Everyone a fundraiser

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

A colleague of mine – someone who has never been a formal part of Acumen’s fundraising team but who has done a good deal of fundraising  – said that a series of recent meetings with new donors reminded her of what it means to raise money.  She said:

The act of fundraising changes you, it changes your perspective.  When you sit there and look someone in the eye, it forces you to do two things.  First, you have to have your story straight: what are we doing and why, what are the details, how do all of the pieces hold together?  More important, though, is the sense of accountability you have to that donor when you’ve had that conversation.  You’ve made a promise to them, and knowing that changes you and makes you want to work harder than ever to deliver for them.

Exactly.

There’s something real about face-to-face, personal fundraising that I don’t experience anywhere else – not online or with social media or crowdfunding platforms, not in institutional fundraising or grant-writing (even in situations where you have strong personal relationships).  When someone gives their personal money, when someone sits down and writes a personal check to your organization, it creates a deep connection.  If you choose to see it and experience it, that sense of accountability can be internalized – first for you and, over time, into your organization.  In that personal connection and experience, you have the chance, long after that meeting, to transform yourself into an agent for that donor – not literally to do everything they would do (because they’ve given to you because of what you do and know, because of the perspective and professional judgment you bring to the table) but to give them a seat at the table, an important spot in your mind and in your heart.

Our opportunity is to have everyone who does this work be a fundraiser.  Not their full-time job. But why would we pass up the opportunity to get at least a glimpse of the sense of ownership, discipline, and, yes, obligation it creates?

1 to 100

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

There’s a perpetual mystique about blogging.  How do you do it?  Where do the ideas come from?  How do you find the time?  How do you keep it up?  The notion underlying the question is that sharing one’s thoughts regularly and publically about issues that matter (to you, and to your tribe) is something most of us don’t know how to do or to sustain.

1 to 100_curious georgeSo here’s some data:  In the last 18 months, I’ve written about 200 blog posts, which sounds pretty respectable.  It’s almost enough content to fill up a book.    By way of comparison, I’ve also written 18,574 emails (so sayeth Outlook – so those are just work emails).  Even as a reasonably frequent blogger, for each blog post I write I shoot out almost 100 emails.

In 18 months, I’ve written down and shared an idea, a thought, an opinion 18,574 times.  18,574 times I’ve had a point to make, and even though most of the time the point is short or simple, I have an enormous amount of daily practice in taking my ideas, writing them down, and sharing them with others whose opinion I hope to shape in some way.   My blogging pales in comparison to this, both in terms of volume and time required.  I’m sure it’s the same for you.

If you don’t want to blog (or micro-blog, or whatever) that’s fine, don’t blog. But don’t tell yourself that you don’t know how to do it, because you do.

And if you’re on the fence, maybe it’s time to stop telling yourself how this is something above or beyond you – because it isn’t – and just start.

Citibike – first rides

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

My Citibike key fob finally arrived last week, and I’ve got three days of riding under my belt.  I feel great about it, and also had a few first impressions that I didn’t expect.  So, in no particular order, some first observations, especially for those of you thinking about becoming Citi-bikers.

  • I’m wearing a helmet.  You should wear a helmet.  Everyone should.  It’s just too much to be riding through traffic without it.
  • Getting from inside Grand Central Station to work in Chelsea takes between 14 and 18 minutes, riding at a good clip.  The subway takes longer and has more variability, so my benchmark is 25 minutes.  That feels like a pretty significant improvement.

    NYC bike lanes
    Map of bike lanes in NYC (click for interactive map)
  • I’m very comfortable on a bike, but even so in midtown it feels busy with a lot of traffic and obstacles.  If you’re not confident on a bike/in traffic, you probably don’t want to be commuting during rush hour anywhere between 30th and 43rd street in Manhatten.
  • The new bike lanes are amazing.  I really had no idea how ubiquitous they were and what a big change they are in Manhattan’s landscape.  It’s significant, large-scale work that I bet has gone mostly unnoticed compared to its scope.
  • At least on the route that I’m going, hills are basically inconsequential.
  • It’s been in the upper 80s and lower 90s when I’ve been riding and it was still workable.  I’m no more hot and sweaty than I get when I walk/take the subway.
  • The racks are everywhere and the system to get bikes in/out of them is flawless and very quick.  Little red lights tell you when there’s a problem with a bike or a rack.  So far these are minimal.
  • The bike is a big clunker but that doesn’t matter much.  The three gears work well and give you decent range, though limiting your speed.  The chain is protected and the handlebar rack for your bag is good, though the bungee cord is a bit too tight.
  • The Citibike iPhone app itself crashes a lot for me.  I’m using BikeShare instead, which is more stable and works well (and is free).
  • You end up seeing and experiencing a lot more of the city this way.  On the subway (or a taxi) I experience two blocks of the city even though I’m covering two miles.  That’s a really nice plus.
  • Availability plummets after 9AM (I’ve experienced it, and it was just reported this morning on WNYC).  That said, I (and the commuter profiled in the WNYC post) only had to walk two blocks to get a bike, which is trivial.  As Citibike gets more popular I wonder if availability is going to become an issue.  I also wonder about how bike maintenance is going to be handled over time.  Both are good issues to have, because they mean that Citibike is working.

All in all, I’m a big fan and think it’s pretty incredible.  Yes it’s a bit of a grimy way to get through the city if you’re covering more than two miles, as I am.  But it’s so easy, works well, saves me $5 a day, saves me time, and I’ve discovered that rushing a bit on a bike is less harrowing than running for the subway (not that I ever run for the subway).

Given how compact Manhattan is, it’s really perfect for Citibike.    That probably explains some of the numbers: 200,000 trips/week as of the end of June, more than 2 million miles already traveled, and an estimated 50 million calories burned by riders (the equivalent of 52,000 pints of Ben and Jerry’s).

Speaking of which, maybe I should get myself an ice cream.

An underdeveloped market for risk

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

So much of the conversation in impact investing is about returns: what are they, what should they be?  Now and in the future?

Not so much talk about risk, though.

It strikes me that in traditional investing, people are rewarded for risk-taking and the most successful investors are those that become good at taking the right risks, good at discovering information asymmetries, good at making the well-placed bet early.

My hypothesis is that our biggest ability to create impact is going to come from finding the “next big thing” business models, the ones that solve problems that haven’t been solved yet – whether in energy distribution, sanitation, water, education, healthcare, etc.  And it feels to me that it’s unlikely that, in most cases, betting on new, untested business models – meaning creating new markets with huge amounts of friction (bad roads, poor ports, unreliable distribution, corruption) serving customers who are, by and large, new consumers of whatever you’re selling (so high acquisition costs, etc.) – is going to fully financially compensate investors and entrepreneurs for the risks they’re taking.

[To be totally clear, I’m differentiating between “good” and “astronomical” returns here, and arguing that if we’re clear-eyed about the risks you have to take to solve problems that have never been solved before, then “good” financial returns aren’t good enough, if your yardstick is a simple financial risk/return analysis.]

Of course the whole point is that there are funds and investors that are willing to accept lower returns because they DO value social impact.  And I hope that space continues to grow.  But what keeps me up at night is whether there’s a strong reinforcing mechanism that rewards risk-taking in that part of the capital curve?

Meaning: are the kinds of people who place real value on social returns, by disposition and in terms of feedback loops in the marketplace, likely to be rewarded and culled and selected for their ability to take big, well-calculated risks?  Or is it easier to soft-pedal on risk when the upside is mostly non-financial?  And, if that’s true, are we systematically under-investing in the highest-potential opportunities, because we shy away from risk?

The identity monologue

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

I had the misfortune of being floored by a minor, but extremely unpleasant, illness for about 10 days earlier this month.

Nothing like an abrupt change in circumstance to give a bit of perspective.

What I noticed, especially because the illness came on so fast (and showed little sign of getting better for a little while) was how an abrupt change in how I spent my time totally flipped my perspective.  Home-bound, practically quarantined, counting the minutes (because I was absolutely miserable) for 72 hours (= 4,500 minutes!), I felt powerless, and time shifted for me.   My life is often regimented and tightly structured, nearly down to the minute, which is my way of trying to be productive and fully engaged and present on multiple fronts.  Going from optimizing my commute and my Inbox and meetings down to the last minute to watching a two-hour movie and then another, waiting for time to pass and watching the clock not move, left me feeling miserable, unproductive and, temporarily, powerless.

It reminded me of a day I spent over the winter, an exercise called “everyday barriers” that all Acumen staff participate in.  It’s something the Acumen Fellows undertake as part of their training.  Like our Fellows, each Acumen New York staff member came to work and then left everything in the office except for $5 in cash and a round trip Metrocard.  We were to spend the day in New York City and come back with suggestions for how to improve public services.  It’s an exercise in what we call “moral imagination,” cultivating the ability to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and to see problems from a new perspective.

Having talked to Acumen Fellows who had participated in this activity in the past, I recalled profound stories of connection, as well Fellows gaining a much deeper understanding of the challenges of being a poor person in New York City.  I recall a Fellow telling a story of a woman who walked everywhere with a giant box filled with papers – they were all of her identification, phone bills, records, etc. because the woman had gotten sick of getting to the front of a long line only to be told that she didn’t have the right paperwork.  Fellows experienced what was and was not working well in the provision of New York city public services, and the day served as a jumping off point for discussions about identity, empathy, and social change.

To me the most surprising part of the exercise came right at the beginning.  After about an hour of walking, feeling pretty relaxed, I started to feel a bit hungry and thirsty, and it hit me that it was 9:30am and I had 8 hours to spend in the city on a cold day with nowhere to go and almost no money in my pocket.   While part of my plan was to go to new neighborhoods, suddenly the very familiar parts of the city started to feel different.   The glass windows of a coffee shop or a high-end clothing store felt like they had “keep out” signs flashing at me with my empty pockets, big parka and heavy boots.  The transformation in my experience of something as simple as walking down the street in an upscale neighborhood was profound and shocking.  How could a shift happen so quickly?  I bought an apple for 50 cents and trudged on, making my way to a church (where the music was uplifting), a homeless shelter (for lunch), and then taking a massive trek (that turned out to be a wild goose chase) to an employment center in Queens, with a lot of time in the NYC subway noticing how everyone except for me was in an iPod / newspaper / book bubble.  Time passed differently, and most of New York City felt like it was for someone other than me.

How can the experience of self shift so quickly?  The troubling notion is that we have a silent but persistent “identity monologue” going through our heads, an active but unconscious process of defining and reiterating our own identity.   (I guess the Buddhists would call this “ego.”)  The humbling part is that the constant process of self-(re)definition actively colors my sense of self and how I interact with the world, and what’s surprising is how fragile and mutable it is.  Just think of what it felt like to lose power in Hurricane Sandy (or whatever natural disaster is closer to home for you).

The positive side of this realization is around mutability.  As quickly as my outlook darkened when I got sick, it started to improve three days later once I got out of bed, and within a week I was mostly back to normal.

I’ve had times in my life when I’ve been stuck, where a situation, or where I was living, or a crummy job was sucking the energy out of me, and where it felt like there was something fundamental and permanent about my situation.  Making changes at moments like that can seem like too tall a hill to climb, partly because of the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves feels big, real and permanent.

It is none of these things.

And it is wildly freeing to know that even one small change in our circumstance can begin to change our whole outlook; and that changing your circumstances can change your outlook and perspective (not the other way around).

Citibike

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

I’ve just taken the plunge and signed up for Citibike, New York’s bike-sharing program.  The bikes are suddenly ubiquitous in lower Manhattan, and yesterday a colleague of mine burst into work with a huge smile, raving about cutting his commute from 30 to 10 minutes.  That pushed me over the edge.

To get started, I decided it was worth the $10 (for a 24-hour pass) for a one-time experimental ride before signing up for the year ($100).  Even at $10 for the day it’s not much more than my round-trip on the NYC subway ($5), and I wasn’t sure how long my ride would take or how hot and sweaty I’d be upon arriving to work.  After completing that first ride, I’m sold.

Joe Zaro (of Zaro’s bakery) on a Citibike near Grand Central Station

Even with the extra hassle of a manual first ride – which required manually putting in my credit card rather than the little key fob that they send you, getting confused about how to enter the confirmation code on the bike, and not knowing the best route to take – I still got from Grand Central to Acumen’s offices on 15th Street and 9th Avenue in the exact same amount of time as my regular subway-plus-walk commute, so I figure on a typical day I’ll save at least five minutes and get a bit of exercise to boot.  Also, although I never think about the cost of the subway, I’d stand to save $25 / week if I ride every day, or more than $1,000 per year.  Even accounting for variable weather, days when I’m too dressed up to ride, etc. it seems like a hugely winning proposition in exchange for clipping a helmet to my bag each morning on the way to work.

I’m a big fan of public transportation and of city services / public spaces that work, and Citibike seems like a winner on all counts – even for someone like me who doesn’t live in New York City.

Have you tried Citibike?  What do you think of it?

The Egyptian (wiki) coup

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I’ve found it surprising how nearly blasé the mainstream Western press has been about recent events in Egypt.  Not that the events haven’t been described as important, but rather how quickly the press has devolved to a simple ends-justify-the-means analysis (epitomized in this hugely disappointing David Brooks piece).  The ousting of a democratically-elected leader by the military – with or without huge popular support – is far from a clear-cut turn of events in the Arab world’s largest democracy.

It’s also amazing to see how much the world has changed, that major political events unfold in real time online, including on Wikipedia, where a page titled “2013 Egyptian coup d’etat” apparently went live three days before Morsi was ousted.  In a microcosm over the battle of language that’s ensuing in all circles, there’s fierce debate on that Wikipedia page about whether to call the events a “revolution” or a “coup,” and I find it more interesting still to consider whether and why it would make sense for Wiki-zens to defer to the popular press in defining the terms of debate (an argument made by some in favor of objectivity).

The Wikipedia entry is here, 135 citations and all,  and if you’ve never peaked behind the scenes of a hotly-contested Wikipedia page, now’s your chance.  A nice summary of the unfolding of Wikipedia events can be found on the Foreign Policy blog.

Going towards truth

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Takes guts, involves risk, can feel like walking through the fire.

Turning away, though, doesn’t mean that the truth you’re ignoring doesn’t exist.  It just means that you’re choosing not to see it and stand before it.

Bear witness, find courage, go towards truth.

Starting something

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

“OK get ready New York!!!” shouts an older African American gentleman on the uptown 1 subway in New York City.  He’s dressed in perfectly-pressed ivory linen pants and a neat white collared shirt.

And then he bursts into song, belting out, “This little light of mine…” in a voice that could only be described as angelic.  It deserves a full Gospel Choir behind it.   Barring that, his partner singing harmony was pretty incredible.

Along with just a few of my fellow-passengers, I smile, I enjoy, I give him a dollar.  I get a nod and a nice fist bump in return.

On my next subway ride, a white guy in a suit looks at me quizzically and says, “I thought you were part of the group…on that last train, I mean.”

I told him I wasn’t, that I just liked the music and thought it was gutsy to perform in that way and put yourself on the line.  I couldn’t tell if he was satisfied or confused by my answer.

But I did think it was interesting that just by smiling and enjoying myself, I might be confused for the third member of the group.  Because, of course, being the first, second or third person to stand up and follow enthusiastically can have just as much impact as being the guy standing up and singing.

Leading courageously and following with conviction are both needed to make change.

Neglected, then out the door

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

I was a DIRECTV subscriber for about six years, until I wasn’t.  Meaning, over time the ~$65/month (once it was all said and done) started to sting more and more, and while I was generally happy with the service, the volume of alluring communication I got from everyone else pushing me to switch was in marked contrast to the bill and nothing else I’d get from DIRECTV month after month.

In the TV and telecom businesses, customer “churn” is one of the most important metrics to manage.  This is because customer acquisition and setup costs are high: the costs of giving someone a subsidized phone, or of sending a technician to physically install a costly satellite dish in each new customer’s home, are layered on top of all the regular sales and marketing costs everyone takes on.  That makes it especially important to keep customers from leaving once you’ve gotten them on board.

The challenge for DIRECTV and its ilk is that they have no information at all about how happy I am.  As long as I’m paying, I’m paying – until the day I leave, ending what could have been a 10 or 20 year relationship (which, at $65/month is somewhere between $7,800 and $15,600 in lifetime revenues).

The irony in the TV business is that the marginal cost of surprising or delighting a current customer is so low compared to the value that walks out the door when she leaves.  A free month of HBO for every year I’ve been a customer, or getting NFL Sunday Ticket for free one season if you’ve been a customer for five years (just hypothetically, of course!), could pay off in spades.

Because metrics (customer acquisition costs, churn, etc.) are so much harder to come by in nonprofit fundraising, and because each “customer” is so different in terms of how much they pay/give (DIRECTV’s customers might pay $30 or $200 a month, but that’s about as big as the range gets; a donor could give $500 or $5,000,000), we rarely do the math on customer acquisition costs or churn.  And so we hunt for the next donors at the expense of tending to the donors we already have.  It’s so easy to forget to delight those who are already with us – to give our true believers tools to evangelize on our behalf, and to make those who are happy feel proud, delighted, and occasionally surprised at the little gifts we give them to say “thank you.”  (And by “gifts” I don’t mean trinkets, though those are nice too.  I mean helping them see what they have helped accomplish, and showing them true and honest gratitude.)

We all have lurkers in our midst who are about to leave but we don’t know it.  Of course some folks will leave no matter what, and some will be too expensive to retain.  But let’s at least make that a conscious choice.

It’s a shame and a loss when someone who has been supportive, someone who has been a loyal and important customer, walks out of the door for no better reason than low-level neglect.