Crisis Fundraising Lessons from the Front Lines

Arielle Randle knows a thing or two about communicating in and through a crisis. 

Like so many nonprofit leaders, she cut her teeth on crisis response communications and fundraising during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But her experience and expertise on this topic doesn’t stop there. 

As the global head of communications and marketing for Jews for Jesus, Arielle and her team also led the ministry’s response to the war in Ukraine, and more recently, to the October 7th attack on Israel by the Hamas terror group. 

In our conversation, we covered a series of topics that any fundraiser can benefit from, like: 

1. Developing a learning culture so that ever response to a crisis teaches you something and your organization becomes better prepared to address the next crisis because of the last crisis. 
2. How to balance caring for your people, who may be living in crisis, with telling the story of that crisis so that you can inspire supporters to step up and fund critical mission initiatives in the midst of a crisis. 
3. The importance of developing a crisis response strategy and plan. 
4. The value of moving quickly, and balancing getting information to your supporters before you have all the details. 
5. How to tell an evolving story over time to help keep your audience engaged once the urgency of a crisis situation has waned. 
6. How to communicate with senior organizational leadership so that they’re informed of your progress and activities, but your response doesn’t get held up in internal red tape. 
7. What it takes to keep your team focused and inspired through a crisis response, and why inspired leadership is key. 

As our world and our work become increasingly more complicated, the need to understand crisis communications and fundraising is ever-growing across our sector. 

I hope you find value in this topic and this great conversation with Arielle!