Category: fundraising

No Ask?

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

The fundraiser typically sweats about when the perfect moment is to make “the ask.”  It’s a Goldilocks mentality: not too soon, not too late.

Broadly speaking that is right.  But not if it means there’s no a sense of purpose.

Meaning: imagine for a moment that you’re the philanthropist.  You get emails and calls and invitations from the fundraiser (who could easily be the CEO or the Exec Director) pushing for a meeting.  The notes get increasingly urgent.  You sense something is in the air, and you take the meeting.

And then the meeting is just chit-chat.  It’s the sound of one hand clapping.

You, the philanthropist, discover that their urgency and your urgency don’t meet the same standard.  You suspect that there’s a punchline somewhere out there, but you’re feeling less patient about waiting to hear it.  You don’t take the next meeting.

This doesn’t mean that you, the fundraiser, greet someone and say, “Nice to meet you Analise, I’m hoping you’ll give us a million dollars.”  It does mean being clear about purpose every step of the way.

How you execute on that is up to you.

Saving lunchtime

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

The other day I got lunch at Bowery Eats, a cooking supply store in Chelsea Market that also happens to have a sandwich bar.  My timing was terrible and when I got there at 1:20pm, there was a long line plus a stack of phoned-in orders.

Bowery EatsMore than 10 minutes passed and I still hadn’t gotten my Peter Parker wrap (avocado, warm portabella mushroom, lettuce, a bit of mozzarella, and vinaigrette on a spinach wrap).

10 minutes isn’t long, but it’s more than a couple of standard deviations away from the mean in terms of how long you expect to wait for a sandwich.  Plus, five people with higher order numbers than I had gotten their sandwiches, so I started to get antsy.  I asked the woman at the counter how things were coming, and if they’d lost track of my order.

That’s when things got interesting.  She smiled.  She went to the back to check on my order.  She explained that it was taking longer because they heat up the mushrooms in the oven.  She checked again a few minutes later.  And then, 15 minutes in (five minutes after I’d first asked how things were coming), she actually said to the staff, in Spanish, “I’m not going to put any more sandwiches out until we finish up Order 31.”

And, I swear, I hadn’t made a big fuss at all.

Because of her, not only was I not annoyed, I was impressed.  Her job description might appear to be taking orders, getting customers’ money, and giving them sandwiches, but she was a natural at knowing just what to say and how to say it, with a smile, to make me feel attended to.

This knack is something I look for in hiring fundraisers.  Sure they need storytelling skills and passion and empathy, they need a thick skin and a dogged determination and the ability to build relationships.  But all the truly great fundraisers I know are also….something that this woman had.   “Polite” is the word that comes to mind but that doesn’t capture it, though people who naturally have good manners have some of the trait I’m looking for.  It’s more an unspoken knack to let someone know that you see them, that you’re paying attention, that you are a concierge for them within your organization.

It’s not the easiest thing to test for, but after you conduct your interviews of your top candidates, you can take a step back and ask everyone who interacted with the interviewees: how did they make you feel?

 

 

(p.s. thanks to DC Foodrag for the picture)

Deep and abiding respect for…

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

…the philanthropists who, along with you, make it all possible.

The philanthropists who dare to dream of a different, better world.

The philanthropist who decides, when she doesn’t have to, to do something, not just to talk about it.

The easy thing to do is to badmouth fundraising, to slight it in some way, to say that you’re above it or say that you respect it but you don’t know how to do it and you don’t really want to do it. It’s easy to say that it’s someone else’s job – because how important, how strategic, is it really?

It’s easy to, quietly and behind closed doors, gripe about how hard fundraising is…and then to chuckle about how difficult some donors themselves are…and then to slide down the slippery slope all the way down to a lack of real, deep, abiding respect.

Without that respect, you’re a terrible fundraiser. Without that respect, change doesn’t happen. Without that respect, you don’t get the chance to meet and learn from the incredible philanthropist who combines exceptional success and accomplishment with off-the-charts humility.

Without that respect, you don’t get to change, they don’t get to change, the world doesn’t get to change.

Your ‘ask’ is not ‘by the way’

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

It’s so easy to be terrified by “the ask” that you want to make – whether that’s for advice or a job or to create a partnership or for funding.  It’s as if there’s this sense of shame and embarrassment that you would actually want something to come out of the meeting.

Why?

Your meeting has a purpose.  There’s something you are trying to create in the world and some role that you hope the person across the table from you might play in making that creation happen.

Yes, you must explore, you must understand one another….and it’s fabulous to dream together.  There’s no way to properly ask for something before understanding who the other person is, what they are trying to accomplish in the world, and whether the thing you’re hoping to do is something that connects with who they are, where they are in their lives, and their dreams.

But if the moment you come to that thing, that “ask”, if you find that you’re muttering quickly under your breath; or, just as bad, if what you really are hoping will happen comes across as just one in a list of things that you rattle off all too quickly in the last five minutes of the meeting – if that happens you have to ask yourself why you had the meeting in the first place.

A great test: ask yourself afterwards whether there’s a chance, any chance at all, that the person you met with doesn’t actually know the most important thing you were hoping would happen.

And then, think which mistake you’d rather make: getting turned down, or having the person walk out the door not really understanding what you hoped to accomplish in the first place?

 

Progress

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

This is a photo of a water fountain at JFK airport that shows how many plastic bottles have been saved by that fountain.

Elkay EZH2

Just like that, I’m part of something. It makes meaning of my (tiny) piece of the puzzle, and helps me feel like I am making a difference.

Funny how much effort we spend shouting at people asking them to give, and how rarely we tell them what we accomplished, together.

Easy, Hard

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I’ve noticed over my last six years of fundraising how different new relationships can take different paths – often self-reinforcing.

Sometimes, despite everything you do, it’s just hard.  I remember a few years ago one donor who, no matter what I did, I seemed to mess things up.  I’d reach out for a meeting and it would be the only day he had to be out of town.  I’d invite him to an event only to be told that he’d told someone else on our staff know that breakfasts never work for him.  I’d write an email and misspell his wife’s name.

And then other times it’s easy, it flows.  From logistics to the flow of the conversation to each step in building the relationship, it feels like everything is just working right and is easy.

The trick is figuring out what part of this is substance, what part of it is you listening or not, and what part of it is just luck.

In mid-2012 I was preparing to head out of town for a major fundraising meeting that I’d worked months to schedule – at least 20 emails and careful cultivation before and along the way.  And then, an an hour before I was to leave for the train, I got a migraine (one of 3-4 I get each year).  That was eight months ago and I still haven’t managed to reschedule the meeting.

Seven months later, it came full circle.  I had another out-of-the-blue introductory meeting that I knew little about going in, but it looked like it had potential.  As I sat down for the meeting I thought another migraine was coming on.  It was bad enough that when I sat down with this person I’d never met before, I said, “I’m sorry, I may just have to leave in 10 minutes because I think I have a migraine coming on, but let’s start our conversation.”  He rolled with it, so did I, and we jumped in.  Thankfully I didn’t get a migraine – and instead we have, since then, been building a great, new relationship that is already going from strength to strength.

If you’re just starting out as a fundraiser, you might not have the experience or the pattern recognition to decipher what’s what or to see that you can’t control each and every situation and how it plays out.  All you can do is keep at it, do your best, and continue to listen and to be present.

Bob Dorf – Two customers

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Recently I, together with Acumen’s Global Fellows, had the chance to spend the day in a training session with Bob Dorf. Bob, together with Steve Blank (who writes a must-read blog), is the author of The Startup Owner’s Manual: a step-by-step guide to Building a Great Company.   Steve, in turn, was an investor in Eric Reiss’ (author of Lean Startup) startup IMVU which I blogged about here.

Bob, Steve and Eric have done incredible work in demystifying and breaking down what it really takes to create a startup – yes drive, vision, tireless devotion, but most importantly it’s about finding customers, talking to those customers, figuring out what they really want and how they’ll really behave with your product.  It’s the opposite of sitting in a garage, having a eureka moment, investing time and energy and way too much money in that idea and then figuring out if people want the thing that you’ve built.

I learned a ton from Bob, and am still processing most of it, but there was one piece that really jumped out at me as being hugely important in the nonprofit space, in particular to fundraisers.

One of the stories we tell ourselves is that our work is different and hard(er) because the beneficiary of our work and the customer from whom we are fundraising are rarely one and the same person.  It’s this disconnect that can make everything so tricky, because just because you deliver transformative impact for your beneficiary doesn’t mean your fundraising goes through the roof.

Bob made the simple point that there’s nothing particularly new about this.  Google, for example, is free to you and me and anyone as customers.  We get the best search in the world served up instantly with an ever-improving suite of accompanying products.  The service that pays for it all is Google AdWords which has a completely different customer set.  In Bob’s language, Google needs two separate business model canvases, one for me (user of Google Search) and one for whoever buys Google AdWords.

“But wait!” you protest.  “That’s different!  Google AdWords only works because Google Search works.  Their growth goes hand-in-hand.  Not so in the nonprofit world where I can deliver a world-class product/service and it has no connection to whether or not I can raise another dollar from a funder!”

Perhaps.

But also perhaps not.  True, funding decisions are not typically made as objectively or in a data-driven way, whereas Google Adwords purchases surely are.

Then again, when was the last time we really rolled up our sleeves and found a way to monitor how good our nonprofit service delivery really is, how satisfied customers really are.  When was the last time we presented clear compelling metrics from the front lines – metrics that proved out hypotheses, metrics that drove to real insights?  And when was the last time we took those metrics and showed them to our funders and said, “THIS is what we’re doing!”

Sure, it’s not exactly the same, but it’s also not so different.  And it’s nice to know that we’re not so special, that having two (or many) customer sets isn’t novel.  And it’s a helpful reminder that building a value proposition and finding customers (aka “funders”) is just as core to everything we do as whatever service delivery work we do.

One month, 100 rejections

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

There are great reasons, as a nonprofit, to look for long-term, sustainable sources of revenues, to build a business model that brings in earned income or investor capital.  Philanthropic funds are so hard to come by and often so expensive to raise.

But I also see a lot of intellectually appealing arguments made by founders about not being a traditional nonprofit, when what’s really going on is that they’re just not willing to get out and fundraise.  I’ve seen missions contorted and organizations drifting far away from their original purpose because a founder has decided “I’m not a fundraiser.”

The best part is: all of the best fundraisers I know also say “I’m not a fundraiser.”

(except for one, Jennifer McCrea, who is putting the mojo back into fundraising.)

Here’s the thing.  Most people aren’t fundraisers.  Most people find it petrifying at first.  Most people fail at first, feel like they are hitting up their friends, even feel a little bit ashamed.

But the part I really, truly don’t get is how you could be willing to devote years of your life to a project but not be willing to ask people to fund it.  And I don’t mean write grant proposals, I mean ask people who are philanthropically active to write a check to help make your dream possible.

So here’s my pitch: this thing that you’re willing to devote your life to?   Take one month and get out of the building, knock on every door you can, and promise yourself that you won’t stop until you’re actually rejected 100 times.  Keep track of the 100 rejections so it’s real and you’re making progress.

Because I’m positive you can survive 100 rejections.

Because I’m positive that even if you get rejected 100 times, your idea will get stronger by virtue of talking to all of those smart people.

And because I’m sure that if you set out to get rejected 100 times you’ll raise the money you need long before you hit 100.

More not less

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Recently I had the chance to attend a roundtable discussion on how to scale innovations in global development.

One of the participants, a successful serial entrepreneur, related an important and telling story about why it’s hard to seed innovation in the nonprofit sector. She said she’d raised $200 million in her life, $190M in her four for-profit enterprises and $10M on behalf of nonprofits that had important innovations that needed funding.

With her for-profit ventures, her experience was that when she’d ask a venture capitalist for $1M to fund a new innovation, if they said yes to funding they would typically invest $1.5M or $2M because they knew that she probably needed more money (“runway”) to get it right – that there would be twists and turns in the road, and that the best way to minimize her chance of success was to underfund her.

Her nonprofit fundraising might have the same starting point: asking for $1M to fund a new innovation. In one case she was working on raising $1M from a foundation, and they approved the funding. However, though she asked for $1M they had only approved $750,000 of funding. I wish I’d found this outcome more surprising. If anything I was expecting her to say they gave her $100,000. But the story about VC fundraising was news to me, the idea that a funder would often tell the entrepreneur that they’d asked for too little money.

A big part of what holds us back in the nonprofit sector is that we’re stuck in a program delivery mindset. In that mindset your philanthropy is paying for a set of defined tasks and as a donor your goal is efficiency. And if efficiency is your goal, you might be right in thinking that you could eek out more bang for your buck by giving a little less money than you were asked for.

But new ideas are different – you’re not aiming for efficiency you’re aiming for success. That means that giving less than what’s needed or doing things like challenge grants or other mechanisms designed to “catalyze” other funding are probably a terrible idea. An underfunded innovation cannot get more efficient, it can just have too little cash, which will either suffocate it or force the entrepreneur to spend more time fundraising and less time building the business.

Once we decide a new idea is worth funding, might we take a page from folks whose job is to bet on innovations and write bigger, not smaller, checks?

 

 

The glimpse

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

The thing that gets people over the line isn’t how persuasive your argument is.  It’s certainly not because they see a big need in the world.

The thing that gets them over the line is passion.  Ultimately their passion, but before that happens they need to see your passion.  They need to glimpse something raw and unbridled and real.  A deep belief in what is possible.  Conviction.

In order for them to see that, they need to see you first, to understand who you are.  They need to be able to relate to your passion and have it mean something to them.  They need to appreciate that if you’re all fired up about something then it must be something worth getting fired up about.

The biggest mistake fundraisers typically make is to take themselves out of the story.  It’s a natural to try to step aside since what seems to be on offer is the story, or, worse, the need, and not the person telling the story.

Need is overwhelming and paralyzing to most people.  Need seems insurmountable.  We all are looking for real, grounded, plausible passion, possibility, potential and hope.  People begin to see that by seeing what you see, feeling what you feel.

If they don’t glimpse that in you, how are they ever going to feel it themselves?