The Extreme Fundraising Blog

Nancy Schwartz at the Getting Attention Blog has a terrific post about the .media habits of people aged 12-24 and 25-50.

Check read through the summary and see if it can help your fundraising and the way you interact with your donors and pre-donors. I bet alumni offices are ahead of most of us with tools like Facebook and ChipIn, but there’s no reason why the rest of us can’t jump on board. (And we’ll eventually die if we don’t jump on board!)

This is too odd a tale to be made up. Robbing a nonprofit? An employee of World Relief shooting someone? Especially when World Relief is part of the National Association of Evangelicals?

Here’s the entire blurb as seen in today’s daily by the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

“Nonprofit Employee Kills Robber at Office”

A nonprofit worker in Atlanta shot and killed a would-be robber after the man demanded money from a safe, reports The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Two men at World Relief, a group that helps resettle immigrants and refugees, were closing up the charity’s offices at the end of the day when two men armed with handguns sneaked in through the back door, reports the newspaper. One of the robbers took the men’s wallets, pointed a gun at one of the worker’s heads, and told him to open the safe.

When the robber turned his back, the other charity employee pulled a gun from his desk and shot the robber several times, according to a police spokesman. The name of shooter was not released.

World Relief is a division of the National Association of Evangelicals.

The Chronicle on Philanthropy had a brief article this week about the growing practice of paying volunteers: Retired People Demand Pay for Volunteering at Charities.

Huh?

If you pay…doesn’t that make them employees? I thought the lack of pay was the primary distinction of a volunteer!

According to the article:

“People used to say, ‘Here I am, what do you need done?’” said Deborah Russell, director of work-force issues for AARP, in Washington. “Today’s retirees say, ‘Here’s what I do well, how can you use it, and what will you pay?’ “

Experts say that the payments are important in motivating people to stick with their volunteer roles.

This certainly plays into how we in the nonprofit world adjust to the silver tsunami and the Al Gore Population.

Ellen Goodman has a great editorial on the Al Gore Population. Here’s a brief part of the editorial:

As a country, we are at the beginning of an enormous transition. Under the old compact, sixtysomethings were supposed to get out of the way and out of work. They were encouraged by financial incentives and prodded by discrimination. Now we are drawing blueprints for people who see themselves more as citizens than seniors.

“We used to say that the choices ran from A to B&B,” says Ms. [Rosabeth] Kanter, author of “America the Principled.” Today, she says, “we have an opportunity to define it as a time when your wisdom gets put to work on complex problems.”

Read it all and think of it in terms of my post The Silver Tsunami. Wherever you’re at in regard to age, this is an exciting time to be alive!

Last Monday, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling applied for her Social Security benefits. According to the AP, Casey-Kirschling is the first Boomer to apply for Social Security.

Why does this matter?

The “silver tsunami” has started. Casey-Kirschling may be the first, but she’s the first…of many.

This will totally transform life as we know it. I’m not just being sensational.

Think about the impact Boomers (many of you) have had on life as we know it in the US. Boomers have defined the term “boomer” and celebrated the generation gap. Thanks to that disctinction, we’re now all talking about generations as “Boomers,” “X’ers,” and “Millenials.”

Here a couple random outcomes that we’ll see over the coming years:

• Boomer are known as being more interested in “self” than previous generations. They were the original “me” generation. That’s why “self help” is a multi-billion dollar industry. And why Oprah has such a successful empire. This selfishness can be bad–broken families, awful drug addictions. But it can be incredilby good too–just look at the millions of people Oprah has helped.

  This is the generation moving into volunteer positions. More than previous generations, they’ll want “fulfillment” in their work. And they’ll define what “fulfillment” means for each of them.

• Boomers are a huge cohort. According to the article, for the next two decades an estimated 10,000 people per day will be eligible for Social Security. Per day! These are your current and future donors. But people on limited incomes like Social Security seem to get scared that there won’t be enough income to go around. Maximizing income and maintaining assetts will be even more important for them than ever.

So it’ll be more important than ever for us to get conversant with charitable tools like gift annuities. CGA’s are contractual agreements that guarantee a specific rate of return, regardless of what the stock market does. That kind of guarantee may be very appealing to people that saw their retirement plans decimated by 9/11.

This silver tsunami isn’t just a “blip” on the screen. This will define our life and work for the coming decades. Those of us that can be ahead of the curve in shaping our missions to absorbing these incredibly committed and passionate volunteers will benefit immensely. And we’ll help people thrive in the “second half” of their lives!

Let’s have fun riding the wave!

This was in our internal “daily” here at Inland Hospital. What a great reminder!

FISH! Make Their Day

The Pike Place Fish guys make a difference for everyone around them. They “make their day’ by having fun and inviting others
to join in.

It’s hard for anyone to resist a good time, especially in a place where you’re supposed to be serious. If you’re feeling down and you deal with someone who’s up-beat and friendly, you can’t help but absorb some of their energy.

Have you ever had this experience? you’re having a lousy day. You’re in a bad mood. You’re upset. And then you are confronted
with a dog wagging its tail or a smiling child. Did your mood lighten? Did you smile? That’s what we mean by “Make Their Day.”

Now pass it on

• Look at grouchy people as a challenge, even a game. It’s easier to make someone’s day if they’re already in good spirits. But if they’re being difficult, you get a chance to really prove yourself. It probably won’t be as easy as coming up with a one-liner. Pay attention to them. Play with them. If nothing works, you haven’t lost anything. If it does, it’ll make your day too!
• React to each person as an individual. Ask yourself, “What would make this person’s day? What would bring a smile to their face? What can I do?”

Here’s a great blog post on how not to send an email message.

Please do yourself a favor and read: Six Ways to Screw Up a Customer Email.

Are you guilty of doing you any of these?

Jeff Brooks over at the ever insightful Donor Power Blog, has a great comparison of traditional fundraising vs. effective fundraising. (He calls it: The differences between good and bad fundraising.)

Last Friday, I received 1,000 Ask Without Fear! bookmarks! I’d love to give them away to as many people as want them.

To get your free, ultra-special Ask Without Fear! bookmark, simply snail mail a self addressed stamped envelope to me at:

Marc A. Pitman
Fundraisingcoach.com
8 Waterville Commons Drive
Suite 137
Waterville, ME 04901

I’ll be glad to send them to you right away! (They’re not heavy. A normal first class stamp will do.)

The last couple Fundraising Secrets (Nobody owes you anything and You’re not begging!) have been quite intense. So I thought I’d take it down a notch with Fundraising Secret #5: Use Blue Ink.

If you’re in fundraising, you’re in the direct mail business. So it would serve you well to read up on what for-profit and not-for-profit direct mail professionals are learning. They are constantly testing and retesting the effectiveness of each package.

One of the ideas I’ve heard over the years is that signing letters using blue ink elicits a better donor response.

Blue ink seems to be one of those “facts” that everyone seems to refer to but few actually have cited the research. (Google Answers does have some studies that back this up.)

Like everything in direct mail, you’ll need to test this out for yourself. Any tests that show something lifts response rates is tested with a specific package, for a specific organization, at a specific time. Your context may be different.

But isn’t there something wonderfully alive about seeing a blue name at the bottom of a printed black letter? Even when you know your’s is simply one merged document of the thousands that got sent, it seems more worthy of attention.

And there’s something that connects better when you receive a handwritten note in blue ink rather than black. I’m not sure why, perhaps black ink reminds us of computer printed form letters.

In our day of color printing, it’s even possible to print a blue signature AND a blue handwritten P.S. on mass produced letters.

Blue is still professional enough for the conservative types (those that may get thrown off by “fuschia” or “mauve“). But the touch of color brings life to everything from a direct response piece to a handwritten note.

It’s so simple. Why not try using blue on your next letter and test the response?