A Secret to Arts Fundraising: The Fire of Inspiration

There’s something that all successful arts fundraisers do, and it’s not what you might expect.

It’s not an intuitive action, and I’ve never heard anyone talk about it. But the small percentage of staff and board members who have consistently raised money over time do this one thing. And everyone else does not.

It’s an act of consequence that must be taken.

This act is not everything that needs to be done to raise money for the arts. Think of it, instead, as a first step—a prerequisite, upon which everything else is built.

Most people get distracted by the mechanisms and outcomes of fundraising. The mechanism may be a board member ‘give or get policy’ outlining a minimum annual contribution, it may be a campaign built around a milestone or time of year, or it may be a gala dinner. For each of these there is usually a goal of some kind. Fundraisers are then tasked with contacting others to ask for contributions or table sponsorships to meet the need.

Having observed people mostly fail at this for more than a quarter of a century, while observing others who consistently succeed, I have come to a conclusion.

The act of consequence that must be taken in order for an arts fundraiser to be successful is: they must open their own spirit to become wildly inspired by the art or service for which they are raising money. They must slow down, read the stories, watch the videos, attend the events. They must pay attention. They must personally enter into a state of wonder.

That’s it.

It’s about passionate and committed attention to the wonder that is art. It’s about joy and transcendence. Let’s call it the Fire of Inspiration.

The Fire of Inspiration motivates you into action. It’s an imperative. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me they cannot or don’t want to raise money. Nonsense. They simply lack the Fire of Inspiration. Techniques in successful fundraising vary widely. Some are extroverted, other introverted, some are driven by business contacts, others by family or social connections. Many times I’ve seen self-described lousy fundraisers become prolific fundraisers in spite of themselves once their Fire of Inspiration is lit.

The Fire of Inspiration helps you to speak from an inspiring place. Heaps of research have shown that transactional language leads recipients to step back and assess, while inspiring language leads people to lean in and connect.

The Fire of Inspiration leads you to learn what’s needed to be an advocate. The surest sign of an unsuccessful fundraiser has always been the person asking for charts and brochures. It’s a knee-jerk tendency in would-be fundraisers who wish to use prepared information to do the talking for them. It’s not that those things lack utility, there’s a place for them, but that place is after the fire is lit—after the compelling conversation has been had from a place of inspiration not information.

The Fire of Inspiration is patient. Because it is rooted in a deeper personal truth than a campaign timeline or arbitrary monetary goal. It survives long after those superficial elements expire. This is incredibly important because almost all real fundraising takes time. Gifts, especially major gifts, are most often given on the donor’s timeline, not the organization’s timeline. So, the fundraiser must be in for the marathon, not the sprint.

Alas, lighting the Fire of Inspiration is hard.

Taking this step evades most people. I’d like to share two reasons why.

First, opening up one’s heart to inspiration doesn’t feel like work. It’s not the action-oriented checked box we have all been trained equates to legitimate work. Successful people in modern society want to know what to do, not how to feel while doing it. Stopping, slowing, and paying attention to subtlety to the point of being moved emotionally, is just not something we think professional people are supposed to do.

Second, opening up one’s heart to inspiration requires a leap in one’s level of consciousness. We live in a largely cynical and forceful media landscape that permeates most of our day. Much messaging resides in the levels of consciousness one might call fear, desire, anger, or pride. Where in one’s professional life is there space for love or joy? Not love and joy as concepts, but love and joy as deeply felt levels of consciousness? Lighting the Fire of Inspiration, therefor, takes a deep commitment in the territory of faith.

The good news is that this is precisely what art does.

Art has been part of our civilization since the beginning specifically because we humans require a sense of significance. Sure, we’re motivated in our days by rooting for or against sports teams and candidates, and by the acquisition of money for ourselves or our companies. But most of that cogitation resides in the territory of fear, desire, anger, and pride. It does not feed significance the way love and joy do. Those things are usually fed by family, or religion, or nature, or art.

And so, the tool we need is right there before us. In order to effectively advocate for art, we have to participate truthfully in its nature of love and joy. Energy begets energy. You cannot advocate for essence using form. This is widely misunderstood, because it’s not how most business works. And how often have we heard that nonprofit organizations need to behave ‘more like businesses?’ It’s a fair point often made with regard to certain management elements, but it never comprehends the critical need to light the Fire of Inspiration, which is the embodiment of the energy that attracted us all to the table to begin with.

Once the fire is lit, we can hang our outward activities on the scaffolding of mechanics like sending emails, posting on social media, inviting friends to things, going to coffee, and so on.

The Fire of Inspiration is depletable and renewable. It is also infinite in its capacity. This means that you can’t attend one concert or talk to one parent whose child’s life has been transformed by the organization’s work and have your fire lit for eternity. The fire needs continual feeding. Over time the daily barrage of fear, desire, anger, and pride wears away at our inspiration, and therefore it also wears away at our ability to inspire others. At the same time, inspiration is always just one story, one conversation, or one experience of sublime creativity away.

There’s no upper limit to how high and how hot your fire can roar. The higher and hotter the better. I’m often in wonder at the significant gifts that have arrived at my organization as a result of stoking the flames of supporters whose fires had already been lit long ago, whose fires had been burning brightly, but whose generosity resulted from the addition of even more fuel.

I speak of reading a story or attending a concert, but that is not actually the act of consequence. Lighting one’s Fire of Inspiration is not something that is passive. It’s not done to you. The act of consequence is the opening of the soul, the readiness to be ignited by beauty, the commitment to lifting one’s level of consciousness to love or joy on the wings of human creation.