She is Not One of Your Donors

03 Aug She is Not One of Your Donors

4 August 2026

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

I’ve used the idea in previous posts that when we approach fundraising as US helping DONORS do something they value instead of THEM helping US accomplish OUR mission, we raise more money. It’s a powerful paradigm shift.

And frankly too few people have made the turn.

Here’s some language I’ve in past essays:

• Donors care a lot more about what THEY do with their money than what WE do with it.
• Think more about the opportunities you are presenting to donors than about what the organization (or you!) need.
• We are wasting too much time selling people on why conservation is important and why they should care. We should focus instead on making it easier for people who already believe to find us.

A few weeks ago, I found a new one:

• She is not one of your donors. You are one of her charities.

A massive paradigm shift.

The source is an article written by Mark Phillips on branding. In it, he makes a couple of similarly paradigm-shifting points that are well-worth passing along.

Donors perceive competing brands within a category as being far more similar than different.

Your land trust is perceived by most people as being substantially the same as every other land trust they’ve ever heard of. That includes The Nature Conservancy, The Trustees for Reservations, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, OpenLands, Columbia Land Trust, and dozens of others. Spending time and energy communicating some way that you are meaningfully different than other land trusts is a wasted effort.

Instead, put your logo on a table with a dozen other logos and without any organization names, and ask if people name the organizations. (This is a great tabling activity for farmers markets, or county fairs.) The logos they can name are distinctive, as opposed to differentiated. Distinctive logos are both famous and unique within a specific geography.

And distinctive trumps differentiated every time.

Is your logo famous and unique within your service territory? How could you make it more so? (I’ve suggested giving away window clings to anyone and everyone willing to display it on their car.)

Donors will give to your organization when you are mentally and physically available to them.

Donors give when they give. Maybe they make gifts at the end of every month. Maybe around tax season. Maybe around Thanksgiving. Maybe at the end of the year. Maybe they give impulsively when they come off a trail.

When they decide to give to conservation work, does your land trust come to mind? (Mentally available) And can they easily find an envelope, QR code, or website donation page? (Physically available) This is why we talk about including plain response envelopes in newsletters and QR codes in emails.

When a donor makes a first gift, they enter your base of supporters. You also enter their base of charities.

Your ability to retain and develop that donor – to build a relationship that lasts years and perhaps ends in a bequest – depends almost entirely on the quality of the direct relationship. From Philips:

• How promptly they were thanked.
• How well they are told what their gift achieved – that it and they made a difference.
• How relevant and well-timed the subsequent asks are.
• Whether and how you give them multiple, compelling reasons to give across the year.

She is not one of your donors. You are one of her charities. And conservation is one of her charitable priorities. This is why many donors are very comfortable giving simultaneously to The Nature Conservancy, Land Trust Alliance, the State Association of Land Trusts, and your land trust.

The parallels between luxury purchasing and charitable giving are striking, and charities should pay very close attention.

• Both are emotionally driven.
• People give to charity, like buying luxury goods, in part because of what it says about who they are.
• Both are relatively infrequent compared to everyday purchases.

And in both cases, most people perceive very few differences between brands. We will raise more money by being famous and unique. Not by being different. But rather by being memorable – mentally available. And by being easy to find.

She is not one of your donors. You are one of her charities.

This changes everything.

Cheers, and have a great week.

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Penny courtesy of Pixabay.