It was the right question to ask an anxious kid. I could always see disaster scenarios. But often, the worst things I could come up with really weren’t that bad once I thought about it. It was how my dad helped me get over my anxiety. “If the worst thing isn’t that bad, maybe go ahead and try?” he would say.

It’s a question I carry with me today, and I ask myself all the time. I used to do it every time I went to a donor solicitation. “What’s the WORST THING that could come out of this meeting today?” Most often, the answer was “this person I barely know and only care about in connection to my job might never speak to me again!” Wow...really not a disaster.

I know founders of start-ups are often going to their friends and family for initial donations, so there’s more at stake than there has been for me. But do you honestly think that anyone will get mad at you or stop speaking to you for asking them to be a part of something amazing? If you believe in your nonprofit and the work you are doing, I think you can honestly see that the “worst case scenario” is just “they might not be interested, and that’ll be a bummer.” 

And if that’s the worst case scenario, as my dad would say...maybe go ahead and try?

Need help with that? We’ve got you! Schedule a discovery call today to see if we can bake up a better fundraising recipe for your nonprofit so this year’s bake can rise to new heights!