The Extreme Fundraising Blog

Anyone that’s read my $100,000 Guide to E-mail Solicitation knows that I’m a big proponent of simple, effective emails.

Chris Brogan has an incredibly helpful post on Writing More Effective Email. Read it and benefit.

I love the simple concept of using the subject to clearly state what the emails are about. Wouldn’t that one step alone make life easier?

I just had the privilege of speaking at the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes’ annual meeting. What a fun group of people!

As a pastor, it was a blast to speak with people who’s job is to help people in their parish grow in giving. These people were passionate about what they do, and about Who they do it for.

Which brings me to Fundraising Secret #13: Fundraise for causes you’re passionate about.

Nonprofits engage values at a visceral level. People want to get passionate about the work of their favorite charity.

You need to be passionate too.

If you’re just doing time at a job–just punching the clock to pay the bills–you’ll have a very hard time raising money.

Passion is exciting. Passion is contagious.

Complacency is contagious too.

If you’re disinterested in your nonprofit, you’ll communicate that to the people you’re soliciting.

So if you’re in that situation, start looking for a new job. Or find some aspect of your job to get excited about. Talk to your spouse and close friends. Take assessment like the Highlands Abilities Battery. Hire a coach. (Talk to your friends and social networks to find a good one.) Do something today.

I’m not encouraging you to work 24/7. Boundaries are healthy. But you need to at least get excited about the cool things your nonprofit is doing. Because, to the donor, that means you’re excited about the cool things their donations are doing.

You can punch a clock anywhere. But your nonprofit deserves more than that.

And so do you.

Life’s short. Live passionately.

I’ve been very “aware” of my blog reading habits since Fundraising Secret #10: Read Blogs.

And I realized I’d signed up for too many.

So many people are writing so many good things.

But I don’t need to read them all.

I just went through my 112 subscriptions and purged. I’m now 50 subscriptions lighter!

Wish I could lose weight that fast!

I’m having quite a week!

Tuesday, I was invited to train the super-elite fundraisers for Habitat for Humanity International in Atlanta. I’ve been a fan of Habitat for years. And what a terrific group of development people they have!

Now I’m at the Consortium for Endowed Episcopal Parishes annual conference speaking on fundraising to people employed by their parish as stewardship directors. What a cool job!!! These folks are right in the thick of engaging Christians with the place of their resources in their spiritual journey.

It’s an incredible privilege to be speaking to such terrific people. These people are expanding the Kingdom in some pretty creative ways!

One of the neatest things is that both groups are actively transforming their understanding of what it means to “engage” the people that invest in their causes. And both are seeing it in a much more comprehensive way than just finances.

What an inspiring week!

[This post was cross-posted at marcpitman.com.]

One of my favorite stories is Winston Churchill’s definition of “diplomacy.”

According to what I heard, Churchill said: “Diplomacy is not saying, ‘Lady, your face is so ugly it would stop a clock’ but ‘Darling, when I look into your eyes, time stands still.’”

I love it!

And I was reminded of this when I read Seth Godin’s great post After the Lawyers.

Read it and then look at the your “official” notices on your mailings and brochures.

What can you do to make them sound more like the rest of the things you write?

Jeff Brooks is always full of great advice and delightful humor.

In his blog post, You Can’t Control the Conversation, he offers these tips:

Here’s what to do:

1. Pay a lot of attention to your donor experience. What does it feel like to donate to your organization? Do they get acknowledged promptly? Do they learn about the impact of their giving? Do they get choices about what their money does and how you’ll communicate with them?
2. Make sure what you do is really, really cool. That’s partly a matter of describing what you do in a way that wins hearts and minds. It’s doing something nobody else does, or doing it in a better way. Or doing it in a way that more closely involves donors.
3. Don’t have a scandal. That’s right, just take that scandal right off your calendar. It will follow you around for a looooong time if it happens.

Donors will say things you don’t like. People will say stuff. But that’s the nature of “conversation.”

If it’s just your organization talking, it’s a monologue.

Check this article out from the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s daily email:

A Charity Levy for Britain’s Wealthy?
Affluent British people who do not give at least 10 percent of their incomes to charity should pay an equivalent surcharge in taxes, said Frank Field, former welfare reform minister for Britain’s Labour party, according to The Financial Times.

Mr. Field wants to levy a 10-percent surcharge on British taxpayers’ earnings or investment income of more than $294,095 per year. The British government should create a national endowment fund to distribute the money if the taxpayer does not designate charities to receive his or her money, he added.

Mr. Field’s idea would “encourage richer taxpayers to embrace the responsibilities of wealth,” he said, and raise an estimated $7-billion annually.

I’ve heard it said that we’ll all be philanthropists at death. We can either choose who gets our estate by doing some planning or the government will choose for us.

The British government doesn’t appear to be content waiting ’til death!

I’m a big proponent of giving at least 10% away. But I’m not sure I want the government forcing it…

Check out this Reuters story : Frugal librarian amassed $8 million art trove.

With a The Millionaire Next Door feel, librarian Jean Preston ate frozen meals and took the bus.

But she’d collected art work worth more around $8 million.

The lesson I get from this? Any fundraiser that had visited her would’ve noticed the quantity of art in this little home.

But I bet none visited her.

All these treasures were left in her house when she died. I bet she’d have loved to donate some to museums or other groups, if she’d only been asked.

Don’t neglect even modest donors. (If you’re not convinced, look at my “$100 donor or millionaire” blog post from last week.)

Quite often, the donors that “look” rich are in debt up to their eyeballs. And quite often, the modest, unassuming people have hidden treasures that they’d love to share with your nonprofit: memories & stories, art, antiques, or even estate gifts.

This year, why not committing to visiting ten of your more-modest-but-consistent donors?

You may want to start with your local librarian!

Chris Busch has a great blog post on the differences of political campaign websites.

You may remember that in the “Create a Cause” tenent Creating Donor Evangelists, I recommend looking at political sites to see what they do well.

Well check out the sites of the front runners:

John McCain

Hillary Clinton

Barack Obama

Two are totally focused on the candidate. One is focused on “you” believing in your potential.

I’m not endorsing Barack, but you’ve got to love the way his campaign is about people, not about him.

How is your nonprofit’s website? Is it for the “us” that work at the nonprofit? Or is it about the “them” that want to support your nonprofit?

Just read this in the daily update from the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Large Bequest Surprises Diabetes Charity
An 86-year-old Annapolis woman who died in a house fire last March shocked a diabetes group by bequeathing it the largest donation in the organization’s history — $7.3-million, reports The Washington Post.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which had known Helene Whitlock Alley primarily as a $100 donor, became the beneficiary of most of her estimated $8.5-million estate. The source of Mrs. Alley’s money remains unclear, although her deceased father was an accomplished businessman, and she owned Merck stock that she might have purchased before 1949, while she was a secretary with the company.

Mrs. Alley’s donation was motivated by her late brother’s battle with Type I diabetes. In her will, she described her brother’s struggle with the disease as “heart rending, frightening, and inspiring.” Mrs. Alley intended her donation “to further the research to help find a cure for diabetes that at no time requires a diabetic patient to take an organ-rejection agent” after a transplant of pancreatic cells.

(Free registration is required to view this article.)

Two take aways:

1. You need to treat all donors well. Whatever this group did, they certainly kept her feeling like she was part of their “family.”
2. You never know what other forces are compelling people to make gifts. This woman had a sibling struggle with diabetes.

   Let me rephrase that: If you don’t engage your donors, you’ll never know what forced are compelling them to make gifts.