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.)