Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver

Suzann Stahl

A few days ago I heard a TV news story about a charity that had a fundraising campaign involving local youth. The youth were encouraged to go out into their community and appeal to donors to support a specific program. The young person volunteer most successful with their fundraising was promised front-row tickets and a backstage pass to a performance by a nationally-known and very popular boy band.

At the end of the campaign, when the winner was determined, the hard-working young lady learned that the “connection” to the band fell through and she would not be receiving her prize. How very sad.

This situation reminded me of another. A nonprofit organization put on a business conference and sought out sponsors. Sponsors of $500 or more were told their business logo would appear in over 10,000 flyers, which would be distributed in local Chamber of Commerce newsletters and popular business journals. Many businesses invested, seeing the marketing opportunity as a great value. The flyer was designed, printed and distributed without sponsor logos.

What did the young lady in the first example learn? Not to trust nonprofit organizations? Will she get involved in another philanthropic experience? Likely not very soon. Will she tell others about the experience she had with the organization? Probably so.

Will the business conference sponsors invest in that organization or the event again? Likely not. Will those businesses share their distrust of that organization with other businesses? Probably so.

These are the kinds of situations that make fundraising in this economic climate even harder for well-intentioned, hard-working community benefit organizations.

My advice: don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Broken trust is extremely hard to rebuild.