Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.  –

If democracy requires the whole influence of citizens – and it has never needed it more than it does today — a non profit organization requires the whole engagement of its supporters.

What does whole engagement mean?  Of course there is the usual checklist of ways a donor could help an organization: giving money, introducing her friends, soliciting corporate gifts from her employer, adding the organization to her estate plans, volunteering, and so forth.

But in a donor-centric universe – have you noticed that is where we live? – whole engagement means that she is giving what she is able and willing to give at this time, when asked appropriately.

How do you know whether you are inviting the whole engagement of your donors?  Here is a simple test.  If, when you are talking to your donors, do you listen in order to respond, or do you listen to your donors in order to understand?    

Each of your supporters is, to quote Thoreau again, a majority of one, worthy of your inquisitive attention.

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I am sure biologists and anthropologists have written many pages about what eye contact means.  But here is what it meant to me at that moment:  I am giving you a chance to do the right thing.

Thirty five years ago, computers were changing everything.  Fifteen years ago, the internet was changing everything.  Now, social media is changing everything.  But many things do not change, and the eyeball is one of them.  Look someone in the eye and give them a chance to do the right thing.

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Carolyn Forché 2 NBCC 2011 Shankbone (Photo credit: david_shankbone)

April is the month of Carolyn Forche’s birthday.  She is a poet who had a big impact on me in my youth.  She was teaching at UC San Diego in 1980 when she was visited by 3 men from El Salvador.  “We need you to come to El Salvador and write about the violence you see there,” they said.

“But I am not a reporter,” she countered.

“We have reporters.  We need a poet,” they answered.  She accepted the invitation.  The book that resulted from her visit, The Country Between Us, published in 1981, is a powerful testimony that played a role in America’s growing awareness of its covert support for the repressive regime.  She describes her writing as “the poetry of witness.”

When faced with the crises of the day, it is easy to get discouraged.  It is easy to say, “I am only a fund raiser,” just as Carolyn Forche said, “I am only a poet.”

But we are also witnesses.  Forche’s audience was the readers of poetry.  Our audience is the supporters of the organization where we work.  Whether you work in the arts, spirituality, education, social change, or service, you travel to a place where your donors cannot go, and bring back stories.  Don’t forget how important that is.

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On November 15 in 2002, at Poetry Magazine’s 90^th anniversary dinner celebration, Ruth Lilly’s $100 million pledge was announced.  The Poetry Foundation pre-Lilly was a modest magazine publisher with a staff of four and $1.3 million budget.

If it does your heart good in this sober financial climate to imagine a gift of 77 times your operating budget, enjoy a blissful moment of dreaming about your own Miracle Gift Day.

If you know who that person is, make a goal of spending an hour with him or her in the next six weeks without asking for a gift.  Talk about your dreams for the organization in 5-10 years.  Listen.  Listen.  Listen.  And ask if you can come back for another conversation in six months as your plans crystallize.

Sometimes, good things happen to good people. If your organization has benefited from big gifts, please share the story.  And be sure to enter the Jump Start Contest, Prizes include a $2,500 cash prize, recognition in the fund raising press, and free board training. Details at www.jumpstartgrowth.com/contest.

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Miss Manners got a letter from a man who gave a couple thousand dollars annually to each of a hundred charities. When he lost his job, he was unable to continue give. He wrote to Miss Manners about being hounded by solicitors, and she replied: “It has always puzzled Miss Manners to find how often those who work on behalf of other people in general feel free to annoy the particular people with whom they come into contact.”

In these volatile times, your contribution income is likely to make some whiplash-inducing ups and downs. Use your ROI-head to make your budget, but not to talk to your donors.

And here are a couple other lessons from Miss Manners: Say please. Say thank you. And say thank you more often than you say please!

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On the other side of the wall is an actual conversation.  Give and take.  Back and forth.  Of course, most donors want to learn more about programs and accomplishments and plans.  But there is a very personal and specific reason that the donor selected your organization to support, a very personal and specific reason that the donor invited you into his or her space.  If you can stop talking about programs long enough to find out what that motivation is, you will have crossed the sound barrier.  Asking the right questions is the key.

How do you get across that wall and invite the donor to speak?

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Five judges, all development professionals in small organizations, will choose the winner based on:

• The size of the top 10 gifts
• The growth of the top 10 gifts over the past three years
• Creative and effective engagement of board members in fund raising
• Creative and effective cultivation strategies

Please spread the word about the Jump Start Contest.  Thank you.

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The fund raising profession is crippled by that Leadership mystique.  Lots of people believe that succeeding in fund raising requires nerves of steel, flat abs, and straight, white teeth.  The truth is, good manners and a little ambition will get you far.

If you find that The Prototypical Leader’s Textbook for Fund Raising don’t help you so much, here are some alternative ideas.

• The Leader is self-reliant.  As my mentor Andrea Kihlstedt is fond of saying, “every organization is perfectly configured to be itself.”  That means change is hard.  If you want to be an instrument of organizational transformation, find allies.
• The Leader is never insecure.  Pay attention to your insecurity.  Once you recognize that your nerves are made of some material more like pliable than steel, you can tune them to signal when something is off kilter in your relationships with your donors.
• The Leader is unerringly persuasive.  Your donor has assigned your organization to a certain groove in her brain, and that determines her decision to give $X instead of ten times $X.  Your job, as a fund raiser, is to try to move the organization into a different brain-groove.  This is nervous-making.  You can face this nervousness by asking permission to discuss her priorities with her, by acknowledging that you are going out on a limb, or by any one of dozens of other ways of humanizing the encounter.  Once you admit you are not The Leader, all kinds of possibilities open themselves.

Anyone else out there find the Leadership Mystique unhelpful?  How do you deal with it?

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Every year. an entity called Canyon Investments sent a check for $5,000.  The return address was a post office box in Chicago. Responsibility was batted back and forth between the foundation team or the corporate sponsorship team.  Once, when I was planning a trip to Chicago, I sent a letter to “Dear sir or madam,” expressing appreciation and inquiring whether a visit would be welcome. I was delighted to get a phone call from an attorney representing Canyon, and inviting me to join him for coffee.  He explained to me that the donor preferred anonymity, and that he would be happy to pass on literature.  He also mentioned that there was some extra money in the account, and that a request for $10,000 would probably be granted.

The gifts grew to $35,000 a year. Every time to flew to Chicago, I visited the attorney.  Every time I saw him, I asked if I could arrange a visit between the donor and the Wilderness Society’s president.  He always smiled and shook his head, and offered to deliver any literature I wanted to leave with him.

When you are looking for a donor and, instead, find yourself face to face with a gatekeeper, take a deep breath, introduce yourself, and thank him or her for being an intermediary.

Please share your gatekeeper stories!

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