What the Fundraising

6Building Connected Relationships

I’ve come a long way from the community garden, when my boss directed me to “just build relationships” and sent me on my way. It’s true that relationships are key to fundraising; we know that strong relationships give us the opportunity to grow and expand our fundraising potential, our networks, and visibility for our organizations. But we want strong, connected relationships. Connected relationships happen when aligned funders and fundraisers develop a symbiotic relationship that grows and expands over time. Focusing our time and energy on building these relationships helps ease the stress of uncertainty and creates more opportunities for a funder to connect with the cause beyond a one‐time monetary donation. Creating connected relationships starts with building trust from day one, following up with effective engagement touchpoints, and offering opportunities for dialogue.

Trust is an essential prerequisite for forging deep and meaningful connections. Research shows that without trust, we will face constant barriers to forming strong relationships (Wilkins 2018). But what does trust really look like? And how do we build it? Trust is “such a simple and complex word all at once,” seemingly easy to achieve but often elusive and difficult to repair once it’s been broken (RKD Group n.d.).

Trust is present in connections where both parties are comfortable being their authentic selves, confident in each other’s decision‐making and follow‐through, ...