Donors

In June 2012, I participated in a Canadian training tour: 4 trainings in 4 days. The theme: creating the extraordinary donor journey. I spoke about creating extraordinary experiences for donors. And I experienced two extraordinary experiences there myself.

In Calgary, Joan from CKUA (Alberta public radio) said to me – with tears in her eyes: “I got into fundraising because of hearing you.” She’d heard me a few years ago in Calgary. How kind of Joan to tell me this. How moved I am that I could make a difference for someone. What an extraordinary experience she gave to me. I will treasure this memory forever.

In Toronto, Ann gave me an extraordinary experience. During a break in my presenting, she rushed up to me and shared with me what she had just read on Twitter: “The U.S. Supreme Court found Obama’s Affordable Care Act to be constitutional.” She knew I was anticipating a decision declaring ACA unconstitutional. She was thrilled to be the person telling me that I need not be angry or sad. I could be happy, even ecstatic. Her extraordinary experience was telling me the good news. And my extraordinary experience was hearing the good news.

Check out these tweets from the Extraordinary Donor Journey. Thanks to John Lepp, Jen Love, and Ann Rosenfield, CFRE, from Agents of Good. Try sharing some of these with your colleagues. What can you learn? What change can you make?

I love Dale Carnegie’s quote: “You’ll have more fun and success when you stop trying to get what you want and start helping other people get what they want.” Do that for your customers, your donors, your volunteers, your friends and family.

And here’s another Carnegie quote: “Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.” Hey fundraisers, how well do we do that? And how about our marketing/communications/pr department?

1. How readable are your donor communications – or any communications from your organization? Check out Jeff Brooks’ blog of June 21, 2012, “Real-world fundraising design is aimed at deteriorating eyes.” And for more about readability, read Tom Ahern’s e-news. And read Roger Dooley’s neurosciencemarketing blog and his book BrainFluence.

2. Read the newly-released Giving USA Annual Report on Philanthropy. Share highlights with your development office, your board’s development committee, your CEO, and your board of directors. This is important stuff! What are the trends – and what are the implications for your organization? Get your own copy.

3. Read “Sweetened Charity,” from The Economist magazine, June 9, 2012.

4. Read the Schumpeter column in the June 9 issue of The Economist, “A tissue of lies.” You’ll learn about social psychologist Dan Ariely and his new book, “The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty.”

Organizations keep trying to make me interested. They send me direct mail but I don’t know them. They send me emails but I don’t care. They say “If I could just educate you about this important issue, you would give.”

More education won’t make people care about your cause. More public visibility won’t make people give to your organization. More tweets and Facebook pages won’t make people listen or hear.

Read Seth Godin‘s blog, June 7, 2012, “The unforgiving arithmetic of the funnel.” Seth notes: “The common mistake is to reflexively come to the conclusion that the only option is to make more noise, to put more attention into the top of the [sales] funnel. The thinking goes that if a big audience is getting you mediocre results, a huge audience is the answer.”

But that’s wrong. Deal with the reality of the funnel. Read Seth’s blog.

Have you read Growing Philanthropy in the U.S. yet? Lots of interesting insights. Lots of challenges for you, your organization, and the sector.

This report came out of a summit in June 2011, put together by Adrian Sargeant, leading fundraising researcher. I participated along with 30+ other people.

Here are the 4 major themes:

1. Enhancing the quality of donor relationships.

2. Developing public trust and confidence.

3. Identifying new audiences, channels, and forms of giving with strong potential for growth.

4. Improving the quality of fundraising training and development.

Read the full report, posted on my website. Read the executive summary. Start talking! Host a conversation with your fundraising colleagues through your AFP or AHP or CASE chapter / region or any other professional association. That’s what AFP RI did. Talk about the findings with your development staff and your board’s fund development committee. Explore. Talk. Learn. Change.

Read my web column about social media at the Nonprofit Quarterly. I just rant and rant about the excessive hype.

And here’s more: I was listening to Sherry Turkle, professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. Turkle writes lots about technology. Here’s what I heard – in my words:

— We want Facebook to do the work of connecting for us. But it really can’t.

— We want social media to do the work of conversations for us. How sad. True conversation is so much more than social media. Read Theodore Zeldin’s beautiful little book Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives.

— Our response to social media is lots about FOMA (fear of missing out).

— We’re fleeing from real connection, deep human interaction. Instead, we embrace the quick, transient, ephemeral links of social media. As Turkle notes, “connection is different than a bond.”

— Turkle also noted that we’re “never where we are where we are.” We’re with a group of friends but we’re texting others. We’re at a board meeting but we’re doing our email.

Read The Atlantic‘s article, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” Consider these research facts – not personal opinion – research facts!

— “Facebook users have higher levels of total narcissism, exhibitionishm, and leadership than Facebook nonusers…. In fact, it could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual’s need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behavior.” We create a persona, the person we want to be. That’s what we display in social media…the desired self, not the true self. The Internet allows us to mediate a distance between ourselves and others.

— “Our online communities become engines of self-image, and self-image becomes the engine of community.”

— “What Facebook has revealed about human nature…is that a connection is not the same thing as a bond.”

We all know that social media is relentless. And self curation is constant. Lots of connections don’t produce a group. More connections don’t create meaningful relationships. Relationships are messy. That’s life.

But there’s something else sad about social media, the Internet itself. We cannot remove the past. In real life, we change. We leave behind, hopefully, our follies and mistakes. People grow and can change for the better. But the Internet never forgets. So the new and better you and me…thwarted, compromised.

Read Sherry Turkle’s book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. I think this is a must-read for all fundraisers and digital staff and the CEO, too.

P.S. I just love it when others criticize social media – or at least question it. For example, check out Jeff Brooks‘ infographic, 03-09-12. I hope you already subscribe! And read Jaron Lanier’s book You Are Not A Gadget or Maggie Jackson’s Distracted? Two big shockers. Enjoy!

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I received an email graciously reminding me that I hadn’t renewed my investment. I thought that I had so I called.

The woman in the development office quickly found my record. She told me that I had given. She nicely apologized for the erroneous email. Quick. Efficient. No worries.

A couple hours later, I received an email from the organization apologizing. Very nice. Apparently a computer glitch sent out renewal notices to several (many?) donors.

Later that same day, I received a personal phone call from the chief development officer. She, too, was apologizing. It was Friday about 6:30 p.m. She was calling all the donors that received the erroneous email.

Wow. What great customer service. How very donor-centered.

Neuroscience reports that correcting a mistake makes people very very very happy. A dopamine high, apparently. I sure was happy. I was very impressed.

And it gets even better.

On that personal telephone call, the development officer thanked me for being a loyal donor. “You’ve been giving for 20 years,” she told me. “In fact,” she said, “this is your 20th anniversary right now. On April 10, 1992, you gave your first gift to EMILY’S List.”

Thank you, EMILY’S List for the extraordinary work you do to elect pro-choice, Democratic women in the U.S. Thank you for the extraordinary communications and updates you regularly provide to us donors.

And thank you for the extraordinary apology process. Everyone makes mistakes. Organizations make mistakes. People make mistakes. It’s how we “fix” the mistake that matters.

What an extraordinary experience I had that day.

And how proud I am to be a loyal donor of EMILY’S List.

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“Which Mailbox Delivers Emotion?” The Agitator blog of 12-15-11 reports on the Consumer Channel Preference Study. And it’s pretty darn interesting for fundraisers! Check out the original source at Epsilon. Here are some of the findings:

— Both U.S and Canadian consumers said they pay more attention to postal mail than email.

— Both U.S. and Canadian consumers enjoy checking the mailbox for postal mail – and that’s an emotional connection, people. Remember, emotions rule. Emotions trigger decisions.

— Both U.S. and Canadian consumers said that the least trustworthy channels are social media and blogs.

The report also lists reasons for preferring direct mail over email – and vice versa. Check it out! As always, thanks to the agitators Tom Belford and Roger Craver.

1. Keep scaling those endless difficult but achievable hills. Thanks to Seth Godin. (February 1, 2012)

2. Make sure you know who your customers are (e.g., donors, prospects, clients, board members, whatever). Thanks to Seth again. (February 6, 2012)

3. Grow your email list with 18 different strategies. Thanks to Karen Zapp. (February 2, 2012)

4. Understand what customer dissatisfaction is. Thanks to Seth yet again. (February 6, 2012)

5. This is a common question – all too often, answered poorly. “Not too often. Don’t want to make the donors upset.” Forget those answers. Instead, read Ken Burnett’s answer. Ken is the founder of SOFII (Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration). Ken introduced the term “relationship fundraising,” and his eponymous book is a must-read. Ken’s answer to “how often should you ask” is exactly the right answer, the best answer, the only answer. Share it with your staff and board members.

6. Visit Marco Kathuria’s site mkcreative. Some interesting info. Some good interviews. You might find Marco’s recent interview with me insightful. Read Tom Ahern’s interview, too. Check out the blog about making a fundraising video and the interview of with Gail Perry and stuff about Apple, and more. And mine, too.

I don’t believe charities compete for donations. People have their own interests – and pay attention to those interests.

Most of the solicitations I receive (and you and your donors, too, I suspect) are of no interest to me. So those organizations are not competing for my money. And when I get solicitations from multiple causes that interest me, I decide how much to give to which one.

Competition also suggests that there is limited money available for charity. The truth is, more people give more money each year. (And if we could increase the % of household income that each of us gives, we would raise even more money.)

And competition is an easy excuse to use when organizations have trouble raising money. Instead of complaining about competition, try doing a better job of fund development.

Remember, fund development starts with identifying the predisposed and qualifying them as prospects – or leaving them alone. Fund development requires relationship building (donor-centered communications and extraordinary experiences). Then we solicit. And then we continue relationship building. Learn lots about this in the Free Download Library on this website. Click on Resources and see the pulldown menu.

I talk about congestion. Yes, it’s a very congested marketplace. Lots of solicitations and crowded mailboxes and telephones. So make sure you’re sending relevant solicitations to those who are interested. That way, those donors and prospects will pull out your letter and listen to your call and meet with you. Make sure you don’t waste your resources alienating people who are not interested.

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