We recently polled our Moceanic community about the challenges they face as professional fundraisers. One of the things that came up again and again was how under-equipped many people feel.

Here’s how one fundraiser put it: “It’s frustrating to know what I need to do but feel unsure how to execute without better systems or support.”

If this is how you feel, know that you are not alone.

I know, because this happened to me at the beginning of my career.

I was so frustrated, I almost gave up and left the fundraising profession entirely.

I remember the moment and the place it happened clearly: I was sitting at a picnic table in a park near my office. Just out of college, in my early twenties. I sat there in a sort of emotional darkness, the wind stirring in the trees around me.

A thought was growing in my mind: This is not working. I need to find some other kind of work.

I was a fundraising writer. When I first started, I remember thinking, Oh cool, someone’s going to pay me to write. It was exactly what I wanted to do. Writing was my talent. I kept being told I wrote well, and should pursue the craft.

But there was something I didn’t realize mattered: It was fundraising writing.

It was different from the writing I knew in ways I couldn’t grasp.

To be fair, few people in their twenties really understand fundraising. They don’t get much direct mail fundraising. More important, they don’t have a lifetime of charitable giving to guide the way they think about giving.

Yep, that was me. I just didn’t get fundraising.

It seemed as if the better my writing was, the worse my fundraising results were. I had one especially bad experience: I’d poured out my heart and my soul on a direct mail appeal. I thought, This has to work, it’s so powerfully written.

Then the results came in. It was awful. It was a bomb. That was why I fled my office that day and sat at that picnic table in that lovely park, deep in turmoil, trying to decide what I should do.

Fortunately, I decided to give myself more time before leaving the profession. I didn’t really have any good reason to wait, other than I had a feeling something might change.

Sure enough, something did change.

I found and embraced a mentor: Someone with decades of experience in fundraising, and laser-focused on what worked to motivate people to donate.

What followed was about two years of hard work. My mentor was hard-nosed and never willing to put up with second-best. He rarely fixed my flawed work for me, insisting that I fix it myself.

One day stands out. My mentor was going over something I’d written. “Well,” he said, pushing it back across his desk at me, “this is pretty good writing, but it’s not going to work.”

I was flabbergasted. “Why not? Shouldn’t good writing work?”

He said, “No. Because you’re missing something.”

I now realize he’d been telling me this same thing for months. But now, finally, I had ears to hear.

“The mistake you keep making,” he said, “is you think it’s about how good your writing is. But that’s not what fundraising is about. Fundraising is about connecting with donors. Good writing is fine, but if you aren’t connecting with donors, you’re going nowhere.”

That was when things changed for me. Now I could see what worked and didn’t work. My errors stopped being a total mystery to me. I was making progress and starting to see success.

It’s been decades since then, and that’s what I’m still doing. I still make plenty of mistakes. (My most common mistake is to over-rely on “good” writing and not enough on the things we know work to connect with donors. Everyone has a go-to bad habit we keep trying out again.)

But now I know how anybody gets fundraising right: First, embrace the idea that if you want to influence donors, you’d better connect with them (as opposed to talk at them), and then learn the specifics of what it takes to do that.

Everyone’s professional and life path is a little different. But everyone who succeeds gets there in a similar way:

They find a mentor. Or a community. Or they cobble together a quality education. Or some combination of the three.

Maybe you’re sitting at your “picnic table,” wondering if you can make this fundraising thing work. Maybe you’re thinking about leaving the profession entirely. If so, let me give you the best advice I have: The way through is to find your connection to the fundraising success path. Whether that’s a mentor, a community, an education … or all three.

One way to get there is to join The Fundraisingology Lab by Moceanic.

I admit I’m biased on this, as I’m part of this amazing community. But I can tell you this: The things you’ll learn in The Fundraisingology Lab are the techniques experienced fundraising professionals use. Often surprising. Sometimes counterintuitive. Always tested and proven to work.

All the courses and workshops are grounded in real research, real-world results, and real donor connection. No off-the-cuff opinions. No speculative theory. No ideology-driven commandments.

If you want a place where you can trust what you’re learning – and get the support you need all year long – The Fundraisingology Lab might be exactly what you’re looking for.

And now, for the first time, we’ve introduced Team Membership.

Bring your whole fundraising team together with one plan, one community, and one shared path to success. It’s an affordable way to give your entire team access to expert support, tools, and clarity.

Book your free demo and see what’s possible for your team.

Related Blog Posts:

• The 4 Stages of Your Fundraising Career: Where Are You Right Now?
• How to Master and Share the “Weird Stuff” of Fundraising
• 7 Ways to Make Yourself a Better Fundraiser