The Five Best Ways to Fail at Fundraising

Not everyone loves money. In fact there are hundreds and hundreds of mosdos in Brooklyn alone that hate it and have incorporated many corporate practices to ensure that gelt stays where is belongs - in the donor's pocket.

For those of you that want to escape the inevitable success that responsible fundraising brings, I have compiled this handy list of the five best ways to fail at fundraising.

Get Emotionally Involved:  Blame every setback on your own personal faults. Take every "no" as a personal rejection and an insult to everything you believe in. Start looking shtilerheit in to getting a real estate license.

Let the Donor Read Your Mind: The best kept secret is that donors are telepathic - they can read your mind. Give your donors great service, but never ask them to support your mossad or mention anything about your needs. They can and will read your mind, and one day - one day! - surprise you with an outstanding donation.

Hoht Rachmones!

I make a habit of reading every solicitation letter that I recieve. Everything from the No. 10 envelope to the reply card makes an impact on the reader, and so I find it fascinating to have look at what other mosdos are trying to capture the donors attention and money.

I recently received a beautifully done direct mail appeal from a prominent, local mosad. Everything was al osar - there was definitely a lot of money dropped on making sure that the envelopes, letter and reply card were professionally and beautifully done. I have no way of knowing what the returns were on this particular campaign, but I suspect they'll be mediocre.  

Why? No rachmones on the donor.

The appeal itself was huge blocks of text written in small font. There was some kind of inspirational story in there, together with some jive about guiding the next generation - I don't know... Well written, pretty, but also very hard on the eyes and a burden upon the reader. 

There are many practices and techniques that help to ensure readability in direct mail and other solicitation materials, but that's not what I'm hokking just now. My real point is that quality communication is more essential than ever, while quantity - especially in the Twitter age - is fast becoming harmful. Here's a few points to remember to have rachmones on your donors:

1. Be Concise : Time is valuable. When you communicate with donors about giving, always get to the point promptly. Long hakdomes do nothing for your presentation, and are almost always tiresome. Contrary to our intuition, lengthy presentations are less convincing that those that are concise and focused.

How Disaster Fundraising Confuses Us

This is another winner by Jeff Brooks.

Not always so nogeah to yiddishe mosdos, because we are generally stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to fundraising. However, there is a valuable mussar haskel here that should not be ignored.
Read it all!

When natural disasters hit, fundraising skyrockets. 

That's a good thing, but it also creates a problem: It makes many fundraisers stupid. Because it leads them to believe that the everyday grind of normal fundraising is way too much work for far too little reward. 

Disaster fundraising is nothing like normal fundraising. It's a matter of speed, simplicity, and just being there. Media coverage takes care of the rest, and people give like crazy. 

During a disaster, you can raise funds through media that don't normally work, like spot radio and newspaper print ads. You can even raise funds on Twitter (well, some do). Heck, you could design a dumb, abstract, unoriginal poster and raise funds.

What's in it for your donors? Pay attention!

Well done article by Jeff Brooks.

WIIFM: What's in it for me?
Commercial marketers are constantly reminded to keep WIIFM top-of-mind, because they're tempted to sell their wares on how great those wares are. Not what's in it for the customer.
We have the same issue in fundraising. Too often, we think the reason people give to us is because we are so excellent.
Nope.
They give because there's something in it for them. (We still have to be excellent; that's the price of admission for them to even consider giving to us.)
Here are some things donors might get from giving to you, the real reasons for giving:

• They're seeking personal significance by helping change the world.
  
• They're finding spiritual strength by following the calls of their spiritual tradition.
• They're assuaging guilt.
• They're comforting fear.
• They're proving to themselves or others that they're good people.
• They know it feels good to give.
• They might even be seeking a tax deduction.

There's always something in it for them.
If you remember that and work with it, you'll go far in the fundraising biz!

Enter the Gvir

During one of my many misadventures, I worked with the rosh of a mid-size mossad in Brooklyn. He was charismatic, intelligent, energetic and good with people - all the maalos. Nonetheless fundraising was anemic and very labored.

I don't suppose that it was any fault of his, he certainly was being as responsible as he could. He did, in fact, manage to pay quite a few bills by hitting the pavement. But it wouldn't last. He was spending too much energy, and neglecting too many responsibilities to be able to continue that path for long.

Enter... the Gvir.

The Gvir begrudgingly agreed to get involved with fundraising on a "my-way-or-the-highway" basis. The Gvir has much on his plate, little time, and zero patience for BS. Because he's a maven in business, he knows the right players.

He doesn't prepare a thing. He has no game plan, finesse, or shame. He calls donors on their cell phones on Sunday night and doesn't apologize. He asks for money after eleven seconds of small talk. If they decline, he gets angry and asks again, only not politely.

No, I wasn't on vacation...

Happy to hit the blogosphere after a little more than a month hiatus from writing. I was so arayngetohn in one campaign that I literally did not have time to THINK about blogging. 

Reviving the public image and esteem of a long-troubled institution is no walk in the park. Ultimately, we are on the cusp of success as long as no one does anything crazy or stupid... 

More reports from the battlefield as I catch my breath and become a real person again. 

Using the Board

Here is an excellent article by Hildy Gottlieb on relying on your board for fundraising.

I'm a little on the ropes about the message: your board doesn't want to fundraise - get over it. She outlines some of the challenges nicely, and gives an alternative - "friend-raising."

Ok. At the end I don't really buy the premise, because there really are ways to use your board for effective fundraising. Don't give them a job they hate. Instead, give them the "mission" that best suits them.

I look for one of the following three roles from a board member:

The Key to a Good Proposal

Read & Repeat. This is the foundation of any proposal. 

A donor should be able to look over your proposal in one sitting. Its message and request should stick so well that the Donor can easily repeat them to Mrs. Donor and explain why he's writing such a large check.

Read & Repeat.

Sticking to the Script

Have you ever used a "script" to solicit? Does it make you feel more comfortable or constricted?

Script Pros:

Keeps you from rambling

Moves the conversation

Helps the "confidence challenged"

Script Cons:

Speaking "at" donors, not "with" them

Easily derailed

Sounds "scripted"

The Angry Donor

I remember a farbrengen that some of the staff and I had by a well-known NYC lobbyist. He often has the unenviable job of fundraising for political campaigns - campaigns which demand uber-quantities of cash in a short, fixed amount of time.

We wound up speaking about the "angry donor" - that gevirishe baalebos that is always a little too short on time and patience to treat you like a mentsch.

"The people that I work for have very clear goals and expectations. They hire me to fulfill those expectations," our lobbyist friend declared. "What do you think would happen if I got to a donor but didn't make the ask? Can you imagine if I reported to my client that I got to the donor but didn't make the ask because he was in a bad mood?! My career would be over!"

He added: "Trust me, I'm sure he was in a great mood until the secretary told him you're in the waiting room...!"

Moral of the story: Ask anyway.

Fundraising on Commission

The yiddishe velt is the last stronghold of commission fundraising and, no, that's not good news. 

Commission-based fundraising is shunned as unethical in every sector of the non-profit world, and for good reason. 

This article by Kim Klein for Grassroots Fundraising Journal is a very complete overview on everything that's wrong with our meshulach centric fundraising.

One important point that I feel was omitted: A fundraiser that makes his living from commission knows that his own relationship with the mossad is temporary. He therefore has every incentive to make sure that the donors are his and not the mossad's. This is the dark side of the (only half-true) people-give-to-people mantra. 

Innoculation

I spend a good deal of time dealing with "what if" questions:

What if he gets offended?

What if he's in a bad mood?

What if his business is hurting?

These nagging questions a natural part of our "fight or flight instincts" that seem to shift into high gear before an ask. The way to deal with these types of pitfalls (both real and perceived) is through "inoculating."

Cutting to the Chase

In my years in PR and fundraising, I have learned one lesson that has stood the test of time and has proven to serve its masters infallibly:  People Need Clarity.

This demands that we communicate in a concise and direct way.


Tact and elegance are helpful, but secondary. After all, you and I know a few too many tactful and elegant fundraisers with outstanding shut-off notices.


Concise. 
Direct.

With apologies to email

I've had a very big change of heart.


I use to be very down on email as a means of reaching out to donors, or for any means of respectful communication for that matter. I have relied on good, old-fashioned letters for "real" communication. I still believe that writing letters to donors and prospects is dignified, effective and -frankly- impressive. 

But lately, I've come to owe a number of breakthroughs to email. Too many to ignore. In many cases, the prospect himself asked that email be the principal method of contact at all stages of the game--even solicitation.

Bad Attitudes

Let's say that your organization enjoys a good deal of notoriety, lots of grass roots support, and is known for being effective and well-run. Surely there's nothing that could stand in the way of successful fundraising, right?

Right...?

Actually, in spite of the many finer aspects of many mosdos, there is a terribly strong poison that will turn advantages into liabilities every time. Bad attitude.

I met with board members of one such mosad to discuss how they could boost their fundraising which, to my utter surprise, has been disfunctional for a number of years. They are known for being a "class act" kind of organization, and I was more than a little dumbfounded when it seemed that a few basic and essential fundraising elements were not in place - but could easily be. 

Raising Money from Jews

This article by Bob Aronson is very well done.

Honestly, I'm not as down as he is on the frame of mind of most yiddishe mosdos:

"Most Jewish fundraisers earnestly believe that the organizations they work for are so important that they are automatically entitled to the donor’s money...

"Jewish fundraisers are too bus focusing on themselves and what they want as opposed to what the donors want. Non-Jewish organizations don’t make this mistake...

"[Cultivating donors]  depends on face-to-face appointments and the development of long-term relationships of trust and mutual respect... This, more than anything, is problematic for Jewish fundraisers, who have monthly quotas to meet, gifts to close and annual campaigns to complete. They simply do not have the time, or often the skill, to develop relationships with donors, especially new ones."

I think he'd have to agree that any hospital or university fundraiser wouldn't last till lichtbenchen if he had to raise money for your average Boro Park mosad. The needs of aigeneh are very many, very urgent and very personal.

The Development Professionals I have met from mainstream organizations enjoy a level of support and resources that yiddishe fundraisers have never, ever known. The differences are so profound that I believe it's wrong to compare the two.

That said, this is totally on the money:

"As Jewish fundraisers, we must continue to follow our hearts. But to be successful, this is simply no longer good enough. It’s one reason why there are so few successful Jewish fundraisers and every organization is scrambling to find one.

"The rules have changed, but we’re still living in the 1970s. It is imperative that we adapt, change our organizational goals and train our professionals differently, or we’ll face a future of increasing anachronism and irrelevance."

Read it.

Simple Simon

Years ago I gave a substantial (for me, at least) gift to a charity that I had a long-standing personal relationship with. I was happy and proud to give, and really wasn't expecting anything other than a nice "thank you."

Sure enough, a letter came about six weeks later. I suppose the letter contained nice regards from the organization, but I never really found out. I struggled to read through five lengthy paragraphs (must've been 10 pt. font) that covered everything from the origins of the organization, to its activities and how it makes the world a better place. The large blocks of text, spanning subjects that were (almost) superfluous, made this "thank you" letter burdensome and unreadable.

What would have rekindled that warm, fuzzy feeling I had when I first gave the check? Something much, much more simple. Something like: "Dear Yosef, I can't thank you enough for your gift. I so appreciate your friendship and support." That would've about sold me.

Where's My Check?!

I once had the opportunity to proof a proposal for a friend (and executive director) who was soliciting a certain "Mr. Moneybags."

Clearly, a great deal of time an money had been spent on making this proposal razor sharp. It was beautifully written, tons of pictures and graphics. Detailed reports about all of the programs and activities. Beautiful!

Just one problem.

Nowhere in the proposal was there any mention of a request. Nowhere. I flipped through the whole thing again, just to make sure that I wasn't losing my eyesight. It's as if this organization suddenly had no problems whatsoever, and just wanted to let Mr. M know that everything was a-ok! I found this very eye-opening.

Since then, I encourage all of my clients to mention money first, whether the conversation is initiated via phone, e-mail, letter, whatever. Yes, it's counter-intuitive in our line of work, where tact and ambiguity are our left and right hands. But the "money thing" needs to be out there right away.

"Wait! What?! Then he'll be able to turn me away outright?!" you exclaim franticly.

That's true. And that's his prerogative. And that's why we don't get emotionally involved with new prospects when our "hit rate" is about 1:20. But still, that's called getting off easy, compared to spending time, money and bitter tears on man that has no intentions of coming through for you.

The Numbers Game

Everyone knows that fundraising is a numbers game. Meeting with 20 people is good, meeting with 200 is better. And if we could just have the emotional and physical energy to go door-to-door selling our cause - hey! - what could be better?!

Actually, that's not fundraising. That's what here in NYC they call schnoring. You might as well be wandering through the garment district with a tin can trying to build the Jewish Homeland in Palestine. Charity, fundraising and the American public have all come quite a long way since 1947. So has the "numbers game".

Modern Dance & the Haiti Earthquake

Do you believe in your cause?

Really?

I had the opportunity to sit with a successful individual who lent his time and resources to an NYC dance school. This guy was unreal. Aside from being fervent supporter of the school (his daughter had been a student years ago), he was a committed, active member of their board and was involved in prospecting and soliciting donations.

"Really? Dance?" I asked naively, "How do you pitch dance in today's world...?"

"What exactly does that mean...?" he shot back, somewhat agitated.

My save: "You know. Today's world... Tsunami, Haitian earthquake. Many donors think the arts are secondary to some of the hot crisis issues."

"They're wrong."