If you have ever sat in a fundraising strategy session that felt both urgent and disconnected from the operational realities, you know the frustration. If you have watched a proposal move through nine reviewers only for the tenth to remove every truth drawn from community needs and replace it with polished jargon, you know the quiet disappointment. And if you have opened a donor update and felt that familiar drop in your stomach because the budget shrank again while the crisis grew louder, you already know the reality that follows.
Terminating. Closing. Leaving.
In that space, fundraising stops being an administrative task and becomes the only way to keep the work alive. Yet too often, NGOs treat it like performance. They chase calls for proposals without clarity on direction. They celebrate grant wins without counting how they drained the team or stretched the program scope. They speak of sustainability publicly and then race after another twelve month grant to survive internally.
When pressure intensifies, the response is predictable. Capital C Cuts. Launch a global business development team. Start a full model redesign with a consultancy based far from any country office. Merge units. Rename functions. Rebrand urgency. More often, these moves bring more compliance layers branded as “strategic compliance”, more regional and HQ roles branded as “business development” that end up writing strategies that look good on paper but do not translate into financial or operational value, and more statements condemning donors for cutting funding.
Here is the reality. Fundraising is like an old radio. Already complex. Already sensitive. Already stretched. You do not fix it by replacing it with something new. You steady your hand. You listen for the frequency. Then you adjust the dial a few millimetres at a time until the static clears and the message comes through clean.
That millimetre shift is the small c cut. A deliberate adjustment that improves clarity without reconstructing the system, and creating new departments. It requires no overhaul. It asks for presence, precision, and the discipline to choose alignment over noise.
What follows are those adjustments. They are tricks that helped me, my teams, and leaders I know in securing millions of dollars at country, regional, and HQ levels.
They work. They hold. Read them, invest in them, share them with others.
Stop Chasing Calls, Start Chasing Clarity
Fundraising in NGOs often starts from the wrong end of the story. A call for proposals appears, urgency rises, templates open, teams react, review cycles expand, and quality checks begin .The pressure to submit outweighs the discipline to pause. The only question that should guide the work remains untouched.
What are we actually trying to deliver, why does it matter here, and why does it need funding?
When that question is avoided, proposals become expensive guesses. They might win a grant, but they do not guide the work toward the people who need it. The grants keep structures breathing without moving them forward. Activity replaces direction. Survival replaces purpose.
The reason this question is so often skipped is not lack of capacity. It is discomfort. Answering it honestly forces organisations to confront what they are really committed to, what they can no longer justify, and what they have been postponing under operational pressure. It is easier to respond to calls than to admit uncertainty.
Here is the small c cut that takes us back to first principles. Long before donor meetings, grant submissions, or pipeline reviews, answer five questions with sharp honesty.
What change are we committed to creating in the next twelve to thirty six months? Which programs or capabilities are non negotiable for that change to happen? What do those programs need to deliver, from people to systems to partnerships? How will local partners lead this change, not only implement it? What evidence shows that this direction matches the current reality on the ground?
In NGOs, fundraising is strongest when it chases a purpose, not a budget gap.
Call it a strategy. Call it a spine document. Call it a core needs audit or focus areas. The title does not matter. The clarity does.
A Master Budget Is Not a Panic Document
In many NGOs, the master budget is a common term used to describe survival sheets. They list rent, salaries, vehicles, HQ cost recovery, and every item needed to keep the administrative engine alive. They rarely show what the program needs to grow, improve, or deliver impact. When a master budget turns into a catalogue of operational pain instead of a map of program ambition, fundraising becomes a chase to keep the lights on instead of a plan to change lives.
It is like trying to navigate a storm with a map that only shows the coastline and none of the islands you are actually trying to reach. You can row as hard as you want. You are still rowing blind.
Here is the hard truth. If your master budget only covers operational costs and overhead, it is not a master budget. It is a panic document. And panic documents do not guide fundraising. They only shape strategies built around the fear of collapse.
The strategy, the program design, the operational plan, and the master budget must live in harmony. When you fundraise only to cover operational costs and overhead, it becomes like running on a treadmill without a path. Lots of movement, no real direction.
And if you do not have a master budget at all, then your problem is bigger than fundraising, because you are not managing operations or the organisation. You are guessing and managing optimistic chaos.
Here is the small c cut that serves as a map. A real master budget is not optional, and it is not only for a country operation. It is a must. It is for the region, for HQ, and even for you as a leader. It must show the operational and overhead costs required to function, the program costs needed to deliver impact, the investments necessary to grow and adapt, and the financial requirements linked to your vision and your strategy.
It does not need to be complicated. It can begin as a simple table that clarifies what you must have to survive, what you need to grow, what you need to deliver your strategy, and what it will cost if you choose to do nothing.
Build one version, align it with your strategy, align it with your operational plan, then fundraise from it, and review it frequently to keep your eyes on reality, not assumptions.
Fundraising Is Not a Unit. It Is an Organisational Mindset.
In many organizations, fundraising gets trapped inside a department or team. It may sit under Business Development, Grants Management, Partnerships, or whatever title sounds strategic that year. The name shifts. The pressure does not. A single team is asked to carry what the whole organisation should own. It is like asking one person to push a car uphill while everyone else sits inside.
This is the part we must say out loud. Fundraising is not a unit. It is not a role. It is not a box in the organogram. It is an organisational mindset.
Program teams shape the substance.
Finance shapes the feasibility.
Operations shape the credibility.
MEAL shapes the evidence.
Reputation shapes proximity to communities.
Leadership shapes the direction.
Fundraising weaves these elements together and turns them into a case worth supporting. Fundraising does not start with donor outreach. It starts with internal alignment. It starts when every function sees itself as part of the case, not as an observer of the chase.
When teams share ownership of the story, the numbers, the needs, and the outcomes, the quality of fundraising improves without extra pressure.
Here is the small c cut that shifts the mindset. Redefine fundraising as a system, not a silo. Ask each team to contribute one clear element. Programs define the change. Finance provides the real costs. Operations outline what it takes to deliver. MEAL brings the cost of evidence. Leadership connects it all with direction and permission. One page per team is enough. Then let them build it together and own it together.
Acknowledge how each role contributes to the goal from the angle of reputation, quality, access, and risk. Let people see their fingerprints on the fundraising story because fundraising is everyone’s work. Only in different shapes.
Not Every Call Deserves A Proposal
When budgets shrink, survival instincts become the operational modality. Every new call for proposals starts to look like a life jacket thrown by a donor. Suddenly everything feels essential. Teams rush, meetings multiply, timelines compress, and nine out of ten proposals quietly drain more than they deliver. The organisation works harder without moving with intent. This is how NGOs end up applying for everything: emergency grants, development grants, research grants, nexus experiments, resilience pilots, governance experiments, innovation funds, and that mysterious climate opportunity someone forwarded from a WhatsApp group with the subject line “URGENT!!!!” The hunt quietly becomes the plan.
The reason is simple. In a culture of scarcity and an environment that focuses on cost, saying no feels reckless. Declining a call is treated as refusing oxygen. It feels safer to chase everything than to admit what the organisation cannot carry or what does not align. But that safety is an illusion. Exhaustion replaces strategic alignment. Activity and quick wins replace progress and long term goals. Teams face yet another loss with every no, quietly wondering why everyone is so tired and so busy, with so little visible impact.
Here is the small c cut you should do before chasing a proposal. Introduce a simple Go or No Go moment before any work begins. It can be a short meeting, or a checklist. Three criteria only. One: does this opportunity truly align with our strategy and program direction. Two: can we deliver it without breaking the team. Three: will it pay its real cost, or will it quietly push us further into deficit. Capture the decision in one scoring sheet and one shared log. Give it a few minutes of honest reflection.
This small discipline protects the organisation from chasing noise and gives back time for work with real purpose. Decide first. Then act.
Concept Notes Are Seeds, Not Storage
Concept notes often suffer the same fate as reports, newsletters, and advocacy papers. They are written with energy, saved with pride, and then quietly forgotten.
The issue is not the ideas. The ideas are often strong. The issue is that concept notes are treated as documents instead of tools. They sit in folders, waiting for the perfect moment, instead of moving through people and creating momentum.
A concept note that never leaves a folder is not a fundraising strategy. It is digital dust.
Teams wait for the perfect call, the perfect opening, the perfect internal green light. Sometimes they even draft concept notes for a call that may or may not arrive. That is not planning. That is hope dressed as preparation.
Here is the small c cut you need to remember. A concept note is a pitch. If it does not land with one donor, it can land with another. If it does not fit a call today, it can fit a partnership next month. If it does not open a door, it can plant the idea that opens the next one.
Ideas travel further than full proposals. Proposals expire. Concept notes breathe and grow.
The strongest concept notes are the ones local partners can carry in their own words. When they shape the idea, they can take it into their networks, their coalitions, their own conversations. The concept stops being an internal file and starts becoming a shared asset.
Here is another small c cut in practice. Turn concept notes into living tools. Update them a few times a year. Share them informally with donors, partners, foundations, and private sector contacts. Send them ahead of meetings. Attach them to follow ups. Let them circulate. Let them breathe. Use them to influence agendas before calls are even announced.
If fundraising is the engine, then a concept note is the first turn of the key.
And when you write a concept note, start with a single page that states clearly what is needed, why it matters, what will change, what it costs, and what success will look like for you, for local partners, and for the community.
Reporting Is Not Administration. It Is Reputation Management
The most underrated tool in NGO fundraising is reporting.
The most quietly powerful part of the funding cycle is also reporting.
Yet reporting is treated as paperwork. A compliance step. Something to submit so finance can close the quarter and program teams can move on. Reports get rushed, assembled from different teams, softened to avoid drawing attention to challenges, and stripped of the stories that reflect what really happened.
The result is predictable. Reports feel mechanical. Achievements appear smaller than they are. Challenges look hidden rather than understood. The program progress quite often it is a copy and paste of the last report with updated numbers.
The reason this happens is rarely about capacity. It is about norms and caution.
The norm is to see the report as a date on the grant contract, not as a strategic partnership moment. The caution comes from fear. Teams worry that naming difficulties may trigger scrutiny, budget reductions, more questions, or tension with the donor. So they dilute complexity instead of presenting clarity.
Here is what you need to hear. Donors do not lose confidence because your programs face problems. They lose confidence when your reports are unclear, inconsistent, rushed, or defensive. I say this as someone who has sat on the donor side and signed off on funding : a weak report makes your organisation look uncertain. A strong one makes it look trustworthy. One bad report can close a door. One good report can open doors you did not even know were there.
Reporting is not administration. It is reputation management in writing.
Here is the small c cut that is an investment in reputation. Keep one simple internal rhythm for reports. Use one shared reporting calendar that everyone can see. Let MEAL bring evidence, not number noise. Let finance explain cost absorption and variances with clarity and be transparent about any loss. Let program teams name progress without fear of sharing challenges. Write in the language of community needs and priorities, not only in organisational terms or empty words.
Include a brief story or example that reflects the human impact, something specific enough that could retell in one minute and clearly link it to the numbers in the report.
Offer a call, a walkthrough, or a field visit. And share a short informal update between reports. Two paragraphs. One insight. One honest signal of progress or learning.
In NGOs, a report is not the last step of a grant. It is the first step of the next one.
Diversification Is Not Just About Money
Everyone in the sector talks about diversification. It appears in strategies, board slides, and senior management meetings. Yet when you look under the surface, many organisations still rely on one or two main donors for survival. Naming that dependency feels risky, so diversification stays on paper and the focus quietly shifts back to chasing grant extensions or another round from the same donor.
Fundraising is not only about funds. It is also about partnerships.
Real diversification means looking beyond the usual donors. It can be foundations that cover what institutional donors do not. It can be private companies that want social impact and focus on markets and the economy. It can be impact investors who back ideas that are innovative and scalable. It can be universities and research centres that bring evidence, influence, and skills without adding big costs. It can also be individuals who volunteer their expertise, or familiar places like the mosque, church, or community centre where trust already lives.
Diversification is not only about money in. It is often about pressure out.
Some of the strongest forms of diversification do not even show up as income lines. A joint program can reduce operational costs and reach more people. A shared office can reduce rent. A jointly led initiative can open doors and create access. A research partnership can give you expertise you could never afford on your own.
Here is the small c cut that gives colour to your black and white fundraising. Map the actors in your ecosystem. List who they are, what they care about, what they can realistically support, and how you will engage with each of them.. Then choose one and start. Simple. One email. One call. One conversation. One relationship. A rhythm.
Take the first step. Stay with it long enough to learn. Invest time, see what works, adjust, then pilot the next relationship and the next.
Over time, you are not building a list. You are building a small ecosystem instead of a single dependency. One actor may become a financial donor. One may be a joint program partner. One may be an ally or a door opener.
Diversify slowly. Diversify intentionally. Diversify beyond money.
Relationships Are Not ATMs
Too often, NGOs treat relationships like transactions. Every donor meeting becomes an ask. Every external event becomes a pitch. Every cluster becomes a stage to argue for space. When every interaction is about securing, or extracting something, trust fades.
The driver behind that thinking is not just ambition. It is also anxiety. When resources shrink and time is tight, showing up without an ask feels like a luxury. So teams turn every meeting into an opportunity they cannot afford to miss. In reality, that urgency is what slowly closes doors. If the only time you appear is when you need something, the system already knows your next sentence. And it stops listening.
Donors are not cash machines. Clusters are not vending machines. Partners are not shortcuts. They are people under pressure, juggling their own constraints and expectations.
Relationships in this sector hold more than funding. They hold reputation, access, influence, credibility, coordination space, second chances, and quiet opportunities that never appear in a ToR. When relationships are strong, your analysis is heard, your proposals are trusted, your voice is wanted in the room. When relationships are weak, you are tolerated, not included.
Here is the small c cut. Hold regular informal check ins with each donor and key partner. No ask. No pitch. No slide deck. Just presence. Listen more than you speak. Learn what is shifting on their side: their direction, their pressure, their appetite, their limits.
In clusters and coordination spaces, attend before you need something. Contribute without positioning for a return. Let people meet you without a request attached.
These quiet interactions build the kind of resilience that formal meetings cannot. Relationships are not ATMs. They are systems that grow through presence, humility, and rhythm.
Crowdfunding Needs Clarity, Not Emotion
A crisis hits, a video spreads, a picture trends. It feels direct. Personal. Immediate. People give money in seconds. But once the donation leaves someone’s bank, visibility often disappears. And in many cases, money that people believe is going to urgent relief can legally end up in unrestricted funds. From there it can go to general budgets, operational gaps, investment in a new area, or even to cover organisational losses or a cost disallowed by a donor.
The problem is the gap between what people think they are supporting and what organisations actually use the money for. Laws may allow that practice. Ethics do not. When that gap widens, belief fades. When belief fades, giving slows.
The reason clarity is often avoided is fear. Fear that full transparency will reduce donations if the need includes overheads or staff salaries. But hiding the full picture does not protect trust. It weakens it. People can accept complexity. They do not accept confusion.
Here is the ethical small c cut. Treat crowdfunding as a conversation. Tell people what their donation supports. If it is not going directly to programs, explain overhead in language they can understand and see the value in. Share short visual updates so people who donated can see where the money went. Post one honest progress note, even if the news is mixed. Make the path of the money visible.
Clarity keeps trust alive. Trust is the real currency of crowdfunding.
Do this once. Then do it again. Then do it ten times. That is how you build public trust. And when trust grows, more support follows.
The Small Secret Nobody Teaches
True story. I once faced a budget shortfall so severe that we were preparing to close an entire area office and exit several program locations. No new grants, no funding. During that same month of preparing to close I attended a small social event. I left that evening with a two million euro funding opportunity and a contact who became the anchor of a signed grant that helped us reach thousands of people in need.
Those millions did not come from two hours at a social event. They came from strong programming, organisational reputation, and understanding community needs. The social gathering simply created a moment to share a clear idea with someone who was ready to listen.
Another true story. I once worked with a program director during a period when funding was shrinking and closure was the main topic in every conversation. At that time we were frequently getting WhatsApp messages, calls, and emails with offers from donors of non competitive grants around 100 to 300 thousand dollars and a single question: “Can you take it and make it operational.” We started calling them X1, X2, X3, X4 grants. Those grants became the backbone of operations across five area offices.
These thousands of dollars did not come because we were wearing suits and moving from one event to another. They came because we had a strong reputation as emergency responders, showed up to coordination meetings, and had a program director and area operations teams who worked in harmony, carried the same messages, and kept showing up.
These moments are examples that opportunities do not only come through pipelines or calls for proposals. They come through people. They come through how you show up, how you communicate, how you connect, and how you build trust.
This is the quiet currency that fundraisers must learn:
Charisma that is grounded.
Character that is consistent.
The ability to simplify complex realities in a way that makes people lean in, not lean back.
A presence that carries clarity even when the context is chaotic.
A track record that follows you into every room.
A reputation built on reliability, access, quality, and partnerships.
Here is the small c cut to practice that. Understand that the pathway to a direct award, a single source contract, or a non competitive grant is shaped by organisational reputation, operational footprint, and the quiet relationships that accumulate over time. Invest in the human side of influence, in relations and join events. This is not about charm. It is about awareness. Knowing your organisation, your vision, your team, and your communities well enough that when you speak, it feels real.
Remember this : Some doors open because of strategy. Some open because of preparation. And some open because someone in the room remembers how you shared an idea and how you made them feel.
Protect Fundraising Teams from Burnout
Fundraising and grants management teams are treated like emergency generators. They are expected to run nonstop, power every program, keep everything alive. Then everyone wonders why the lights keep flickering.
The reality is simple. Fundraising and grants teams live in permanent deadline mode. Calls keep coming. Drafts repeat. Donors change templates just when everyone has finally learned the old one. Late night messages arrive asking for “quick inputs please” that are never quick. Program, finance, and supply chain colleagues are pulled in at the last minute for numbers and details they never had time to prepare.
In the middle of all that, HQ arrives with a new compliance checklist, a new process, or worse, a new software system to use. The inbox is full, the calendar is crowded, and coffee turns into a basic survival tool. Everyone is tired, frustrated, looking for other jobs, or looking for anything that makes the toxic atmosphere bearable. And behind the polite emails and coordination calls there is a sea of quiet tears from grants and fundraising staff who are always under pressure.
The sector treats this as normal. It is not normal. It is slow burnout. That is the hard truth.
Here is the small c cut that releases the pressure. Limit how many proposals you pursue at the same time. Hold regular debriefs that ask about energy, not only results. Bring program, finance, and supply chain into the Go No Go and proposal planning early so they contribute with clarity instead of crisis. Treat rest as part of the work, not a prize at the end.
Let grants and fundraising teams visit field sites so they can see the impact of their work instead of being stuck in events and behind laptops. Invest in them: their ability to use AI tools, their diplomacy and communication, and their wellbeing.
Because even the strongest generator fails if it never pauses.
And mobilisation collapses when the mobilisers collapse.
Less noise. Just fundraising done right.
Fundraising will never be easy. Emergencies pile up. Budgets shrink. Economies go up and down. Politics shift. The work often feels heavier than the resources in hand.
In that pressure, the instinct is to reach for louder strategies, new units, or polished plans and structures that promise transformation. More proposals. More crowdfunding. More chasing. For most teams, these change very little. The same overload. The same confusion. The same race.
Real change in fundraising comes from quieter moves. A clearer purpose. A real master budget. One honest Go or No Go decision. A realistic proposal planning conversation. A concept note that finally starts to travel. A report that tells the truth with enough clarity to rebuild trust. And leaders who are able to bring together their understanding of context, reputation, team competence, and simple storytelling.
Over time, these small, repeated disciplines will do more for your fundraising than any single restructuring, branding campaign or new unit. Treat this piece as a menu. Choose two or three small c cuts and turn them into practice for the next twelve months. Put them on one page. Name who holds what. Protect the time to do them properly. Review them every quarter with the same seriousness as a major grant. Ask how the work feels, not only what the numbers say.
Because fundraising is not about chasing donors. It is about keeping the promise we make to communities and to our own teams, that the work will matter because it is designed with clarity and delivered with purpose.
My take is unchanged. Most of what feels broken in this sector comes from chasing symptoms instead of causes. We treat budget gaps, proposal losses, and pipeline pressure as the problem when the real work is to fix misaligned strategy, extractive processes, and transactional relationships. Fundraising is not revolution. It is optimisation in small shapes, one small c cut at a time, one improvement at a time.
Ali Al Mokdad
