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.)

Call Me Naive

A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were having a friendly disagreement about a donor.

He argued that this donor's philanthropic priorities were carefully calculated to promote his professional ambitions.

I said I thought the donor was just giving money to the things he cares about.

And it occurred to me that I'm pretty naive by nature.

It also occurred to that to be a fundraiser, one has to be a bit naive.

We have to be naive because we have nothing to gain by being cynical.

Cynicism, of course, is tempting.  (Especially for a naturally sarcastic person like me.)  What's great about being cynical is that you run very little risk of being embarrassed.

Imagine someone offers you a great-sounding deal and you have to guess whether they are being nice or trying to rip you off.

If you guess they are trying to rip you off, and you're right, it shows you are worldly and smart.  If you're wrong -- well, it just means that this was an exception to the rule.

Now imagine you guessed they were just being nice.  If you were right, you got lucky.  If you were wrong, you're an idiot with terrible judgment.

That kind of skepticism probably serves people very well in a wide range of professions.

But it doesn't help us fundraisers.

Because we have nothing to gain by guessing people aren't going to respond to our appeals, attend our dinners, join our membership programs, say yes to our major gift requests, approve our proposals or sponsor our events.  It just makes us hesitate to ask them.  And the less we ask, the less we get.

And so we sally forth with slightly ridiculous expressions of wonderment on our faces, expecting acts of selfless altruism from everyone we encounter, impassively disregarding waves of counter-evidence and feeling enormous satisfaction each time we are right.

The Fundraiser's Guide to Serenity

I haven't posted in a week.

Why? Because I've been busy promoting my fundraising workshop at Lincoln Center at the end of March.

I'm very excited about the workshop. But there is one fundamental issue connected to it that makes me a little uneasy. 

The truth is: some organizations won't succeed with their fundraising efforts, no matter how hard and smart their development staff work.

In my workshops, I emphasize the "tactics" of fundraising. (Hence the name of my training company.) I teach the fundamentals of grantwriting, corporate sponsorships, board development, membership and annual giving, special events, etc. I intentionally focus on those dynamics within the direct control of the fundraiser.

But the truth is: some dynamics are out of our control.

The serenity prayer advises us to accept the things we cannot change and to have the courage to change the things we can.

For development professionals, I think "accepting the things we cannot change" is the path to insanity, not serenity. If you choose to stay at an organization that does second-rate (or tenth-rate) work, alienates natural partners, mismanages finances, etc., you'll need a truckload of pharmaceuticals to experience anything like serenity.

People often ask me how I came to work at El Museo del Barrio.  I'm not Latino.  I don't speak Spanish. And until I started there, I didn't know the first thing about Latino or Latin American art. (Now I do know the first thing.  But my colleagues might dispute that I know the second or third thing.)

Why did I go there, and why do I stay there?  Because I need to work at an arts organization that does excellent work; that demonstrates a sincere commitment to its staff, audience and community; and that wants to succeed.  El Museo is all of that.

When I meet fundraisers who work for self-destructive tyrants, or at organizations that just don't do anything terribly important or exciting, I know that they will be very limited in their success until and unless they move on with their careers.

I usually start my courses by sharing this bitter truth with fundraisers. I tell them to take a hard look at their organizations and determine whether the elements necessary for success exist for them.

But maybe I should start with the fundraiser's serenity prayer instead: Give me the serenity to go forth boldly with my fundraising plan as long as I'm raising money for a cause that deserves it, the courage to find a new job if my organization doesn't deserve it, and enough self respect to admit there's a difference.

Don't Be Afraid to Tell Me What You Want

For most of us Development Directors, the selection of a new Executive Director is probably the single most important factor in whether or not we will enjoy and succeed at our jobs, or struggle in misery.

At El Museo del Barrio, where I work, Julian Zugazagoitia has just announced that he will be leaving his position to become the Director and CEO of the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. I will miss Julian profoundly, both personally and professionally.

Fortunately, El Museo is in a very strong position -- the staff is talented and motivated, and the board is unified and clear headed. I am very confident that the board will choose an effective leader to build on Julian's excellent tenure.

Still, this transition has caused me to reflect on what we Development Directors want from an Executive Director/CEO. Here are my top five priorities -- I'd love to hear yours:

1) The Director must be passionate about a vision and able to communicate that vision in a way that gets people excited. One of my favorite quotations is "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood." The Director must have that kind of fire in his or her belly -- even if it means continuously cutting through the cynicism and doubts of others.

2) The Director should be a manager, but not a micro-manager. Ideally, the Director should carefully track the organization's goals and hold direct reports accountable for delivering on their responsibilities. But frankly, if I had to choose between a micro-manager and a space cadet, I'd take the space cadet.  A few strong deputies can fill in for a charismatic but unfocused boss.  But micromanagement is a disease that will decimate a nonprofit. (And it is epidemic.)

3) The Director should be someone who, when in doubt, says "yes."   

4) The Director should be someone who knows how to make decisions. Bad decisions are usually better than no decisions. Like micromanagement, the inability to make a decision renders your staff impotent.  

5) The Director should love funders and fundraising. The four points above are all crucial to the success of a fundraising program. But just as crucial, the Director needs to respect his or her funders as partners, and should never perceive them as necessary evils. The Director must be eager to share plans with these stakeholders and ready to listen to their input. (And should take every possible meeting and arrive on time and well prepared.)

Those are my top five. What are yours?

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.