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.

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.)

Article Review: For Academics

There is a strange thing that happens in Academia.  Scholars who get promoted into high enough administrative positions suddenly find themselves with fundraising duties.

Here's a great essay from one such gentleman, David D. Perlmutter, who found himself the Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Iowa, and reflects on how he learned to fundraise.

The title says it all: Don't Fear Fundraising.  

First of all, that's good advice.

But second of all, it speaks to how common a problem that is...fear of fundraising.  That's why this whole blog exists, after all.  There's plenty of technique and skill in development work, but psychological blocks are the biggest roadblock to successful fundraising for so many folks.

Check it out.  Some good first-hand advice.

Back to Basics: How do you Cultivate?

If you read yesterday's post, you know where you're trying to go with all of this cultivation stuff, at least in the abstract.  (For extra credit, check out my Friday For You post this week, where I talk about SMART goals...you should be using them for your own development, but they apply beautifully to this specific work as well.)  So HOW do you do it?

For the life of me, I can't find a set of benchmarks from a reliable source, but you're looking for a number of "touches," over a 6 - 24 month period, to go from "prospect" to "major donor."  (Of course, this is the dream.  The harsh reality is that you should focus your expectations differently...as a fundraiser, you can't eliminate the need for actual dollars to come in as a result of your work, but when it comes to major giving, success is not fully about converting a prospect to a donor - it's about getting to a good solicitation, even if the answer is no.)

Here's an incomplete list of techniques you can use on that journey:

1. Face to Face Meetings

This is the obvious one.  There's nothing quite like being in the same room with someone.  You can connect better, your conversation will flow more naturally, the person on the other side of the table can see your charming, genuine smile.  But you have to be careful not to overuse these...and if your prospect feels like you're a nuisance or wasting his/her time, you've dug yourself a nasty hole.

Have an agenda.  Think about what you want from a meeting.  Granted, this can be two parallel answers: what you really want is to get in front of that prospect so they remember how much they love you...but that's not something that's likely to be valuable to the prospect.  Make sure you have a *real* reason to visit with them.  Getting feedback on something?  Works if you actually want their feedback on your newsletter/program/new strategy/website design/etc.  Will backfire if you don't really care what they have to say.  Update them on something a little too sensitive to put in writing?  Again - this is delicious if it's true (finalist for X grant; about to start a search for a new Executive Director and hoping they might be able to recommend some candidates confidentially, etc.), but likely to annoy if you're overreaching.  How about an introduction to another key player in your organization?  Senior staff, maybe direct program staff or students/clients/participants, if that's a draw, board members, your founder, etc.

Another tip for face-to-face meetings: it's OK to be direct when you're asking for one.  "I want to update you on X" is different than "I'm looking to find enough funding to do X before the end of next month.  Could I sit down with you to talk about that effort?"  One tees up a solicitation in a very different way...but if you're hoping to actually make an ask, it might make the actual meeting much much easier if you are upfront about your agenda.

2. Phone Calls

In between meetings, it's nice to stay in touch.  The phone is one way to do that.  

Be mindful of how your prospect likes to stay in touch, and always be respectful of their time ("It's so nice to hear your voice - is this a good time to talk?")  Same rules about agenda apply, but have a little slack in them.  There's less commitment to a 10 minute phone conversation, and they have a chance to get off the phone much sooner, so your reasons for calling can be less direct.  Wanting to tell them a particular anecdote from the field, wanting to tell them that you read that book/article they recommended, congratulating them on their child's graduation/black belt/recital

3. Email
I'm told that only old people are into email these days.  Luckily, almost everyone you'll be asking for money is "old" - or at least old enough to use email for both business and personal communications...and you're hoping to be at the edge of overlap with yours.  (I fear I'm dipping a toe into the gentle bubbles of the La Brea Tar Pits as I say that - you're not looking to be personal friends with your donors.  This is a professional relationship.  Period.  But you're looking to become the equivalent of a "work friend" - that person that you wouldn't hang out with if you ever left this job, but you're genuinely glad to run into them and chat while making copies, and you grab lunch occasionally.)

Email doesn't catch someone at a bad time, like a phone call, but we do generally feel pressure to respond quickly (24-48 hours), which makes it a fairly conversational medium.  It adapts well to expectations - you can be formal or informal as needed.  You get answers to your questions quickly, you can reference the weather or news without worrying that no one will remember what you're talking about by the time your parchment is delivered by pony express...

"Just thinking of you" emails are great.  Low investment, no need for the other person to respond, but decent impact, if you do it well.  Send links to articles, send videos, recommend a podcast that touches on something you talked about at your last meeting.  Make it personal - it needs to be clear that you wrote this email exclusively to the donor, and didn't cut and paste an email with a link to the society pages featuring your gala to all 15,000 donors in your database.   Want a response?  Ask an interesting question - one that begs an answer (nothing rhetorical or too open ended..."check this out; any thoughts?" isn't getting any replies.)

4. Handwritten notes and other postal mail
I get ~200 emails a day, all told.  More when things are busy.  But I can tell you exactly who sent me the last handwritten note I got in the mail.  It was a job applicant, thanking me for my time interviewing her (on behalf of a client.)  She went from being one of three equal candidates in my mind to being someone I felt very warmly about, all things considered - though it can't be overstated, *what* she wrote certainly helped, by proving she had actively listened to some of my questions and comments during our meeting.  Content counts, obviously.  But a beautiful card and a few short handwritten sentences stand out, inherently.

And think creatively - try to remember the joy of getting unexpected notions in the mail.  One of my early fundraising mentors, a 25 year volunteer solicitor, sent Halloween sized candies, randomly, to his annual list of prospects.  Things I learned by experience so you don't have to: M&Ms don't make it to Texas in the summer.  The candy gets shattered and the chocolate forms one big lump with colorful shards.  Also, don't send Smarties when the post office is on high alert for anthrax.  But in general, this works *very* well to make people think of you fondly...and you can be creative with the principle - any small, delightful little gift.  Nothing expensive, but something charmingly valued as a surprise in the mail.

Check out some of the research done on gifts sent with solicitation...people feel obligated when you send gifts.  Even those stupid labels from the ASPCA and March of Dimes.  There's a reason direct mail packages are designed like that - the response is worth the extra expense.  The difference here is that you're not pairing your gift with a solicitation on the spot - you're simply building good will, towards a future very large ask. 

5. Invitations to events
It's like a face to face meeting, but better.  Invite your donors to non-solicitation events.  Asking for scholarships for tuba players?  How about a seat at your next orchestra or brass band concert?  Looking for capital gifts?  How about a ground-breaking ceremony, or a tour of the construction site?  Be creative - you might even consider events that have nothing to do with you.  Is your prospect a huge baseball fan?  How about an afternoon game with the local farm team?  Great place to talk.

6. Whatever materials small donors are getting, personalized
Don't take your donors out of the pool for all the direct mail/email/whatever you're sending to your full base of supporters.  First of all, if you're trying to make people feel like part of an inner circle at your organization, having them out of the loop on any piece of mail is a great way to kill that.  I remember one case where the development team held back on sending a (pretty cute, musical) video to their major donor prospects because it contained an ask for $45 at the end.  Except it went viral (ish...a bunch of the older donors who were targeted sent it around to each other), and there wound up being a handful of major donors who were seriously hurt and annoyed that they were left out.  Secondly, if you're cultivating a savvy philanthropist, they want to get a very good sense of your organization and its operations.  They want to know what you're doing to raise money other than ask them to hand over some serious cash.  Seeing your newsletters and general solicitations adds a lot to their understanding of how you work.  (If you're afraid of that, the answer is in figuring out why - are you presenting yourself in conflicting ways to different audiences? Are you frustrated by the quality of your communications?  Fix the problem instead of trying to hide it!)

BUT...please don't just send generic solicitations or any communications without comment.  A note on the year-end mailing saying "I wanted you to see what we sent our whole list of supporters; don't you love the picture on page two?  You were at that event, weren't you?"  Or simply "You're obviously not the target demographic for this solicitation, but I wanted you to know what we sent to last year's donors, asking them to renew their support."

Personalizing mailings with post-scripts can get tricky, of course, and there's no good way to handwrite an extra couple of lines on an email or self-mailer...that doesn't let you off the hook though.  Send a note in advance of the form letter/email they're about to get, handwritten or via email.  It goes a very long way towards making people feel like you're paying close attention to them as individuals...because you ARE.

7. Introductions
I bet you have some folks among your supporters - maybe big donors, maybe passionate small donors or volunteers - who are great ambassadors for your organization AND a joy to know.  Maybe you have some supporters who have specific skills or interests that might be unique and very valuable to your prospect.  As you get to know your prospects, think about connecting them to others within your organizational sphere.  Perhaps the college counselor on your board would be a great connection for the woman whose granddaughter has her heart set on college in California.  Perhaps you know a great bridge partner for the gentleman whose usual partner is in Florida for the winter.  Perhaps you just think donor X would have a blast chatting with prospect Y.  When it's right (this isn't a technique you can force, only one you can keep on your radar so you see the opportunities), it's a great way to increase the human connections surrounding your organization.

8. Social Media!
The goal of using mail and email (and phone) in your cultivation strategy is simple: increase the points of contact between you and your prospect so that you strengthen the lines of communication between you.  Social media - everything that exists now, everything that will exist in the future - provides new tools for doing the same thing.  Start a back and forth on twitter with a prospect who loves tweeting.  Make sure your Pinterest or instagram fan sees your latest photos.  Like and comment on some of your Facebook fanatic's daily status updates.

One caution here, though...your institution shouldn't leap into all of these new channels without understanding how to authentically AND SUSTAINABLY transfer your brand to this new communication tool.  It always makes me tremendously sad when I see organizations who have a Facebook account that last summer's intern started for them that has been thoroughly dormant since they left.  If you don't have the manpower (paid or volunteer) to *really* use, say, Twitter in a meaningful way, in a way that shows you "get" the medium...don't do it poorly.

What are your favorite tips and tricks for connecting with people and strengthening their relationship to your mission and organization?

Back to Basics: What is Cultivation?

What IS cultivation?

When I was thinking of starting this blog, I asked friends and clients for questions that they'd like me to answer - anonymously (for them) so no one would think they were stupid.  This is the second most frequent question I got.  And since I put up some posts describing the very basics of major gift fundraising, I've been getting variations on this theme - now that I've met with a prospective donor, I know that I'm supposed to "cultivate" them and then "solicit" them...but what does cultivation really mean?  What am I supposed to be doing???  How will I know when I'm done cultivating and it's time to solicit?

So let's pick up where we left off: You get a meeting, you psych yourself up, you go, and you rock it out with confidence and good listening skills.  Congrats!  You are now in the cultivation phase.

Before I give tips from my experience on techniques you can try to cultivate folks, let's think about what cultivation needs to do for you.  There are people who don't know your organization, and there are people who give meaningful gifts to your organization.  What lies between those two points is cultivation.

Cultivation is HARD work, and you've got to plant many seeds
if you want to gather enough fruit to feed your family.

Cultivation does the following:

• Turns your prospect into someone who knows enough about your organization.
• Turns your prospect into someone who cares enough about your organization.
• Connects your prospect to your mission and its larger context in new ways.
• Teaches you enough about your prospect.

That word "enough" is a killer though, right?  I'm so sorry - I can give you a framework for thinking about these things, but there's still an element of art to fundraising, a gut sense that you have to develop for yourself.  

Every prospective donor has their own set of criteria for making a donation to an organization.  This is true from your $20 donors on up to your $20 million donors...and it often varies by the size of the gift they're contemplating, and how emotional their tie is to your mission/cause.  Your job is to figure out what they need to know before they're comfortable donating to your organization.  Might be financial assurances, might be strategic planning, might be proof that your programs are having impact...might just be an understanding of what you do and why.  The important thing to remember is that your job is NOT to get them to some basic level of knowledge about your organization.  You don't get points for their being able to pass a pop quiz if you've failed to pay attention to what's relevant to them - and then get them that information, without overkill.

When it comes to what you do and why, that's the key to "caring enough."  When your prospective donor sees beyond the technicalities of your needs (you need money to do X) and starts being truly interested in WHY your organization has made its choices, you're on your way.  Most donors will need to get to the point where they feel that you stand out from the crowd, that your programs are different, in a good way, from what other organizations are doing with similar missions.  You're looking to take up residence in your donors' brains, so that they forward you newspaper articles and funny tweets related to your mission, and so that they talk about you when they're out with friends.

Which brings us to connecting these folks in new ways.  It's not just that they appreciate your programs in a sea of like-minded institutions, it's that they become more connected to the larger mission.  For instance - if you are an organization that provides mentoring for young girls, you want these donors to think of you when related topics come up over drinks with friends - bullying and what to do about it; feminism and equality; lack of women in politics; the impact of intergenerational relationships in society...cultivation is bringing that potential donor to the point where they think of themselves as being involved in good works, being part of the solution to society's Big Problems (even if you're only tackling a small piece of things) because they're connected to you.

And last but not least, cultivation is not purely a process that your donor goes through.  You are cultivating a relationship, and that takes two people.  When you can answer confidently "yes, this person is ready for a solicitation" - which, by the way, also requires you to know what the right solicitation might be - then you know your donor well enough to move to the next level.

Tomorrow: practical tips for doing this kind of work

Mailbag: Forget the Overhead Myth

Q: I know that donors are looking at my administrative costs, and that I'm supposed to keep my overhead low if I want to get good evaluations from watchdog groups...but what does that actually mean?  I can't cut anything else without cutting staff, so...are other people just way better at creative accounting?

A: Yes, there are some donors who are looking at your administrative expenses, popping it over your whole budget and rejecting folks whose ratio doesn't match their ideals.  YOU DON'T NEED THEM. Also, they're really really few and far between.  Asking you about your overhead is a good thing - it keeps us honest, it keeps us mindful of a need to answer to our supporters, to be efficient.  But that's the start of a conversation for most donors, as it should be.  That's not a bad thing at all.

There is, certainly, a big drive in the sector, for accountability and efficiency.  And overhead seems like a good way to measure that.  So let's be kind and say that this is a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing - there are donors who've read this far in their official donor orientation handbook and ran out of time, and are now just winging it.  You run into them in the field, and you hear about them in the nonprofit press...and they make a good scary story to tell around the nonprofit campfire, because like all good scary stories, there's enough truth there to make the story seem very very real.

First, head here, to one of my favorite web comics, Savage Chicken.  Have a chuckle, then come right back.

Now, let's talk.

1) How's your overhead?  Are you doing things that make sense?  When you spend money, do you do so intentionally, with reasons you can articulate and stand behind?  How does your board feel about your expenses (overhead and beyond)?

That's right - I'm not asking you about your overhead in comparison to anything - not in ratio with your overall budget, not in comparison to an average for your type of organization, and certainly not by asking how close you can get to zero.  I'm asking why you spend what you do, and why you think that's the right move for your organization and the people you serve.

If you can tell that story, most donors will listen.  ASKING QUESTIONS IS NOT A BAD THING.  Donors should be asking questions, and this is a question that you can expect, so swing for the fences.  You're going to be asked to talk about why you need money, and how much you can do with it!  That's a great place to go in a conversation, and these questions means that the donor is driving you there.  Again - this is fantastic.  A gift, really.

2) Now that I've asked you to tell me a story about what you spend and why, without feeling persecuted by expectations of your overhead, please remember to tell that story to anyone who will listen.  But, of course, it would be stupid not to be prepared to discuss how that number, whatever it is, compares to other numbers in the mind of your prospective donor.

• What's typical overhead for an organization in your field?  How do you compare?  Explain any big differences...could be that you're operating in Nebraska and most are in New York City.  Could be that you're running these two pilot programs that require extra oversight and evaluation.  Could be that you have a commitment to covering full health benefits for all your employees.  
• What's your overhead to program ratio? The question at hand, however you want to break it down: what's the "running the organization" vs. "performing our mission" set of numbers?  And when you think of it like that, you may start to see that a simple ratio from your budget or balance sheet doesn't really describe that accurately.  Say, for example, that you put all your staff in the administrative line...but there are only two of you, and in addition to running the organization, you and your second in command also provide direct services to clients.  So...are you "overhead" or are you "program?"  You don't even need to decide how to categorize yourself - you just need to be able to explain why the numbers themselves need context.
• What other numbers (straight from your financial statements or in comparison to any benchmarks) will draw questions?  Be prepared for questions you can reasonably expect.
• There's no end to the list - but the same rules apply: As long as you can explain your reasons for the way you stack up in various comparisons, being clear and open about your institutional choices is GREAT.  It may help you and some donors see, early on, that you're just not a good fit for each other.  You want - NEED - to let them go.  They'll be dissatisfied with their donations, and you'll drive yourself crazy trying to please them.  

3) Your comment about creative accounting scares the bejesus out of me.  Creative accounting shouldn't be a euphemism, it should be a term of praise for the folks who have figured out how to use the very clear and straightforward rules of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) to sing nuanced and complex melodies.  Don't ever attempt any kind of deception through your financial statements!  (First of all, it's one of the stupidest things you can do; it's bad form and bad faith, and you can't make up for that by pretending it's justified to help you achieve your mission.  You have to live with your realities, and they are reflected in your numbers.  Second, you'll get caught.  You will.  And that could, perhaps should, destroy your organization, in a shuttering/closing to business/not-existing-anymore sort of way. Don't do it.)

• You should be discussing options with your accountant so that your numbers are "singing" your song.  
• You should be running your basic financial statements by trusted business savvy advisors, for the express purpose of having them tell you what they see in them, what questions they have after reviewing them, etc. (Then you prepare to answer those questions straightforward and with confidence; see above.)
• You should prepare development versions of all your financial statements that attractively lay out all the context and assumptions that folks should find relevant in looking over those numbers.
• IF YOU ARE HOPING TO HIDE anything that you find embarrassing in those numbers, the problem isn't the numbers.  The problem is the embarrassing reality.  So you either need to find a way to confess a one time lapse (you screwed up cash flow your first year on the job and needed to make a withdrawal from savings to make payroll for a couple of months) or change the way you do business so that your practices reflect what you want to tell people you do.  See how that works?

Social Entrepreneurship: Why you can't ignore this buzzword

Echoing Green, along with the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, put out an interesting report (preliminary, they note) in June of this year titled Early Stage Impact Investing: A Blueprint for Screening Social Impact Potential.

Why you should care:

1. Maybe some of you consider yourselves social entrepreneurs.  You're seeking funding, but whether or not you're building up a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, you identify primarily as an entrepreneur and you're thinking in terms of investors instead of donors.
2. If you don't identify that way, you still don't have the luxury of ignoring that perspective.  Venture Philanthropy as a concept is not going anywhere in the near future, and in my experience it's not only growing as a philanthropist mindset, it's a good thing for the sector as a whole.  You need to be able to make a case for your organization and projects in terms of social investment, with calculable returns and impact.

This report, among other things, does an excellent job of highlighting seven elements that "investors should probe in order to mitigate impact risk and increase the potential for an investment to achieve its social targets."  When you cut through the jargon, you've got yourself a nice list of seven items you want to address (or be able to address in further conversation) any time you are putting together a grant or proposal for someone who identifies as a venture philanthropist or has been indoctrinated into the sector fad of "accountability."

• Social mission: how do you demonstrate your commitment to your mission? This all boils down to that thing your grade school (high school?) writing teachers kept telling you: show, don't tell.  "We're committed to fighting illiteracy" is not as expressive as "we have tutored 10,000 students this year, and all of them now test at grade level in reading comprehension."  (Wouldn't that be amazing?)
• Evidence: Can you prove causality?  How does a donor know that your program directly caused the changes (outcomes) and that those changes have an impact for society?  (Maybe all those thousands of kids were going to test at grade level, or their teachers are really good and it's not the tutoring that helped them.)
• Social entrepreneur: Just like investing in businesses, the leadership matters.  A great idea won't make it if the organization's director is bad at their job...so inspiring confidence in the leadership team is essential.
• Impact measurement: How are you evaluating your work? (There's no one right answer, as long as you're doing it in a sustainable and sensible way, and can communicate to the donor what kind of reports and measurements they should expect to see in the future.)
• Potential for disruptive innovation: What makes you unique?  Why should a donor give to you, instead of one of the gazillion other organizations trying to solve the same problem/provide the same services?  
• Potential for scale: This is mostly applicable to smaller organizations, but the general question is "if you succeed, can you change the world?"  When you're looking at investments, you want to know if you're investing in a very nice little coffee shop that will serve its neighborhood well, or if you're investing in Starbucks.  Most investors salivate over the latter more than the former, but you have to be honest about what you are and hope to be.
• Governance: This is a different aspect of leadership, and importantly distinct.  But making it clear that this yours is a well governed (and not just well helmed) organization is good for addressing everything from paranoia (how do I know you won't misuse my funds) to agility (if "market conditions" change dramatically tomorrow, will you have the adaptability to change with them?  Think about March of Dimes, which started to combat polio in children...but still exists, despite the near eradication of that disease, thanks to good governance.)

Article Review: Guidestar's Interview with Jerold Panas

Last month, Guidestar published a nice, short and sweet interview with Jerold Panas.  I haven't read his book, but I agreed with much of what he said in this interview.  I'm recommending it (the one page article - make your own choice about the book!) as good advice for new fundraisers and good reminders for those who've been in the trenches a while.

Things I want to highlight and restate:

1. He's got a great formulation for three factors that need to be present for a successful ask: relevancy (the mission, organization and/or project needs to be important to the donor), emotional appeal, and urgency (why give NOW?).  One of the questions I get asked a lot is how you know when to make a solicitation instead of continuing to cultivate...so here's one answer: when you know you can make a relevant, emotional, urgent ask, you're there!  
2. He doesn't use the word explicitly, but much of his advice boils down to empathy.  Can you put yourself in your donors shoes?  This is not a generalized phenomenon - we're not talking about you being able to think of several perspectives that groups of potential supporters might have...that's good too, and an extension of honing your empathic skills, but in this case we're talking about specific people.  Do you know your donor well enough to structure a great solicitation - who should make the ask, what questions will the donor ask (or not ask), how should you actually phrase "will you give me money?" Can you project yourself into this person's mind?  (Check back for future posts on building up your empathy levels - it's an incredibly useful tool, for every aspect of your life!)
3. Again, this is my word, not his, but authenticity is an incredibly important part of successful fundraising.  Jerold talks about making sure to "sing your own song."  It's true.  You need to figure out your own, authentic style - for making solicitations, but also for stewardship, cultivation, communications...and it has to be real, passionate, full of integrity and enthusiasm - authentically you.  That's not easy - for many of us, we're trying hard to be "us" in general, to find ourselves, to find balance, etc.  Adding in a quest to then translate that moving target into a professional version of ourselves is a challenge, to say the least - but it's part of life, and it's part of fundraising.

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?

  

Mailbag: I think my biggest donor hates me

A very edited version of a question received from a friend/reader:

Q: It's my first year in a new position, and we're working on launching a capital campaign.  We really really need a huge new gift from my organization's biggest donor...but I think she hates me.  It's messing with my head, paralyzing me with fear, and making it hard to think about anything else.  I don't think the campaign will succeed without her, and what if it's my fault she turns us down?

A: OK, so the stakes seem high here, but I don't know if you're making an honest assessment, or whether your fear is leading you to obsess about a worst case scenario.

I'm going to answer two parts of your question separately - the biggest problem you're having is paralyzing fear.  That's something you need to fix immediately, because every day you spend motionless makes it that much harder to get started again.

If we were in a coaching relationship, we'd be working on distancing yourself from all your emotions so that you can step back a couple of times a week and think about your campaign strategy objectively...go back to the basics and break down that campaign into a series of bite-sized goals, then channel all of that anxiety into chipping away at your list of tiny steps forward.

If the thing that's tying you in knots is a complicated situation with one donor (even if it's your biggest donor), you need to be able to sit down at your desk (or take a walk if that's a better way to clear your head) and think about all the pieces of the puzzle.  You're going to need a base of dedicated and involved smaller donors.  What's your plan for reaching the masses?  Work on that while your gears are grinding elsewhere.  You'll need to scour your existing donors for folks who can be wooed into stretching to new heights of giving, and start the wooing process.  You'll need to train and mentor and encourage your board members to get involved.  Maybe you need some printed collateral.  Maybe you're planning a launch event.  The specifics, you'll have to come up with.  But there is inevitably a long list of things you need to do, and there's immense psychological benefit to being able to account for real progress at the end of the day (or week, or month).  Turn your paralyzing fear into nagging fear.  Nagging fears you can live with, or better yet, pin them down and dispel them.

So now let's look at the fear of being hated by a donor.  First of all, why do you think this person hates you?  Unless there was an actual incident - did you accidentally say something offensive? ("Pregnancy suits you!" "...I'm not pregnant.") Did you do something bad? (Accidentally shatter her grandmother's heirloom and priceless vase by knocking it off the coffee table when you had tea at her house?)  If there's no real cause for anger or hate, the odds are that you haven't made that deep of an impression.  Actual hate takes energy to manifest and maintain.  At worst, you're probably just an annoyance.

There are so very many reasons that two people might not click, and that's without figuring in the fact that you're talking about people who met in a rather artificial circumstance - a paid professional whose job it is to connect the donor to the institution and then ultimately ask them for money. It's perfectly fine to not form a personal, deep connection to every donor.  Perhaps this metaphor will help: a great donor relationship casts you in the role of midwife - someone who has a connection with their charge and is honored to be trusted to help the donor bring a new gift into the world.  Most donor relationships have you playing the role of translator - speaking to the donor on behalf of the organization, bringing donor concerns and thoughts back to the organization, and hoping that you can speak both languages well enough to communicate effectively.  A poor donor relationship makes you a translator with an annoying voice or distracting accent.  This should be a comforting perspective: you might not be the translator the donor would imagine or choose, but ultimately, it's not about you.  Really.

Except when it is.  Sometimes, people really are that crazy, and it's not impossible that your worst fears have manifested in this donor.  She hates you AND is willing to hold it against the organization.  Very very unlikely, but not impossible.

You are never the only member on the fundraising team.  So discuss your fears frankly with the rest of your team - an Executive Director, a Director of Development, Board members...Coach one of them through taking over the relationship, or hear what they have to say about making amends and trying to start fresh.  Ask for help.

You might even consider asking the donor.  Tell her you fear that the fact that you two have not developed a warm relationship is getting in the way of her longstanding relationship with your amazing organization, and you know how big a role she has played in its success to date (or the impact her involvement has had, how much she's been appreciated...whatever you think matters most to her).  Ask if you've offended her.  Ask how you can get past your rocky start.  Try to find some small common ground (like, say, a passion for the work that your organization is doing) and start fresh.

It may wind up that you need to hand over the relationship to someone else.  Happens all the time, so it's important to not feel like that move means failure.  Just don't do it from a place of unexamined fear...do it because it makes good sense.

First Dates part 3 - But Enough About Me, Tell Me About You

You don't want to waste a meeting by not telling your prospect about your organization and its programs and needs.  But that's not really why you're there.

Your biggest goal is to be alluring.  You're trying to provoke an emotional response, spark an intense connection.  You want your prospect to be completely smitten with you by the time you part ways...all the better to want to see you again, want to know more about your organization, want to help you change the world (or make great art or fight for justice or whatever you're working to do, in its most grandiose terms).

This is really really hard to wrap your head around unless you're a narcissist or one of those blessed people whose charm can't be turned off.

So now that I've said that, forget about it, unless it's useful to you.  Instead, think about the things that are going to help with that relationship in the long term: listening now (not just listening, but drawing out deeper conversations and stories and soaking in them) and remembering later.

First, learn to be a good listener.  Believe it or not, that's an actual skill that you can work on.  There are people who study listening for a living.  They know the difference between active listening, empathic listening, appreciative listening, informational listening...and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I always find it very odd to read some of these academic papers; it's a little like reading about breathing - something you do all the time without thinking a whole lot about it, and as soon as you see the diagrams and clinical explanations and case studies, that thing that you do (just plain old breathing) starts to feel weird.  You can't stop thinking about it. You notice every breath you take.  Does everyone have that whistle?  Are you breathing too shallow or too deep?

Helpful tip: don't try to teach yourself active listening skills by googling it the night before you meet with someone you really want to impress.  You'll wind up overthinking your own conversational technique and blow the meeting.  These are skills you have to develop and refine over time as part of general professional development.

Straight up/standard active listening technique is a little odd and formulaic.  You do a lot of spitting back whatever the other person has said, and if you haven't figured out how to turn this from a useful counseling technique into something that feels and flows naturally, the person you're talking to is either going to think you're a condescending schmuck, or not quite all there.  (Either way, it behooves you to practice in a safe space until you've gotten the hang of it.)

But here's why you want to do it: People love it when they feel someone is listening to them and is actually interested in what they have to say.  Done properly, active listening gets folks to open up, builds trust, reduces the judgment and emotions you're bringing into the conversation, and vastly improves your memory for what's being communicated.  And notice I said communicated - you'll have better memories not only of what was said, but for body language and tone and other non-verbal cues.

Second, make a mental checklist of the things you'd like to find out during the meeting.   Like most things in life, if you know what you're looking for, you're more likely to find it.

Here's a good general list of First Date Big Questions.  Use this as a starting point, not as gospel.  For your list, remember to keep it short.  You can only keep 4 - 7 things actively in your mind at a time, so that's a really good size limit for your mental checklist.  (Check out the research on working memory if you're curious why I say this, and yes, working memory capacity varies with individuals.  Still.  Keep your list  short and manageable.)

1. What is this person's relationship to/interest in the mission of my organization?
2. How does this person perceive my organization (what does s/he know about us and our work, does s/he have an accurate picture or, if not, is it worth trying to correct that)?
3. What drives this person?
4. How does this person like to be perceived by others?
5. What do they consider their biggest triumphs and/or fears?

You'll note - none of these are questions that can simply be asked outright.  You need to find the answers cumulatively over the course of your entire conversation.  But anything that adds to these answers, you want to grab and put in your pocket for later.  Dig a little deeper.  

Not specific enough to be added to this list, but things that are always useful to bring out in that first meeting: 

1. Personal anecdotes.  About anything.  Funny stories from their childhood, tales of the workplace, with bonus points for good stories about why your organization's programs or missions have a personal meaning for them. (You're going to be good at active listening at some point, which means you'll be trained to appreciate these stories and file them away without judgment for later, when you can analyze them for insights.)
2. Family information. (How old are their kids, what are their names, what does their spouse do, how close are they to their crazy aunt Lulu...it's all useful to learn and file away.  You'll be a development rock star when you send a nice little handwritten note for a kid's kindergarten graduation, and crazy aunt Lulu may inspire your donor to name something in her honor...you never know when family information will pay off...so pay attention when it comes up!)
3. What book(s) are they reading right now? (The book doesn't so much matter, but the way they talk about it is useful information.  Are they a secret (or not so secret) nerd? A romantic? So exhausted and drained at the end of a day that all they can handle is something with a quick plot and no hidden depth?  And it's a good question to slip in if you get stuck for conversation.  Likewise movies.  And if you need to, you can mention a book you're reading to make it a more fluid question...get creative, but get listening.)

Immediately after the meeting: take notes.  Active listening will help improve your memory, but there's nothing quite like putting it in writing.  And don't wait.  You don't want to risk sending a card addressed to Aidan to your prospect's daughter Adrianne, n'est pas?  And put down everything you can think of - these are notes for you...if something becomes irrelevant, who cares?  Best to sort through a lot of garbage later, if it increases the chances you've got some golden nuggets in your collection of notes.  

First Dates part 2 - What's A Nice Fundraiser Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

When last we left our metaphor, we were walking into the bar, and had just caught sight of our date, who sees you, smiles and waves.  As you head over to him/her, your nerves are about to get the best of you, and all you can think is "What the hell am I doing here, I don't know how to do this, I'm pretty sure I just forgot how to speak English, and I just know I'm going to screw this up and this guy/gal will never ever ever donate a cent to my organization."

Happens to professionals all the time.

Often combined with "Oh my god, what am I going to say to someone with that much money, and what do I do when the check comes?"

Seriously, I hope that all of your problems are this bad.  Because aside from the terror you're feeling, these are all things you can get through.

To help, here's a checklist of four things that you can practice answers to in the shower until you're feeling comfortable with what you have to say (and how you say it.)  If you communicate all four, it's a successful first date...and 3 out of 4 earns you an A-, if you can manage those 3 with grace.

1. Have an elevator pitch for your organization and several of its programs (or the campaign you're fundraising for, if that's relevant - whatever you're hoping to eventually solicit money for, be able to describe it reasonably well in under 30 seconds.)
2. Know how you stand out from the crowd.  What's different about your organization, what's unique about your approach, what distinguishes you from everyone else? (And, lest this not be obvious, never disparage other individuals or organizations when developing this sound bite.  Or ever, really.  It's just tacky, and always reflects poorly on you, eventually.)
3. What do you need? 
• At some point, a savvy donor may ask, even in a first meeting "So what do you need?"  That's great, if you have an answer.  If you don't, that's a huge turnoff.  You'll leave the prospect thinking that the whole meeting has been a waste of time, if you don't even know what you're looking for.  If they don't ask, just knowing "I'm looking for an angel donor to make project X a reality" or "I need an extra $10k a year to hire a web designer," etc. can help guide your conversation.  Example: let's say you need that web designer.  Managing to talk about the importance of a comprehensive web presence, or how amazing it is that organizations that were once hyperlocal are now forced to consider global image thanks to the internet?  Sets you up for this ask eventually.
4. What's your personal story?

• Most people want to relate personally to their fundraiser.  Why do you care enough about this mission/organization to be on the frontline, asking for money right now?  How did you get involved, what does it mean to you?  The answer is rarely going to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth...you want to consider a way of phrasing the truth in a way that a) makes you comfortable (you do not have to lay bare your entire soul) and b) makes the prospect comfortable.  (Raising money for a rape counseling hotline?  "I have enough personal experience that this is deeply important to me" continues the conversation.  "Well, I was raped a couple of times in college" could stop it cold.)

Beyond those four things, you should have lots and lots of stories.  You should have enough material that you could do nothing but talk about your organization for an hour or more, using anecdotes.  Funny or touching stories from the field.  Amazing outcomes.  Lessons learned the hard way.  Profiles of your staff.

You will not tell them all of those stories.  Promise me that!

If you spend a full hour talking about your organization and experiences, it's gone poorly.  (Ever go on a date with someone who just wouldn't shut up about themselves and their accomplishments?  Was there a second date?)

But if you have a lot of material, it's like having a rolodex of good stories, and you can flip through that mental file and pluck out the right one for wherever the conversation takes you.  This is about being prepared for anything, not about trying to say everything you have to say on a first date.

You can wing it, of course, but I personally know the pain of being the kind of person who, when under pressure, is quick to jump to "Oh, that reminds me of this really funny story when..." that ends "Holy batwings, why am I telling this story?!"  If I'm super nervous, my filter for what's appropriate develops holes in the mesh, and I tend to go "blue" as my grandmother used to say.  Or, less damaging but on the same spectrum, you want to be telling stories that enhance the prospect's understanding and/or opinion of your organization.  It's very easy to tell stories that are the equivalent of junk food - lots of calories, might be delicious, but at the end of the day, terrible nutrition and ultimately forgettable.

I've found it very useful to practice and file good nuggets for conversation - you can even give them mental tags for categorization - "shows how well we accomplish our mission" "shows how efficiently we use donations" "shows how we're a spunky grassroots organization" "shows how graceful and dignified we are when fighting battles at the statehouse" "shows our sense of humor in the face of all the hard work we do"...etc.  Whatever you think is important to communicate.  You've given the elevator pitch - now, with your stories, slowly and as part of natural conversation, do what every high school writing teacher told you at some point: show, don't tell.

Preparation is going to make you feel more comfortable.  And that's going to improve everything about this first date.  

Next up: stop talking already.  Ask some questions.

First Dates

Congratulations!  A prospect said yes to a meeting!

Treating this like a first date is a great idea.  But some people are really bad at dating...so let's elaborate.

We all know this person: as soon as they make plans to have drinks with someone, their mind starts spinning wild stories into the future, envisioning a winter wedding, picking out names for their children...and that never works out, because that kind of craziness makes it impossible to simply be there on that first date.  There's no getting to know each other, there's no sense of togetherness - it's just the poor date, tagging along with you and your dreams.

You can't go into a first date hoping that you'll be ready to pop the question by the end of the hour.  So?  Don't approach a first meeting with a prospect thinking that you need to be ready to solicit them by the end of the meeting.

Your job on a date is to get a feel for each other, establish some common ground, introduce yourselves. Donors have a lot of causes competing for their support.  You have a lot of potential donors to court.  Just like dating, the purpose of these meeting is to see if you're a good fit for each other, and if things go well, it's a relationship you build up over time.

It's a two way street.  A lot of folks get thrown by perceived power dynamics - if you're lucky, you're a working stiff, raising money for an organization you love, across the table from someone who is ridiculously, almost unimaginably wealthy.  But on a first date, you cannot see yourself as powerless.  You're trading information, you're feeling each other out.  The second you believe you're begging for table scraps?  Well, it's like someone who goes on a first date and leads with "I'm so grateful you agreed to go out with me.  I'm ugly, boring, unlovable and completely unworthy of your interest, but I'll worship you if you date me."  Won't go well.

Ideally, you are listening more than you're talking, after you make sure that the prospect has a reasonable foundation of knowledge about your organization.  You have a lot to learn about this other person.  What are their likes and dislikes, what missions and causes speak to their heart, what do they support because of a sense of obligation or inherited responsibility, what do they look for in projects to support, what motivates their giving...and also, what do they like about their job, what kind of family do they have, what things might you (your professional persona) and they have in common...and that's just the general questions.  Depending on what kind of organization you're fundraising for, you also want to know how they relate to your cause?  Are you in the arts?  What was the first performance they remember?  Are you working for a homeless shelter?  Have they ever been to one?  

Think about your excitement, meeting a potential mate for a date in a swanky restaurant.  You're dressed up, you have every reason to believe this person is amazing...what do you want the evening to look like?  Well, there may be some awkward introductions at first (hopefully not so awkward!), but you want to settle into an easy conversation where you're asking questions, listening intently to the answers, and responding with tidbits of your own (stories, anecdotes, observations) and then asking the next question based on where the conversation has gone.  You're laughing, you're talking...you want more, when it's time to end the date.

Just make sure you're steering - not just letting the conversation ramble and run away.  A fun coffee date with a prospect that doesn't give them new appreciation for your organization and/or doesn't give you any better sense for who that prospect is as a supporter may be pleasant...but you're not likely to get more of their time.  (That's where the date comparison ends...it's not enough to enjoy each other's company - you're not looking for friends, you're developing a professional relationship, and if you don't provide them with a clear answer to the question "is this worth an hour of my time?" then these prospects will be spending their valuable time elsewhere.)

Be engaging, be charming, make connections.  Leave them wanting more, and make sure you have enough information to be able to follow up in a way that will strengthen that connection.  And most importantly - don't put too much pressure on the date.  Give yourself breathing room, and just enjoy the chance to get to know an amazing person a bit better.

Next up: a little more structure.  What do you want to be sure to communicate, and what do you really want to find out?

Anonymity vs. Public Legacy

Mark Oppenheimer wrote a great article in the New York Times about a couple of different things that motivate big donors: naming rights vs. anonymous donations (and altruistic satisfaction).  He came at it from a religious angle - both Judaism and Christianity elevate anonymous giving, giving without any expectations of recognition or return, giving without strings attached...

Without getting into any whiff of the hierarchical morality of various giving styles, this article can help inexperienced fundraisers gain a little insight into what might drive a donor.  Spend a little time thinking about what these two desires say about a donor - the desire to have your name attached to a building, to leave a legacy, to be recognized and celebrated not only by an organization's leadership but by your peers and the public...and the desire to know what no one else does: that you've changed lives, to feel that you are motivated by purer stuff, to feel like you have fulfilled a commandment.

Then take it one step further: how can your organization provide for these kinds of donors?

Maybe some day we can have a conversation about how some of these ideas might guide you and your organization in crafting your development strategies (are you better at providing for one type of donor motivation than another?  How do you attract those donors?  Are you missing out on a big piece of major donor pie by not being able to reward donors looking for a particular response to their donation?  When it comes to cultivating anonymous donations, or going gung-ho in the other direction, encouraging naming opportunities for every level...are you communicating the right things about your organization?)  More on all that later...

Choosing the right tool: asking for a meeting

So, you've got your pitch prepared, and you've mustered your courage, and you've shellacked your ruefully thin skin so that you won't be terribly damaged by inevitable rejection (as one of my first fundraising mentors was fond of saying - if no one is telling you no, you're not asking enough people.)...

Go forth and ask for some meetings!

And for some people, that brings them to a screeching halt.  Break it down further.  

OK.  So, you've got a lot of choices when in comes to the mode of communication you'll be using.  How do you sort through those?

Let's start with some reasonable criteria you can use to select the right tool from your toolkit.

1. You're likely to be limited by the contact information you have for your prospect.  If you only have a phone number or a mailing address, well, you use what you have, and don't look back.
2. What feels natural/most comfortable for you?  Are you the kind of person who would rather have the immediate give and take of a live conversation, where you can tell jokes and gauge the response (instead of being terrified they'll be misread in an email), where you can purr and pluck your voice to make sure your message stands out?  Pick up the phone.  Are you terrified of accidentally getting caught like a deer in headlights unless you have time to write everything out?  Email sounds good.  It's a great idea to default to whatever method lets you relax and shine.
3. On the other hand, you need to balance that with what you know about your prospect.  Take every person as an individual, of course...but if you're dealing with a Millenial whiz kid who's made a couple of fortunes already as a tech entrepreneur, email is probably your best bet, if not some other kind of electronic medium.  If you're approaching an old school, noblesse oblige philanthropist in their late 80s, a handwritten note on good stationery might be the way to go.
4. What's your time horizon?  Let's say you live in Boston and have to be in New York a week from Thursday, and you're looking to meet with a couple of people while you're there.  The US Postal Service is not going to do it for you.  Let's say you're looking to connect with a Forbes List billionaire who has a home two blocks from your headquarters, and it's less about when and more about making the best possible impression.  That's a great time to take the long view and get your board member's spouse's great aunt (who plays bridge with said billionaire on Wednesday afternoons) to finagle an introduction.  (Obviously, those kind of machinations do not turn on a dime!)

So what should you have in your toolbox, anyway?  For starters (and I've gone with bullets instead of a numbered list, to help you remember that I'm not listing these in any hierarchy...you have to decide which is best for any given situation):

• Email.  Useful and commonly accepted.  Often has a very swift turnaround. Spam filters can be a hazard.  Keeping it short is *essential* - no one scrolls down too far for someone they don't know.  You can include links, which, if done right, can be very engaging (without having to write more in that initial email).  If you don't have a formal record-keeping system where you save and categorize all your outgoing communications, you now have a record of what you sent to the prospect.
• Snail Mail.  Can help you stand out - people don't get a whole lot of actual person to person mail anymore.  Has to be opened and read...so you have to make sure not to look like a piece of junk mail.  You can send brochures or one-pagers or other pretty/graphic items that help tell your story, or even tchochkes...IF you think it helps your case.  You can type a longer letter or send a handwritten note for greater personalization.  Takes a couple of days at best to arrive.  Much harder to get someone to send a letter back than to click "reply."  Think about whether to mail to someone's home or office (what message does that send?).
• Social Media sites (LinkedIn and Facebook are the two big ones currently; there are others and fashions will evolve - this advice remains constant.)  Many of the advantages of email, but with the added benefit that the recipient can immediately see that they have x friends who already support you.  Usage is less normalized than email - e.g., some folks may be on Facebook 24/7, while others have virtually forgotten that they have the account and their inbox is not set up to alert them that they have a new message.  Some folks think Facebook is a place where they socialize with friends rather than interface with the public.  Some folks treat LinkedIn as a place for their business networking...rather than a place where folks might find them and solicit funds.  Note: a request for a meeting should always be done in a private message, even on these sites.  DO NOT place such a request on a public forum, even on one of these sites.  It would be terrible etiquette.  Potential exception: Twitter.  If you've developed a back and forth with someone on Twitter, go ahead and tweet an invitation as an extension of your conversation, but remember that it's not a private chat and adjust accordingly.  But it might be better to form a relationship via twitter and then email.
• Phone. Patented in 1876.  Pretty useful since then and still a great way to reach out and touch someone.  No worries about someone misreading the tone of your writing.  You can prepare all you want, but you can't be entirely scripted the way a written invitation is.  You can adapt on the fly as you talk to the person.  Very immediate.  You need to be equally prepared to have a conversation or to leave a message.  
• In person.  No, this isn't a case of scheduling a meeting to make a meeting...quite.  Let's say you see someone at a cocktail party - you can ask them for a meeting, get them to say yes, and arrange to call their office on Monday to figure out the details.  And if you think that's an approach that will work, this is a great long play - getting in the same room with someone for the purpose of catching their attention long enough to get them to agree to an actual "first date."  For folks who are (or are virtually) public figures, this might be the most successful way to open that door.  Biggest con: these are hard to manufacture/navigate, and you've got the additional pressure of a potential rejection happening real time, in your face, that you must deal with gracefully. 
• Friend of a friend set-ups.  If you can have someone who knows you and your organization open a door for you, that's almost always the best way to introduce yourself and ask for that first meeting.  But most of the time, that'll take the form of an introduction at an event you're both at, or an email of introduction where you're cc'd (and then need to follow up directly), or your friend giving you contact information for your prospect and allowing you to use their name ("Jane Doe told me I should give you a call because you might be interested in what we do...").  Some times, that friend will arrange a meeting for you...could be one on one, most commonly is a lunch or coffee where that friend will be present along with your prospect.  Going back to our dating metaphor, this one is definitely matchmaking.  It takes as long as it takes.  And for better and worse, you hitch yourself to the reputation of your matchmaker (could be great, but not everyone with access to wealthy philanthropists is liked by them...tread cautiously, using your gut).  Some matchmakers are terrible meddlers (if they're at the meeting, some will insert themselves in the conversation - again, for better and worse...depends on the person!).  You have to really be on your game and exceptionally charming at that meeting, because unlike the rest of these approaches, where the person has said yes because of something you have done, they may only be at that meeting because of social pressure and obligations to someone else entirely...so you've got more work to do to win them over!

Not on the list:

• Texting.  For the moment, this still seems too informal in most scenarios, for a first point of contact with someone you've never met.  How do you introduce yourself and ask for a favor in 140 characters?  But younger generations are eschewing email and phone for texting, at least statistically...so think about using texts if it makes sense, but only in connection with another method.  For instance: go "speed-dating" at a young philanthropists conference, and secure both phone numbers and permission to be in touch for a coffee date "some time soon."  Then it might be OK to text a followup the next day and suggest a meeting.  Just make sure it makes sense and feels like the best way to communicate...novelty alone isn't necessarily the best way to stand out.

What are some of the most effective ways you've asked for meetings with cold (or at least cool) prospects?