I am fortunate that as part of my travels I have the wonderful opportunity to listen to many wonderful speakers. This past week, one of the speakers I had the good fortune to hear was explaining the relationship between major donors and organizations. Among his many salient points was the following nugget that I quickly added into my iPad to discuss with you. "Recognition is not motivational, stewardship is, Trust is experiential" profound in its simplicity eh? But it really strikes at the core of not only what we do as fundraising professionals but also why we do it.
Let's boil it down into its parts and then look at the whole in terms of the relationships we ask people to have with our organizations. Recognition is not motivational: this strikes close to home, especially when you examine the amount of time fundraisers spend on public recognition of gifts, falsely believing that entrance into the platinum giving society over the titanium one will motivate a donor to stroke and extra big check this time. It also relates back to my post last week on donor honor rolls. Very very seldom do these types of recognition motivate donors to give, yet we seem to spend a great deal of time in their service.
Stewardship is motivational: amen. If you as a nonprofit, spend my money according to the purpose it was given, tell me how you spent the money and then tell me the impact it had on others, I'll give to you forever. Stewardship builds loyalty, it reinforces good behavior and builds trust in the organization. As many of you know, I think Charity Water is the best in the business at this. They not only tell me how they spend my money, they send me the GPS coordinates of the well my funds helped drill! They do this regardless of the amount of my gift. How come other nonprofits, universities included, fail so spectacularly at this? We ask, nearly beg, for unrestricted funding, yet these are the folks we communicate with about the impact of their giving the least. How does this make sense? If there is truly an area of greatest need, then for the love of all that is holy, tell me what that need was and how my money made a difference! It doesn't have to be glamorous, tell me I paid the light bill. Bought reams of copy paper, anything, but tell me something!
Trust is experiential. If you've ever been burned by giving your trust too freely you can literally still feel the sting of betrayal. It's a palpable feeling that never does seem to recede all the way. When an organization breaks a donor's trust, the road is long and hard and full of painful rocks. Many years of good relationship building is lost in one simple breech of trust, and safe to say in many cases, people aren't forgiving, nor should they be. You solicit a donor for money and then don't spend it because your department chair is saving for the day Bruce Willis arrives on a spaceship? Well that's a tough second ask now isn't it? There's forgiving, and then there's blind trust. Your organization must be trustworthy in order to have donors invest in it and maintain their giving.
How do you feel about the significance of these words we use very often in our world? Are there other profound simplicities here? I'd love to hear from you.
Cheers,
Lynne
amen, sister. Exactly!
ReplyDeleteLove this. thanks.
ReplyDeleteMakes me want to do a better job.
DeleteThank you all for your kind comments! Let's strive to make each other better!
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Thanks for your posts, Lynne – always thought-provoking. I’m wondering regarding this post as to the logistics and ethics of telling a donor how we used their money. Does the template thank-you letter tell everyone that their donation was used for the same thing? Of course, general fund donations aren’t tracked so we don’t actually know how someone’s $50 was spent. It’s definitely appealing to donors to hear that their donation went towards something specific, but if we tell everyone that their donations went to pay the light bill, to use your example, when in fact there are many other things that those donations are being pooled to pay for – is that ethical? Or should nonprofits speak vaguely, like “your donation went to help the many people helped by our organization” – which is perhaps truer but definitely less inspiring? It's made more simple if you're constantly doing discrete capital projects, like building wells, but many nonprofits, of course, are involved in providing services to many individuals over a long period of time. Thanks for your insight - it's highly valued!
ReplyDeleteSO here's the point. We SHOULD track the general fund dollars and tell donors that their money paid the light bill, without lights its hard to help people. We have to be 100% transparent, all the time. When we provide services we need to tell donors what we did with every dime, where it went and why. Building donor trust is crucial to our success.
DeleteThanks Lynne.
DeleteI've printed this out to discuss at our next team meeting. You rock Lynn :)
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