Team Habits for Fundraising
If an organization wants to align around fundraising, it has to build internal habits that support the work — not just the solicitation, but the entire fundraising ecosystem.
The first habit is understanding that fundraising is more than asking for money. It’s cultivation, stewardship, storytelling, and connection. It’s everything we do to help someone feel meaningfully tied to the mission and invited to support it. When everyone in the organization understands that, fundraising becomes a shared responsibility rather than a siloed function.
The second habit is building a culture of storytelling. Program staff and the people closest to the mission should be encouraged, empowered, and celebrated when they share stories about impact. Stories from clients, stories about outcomes, stories about challenges overcome. These stories help fundraisers talk to donors, but they also help the rest of the staff understand the real-world results of their work. Storytelling is how organizations stay connected to their purpose.
Another habit is reframing how we talk about gifts internally. Fundraisers need to resist the urge to say, “Look at the gift I brought in.” No gift is the result of one person’s effort. Yes, the fundraiser may have cultivated the relationship, written the proposal, or made the ask — but the gift only exists because of the work everyone else did to build the mission, deliver the programs, and create the impact that inspired the donor.
(By the way, this is a hard habit to break. Especially when nonprofits regularly ask "tell me about the biggest gift you brought in" as part of their interview process. Like the song says, it's not all about you.)
The final habit is demystifying donors. There’s a lot of fear and misunderstanding about who donors are as if they’re somehow above us, or intimidating, or disconnected from the work because they have money. But donors are just people. They care about the mission, and giving is how they express that care. When fundraisers share stories about donors — their reactions during a tour, their reasons for giving, the moments that moved them — it helps staff see donors as partners rather than distant figures.
When organizations build these habits, fundraising stops being something that happens “over there” and becomes something the whole organization is aligned around. It becomes shared work, shared purpose, and shared impact.
How do you build a culture of engagement around fundraising in your organization?
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