Find the Step Where People Stop
Every conversation about fundraising support starts the same way.
We need more donors. We need better engagement. We need to grow the annual fund.
All of those are wishes. None of them is something anyone can work with.
A wish names an outcome you want. A brief names the specific place where the thing is breaking. Those are different objects and only one of them can be acted on.
The difference looks like this.
We need more donors is a wish. Two hundred people opened the appeal, forty clicked, and three gave, is a brief. Now there is a question worth answering, which is what happened between the click and the gift.
We need better engagement is a wish. Our event sells out every year and we have never once asked an attendee for anything afterward, is a brief.
We need a new website is a wish. It takes eleven clicks and a login to make a fifty dollar gift, is a brief.
The reason this matters is not pedantry. It is that wishes get answered with new things.
When the ask is more donors, the answer is always a new campaign, a new event, a new platform, a new hire. Something gets built, money gets spent, and nobody ever finds out whether the original problem was in the thing that already existed.
When the ask is a specific broken step, the answer is usually much smaller and much cheaper. Fix the step. See what changes.
So before you approve the next new thing, do the unglamorous version first.
Walk the path someone takes from wanting to support you to actually supporting you. Write down every step, count them, and find the one where people stop.
Most organizations have never done this, and most of them find something in the first ten minutes that costs almost nothing to fix.
You are probably not short on donors. You are probably losing them at a step nobody has looked at.
Anchor works with community nonprofits, foundations, schools, and parishes. If you want this looked at for your organization, start with getting your bearings. It's free and takes about five minutes.