In nonprofit fundraising, the folktale of the tortoise and the hare is highly applicable. The biggest flex isn’t just hitting your goal. It’s achieving those goals without the fire-drill panic of scrambling during the final month of your fiscal year. Can you imagine a world where your organization reaches 100% of its annual fundraising goal halfway through the year?

That may sound too good to be true. Not so. It is possible to apply the the tortoise and the hare, embracing a tortoise mentality.

How? By embracing a tortoise approach to fundraising—focused, consistent and strategic—over the hare mentality that prioritizes short-term wins at the expense of long-term sustainability. Let’s take a few minutes to understand what that looks like in practice.

The Tortoise and the Hare: Why the Hare Mentality Falls Short

For too long, the nonprofit sector has been trapped in the mindset of chasing short-term, event-based goals:

  • What’s your gala goal?
  • What’s your Giving Tuesday goal?
  • What’s the campaign goal?
  • What’s your golf outing goal?
  • And on, and on, and on...

These hyper-focused, event-based goals often become the central metric of success. Fundraising teams—and even boards—become more concerned with these one-time milestones than with securing the annual revenue needed to support their entire budget. In the tortoise and the hare analogy, this is a hare approach.

The result? A fundraising culture that perpetuates instability. Inconsistent cash flow can lead to stressful end-of-year pushes, an over-reliance on transactional gifts rather than fostering donor relationships and a lack of reserves or diversified funding streams, leaving the organization vulnerable.

The Tortoise: A Better Way to Fundraise

There is a better rhythm for fundraising, one that prioritizes long-term thinking and consistent execution over quick wins. The tortoise approach focuses on building sustainable, scalable charitable revenue by taking a long-term view and committing to consistent, disciplined actions. To use this method:

1. Think beyond your fiscal year. Mapping out revenue goals with a three- to five-year horizon provides clarity and direction for your nonprofit’s long-term sustainability. This approach encourages you to align your fundraising efforts with your organization’s broader vision and mission, rather than just focusing on short-term objectives.

Read the full article about the tortoise and the hare mentality by Sherry Quam Taylor at Forbes.