Failed fundraising program 2

My thought download:
I wasted money; I was careless; I wasted donor dollars; I didn’t follow my gut; I did something wrong; I wasn’t smart; I was led on; I should have been more careful; All investment needs to show a return; Investment that doesn’t show a return is wasted

C: $120K invested in P2P project in 2019/2020 with $40k raised by 2024.
T: I wasted donor dollars
F: Shame
S: Heavy
A: Focus on the gap between amount invested and amount raised; Shut down investment to prevent further losses; Ruminate; Avoid looking at the webpage & fixing bugs; Don’t keep working on it or promoting it
R: I focus on dollars instead of other returns / I waste the opportunity to make a greater return

“What I see is a smart decision that you made with confidence.” My brain is telling me that you see the decision to stop continuing investing as a smart decision made with confidence, but the decision to invest the money in the first place was not a smart move. But looking at the model above, I’m now questioning the decision to stop investing in this program. Maybe with some strategic pivots, we could see a better return.

Stepping back I can see some big thought errors in my thinking. You usually have to invest money (or a lot of time – or both) to raise money and not all of those attempts succeed in raising money. You have to keep trying to succeed at achieving a goal. I gave up relatively quickly on this one.

What I got through this investment was data, a lot of learning, experience, I created a program supporters had asked for for a long time.

My colleagues have invested lots of money in other programs that failed to see a return. It’s just part of the process I guess. You take calculated risks and sometimes they fail. You learn from it and move on.

I don’t this experience to stop me from making more investments in the future & trying new things, but I think that’s what’s happening. I haven’t launched a major new fundraising initiative since this one. Everything feels heavy & like work. When I started this program I was so excited and motivated about it. I’d like to get back to that place.

 

 

Answer:

Yes to your model. So good. How does it feel seeing it all there written out? You’ve done some great exploring, celebrate yourself. Anything we say as coaches, you get to be curious about. Notice the reactions you have. Notice what comes up. This is all part of the process.

You have every option on the table for you right now. How do you think you could start moving from heavy to excited? Perhaps you could try making a list of thoughts that create these feelings for you. Take a piece of paper and write “heavy/like work” on “excited/motivated”. Choose some thoughts from the past, some thoughts from right now, and even some future thoughts you might want to try.  You cannot go back. You made the exact decisions you were supposed to. Now what?