Posted on: October 13th, 2009 by Alan Clayton

When you have the mother of all recessions caused by a credit crunch, the importance of confidence becomes obvious. When people are scared of lending to each other, or simply spending money, everything goes wrong. Confidence, and the confidence to spend in particular, is key to fundraising success, too.

I am aware of a number of organisations that have invested heavily in fundraising through this recession. They have grown. I am also aware of other organisations which took a short term, “protectionist” view and cut back on investment through the last 18 months. They are now having trouble making the first draft budgets for 2010 stand up.

It’s a spectrum of course, and some stood resolutely in the middle, but the organisations that are most confident going into 2010 are those who remained the most confident through the turmoil of the last year and a half. Those organisations that had strong, confident leadership seem to have fared best. Rolling up your sleeves has proved more effective than rolling your eyes. Those that have rolled up their sleeves are coming out the other end with better income, more sustainable income and more market share.

So who are the confident? The confident are those that understand the most basic fundamental of large scale fundraising, which was wonderfully illustrated by a research piece published by Sean Triner of Pareto Fundraising in Sydney last year: Over the medium term, the biggest factor in how much income you generate is how much you spend.

To persuade an organisation to prioritise sustainable fundraising investment over the medium term over short term project funding or immediate redundancies takes a strong, knowledgeable and above all, confident, Director of Fundraising.

If you are one who has remained confident, well done. If you are one that has had to give in to colleagues, Chief Executive or Trustee demands for short term action to protect the rest of your organisation, then you need to get your confidence (and negotiating skills) honed as you prepare for 2010 budgets. The lag of this recession is going to last another 12 months for fundraisers at least.

I’m tired of fighting this battle as fundraising clients have had to justify their budgets to people that don’t understand the middle term damage they are doing. I know where I’m going to refresh the inspiration. IFC in Holland. I love meeting fundraisers from around the world who have a much tougher time than we ever will and who smile and radiate confidence nonetheless. It works every time. See you there, I hope.