Here’s what people do in groups: they look around to figure out the normal way to behave.
Your Board members do it too. They are looking around the Board room to figure out what’s normal – especially around giving and really especially around fundraising, since fundraising makes most people hugely uncomfortable.
So, unless yours is one of the 1% of Boards that is totally committed to giving and to fundraising, what you need to do is change what is normal when Board members look around the room.
When you’re talking to a philanthropist about giving to your organization, you’d better know what question they’re answering for themselves.
Are they deciding whether to give above and beyond what they had planned to give (…this year …in their lifetimes) or are they deciding where to give money that they’ve already (psychologically) pre-allocated as philanthropic money?
Because a conversation about a philanthropic allocation is very different than a conversation about overall level of giving: the allocation conversation is more straightforward, but also a lot more bounded; the conversation around total giving is much deeper, more profound, more personal and protracted, and potentially much more powerful.
Your organization is probably much better at one of these than at the other. Both can work, you can excel at both, but first you have to know which conversation you’re having and which conversation you’d like to have.
“Fundraising is all about relationships,” we say.
Sure.
And then we churn through lists and count the level of activity for members of our team (how many calls, how many meetings, etc.), because actually measuring relationships and whether they’re being created is really, really hard.
Of course you must churn through the list. You must reach out more. It’s non-negotiable. You don’t get to hide behind “I’m a relationship-builder so I don’t do proactive outreach” because the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
But you’ll be churning through lists forever, with the same disappointing effort-to-outcome ratio, if you don’t get more of your relationships to cross the emotional chasm.
You know it when it happens – those people with whom you made a genuine connection, those people who touched you as much as you touched them. You know it because you understand these people in a different way – and they understand you in a different way – because you have shared something genuine about who you are, deep down in your soul.
I know. It’s uncomfortable to actually say that kind of thing out loud.
But we’re in this because we actually want to make the world a better place, right? There’s nothing more real, honest and vulnerable than that. That’s why this job is so hard when you’re trying to protect yourself and keep things at arm’s length, and why it becomes natural when you allow real human connection to happen, even if just for an instant.
Silence is your friend.
When you’ve shared the great work that you’re doing, when the person across the table from you is clearly excited and ready to jump in with both feet, and when you’ve asked them to make a significant donation…then be quiet.
They probably feel a little uncomfortable at this exact moment. You probably do too.
If you’re an empathetic person (which you obviously are), you’ll be dying to rescue them from being uncomfortable, and you’ll do it by filling in the silence.
Don’t do it.
If the partnership is the right one, and the funding decision is the right one, then the kindest thing you can do is stay quiet.
Let them fill the silence by saying yes.
Here’s how a former CEO (for about a decade) of one of a well-known, well-respected U.S. charity started his story about his time there:
“It was a federated structure, so as CEO I raised only 20% of the money. So of course I had no power and no authority. Sure, I had it on paper, but really I had nothing.”
So here’s the chasm we have to cross in our sector: the good CEOs obviously get it, they understand that who you take money from is who you are; and they understand the inextricable link between what funds come in (and who brings them in) and power, strategy, and decision-making within the organization.
Yet at the same time there’s general agreement that nonprofit fundraising is still mostly broken, that fundraising jobs are career dead-ends, that fundraising is “overhead” (read: waste, something to be minimized).
Here’s a thought: let’s borrow a page from the corporate playbook. Let’s take our best, highest-potential up-and-comers and put them through multi-year leadership rotations through ALL major functions in the organization (and no, it doesn’t count if they do 7 program rotations, one for each of your program areas, and then 1 “back office” rotation to cover HR, marketing, and fundraising). That way no one gets to the top without having been on the front lines.
Oh, we also need a little more rabble-rousing.
I had a great conversation last week with someone starting a new nonprofit who is aiming to raise $100,000 next year.
We ended up talking a lot about how to get started on this seemingly audacious fundraising goal. Interestingly, we didn’t spend much time on the obvious stuff – is the organization’s story compelling? what does success look like? what is the elevator pitch? Instead, we focused on whether it is important for her to believe in the fundraising ask and the $100,000 goal.
Put another way, as the founder and fundraiser-in-chief, how important is it to believe in the story at all three of these levels: mission; fundraising ask; fundraising goal?
My answer: it’s essential.
Think of it diagramed out like this:
The trap that many nonprofits fall in to is to come at this diagram from the left, meaning you (the founder) feel:
But of course your (potential) donor is, most likely, coming at this from the right:
The most successful fundraising conversations break down all of these barriers and (unintended) habits: the successful fundraiser successfully shares the story in a way that makes the programmatic work as real to the potential funder as it is to her; she also literally sits in the shoes of the potential funder to understand and decide together if providing philanthropic support will meet the funder’s goals.
And the successful funder puts herself in the shoes of the organization and makes every effort to understand what it needs most; and she takes steps – financial and otherwise – to help the organization reach its goals.
A deep belief, a deep conviction in the programmatic work, the ask you’re making, and the overall goal? They’re table stakes. Without that, you can’t start down the path.
A colleague asked me today, “what different strategies would you use to ask someone for $250,000 as opposed to $50,000?”
The first thing to clarify is whether you’re asking the same person for these different amounts of money. Put another way, are you asking “how do I get someone to shift from making a donation that’s not a big decision to making a donation that is a big decision?” Or are you asking, “how do I get up the nerve to look someone in the eye and ask them for a quarter of a million dollars (or more!)?”
Regardless of which of these questions you’re really asking, in each case you need the same basic elements. You need a story that is real, compelling, that has emotional content. A story that you believe in, that you think is important. A story that is true for you, for your organization, for its beneficiaries. A narrative that resonates with and reinforces the world view of the donor. A narrative that the donor can be a part of – can place themselves in and, in the best of cases, can help write themselves.
The size of the donation (the “ask”)? It has to come out of this narrative and this truth – you can’t bolt it on afterwards and have any hope of success.
So, going back to the two questions, if someone is giving much less than then can, then the story is not holding true for them on some level.
If you are asking for much less than you should, then the story is not holding true for you on some level.
Which one is it?
I couldn’t be happier to have a guest post on outsourced fundraising from Anne Marie Burgoyne. Anne’s role at Draper Richards is to find and support early-stage, high-growth nonprofits, and Anne serves on the Boards of One Acre Fund, LivingGoods, Mapendo International, Spark, Agora Partnerships, Global Citizen Year and Mission Continues. If anyone is in a position to see these questions play out in multiple early-stage nonprofits, it’s Anne Marie.
When I read Sasha’s post last week about Peter Haas’ TED Fellows blog post (on the possible future of the fund raising industry), I jotted down ideas I had about how such an outsourcing idea might (not) work and why – purely as an intellectual exercise. And then, oddly, an email arrived from Sasha asking if I might have thoughts on this topic to share. How fun and here goes!
For context, I work for the Draper Richards Foundation – a funder of early-stage non-profits with high-growth models. We see 40-500 applications annually, use a very thorough diligence process to get to know the individuals and models applying for our grants, and fund 1-2% of the applicants with $300K, a board seat and participation in our community of practice. We seek to invest in organizations with strong leadership, scalable models and sustainable impact and provide general operating support, introductions, and as much time and attention as we can to help our portfolio of entrepreneurs succeed. We come from a venture capital tradition and firmly believe that fundraising is a key skill set of a gifted entrepreneur.
I concur with Peter Haas on a number of levels. It IS really hard to raise money and it is hard to be good at fund development. I have great admiration for people who raise money well (and those who continue to hone the craft) and I remember it being the hardest part of my job when I was an executive director.
Unlocking resources is the highest and best use of time, especially for an organization in its early years. Fund development calls rarely are mono-focused on raising money. A well-prepared, well-executed fund development meeting can yield partnership and board development leads, as well as identification of possible volunteer and full-time talent – a social network stands at the ready when a person who is committed long-term to their organization calls on a foundation or generous individual. I am reminded of one of the findings from Heather Grant and Leslie Crutchfield’s terrific book Forces for Good – “Convert individual supporters into evangelists for the cause.”
This sort of conversation only happens through good listening, continued dialog and mutual trust – with a leader who is intellectually and emotionally stuck long- term to their organization.
In addition, fund development keeps nonprofit leaders close to a big part of their market – a must in the bifurcated world of non-profits in which the “purchaser” of services is different from the recipient. In my further past, I managed a sales team, and feel strongly that the market feedback role of revenue generation is integral to an organization’s success. Many donors focus on a topic or geography of interest to them. The questions they ask and the observations they share are often rich with intelligence that can help with execution and organizational decision making.
Don’t ever think that your gun for hire is looking for more than the money when they pay a call. People respond to their incentives – and if their motivator is gift size alone then that is what they are looking for and that is what they will close.
In addition, there is a big difference between need (“I’ll take any money”) and want (“This is a funder who understands our work and sees our vision.”). If a fundraiser is motivated by their “cut,” versus the trajectory of an organization’s work, mission creep is sure to follow.
The aspect of the equation that is missing here, I think, is that in early-stage work, all you have to offer is the reputation and past success of the leader and her brave and capable staff. There is no consistent proof of concept, no execution in multiple settings, few impacts to share that are clearly replicable. There is, however, a vision for change and a path to make the world different – and that story can best be told by the person whose mind incubated the idea, the person who is orchestrating its execution.
Once an organization reaches critical mass in terms of size and history – often when they have been in existence 3-5 years and have a budget of above $1-2M – hiring a committed and professional Development Director can be a boon. These senior members of the team often have an area of expertise – high net worth individuals or large institutional funders – and come in with their eyes open to learning the mission in intimate detail and their ears open to hearing what current and potential funders have to share about the work of the organization and their experience as donors. They can multiply the impact of the founder’s considerably, but are never a panacea – the role of fundraiser, and role of the executive director in fundraising, never ends, it simply mutates over time as the needs of the organization evolve.
I am a big fan of outsourcing non-critical path tasks that are routine, time consuming and distracting – but fund development is not one of them. Human capital is the heart the non-profit engine. And relationships with funders as people and as connectors, rather than wallets, builds deep capacity for future giving – of money, of ideas, of additional relationships.
Founders and leaders, especially in the early years when an organization is building its model, reputation and brand, are in the best position to successfully raise funds and to build deep and broad relationships that will be a foundation for future success.
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I started practicing yoga ten years ago – very intensively in the early years, a drop-off when I moved away from the first yoga studio I really loved, with a slow but consistent decline in the past few years as my life has gotten busier and my kids have gotten bigger. Over the last few months, things got so full that whole weeks were passing without any yoga at all, and it was affecting my sleep, my mood, how my joints felt, the works (all worse).
I know enough about yoga and about how the mind and body work to know, intellectually, that between practicing a lot every so often (that is, 2 hours every Saturday) or a little a lot (30 minutes every day), a little a lot is much better. Once a week feels virtuous, but thirty minutes a day is a habit, it’s part of my life, it builds.
But I don’t have this kind of time. I don’t have an extra 30 minutes (which always becomes 40 or 45 minutes), certainly not every day.
Or do I?
Last week, I decided the time had come to do something. So I decided then that the next day and every day I’d wake up 30 minutes earlier. No planning involved, no “I’ll get to it at the end of the day.” I admitted to myself that I needed to make an arbitrary commitment that was clear and time-delineated and non-negotiable.
It’s early days, but so far so good. It’s working because it’s clear, it’s simple, it’s something I can do right now. I’ve created a structure that works for me.
We are all filled with good intentions. There are lots of things we want to have in our lives but we don’t create space for them – because our lives are full, our days are full, and because it’s easy to do what we’ve done. We need help doing the things that we want to do, doing the things that will make us happy. We need a structure that will help us act.
One of the problems so many nonprofits face is that the issues we tackle are so big that they’ll be here tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. This is the perfect excuse for someone who genuinely cares to end up not acting – because of the gap between good intentions and good actions.
WE, the nonprofit professionals, feel the urgency today, but that’s because we live in our world; because we’ve dedicated our lives to this. For everyone who doesn’t live and breathe this, we need to translate this sense of urgency. When we talk to people and try to motivate them to act, we cannot simply say “this is important, I want you to help.” We need to communicate why we need their help NOW. We need to move that person to action – to help her do what she wants to do but isn’t doing – with a calendar and a deadline and things that will not happen if they don’t act now. (and “now” doesn’t have to be today, but now can’t be “someday” either. More than six months away is the same as “whenever.”).
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For anyone who is interested in nonprofits, how they mobilize resources, how to do world-class fundraising, I have good news: Jennifer McCrea, who has done as much as anyone to revitalize and reposition philanthropic fundraising, just started blogging. Jennifer has worked with the Boards of scores of top nonprofits, she teaches a wonderful course called Exponential Fundraising, and she brings more joy, energy, conviction and purpose to fundraising than anyone I know.
In the interest of doing more than just pointing to Jennifer’s blog, I’d like to jump into a conversation she started yesterday, in her post titled “Fundraising is not Selling.” It’s an important question, because how we answer informs our mindset, attitude, the teams we build, the activities we engage in, and where we look for lessons.
So is fundraising selling? It’s tempting to say it’s not, because selling can appear to be about transactions, about pulling a fast one, about a sucker being born every minute. Selling is the guy with the big fake smile as you walk into a car dealership, it’s the manufacturers’ coupon that you can’t really redeem, t’s the spam that’s cluttering your Inbox, right?
Sure it is.
What about when you crack open your new iPod box and every last detail of the packaging is just cool and perfect? When you arrive for a vacation you’ve been looking forward to and the concierge does something special to make you feel welcome? When the Zappos customer service rep upgrades you to free overnight shipping? When LL Bean takes returns on 15-year old shoes? When a realtor finds you the house of your dreams, for less than you were willing to pay?
Well that’s selling too.
Just last week I was cleaning out my Inbox, frustrated with all the junk mail I still receive, when I opened an email from Dollar Rental Car. I was planning to hit the “Junk” button, but the email had an offer for specials on midsize car rentals. I had reserved a rental car an hour before, and by clicking on the link in the email, I saved $150. It didn’t feel like I had been “sold” anything.
The point is, when you sell something in the right way, you are helping someone get more value from something (a product, an experience, a donation) than what she is paying. You are solving a problem for her. You are meeting a need that she has.
So no, I don’t think that fundraising should be transactional, should be a one-time sale, should be about the money. But I’m not ready to go to the other extreme and say that “selling” is a dirty word, because the nonprofit sector is – technologically, tactically, strategically, in terms of execution – in the dark ages in terms of how we sell the incredibly valuable things we have on offer. And there is a whole world out there of people in other sectors who do the best, highest level, most value-creating, partnership-enhancing kinds of sales imaginable, and if we throw out the notion that we have something to learn from them, we close ourselves off to a generations’ worth of learning and experience.
It is true that philanthropic giving, especially large gifts, are by definition deeply personal, and that the job of the best fundraiser is to be present, to listen, to understand, to sit at the same side of the table as the philanthropist and help her both understand and realize her goals and and connect her philanthropy to these goals. And that process of discovery has many characteristics that are absent from sales of almost any other product.
But I think we’ll serve ourselves better by putting a finer point on what makes philanthropic fundraising (“philanthropic sales”?) different from other sales, and what makes it the same. Because I for one believe that there are great salespeople – whether they call themselves salesmen or marketing directors or CEOs or slam poets – from whom I have a lot to learn.
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