Tag: fundraising

Don’t take it personally

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

Jonathan Lewis’ recent blog post and accompanying video on fundraising hits the nail on the head: “The best fundraisers don’t fundraise.  Instead, they teach people to take realistic – and unrealistic!  – risks in the service of a better world. “

“Teaching” and “risk-taking” in service of a better world.

Maybe if we used that language more often we would have more great people getting into fundraising, more people in fundraising with the right mindset and orientation, and more funders taking risk.

I’m with Jonathan all the way until the closing paragraph, where he says, “Infuriating indeed is the patronizing ‘don’t take it personally’…If you believe in your mission and if you are giving it your all, then it’s always personal.  Every committed social entrepreneur takes organizational rejection personally!”

As I told Jonathan, I don’t think this is quite right.  Of course I feel it personally when I am rejected, when someone doesn’t share my passion or, worse, when my explanation of what we are trying to do at Acumen fails to capture the imagination of someone who I know is aligned with my passion and vision (in which case, shame on me).  I don’t think I would be human if I didn’t feel it; indeed, if the day comes when I stop feeling it I’d have to question my own passion and sense of commitment.

But when I let the rejection feel personal, and when I see other fundraisers do the same thing, I think that’s a big mistake.

The person I’m meeting with came into the meeting with a worldview, with ideas, with momentum in a certain direction…and so did I.  I feel like my job is to listen, explore, connect, tease out alignment, and then to inspire action (aside: the “inspire action” bit is really important and not easy to get right.)

But when that alignment isn’t there and I end up feeling personally rejected then I believe I’m misdiagnosing what just went on in that meeting.

When someone says no, it could be an execution error on my part: maybe I handled the meeting poorly, didn’t listen enough, was off my game, didn’t have a real and compelling ask, didn’t tell compelling stories, or didn’t articulate how Acumen could help the funder realize their vision.  Hopefully, after fundraising for nearly seven years I make fewer and fewer of those mistakes, but I’m sure I do make them plenty.  When this is what’s gone wrong,  I need to use a rejection to figure out how I can get better, how I can hone my craft, how I can turn “no’s” into “not now’s.”  Taking these sorts of rejections personally places blame in the wrong place: I didn’t do my job well, plain and simple.

And when what I’m fundraising for doesn’t inspire a funder or align with their vision, then something entirely different is at play.  That’s a question of worldview, a question of where they are in their journey.  It’s about lack of alignment of vision and values and aspiration.  What they’re looking for is not what I’m selling.

(Note that it’s easy to see, when I’m selling database software or consumer copiers, the difference between being turned down because the person isn’t buying anything right now, buys from my competitor, or decides to buy productivity software and a high-end color printers instead.  In philanthropy what we mostly see is the person giving or not giving to us, so everything gets much more muddled).

Almost always, it’s not personal.  I have not been rejected.  The moment I take rejection too personally is the moment I lose forward momentum, the moment I begin to question myself at a more fundamental level, the moment I forget that real long-term partnerships happen because of a deep sense of alignment, not because someone chose to buy what I’m selling.

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?

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.

The Overhead Myth

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

The founders of the three largest charity watchdogs in the US have penned a letter and started a campaign to debunk the overhead myth.  Between Dan Pallotta’s outstanding TED talk this year – with nearly 2 million views and counting – and this move by Art Taylor (BBB Wise Giving Alliance), Jacob Harold (GuideStar), and Ken Berger (Charity Navigator), we might just be at the beginning of the end of the tyranny of “low overheads = well-run charity.”

Quoting from the new website, http://overheadmyth.com:

The letter, signed by all three organization’s CEOs, marks the beginning of a campaign to correct the common misconception that the percentage of charity’s expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs—commonly referred to as “overhead”—is, on its own, an appropriate metric to evaluate when assessing a charity’s worthiness and efficiency. The nonprofit sector, which all three organizations provide information to and about, has too often erroneously focused on overhead over the past few decades, which has starved nonprofits from investing in themselves as enterprises and created what the Stanford Social Innovation Review calls, “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle.”

I don’t yet know the details of the aforementioned campaign, but it’s high time we had one.  My hope is that the campaign provides donors and funders rules that are as simple as the “low overhead” mantra has been, because we won’t debunk one simple, easy-to-follow orthodoxy unless we replace it with another.

The challenge, of course, is that solving big problems is hard, complex, and nuanced.  Nevertheless, my bet is that the most successful version of this campaign will result in simple mantras and a few short checklists, as well as focused advocacy with the big foundations, institutional donors, and signatories of the Giving Pledge.

I’m excited to see this unfold, and to support the effort.  As a start, here’s the full text of their letter, which you can endorse here.

To the Donors of America:

We write to correct a misconception about what matters when deciding which charity to support.

The percent of charity expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs—commonly referred to as “overhead”—is a poor measure of a charity’s performance.

We ask you to pay attention to other factors of nonprofit performance:  transparency, governance, leadership, and results.  For years, each of our organizations has been working to increase the depth and breadth of the information we provide to donors in these areas so as to provide a much fuller picture of a charity’s performance.

That is not to say that overhead has no role in ensuring charity accountability. At the extremes the overhead ratio can offer insight: it can be a valid data point for rooting out fraud and poor financial management.  In most cases, however, focusing on overhead without considering other critical dimensions of a charity’s financial and organizational performance can do more damage than good.

In fact, many charities should spend more on overhead.  Overhead costs include important investments charities make to improve their work: investments in training, planning, evaluation, and internal systems—as well as their efforts to raise money so they can operate their programs.  These expenses allow a charity to sustain itself (the way a family has to pay the electric bill) or to improve itself (the way a family might invest in college tuition).

When we focus solely or predominantly on overhead, we can create what the Stanford Social Innovation Review has called “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle.”  We starve charities of the freedom they need to best serve the people and communities they are trying to serve.

If you don’t believe us—America’s three leading sources of information about charities, each used by millions of donors every year—see the back of this letter for research from other experts including Indiana University, the Urban Institute, and others that proves the point.

So when you are making your charitable giving decisions, please consider the whole picture.  The people and communities served by charities don’t need low overhead, they need high performance.

Thank you,

Art Taylor
President & CEO, BBB Wise Giving Alliance

Jacob Harold
President & CEO, GuideStar

Ken Berger
President & CEO, Charity Navigator

Are you a fundraiser?

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

There’s an old line that parents swap, and it goes something like:

People who aren’t parents think that there’s not a chasm between people who are and are not parents.  People who are parents know that there is one.

It’s not better or worse to be a parent, it’s just a different worldview and state of mind, a line that you cross and can never go back.

I think fundraisers experience something similar.  A good fundraiser is just as smart and savvy and capable and strategic as non-fundraisers – indeed much of what motivated me to start this blog was how frustrated I was to see that the nonprofit world sidelined fundraisers and fundraising and then wondered why it was so hard to scale things that work.

But there is something different about being a (good) fundraiser.  It means that at any day, at any moment, on some level you’re thinking about that revenue line, thinking about where you are in the year, how much time you have left, and what it’s going to take to get there.

This, too, isn’t good or bad, it just is.  It’s something you feel in your bones and in your gut.  And living with that feeling and that stress does take some getting used to.  I think the challenge of living with that discomfort is where lots of the burnout for fundraisers comes from.

My hope is that if we acknowledge it, if we say it out loud, if we share that this is something we are all holding, the weight that we are bearing gets just a bit lighter.

What do you want?

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

It’s actually very easy to communicate what you’d like someone to do.  The NY MTA does it simply, with a bigger box.

Metrocard

Of course this applies to web design, IRS tax forms, etc.  But it also applies to how you fundraise.

The most subtle, ever-elusive dance in fundraising is between relationship-building and “closing the sale.”  I find that, by and large, new fundraisers have to learn to invest more in building relationship, providing value to others, and being ambassadors within their organization for potential donors.

At the same time, you always have to be ready to answer the questions: “What’s most important to you?” or “If I’m ready to donate, what should it be for?”  There’s almost never any harm, even at the outset of a relationship, to be very clear about what your priorities are and how someone can be most helpful.   That’s not trying to close the sale too early, it’s knowing what your priorities are and giving someone clarity.  That’s never a bad thing.

If you don’t let them know (or worse, if you don’t know) what you hope they’ll do, how can you ever expect them to figure it out?

And if you’ve ever gone into a fundraising meeting without your top priority ask in mind, you’ve broken this rule.  I know I have.

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?