Tag: connection

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.

Sport

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

While the biggest highlight of my trip to Karachi last week was definitely meeting all the applicants to the Pakistan Fellows Program, the most fun and surprising piece was getting to play squash twice during the week.

Pakistan has an incredibly illustrious history in squash – Pakistan dominated the sport for nearly five decades, starting in 1951 when Hashim Khan, a former squash coach in the British Army, won the British open (dominating then champion Mahmoud Karim of Egypt 9-5, 9-0, 9-0), and carrying through the reign of Jahangir Khan, considered by many to be the greatest player ever to play the sport – he won the Squash World Open six times and the British open 10 times, and had a 555 match winning streak from 1981 to 1986.  Unfortunately since 1998, when Jansher Khan was defeated in the finals of the British open, squash has fallen from prominence in Pakistan, but there remains a proud history and tradition in Pakistani squash.

And so, the day I arrived in Karachi, after 20 hours of flights and then heading straight to the office to work, I was particularly excited when my Acumen colleague Humza Khan dusted off his squash racquet and took me out for a game.  As I told Humza, on my spectrum of ways to spend a first night on the road, if the bottom of the spectrum is being alone in a hotel room ordering room service and watching crummy TV (and not being able to sleep because of jetlag), pretty near the top of the spectrum is getting to play a good game of squash with some (new) friends.

Yes, Karachi can feel very foreign, but to get the chance, within 12 hours of arrival, to step on a squash court with a colleague and then rotate through games with a bunch of other guys who were playing…at that moment when you’re on the court, everything else drops away and you are just two people playing a sport that you love, interacting as equals and using the shared vocabulary of a game.  And in that moment you glimpse and feel your shared humanity with ease.

It made me think that it would be fabulous if it were easier to travel places and find a great squash match, cricket game, game of pick-up football, you name it.  What better way to really get to know a place?

After our game that night, Humza (who does amazing work with youth football in Karachi) and I got to talking about sport, and he shared that the only time Pakistan feels and acts truly like a nation – and not tribes or sects or groups with regional differences – is when Pakistan plays a cricket match.

In sport we are human, and for a few brief moments all that makes us different is stripped away.   I wonder how we might access that feeling and spirit more often.

Goldilocks giving

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

When it finally comes time to ask someone to make a philanthropic donation, how much should you as for – a little, too much, or just right?

“Too little” is never right.  If anything, “too little” is a polite way for someone to say “no.”

“Just right” in my experience also isn’t the answer.

Why?  Because we need to ask the most of everyone if we are going to accomplish great things together.  To be our best we all stretch, we reach just a bit too far, we dream audacious dreams because before something can happen we have to imagine that it just might be possible.  So too with giving.  It should be a stretch, should feel a little outlandish and a bit impossible.  At that moment of connection and excitement and commitment, people will go a bit further if you ask them – and even if they don’t no one gets hurt along the way.  We’re all grown-ups here.

This is particularly important because of how people tend to approach renewals of their giving.  While occasionally someone who gives at a low amount relative their other charitable work will jump to a significantly higher level, those sorts of shifts are rare.  Which means that if things work out well, the giving conversation you are having about this year is setting the bar for giving for next year and the year after that and…

In this case, “too hot” is better than “just right.”

24 hours

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I keep wondering what people are getting at when they put a huge effort into shaking hands, making conversation and swapping business cards and then disappear off the face of the earth.

Almost as bad is following up days or weeks later to say how nice it was to meet.  By choosing to (re)start your conversation weeks down the line when you have the option to do it within 24 hours you’re communicating that lots of other things are more important to you.  This conversation is low on your list.

That may be right.  Just be clear that it is a decision.

Not-so-small talk

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

It amazes me how much time we waste in our effort not to waste any time.

Five, even ten minutes to understand who a person is, where they are today, now, at this moment…there’s no way that you can skip that step and hope to create any sort of real connection in a meeting.

Almost every culture in the world knows this – that you cannot start a conversation before you’ve talked to someone as a person.  Except Americans, of course.  We pride ourselves on “getting down to business.”

There’s wisdom in those old civilities of asking after someone’s well-being, their family.

Two people might be able to strike a deal, but two human beings are needed to create any sort of partnership.

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?

Not transactional

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Of course no one says that they have a transactional approach to fundraising. How could you admit to such a thing?

But to get beyond transactions means that donors are not numbers to you. It means that after people give you feel more enthusiastic, not less, to talk with them, to plan with them, to dig in with them. It means full emotional investment in the relationship, not looking over your shoulder at the clock. It means taking the notion of “partnership” seriously.

No one will ever say that they believe relationships should be transactional, but it takes guts to fully invest. You can’t fake it.

One great moment in a 24 hour delay

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

I’d love to chalk it up to bad luck – I continually have things go wildly wrong most of the times that I fly Delta.

Here’s what happened this time: for an 8:30pm flight to Accra, Ghana, we dutifully boarded the plane around 7:30pm, taxied out on time and began waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  Rains came, and then lightning.

Around 11pm the pilot told us that the storm was moving quickly, that “most of the other planes have returned to their gates but we are keeping our spot.”

Sometime closer to midnight he said that “there are 66 other planes looking to take off” but he still felt we could get out.

A bit after midnight I finally dozed off, and was in and out of consciousness until 2:30am when the pilot threw in the towel, took us back to the gate, and told us to wait by the gate for an early morning departure.  It was to be at 6am, then 7am, then 8:30am.  After waiting in a plane on the tarmac for six hours, and then sleeping in the terminal for another six hours, Delta cancelled the flight and rebooked us all on a new flight at 8:30pm that evening, 24 hours after our original flight.

Who knows what really happened, whether we actually had a chance to get out and the pilot made the right call.  Who knows if it’s true that the Accra airport has a curfew – though all of my Ghanaian colleagues adamantly say that’s not the case.

What was striking through it all was that it was no one’s job to handle the whole situation.  The pilot’s job was to get us to take off, which didn’t work out.  After that we were handed to a series of gate agents and other representatives, none with any sense of ownership or real responsibility.  It was one massive game of pass the buck: at no point did someone stand up and say “I’m the person who is taking care of this situation, here is what’s going on, we’ll have more answers for you by 6:00am.”  Divide and conquer can work when things are going smoothly, but it falls apart completely when things go off the rails.  This is probably why at one point the NY Police Department had to be brought to the gate to quell a brewing uprising amongst the passengers – complete with threats of barricading security (“if we can’t fly out, then no one can!”).

The one bright spot?  Upon lining up (again) the following evening to board the flight, the amazing level of openness and camaraderie amongst all the passengers.  We were all in this together.  Conversations amongst strangers started effortlessly.  We were all smiling and laughing about our shared predicament and the absurdity of it all.  One Liberian woman, beaming at counter when I checked in, struck up a conversation with me about how she’d decided to just be happy and upbeat and stop worrying and complaining – she knew it would all work out OK and that was the energy she wanted to put out from that moment forward.  I smiled, laughed, and agreed with her, and the next moment I found myself getting a joyful hug from this woman I’d never met.

So there you have it: the moments of genuine human connection brought joy and laughter in the midst of this mess.

And it makes me wonder if it’s when the world around us breaks just a little that we pull together and come together, and if in our hyper-efficient, hyper-virtually-connected world where everything works smoothly, the chances of the impromptu smile, laugh, or hug simply disappear.

Note to left-brainers

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

It’s not helpful, ever, when asked for your input to list three or 10 or 20 things that need to be fixed without mentioning a single thing that is great.

I say this with humility as this isn’t a strength of mine – and I’m working on it (forever, I expect).  I watch in awe (and take notes) the people to whom this comes naturally.  And I empathize with the sentiment: you just want it (whatever “it” is) to be great, so let’s talk about why it’s not great yet and fix it.

The thing is, to make something great more often than not you need to amplify the things that are already really, really good.

Error correction alone does not get you to greatness.

Autreat signal badges

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

I was thinking some more about how often we miss the opportunity to help the people we bring together connect with each other.  Then I heard about Autreat, a a conference run by and for people with autism.  As one of the many things they do to make the conference helpful and productive for participants, the organizers give them the option to wear red/yellow/green “Interaction Signal Badges.”

Red = I do not want anyone to approach or interact with me.  You can reply to questions I ask you but that’s it.

Yellow = I will interact with people I already know but not with unfamiliar people (“we’ve met online” = unfamiliar)

Green = I’m interested in interacting but I find it difficult to initiate interaction, so I’d be happy if others initiate interaction with me

The badge is just one of a zillion oft-overlooked elements we control when we bring people together, one of the things we could pay attention to if we really want to help people feel comfortable and create the kinds of connections they’d like to create.  The TED conference has massive badges with names printed in 32-point (I think) font, giant pictures, and “talk to me about” conversation starters.  Other great conferences go in the opposite direction, inviting a tiny number of attendees, having no one wear a nametag, and getting the social juices flowing with singing and poetry and time at the pub late into the night.

The problem with most conferences is that they do none of these things.  The organizers act as if putting on a conference involves packing the agenda with high-profile (often concurrent!) speakers and having people sit through those talks, with opportunity to randomly “network” in huge, personality-free reception halls.  The organizers spend 98% of time on the “program” and 2% of time on the steps (big and small) that would make it twice (or 10 times) as likely that people would interact.

Susan Cain recently reminded the world that there’s nothing particularly normal or special about being extroverted and about feeling totally comfortable in a massive crowd of folks and striking up new conversations.  So here’s a hint to people who bring people together: almost everyone would rather have more substantive, productive and fun conversations with almost everyone else, and almost everyone finds it difficult to start brand new conversations.  Help them!