Life Lessons

I've been asked to fill out a questionnaire for an interview with Fundraising Success Magazine, in follow up to the Fundraising Star piece.  I'm quite flattered.

Some of the questions are purely factual and some are very fundraising focused. But a few others are a bit more expansive.

The hardest one for me to answer is the final one: "Greatest Lesson Ever Learned."

I've spent a fair amount of time pondering that in the last day or two. Frankly, I'm not sure I've learned much in my life.

So I'd like try a few life lessons out on you, dear reader, and ask you to let me know which one seems most profound. None are about fundraising, but could perhaps serve as analogies of some kind.

Let's take them in chronological order.

The first one that comes to mind is the time I was going door to door in my neighborhood selling candy for my synagogue. (Look at that, fundraising after all.) I was around 13. A small fleet of young hoodlums, in my memory there were about 63 of them but the real number might be closer to five, passed by me on their bikes. One of them, the leader of the group, called out to me to ask if I was Jewish. When I said yes, he started to sing Havah Nagilah and all his friends laughed derisively. Having heard all my life that if you stand up to a bully he will immediately back down, I called out to him, in an admittedly tremulous voice, "Why, you want to make something out of it?"  (I really did use that phrase.) And to my irritation, he immediately -- and I mean without even a shadow of hesitation or ambivalence -- jumped off his bike and ran straight at me.  Lesson learned: If you are a chubby kid with glasses and you stand up to a bully, he will probably jump off his bike and start punching you. Secondary lesson learned: A lot of what grown ups tell you is a load of crap.

The second one is less comical and more melodramatic. It concerns the famous Miracle on Ice of the 1980 Olympics. (Summary: a rag tag team of young American amateurs beat the Soviet Union and Finland to win the gold medal. You can read about it here, if you're interested.) Anyway, what I find so instructive about that victory is this: after the U.S. team had defied all expectations to beat five teams in a row, every sportscaster in the world (as I recall) was saying, more or less: well that was an amazing run, but there is zero, zero chance these U.S. amateurs can beat the Soviet team. It isn't a long shot, it's impossible.  Don't even hope they win, because that would be pointless. They can't win.  But I guess the U.S. team didn't accept that, because as you either know or have guessed, they did win (and then beat Finland and won the gold). Now, I wasn't much of a hockey fan then (and still am not), but I was an anguished romantic who always seemed to be making emotionally charged, idealistic arguments and having them disputed by the cynics all around me.  And when the U.S. team won that gold medal I said to myself: for the rest of my life I'll know that when someone says something is simply too far fetched and cannot happen, it isn't true. Lesson learned: Sometimes highly improbable things do come true, so never give up hope. Secondary lesson learned: A lot of what grown ups tell you is a load of crap.

The third one took place about 18 months later, when I spent a summer in an advanced placement program at Cornell University. It was July 4 and a bunch of us -- three or four nerdy, nervous guys and one pretty girl -- walked somewhere to see some fireworks. The girl's name was Sue, actually, and she was talking quite a bit about some guy (I don't remember his name, or the name of anyone else in the story, except for the pretty girl) who she like, totally couldn't stand. (People didn't really say "like, totally" back then, but you get the idea.) I knew who she meant -- he was an athletic, cocky, loud kind of guy. Let's call him Patrick. And then, in what seemed to be a cosmic coincidence, that very guy, let's-call-him-Patrick, suddenly appeared.  And while we all sort of trailed behind Sue, let's-call-him-Patrick walked right alongside her. And he was sort of teasing her and bumping into her a little. Can you imagine? I felt sorry for both of them -- her, because she had to put up with this guy she like totally couldn't stand, and him because any minute now she was going to humiliate him and tell him to get lost. When we got to the field to view the fireworks, let's-call-him-Patrick sat right next to her.  Couldn't he read her signals? She kept pushing him and yelling things like "shut up" and "you're such a jerk" -- I mean, she was laughing to be nice, but we knew she couldn't stand him.  So we all sat there, somewhat enjoying the spectacle of Patrick's imminent demise. And then, I probably don't need to tell you, the next thing we knew they were making out with each other. Making out! With each other!  I mean, she'd just been telling us that she especially disliked him. I'll tell you something: I was surprised. Lesson learned: In general (and in fundraising), it is better to be self-assured, goal oriented and unafraid than timid, nerdy and passive. Secondary lesson learned: People don't always know what they really want, and you could go crazy trying to figure it out.  Sometimes it's better just to offer them what you have and see if they get used to it.

Overall lesson: You should pursue your greatest dreams, hopes and desires, because anything is possible.  But you'd better be smart and aggressive, or you will probably just blow it.

I Am Truly Humbled

Well, the big day has arrived.  The new issue of Fundraising Success magazine finally appeared in my mailbox, and there I am, right on page 20: a "Fundraising Star."

I always find it funny when someone gets a big award and claims to be humbled. What does that mean? Isn't everyone who wins an Oscar or a Nobel Prize really the opposite of humble? Aren't they all proud, exalted and vainglorious?

Well, believe it or not, I am truly humbled.

Two reasons:

1) Even though this news has gone out via email to the Fundraising Success email list at least once, and maybe twice, and has now been mailed across the country in a glossy print publication, I haven't exactly been overwhelmed by congratulatory telegrams. (In other words, I haven't heard a peep from anyone.)

2) I am well aware that every fundraiser is only as good as his or her last fiscal year. I could screw up everything in the coming months. Then I'd really show you humble.

In fact, I'm a pretty superstitious guy, and I'm a little worried that I might start to relax a little.  Have you ever seen a decent fundraiser who looked relaxed?  We're a pretty nervous group.

So all I can do to maintain my aura of appropriate anxiety is keep in mind the lessons of three great nonprofit leaders with whom I've worked:

The first is from Karen Hopkins, my boss when I was at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).  Though I'd been a fundraiser for at least five years before I met Karen, she is my role model when it comes to development work.  And the main thing I learned from her is to follow every lead until it either turns into money or into nothing -- but don't give up until you reach a conclusion.  I'm convinced that we all leave piles of money on the metaphorical table because we get fatigued by the elusiveness of prospects or ambiguity of situations.  Karen doesn't, and I try not to.

The second is from Harvey Lichtenstein, who was Karen's boss for the first few years that she was mine.  Karen quotes Harvey as saying (I'm paraphrasing): "In life, things usually don't work out.  But sometime they do." That quote deserves a post by itself. Because not only do we have to try a lot of things to discover the strategies that succeed, but we have to put up with boldly trying lots of things that fail. In public.

The third is from Reynold Levy, President of Lincoln Center.  Reynold likes to say -- as you could read in his great fundraising book Yours for the Asking -- "In soliciting donors in writing, it is far better to be roughly right, brief and early than perfect, comprehensive and late." That simple adage, which far too many fastidious fundraisers ignore, should be the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath for Development Directors.  And perhaps even more important, though harder to achieve: "It's the Board of Directors, Stupid."

So, I will once again remind myself to follow those great examples and do my best to live up to my brief moment of glory (hey, my mother is proud), and not go from truly humbled to completely humiliated.

On another note: if you've read this far, thank you!  If you or anyone you know could use a three-day course in fundraising, register for my Weekend Intensive at the end of March.  Use the discount code MattsBlog and save $250.

A Tale of Two Missions

Once in a while, in a nonprofit organization, someone will propose a creative idea for raising new earned revenue.


And often, someone else will point out that regardless of its business merits, that idea is just too far afield of the organization's mission. And that's not what the organization knows how to do.  So...forget it.


I find that reaction mystifying.


Imagine if baseball teams were so sanctimonious about their sport?  "No selling hot dogs -- that's not our mission.  We hit balls and run around bases."  Or movie theaters?  "We're here to show moving pictures with sound, not peddle exploded kernels of corn!"


I'm exaggerating a bit, of course.  Nonprofits will serve hot dogs and popcorn to make money.  We'll also run cafes and gifts shops.  Actually, we'll do all sorts of things, as long as they've been done a million times before by a million other organizations.


But when a new idea is suggested, many nonprofits will recoil in shock.  That's not our mission!


So I'd like to propose that we nonprofits hereby consider ourselves to have two missions: Our first mission is whatever it says in our mission statement.  Our second mission is to raise as much revenue as possible, in whatever way is legal and inoffensive, to support the first mission.


Here's an example:


Imagine you are an orchestra with a little concert hall, conveniently located in the middle of a functional but unused gas station, which your organization happens to own.  (In fact, it is a magical gas station: the underground tanks never run out, it's the only station within miles of a thruway off ramp, and it's environmentally harmless.)


But forget about all that for now.  After all, you need money to run your orchestra.  So you duly hire a development staff to write grants, seek sponsorships, build a membership group, hold a few fundraising events each year, etc.


But your community is not wealthy, and so you barely muddle through.  There's never enough money to pay the musicians what they deserve or fix the acoustics in the hall.  You consider transposing all the violin parts for tubas because tuba players don't need such high wages.  You are in a continuous state of under-funding.


Then one day a new staff member asks, meekly: "Why don't we try selling some gas from those pumps out front?"


And everyone shouts back: "Because that's not our mission!  We're an orchestra, not a gas station!"


I'm arguing that if you can better fulfill your mission of being an orchestra by also being a gas station, then you are obligated to be an orchestra and a gas station. 


If you're an orchestra, you expect your musical quality to rise to the highest possible level.  You strive for perfection.  Because that's your mission.


But we're often willing to overlook opportunities to leverage our assets for earned revenue because it's a distraction, or simply because it's off mission.  Carry advertising on our Website?  Rent our mailing lists?  Play weddings and bar mitzvahs?  Horrors!


Well I say, if it doesn't seriously harm your reputation or otherwise undermine your organization, then you are obligated to do everything you can think of, and to do it as well as any for-profit business could be expected to do it under the same circumstances.  If you don't have the expertise to maximize the opportunity, then go and find it.  


After all, it is your mission -- or at least it's one of them.

(I should point out, by the way, that I'm not secretly talking about the nonprofit I work for, which is very flexible and open to new ideas.  This post, and most of my posts, are culled from decades of direct experience with various organizations, some great and some crazy, and shop talk with colleagues.)

Want to Hear About My Problems?

When I was in high school, I had a strategy for getting girls to fall in love with me.


The plan was to act sullen a lot and then wait for some beautiful girl with a poetic sensibility to notice how special I was.  Then I would tell her about all of my problems and she'd be fascinated and enraptured.


Did I mention that I didn't have any girlfriends in high school?

Most moody adolescents figure out, eventually, that few people are particularly attracted to people who exude unhappiness.  (It does seem to work in the movies sometimes, to judge from the advertisements of movies I never see, but I think you have to look like Johnny Depp.)


So it's kind of funny that so many nonprofits never seem to figure it out.


I've worked for a bunch of nonprofits now, and I've consulted, formally or informally, with many more of them.  I can't tell you how many times I've sat through strategy sessions, or read appeal letters, or watched testimony, about the dire circumstance nonprofit x was facing, and how much they needed urgent support to survive.


But I can tell you how many times I've seen that strategy work.   Zero.


This point was driven home for me about eight years ago in a City Council delegation hearing in Queens.  All of these Queens nonprofits were lined up to make heartwrenching pleas for increased support in the wake of September 11.  As I waited my turn, I watched the leader of a little senior center stand at the microphone and detail all of the draconian cuts her agency had already enacted.  The center was, she said in a shaky voice, at the end of its rope.


I particularly remember her explaining something about how they couldn't afford to keep the refrigerator plugged in any more.  This was desperation at its sharpest.


And here's what else I remember: 1) Two City Councilmembers were pointing to something funny on a soda can that one of them was drinking -- they were totally detached from the testimony; and 2) I myself felt bored and annoyed by the testimony.  (And I'm a guy who tears up at babyfood commercials.)  I figured, if she can't figure out how to raise enough money to keep appliances plugged in, she probably shouldn't be running that senior center.  


From what I can tell, first-time donors will often respond to a well crafted emotionally charged message about a severe problem that an organization is going to solve -- but not to a problem within the organization itself.  And long-time donors will quickly tire of requests to be rescued.


So my advice: Don't go there.


At El Museo del Barrio, where I work, we are looking at a significant fundraising goal for the upcoming fiscal year.  Despite the self-assured proclamations of my last post, I'm a little nervous about how we're going to meet our goal.


The reason for the big goal is simple: we've got a lot of great things we want to do, and we haven't yet figured out how to fund them all.  (A few big grants have run their course.)  So we don't have problems -- we have challenges.  And we will embrace those challenges and celebrate when we meet them.


Because even if we did have problems, no one would care that much.  (Unless we could make ourselves look like Johnny Depp.)