Do the Word

There is very little that is heroic about fundraising. And that’s sad, because there should be.

And by heroic, I don’t mean:

• Commendable, touching, or really cool;
• Successful (i.e., raised a lot of money);
• Heart-wrenching (i.e., generates an emotional response).

I mean:

• Heart pounding;
• Changes the very identity of the giver;
• The stuff of legend;

Dan Pallotta, whose Harvard Business Review stuff is always a good read, blogged about that this week in a piece entitled, When Your Goal Is The Impossible:

For two years before I saw the film [Alive, the story of plane crash survivors hiking out of the Andes], I’d had this idea for a 600-mile bicycle ride to raise money for AIDS but was too intimidated to do anything about it. Walking out of the theater, some voice that didn’t seem entirely mine said, “That’s it, we’re going to build the AIDS Ride.” And the next day my staff and I began trying to figure out how to get 500 people to bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It seemed impossible at the time. It hadn’t been done before. But a little over a year later, 478 heroic people of all shapes and sizes, most of whom hadn’t been on a bike in years, finished the 600-mile journey, netting a million dollars for AIDS.

As we rode into West Hollywood together, I couldn’t stop crying.

I would cry at dozens of these kinds of closing ceremonies over the years as tens of thousands of average people completed long journeys after raising large sums of money for urgent causes — both things they never thought they could accomplish when they started.

Why in fundraising do we say that an activity is successful if it raises money and is generally ethical? Isn’t that an exceedingly low standard? Why can’t we say that an activity raising money is a necessary but insufficient condition of calling it a success?

Then we would be doing more than fundraising. We would be doing, you know, development.

As I think back over my development career so far, I find that the most successful campaigns I have been involved in so far have done more than transfer money into a nonprofit’s bank account.

They ennobled people. For a brief moment, people truly became heroes.

They didn’t just get called heroes. And it wasn’t because we stroked them and said, “You are really a hero!”

I mean:

People became heroes.

• If you can describe your fundraising activities and only get choked up by the brochure or PowerPoint and the “take” for the night, not the heroics of those in the moments in the middle…
• If your fundraising doesn’t make your donors better, more capable people…
• If people who participate in your fundraising activities don’t reminisce about them and tell other people about them and describe them as life-changing moments…

…then it’s no wonder that you don’t like the job of fundraising, that you see it as a necessary evil–a vile means to a noble end–rather than a mutual adventure of discovery with your weird and very cool donor friends.

Regular readers of this blog know that my admiration and adoration of the writings of D. Michael Henderson borders on the man-crushy. Dude is flat out brilliant. Read everything he ever wrote. Then read it again.

No, he’s not a ‘fundraising’ writer.

(The best writers on fundraising, in fact, are those who never write about fundraising. They are those who write about things like coaching and discipleship. What makes them great is that they help us to see that we’re holding the wrong end of the scissors, which is why our scissors don’t cut so well. Translation: we focus on fundraising activities, whereas coaching and discipleship focus on the recipient of those activities, i.e., the major donor, or what in Transformational Giving we would call the champion.)

So take a read of Henderson’s ode to Mormon discipleship strategies (noting that Henderson is anything but a Mormon, but he knows a good strategy when he sees one), and ask yourself, “How would my major donor development program look differently if I Mormonized it?”

“The Mormons are growing rapidly because their methods are more biblical than ours. We call ourselves ‘Bible-believing Christians,’ but that’s only half true: we believe the message of the Bible, but we don’t practice the methods Jesus modeled. Here are some things the Mormons do which are more biblical than our evangelical model:

1. Every Mormon is a witness. They tell people about their experience in the church. This is what Jesus said should happen when the Holy Spirit comes: ‘You shall be my witnesses…’
2. Every Mormon is expected to be a missionary. Young Mormons commit two years of their lives to missionary training and on-the-job experience. This is not perceived as something they will do and ‘get it over with.’ No, the two years of missionary service is preparation for an entire life of outreach, service, witness, and evangelism.
3. They meet people in their homes. They don’t call non-Mormons to public meetings. Here’s an interesting statistic: Mormon missionaries going door-to-door report less than one convert for every thousand homes on whose doors they knock. However, when presentations are made in the home of a Mormon friend or relative, the conversion rate is more than 50% Just like Jesus did!
4. In every local ‘ward,’ there are trained evangelists who can be called upon at any time to make a presentation for Mormonism. They’re good at it. They receive special training. These are not professional revivalists who travel around the country giving speeches in churches; these are local Mormons who are evangelizing local prospects. This is the Ephesians 4 pattern of the early church: apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors/teachers.
5. From the very outset, a ‘ladder’ of spiritual development is presented: a seeker is presented a picture of what he or she could become by faithful participation in the Mormon community, and it is a compelling motivator. Jesus did this. ‘Follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.’
6. The invitation to become a Mormon is not based on getting rid of guilt, but on gaining an abundant life. It is not a guilt management system. The focus is not on past sins, but on future fulfillment—not future fulfillment in eternity, but right now. This was Jesus’ message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come; it’s right here, right now’

The quote is from Henderson’s The Ladder of Faithfulness. Make sure to get thyself a copy straightaway–it’s under 10 bucks even.

Catalytic philanthropy.

Sean Stannard Stockton is intrigued by it, terming it Shock and Awe Philanthropy.

Commenters on Mark Kramer’s article introducing the discipline are mixed in their reviews of it.

And me? I’m absolutely delighted by it. Of course since Catalytic Philanthropy is a secular philosophy, its goals, presuppositions, and methods are distinctly different from Transformational Giving. But still, I can’t help but woot in agreement as Kramer contends:

For most donors, philanthropy is about deciding which nonprofits to support and how much money to give them. These donors effectively delegate to nonprofits all responsibility for devising and implementing solutions to social problems. Despite the sincere dedication and best efforts of those who work in the nonprofit sector, there is little reason to assume that they have the ability to solve society’s large-scale problems.

Now in TG, the focus is not on solving social problems but rather on comprehensively reflecting the character of God to a world in need, but still, my gosh, it’s wonderful to have someone else hankering articulately and systematically for a reformulation of the relationship between nonprofit and the individuals they solicit.

Kramer’s article opens with a powerful picture of what in Transformational Giving we would call a champion–someone who owns the cause comprehensively in their sphere of influence:

Thomas Siebel does philanthropy differently from other donors. As the founder of the software company Siebel Systems Inc., he is one of a handful of philanthropists who have the resources to devote substantial time and money to charity. His approach and the results he has achieved, however, dramatically distinguish him from most of his peers.

In 2005, while spending time on his Montana ranch, Siebel became concerned about the rampant local use of methamphetamine, or “meth.” Meth is a highly addictive and physically destructive drug, and it is a particularly acute problem in rural America. In 2005, Montana had the fifth worst level of meth abuse among all U.S. states. Half of its inmates were imprisoned for meth-related crimes. The direct cost to the state was estimated at nearly $300 million per year, and the cost in human lives and suffering was far greater.

Rather than writing a check to a local nonprofit, Siebel took the time to find out why people become addicted to meth. After learning that first-time users were typically teenagers who were unaware of meth’s risks, Siebel created the Meth Project to change teenage perceptions about the drug. He brought together experts and hired a major San Francisco advertising agency to develop a hard-hitting campaign that would reach 80 percent of Montana teens with at least three ads every week.

You’ll want to read the rest of Kramer’s article to find out the impact that Siebel is having. Make sure to scroll down through the comments, where you’ll find appreciative nonprofit leaders lauding Kramer with such praise as “The arrogance and condescension in this article is disgraceful.” Old ways die hard and ugly, and often the only beautiful thing to nonprofits about so-called “donors” is their money.

Still, we wish Mark well. Good to see many of the principles we champion also gaining a foothold in the mind and practice of our secular counterparts. What’s more, were I feeling smarmier than I am today I would note that this development is especially exciting for we Christian nonprofits, who are, sadly, known less for putting into practice the courage of the Bible’s convictions about what we ought to be doing and known more for copying whatever’s working in secular fundraising. My advice: If you’re going to copy secular practices, give Catalytic Philanthropy a try.