Goodbye to All This

Let's face it.  I've lost interest in this Blog.

I started this process a little over a year ago in order to promote my fundraising workshop.  It was my short term hope that my workshop would put some extra cash in my pocket.  It was my longer term dream that I would build an international fundraising training empire and amass the kind of wealth that allows you to drive Cadillac convertibles and wear flagrantly false toupes.  (Even if you have a full head of hair.)

I dared to dream these dreams because of the reportedly dizzying power of social media to transform one's idea into a global phenomenon overnight.

Needless to say, none of it came true.  The workshop lost money, I didn't build an empire, and I never seemed to gather much of a following for my Blog.  A few times it got picked up by other blogs or email newsletters with significant followings, including the excellent You've Cott Mail, and on those days my readership would spike into the triple digits.

Anyway, I've learned two primary lessons along the way which I'd like to share with anyone who happens to read this:

1) Social media is pretty hard.  The competition is enormous and it's tough to rise above the noise.  Like everything else in life, you have to grind away (or get very lucky) to have an impact.
2) There are endless lessons to learn in fundraising -- I feel that I'm forever reaching deeper levels of understanding.  But after a while, in my opinion, the kinds of things people like me write about fundraising on blogs start to feel worn out.

I had been toying with the idea of relaunching this effort.  But just recently I got a great, exciting, challenging new job: I'm going to be the Vice President of Development at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  That will require my full attention, and so this seems like the right time to sign off.

I'm going to unplug the blog (can one do that?) and my Website.  But feel free to drop me a line if you want to get in touch or have any questions.

Thanks for reading.

Best,

Matt

My goodness -- did I fall asleep?

Well, I thought I would stop blogging for a week or two (which turned into a month or two) just for the perverse thrill of being inundated by calls and emails from terrified readers. Sort of like getting to go to your own funeral.

But apparently those emails and calls all went into some extremely effective spam killer in my computer's security system, because I never received even one of them. So to all of you who have been trying relentlessly to get in touch with me, I offer my humblest apologies.

And I guess I owe you an explanation.

My excuse is that my family recently moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs of New Jersey, and between packing and unpacking (and work and my kids), I haven't had much time for anything.

But I'm back now. So please, take heart. The long summer of my absence is finally over.

Here in my new home state, there's news which would send a chill down any fundraiser's spine. My new state, apparently, lost hundreds of millions of dollars in education funds because someone made a mistake filling out an application form.

Let's focus, for a moment, on the version of the story that I heard initially: some other-than-meticulous grant writer put the wrong column of numbers in an application for "Race to the Top" funding. The federal government, unwilling to bend in its bureaucratic regulations, refused to allow a simple correction to be made.

I had two reactions when I first heard that story. First, I thought of all the little mistakes and typos I've made, or failed to catch, on the zillions of proposals I've submitted over the last 20 years. [Note to future prospective employers (if I'm ever looking for a job again): Kidding! I'm just making that up for the sake of my readers.]

The idea that a screw up by me or one of my staff could lead to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars (or even hundreds of dollars) is terrifying.

But I was also struck by the absurdity of such a situation. After all, shouldn't the decision of how to appropriate federal monies -- money that could have a profound effect on the lives of countless kids --be determined by underlying merit, and not by who has the most careful proposal writer on staff?

Recent news reports, however, make the issue more cloudy. Perhaps the New Jersey officials were given an opportunity to make the correction and failed to do so. And apparently they opted out of a grant training session -- which all of the ten winners opted into.

What's the point?

Certainly it's a cautionary tale about being careful with applications. And about avoiding hubris.

But also, when you look deeper into the story, you begin to see how the carelessness of the applicant seems to reflect a kind of cynicism about the goals of the program.

And there's no quality more undermining for a fundraiser than cynicism.

Sometime a Paradox

A  few months ago, I was driving up the West Side Highway in a car teeming with discontented children (alright, there were only two of them), when we hit heavy traffic.  Needless to say, we were running late, anxiety was high and the relentless sound of childish whining was unbearable (and that was just me).

After crawling for what seemed like hours, I saw the problem: a half-marathon was underway.

We were hitting the tail end of it.  The winner had probably passed the finish line 30 minutes earlier.  But there were still hundreds, thousands of people running toward the finish line.  As we crawled up the highway, the parade became attenuated and the remaining participants -- the stragglers -- looked increasingly exhausted.  Yet it went on and on.

The sheer volume of people up early on a Saturday morning was astonishing.

And it occurred to me that it is probably easier to recruit thousands of people to do something hard -- run 13 miles, say -- than it would be to get them to do something easy.  That's the always-surprising paradox: people love challenges.  We tend to get bored by experiences that are easy and embrace the ones that are hard.

I thought of that recently during a friendly debate among some colleagues about board giving.

My colleague was arguing that setting a specific high financial obligation for new trustees would turn those new trustees off.

I disagree. In fact, the challenge is part of the attraction.  

Smart, well adjusted, ambitious young people want to go to a school that will make them work hard in order to learn a lot (and then get good jobs).  Serious athletes want to compete against the best.  Mountain climbers want to scale mountains, not escalators.  (I prefer escalators, but I digress.)

I think board members, at least the ones we really want on our team, are likely to feel the same about their financial participation.  They want to know that the expectation of them is serious and significant -- so it is an accomplishment when they achieve it.

I think we make a serious error when we intentionally avoid presenting our board members with a clear expectation of what to give.  It puts an undue burden on them as they try to figure out how to avoid cheapness on one side and ostentation on the other, and it sends the message that there is nothing particularly exclusive about the club they just joined.

In a variation on the Groucho Marx joke, many of them wouldn't want to join a club that would have them as a member even if they didn't make a contribution.  Or would have the guy sitting next to them who hasn't given much of anything.  No one wants to be the only person chipping in for the pizza.  If there is no stated giving requirement, then every board member has to worry that they are over paying in relation to their peers.

Let's all do our board members a favor: tell them, in writing, what we expect them to pay.  It's the least we can do.

Do You Know What Puffery Means?

I didn't.  But now I do.  I just read about it in the Fundraising Detective blog.

Puffery refers to the perfectly legal way that companies brag about their products, making claims that are exaggerated but not provably false (think "coldest beer in Brooklyn" or "best pizza in Chicago").

There are a few fascinating things about puffery.

First of all, it's legal because it is generally assumed that no one really believes it.

But if no one believes is, you may ask, then what is the point of saying it?

The point is, I would guess, that even if the prospective buyer doesn't exactly believe it, he or she still believes that something like it must be true.  Or at least believes that the seller is very enthusiastic and confident about the product.  I conjecture that the enthusiasm and confidence itself is the message.  (If you want to explore a  brilliant gloss on this topic by one of my intellectual heroes, Northrop Frye, read The Vocation of Eloquence chapter of The Educated Imagination.)

Second, it is only effective on people who do not consider themselves experts on the subject.

Which brings me back to fundraising.

I often read pieces by fundraising experts about the importance of avoiding dry statistics and complex logic in fundraising writing, and instead using stories and appealing to emotions.

And I'm sure that's true -- for direct mail.  But it strikes me as dead wrong in foundation grant proposals.

Because when we're reading direct mail pieces, we want to believe that an act of generosity on our part will have a profound impact on an urgent problem.  Just as we want to believe that the pizza we're about to eat is the best in Chicago, or the shampoo we're about to buy is going to make us look like fashion models.  We are, to paraphrase Frye, thinking with our imaginations.  We live much of our lives in a state of imagination; if we didn't, life might be unbearable.

But sometimes we know we must suspend our imaginations to make important decisions.  We'll pull off the highway because we read a sign that says "best barbecue in Tennessee," but we won't stake our life savings on an email that promises the "investment opportunity of a lifetime."

And the foundation program officer, who is paid to direct grants to the most effective possible use, won't be swayed by your attempts to bring tears to her eyes.  She is an expert in what she does and your puffery will likely leave her cold.  She want facts.

At least while she's at work.  After pouring over proposals all day I'm sure she'll head to that new bar she passed by recently -- you know, the one with the big sign that says "Best Martinis in Manhattan."

Fundraising vs. Begging

I had a job once as a canvass director.  Which means it was my job to co-run an office of (mostly) young people who went out door to door asking for money.

A guy I worked with told me that every day when he went to work, his roommate would say: "Good luck with the begging today."

Sometimes, in our darkest hours, we fundraisers do feel like impoverished mendicants.

But that feeling should be a warning system: if it feels like begging, we're doing something wrong.

Fundraising is most successful, and fun and satisfying, when we feel that we're providing something valuable in exchange for our donors' dollars.

Sometimes the "something valuable" is a good or a service.  Like great theater tickets or curator-led private viewings or opportunities to meet brilliant leaders in a field of interest.  The big players in the nonprofit cultural world provide those privileges in abundance, and it plays a big part in their fundraising strategy.  We smaller guys need to figure out how to replicate that formula in a manageable but meaningful way.

For non-arts organizations, the "something valuable" might just be the opportunity to be involved in something important and exciting.  The opportunity to make a real and significant difference in the lives of people who need help, or to get a school built, or to provide potable water to a village that needs it desperately.

Or perhaps there are opportunities to partner with organizations that will enable you to provide special benefits for your donors.

My point is: innovation and bold creativity can go a long way in terms of transforming our asks from unpleasant obligations to stimulating opportunities in the minds of our prospects.

Fundraising is dreary and difficult when we're doing nothing particularly exciting or important and providing our donors with uninspired gratitude in return.

The first step, I remind myself continuously, is figuring out how to make ourselves, and then our donors, excited about the project and the ask.  Sometimes that means expanding the project and increasing the goal.  I tend to think that it's easier to raise a million dollars for a fabulous project than a half million for a mediocre one.

With the right "something valuable" in hand, the fundraising challenge may not be easy, but it won't feel like begging either.

The Shock of the Obvious

Today I went to the final session of the Carnegie Corporation/Kennedy Center Arts Management Initiative.

I found it quite fascinating, although I think many people were annoyed by this one guy who kept raising his hand to ask questions.  (Okay I admit it, it was me.)

There was a tremendous amount covered, but if you know Michael Kaiser's spiel, none of it will be shocking.  Kaiser essentially urges arts organizations to plan exciting programming way in advance (five years), market their work aggressively, build a family of fans and supporters, and repeat.  He is adamant, sometimes to the point of controversy, that arts organizations undermine themselves when they chip away at programming and marketing to save money.

But today, I realized what is special about a leader like Michael Kaiser -- or Reynold Levy or Karen Hopkins, for that matter.

In each case, these people have two special qualities, each of which is rare in its own right.

The first is fearless imagination.  

It takes courage to be imaginative.  Right after we have a bold imaginative thought (I want to be the President of the United States, I want to get Paul McCartney to play at my benefit concert, I want to launch a $10 million fundraising campaign), most of us hear a little voice in our head that says: you are crazy.  You are not the kind of person/organization to which such grand and glorious things happen.  If you tell people this idea, they will laugh at you.  If you try this you will fail and be scorned.  

But the Michael Kaisers of the world don't hear that voice.  Or maybe they hear it and ignore it.

Because they seem to be relentlessly audacious.  They are constantly surprising us with the grandiosity of their plans.  International collaborations involving hundreds of people.  Productions that cost millions and transform spaces.  

And if you inquire about the origin of the ideas, you'll find they often start with  an almost childlike enthusiasm leading to the question: why not?

But that's just the first quality.

The second quality, when combined with the first, is devastatingly powerful.

They execute relentlessly.

Most of the world's imaginative ideas are voiced over drinks and dissipate with the buzz of the alcohol.

But Michael Kaiser, as you'll know if you hear him speak (and he speaks widely -- you can listen to him here) meets with his marketing and development vice presidents every day (I'm not sure if that includes weekends) beginning at 7 am.

And they keep talking -- about implementation and adjustment of plans -- all day long.  

The point isn't to hero-worship Michael Kaiser or the others, but to be candid about why many of us in the nonprofit world bemoan the difficulty of raising money and surviving.

In the spirit of that candor, we must admit that standard operating procedure is to program cautiously and then manage haphazardly.

We're not committing ourselves to outrageously bold ideas.  And we're not arriving at the office at 7 am to hammer out the endless details to pull it off.  

So of course life is hard.

(My emphasis on the early morning issue, by the way, is just to illustrate the intensity of the process -- the point is the relentless commitment to the management of small details, no matter when you start.)

I can't prove it, but I think if we could all become more like Michael and Reynold and Karen, whether as leaders of organizations or trustees or development directors, we would all have more success.  Because "the pie" would just get bigger as more people got excited about all the amazing new things going on in the nonprofit world.

 

I'm at my computer now. Where does the food come out?

When this whole Internet thing started (or maybe ten years later, when the news finally reached me), I remember people saying that soon we'd be getting food through our computers.

I recall wondering if that meant that the food would actually come out of the computer. Like maybe binary code would somehow be transmogrified into food. Or perhaps we wouldn't need to eat at all -- the nourishment would just be biochemically programmed into our bodies.  All of which seemed horribly alienating. (Full disclosure: I love food.)

I realize that in retrospect my confusion seems unnervingly idiotic. But I recollect that others were equally perplexed. We knew computers were somehow going to revolutionize the world, but we couldn't imagine what that meant.

With a mixture of relief and disappointment, I've since apprehended that computers will not fundamentally change my experience as a human being.  So far they've just made it faster and easier to produce, transmit and access information.  Ultimately, it all gets translated back into familiar human experience.

Facebook, for example, feels like I'm stepping into a party (sans food and drink) every time I log on. Being able to access a party of lots of old friends and co-workers and half-remembered schoolmates is indeed different from life before Facebook. But on the other hand, I've been to parties before.

Anyway, all of these reflections are prompted by my reading of Janet Levine's latest Too Busy to Fundraise Blog post.

I can relate to Janet's bouts of exhaustion and discouragement in relation to the incessant chatter about nonprofits and social media. All of the compulsion to master Twitter and LinkedIn, not to mention Facebook and Blogging, and online fundraising opportunities like ChipIn or Karma 411, can be overwhelming.

But my feeling is that no matter how well we master this new world, we're never going to get pizza slices from our computer.

And, more to the point, I don't think we're ever going to transcend the fundamental human desire for personal interaction.

Just as watching TV doesn't make us lose the joy of seeing live performance or attending church or going to parties and restaurants, online fundraising won't replace one-on-one personal fundraising. It's just a new, and admittedly exciting, additional option.

We owe it to ourselves to learn all we can about these often fun and powerful tools.  But at the same time, we should accept that some of us, based on some permutation of personal inclination and organizational focus, will not likely incorporate online fundraising into our development strategy. Or will try and not have great results.

Because there are only so many hours in the day, and for some people, it's all just too hard to learn, and perhaps too poor a fit.  If you abandon your personal relationships, which you understand and which have meaning for you, in favor of crowd-sourced, media rich online giving efforts, which are baffling to you, you're going to look like a middle aged guy with a bad combover at a Radiohead concert, trying to dance your way over to an intensely ironic 25-year-old in a Sex Pistols t-shirt. Metaphorically speaking, you won't go home with the girl.  (More full disclosure: I've never actually listened to Radiohead.  It was the only cool contemporary group I could think of.  I just looked in Wikipedia and saw they started in 1985.)

Ideally, you'll figure out how to do it all.  Individually cultivated gifts and online efforts and grants and sponsorships and board development and planned giving and government grants and earned revenue initiatives and lots of other stuff. Whatever you can manage and whatever works.

Less ideally, you'll prioritize what works best for you.

Social media is another tool in the arsenal, not the war to end all wars.

At my fundraising workshop last weekend, I quipped that if the person in charge of your social media strategy needs to buy the book "Facebook for Dummies," you're probably not going to have much success.  (Final full disclosure: No one at the workshop laughed.  I hope someone reading this thinks it's funny.)