The Extreme Fundraising Blog

With Ground Hog Day right around the corner here in the US, I thought we’d learn Fundraising Secret #11 from the perspective of the classic movie Ground Hog Day:

Fundraising Secret #11: Don’t be a Ned

Does this sound like your fundraising efforts?

Ned: Phil? Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you!

Phil: Hi, thanks for watching. [Starts to walk away]

Ned: Hey now, don’t you tell me you don’t remember me ’cause I sure as heckfire remember you.

Phil: Not a chance.

Ned: Ned… Ryerson. “Needlenose Ned”? “Ned the Head”? C’mon, buddy. Case Western High. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing. Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn’t graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore? Well?

Phil: Ned Ryerson?

Ned: BING!

Phil: Bing.

Ned: Do you have life insurance, Phil? Because if you do, you could always use a little more, I mean, who couldn’t? But let me tell something - I got’s a feeling [whistles] you ain’t got any. Am I right or am I right or am I right? Right, right right.

I crack up every time I see this scene!

Phil is so completely self-absorbed and utterly uninterested in Ned, let alone what Ned’s selling. And Ned’s so completely absorbed with selling insurance, he’s not reading Phil’s very clear signs of indifference.

Please, don’t be a Ned.

Our donors have had it “up to here” with marketing and sales and promises from people that don’t care about them.

Learn to care.

Our donors, like us, are real people with real concerns about real lives. And your nonprofit isn’t at the center of their real lives. Nor should it be.

It’s our job to help get our organization on their radar screen. But rather than going after anyone that can fog a mirror, it’s more helpful for your fundraising efforts to figure out what type of person already gives to you.

• Men or women?
• WWII generation? Silent Generation? Boomer? Xer? Millenial?
• What draws them to your mission?
• How are they first introduced to your organization?

I’d venture to guess it’s not by accosting them on the street in the middle of a cold February day. (Or on the phone. Or in the mail.)

So as you start this new year, commit to taking the time to do the hard research to get to know your current donors. And commit to engaging with donors and donor prospects to get to know them, and to let them get to know you, before you ask.

And whatever you do, please, don’t be a Ned!

Many of us experienced the end of the fiscal year on June 30th. Before taking a well deserved vacation, this is a great time for catching our breath and re-assessing our position. Some of what I’m currently reading, Seth Godin’s new book, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), may provide a great launching point.

In a very brief summary, Godin posits that all worthwhile endeavors go through “The Dip.” The Dip helps sort half-hearted attempts from the truly world-class efforts. “Most consumers…,” writes Godin, “wait for something to be standardized, tested, inexpensive, and ready for prime time” (p. 48). You may be popular with a few early adopters, but to be “best in the world,” you need to go through the Dip, as hard as it may be. Only after proving yourself, will others feel comfortable joining you or donating to your cause.

This is so important to us in the nonprofit world. As I told my new friends at the Lowcountry Chapter of the AFP, we’re all in this world because we’re passionate about our cause. We love helping kids, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, spreading social justice, helping women start businesses, providing excellent arts, preserving land…and doing what we all do.

The causes are so good, we feel we shouldn’t need to fundraise. People should just “get it.” If they don’t, they should be able to come to their senses based on a website or a brochure.

But that isn’t how it happens, is it?

Incredible as it may be to us, people aren’t throwing money at our cause. Or if our cause is huge, it may seem that everyone is giving to that other organization rather than us.

According to Godin, this is where we need to decide if we’re in a Dip or a Cul-de-sac. A cul-de-sac is a dead end; a Dip is simply part of the journey. You’re in a cul-de-sac if you can’t become the “best in the world” at what you do.

Take some time to think of what your “world” is. Can you be best in the world at it? If not, you’re in a dead end.

The only thing to do in a dead end is to quit. Well, the only sane thing. Unfortunately, most of us prefer to endure the persistent pain of mediocrity rather than pressing on to greatness. But people and organizations that make the greatest difference, and reap the greatest rewards, are those that are “superstars,” best in the world.

Quitting takes guts. But if you’re in a cul-de-sac quitting is a very real, and can be an incredibly freeing, option.

If you’re not in a cul-de-sac, you’re in the Dip. Quitting in the dip would be incredibly dumb. You’ve come too far to give up now. If you find yourself in the Dip, the only sensible thing to do is to press on and push through. When you come out on the other side, you’ll be one of the very few organizations that will have come through the Dip. And you’ll be reaping the rewards of being world-class, including getting to help the people you help in more ways than you ever thought possible.

In our next issue, we’ll look more at committing to going through the dip. But for now, ask yourself:

Can you be best of the world at what your doing?

What is so special about your nonprofit? How can it be best in the world?

While you’re at it, what is your world?

[If you’d like to pursue this more between this issue and the next, check out my blog post Church Planting in the Dip and the accompanying links. Or you could buy your own copy of The Dip!]

Mark Nakumara pointed me to this great blog post by Guy Kawaski about ways to used LinkedIn.

Can you imagine how cool it would be if donors started researching you before a solicitation call! Very cool!

To read the Guy’s blog post click here.

My LinkedIn profile is here.

There’s a great article about the philanthropy of Myra Kraft (owner of the New England Patriots) in the Boston Globe called Giving Large.

It’s long but read the whole thing. It’s a great insight into what motivates giving.

Here’s a sample:

Kraft treats board work like a job…She says she comes at the work with no agenda other than to ask tough questions; in the one instance in which she felt her questions were not welcome, she resigned from the University of Massachusetts board in 1998 after only four years. “I just raise my hand and ask questions – I think that’s what a person is supposed to do if a person sits on a board of trustees,” she says. “I speak my mind, not to be negative or confrontational, but if I disagree with something, I’ll ask it or state it, and they can throw me off the board. At this point, people know what they’re getting with me.”

Looks like Blackbaud’s moved the Gift Range Calculator to their site.

Give it a whirl. It’s a very useful tool!

I love feedback. I wouid probably constantly take surveys and assessments if I could.

So I loved this idea from Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog as shared by Jeff Brooks on his Donor Power Blog: “Be Your Donor” day.

Read the post and then give it a try.

Here in the US, we’re about a week away from Thanksgiving. Have you mentally checked out of work or are you preparing for the biggest time of giving in the calendar year?

Before you put your work on hold, consider implementing this tip from Jeffrey Fox’s book How to be a Rainmaker. (It’s the reason I got it in the first place. A colleague on a CharityChannel.com listserv raved about this list. She said whenever business was slow, she returned to this list and business always picked up.)

Here are the 10 things Fox recommends:

1. Send a handwritten note.
2. Clip and send an article of interest.
3. Talk to a satisfied client and ask who else you might help.
4. Send a thank-you gift to someone who referred you.
5. Give your business card to someone with influence.
6. Send a letter to the editor of a magazine your customers read.
7. Add fifteen people to your mailing list.
8. Leave a compelling voicemail.
9. Make an appointment.
10. Call a client you haven’t talked to in two years.

Isn’t this a great list?

Choose today which one you’ll do to help your organization raise more money. Now, commit to doing it before the end of the week.

Then have a great Thanksgiving! 

Since last fall, we’ve been working through the basics of asking people for money with the simple four-step formula: R.E.A.L.

• Research,
• Engage,
• Ask, and
• Love ‘em/Like ‘em/Live with their decision.

So far, we’ve looked at RESEARCH and ENGAGE and ASK. I hope these steps seem incredibly simple, common sense.

Asking people for money is not rocket science. Don’t get lost in researching and engaging. No one makes a gift without being asked. And remember, the reason you are even “engaging” them is that you want to ask them for money. You want them to invest in your cause.

And after the homework and relationship building you’ve done, actual solicitation will seem more like a conversation between colleagues than a sales pitch.

To review the earlier steps, check out some of these EFE blog posts:

• Research! 
• Research Ideas
• Engage!
• Engage Behind the Scenes
• Ask!
• Keep Asking!
• Ask Yourself!

In the upcoming issues, we’ll get to look into the last step: Like/Love/Live.

Fundraising is one of the most exciting professions on the planet! It’s my hope that the simplicity of this process neutralizes the fear you may have in asking people for money.

All fall, we’ve been working through the basics of asking people for money with the simple four-step formula: R.E.A.L.

1. Research,
2. Engage,
3. Ask, and
4. Love ‘em.

I love asking people for money! I hope that outlining a simple process like this will help get other people as fired-up about fundraising as I am!

So far, we’ve looked at RESEARCH and ENGAGE. (You can see the archives at http://frcoach.blogspot.com/). I hope that these two steps seem like incredibly simple common sense.

We’d do well to get to know people before we ask them for money. Through finding out about a prospect with simple research tools and getting to know them in conversation over a period of time, we can focus our ask on projects that the prospect will be predisposed to supporting. And they’ll know you too, making the actual solicitation more of a conversation between colleagues.

As normal as this sounds, we often forget to do it. Faced with the crisis of needed funding, we either blindly send out a letter to a chamber of commerce mailing list, or we start calling people we’d love to have make a gift.

Both approaches may get moderate short-term results. But neither builds long-term relationships for your organization.

Two Suggested Resolutions for the New Year
Here are a couple resolutions to consider for the New Year:

1. Make a practice of taking time to P.Y.I.T.S., “put yourself in their shoes.” Before you send a letter or make a call, take a moment to ask how you yourself would respond if you were about to receive such a letter or call. 
2. Commit to reading Dale Carnegie’s classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” I try to read this book at least once a year. Why not do it in 2006?

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

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I. FUNDRAISING BASICS: Get R.E.A.L.! Peer Reviews & The CPI Index

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I. FUNDRAISING BASICS: Get R.E.A.L.! Peer Reviews & The CPI Index
In our last edition, we were discussing some different ways to do the “research” step of the Get R.E.A.L.! Process (Research, Engage, Ask, Live/Like/Love). 

Now, let’s look at two other Research tools: peer reviews and something I call “the CPI index.”

Peer Reviews
One of the most effective ways of researching prospective donors is asking people about them. Nonprofits often compile a list of names and have “peer review” sessions. They present the list to a select group of peers and go over the names one by one. It can also be effective to do this this one-on-one with people.

These sessions can be highly informative and helpful in gathering anecdotal information as well as hard data. One of the most helpful parts of this type of review is establishing the relationships between prospective donors.

But not everyone is comfortable talking so frankly about their peers. So I developed the “CPI Index.”

The CPI Index
The CPI Index is a form of research that attempts to “objectify” the information by scoring prospective donors on three criteria: capacity to give, philanthropic nature, and interest in your cause or organization. This helps you identify the prospective donors you should visit first.

Capacity: Does the person have money they can give your organization? If not, they won’t be good prospects–no matter how nice they may be. (Face it, at some point, your nonprofit needs cash to pay the bills and accomplish its mission.)

Philanthropic Nature: Is the person a giver? If they don’t give gifts to other organizations, chances are high they won’t give gifts to yours.

Interest: Is she interested in your cause? Bill Gates may have high capacity and high philanthropic nature, but without an interest in your cause, you’re not going to receive a gift from him.

For this kind of research, prepare a list like before but this time add the three CPI columns. Then ask people to score the prospective donors in each area on a scale of 1 (being lowest) to 5 (being highest). Then add up your scores.

People with 12’s or higher should be on your top priority list. Get to them this week!

Be sure to also look at the people that scored high C’s and P’s but only mediocre I’s. You can’t impact whether or not the person has capacity or whether or not she is philanthropic. But you can impact how interested she is in your organization. These may be people to begin cultivating for a future gift.

Peer reviews and the CPI Index are two more ways to help you accomplish the “Research” step in the Get R.E.A.L.! process of asking for money. Next week we’ll look at the step: “Engage.”