A few years ago, a woman told me she was live-tweeting my workshop to her co-workers and summarized my introduction in the title above, using far fewer than the 140 characters allowed. I thought it was quite a reasonable summary, although I was glad that further tweets emphasized building relationships. In this and the next section, we expand this tweet to its full meaning.

In this section, I lay out the basics for creating a culture of fundraising. I start with the relationship between the kinds of money you need to raise and the types of gifts donors can give to meet those needs. Then I expand on the basics of the middle of this tweet—“thank them”—what does that mean, exactly? What is a good thank-you note? (A tip—if you don’t have time to read any more of this book, just read the chapter on thanking and you will raise more money.)

I spend a good deal of time helping you and your team feel more comfortable with asking for money, including exploring why asking for money is so hard for most Americans. I then review the main ingredient you must have to raise money from people: people to ask. Identifying prospects instead of haphazardly asking anyone in your path is key to success. Finally, I detail the logistics of asking for money in person—a how-to that can be used to get a $1 donation for a raffle ticket or a $1 million pledge for a capital campaign.

Building a donor base is a labor-intensive task that requires persistence and minute attention to detail, along with a healthy sense of risk and willingness to spend money in order to make money. Not all strategies suit all organizations, and every organization will need to figure out which strategies work best for it. At the same time, organizations need to resist the temptation to fly from strategy to strategy looking for the magic one that will solve all their financial problems. Strategies that work well for an organization are ones that have usually been honed over many years, with lots of evaluation and planning each year, and they are coordinated with all the other strategies the organization uses to raise money.

I end with a chapter on how to divide your donors into smaller groups so you can more effectively focus on what they want as a result of giving to your organization. This strategy will help you build loyalty.

The work of inviting people who have not given to an organization to give for the first time, and then asking those who give to give again and again requires about 40 to 50 percent of the time we spend on individual donor fundraising. These chapters will help you use that time to maximum effectiveness.