The Extreme Fundraising Blog

Have you ever gotten exhausted trying to conform your day to the system a colleague passionately uses? Have you ever wondered how someone in your office could possibly make sense of chaos their office let alone keep their assignments straight? Have you ever bridled under the reporting requests of your supervisor? If so, you may have experienced a clash of abilities.

It should come as no surprise that we all are not created with the same abilities. Some people methodically work through a process to come to a conclusion while others can consistently make accurate snap decisions. Some people seem to have ideas pouring out all the time while others seem to prefer focusing with one idea. Some people seem overly concerned with how a report looks while others seem overly concerned with the actual content of that report. Some donors want to see 3-D models of capital projects while others would prefer to just hear about them. Some expect to be walked through the case statement step-by-step while others want to cut to the chase and get to the ask. All of these can be affected by the unique pattern of our innate abilities.

****WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “ABILITIES”?****
The abilities experts at the Highlands Company (http://www.highlandsco.com) state that, “Everyone is born with a range of abilities unique to him or her. It’s fair to say that these abilities are essentially hard-wired.” Obviously, we’re more than simply the sum of our abilities. We are a complex interaction of things like skills, values, interests, goals, life stages, and personality, as well as abilities. But abilities point to our baseline approach to the world.

Unlike skills, abilities cannot be learned or acquired. They just are. Being “good with your hands” is an ability. To be a brain surgeon, you must add skills to that ability. When you’re doing something within your ability set, it comes easily, quickly, seemingly effortlessly. When you’re required to work outside of your natural abilities, the task at best takes much longer to complete, at worst produces incredible stress while you’re doing it.

The Highlands Company organizes the abilities into three major categories:

• PERSONAL STYLE: Generalist/Specialist; Introvert/Extrovert; Time Frame
• DRIVING ABILITIES: Classification; Concept Organization; Idea Productivity; Spatial Relations
• SPECIALIZED ABILITIES: Design Memory; Observation; Verbal Memory; Tonal Memory; Rhythm Memory; Pitch Discrimination; Number Memory; Visual Speed & Accuracy

****WHAT ABOUT YOU?****
Wouldn’t it be nice to know how a donor, subordinate, or your boss would most naturally expect to receive information? Better yet, wouldn’t it be terrific to know how you do? In the following articles, I’ll sketch the characteristics of the top abilities and make connections to how they might impact fundraising. Be prepared to more fully enjoy your job!

How can you determine your innate abilities? The best method I’ve found is the Highlands Ability Battery. The Battery is an incredibly thorough 3 hour assessment. Rather than asking you how you perceive yourself, the Battery measures how you actually perform on a series of 19 work samples. This very accurately and objectively tests your abilities. Individuals and companies like GlaxoSmithKline have been benefiting from this for years. (I was so amazed by the results that I became a certified provider of the Highlands Ability Battery.) More information on the Battery and some sample exercises are available at http://www.highlandsco.com/.

I’ve also been told the book “Now Discover Your Strengths“–the follow up to “First Break All The Rules“–includes an assessment of your abilities. I believe more information is available at https://www.strengthsfinder.com/.

We’ve covered a lot of ground since we started this series back in November! From Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman in First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, we’ve learned that “accuracy” and “availability” are two things customers and donors take for granted. We’ve also learned that truly committed donors, real advocates, are created when they feel they are “partnered” with the organization and when they look to that organization for advice.

It seems that most of our fundraising is focused on the first two attributes while the last two all too often seem expendable. I believe the Gallup organization now gives us objective research to turn our typical approach on its head!

But HOW do you create systems that foster donor advocates? How can you create an environment of donors beating down your doors to give you money AND telling all their friends about how great your nonprofit it is? Fortunately for us, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba have created a veritable handbook on how to do just that: Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force.

CREATING DONOR EVANGELISTS
After studying businesses that create customers that evangelize for them, McConnell and Huba distill their findings into six Creating Customer Evangelist themes. These themes are:
1. Customer Plus-Delta: Understanding the Love
2. Napsterize Your Knowledge: Give to Receive
3. Build the Buzz: Spreading the Word
4. Create Community: Bringing Customers Together
5. Bite-Size Chunks: From Sampling to Evangelism
6. Create a Cause: When Business is Good

Following their findings, we create DONOR evangelists when we:
• know what our donors like about us and what they think we need to improve;
• give away our knowledge and information in ways that are easy to receive and easy to pass on;
• are intentional about spreading our story word-of-mouth;
• do all we can to foster relationships between us and our donors and, more importantly, between the donors themselves;
• find ways to allow donors and prospective donors to get a sample taste of either our “product” or of the experience of being a donor to our organization;
• are intentional about being passionate about our organization’s mission–so passionate that it becomes a cause–and make it easy for donors to join our cause.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
So what are you going to do with this exciting information? Are you convinced that creating donor evangelists is important to your nonprofit? Or are you already attracting more new donors than you can handle? How are these six themes going to change or fine tune your approach to fundraising? All six are ways of thinking that once learned can become habitual and part of your staff’s or organization’s culture.

Reply to this message or email me at marc@fundraisingcoach.com and let me know what changes you plan on implementing. Also let me know if you’re interested in having me coach you or your staff through some of those changes.

This is last installment in the “Creating Donor Evangelist” series! All the back issues are available at http://fundraisingcoach.com in the archives in the “ezine” section. As a reminder, Huba and McConnell’s six “Creating Customer Evangelist” themes are:
1. Customer Plus-Delta: Understanding the Love
2. Napsterize Your Knowledge: Give to Receive
3. Build the Buzz: Spreading the Word
4. Create Community: Bringing Customers Together
5. Bite-Size Chunks: From Sampling to Evangelism
6. Create a Cause: When Business is Good

Today we’ll explore number 6: Create a Cause.

CREATE A CAUSE
Fortunately, creating a cause is what nonprofits are all about! This one should be easy for us. McConnell and Huba quote Guy Kawaski (formerly of Apple Computer) and his five goals for a company’s cause:

1. A well-defined vision

2. Making people better

3. Generating big effects

4. Catalyzing selfless actions

5. Polarizing people.

How well does your nonprofit communicate these? Is the vision, your organization’s “grand plan to change the world,” clear and memorable? Is your organization committed to making people better–including its donors? Is it generating big effects and spurring others on to selfless actions?

How is it doing at polarizing people? Huba and McConnell note that because causes have the power to change society, they naturally tend to polarize people into groups. Does your nonprofit’s vision do this? Should it?

Huba and McConnell devote a section on adopting a charitable cause. They tell of how American Express gave a percentage of all purchases toward a fund to reopen the Statue of Liberty. Customers often want to be associated with companies making a difference in this way. Are there natural corporate relationships your nonprofit can create? And, should it?

One very important point that the authors make is that causes should be easy to join. They report on their experience trying to join several “causes” including: the Microsoft Developer Network, Handgun Control, Inc., NRA, the National Audubon Society, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. This section is worth reading on your own.

They often couldn’t tell if they’d joined the cause or merely signed up for an email list. Hint: those are not the same thing. People joining a cause want to be more actively involved than passively receiving email.

The easiest cause to join was the Sierra Club. They clearly posted a “Join or Give” button on their front page. That linked to a page with clear membership benefits including how donated money is used. Joining at the lowest level cost $25 and filling out the form and credit card information led them to a confirmation page. They received a hardcopy of the Sierra magazine a couple weeks later and a special backpack shortly after that.

Does your nonprofit make it easy to give? Many organizations make “giving” a hard option to find on its website.

Huba and McConnell sum it up very well: “Rallying supporters to join your cause is like dating: once they’re ready to commit, don’t jilt them at the altar.”

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Is your cause compelling? What kind of difference are you making in the world? Why not have a “join the cause” page on your site?

How many clicks does it take to get to your giving page? Take a moment to go through the process as though you were visiting the web site for the first time. If you were a first time visitor, would you make it all the way to giving money and joining the organization’s database? Can you even accept money online? If you can’t, why not? I mentioned a simple, relatively low-cost alternative is in my “$100,000 Guide to Email Solicitation.” If you need a refresher you can find a PDF of a draft of the Guide in the resources section of http://fundraisingcoach.com.

This week survey the web sites of some politician running campaigns to get some great ideas about involving people in a cause. They all have donation options, multiple volunteering options, and gear for people that support their cause to wear. Why shouldn’t your organization have all that?