Asking for money can be a scary thing. So many people are afraid to ask their friends for money and this seems to be a particular problem for folks who sit on nonprofit Boards and have the responsibility for fundraising for their organizations.

Just like conquering fear of heights or fear of most anything, your fear of fundraising can be overcome. It takes a few simple steps, a positive attitude, a little support, and a good dose of courage.

Focus on the reason why you care about the organization. Keep that in your mind as you go through this exercise and it will make things a bit easier.

When you’re ready, take these baby steps toward asking for a donation:

1. Pick a friend that you can ask for a gift. Make sure it’s someone you trust – this will help you feel safe.
2. Practice telling him/her about your organization. It’s okay if you stumble on your words. You’re practicing on a friend after all.
3. Then ask for a $50 donation. (This is a slightly larger amount than most people give and a good place for you to start.)

Pay attention to how the experience goes for you. How does it feel while you are in the conversation? Are you nervous? Sweating? How does it feel after you ask for the gift? Are you relieved that it’s over? Was it easier or harder than you thought?

Afterward, write a short description of your experience, positive or negative. (There’s great power in writing this experience down!)

Hopefully, it was an exhilarating experience for you! Once you get your fear under control, you may actually find it fun to talk with people about the organization you love.

Whether the experience was positive or negative, think for a moment if this is how you want fundraising to be for you. Is there a different way you think it could or should be? Would you like it to be easy and light, with the words rolling off your tongue? Would you rather it be full of energy, with your donor prospect catching your enthusiasm like a spreading wildfire? Would you like to have donors thank you for giving them the opportunity to support your organization’s work? (It can happen!)

Remember, when you focus on the baby steps that need to be done, and just DO one, you stop being afraid or overwhelmed by the big stuff or the things that might happen if you fail.

Want more practical tips and ideas for successful fundraising? Get the twice-monthly “Bright Ideas for Fundraising” at http://www.getfullyfunded.com

Sandy Rees is a nonprofit fundraising coach and speaker who shows small nonprofit organizations how to raise more money, gain more supporters, and strengthen their Boards.

(c) Sandy Rees, CFRE

Like most of you I have been reading the news and seeing how bad many of the businesses are getting out there. To try and help we have offered 1 hour free Marketing Strategy sessions on a first come first serve basis to our readers. We started offering the help many many weeks back and even though we have many thousands of readers each month, only one firm called for free help. They were very nice and sent us a much appreciated thank you card for taking time out of our lives to give back.

This brings me to the question, “Is it really bad out there? or Are our readers doing better than most? Or is it the fact we were trying to help for free with no strings attached that caused only 1 out of 40,000 readers since the special started to email for a session?

Maybe it is the free part. You know to good to be true so it probably is thing… I am here to tell you it is true. There are no strings attached. No contingency. Just two very caring marketing strategy experts trying to help ease the pain that we see around us and read about every day on Forbes.com and Money.Com.

So for the last time this year I will give our readers a chance to email and schedule a session. You can email using the contact form on the site. It does not put you on a list or anything in case you were wondering. Remember it is on a first come first serve basis.

Wishing you great success.

The Kind Hearted Executive

Get his 7 Psychological Secrets book here – it’s complimentary. How can Yanik give away his eBook for nada? It’s easy. Tucked within the 22 pages, there are multiple links to his products page. It’s a viral way to send his advertising message out for free. Why am I telling you about this?

Three reasons.

1. It’s a great example of what you can do for your own company.
2. It has great information that is easy to understand.
3. Just knowing Yanik’s story may get you juiced to take your company to a new level.

If you’ve been thinking of writing a book or anything remotely resembling a book, this is something you will definitely want to check out! Our book, and the books of many of our clients, have been greatly helped by Gail Richards and Jan King’s assistance. If a book is in your future, you will want to know these publishing gurus!

Gail Richards, a creative whiz and veteran in all things publishing and the founder of Authorsmart.com, and Jan King, former publisher, author of numerous business books and founder of eWomenPublishing, invite you to participate in their 11-Week course FREE just because you are in our inner circle!

For more information go here, and click here to register. Use Discount Code FREEFUEL.

If you’ve never heard of either of these, that’s cool, just realize you are being given a pretty cool gift.

I’m on a lot of the experts and internet marketing guru’s lists, and all of a sudden I started seeing talk about getting Camtasia (retail value about $300) for FREE! And if that wasn’t enough, also getting SnagIt for free, too! Woo hoo, it was holiday gift-giving come early!

Camtasia Studio is the tool used by the most experienced marketers for making screen capture videos. It’s an extremely powerful piece of software (AND SO EASY TO USE), and you can get a fully functional, licensed version direct from the manufacturer, for zilch – I love this!

SnagIt is a great screen capture program, with loads of options. It will even grab entire web pages, regardless of length.

What’s the catch? None, really. Though the versions are slightly older (and the version I still use), it’s more than you’ll probably ever need to get started. The manufacturer, Techsmith, is hoping you’ll take advantage of the half-price upgrades to their latest versions. This is what is known as an upsell (more on those in future Marketing Mojos).

Want to get these? The process is simple. Grab the downloads and install them.

Then go to the links mentioned for the license keys, give them your email address, and they’ll email you the key needed to unlock the software. (These are not limited trials, they are full licenses).

I’ve include Internet Marketer Paul Myers links for you to use! Enjoy!

Camtasia Studio download:

http://www.talkbiznews.com/r/camdownload.html

Camtasia Studio Key:

http://www.talkbiznews.com/r/camkey.html

SnagIt Download:

http://www.talkbiznews.com/r/snagitdownload.html

SnagIt Key:

http://www.talkbiznews.com/r/snagitkey.html