Three ways to set yourself up for success in a new fundraising role

From catching up on years of institutional knowledge to learning how to use a new donor management system, starting a new fundraising job can be daunting. But there are surefire steps you can take to set yourself up for success: Learn about your constituents, learn about their donor journeys, and document what you’re learning.

Three ways to set yourself up for success in your new role

Find out who’s who in your constituency

You may have been provided with a roster listing the names, roles, and term details of your board members. But do you know how they are tracked in your donor management system? If there’s no mechanism in place that allows you to pull the current board as a group into search results, it’s important to prioritize learning how to do that now because it’s how you’ll later be able to create board reports and mailing lists with ease.

LGL Tip: Use Groups in Little Green Light to track current and former board members.

There are other groups of constituents you should be thinking about, too. Do you know who makes up your top donors, lapsed donors, and new donors? These constituents share characteristics within their giving histories, which means that you can use giving data within your donor management system to find them. If you practice searching for these constituents, you’ll become more familiar with important names that might not be on your board roster. And if you are not able to locate these constituents, then you may have identified a gap where your organization’s data management can be improved.

LGL Tip: Little Green Light automatically calculates top donors, lapsed donors, and new donors and assigns these as giving statuses. You can also customize how giving statuses are defined.

Consider their donor journeys

Learning about your constituency opens the door to thinking about your donor journeys. This phrase refers to the overall experience that someone has from when they first learn about your organization to becoming a loyal supporter. Tailoring your outreach to constituents based on where they are in their donor journey helps ensure constituents hear the right messages from your organization at the right time. When you practice searching for different groups of constituents, consider your ideal next step for each separate group. That way, when you start communicating with constituents you’ll already have some goals in mind to guide your messaging.

Document your learning process

You’ll be absorbing a lot of information in the first few months of your job. You might discover how to do something in your donor database that isn’t needed immediately but will be useful at some point. Documenting as you learn is a great way to create reference guides personalized to your role and organization. This can help when you need to recall a particular detail months in the future, and it can help the next person who joins your team.

LGL Tip: You can upload your documentation to Little Green Light so that it is easily accessible to other team members working in your account.