One of the most important steps in getting your fundraising off on the right foot is making sure that the people your put in your fundraising team are there because they have a passion for the goal or cause that you are trying to reach. People are the greatest resource in any fundraising venture and utilizing them is imperative for reaching your money raising targets.

In this first article of a two part series on your fundraising team, I want to point out three reasons why having more people as a part of your overall fundraising strategy is going to pay off down the road. Let's take a look at what those reasons are:

1.) Networking - If you think about the pyramid effect: one person knows two people, and those two people know two people, and so on - then you understand why more is usually better - especially for networking. You begin a small snowball at the top of a mountain only to roll it down and watch it grow to immense proportions.

2.) Many hands make light work - If you just want to recruit more help during your event, that's no problem. Spreading the work around allows the event preparation to be done effectively and efficiently.

3.) Greater skill set to work with - This is important. If you have three people in your organization, and none of them has the slightest clue about income tax, legal arrangements, and / or how to fix the glitch in the computer, then you might be spending more of the organization's money on paying professionals to help you, than having those in your ranks lend a helping hand.

I spent a great deal of my amateur athletic career doing fundraising. However, since I wasn't always around (traveling internationally for competition), I had to leave many of the fundraising duties to my team members. Without them, I may not have achieved the success in my fundraising that ultimately led to my success as an amateur athlete.

Spend some time developing a fundraising team that utilizes the skills of others and helps to attract others to your organization. Remember, passion for an organization is contagious - and belief in a cause or a goal is the number one driver for success in any fundraising effort.

Building your fundraising team is one of the preliminary items you should take care of when you are devising a fundraising strategy for your organization. The people you recruit and the passion they have are going to drive your fundraising to much greater heights.

Watch for Building a Solid Fundraising Team- Part Two, where I will discuss the type of people that help make the best fundraising team for any organization.