Rethinking How I Map the Customer Journey

Pairing actions with beliefs to better support potential clients at every stage.

Photo by Angela Knox, The Divine Group

One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced at BrandRaise over the last year and a half is a recurring misunderstanding about what it takes to hire fundraising support.

Especially for a capital campaign, which usually spans multiple years and has a multi-million-dollar goal, the investment can feel daunting to organizations.

We’ve heard it all:

“Why can’t you just charge commission on what you raise?”

“Why is this so expensive?"

"We can’t afford that, we'll just do it ourselves.”

At first, I treated these comments as objections to handle and we created even more detailed proposals that explained everything we did in a 14-18 month time-frame, in an effort to communicate the value.

But the more I heard them, the more I started to see a pattern.

Typically we're connecting with small to mid-sized organizations who are strapped for time, money and systems; organizations who have never raised a large sum of money at one time. It's a new experience and likely a daunting one.

These objections aren’t really about the price. They’re about (a lack of) awareness because there’s a gap between wanting to raise millions of dollars and understanding what that process requires.

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This post is part of the ‘Behind the Business’ series. You can read the rest (plus gain access to all the archives) by becoming a paid subscriber. This series is an every-other-week post sharing personal thoughts, comments, strategies and tactics about the ups and downs of building a people-first, service-based business, as a mom and wife.