You can have a great idea and still never get funded. These four questions decide who will actually say yes, before you waste time asking the wrong people. If funding feels harder than it should, it’s usually not your mission. It’s who you’re talking to. Most funding failures have nothing to do with the quality of your work and everything to do with who you put your work in front of.

Most nonprofits are leaving serious money on the table every single month. There is a phenomenal compounding program almost no one talks about. We’re speaking from multiple points of experience here:$0 to over $125,000 per year!$110,000 per year to over $300,000 per year!$20,000 per year to over $900,000 per year! And it is rarely because a gala underperformed or because you don’t have a major gifts officer or because your grant hit rate is too low.

A widely shared post on LinkedIn recently declared that when an organization tries to raise ambitious amounts of money, from a cold audience, on a tight timeline, it’s not a fundraising problem—it’s a leadership problem. While that might earn applause from frustrated fundraisers, here’s the truth: it’s not that simple.