Exciting news (at least for me)

Dear readers, I'm going to take a hiatus for a couple of weeks - like every good shrink, I'll be taking August off, summering in Lake Winnipesaukee.  I hereby recommend you take a vacation from your problems too. Just until I get back.

Just kidding.  I've been hard at work with my friends at Gilday Creative to create a more functional, more professional site, and one that better expresses my personality.  We've finally reached the stage where it's time to put the final touches together, migrate all the posts to date, and test the heck out of things.  Unfortunately, that's also coinciding with a long-planned end of summer vacation for me.

After today, I'll be on hiatus until August 26, at minimum.  I may decide, for strategic and sanity-preserving reasons to postpone my return and Big Launch for the pretty new site until September 3, the day after Labor Day.  But when I return, things will look different.  Better.  Dare I even use the word "snazzy?"

Please keep emailing your questions and situations and article recommendations!  I love hearing from you, and hope the new look will help us bridge the digital divide in even better ways, all the better to develop you with, my dears.

I hate to go off and not give you a little something to tide you over.  So.

1. If you haven't already gotten this link from everyone you know, 25 Situations Only Nonprofit People Can Understand on Buzzfeed
2. An article that MentalFloss titled "9 Fundraising Lessons from the World's Weirdest Charity Stunts", but I recommend reading it as 9 Reminders that my Day Could Be A Lot Worse.  Bookmark this puppy.  Use as needed.
3. I'm a sucker for Old Jews Telling Jokes.  Start here, with Len Portnoy's fundraising joke...and then watch the rest.  That should last you through labor day.

Mailbag: How do I write my case statement?

Q: I work for a pretty small organization.  We've been able to get started on government and foundation grants, and after two years working hard to build an Annual Fund, my board thinks we're ready to add a major giving program.  I have never done this before.  I'm willing to try it, and I'm reading everything I can on how to do major gift fundraising, but I'm scared and I'm stuck.  I know I need a case statement, but I don't know how to write one, and I have no idea what to say.  Do you have a template you recommend?

A: I don't recommend a lot of templates.  They can be very very useful, don't get me wrong, but templates too often give people implicit permission to literally think inside the box.  You're so focused on properly filling in the blanks in your form (sorry - template) that you're no longer thinking about what you actually need: what makes your story unique, what makes the way you tell your story unique, and what makes your audience unique.

So I'm going to do two things: first, congratulate you on asking for help, and two, encourage you to keep doing it.

Oh, and since I'm not totally heartless, I'm going to explain that, and give you a worksheet for how to create a case statement.  It's not a template - it's a series of steps you can take (promise me that you'll take them as guidelines not gospel) that should yield a pretty decent version of a case statement.  But unlike a template, everyone will execute each of the steps differently - meaning that you'll wind up with a document that couldn't be written by an organization with a similar mission and thesaurus, you'll wind up with a case statement that couldn't be written by anyone but you.

1. ASKING FOR HELP is one of the most useful things you can do when you're looking at a major gift project.  But don't ask me.  Ask your supporters.  Ask why they give.  Ask what they want to know when making a gift.  Ask if there's something you could do that would make them want to give even more.  Ask what they tell their friends when they talk about being a proud supporter of your organization.
2. When you've collected a bunch of statements and thoughts from your supporters, add your own.  Why are you proud to be associated with your organization?  What's so special that makes you spend so many hours and so much effort on your work?  What makes your organization stand out from all others?
3. Grab a copy of your mission and vision statements.  If you don't have enough material specifically addressing this from the previous two steps, think of a couple of ways to express why your mission is so important and why your approach is the best way to do achieve your mission.  
4. Collect all these materials, read them over, chew on them.  This step is actually important.  You can't achieve brilliance or innovation without a little bit of space to breathe.  Could be you take a long lunch, go home early and work in your garden while thinking about what you're going to write, could be you just put everything aside for the morning and watch your programs happening.  Remind yourself in very real terms what you're doing here.  Figure out what you need.
5. Pick out a few different messages that you think make your case well.  They should compliment each other, they should speak to different audiences.  Figure out the FORMAT that works best to express those.  There's no particular or proper form for a case statement, it's a term that encompasses a variety of written documents that quickly make a case for support.
6. After you've got your first draft that is your best effort at weaving all your favorite tidbits together, check for:
• Logic (whatever you've said, does it make sense?  Does A -> B?  Did you accidentally skip relevant pieces such that you've said A -> Z, but some of your readers don't know how you got there?)
• Inclusion of narrative (you need some good stories for people who like to read - well crafted, compelling language that is free from jargon and pretension)
• Inclusion of data (you need some straightforward numbers for people who just want bottomline numbers/are data driven)
• Inclusion of graphics (you need something for folks who are visual learners - could be data in infographics, could be photos speaking a thousand words, could be your emotional appeal in one perfect photo or cartoon)
• Inclusion of some emotional appeal (you need something for folks who give from the gut)
• Soul (does this feel authentic to who you are as an organization?)
• Brevity (This needs to be short.  As short as possible given all you need to communicate.  People just won't read endlessly.  Be honest and brutal in your assessment of how short you can make this document vs. how short you should make this document.  When in doubt, ask someone else, someone less invested.)
7. Now that you've checked for the details, check for the big picture.  Does this document say Who you are, What you need, Why you need it, and When you need it?  (I put the two checks in this order because if you do step #6 thoroughly, you're most likely ready for step #7...but might need to carve away some of the excess that's hiding those Big Picture answers.)
8. Go through a few drafts until you feel ready to get feedback.  Ask for it from a variety of stakeholders.  Use this as another reason to get in touch and get advice from some of your existing supporters, big and small.
9. Go through more drafts if you need to.
10. When you go to press, love the document, but do your best to not be burdened by how much work went into it.  There are stories and statements that didn't make it in there.  When you go public, you will hear more about what it's missing than about how much is amazingly right about it.  It's just another tool.
11. I didn't mention anything about campaigns or other specific projects/programs.  Case statements are often written for specific funding needs.  All of the above applies whether you're working on communicating why people should support your organization or why people should support Funding Need X.  But if you're looking for a particular funding need, make sure not to dilute that message with too much about general support or organizational details.

Quick Tips: Wordle

In my consulting work, I spend a lot of time on storytelling.  If you want to figure out a strategy forward, it helps to agree on who you are and what you do now...and getting stakeholders to tell their personal and institutional narrative is a great start towards that agreement.

One of the things I frequently do after getting a bunch of people to write down answers to a few questions (nothing particularly complex - things like "how would you describe your organization to a friend?" and "what are the values of your organization in 140 characters or less") is run those answers through Wordle.

People think it's magic.

I feel conflicted about damaging my mystique here, but I'm sharing this little tip because it turns out that a lot of my former clients are taking this brilliant (FREE) web tool and using it to make graphics for various communications, from printed material to social media.

Check it out.  www.wordle.net

Simply enter a bunch of text (survey answers are super handy if you've recently asked relevant questions, or you can feed in your last couple of development pieces - case statements are great for this), tweak your colors, and voila - a free graphic that reflects language you use when talking about yourself or your mission.

Also...what if you don't identify with what comes out when you pop in your development narratives?  You might want to use that as the starter for a serious conversation about a disconnect between your organizational identity and your fundraising strategy!

Mailbag: How to get past fear

Q: I don't think I'm cut out for fundraising.  I love my organization and I want to help get the funds we need to survive and do our work...and I even know what I *should* be doing, I think.  But when it comes to picking up the phone and calling donors, I can't.  I am stupidly panicked and get anxious and just can't pick up the phone.  How do I get past my fear?  I don't want to keep letting people down.

A: I have a friend who posted a quote on her facebook wall recently, and I've been chewing on it such that it made me fish your email out of the ol' mailbag.  Here it is:

"Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates the strength of Resistance. Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.” --Steven Pressfield

I want to like this quote.  I really do.  But the more I think about it, it's hooey.  The only thing I actually agree with is that fear is good.

Fear is an alarm system for when you've got some instinct and insight cooking in your brain, but it hasn't figured out how to form comprehensible thoughts yet.  That means you should always pay attention to fear - it's an alert that you need to figure something out, that you need to examine why your emotions are aflame.  WHY are you afraid?

Mr. Pressfield would have you run full speed towards whatever makes you afraid.  And I think that popular sentiment, that fear is something you must conquer by force, is coloring your question.

Why are you afraid of calling your donors?

You must figure that out before truly addressing how to move forward, past your problem.  But maybe you're new to fundraising, and that makes it a little tricky to self-analyze...so here are some possible reasons that might be underneath your fear.  It's obviously far from a complete list of the possibilities!

1) You're afraid of rejection, in all its glorious forms.  The person on the other end of the line might yell at you for being a glorified telemarketer.  The person on the other end of the line might unload all their grievances about the organization in general, by the screaming bucketload.  The person on the other end might tell you they're offended that lowly you would dare to call high and mighty them.  The person on the other end might tell you that they're not interested in supporting your organization any more.  The person on the other end might tell you they know why you're calling, but they'll call you if they want to make a gift.  The person on the other end might rudely but simply say "oh, Susie from Org. X?  Not interested, thanks," and hang up.

Rejection isn't any fun.  But it's something you can and must live through as a fundraiser, without taking it personally.  Figure out how YOU can get your mojo back after a nasty rejection (I tend to use it as an excuse for a latte instead of the cheapest coffee I can find; remind me and I'll do a whole post on other ideas some day), and then force yourself to call.

2) You can't envision the conversation.  Do you know why you're calling this person, or did you read a bit of fundraising advice that says "call your biggest donors at least once every two months" or some such nonsense?  I say nonsense because it's not bad advice, it's just utterly useless without understanding WHY it's something you should be doing.  No one picks up the phone just to say hi anymore, not even with their closest friends.  Figure out why you're calling.  If you're still nervous after you decide that you're calling to update them on the success of your summer programs, or want to set up a time for them to come see the gardens their donations supported, or want to take them to lunch to talk about planned giving, or want to know if they would give some feedback on a mailing you're planning for next month, go ahead and script a few lines.  Really.  Write them down like you're writing a play.  The only caveat there is that you're not allowed to keep reading what you've written word for word if the conversation goes somewhere else.  You have to listen to the conversation that's actually happening once you get there...but scripting can tamp down some fear when you're afraid of not being prepared.

3) If planning out the conversation and accepting that rejection is not failure still leave you panicked, perhaps you don't know your donor well enough.  Some people deeply fear the unknown, and unknown donors are just so unpredictable that it's hard to use the above crutches to get through an encounter.  Plan a get to know you meeting.  Tell your donor that you want to make sure you really understand them, so that you can better serve both them and your organization.  Have a lunch or coffee date where you truly get to know them (as donors, please...keep it professional!)  Plan to ask them about their connection to your organization.  Their childhood.  Their philosophy about life.  THEN their philosophy about giving away money.  Their own fears (you can share yours - the fear of letting down your organization).  Their own dreams.  See if that level of humanizing and understanding puts your fears to rest (and greatly strengthens the donor's institutional connections, to boot.)

4) Is phone the right way to connect with this donor?  Maybe you're getting the wiggins from the telephone because this donor has never ever had a phone conversation with you.  You've put in your development plan that you're going to call 3 donors a week, but you didn't really think about the fact that the next 5 donors on your list are all senior executives in the prime of their career who have no interest in getting on the phone with you in the middle of their day.  But they'd love an email.  Or a random handwritten note with whatever you were planning on saying to them.  Here's a perfect example of why you don't simply run roughshod over your fears as if they were beacons shining on the best path forward.  Your instincts here are giving you valuable information about a better way forward.

For every set of fears, there's a different set of questions to ask yourself as you figure out what's sending up the bubbles of anxiety and apprehension.  When it's something that is internal - you are afraid of rejection or failure, and there's great risk of feeling those things if you press forward - sometimes you have to figure out how to simply get past that fear, conquer it and keep conquering it until exposure therapy tames that particular fear.  But when it's born of something that you should be fixing before moving forward, listen to that, too.  

Our own fear can give great advice.

 

Mailbag: Tired of pretending

Q: I've been cultivating this one prospect for a few months, and I can't figure out where we are.   I thought I was clear about my interest in getting her to support my organization, but I think she thinks we're friends.  We're about the same age, and I really do like spending time with her...but I can't afford to spend all this time on a prospect who's not going to pan out, you know?  I feel like I'm wasting company time on a personal relationship.  But I'm afraid that she'll hate me if I tell her that the only reason I've been having lunch with her is that I want her money.

A: In amicitia nihil fictum est, nihil simulatum, et quidquid est, in est verum et voluntarium.  In friendship, nothing is fiction, nothing is fake, and whatever it is, is true and voluntary. (Cicero)

I ran across that quote a week ago and knew there was a reason I wrote it down.  These are good words to live by for cultivating friendships, and good words to live by for cultivating donors.  Sometimes those sets overlap, sometimes they don't - but until you let go of the fiction you're allowing to seep into this relationship, you can't have a relationship that is true and voluntary.

Do you want a real friendship with this person?  Hold onto that answer a minute.

One of the biggest perks of frontline fundraising is getting to meet some truly amazing people.  Sometimes you're going to hit it off, you'll have a good rapport and a lot in common, and you will wind up with a personal friendship (whether or not you wind up with a major donor).  But, and I can't stress this enough, you're not there to be someone's friend.  That's not the job.

If you're working with a prospect, you need to be true.  That's a rather poetic way of phrasing it, so it's open to some interpretation - honest? direct? open? gentle? authentically concerned about their feelings?     unafraid to expose your genuine self?  Any and all of those are fairly good advice.  And they are essential for maintaining the voluntary nature of your relationship.

A donor has to support you because they want to.  There can be complicated reasons that folks "want" to support you - they might want to support the mission; they might want to support your organization's leadership; they might want to impress someone on your board; they might want to feel good about honoring a deceased loved one; they might want to get their name on something; they might want to do something nice for you, their friend.  You can think of more reasons - but they boil down to wanting to give, based on true and voluntary reasons.

If you feel you compelled to hide your own feelings, you're undermining this whole system.

Now, I'm not talking about neglecting to discuss politics with a donor you know is on the other side of the political spectrum.  Unless you're a political fundraiser, that's irrelevant.  Treat donor relationships like your distant relatives at Thanksgiving dinner - you know you don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but you go out of your way to not pick fights and to talk about things you know you can both discuss pleasantly.  You're representing your organization.

What I'm talking about is remembering that YOU are representing your organization.

Now let's get down to brass tacks.  You feel like you're spinning your wheels with a prospect because you don't know if she's going to ever become a donor.  I'm *not* going to criticize or analyze your methods that lead you to say that you thought you'd been clear that you're looking to turn her into a donor.  I don't need to.  Donor communication is very simple - if they understand what you're saying, you've communicated.  If they don't, it doesn't matter how reasonable your attempt was, you need to try again, differently.

Tell your prospect that you always like seeing her, but that you're concerned about doing so on company time without a clear agenda, and then set one.  Tell your prospect that you enjoy spending time with her, but want to make sure that she's getting everything she needs to make a decision about supporting your organization or project X this fiscal year.  Tell your prospect that you are very concerned about meeting your fundraising goals for the year, and why that's so important to all the work your organization does, and that you'd love to meet her if you can help her come to a decision, but otherwise, you'll have to catch up after the fiscal year ends.  Keep trying to communicate until you succeed.  Make sure you don't try avoidance as a tactic, either as a way to not take too many meetings or to avoid awkwardness after you've communicated that you don't have time for endless personal lunches on company time.

You'll notice that I didn't suggest that you offer to move your socializing to after-hours.

IF you want to actually be friends with this person, you can put that into your true and voluntary communications.  Go for it.  Your prospect can say no (in which case you respect that utterly); it's their choice once you ask.  But we all go through times in our lives where we don't have enough time to spend with friends we've known for years, and we've all met folks that we like well enough when we see them for work but don't want to spend extensive time with.  If you don't actually want this prospect as a personal friend, don't make the offer.

Socializing with prospects and donors is a fine line.  You must always walk a tightrope between professionalism and authenticity.  You are not there to make personal relationships, you are there to connect people to your organization...but someone who suppresses all personality or manufactures one just for the occasion is going to do a poor job at building those institutional ties.  You are always obligated to build relationships on behalf of your organization.  Sometimes you will incidentally form personal friendships in the process.

Allow me to offer one final thought: when you conduct yourself as I'm suggesting, you'll be left with true and voluntary relationships.  But that also means that you cannot be all things to all people, and that truthfully, some people want something else.  Your honesty and clarity will help them see that they don't feel compelled to support your organization.  Get used to letting them go and being grateful for the separation.  If you trick them into thinking you/your organization are something you're not, you might get a gift, but ultimately you'll wind up unhappy.  If you twist your mission or programs or organizational focus to please a donor, you'll regret it.  If you bring in a donor who will not actually value what you're doing, they will regret it...which means you will too.  Unhappy donors are far far worse than amicably parted prospects.

Things I wish Boards knew #1

A "prospect" is not "someone we've heard has money."

Here are some things I've been told as a consultant:

• We have a portfolio of prospects, we just need someone to manage the relationships.
• We have more than 100 local prospects who are waiting to be contacted.
• Each of our board members has provided a list of 10 prospects, but our development staff hasn't been able to close a single gift.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a variation on this theme...and not once has it been what I would call "true."

The board members telling me about their large numbers of prospects aren't (for the most part) trying to confuse or mislead me.  They're misleading themselves with an earnest belief in these "prospects."  But having a list of people (even a well researched list, where you have a specific and accurate estimate of capacity - the reliable measure of wealth) that is essentially plucked out of a phone book is just that - a list of names that no more belongs to you than any other list of names of people in your community.

A prospect is something much much more.

A prospect is someone that you have reason to believe would be interested in supporting your organization if you got the chance to talk to them.  Perhaps they are a friend of someone already connected to your organization, and that person tells you they're interested in some aspect of what you're doing.  (Preferably, that person will also make an introduction!)  Perhaps they have a history of supporting many organizations that share your general mission or vision (e.g., if you do anti-poverty work, they support three organizations that come at it from a different angle or work in a different region).  Perhaps they have a family connection to your mission.  (e.g., if you are a disease research foundation, they have a sibling who has fought the disease you're trying to cure)  Perhaps they have made public statements about supporting social enterprise in their hometown, and you just happen to fit that bill.  There are nearly infinite ways that someone might pop onto your radar - but "having money" isn't enough.

Let me say that again: Being rich does not obligate someone to give you money.  I don't care who you are, or how deserving you feel your organization is.

Here's the hard hard work that has to go into successful fundraising: you have to take people with known capacity and research them to figure out whether your organization has a chance at being a good fit for them.  You have to find a way to reach them so that you can make your pitch.  You have to make a good pitch...and that pitch is rarely "give us money," it's "here's why you should get to know us."  THEN you work your way towards "What would make you want to support us financially" and close with "Can you give us some money?", which will only work some of the time.

If you are a board member, there's no quicker way to convince a great development officer that they're going to be persecuted at your organization than to keep conflating "people who sound rich" with "prospects."  That's so far from the truth that there's no way to succeed if you think everyone with a house in a really nice zip code is just waiting to give you money if you just send a professional to ask them.

I am willing to sympathize though: over 90% of board members (from some study cited at a conference I went to - forgive me, but that's a "truthy" number nonetheless) have never had formal development training as part of their board orientation.   If you are on a board, take the time to learn how development works, and what role you can and should play for your specific organization.  I'll offer some additional tips on fundraising from a board perspective in this column, and please send me questions for the mailbag!

But in the meantime, this is Board Sin #1.  Cut it out.  Not only are you setting your expectations stupidly high on a foundation of sand, but you'll damage the morale of your professional team. And shame your fellow board members who haven't gotten the memo.  (Gently or publicly, whatever gets the message across best.)

Don't forget to laugh

Someone forwarded me an article yesterday on sleep deprivation and mothers of young children.  A sweet and hilarious personal essay recounting great stories like "I walked into a wall and sent my kid to school with an onion instead of an apple" and "that time when I almost fell asleep while walking a couple of blocks with my kid in a baby carrier."  When you truly love the best parts of your job (yes, being a mom is a job - though it won't pay the bills and it's *really* hard to quit), you can laugh at the ridiculous bits.  You know, the ridiculous bits that test your every limit and make you want to cry or hit something; the ridiculous bits that might make someone who's never experienced such a thing smile, but makes instant compatriots out of those who share the experience and gives members of the sister/brotherhood a chance to laugh loudly and deeply, with real guffaws.  I personally laugh in the face of utter exhaustion.

Which is all to say: Fundraisers have a lot to laugh about.  This gig (paid or volunteer) is crazy.  It's hard.  And people are crazy, which makes asking them for money even crazier, and harder.

You need a good laugh.

I can't recommend fundraisergrrl strongly enough for a quick pick-me-up.  I have smiled, I have laughed out loud.  Yes, I say, yes!

Go check her out at fundraisergrrl.tumblr.com