What Does A Fundraiser Look Like?

17 Jul What Does A Fundraiser Look Like?

What does a fundraiser look like? Grandmother and her grandchildren at Beit-Hanan. Source: Beit-Hanan Archive via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project via Wikimedia Commons.

A new soul-colleague told me the other day he had doubted I could really raise money because I looked like his grandmother.

At first, I was insulted. But I do often dress like someone’s  grandmother.

And I act like this grandmother in the picture–projects and people coming out of my hair. And in my hair. I like them there.

Like a Grandmother?

After my initial upset, he clarified: he loved his grandmother. He admired his grandmother. He even loved how she dressed!

She just didn’t look like the kind of people he associated with raising money.

And so I wanted to write you about this, in case you have the same assumptions. To make them easy for you to notice, and to question.

I am glad I don’t always look like other people’s assumptions about who raises money. (I do clean up well, and sometimes actually do look like “those” people, until you get to my car, but that’s another story).

I’m glad because we can make the world bigger or smaller by the stories we tell ourselves about these things. 

You may want to raise money and not look like anyone’s assumption of a fundraiser either! (My friend doesn’t look like his own assumptions, and he is a stellar fundraiser.) You may worry about entrusting some of your money to people who look like your grandmother. So this advice could be directly relevant to your success.