How to Fundraise in a Reputational Crisis

The story breaks on a Tuesday.

First, your phone blows up.  Reporters calling.  Worried texts from board members.  You open your email. Donors, clients, stakeholders, the media, all asking the same thing: "Is this true? What's going on? How could this happen?"

Crisis communication is its own discipline and one we, as nonprofit professionals, are rarely given any training in.

The day began like any other.  By lunchtime, it had become a storm of epic proportions.  You're trying to define the narrative, calm down staff, reassure board members, manage the press, and preserve donor relationships.

On top of reassuring and answering everyone else you're likely grieving yourself. You've got deep emotional ties to the mission, the leader, and the staff. You're likely experiencing a mix of shock, sadness, betrayal, anger, confusion, even embarrassment. On top of that you have bills to pay, a family to support, and worry your job is on the line.

Every donor conversation suddenly becomes emotionally charged.

Donors are asking, "What happened?" but you can sense an undercurrent of, "Can I still trust you?"  No matter what the crisis is: leadership misconduct, misuse of funds, a data breach, or some kind of political controversy, the biggest thing at stake is trust.

What a crisis actually does to your donor relationships (and what it doesn't)

When bad press hits, your clients don't stop depending on you.  The need doesn't go away.

Neither does your donors' passion for your mission. But their confidence in you as the right steward of their resources may be in question.

I've watched fundraisers freeze during a crisis, and I've watched others bounce back.

The difference is in knowing what to do and having the nerve to do it while everyone else may be in a full-blown panic. It's tempting to think it'll blow over and completely normal to be afraid of stepping into the media limelight but keeping quiet in a scandal only makes this worse.

Effective crisis messaging boils down to answering three fundamental questions:What happened?What are you doing about it?How will you continue fulfilling your mission?

There's a critical lens through which you need to answer these questions: with transparency, empathy and responsibility.

The first 48 hours: what fundraisers need to do before anyone else does it for them

It could take days for your communications department to build a plan.  Or for legal to clear language.

But you don't have days. Your major gift donor relationships are on the line. You don't want them to hear about what happened through a "Did you see this?" text from a friend.

In the first 48 hours your job is quiet, personal, targeted donor communication.  Not a mass email.  Not a press release.

Start calling. Not emailing. Calling.

The biggest mistake you can make is not connecting.

Get approval from leadership for a simple "Here's what you can say if a donor asks". A live voice, even one that can only say "I wanted you to hear this from me, and I don't have all the answers yet, but I will," does more for retention than a perfectly worded statement sent two weeks later.

Call your top major donors. These are the people who cannot learn about this from anyone but you. Keep going down the list based on the size of your portfolio and the depth of your relationships.

Hold the regularly scheduled newsletter or appeal if it's tone-deaf, but don't go dark. A brief, honest phone call beats silence every time.

I've seen fundraisers wait for the "all clear" from the communications team before making a single call, and by the time it came, their top donors had already heard the news from someone else and drawn their own conclusions.

I've also seen a fundraiser get on the phone within hours, say "here's what I know, here's what I don't, and here's what hasn't changed," and keep every one of those relationships intact.

The difference wasn't information. It was speed, transparency, and honesty.

How to talk to your top donors when everything feels uncertain

Good nonprofit donor communication in a crisis follows a specific pattern, and it's simpler than people think.

Step one: lead with why you're calling

"I didn't want you to hear about this from anyone but us."

Step two: say what you know

Say what you know, plainly, without corporate hedging. Use empathy.

Step three: say what you don't know yet

Say what you don't know yet, without pretending you do.

Step four: ask them what they need from you

Ask them what they need from you, i.e. "What do you need to hear from us right now to stay confident in this work?" This is the most important part, and it doesn't occur to a lot of fundraisers to ask. Donors who are asked what they need feel like partners. Donors who are only told things feel like they're being managed.

Do's

• Humanize it. If there's a story about someone your organization has helped recently, tell it. Not as a deflection but as a reminder of their impact as donors and what is still unchanged. Your mission didn't stop because of someone else's mistake or poor judgment.
• Realize that the donors asking the hardest questions are usually the most invested.

Don'ts

• Resist the urge to over-promise. A sentence like "This will never happen again" is vague. Even worse, it could come back to bite you. A sentence like: "Here's what we're doing right now, and here's who's accountable for it" you can stand behind. Specificity, transparency, and empathy are what rebuild trust.

Up to this point, we've been talking about protecting trust. Now comes the question every fundraiser dreads...

Should you keep asking for money during a crisis? (The honest answer)

Yes.  Because your mission didn't stop. So, neither should your fundraising.

Unless you ask, people won't think you need help.

Be brave, show that you deeply care about your donors and clients and don't stop fundraising.

According to one of the world's most leading philanthropic experts,Russell James Ph.D. J.D. CFP: "Crisis is the time to show support. It is the defining moment that identifies a friendship relationship, rather than a transactional relationship"

Any fundraising you don't do now is 100% guaranteed zero revenue and a lost opportunity you can never get back.

What's the worst thing that could happen?It might not do well as an appeal.
True.  But how well will sending nothing do?  I can 100% guarantee you that it will raise nothing.

Someone could get offended.If you've shown great empathy, transparency, and responsibility then that's not likely.  Your job is not to offend as few people as possible.  Your job is to serve your clients, your donors and your cause.

I know what you are thinking.  "Rachel, I get it!  I am with you 100%!  But it's the board, Executive Director, Communications Director that I can't convince."

But does your mission still deserve support?

Ask the naysayer:

Think of a time when you helped an organization or person in a crisis.  How did it feel?Think of a time when someone gave you an easy, doable way to help.  How did it feel?

If you are in a reputational crisis know that silence doesn't protect revenue. It just delays the reckoning and makes the eventual ask harder, because now you're asking cold, after a long gap, with no update in between.

How to protect your donor base and come out the other side

Any credibility crisis is a marathon, not a sprint.

Retaining donors during a crisis isn't one single heroic save.  It's connecting quickly with transparency and empathy.  After that, it's dozens of small, consistent, thoughtful check in's and follow-ups that add up.

Ideally, your donor communications are a consistent drumbeat of asking, thanking and reporting back to your donors.

Need help making that happen?  Here's the recipe (link to blog post The Non-Ask Email That Raises More Money Than Your Appeal) and a stewardship plan to make implementing it easy.

Don't let the crisis talk you out of the "reporting back" part.

Donors who gave you the benefit of the doubt need to see, later, that it was warranted. A short, honest update three months out ("here's what changed, here's what we fixed, here's what your continued support made possible") does more for long-term retention than anything you say in week one.

Whatever you do, don't go silent on frequency.

Keep the personal touches: the phone calls, the handwritten note, the thank-you that reflects on what a compassionate person they are, the impact update that describes what the gift is actually doing. These small gestures are how you rebuild trust and solidify a relationship that has been shaken.

Trust rebuilds through hundreds of small, predictable, honest moments, not one big gesture.

Your donors don't expect perfection. They expect honesty. Be the calm, steady voice they can count on, and you'll come out of the storm with stronger relationships than you had before.

And here's the part almost nobody says out loud: this is exhausting for you. You're holding donor anxiety, board anxiety, and your own feelings about what happened, often without anyone checking in on how you're doing. Talk to a peer, a mentor, someone outside your organization who can empathize and support you.

In the end, fundraising has always been about relationships. And relationships aren't tested when everything is going well. They're tested when everything isn't.

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