Tag: courage

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.”

An “intangible” dividend?

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

So here’s a curious narrative: in the early 1990s, 4,600 poor families in LA, New York, Chicago and Boston were moved from very poor neighborhoods (more than half the residents living in poverty) to wealthier (less than a third of the residents living in poverty).  The hope was this would result in better jobs, higher incomes, and better educational outcomes.

After rigorous, scientific testing, the initiative failed to deliver the desired results.

And yet, in what was described as an “intangible dividend” by the NY times, the recipients ended up significantly, quantifiably happier.  “The improvement [in happiness] was equal to the level of life satisfaction of someone whose annual income was $13,000 more a year.”

This is the dividend that’s called intangible.  Happiness.

Of course it’s hard to measure, of course it is squishy and self-reported, but if we’re ever going to get anywhere we have to have the comfort and confidence to say out loud that things like human dignity, pride, and yes happiness are the whole point, the only point really, and that everything we’re doing is aimed at loose proxies to those results – what could be more real or concrete than that?

Just think how much we’ve punted on this issue, if we’re really honest with ourselves.  We’ve come to a point where we’re saying with a straight face that if we put a lot of money into the impact investing sector and that money realizes a healthy level of financial return then we’ve had success.  That puts us about seven degrees removed from actually understanding if anyone is better off, happier, freer, more proud or connected or more able to realize their potential, if someone is more likely to realize justice if they’re wronged or less likely to fall back into poverty if they get sick.

As a sector we have to have the courage to say out loud that happiness is not an “intangible” dividend, it’s not a silver lining in a program that otherwise failed to raise people’s incomes.

Would that we lived in a world in which the NY Times headline could have been: “large-scale government program a huge success, making 4,600 families happier, healthier, even without increasing incomes.”

It feels like looking at the sun, saying out loud that the whole point is happiness or pride or dignity.  It’s so much easier and safer to look away.

What do you know?

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

“Who are you to be spouting all of these ideas?”

“What do you really know about this?”

“You’re not an expert.”

“There’s nothing new here.”

“Who cares what you think, really?”

And on and on.

No, that’s not what your critics are saying.  It’s what the little voice inside your head is saying, the one that’s holding you back.  The one that is petrified that you might discover how much you actually have to offer.

Mailing it in

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Today I received emails from class representatives from both my high school and graduate school asking me to give as part of an annual campaign.

Both asks were identical: our participation rates are low, please give so we can increase that number (one of them said that if we got to 40% our class could get a free dinner…we were at 13% and have a few days to go.  Good luck with that).

It’s such a dismal approach that I can’t dignify it by calling it fundraising.  It feels like a bill collector aiming for the lowest level of shame (“give us something”) in the hopes that if you pester people enough with a safe, familiar approach you’ll create enough miniscule annuity streams that it will somehow pay off in the end (it doesn’t – the math doesn’t work).

It would take so little to tell one – just one – very short story:

Dear Sasha,

I know how busy you are and how many emails you receive.  I also know how important [school] was to you, and I wanted to tell you one story that caught my attention last year, and I hope that reading this will encourage you to give as part of our annual campaign [LINK].

When we were students, only 15% of our class received scholarships.  Now that number has jumped to 65%.  Just last year, [name] who was on a full scholarship to [school] was accepted to a [great school], also on a full scholarship.  She is aiming to be an engineer and is already part of an incredible research lab working on bioinformatics.  [Name] was always a leader in the [school] community, and while we aren’t surprised at her success couldn’t be prouder – and it’s a success we can all share in.

We’re hoping you will join your classmates and give this year to support this kind of success.  We all share the sense that the education we received was the foundation of so much we’ve accomplished in our lives.  Let’s do what we can to share that success with others.  Even just $10 to show your participation would mean a lot.

[nice big button – click to give]

– Class representative

This letter I’ve written isn’t even that good, but it’s a start.  It shows respect to the recipient.  It takes a stab at creating an emotional connection and allows the alumnus to ascribe meaning to the action you’re asking him to take.  It reinforces the connection he already feels to the institution.

“That’s the way we’ve always done it” is no excuse for doing something without an ounce of heart, soul, or courage.  Give all of us the respect of showing us why you’re asking, and (if you dare) take the added step of helping us understand that we already are part of something that was hugely important in our lives.

You’re contacting people anyway.  Why not try to make it good?  Lord knows it couldn’t be any worse.

What sets you apart

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Not smarts or capacity or competence.

Not pedigree.

Not even accomplishments if they didn’t require putting yourself on the line.

Relentless passion? Courage? Going out on a limb? Refusal to give up? Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.

It’s virtually impossible to lead if you’re not fully invested. It’s impossible to lead if the (potential) failure wouldn’t be personal. It’s impossible to lead without having something at stake.

What sets you apart is showing that you’ve done something that looks like that.

P.S. This all translates directly into questions to ask – and questions to skip – in interviews.

Generosity partnership

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday I had the pleasure to spend a few hours at one of Seth Godin’s seminars.  If you believe in making a ruckus, if you’d benefit from a day of real conversation (and inspiration, and stories, and plenty of laughs) about why it’s up to you to make a ruckus, then you have to find a way to get one of these seminars.  The day will challenge you AND give you tons of tools to speed you on your way (plus great giveaways!).  It costs as little as $300 a person if you bring a group which is an amazing deal.

One guy I met there, who will soon be running a school, told me that he couldn’t get his old school to pay for the seminar (“they felt like the couldn’t quantify the value of it”).  So a trustee who is a fan of Seth’s sponsored him instead.  I love the notion of not being able to quantify the value of day that could accelerate someone’s journey to becoming a transformational leader.  Kind of a “it’s warmer in the summer than it is in the country” analysis.  (Value of becoming a transformational leader = more or less infinite, right?)

Anyhow….

Seth did a session on nonprofit fundraising, which he led off with a riff that began “Fundraising is a generosity partnership for both people.”

Let’s pause get our heads around that for a minute.

A while ago I succeeded in creating a ruckus by writing a manifesto for nonprofit CEOs.  In it I argued that we have to reinvent fundraising, first and foremost by discarding the notion that what we do as fundraisers and nonprofit leaders doesn’t have value.  Of course it does, and when we realize that, when we really own that, we change everything – power dynamics, the sense of our own worth, our motivation and courage to get out there and tell our story, everything.

I still think this is all right, and nearly four years later I’ve also figured out that it’s not the whole story.

“Fundraising is a generosity partnership for both people.”

For both people?  That means we have the chance to be generous. Us.  The fundraisers  Wait, isn’t this about someone else giving?

If fundraising is a generosity partnership, that means we have something real to give, something of value.  That means it’s not just that we need the courage to get to the starting line and recognize that we’re doing something worth paying attention to.  We need to go a whole lot further and recognize the true value of what we are offering:  the chance to make a change in the world; the chance to be part of a group of like-minded people who won’t accept the status quo and who wake up every morning to fight for change; the chance to create meaning and healing and hope and possibility.

When you say it like that it becomes obvious that these things are worth the same or more than the philanthropist ends up giving – they have to be, or why would she give in the first place?  The philanthropists knows this, that’s why she cares and that’s why she gives.  We are the ones who forget it.

“Fundraising is a generosity partnership.”

So when you lack courage, when you’re hiding, when you’re doing everything but getting out there and telling your story, when you’re doing everything but building your tribe and raising the resources to do what you’re here to do, your mantra is:

I have something to give.  I have something to give.  I have something to give.

Something that’s really worth something.  Something that’s worth everything.

Your idea

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

At the start it’s just smoke, a wisp. It has no substance or form.

You can take it around to people for help shaping it, so you can better understand what it could be.

But the thing is, at the start it has no mass, and until it does it’s impossible for people to really do much of anything about it.  They can talk and you can talk, and that’s about it.

Mass gives it the ability to go places.  Mass means that with a push it can break through things.

Talk is fine, but the real work is giving your idea some mass.

Shorten your backswing

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

It was time today to sit down and write a blog post.

I keep track, by email, of blog post ideas when they happen, and was just about to go into that email account when I saw an interesting tweet….that led me to a clever article about Occupy Wall Street, that….  wait a minute, what was I planning to do?

There’s the real work we need to do, and there’s all the muss and fuss that we do as part of our process of starting our real work.

This can happen a lot in sports.  In racquet sports there was a whole move-my-racquet-forward-before-hitting-a-backhand thing that I used to do.  I have the same problem (never fixed) when throwing a frisbee.  If you ever go to a yoga class, watch how much hair-fixing and water drinking happens at the exact moment the instructor calls out a challenging pose.

It feels minor, but think about all the wasted motion I was doing for the 500 backhands I hit in a one hour squash game – energy spent, speed reduced, extra steps taken for absolutely no reason other than that I’d built up a bad habit.

This isn’t just about not getting distracted by social media and your inbox (though those are particularly dangerous because they pretend to be work).  It’s about shortening the distance between “I’m going to start working” and “I’m working.”

Generosity excerpt

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

A friend sent this in as a non-sequitur in another conversation we were having.

The other day I was coming out of a coffee shop and decided to give a homeless man a $10 bill…what can you get for $1 these days?…I feel like I’ve been giving $1 since I’ve had discretionary income…I subconsciously never accounted for inflation/cost of living increases.  He thought I made a mistake and said: Ma’am, I think you made a mistake.  Did you mean to give this to me (assuming I meant to give him $1).

I replied: I absolutely did.

Nice.  And kinda shatters the whole angle of the panhandler who is trying to pull one over on you, doesn’t it?

I hesitate to share too many examples of giving to people on the street when talking about Generosity Day, since somehow that’s a lightning rod for what I consider to be a distracting conversation (namely: “should one give to people on the street?”).  At the same time, the immediacy and humanity of giving (or not) to someone who is standing right and front of you and asking for help is, I think, something we cannot shy away from.

Do you have more generosity stories to share?

Say it out loud

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

That thing you dream of doing someday?  That thing that you’re working on already, even if you’re just teething on the idea?   Tell somebody about it.

Tell somebody, even if in a whisper, about that future and what it will look like: how the world will look; the person you will be; the dream.

“Somebody” is a person you trust, a person who matters to you and who matters to the idea. ”Somebody” will be touched by the idea and the brighter future the idea will create.

Even if it’s just one person, the act of saying the idea out loud puts it out there, makes it just a bit more real.  The act of saying it out loud gives one person the chance to react to it, and when they don’t laugh out loud (because of course they won’t) you’ll believe just a bit more in something that seems impossible.  And that might just give you that additional ounce of courage you need at the exact moment you need it.

Say it out loud.

(email counts too if that’s easier for you).

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“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’”

– Mary Anne Radmacher