The aptly named Cupid’s Arrow, a recent e-book from Blackbaud, features strategies, tips and ideas for attracting the donors you want and courting them to your cause—making it better than any Cosmo dating-advice column!

I often hear that fundraising is a tough business. There’s the economy, dwindling government funding, increasing competition and a growing gap between Canada's top 100 non-profit organizations and all the rest of the nonprofits. So, maybe we should stop thinking about our fundraising efforts as a tough business and start thinking about it with the same hopeful aspiration we have when dating. Yes, you read that right, shift your mindset for a moment and think about fundraising as the pursuit of people who have the potential to fall in love with your organization. People who will engage, respond to your attention, and eventually develop into lifelong passionate partners.

The attraction phase

My favorite advice from the e-book centered on the first phase of dating—the attraction phase. Here’s a synopsis of my favorite chapters that will help boost your donor acquisition success.

Madeline Turner advises nonprofits to get the attention of prospective donors through thoughtful strategy and provocation, similar to dating. She writes, “you have to begin by turning heads. Just as you can’t expect that the love of your life will happen upon your doorstep while you’re sitting home alone watching reruns of Seinfeld, you can’t expect to grow your supporter base by assuming that prospects will stumble around the Internet and find your website. You have to take the initiative, iron a shirt or fluff your hair, and put yourself out there.” Madeline’s key takeaways: “take the initiative, get ready to court your donors and don’t leave it up to chance. Remember to create content with messages that quickly resonate and inspire action. Build a presence on social media. Tell stories. And, don’t be afraid to do something different.”

Once you are ready to put your organization out there and begin to attract the donors you want, Ryan King tells you what to do in the 10 seconds you have to make a first impression. He notes, “depending on the study, the amount of time people spend determining whether or not they are interested in something online is between 4 and 10 seconds.” To initiate a lifelong relationship, be intentional with your message and how you communicate. Ryan’s top tips:

• Get to the point as quickly as possible. Visitors aren’t going to read your entire website, so make sure you highlight the key points in the beginning.
• Incorporate graphics and videos. Utilizing graphics and videos makes your website more engaging and allows you to tell your story without requiring your visitor to read.
• Use bullets or lists to call out text. Put your key takeaways in bullets or lists so your visitors know what is important.
• Make the goal of your message clear. Do you want them to donate? Volunteer? Attend an event? Make the goal clear to the visitor, and make the call to action even clearer.

Like dating, when you know who you are and what you stand for, you are in a much better position to attract donors to your nonprofit whose values and aspirations align with your organization’s mission, hopefully leading to a lifetime of donor love. So, if you are clear on your mission and your organization understands how to communicate “what they are about” it’s time to actually get into the dating scene.

The dating scene 

According to Andy Welkley there’s no better way to jump in to dating than with a wingman by your side.  He writes that the goal of the wingman is to build up the leader’s persona through stories and casual conversation, as well as by engaging the prospect’s friends. He writes, “the effectiveness of the wingman in the newly blossoming relationship depends in part on his ability to paint the leader in the most positive light. Few of us find the person who incessantly talks about himself attractive, so the wingman assumes the role of storyteller.” Think of social media the same way, use it to tell stories, build up your organization’s brand and provide support for your mission and communication efforts by recognizing your supporters, sharing information and engaging them and their friends in the conversation.

If your nonprofit is yearning to do something different to attract, engage and build relationships with donors, then maybe you should stop thinking of fundraising as work and instead think of it as wooing.  To learn more about courting donors online, check out the advice, ideas and best practices for donor acquisition in Cupid’s Arrow, you can download it here.