I don’t believe that money is the stuff of dreams, but for better or worse, dreams become reality through money. Dreaming of more money is fool’s folly. Dreams come from your purpose and vision. Make sure your expenses are aligned with your vision to ensure that your dreams can become reality.
One of my favorite questions ever asked of me by a potential funder is “What more could you do today with an extra $10,000?” To be honest I didn’t have a good answer. This is because my reason for initially going to this donor was that I needed more money. He correctly challenged this ask with Why do you need more money? I bring this story up to illustrate that the answer is not more money, the answer is better priorities and clear actions that will produce your desired impacts.
One of my least favorite responses is “We don’t have money for that.” This is rarely the case. What this response is really saying is we don’t have the priority or will for that. This is why having a clear sense of purpose, vision, goals, actions, and measures should be the foundation to your financial structure. It’s so rarely about how much you have verses how you use what you have.
You will likely have limited resources. This just means you need to limit and focus your immediate actions to achieve success with attainable goals. Perhaps you have heard of SMART goals; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This methodology can be used to assess your options and make sure you are selecting priorities that can be realized. You can then turn these accomplishments into metrics or stories to motivate others to support your cause and generate additional funding to move on to the next priority. Success begets success.
So, when you have a funding issue, be sure to look at it as a priority issue and be clear as a leader what are your priorities are. Your staff, patrons, donors, and stakeholders will admire you for this clarity and conviction. It will ultimately make saying the inevitable NO easier because you have a clear reason behind that decision.
It is always worth your time to invest in aligning your finances with your story and your impacts. It is easy to let your spending drift off purpose. It takes setting aside reflective time and using discipline to bring things back into focus to use your resources for their greatest good.
An easy way to do this is always keep an answer in mind for that $10,000 question. What could you do today with an additional $10,000? If 10k seems outside your scale, decide what you would do with an extra $1,000 or $3,000. The point is knowing your desired actions, what the cost of those actions will be, and what impact those actions will have once achieved. A SMART answer like this will impress anyone.
So, what could you do with an extra $10,000 today?
