How to Raise Money, Creatively

Just a few random thoughts on fundraising:

1. Sometimes it must be possible to forget about money and (a) barter for the goods or services you need, or (b) get in-kind contributions to meet your operating needs. This probably won’t work when it comes to things like salaries, rent, consulting fees, or utility bills. However…

2. Brainstorming often works, even when it comes to dealing with money problems. Look for new appeals, new audiences, and new promotional media. You can do simple, old-fashioned brainstorming on one of those subjects. You could try a formal idea-generating method like SCAMPER, attribute listing, or morphological analysis.

3. Don’t fundraise without knowing some copywriting principles!!! I don’t care how small or cash-strapped your organization happens to be.

Maybe these thoughts will spawn some creative and practical thinking on how to get the resources you need. Let me know what you think, or what ideas you get. My idea is to look for ways to generate resources for my own humble group - IdealistDC.

Brainstroming and Social Change, Again

Last time I wrote about brainstorming techniques that would help social innovators and activists to get better results. This post builds on that idea with some advice on what sorts of social innovation or activism tasks can be helped by using various brainstorming techniques. You’ll need to do a little homework after reading this post, and might need a reference source while you read. I suggest http://www.mindtools.com/ for information on the brainstorming techniques I’ll mention here.

Here is my brief guide to common tasks and a brainstorming technique to use with each:

1. Advocacy - random input for demonstration tactics and messages
2. Education - morphological analysis for alternatives to the usual component parts
3. Fundraising - random input for strategy and tactics; provocations
4. Policy - morphological analysis, SCAMPER
5. Program design - provocations, morphological analysis, SCAMPER
6. Social marketing - random input, morphological analysis

Provocations and random input are described in Edward De Bono’s book Serious Creativity. Random input, SCAMPER, and morphological analysis are covered in Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko.