Starting a fund raising program from scratch can be both exciting and frustrating. There will be fleeting moments of glory, often preceded by extended periods of self-doubt and aggravation. There is no panacea for this malady. Any charitable organization, starting a new development program, will face similar problems. However, if you want to minimize the pitfalls and start off with a sound plan of attack -- use N.I.T.R.O.!

A little over six years ago Blood Systems, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, decided to start a comprehensive fund development program. Blood Systems, a 55-year-old, not-for-profit charitable organization, provides blood and blood products to over 600 hospitals in the United States. Unfortunately, Blood Systems never developed a fund raising program because of a fear that soliciting financial contributions would hinder their core mission of recruiting volunteers to donate blood.

If your charitable organization is struggling to develop a new fund raising program, N.I.T.R.O. may help you ignite your Board members and volunteers and push past the difficult infancy of a new program.

It worked for Blood Systems.

N. Necessity What in your organization needs funding? Do you require more money for books and computers? Maybe there's a need for beds, food or vans? Necessity is what drives a development program. Blood Systems needed a new fleet of bloodmobiles. These $125,000 vehicles are as big as a city bus and are the backbone of a successful blood donation program. These state-of-the-art vehicles make it more convenient for volunteers to donate blood and safer for technicians to draw and process the blood. There were other important needs, but the bloodmobiles were critical to the future of the organization. Once we knew the focus of our development efforts, it was then a matter of finding ways to raise the money.

I. Ingenuity Fund raising offers a smorgasbord of techniques to raise money. The trick is choosing ones that will immediately begin producing results. It's a fact of life that initial fund raising efforts are often criticized by Board members and senior staff because they don't see immediate income. To quiet the naysayers, it's important to generate some philanthropic dollars as soon as possible.

To raise money for the bloodmobiles, Blood Systems decided to approach the corporations who had been annually supporting blood drives. It seemed logical that this very large group of corporate entities would already have an affinity for our organization because of their long track record of supporting blood drives. A corporate giving program was initiated to raise money in communities that had a blood donor center. A direct mail campaign was also incorporated into the fund raising efforts because of the vast number of blood donors who could be identified. In some areas special events were conducted to help raise the needed dollars.

Any new fund development effort can utilize these same kind of activities. The key is knowing what you need the money for, and aiming your creative juices in that direction.

T. Tenacity I've never encountered a charitable organization who struck gold in their very first fund raising effort -- and never had to raise money again. Successful fund raising takes time and a great deal of effort. Tenacity is the key to great fund raising. When you hear that a hospital or university has raised millions of dollars in a campaign, you can bet that institution has had a well-developed program for many years.

Your new development program will hit barriers, lose key players, squander money, and stagger -- but tenacity will help it bounce back. In the first few years at Blood Systems, some fund raising efforts were bitter failures, other only luke-warm. The first few years of any program will try the patience of staff and board members, but eventually you will establish a core base of donors and volunteers who will make programs, activities and events successful

R. Reasonable Goals Establishing unrealistic fund raising goals for a new development program will frustrate the staff and disappoint the Board. Unfortunately, if the CEO or the Board Chairman are ill-informed about fund raising, they will assume that hiring a development professional will guarantee quantum returns on that investment. It just doesn't happen. The first year of any development program will be devoted to researching potential donors, building a volunteer base, educating and involving the Board Members, encouraging staff members, and testing new fund raising ideas. Unrealistic goals can be fatal to a program and will cause new employees to flee.

Blood Systems made the mistake of planning a $1 million capital campaign in the early stages of the fund development program. With no donor base of support, little community recognition, and a weak steering committee, the capital campaign effort was doomed from the start. Fortunately, the failed effort was a grand learning experience that provided a springboard to more successful efforts in the future.

O. Optimism To succeed in fund raising you must be optimistic. Each day the development professional should approach their job with unbridled optimism -- confident that their efforts, and those of the volunteers, will eventually generate success. The fund raising staff should be the most optimistic people in your organization, almost to the point of being obnoxious! Programs may be lagging, dollars may be slow in coming, and donors may not be beating a path to your door -- but things will be better tomorrow! That's the beauty of fund raising. The more you talk about fund raising and the more you educate your constituents about the need for dollars, the more dollars you will receive.

Blood Systems has maintained a high level of optimism and the results have followed. In 1993, the first year of fund raising, Blood Systems was receiving less than $25,000 in gifts. Using the concept of N.I.T.R.O. we've ignited a fire in our organization that has now raised nearly $4 million.

If your organization is planning to develop a new fund raising program, success will be based on identifying needs, promoting ingenuity, bulldog tenacity, establishing reasonable goals, and harboring huge amounts of optimism. N.I.T.R.O.!