Universities do not train professionals in this field, since from an official point of view this specialty does not exist. Among the most successful Russian fundraisers there are people with a natural science education, philosophers, journalists, and the least common are marketers. In this area, the desire to develop is the main factor.
It is easier for those who are familiar with marketing, advertising, public relations, and psychology to achieve success as a fundraiser. Skills in design, copywriting, etc. will be useful. If you do not have all this knowledge, all that remains is to devote time to self-education, fortunately, many good books and courses in these disciplines are now available.
However, it is worth considering that there are very few books on this topic in Russian. Therefore, it is worth delving into business literature, because most of the tools have migrated to fundraising from sales and building relationships with clients.
In our country, the NGO sphere the usage of facebook database consists of people who have known each other for a long time, communicate with each other and are ready to provide mutual assistance. Participate in their conferences, master classes, meetings.
Business meetings for useful contacts
You need practice because even if you master the necessary theory, you will not achieve results. It is important to try, make mistakes, analyze them and try again, as in any professional field. It is recommended to gain experience on small projects, because otherwise any mistake will cost you dearly. It is better for your poorly composed letter to be received by a hundred people, and then you will draw conclusions and correct the text, than to send a bad mailing to fifty thousand recipients.
Gradually, your view of the world around you will change. You will think, looking at advertising, what catches your attention in it, and how to apply the technique in your activities. And having encountered some information in social networks, you will begin to plan how to use it to attract large sums for the implementation of a project. As soon as such changes begin in you, you can consider yourself a fundraising specialist.
Download a useful document on the topic:
Checklist: How to Achieve Your Goals in Negotiations with Clients
Mistakes in fundraising
Refusal to prepare a strategy
From the outside, it may seem that running a fundraising campaign is part of daily work, there is no point in preparing a long-term policy for it. In fact, without a strategy, you will not be able to know how often to share information about the campaign, what materials or product will attract sponsors, who is the target audience. It is important to imagine the portrait of the person for whom the campaign is launched, his interests, his way of thinking. And this is impossible without a strategy.
Be sure to collect reports and analytics on the work of each channel, forming a communication policy for fundraising. You should be interested in the dynamics of the use of social networks, mailings, website, media, etc. This way you will get maximum information about the audience, and will be able to fine-tune the content.