Do the Word

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.

In our last two posts (here and here), we’ve been talking about The Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome–specifically, how the more desperate nonprofits get about money, the more likely they are to repel the very donors they are seeking to attract.

The whole idea of a Nonprofit Bubonic Plague occurred to me after Todd Eckhardt, Director of Champion and Partner Development for World Gospel Mission, shared a post with me last week that he planned to send to the organization’s missionaries. He noted that for missionaries, sadly, the focus on involving people in mission is inversely proportional to the missionary’s financial need.

That is to say, the more a missionary gets desperate to raise support, the less they focus on getting others involved in missions and the more they focus on their own needs.

As Todd explains in his post, that’s, um, backwards.

Todd has given me permission to quote his post in its entirety. Though it’s written to missionaries, the three solutions Todd presents apply equally well to nonprofits of any stripe who are seeking to avoid catching The Nonprofit Bubonic Plague. Let’s read and then go and do likewise:

Many missionaries on Home Missionary Assignment [i.e., traveling across the US to raise support] with deadlines of the need to get back to the field, or missionaries on the field whose accounts are running low, all have the same question about [Transformational Giving].  The question is…I want to be all about the champion but I need to get back NOW, so how do I communicate this to my champions?

Urgency is not a bad thing and it has its role.  After all we are all working with urgency to see the lost won to Christ.  There are ways to express the urgency of the need without making it an emotional plea that leaves the champion feeling empty.

1. Focus on the role they play with you as team members. They want you to succeed for the kingdom as well.  They want you on the field too.  If they didn’t they would be your champion in the first place.  So let the current group of champions know it is urgent.
   
2. Avoid crisis thinking. There is a huge difference between crisis and urgency.  Crisis can give the impression that we are not going to make it and the ship is sinking.  Urgency can be portrayed that “time is a wastin’” and we have a race to win.  We all want to run the race with a sense of urgency.  But if we run with panic that means we are behind.
   
3. Appealing for gifts does not have to change in urgent situations. It is still about their obedience.  You can communicate the time crunch and still challenge them about their walk and role.  It can still be about them.  Perhaps the situation is urgent due to a lack of obedience of the Body of Christ to respond.  You may be God’s resource for some in the Church to finally become obedient.

In the preceding post we wrote about the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome–the propensity of today’s donors to bail on even a favored charity when they sense that it is in financial trouble.

Today we take a look at the stats that relate to that syndrome–updated numbers about the behavior of Christian donors in the midst of this current recession, as well as what said donors are indicating they’re likely to do for rest of the year. (Hint: It’s not “Write checks to nonprofits in financial distress”.)

The numbers come from the Barna Group in a three-part report called The Economy’s Impact. The fact that generally “mainstream” (i.e., secular) fundraising bloggers didn’t make note of this tremendous wealth of data on giving just underscores the degree to which this gargantuan segment of the nonprofit world (i.e., the Christian part) is at best underreported and at worst completely ignored.

Do make sure to read the whole Barna report, since it is flat out rife with relevant data. For our purposes, though, three statistics are key:

• 48% of all adults said they had reduced their giving to non-profit organizations (excluding churches or other types of congregations) in the last three months.
• 29% of adults said they had reduced their giving to churches and congregations in the same time frame.
• 7% of adults surveyed reported that they donated at least 10% of their income. This percentage has stayed consistent throughout the recession.

The question, as related to the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome, is this:

Why are donors more likely to reduce their giving to nonprofit organizations than to churches?

Frankly, I wish Barna would have asked that question explicitly as part of the survey. In the absence of hard data, however, let’s twist the numbers to make the point we want–er, I mean, let’s use our common sense.

• Is it because nonprofits have not dropped as many A-bombs (Appeal bombs) and made as many urgent, emotional, desperate pleas for funds as churches have?
• Is it because nonprofits do not ask as frequently for money as churches do?
• Is it because nonprofits have not made as good a case for the funds as churches have?

I would confidently answer no to each of the above. The number of urgent, emotional, desperate pleas for money that I’ve received from nonprofits over the last few months outweighs by a factor of one hundred the number of times the subject has even come up at church, not to mention the tone or intensity. And with all due respect to churches, I can think of few times when pastors made more cogent cases for funding than nonprofit execs. No, there’s something more and different going on here.

And therein lies the point I want to make about why donors are cutting back on their nonprofit giving much moreso than their church giving:

It’s the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome.

Let’s face it: The scent of funding desperation that hangs over the nonprofit sector at present is as thick and overpowering as Brut Aftershave. How many communications have you had with your donors in the past three months that haven’t involved the long face, the stiff upper lip, the “We’re doing the past we can” attitude that sounds more like a person struggling with a terminal disease than a nonprofit leader flat out hog wild to change the world?

At least at church more gets talked about than how behind we are on the bills.

And that’s just the point:

Where did we get the idea that the best way to deal with financial shortfalls was to talk more about money? Where did we get the idea that talking less about our mission and purpose and vision and more about our institution and its incessant bills and financial needs is what will draw greater numbers of people to give and dive in deeper than ever before?

Sum it up and say:

There’s something more here than guilt or frequency and desperation of ask that explains why people are cutting their donations to charities at a faster clip than they’re cutting their donations to the churches. There’s a basic principle at root here. Call it life or involvement or activity or participation or engagement or ownership or whatever you want. The bottom line is that when a donor’s basic relationship to you primarily involves them giving you money, you will always–always–get aced out by an organization whose basic relationship with the donor is more holistic.

And that’s the heart of Transformational Giving. The faster we as nonprofits can reshape our organizations accordingly, the more likely we’ll survive this recession, accomplish the purpose we set out to achieve, and be the donor magnets that we have the potential to be…as we shall see when we move on to the third and final part of our series on The Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome:

The Solution.