Do the Word

I was pleased to see Pamela Grow addressing Your First 100 Days As Development Director–great topic and a well-done post, though I would likely lay out a somewhat different agenda.

The main point I would make in regard to Pamela’s post is this, however:

There is one more set of 100 days even more crucial than your first 100 days as Development Director; namely, the 100 days before you take the job.

As Janet Levine notes in her excellent post, How (Not) To Hire A Fundraiser, the average tenure of a fundraiser is eighteen months. Why so short? Because individuals candidating for fundraising jobs do nothing to dispel the almost comically unreasonable expectations of the organizations that are considering hiring them. Writes Janet:

I once was asked in great detail—several questions in fact—what I would do in my first 90 days to connect with current major donors. Not a bad question except this particular organization had no current major donors. They had no individual donors at all. They had been largely federally funded and wanted to change that. The questions they should have asked me would have focused on how would I begin to identify major donors and what would I do—if I would do anything—to build an annual giving program.

She summarizes the problem nicely:

Too many nonprofits hire a development director and then expect that person to log in the gifts, send out thank you letters, manage the annual gala and the golf tournament, make nice to board members (but don’t for pity’s sake ask them for anything), keep the files up to date, get out a newsletter, arrange for the bus to pick up….and oh yeah, in your spare time, could you make sure you close the financial gap between our revenue and expenses.

All these tasks may belong in the development department. But not even superman could accomplish all and do any of it well. For starters, these all require different skill sets. Beyond that is the fact that most people who are not in the business of fundraising do not seem to understand that development is not a single thing with a single set of tasks that require a single set of skills to be accomplished in a single timeframe.

So the most important 100 days for you are the 100 before you accept the position. It’s during this time that you calibrate the expectations of the individuals who are considering hiring you, helping them to understand what’s realistic and what’s not, and why.

I have always told organizations that building a development program is like building a large building: After the first year, progress looks like a giant hole in the ground…but a hole with purpose! If you want something other than a house of cards, the hole must be well dug and the foundation must be well laid. In my experience that typically takes around 18 months…which means that right at the point that any structure would be about ready to rise up out of the hole in the ground, the organization fires the fundraiser for being ineffective, thus restarting the clock and setting back progress another 18 months.

The only way out of this vicious cycle is to address it head on in the interview process. That’s not the right time to say “yup yup yup” when they ask you if you are capable of posting big gains in a hurry. And if they say, “You know, we only have enough money to fund your position for the next 90 days, so that means you have to raise a lot of money between now and then to cover your salary and our organization’s needs,” that’s a sign that not only do they not understand development, they’re also smoking crack (i.e., exhibiting an alarming tendency to not take development–and nonprofit management and stewardship–seriously).

I know especially in today’s meager job market it’s tough for you to say no when you’re offered any job. But trust me: the only time you have to recalibrate expectations is before you take the job. After you take the job, even Pamela’s excellent 100 day list can’t save you if you’ve said yes to a development job with crazy expectations that are rooted in nonprofit fundraising fantasyland instead of reality.

I’m officially declaring next week as “Leave Jeff Brooks Alone Week”, since this week I’m far too busy picking on the guy to let up.

Actually it’s not as bad as all that. I’m still hoping he was joking in the post I quoted yesterday. And for the most part I like George Crankovic’s guest post on Jeff’s blog entitled We might as well give donors control–they’ll take it anyway. I’ll assume George, like Jeff, was also joking when he wrote:

Oh how times have changed. If you’ve been in fundraising for a while, you remember the Golden Age of Giving. You know, those halcyon days in the bygone past when donors knew their role and knew their place. We would send letters; they would give. Simple.

George goes on to cite a number of examples we like about “donors” being in control, including Toby Ord’s givingwhatwecan.org and Angela Eikenberry’s research on giving circles (which we’ve  written about appreciatively here).

But the post strikes a sour note with us at the end, when George offers a series of five recommendations that leads me to believe that he may be falling rather shy of the full impact of the very point his post makes so well, namely, “donors” want authentic, not simulated, control of their giving. Here are George’s five recommendations:

• Invite donors to tell you how much and how often they want to give — then listen.
• Call donors to thank them and to talk, without pressure, about the need and about your charity.
• Tell donors over and over exactly what their gifts do.
• Update your website so that it clearly conveys the need you’re responding to.
• Make sure your appeals have clear, specific offers that are relevant to your donors and show the impact of their giving — not vague calls to action that just restate your organization’s mission statement.

These recommendations remind me of a certain type of painting “coloring book” that my mom used to buy me when I was four or five. The pages were pre-printed with ink of different colors in microscopic dot form, barely visible to the naked eye. One then simply took a paint brush, dipped it in plain water, and then wet the micro-dots. Voila: the paint would appear, exactly the right color in the right spot, and the picture could be completed flawlessly by any four or five year old without an ounce of artistic sense or effort and then hung on the refrigerator.

Great when you’re four or five…not so great when you’re twenty-four or twenty-five.

Likewise, “donor” control over their own giving means just that: control. It doesn’t mean better reporting, greater appreciation, or more precise giving opportunities. It means giving them real paints and a blank canvas and trusting that they really do want to learn how to paint. It means that our nonprofit serves as an easel, and we serve as painting instructors, coaching them to full maturity in the cause just like we grew to full maturity in the cause. Is the first painting a masterpiece? Hardly…but our first one wasn’t, either. So what keeps them working with us is our substance, our ability to equip them, and the ability of our organization to serve as an effective platform for them to impact the cause comprehensively.

To this end I recommend you read The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back. I’ve previously written about the book here. I may not have done things exactly like the Salwens (the authors of the book) did, but that’s just the point:

At some point, champions need to be given the paint box.

In George’s view, we “might as well” give it to them–note the slightest hint of resignation there.

In my view, that’s a moment of great celebration—Ephesians 4:11-15 come to life…if and when we nonprofit leaders have done our job right.

I’m sure Jeff Brooks is joking when he favorably cites Neuromarketing’s Flattery Will Get You Somewhere post.

It’s the Neuromarketing post that has me kind of freaked out.

The Neuromarketing post reports, “[N]ew research shows that even when people perceive that flattery is insincere, that flattery can still leave a lasting and positive impression of the flatterer“.

Their resulting recommendation?

Engage in “ethical flattery”:

The key to using flattery in a non-manipulative way is to be honest. Particularly in a direct sales environment where the interaction is customized to the individual, the salesperson can praise some action or characteristic of the customer and do so in a way that is not dishonest in any way.

In a more general marketing situation, honesty can still be maintained with targeted pitches. For example, “When you purchased one of our Platinum Class suits, you demonstrated that you are an individual who recognizes and appreciates both sophisticated styling and superb quality…”

These customized approaches are not only more honest but are likely far more effective than, say, a mass mailing that makes an obviously bogus flattering statement about the recipient. Even though the study suggests that the latter approach might actually work, a statement that is actually grounded in truth will cause less cognitive dissonance and create a favorable impression of the firm or brand at both implicit and explicit levels.

Yee-ikes?

Jeff Brooks adds:

One of the many nice things about donors is you don’t have to be insincere to flatter them. They are self-demonstrating excellent people. Just pointing out the truth about them is enough.

So go for it. Flatter away. Your donors more than deserve it.

We’ve long spoken against the use of flattery in working with “donors”, and our arguments have never contended that flattery doesn’t work. Clearly it does. Our arguments have centered around two main poles:

1. There’s a term for fawning all over someone (even a wonderful someone) in order to get something from them. It’s called sycophantic, as in:Adj. 1. sycophantic – attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery. Synonyms: bootlicking, fawning, obsequious, toadyish

   I never–never–want to be a professional bootlicker. The thought nauseates me. What an embarrassment that would be not only to me and to my organization and to my cause but to my wife and children as well. And something tells me it doesn’t exactly thrill God either. Despite the very valid research that shows that people will extend their boots to be licked by a professional bootlicker, I hope that you have too much dignity to extend your tongue. No one doubts that prostitution is effective, too; only that it is a smidge unethical…no matter how “ethically” one may undertake the practice.

2. In Transformational Giving (TG), we coach champions to comprehensive maturity in the cause. As I wrote in a previous post:”Needless to say, [flattery] doesn’t put us in a particularly advantageous position to hold individuals accountable, subject them to strenuous training, coach them to do things they are really uncomfortable doing…and then drill them when they fall short. These are all the things any coach must do, and it’s certainly no less true in TG coaching where our goal is to equip individuals to grow comprehensively into the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause.”

Traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) has no qualms about bootlicking. “As long as the money’s green” has long been ttf’s motto. Anything legal or “ethical” that can be done to yield more green is considered reasonable practice. To which I have a very unflattering reply:

Blech.

This is the kind of sycophantic silliness that is a continued blight on our profession…and just one more reason to jump off the sinking ship that is traditional transactional fundraising (ttf), even when it’s sinking as slowly as it is.

I think I’ll go shower.