Mailbag: Glorified Panhandling

Q: How do I not feel like I'm just a glorified panhandler when I'm asking for money?

A: Oh, boy have you come to the right place.  However you want to phrase it, it's a VERY common hangup for people in fundraising (volunteer and professional alike).  Let's start with some praise: you clearly know how fundraising works.  You have to ask for money.  

Does that seem too obvious?  Don't take that knowledge for granted - I worked with an organization that felt it was tacky to actually make a direct ask...they thought it would be best to simply tell people with money about how awesome their organization was, how important it was to so many people, and then just wait for them to beg to give some money to support all that great work.  Seriously.  You can't make this up.

If you need donations, you're going to have to ask for them.

There are all sorts of ways to get through that reality if it's uncomfortable for you.  But you should never feel like a glorified panhandler.

A panhandler is asking you to give him money for no other reason than that he needs it.  He might trade on your sympathy, he might trade on a sense of guilt, he might try to make you uncomfortable so that giving him a little something is the easiest way to make him go away.  But it's always something for nothing.  Why should you give?  Because he needs it.

If this is your fundraising approach, you're doing it wrong.  REALLY wrong.

Even the most desperate appeal from a legitimate not-for-profit institution asks you to give because we need the money TO DO SOMETHING, something that is valuable to other people, something that is valuable to our community or society at large or humanity as a whole.  Don't underestimate that.  It's a huge difference, and you should feel it, deeply.

Here are some other thoughts to help you commit the act of asking, if it feels desperately uncomfortable to you:

1. You're asking adults, right?  You get to ask, they get to say no, if they want to.  They're grownups and you shouldn't feel badly about asking a question, as long as you don't make them feel badly about their answer, whatever it is.  Seriously.  We know how this works.
2. It's not about you.  Really.  You're the embodied voice of an organization.  Didn't you hear about Citizens United?  Institutions are people too...they just need someone else to speak for them.
3. Go back to the difference between you and panhandlers: you're offering something of value in return for a donation.  If that seems very intangible to you, spend some time figuring out how to make it tangible.  For some people, that's knowing exactly what a $20 donation allows you to do.  For others, it's being able to offer a tchotchkie in return (totebag, t-shirt).  For still others, it's figuring out a meaningful way to celebrate their donors (thank you brunch, names on a wall).  Or maybe it's a new commitment to stewardship (sending pictures and handwritten letters so donors know what their money did).  There are nearly infinite ways to do this.  It's about understanding your own value proposition well enough you can eat, drink and breathe it.
4. I can promise a certain level of desensitization.  The more you ask, the more natural it will feel.  Your skin will thicken, you'll be able to let most rejections roll off your back, you'll be able to ask  people you know and people you don't know without feeling as awkward...it's a process, but it gets easier with every ask.  Soon, you'll be able to use your feelings as a geiger counter - the more nervous you feel about an ask, the more suspicious you should be that something's not quite right (i.e., you should rethink your plans for when and how the solicitation goes down), and that's a tremendous asset for a fundraiser.
5. Are you asking for smaller gifts?  Perhaps you can work with your team to take charge of either larger/major gifts, or grant writing, both of which have different emotional dynamics when it comes to the ask.  When I ask a working class friend for a gift of $25, that money comes out of her wallet. It's a tradeoff between fancy coffees, a couple of more expensive groceries, a new pair of sandals...and a donation to my cause.  When I ask someone with a set philanthropic budget for a gift of $1,000, it's a tradeoff between giving to my organization and giving to a different organization.  That money is already marked for charity - I'm just trying to convince that donor that my charity can do something great with it.  

Emotionally, there are still some nuances to cover.  Tomorrow: same basic question, slightly different concern.  Is it "panhandling" to ask people to donate to your bike ride/marathon/whatever-a-thon?