A Wise Sage Says It Better Than I Can
Giving credit where credit is due is something I've always believed. So, when I read the words of a long-time fellow professional, Jim Langley, I thought it was due to commentary and appropriate attribution.
In a recent posting, Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, started an article with the following:
Fewer donors are interested in buying what you're selling and fewer fundraisers are interested in selling what you want your donors to buy.”
Simple brilliance in much better verbiage than I've said before. But the concept is the same as what I voice constantly.
The transactional nature of most gifts is based on the concept that the fundraiser is trying to tell the donor what is needed and to get the donor to give to that particular need or initiative. What I have found in healthcare, in particular, is this is the thought process of C-Suite leaders, in particular the chief executive officer and the chief financial officer. “Just tell them what we need and ask them for that,” is a normalized comment from executive leaders to fundraisers.
And while a few gifts in that methodology might come to fruition, it's always amazing to me that we don't actually ask the right question. What is it that the donor wants to accomplish?
This false narrative of successful fundraising, telling donors what they should give to, is creating several negative outcomes.
We are not maximizing people's interests in helping others. People will give to their greatest potential if it is a passion of theirs, that they believe that their desires are met by an organization that wants to do good within the framework of the donor’s perspective.
We're creating immense burnout within the nonprofit sector. Most fundraisers are fairly good people. But when the metrics and the overall message are to get the money for what we need and don't care about what others think, that leads to people going to find other things that are more in line with their desire to make the world a better place.
We're raising less money.
From a cultivation perspective, we need to spend more time asking what donors want to accomplish and what their passion is. Most transformational gifts come from emotional perspectives, where people believe their gift can make a difference within the framework of what they believe in. They don’t come from an obligation. They don’t come from being told to do it. The more we realize that, the sooner will turn around philanthropy in a much more positive direction for both nonprofits and donors.
