“Marc excels at taking...ideas from the marketplace...making the concepts applicable to not-for-profit...showing how, turning broad models into concrete, bite-size action steps.”
As a fundraiser, it’s so easy to get jaded. To think we’ve seen it all. But curiousity is one of the most important tools a fundraiser can have. It helps in every step of the “Get R.E.A.L.” fundraising process:
Research: If you’re curious, you will not just enter someone’s email address, but notice that it’s a unique domain name and go check it out. Even if it doesn’t lead to a major discovery, it can be a talking point with the donor.
Engage: Being curious as you engage a donor involves asking perceptive questions. Once, while in the lobby of a factory that produced wrought iron products, I asked how paint got on the iron. That started a 2-hour tour of the plant, including a long (and fascinating) explanation of a new piece of equipment that not only fused the powder with the iron but also recovered the waste. The donor would never have spent that much time if all I talked about was my nonprofit. Curiosity shows donors you are interested in them and their business, not just what they can do for you.
Ask: Curiosity can be invaluable after making the ask. As the prospect processes how that size a gift might be possible, you can honestly ask curious questions like “When might be a good time to ask you in the future?” or “Would it be easier to make smaller pledge payments now and then bigger ones after the kids are out of college?”
Love: Curiosity will help ensure you are thanking donors in ways that mean something to them. Do they want public accolades? Or is a private lunch with the executive director more appropriate? Curiosity will lead you to show them gratitude in ways they will receive it.
The great thing about curiosity is that, when it’s genuine, it is always well received. Rather than being seen as annoying or probing, questions sparked from genuine curiosity show incredible respect for the donor and the things that are important to them. You can even draw on things you’ve read or heard in other places. “I was just reading that the publishing industry is trying to do x, y, and z to adapt. Is that similar in your industry?”
Even though you’ll be tempted to be the person with all the answers, if you want to be successful as a fundraiser, stay curious.
“Sheesh. I can’t remember their name…but if I saw their face! Then I’d know them!”
How often have you heard that said? Or said it yourself?
If you’re doing nonprofit marketing or fundraising on the web with social media like Facebook and Twitter, you know the importance of having your face (or logo if you must) associated with your account.
But have you ever left a comment on someone’s blog and wonder why some people have faces with their comments while others don’t?
It’s all to do with the email address you use in the comment form.
Thanks to a site called Gravatar.com, that email address locates a picture of you.
Register for free, and you can upload an image to be used on blogs across the web. The best part is, you get to associate different images with different emails. Sort of like a mullet, right? One image for your email that’s “all business on top”; another image for your email that’s “all party in the back.”
Can you see how much more professional people look with a real face next to their comments? So do yourself a favor and head over to Gravatar.com. You’ll be helping people put a face to your name in no time!
Have you checked out Google Docs? I keep finding remarkable ways to use this for collaboration!
For example, an organization I work with recently ran a phonathon that didn’t involve asking for money, but asking people to advocate for our cause. Our database administrator did the sort and dumped hundreds of names exported onto two Excel spreadsheets with just the minimum of information: record number, city, state, first name, last name, phone number.
That’s all we needed to make these calls.
The problem was, if we printed out multiple copies of these sheets and gave the sheets to each caller, we would run into the very real possibility that we’d unknowingly call people two or three times. Multiple calls were fine, but only if they were planned!
Just giving the sheets to callers was a bit problematic too. Not all of them came in to our central office. But saving the Excel sheets as individual files would be a complete hassle.
So we experimented with Google Docs. We simply uploaded the spreadsheets and added three more columns:
one for callers to put in their initials
one for the action that occurred (“lm” was for “left message” but we also were able to record “yes” when they would take the action or “no” or “undecided”)
one for notes
We then “shared” this spreadsheet with anybody we wanted working on these lists. We had a handful of callers in the same room, some callers in other offices in the building, and some callers in other parts of our state. It didn’t matter where they were physically located, because we were all calling from the same sheet.
Then found out we could see edits being made in real-time! This would let us see the letters as people were typing, no matter where they were located. Eery, but incredibly helpful to all of us on the team.
The callers loved it using Google Docs! They would choose a city or town, fill those lines with their initials, and get busy making calls. They said seeing their initials on so many rows made it feel like they were actually accomplishing something. They were also able to start at different times and still be, literally, on the same page.
I’m not sure any of us got over the “magic-like” quality of all of us putting information into the sheet at the same time. We could all see the notes people were typing in, the communities they were taking, and the actions the call recipients were promising to take as a result of our call.
We could even use a chat window right on the page to ask each other questions.
Each night, I’d try tally up how many calls were done. I’d also try to bring uniformity to the codes being used so they could get imported into the database more easily. I’d send out the stats of total calls and what the results of the call were each night to give callers immediate feedback. (The number of calls we were able to make was remarkable.)
To differentiate what day the call took place, callers would put their initials and the date, ie. if the date were May 23 and I were the caller, I’d put: map23. This worked for us because we were only calling for a week or two.
Google Docs is free and easy to use. I don’t think I’d use this for any lists that would include private information. (In our case, the record numbers already were public, not private.) But I highly recommend trying it for phonathons like thankathons or phonathons trying to get people to act in a certain way!
Have you found cool ways to use Google Docs? Let us know in the comments!
