Two Videos: How Donors Connect…and How They Don’t

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Most of us in the nonprofit world exhibit a skewed, inaccurately idealized image of:

  • how donors are connected
  • what they are connected to
  • what passes along those connections

Our idealized fundraising models are based on a Matrix-like image of donor connectivity. In our models, information generated by a nonprofit–in the form of a newsletter or email or tweet–tumbles outward from us on a straight-line path to a donor, who receives it and passes it on to others in his or her sphere of influence in the way and for the purpose the nonprofit intended.

That idealized model is flawed in several ways:

  • In reality, donors pass on very little of the information they receive from and about organizations
  • Of the information they do pass on, they rarely pass it on in a straight-line fashion, i.e., even a retweet reshapes the information through the change in context (from nonprofit to donor)
  • Donors pass on information for their own purposes, not those of the nonprofits originating the information (think of this as a kind of information mashup, which is the typical way information is transferred by human beings). Since nonprofits rarely think in terms of the things that might motivate donors to pass on information, they can’t imagine either the content or the form that is most conducive to information transfer

A far more accurate illustration of donor connectivity comes from the following video, which, while designed to depict (of all things) traffic patterns in Lisbon, perfectly conveys a number of profound truths about how donors connect. First watch the video, then consider these truths:

  • People are not discrete nodes on an idealized information transfer network but are instead more like blood vessels, smooshed up into each other through densely packed relationships (both casual and formal) as they (not simply strands of information) tumble along through life.
  • In other words, people don’t simply pass on information but instead pass on themselves in a million small ways everyday. Sure there are transactions, but these are far and away the least common (though must studied) way humans share. The main way humans share is that their characters/natures/personalities simply smoosh into each other as they “do life” together and side by side.
  • The most effective way to impact your cause, then, is not to supply donors with information, as if they dutifully pass it along to others, but to support donors in their own character/nature/personality transformation as relates to the cause itself.
  • Remember that these kinds of transformations are never individual in nature: when something truly impacts our character/nature/personality, we will pass it along to others as a matter of course, simply by rubbing up against them as we live.

Sum it up in two observations:

  • The modern fundraising model is fundamentally flawed because it thinks in terms of information transfer leading to financial transactions. Life is far more organic than that. Fundraising must think in terms of personal transformations that–of necessity–impact all those who come in contact with the one who has been/is being transformed.
  • Because modern fundraising traffics in idealized (read: “badly flawed”) ways of thinking of human beings as discrete containers of meaning and interest, it overlooks that fundraising is inherently communal/corporate and must be comprehended and practiced as such.

Next week we launch a mini-series on this blog that I think will rank as one of the top four or five that we’ve yet done on this site. In essence, it will be a call to shift fundraising from a Matrix-like informational flow conception to a blood vessel-like process of corporate transformation.

I realize that may sound rather abstract or theoretical at the moment, but just extend a little trust my way, give the above videos one more view as you muse over these things, and then join me as we reconvene next week to talk about Coaching Champions Corporately.

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Expect the Volunteer Boom to Show Up at Your Organization Right After the Massive Generational Wealth Transfer

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Pastor Foley

The red nonprofit herring of our time was the Great Wealth Transfer, in which trillions of dollars would seep out of the wills and estates of people who were not terribly charitable during their lifetime but would apparently become so in their deaths, thus freeing nonprofits from having to do, you know, actual work to help champions develop philanthropically.

Next up in the nonprofit myth cycle?

The Great Volunteer Boom, in which millions of baby boomers will stream into nonprofit organizations to offer countless hours of service.

One of my favorite bloggers, Joanne Fritz, brings two articles on voluntarism to our attention, and the one does a great job of preventing us from misreading the other.

The first, Wild Apricot’s Are Your Ready for the Volunteer Boom?, contains data well worth reviewing:

There are 77 million Baby Boomers – between the ages of 46 and 64 – in the US and another 10 million across Canada. Based on sheer numbers alone, this group represents a boon to the volunteer world. But it gets even better – “boomers” are also generally well educated, wealthy and skilled individuals who have already proven their willingness to volunteer – with nearly a third of boomers volunteering for formal organizations. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service’s “Baby Boomers & Volunteering” issue brief, these Boomer volunteers:

  • Have the highest volunteer rate of any age group. The volunteer rates for boomers – 33.2% – is the highest of any age group.
  • Volunteer an average of 51 hours a year. With the exception of people over the age of 65, boomers volunteer the most of any group.

The predicted volunteer boom turns on the same failed logic as the generational wealth transfer, namely, that individuals who have not chosen to volunteer before the age of 65–which would encompass the time their children were in school, their membership in a faith community (which, statistically, is not likely to change much at retirement), and their holiday celebration patterns (like volunteering at a rescue mission at Thanksgiving)–are now going to become voluntaristic when they retire, as opposed to remaining as self-focused as they have been in the 65 years prior.

Anyone want to take that bet?

At the other end of the spectrum, Joanne notes a great article on Philanthro-teens delving into the nonprofit world.

But guess what? It’s not your nonprofit world they’re delving into:

Borrowing from trends in celebrity charity, kids are mobilizing their peers to address everything from infant mortality in developing nations to neighborhood concerns. They’re donating presents to charity, and they’re establishing their own nonprofits.

“The number of kids creating their own organizations and taking action for causes they care about is skyrocketing,” said Nancy Lublin, chief executive of DoSomething.org, a New York-based nonprofit that helps young people to engage in philanthropy.

“Kids today just saw their parents go through a recession, get laid off and struggle,” Ms. Lublin said. “They look around and say: ‘What’s the point? I don’t just want a second car in my driveway. I want a life of purpose.’ ”

And that life of purpose means starting a nonprofit organization of one’s own rather than getting a job that yields the cash to fund not only the second car in the driveway but the support of other people’s nonprofits.

Where does it all point?

Well, definitely away from a boom of people–young or old–eager to support you as you live out your dream of professional nonprofit service.

But towards success for any nonprofit bold and savvy enough to exist as a platform where people young and old can be equipped to tackle the cause drawing on their own unique insights using their own unique gifts.

A nonprofit that serves as the stage and not the actor can definitely expect a major boom in the years to come.

But a nonprofit that serves as the actor?

That boom is just about to go bust.

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Transformational Giving Doesn’t Need a Donor Database. It Needs a Life-Caching Service

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Ten months ago I did a series of video shorts on YouTube detailing the ins and outs of database development for Transformational Giving. I was so honored by the response, which mainly consisted of people emailing me and asking me if I had cancer, given that I lost fifty pounds since the last video I had recorded.

(And no, I don’t have cancer. I just stopped eating after dinner, and I make sure to exercise daily, even when I’m on the road, which is most weeks. Seriously, that’s it. It’s worth checking out the difference in the videos as my own personal Jim Morrison transformation in reverse.)

Though most technology pieces tend to have the shelf life of banana pudding (which I was apparently eating a lot of while recording those Mission Increase training videos), I think the database video content has worn well and continues to be quite relevant and watchable.

What has changed, however, is that in the YouTube training videos I was waxing prophetic about what a Transformational Giving database would look like, since none as yet exists.

That’s still true, but we’re definitely getting closer to the day when the TG database of the future becomes the TG database of the present. You just have to know where to look.

And the answer is, not in any fund raising magazine, God bless ’em.

That’s because Transformational Giving differs from traditional transactional fundraising in kind, not degree. So you kind of have to look elsewhere to find software that’s built to help nonprofits and their champions collaborate together to build publicly oriented pages that track champions’ progression to full maturity in the cause.

That’s why I was so excited to read the post at Springwise about a new “life-caching service” just entering Beta. From Estonia.

Now in beta, Estonian myHistro is designed to help users create and share stories from their lives with friends and family. Users begin by signing up with the free service either directly or through Facebook. From there, they place events from their lives on a timeline and a map, indicating other people who were involved and whether the story is private or open for sharing. They can also write a story summary. Photos and descriptions of events can be added for illustration, and friends involved in the story can add their own impressions. The result is a joint narrative that can be saved and replayed at will over time.

Before you plunge headlong into leading all your champions to set up their life-caching database pages at myhistro, let me spin you this cautionary tale:

I was going to personally illustrate how a champion’s record could be done TG-style in myhistro, and I figured it would be sporting for me to do this by setting up my own. I found the interface to be quite intuitive, and in just a very few minutes I had laid out my own story in quite impressive fashion–using photos, maps, and narratives to detail my path of growth in Christ–so far–in the Work of Mercy of remembering the persecuted church.

Then the site crashed and I lost all my data. My story disappeared down an Estonian sinkhole.

I guess that’s why they call it “beta.”

Anyway, even if it’s more vision than reality at this point, it’s a good exercise for you to visit and maybe even try to set up a record of your own. Maybe you’ll have more success than me.

But even seeing it–and spending a few minutes remembering through a social media record like this how God has guided Mrs. F and me in our own growth in one particular cause–leaves me hungering for a stable database platform like this to emerge, whether from myhistro or another quarter.

But I will continue to channel that hunger into blogging rather than banana pudding, since I already went down that road before, and it’s murder on one’s video presence.

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