Monthly Archives: April 2008

Can fundraising be fulfilling?

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Fundraising is not just about getting your CRFE or knowing all the nuances of planed giving instruments or being able to cultivate a donor to the point of securing a significant gift. These are obviously important to our craft and in many ways it’s how our success is measured. But, at the end of the day, even though the ultimate measure of our individual success is based on the the funds raised, development is much more. If we are just out to “raise” money and only view the donors we work with as a means to an end than we will have really missed the true joy of our profession.

Our profession is not about money, or at least it shouldn’t be – it should be something much, much more – it should be about connecting with people, being a conduit between the organization and the people or cause the charity serves, introducing people to new experiences and broadening their view of the world; and in the process helping them to be fulfilled as a human being – giving them purpose and meaning to their life.

This is what it’s all about folks. Sounds corny but it shouldn’t.

If we think it’s only about getting money from people, like the guy in Jerry Maguire that says “Show me the money!!”, there will always be a pit in our stomach because our heart is not in the right place.

Our heart has to be focused on the “person” not the “wallet”. If we follow this principle we will be successful, fulfilled and happy – and our donors will be happy and fulfilled too.

I recommend reading a great little book written by the late Henri J.M. Nouwen called The Spirituality of Fund-Raising which can be ordered for free at http://www.henrinouwen.org/home/booklet Henri Nouwen illustrates the spiritual side of fundraising in a very compelling and inspirational way.

I highly suggest reading it and passing it on to anyone working in the field of fundraising, especially those that work directly with supporters.

 

 

Customer service isn’t brain surgery – but I often wonder if it’s just as tricky…

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I don’t know if you ever had the same poor, shoddy and rude customer experiences as me, but it seems as though I encounter more than my share of bad customer service everyday – or maybe I am simply over sensitive to bad service because I am such a big believer in good service. The funny thing is that I don’t know of one organization, big or small, that believes in poor customer service in spite of it running rampant.

I don’t recall ever seeing a mission statement hanging on a wall or posted on a website that said – “ACME strives to put our customers second by putting the self-serving interests of the company first”, or “ACME’s mission is to provide excellence through lower than average customer service everyday”, or “ACME takes pride in pissing off our customers, while forcing them to look for product or service alternatives elsewhere, and generally aggravating the customers that actually ensure we will a paycheck every two weeks”.

But actions speak louder than words – the vast majority of customer service mission statements or customer service initiatives simply give lip service to the notion of really putting the customer first.

Bottom-line, any written or verbal commitment to excellence in customer service is mostly bogus for all organizations – both nonprofits and for-profits.

In fact, customer service satisfaction is at an all time low – I don’t have a fancy statistic to quote because I don’t need one – just take a look around at your daily experiences. Open up your senses and you will begin to witness the slow degradation of the way society views a spirit of service to others.  The more you peel back the onion the more you realize how numb, and tolerant, you have become to poor customer service.

I am not going to give you examples – I am relatively confident you have your own. What I would like to do is challenge you – wherever you are and regardless of the type of organization you are with – to make a commitment to excellence in customer service. Not by writing a mission statement but by actually making it happen.  Make it a top priority – it will help bring you success.

Perhaps at one point in your life you were told to write a short, hand-written note to someone you interviewed for a job with, or someone that gave you a gift, or for some other occasion.

  • How many of you have heard this before – to always follow up a job interview with a handwritten note?
  • How many of you actually have taken this advice?
  • If you have personally interviewed job applicants with any great frequency, how many hand written notes have you actually received from those candidates?
  • And finally, how many of the people you hired were the ones that sent that note?

The point here is that it’s one of those no-brainers that no one actually does (accept myself and hopefully some of you). Exceptional customer service like Nordstrom dishes out is a no brainer – it makes total sense to put the customer first. But since so few actually get around to doing this you can end-run them and make excellent customer service a defining market position for your nonprofit.

Successful companies have usually nailed this concept. If it is truly a no brainer why do so few accomplish this?

Because actions are always harder that words. Words are cheap. Be different and make your actions speak louder than words.

Look out – here it comes… the government is going to save the day!

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Steven T. Miller, commissioner of the IRS’s tax-exempt and government-entities division, said the tax agency will be “more aggressive” in monitoring the “efficiency and effectiveness” of charitable organizations, even though such monitoring is not expressly within the agency’s jurisdiction. Mr. Miller added: “The question is no longer whether the IRS has a role to play in this area, but rather what that role will be.”

See: http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=4498 

Wow – those are fighting words. At least they should be to those of us with half a brain in the nonprofit community. Is this really what it’s going to take to get our industry to wake-up and smell the sentiment of society, and within our own government? The last thing we should want is have the government aggressively monitor a nonprofits efficiency and effectiveness!!! Isn’t that an oxymoron?? To have government in the same sentence with efficiency and effectiveness? My gosh – the irony of this is beyond belief.

But such are the times we live in aren’t they? The government is going to step in and save us all. I can only imagine the regulations they will put in place – just like Sarbanes Oxley did for the for-profit sector. Our fundraising ratios are going to get hammered because we will need to allocate more money, hire more people, and spend more time than we ever have before on complex regulatory accounting practices to prove to the government that we are efficient and effective and meet their set of guidelines; which undoubtedly will not be viable for the the vast majority of nonprofits.

Wouldn’t you just love to know the effectiveness and efficiency of the tax-exempt and government-entities division of the IRS that Mr. Miller runs?? One can only imagine. I am sure they are just like the nonprofits he intends to regulate – understaffed, underfunded, overworked, facing incredible competition, fighting for every dollar they make, while at the same time providing a USEFUL AND IN MOST CASES LIFE SAVING and LIFE CHANGING SUPPORT THAT WOULD NOT BE AVAILABLE OTHERWISE!

Pardon the caps and the bold type but I feel like sticking my head out the window and shouting – “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore“…

We have to figure out a way to stop this nonsense before the government figures out a way to get into our pockets. A wise man once told me to “follow the money” – and I think this is one of those times were if you follow the money the whole thing will make sense. Think about that for awhile and see if you come to the same conclusions that I have.

I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist but there are forces at work here that won’t be good for nonprofits out there – especially those that are ethical, moral, accountable, transparent, hardworking, honest, service oriented and passionate about their mission and above all provide a service the government can’t or won’t or is unable to provide.

Keeping the energy alive…

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How can you energize your organization? By nurturing a sense of vibrancy and youthful energy – that’s how.  There’s nothing more energizing then working at an organization that is just a little different than the rest. Think APPLE – they have this art down to a science – vibrancy, youthfulness, coolness, energy, a sense of being part of something bigger, innovation, and of course success.

What is the catalyst for building this winning culture?

Well, it was the two yutes as Vinny Gambini said in the movie My Cousin Vinny. Okay, where is that coming from you’re asking yourself. Well keep reading because it will make sense in just a moment, hopefully – but I couldn’t resist quoting another movie. My family likes movies, especially ones we can quote and re-quote over and over again at nauseam.  My Cousin Vinny is one of those movies. If you haven’t watched it, it is definitely worth the rental fee.

In any event, the point I want to make is that to become a successful nonprofit this day and age youthful energy must be accepted and welcomed from the top down – including all the wacky ideas (which really aren’t always wacky, it’s just that we are too old to understand them), like the podcast this and text me that ideas that seem to just overflow from anyone under the age of thirty. The crazy part is that the younger generation has an ability to see things with fresh eyes and apply fast-paced technology and the changing cultural nuances to just about anything – like a nonprofit and fundraising.

How do I know this? Well, I have kids number one; plus I have always made it part of my management style to hire young people that are smart and have energy and can bring new perspectives to old challenges.  It’s my way of staying youthful – but also my way of staying one step ahead. Yes, we need to surround ourselves with seasoned pros that have an advanced set of skills and experience to get the job done. But at the same time we need to balance this with youthful energy, optimism, and entrepreneurship. Like the ying and the yang – we need both to succeed.

To get an idea of the insights a twenty-something, nonprofit professional can bring to your organization you should read a new series of articles that will be appearing at the Fundraising Success Magazine website: http://www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/story/story.bsp?sid=95813&var=story&publication=FundRaising%20Success&publicationDate=4/16/08&slug=Giving2.0_04%2F16%2F08_Feature+2&category=None&section=Unknown&swd=christina%20johns 

This new column on WEB 2.0 is being written by Christina Johns, a relative newcomer to the nonprofit field, who has loads of great ideas that are sure to help us reach the elusive younger audience.

I work closely with two such young people (the two yutes mentioned earlier) – their energy and dedication to excellence is phenomenal; their ability to look at a challenge and bring a new way of thinking is amazing; and their ability to bring a certain sense of naiveté coupled with a dose of “I am going to take on the world and do this nonprofit thing better than you ever did” is down-right invigorating. So much so that it can be off-putting to many seasoned professionals (read – older and stodgy).

Bottom-line: make sure you hire young, intelligent, optimistic, dedicated, innovative men and women that have a strong character but are grounded in life and its true meaning.