Are you a fundraiser?

There’s an old line that parents swap, and it goes something like:

People who aren’t parents think that there’s not a chasm between people who are and are not parents.  People who are parents know that there is one.

It’s not better or worse to be a parent, it’s just a different worldview and state of mind, a line that you cross and can never go back.

I think fundraisers experience something similar.  A good fundraiser is just as smart and savvy and capable and strategic as non-fundraisers – indeed much of what motivated me to start this blog was how frustrated I was to see that the nonprofit world sidelined fundraisers and fundraising and then wondered why it was so hard to scale things that work.

But there is something different about being a (good) fundraiser.  It means that at any day, at any moment, on some level you’re thinking about that revenue line, thinking about where you are in the year, how much time you have left, and what it’s going to take to get there.

This, too, isn’t good or bad, it just is.  It’s something you feel in your bones and in your gut.  And living with that feeling and that stress does take some getting used to.  I think the challenge of living with that discomfort is where lots of the burnout for fundraisers comes from.

My hope is that if we acknowledge it, if we say it out loud, if we share that this is something we are all holding, the weight that we are bearing gets just a bit lighter.

What do you want?

It’s actually very easy to communicate what you’d like someone to do.  The NY MTA does it simply, with a bigger box.

Of course this applies to web design, IRS tax forms, etc.  But it also applies to how you fundraise.

The most subtle, ever-elusive dance in fundraising is between relationship-building and “closing the sale.”  I find that, by and large, new fundraisers have to learn to invest more in building relationship, providing value to others, and being ambassadors within their organization for potential donors.

At the same time, you always have to be ready to answer the questions: “What’s most important to you?” or “If I’m ready to donate, what should it be for?”  There’s almost never any harm, even at the outset of a relationship, to be very clear about what your priorities are and how someone can be most helpful.   That’s not trying to close the sale too early, it’s knowing what your priorities are and giving someone clarity.  That’s never a bad thing.

If you don’t let them know (or worse, if you don’t know) what you hope they’ll do, how can you ever expect them to figure it out?

And if you’ve ever gone into a fundraising meeting without your top priority ask in mind, you’ve broken this rule.  I know I have.

Out loud

What if you committed, for a little while, to verbalize the great ideas that pop into your head?  The important, risky (-seeming) ideas that represent what’s really on your mind.  The ones that you don’t say because they’re a bit too real, too honest, too to the point.

There are few skills more important than being able to say the right thing at the right time in the right way to shift a whole conversation.

One-on-one conversations, group conversations, high-stakes and low-stakes conversations, all are susceptible to that kernel of truth and insight that breaks them wide open.

The entire business school case method is geared, ultimately, towards teaching this skill.   For two years you sit with 85 incredibly bright people, and the class is orchestrated by a Professor who, if she’s good, is looking for just one thing: getting students to learn how to integrate the case content and the points made by other classmates, pulling those threads and her own observations together to get to real insight, all in a way that move the discussion forward.

You can save yourself $200,000 and two years at a top business school by starting, today, to say your great, good and OK ideas out loud.  The best place to start?  Not necessarily the ideas you think are the best ones.  Start with the ideas you’re afraid to say out loud, the ones that make your heart beat a little faster.  Fear is a great indicator of how real they are and how much truth they contain.

It’s true that saying these things in a way that they are actually heard is itself an art.  But you’ll never practice that art if your most important ideas are kept under lock and key.

The end of the line

One day in the not-so-distant future, you’ll get there.  The end of the line.  The top of your organization.  The top of your field.  Nowhere else to go, because you’ll have arrived.

Most likely, that day won’t be within striking distance of the end of your career.  Far from it.  So there you will be, at the top of your game and the top of the ladder you spent all that time and energy climbing.

And then you’ll have no choice but to make a shift.  They’ll be no sense any more (was there ever?) in the obvious milestones of advancement: title, promotion, compensation.  In all the important ways, those things will be behind you.  At which point your yardstick will cease to be how high you can climb and become, instead, the actual impact you are having on the world, the change you are creating for others.

Imagine not waiting until that future date to let go of striving for the obvious markers of success and progress.  Imagine how letting go now, not five or 10 or 15 years from now, would free up all the energy you’re putting into the climb.  Imagine your confidence and sense of relief in recognizing that someday soon you will get there, which is why there’s no need to (and not much result in) continuing to push the rope.  Imagine your ability to focus on the stuff that really matters: the really important, hard-for-the-right-reasons elements of making a difference.

Isn’t this, in the end, what it means to live a life of service?

Isn’t this why anyone who gets to the “top” discovers that it’s really just a starting line?

A wasted day

Think about it: on a day when you swing for the fences, you might swing and miss.

A miss means a complete miss, a whiff, an air-ball, and all the associated jeering (we think) from the peanut gallery.  Wouldn’t it be embarrassing, and inefficient, to be completely wrong, to put a big idea out there that goes nowhere at all, one that’s just plain wrong?  Wouldn’t it, objectively, be a waste of time to work on something all day long and have it amount to nothing?

We have no time to waste!  Let’s tick through our To Do list, take the meetings that are on our calendars,, chip away at the projects that others have asked us to work on.  We know, at least, that on a day like that we will never have accomplished nothing.  This not only feels safer, it’s also what we were taught to do for a major portion of our lives.  It’s where good grades come from and how we got good reviews at our first and second jobs.

On the other hand, hitting “send” or “publish” on an outlandish, important idea; digging in and doing the work that no one asked you to do; spending time with people who will push your thinking and take your work to the next level…none of that is linear at all.  And so we are faced with our anticipation of the possibility being totally wrong, of our idea missing the mark, of being embarrassed, of discovering that, at least at this moment, we’re not that good at coming up with The Next Big Thing, and, staring that anticipation in the face, we decide to keep on playing small and safe for long enough that soon enough that’s the only thing we do.

The question becomes: which really is the wasted day?  The one where you tried for something big and failed, or the one where you didn’t step to the plate, didn’t take the shot, didn’t put yourself on the line?

Never trying anything can’t be a strategy for getting from here to there.  Nor can waiting until you’re “in charge,” because: 1. You shouldn’t be put in charge until you’ve shown that you can make new things happen; and 2. If you’re put in charge without having learned how to make important things happen, how will you suddenly know how to break away from the task orientation that had served you so well for so long?

Have you ever met with your boss or a peer and had them tell you: “you’re doing great work, but I’m giving you a terrible review because you played it too safe last year?”   Have you ever told that to someone else?

What does it take to get us to start playing big?

I am generous when…

My daughter made this poster for a project in her Kindergarten class.  The assignment was to finish the sentence: “I am generous when…”

In case it’s hard to read: “I am generous when I have a lot of books and my little sister wants some I let hear her have some.”

Life used to be simple and we made it complicated.

Makes me think about finishing that same sentence from time to time.

Save it for another day

A good friend told me a beautiful story recently.  She was at a 7-11 and got to the register only to be told that the guy in front of her had paid for her food and her coffee.  Apparently the guy who paid was a regular, a trucker, and he did this from time to time.

It made my friend’s morning, and she immediately offered to pay for the next person on line, to keep paying it forward.

The cashier asked her not to do it.

Better, the cashier said, to do it somewhere else on another day.  Because she, the cashier, had already gotten to experience the joy of being part of an act of kindness.  She had had the chance to deliver the message of the gift given to my friend.  Her day was already a fabulous, exceptional day.

Instead, let someone else (another cashier or waiter or just about anyone) somewhere else experience that same joy on another day.

Nice.