Blog Archives
Echoing Penelope from the trenches. Do your volunteers “get it”?
As all of you know, I am a Penelope Burk fan from my head down to my toes. Her book Donor Centered Fundraising is a resource development manifesto for me. I’ve dedicated a number of blog posts to various donor-centered topics ranging from cultivation and stewardship strategies to newsletters and gift acknowledgement letters. I just love blogging about these topics. So, it is especially thrilling for me when a volunteer picks up on these themes and joins the ranks of people spreading the donor centered fundraising message and Penelope’s work.
Last week, an old Boy Scout friend and volunteer who subscribes to this blog sent me an email. Jim is still a volunteer at Northwest Suburban Council in Mount Prospect, Illinois and he is very involved in the parent-teacher organization at his child’s school. Needless to say, he has been involved in countless fundraising activities throughout the years.
Jim’s email was simply him forwarding me an eBlast from Guidestar that was titled “More Money For More Good” and promoted one of Guidestar’s free guidebook resources that they call “More Money for More Good: Your Nonprofit Guidebook to Fundraising with Impact“.
I always love it when friends, family and blog subscribers send me stuff because I am always on the lookout for topic ideas. So, I read the Guidestar eBlast and it echoed all of the good teaching of Penelope Burk on the subject of donor centered fundraising (e.g. impact, donor communication, etc). I even clicked on the cute, informational YouTube video about “How Nonprofits Can Improve Fundraising, Increase Effectiveness, and Better Engage with Donors“.
Guidestar is great. They are smart. Their stuff is always quality, and I hope you click-through and access some of their resources because it will surely help your agency with its year-end fundraising efforts.
However, it was the words from my friend, Jim, that resonated most with me because it was straight from a volunteer’s mouth and his point of view (which I think is much more powerful than what any professional organization can communicate).
Here is what Jim said in his first email that included that Guidestar eBlast:
“We know what we’re doing because we do it (almost) every day, but our donors don’t necessarily live and breathe our mission/passion. They’re more apt to help if we remind them what we’re doing & how they could help.”
I couldn’t have said it better, Jim!
In his second email responding to my request to use his name and story as part of this blog, he elaborated more on his original point:
“The reminder about having donors understand my organization’s impact is what jumped out at me. I have people who are so involved and they are my organization’s best cheerleaders, but they do not realize that the people they are soliciting do not really know what we do. Making people understand what we do and why we exist is the key to making them care.”
Again, I think Jim hits the nail on the head with this last statement and it should give every fundraising professional a tingling sensation when they hear one of their fundraising volunteers or board members vocalize such powerful points of view.
Perhaps, at this point, you’re wondering how close Jim might have nailed the concept? Well, here is something Penelope Burk said on page 87 of her book about her donor research and this topic:
“23% of study donors always or most of the time receive measurable results of their gifts at work; 29% receive this information sometimes; 55% never or rarely get this information. A number of other questions in the study confirmed that measurable results influence donors’ future support more than anything else.”
How much would you pay to be in the trenches with a fundraising volunteer who ‘gets it’ like Jim? The better question is “what are you doing to help your volunteers achieve these ‘ah-ha’ moments? Once one volunteer has this epiphany, how do you position that same volunteer to become an advocate and help their fellow volunteers have similar revelations?
I think there is an important lesson for all fundraising and non-profit professionals to be learned from Jim’s story. Please scroll down and share a few quick thoughts and answers to the questions above in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.
Here’s to your health!
Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847
Non-profit inside-the-box thinking: Donors are the boss
As promised in last Friday’s post, I am dedicating yesterday, today and tomorrow to challenging proponents of “outside-the-box thinking” and examining various “inside-the-box thinking” principles. This week’s posts were determined by DonorDreams blog subscribers who took the time to voice their opinions via a poll last Friday. Thank you to those of you who voted. Additionally, the foundation of these posts are rooted in Kirk Cheyfitz’s book “Thinking Insider The Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business.”
DonorDreams blog subscribers voted to hear more about chapter five of Cheyfitz’s book, which is titled “The Box Top: Customers Are The Boss”.
I love how the author starts each chapter with a short sentence that serves as “food for thought”. The following is how chapter one was started:
“Give customers what they want, not what you want to give them.”
Most of this chapter talks about how the “customer experience” has been the foundation of our economy for centuries and is easily traced back to the Middle Ages. Cheyfitz does a great job telling readers about customer-centric lessons we can all take to heart that were developed by the silk merchants in the 1300s, the town butchers in the 1700s, and the department store barons like Sears and Wards in the 1900s. It was eye-opening to see how the author took seemingly “modern” business practices (e.g. using CRM to segment customers into niches, using customer loyalty programs to reduce turnover, etc) and trace them back to pre-Magna Carta days.
As I attempt to make heads-or-tails out of this chapter for non-profits, it strikes me that non-profits have a more difficult challenge than their for-profit cousins when it comes to focusing on customers and thinking inside-the-box.
Why? Because when a non-profit reads the word “customer,” two different images are conjured up . . . “donor” and “client”. I believe that successful non-profit leaders are able to balance these interests and develop customer-focused approaches for both audiences. However, for the balance of this blog post, I am just going to focus on the donor side of this equation.
For those of you who routinely read DonorDreams blog, it won’t be surprising to learn that everything Cheyfitz talks about in chapter five aligns perfectly with what Penelope Burk espouses in her book “Donor Centered Fundraising“. You can see this is clearly the case from the following language on page 74:
“Simply put: Find out what customers really want, then give it to them. Make sure they have plenty of choices — in what they buy, where they buy, how they buy, and how they pay for it all. And address them personally, talk to them honestly, and treat them well every step of the way.“
The bigger question for me is: “How many non-profit organizations are really doing this?”
- We work hard to convince donors to give us unrestricted gifts rather than funding a specific program.
- We write funding proposals aimed at telling donors what we need.
- We solicit donors using tactics that fit our needs and match our resources rather than how the donor feels most comfortable being solicited.
- We fire off a database generated thank you letter and skimp on the transparency when it comes to showing donors exactly what their contribution paid for and what good it helped do.
As I think back to some of the most successful donor relationships that I’ve personally built, it really goes back to personal interaction, building a relationship into a friendship, understanding what the donor really wanted to get out of the relationship, and treating them like I treat members of my family.
So, how can non-profit organizations get back to the customer service principles used by the small town butcher or general store owner? How do we build our box and think inside of it rather than trying to “think outside-the-box”?
At the end of this chapter, Cheyfitz offers six different tips on how to build this box. I won’t ruin the surprise (because you should buy this book and read it), but I will share two of his tips to whet your appetite:
- Never assume you know the reason a customer does anything. Always ask. Always listen. Always use the resulting information.
- When creating a customer relationship plan, ask . . .
- Who needs to be talked to and courted?
- What different groups do they fall into?
- What outcomes are desired?
- What messages will be delivered?
- How will success be measured?
Not only will these tips help you craft an awesome stewardship plan for your donors, but they are the basis for almost any plan you will ever write for you organization (e.g. strategic plan, marketing plan, business plan, board development plan, etc).
It is easy to conclude after reading this chapter that if you’re not personally sitting down with at least one donor every day, then you’re not living “inside-the-box” and your organization is not donor-centered.
How do you meet your donors’ needs? How do you know what those needs are? How do you successfully align donors needs with your clients’ needs? What are you doing to keep this “inside-the-box” principle in front of you every single day? Please use the comment box below to share answers to these questions or any other thoughts that this post may have inspired.
Here’s to your health!
Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847
Don’t sing the ‘goodbye song’ to your non-profit donors
Welcome to O.D. Fridays at DonorDreams blog. Every Friday for the foreseeable future we will be looking more closely at a recent post from John Greco’s blog called “johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly” and applying his organizational development messages to the non-profit community.
Today, I am focusing on a post that John wrote about attribution theory and contingency theory based upon a “classroom song” story that a friend shared with him over a fierce game of Scrabble. After reading his post, a song jumped into my head from my days at Grace Pre-School in Mount Prospect, Illinois. It goes something like this:
“Grace Pre-School is over and its time for us to go home;
Goodbye, goodbye;
Be always kind and good;
Goodbye, goodbye;
Be always kind and good.”
That was the song we sang at the end of the day when it was time to pack-up and go home. I can’t believe how four decades later that song sprung into my head as conveniently as if I had just sung it yesterday.
At the ripe old age of four, that pre-school song helped me bring the school day to a close. It reminded me to put my toys away, say goodbye to my friends, get my coat and bag, find my Mom, and leave the building without shedding a tear. It only worked within the confines of the church that housed my pre-school program. It didn’t result in me being “kind and good” . . . you can ask my Mom and she’ll tell you that I could be a terror on certain days.
To think that singing my pre-school — anywhere and anytime — would yield the same results or “cause” me to be “kind and good” is quite simply misattribution.
In the non-profit fundraising world, we do this all the time with donors and it goes something like this:
- Contribution comes into the office,
- The contribution is entered into the donor database,
- The computer generates a thank you letter that is sent to the donor,
- The donor gets added to a newsletter mailing list, and they receive a few newsletters,
- Another solicitation is made that results in another contribution.
Cha-ching! The donor is conditioned. The money rolls in. It is oh so simple. I can almost hear fundraising professionals singing a song that goes something like this:
Cause and effect is such a great thing until you realize that you’ve attributed the wrong stimulus to the wrong results.
Penelope Burk, CEO of Cygnus Applied Research, does a great job in this interview with The Chronicle of Philanthropy of debunking the myths associated with singing the donor song. She points to research illustrating how the average non-profit loses 50% of donors somewhere between their first and second contribution to their agency.
Huh? I wonder if those fundraising professionals mistakenly sang my pre-school “goodbye song” to their donors instead of the “money song”. LOL
All kidding aside, Burk is the queen of “Donor-Centered Fundraising” which tells us that cookie cutter approaches to donor stewardship result in high turnover rates. Donors stop donating because they feel “over-solicited”. Many fundraising professionals hear this and think that fewer solicitations are the remedy. This conclusion is simply not true. Burk does a great job of explaining the subtle nuances behind “over-solicitation” in The Chronicle of Philanthropy interview:
“. . . over-solicitation is not a frequency of asks in a set period of time; rather, it is being asked to give again before donors are satisfied about what happened with their last gift.”
- Every donor is like a snowflake — they’re different.
- Everyone has a different threshold for what they need to see in order to be satisfied about what happened with their last gift.
- No one responds to the same stewardship activities the same way.
When Burk talks about being “donor-centered,” she is really saying that we need to get to know our donors individually. We need to craft stewardship strategies around donors’ needs and preferences in order to avoid “over-solicitation”.
Am I hearing some of you mutter words like “crazy” and “impossible“? If so, then I encourage you to dwell and explore the following ideas:
- database contact records
- segmentation
- surveys
- discussions
- focus groups
- stewardship plan
My parting advice to you is stop misattributing the “money song” to securing donations because you are losing half of your donors after their first contribution and 90% by the fifth gift. Read up on the concepts of “Attribution Theory” and “Contingency Theory” and stop singing the “Goodbye song” to your donors.
How does your non-profit organization customize its stewardship activities to individual donors? Do you just do so for your major gift prospects? Where do you store your individualized stewardship plans? What role does your donor database play in managing your Moves Management program? Can you share your success results? Did your donor loyalty rate improve?
Here’s to your health!
Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847
Saying “Thank You” in a Donor-Centered Manner
Penelope Burk, CEO of Cygnus Applied Research, has done a lot of research into what it means to be donor-centered. She knows what motivates donors, and she know what troubles donors. If you haven’t purchased and read her book — “Donor Centered Fundraising” — then you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve read her book a number of times and walk away from each experience learning something new.
On page 46 of Burk’s book, she reports the following about what her data says about prompt donor recognition:
“Prompt gift acknowledgement influences 44 percent of study donors’ future giving decisions. 38 percent of study donors receive a thank you letter within two weeks; 54 percent within a month; 8 percent within two months.”
I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it is one thing to “academically” understand this concept and a completely different thing to “emotionally” understand it.
Without getting into embarrassing details, I recently made a $1,000 contribution to a non-profit organization. Not only did I get the acknowledgement letter three weeks later, but the letter wasn’t personalized nor did it contain the right information.
Adding insult to injury, this non-profit organization sent me another solicitation within a week.
Truth-be-told . . . I still like this organization. Their mission is awesome and very necessary. I might even go to the event to which they just invited me. However, nothing they are doing can be considered “donor-centered”. The consequence, of course, will likely be falling donor loyalty rates.
Make it a policy of your organization to produce a mail a gift acknowledgement letter within 24 hours of receiving a pledge or contribution of any size. After the board adopts a set of written fundraising policies, they need to hold the executive director accountable for implementation. Remember, that which gets measured, gets done!
All of this policy talk got me thinking about my experiences with organizations and their written resource development policies. In all honesty, I have not seen any written resource development policies recently. Sure, I’ve seen document destruction policies . . . whistleblower protection policies . . . financial controls policies . . . conflict of interest policies . . . BUT no written resource development policies.
As recent as last week, I’ve been asking everyone who will listen if they could send me a copy of their agency’s donor database policy and procedures manual. Yep, you guessed it. Everyone talked a great game, but I only received one sample (kinda).
Why is it that many of us take every other policy challenge that is thrown out way seriously, but seem to cut corners when it comes to resource development policies?
Rolling up our sleeves and engaging fundraising volunteers, board members, and donors in writing resource development policies provides us an opportunity to align our fundraising practices (e.g. gift acknowledgement letters) with donor-centered practices. In turn this activity might help improve our donor loyalty rates.
Click here for some stand alone policies pertaining to resource development.
When is the last time your organization reviewed and revised its fundraising policies? Where are those written policies captured (e.g. SOP manual? RD Plan? Stand along policy documents?) Who did you engage in revising your policies the last time you undertook this task? Please scroll down and use the comment box to answer some of these questions or weigh-in with your opinion.
Here’s to your health!
Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847
You’re FIRED!
I’m not sure who I enjoy more when it comes to terminating employees or contestants — Vince McMahon (owner of WWE) or Donald Trump (of Celebrity Apprentice fame). Personally, I couldn’t stop laughing throughout the Donald’s YouTube video as he fired Star Wars characters. You really should click that link. ROTFLMAO!!!
So, what does this have anything to do with non-profits, fundraising and donors? For the first time in my life, I heard a donor say: “Someone needs to be fired over this.” Ever since that conversation, I haven’t been able to get The Donald out of my head.
The “back story” to this conversation is really simple. In fact, you won’t believe it at first.
I was catching up with an old friend, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, and our conversation turned to my efforts to open a non-profit consulting practice. Shortly after updating them on where I was with legal paperwork, marketing and business development, they wished me luck and said “non-profits need a lot of help”.
Well, I couldn’t let that comment go by the wayside. So, I asked what they meant. After a sigh, they shared a story about how one of the non-profit organizations (to which they loyally contribute) screwed up the “donor honor roll and giving levels” in their annual report. Without getting into specifics, let’s just say it was somthing like: their name was misspelled, they were listed in the wrong giving level, they didn’t want to be publicly recognized, etc.
As I referenced earlier, this donor wasn’t just annoyed . . . they were angry enough to say: “Someone needs to be fired over this.” After stewing on this conversation for a good long while, I’ve decided that there must be some good lessons to be learned from this situation. So, I did a little research and decided to share those findings with you today because as I always say “we can learn from each other”.
As I tend to always do, I turned to the person I consider my fundraising guru — Penelope Burk — who conducts annual donor surveys on this subject and published the book “Donor-Centered Fundraising“. I encourage everyone to buy a copy of that book and internalize it. Here is what Penelope reports in her book on pages 125-126:
- 93% of non-profit agencies recognize their donors using various vehicles such as a newsletter, annual report, etc. Of these organizations, 65% list their donors by gift level and 22% list them alphabetically.
- When Penelope asked those non-profits why they do this, 49% said they think it helps attract other donors, 47% said they believe it creates donor loyalty, 19% said stated it helps showcase philanthropy and the newsworthiness of charitable giving, and 17% believe it encourages gifts of higher value.
- Upon further investigation, the research shows that there are a number of potential pitfalls associated with recognizing donors in this fashion including: 1) accidentally omitting someone’s name, 2) misspellings, 3) accidentally reporting someone’s name when they contributed anonymously, and 4) accounting for multiple gifts throughout the year and putting a donor in the wrong giving level. This doesn’t even address the problems associated with cost, staff time, etc.
- Here is the kicker . . . 71% of individuals and 83% of corporate donors told Penelope that the donor honor roll had no influence on the size of their gift. Even more to the point, 90% indicated in the survey that they want to be asked first before a non-profit agency publicly recognizes them.
I am a huge advocate for donor recognition and stewardship. If you want to create donor loyalty, your organization needs to invest in newsletters, handwritten notes, websites, impact reports, donor recognition societies, annual reports, stewardship events and receptions, etc. However, these things cannot be after-thoughts because that is when mistakes get made and donors get angry.
Think of it this way, don’t you think a $25,000 gift (or any size contribution for that matter) entitles you to having your name spelled correctly or being placed in the right giving range? More importantly than just recognition, shouldn’t non-profits be accountable to their donors and demonstrate a return on investment back to their investors?
I must admit that I used to be a big fan of donor honor rolls, but I’m re-thinking my position after seeing how passionate my friend was over that mistake. I guess this is where I am at after a few cups of coffee and a little research:
- Figure out a way to ask donors for their permission before publishing their names in anything. It could be as simple as a check box on the pledge form and a line asking them how they’d like their name to appear.
- I’m almost inclined to stop listing people by giving levels and just publish their names alphabetically. Stephen Colbert scrolls the names of donors to his SuperPac along the bottom of the television screen without any indication of contribution level, and this seems to work just fine.
I keep coming back to conversations I’ve had with donors who say: “recognition isn’t important to me”. I now think that my favorite childhood cartoon characters — Tom & Jerry — might have taught me a very important lesson with regards to donors who say this. Click here to see a YouTube video to refresh your memory!
So, if you never forget these two things: 1) You’re FIRED and 2) “Don’t You Believe It”, then you should always be fine when it comes to donor recognition and stewardship.
What are your thoughts about donor honor rolls? Do you still list people by giving level? If so, why and how do you prevent mistakes from happening? Do you ask donors permission before publishing their names? How do you go about doing this? Please use the comment box below to weigh-in because we can all learn from each other.
Here is to your health!
Erik Anderson Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC eanderson847@gmail.com http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847 http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847 http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847Fundraising volunteers speak out: Part 4
After last week’s focus on donors and what they have to say about their charitable contributions, I’ve decided to change the focus and ask volunteer solicitors to talk about their most rewarding solicitation experience and what needs to happen to keep them involved next year. Similar to last week, this week’s respondents answered an anonymous online survey that they learned about on various social media channels and from blast emails. I’ve picked four really awesome responses to share with you this week that I think provide excellent lessons for non-profit and fundraising professionals. Enjoy!!!
Again … the survey was anonymous because I wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing up the truth. Here is what the today’s highlighted survey respondent said:
Question: Using the comment box below, please write a paragraph or two about your most rewarding solicitation experience (e.g. when you sat down eyeball-to-eyeball with someone else and asked them to consider making a charitable contribution). Why was it so rewarding for you? How did you feel going into the meeting? And what made you feel comfortable enough with doing such a solicitation?
Answer: I asked the Frye Foundation for money to create a four state event around domestic violence and homeless families. It was rewarding because they became a very interested, active participant in the process and the outcome.
Question: Understanding you are probably a very busy person, what does the charity that you’ve made some solicitation calls for need to do (or show you) in order to renew your commitment as a volunteer solicitor in the next fundraising campaign?
Answer: It needs to call to my ethics . . . it needs to be well run and respected . . . and it needs to show results.
OK … unlike last week when I couldn’t resist weighing in with my thoughts, I’m going to take a risk and ask YOU to weigh-in and share what you think the moral to the story is. And the risk I’m referring to is . . . no one is going to comment and all anyone will hear is the sound of crickets. Please use the comment box below and remember that we can all learn from each other. I also encourage you to share links to resources that you’ve found on the internet.
Here is to your health!
Erik Anderson Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC eanderson847@gmail.com http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847 http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847 http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847Fundraising volunteers speak out: Part 3
After last week’s focus on donors and what they have to say about their charitable contributions, I’ve decided to change the focus and ask volunteer solicitors to talk about their most rewarding solicitation experience and what needs to happen to keep them involved next year. Similar to last week, this week’s respondents answered an anonymous online survey that they learned about on various social media channels and from blast emails. I’ve picked four really awesome responses to share with you this week that I think provide excellent lessons for non-profit and fundraising professionals. Enjoy!!!
Again … the survey was anonymous because I wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing up the truth. Here is what the today’s highlighted survey respondent said:
Question: Using the comment box below, please write a paragraph or two about your most rewarding solicitation experience (e.g. when you sat down eyeball-to-eyeball with someone else and asked them to consider making a charitable contribution). Why was it so rewarding for you? How did you feel going into the meeting? And what made you feel comfortable enough with doing such a solicitation?
Answer: I was asked by one of my favorite non-profit organizations to contact someone who I really didn’t consider a friend but knew casually through mutual friends. It took more than a month and many phone calls before she responded and I was able to get the meeting. While I was not expecting much, I did get a generous pledge from her. I’m not sure if it was the most “rewarding” solicitation I’ve ever done, but it is the hardest I ever had to work to secure a contribution. In hindsight, I can’t honestly say that I ever felt “comfortable” making that ask or being put in that situation.
Question: Understanding you are probably a very busy person, what does the charity that you’ve made some solicitation calls for need to do (or show you) in order to renew your commitment as a volunteer solicitor in the next fundraising campaign?
Answer: I don’t want to go out and bust my butt if the non-profit who has recruited me is seen as being in “poor standing” in the community. I am attaching my good name to this agency, and choosing to help a non-profit with a poor public opinion and bad management reflects poorly on me. I look for quality organizations that are dedicated to sustainable business practices.
OK … unlike last week when I couldn’t resist weighing in with my thoughts, I’m going to take a risk and ask YOU to weigh-in and share what you think the moral to the story is. And the risk I’m referring to is . . . no one is going to comment and all anyone will hear is the sound of crickets. Please use the comment box below and remember that we can all learn from each other. I also encourage you to share links to resources that you’ve found on the internet.
Here is to your health!
Erik Anderson Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC eanderson847@gmail.com http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847 http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847 http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847Fundraising volunteers speak out: Part 2
After last week’s focus on donors and what they have to say about their charitable contributions, I’ve decided to change the focus and ask volunteer solicitors to talk about their most rewarding solicitation experience and what needs to happen to keep them involved next year. Similar to last week, this week’s respondents answered an anonymous online survey that they learned about on various social media channels and from blast emails. I’ve picked four really awesome responses to share with you this week that I think provide excellent lessons for non-profit and fundraising professionals. Enjoy!!!
Again … the survey was anonymous because I wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing up the truth. Here is what the today’s highlighted survey respondent said:
Question: Using the comment box below, please write a paragraph or two about your most rewarding solicitation experience (e.g. when you sat down eyeball-to-eyeball with someone else and asked them to consider making a charitable contribution). Why was it so rewarding for you? How did you feel going into the meeting? And what made you feel comfortable enough with doing such a solicitation?
Answer: I don’t know if I have ever felt that making the actual ask was rewarding. Getting a check in hand feels rewarding. On the other hand, having someone not give you money is just as deflating. I think the feeling you get from having a face-to-face solicitation is not immediately rewarding. I believe it is when you “put it [the ask] in perspective” that you can feel rewarded. You went out there and stood up for something you believed in. If you can capture that feeling I think that is reward enough. As far as what makes you feel comfortable. It is the relationship with the person you are soliciting. The better the relationship, the easier it is to solicit.
Question: Understanding you are probably a very busy person, what does the charity that you’ve made some solicitation calls for need to do (or show you) in order to renew your commitment as a volunteer solicitor in the next fundraising campaign?
Answer: I think that the organization just needs to understand the challenge of asking people for money. I think it needs to be careful not too lean on people too heavily. Think of each volunteer differently, account for what might make certain asks hard. I think ultimately you want someone to appreciate you and the fact that you are really putting yourself out there.
OK … unlike last week when I couldn’t resist weighing in with my thoughts, I’m going to take a risk and ask YOU to weigh-in and share what you think the moral to the story is. And the risk I’m referring to is . . . no one is going to comment and all anyone will hear is the sound of crickets. Please use the comment box below and remember that we can all learn from each other. I also encourage you to share links to resources that you’ve found on the internet.
Here is to your health!
Erik Anderson Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC eanderson847@gmail.com http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847 http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847 http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847