Do the Word

It’s January 8. The flimsiest of our New Year’s resolutions have succumbed to reality. At the YMCA where I work out, the New Year’s resolution-swollen crowds are already beginning to thin (faster than the individuals themselves, interestingly).

It’s time for New Year’s Resolutions That We Really, Really Need To Do.

My recommendation at the top of the list for you, dear nonprofit leader?

This year, embrace Transformational Giving as your development strategy with reckless abandon.

I’m indebted to Seth Godin for the persuasive logic here (and Seoul USA‘s Amy Karjala for the link):

Often, someone will riff on a concept or approach that characterizes the revolution that we’re living through online, and heads will nod. “Sure, that sounds great [insert idea here… like Free, or social media or permission or ideaviruses or empowered consumers or treating people with respect, etc.] within reason.”

It’s the last two words that make it a lie.

The last two words allow you to weasel your way into failure. Within reason means, “without bothering the boss, without taking a big risk, without taking the blame if we fail, without alienating our current retailers… be reasonable!”

And so you do it half-heartedly and you fail.

And who beats you?

The people who did it without reason.

Look. Here’s the score (from Ben Gose’s December 10 Chronicle of Philanthropy article):

• 93% of charity leaders say their organizations are feeling the effects of the economic downturn
• 80% have lost financial support
• 40% of charity leaders say their group’s financial situation has worsened over the past six months.
• More than 40% say their groups have laid of staff

Do you really think this calls for a tweak?

A dabble?

A bit of an admixture of traditional transactional fundraising and Transformational Giving?

You’ve officially found yourself alive in a year where continuing to abide by the “safe” status quo presents more danger to your organization than to cast yourself into the river of radical change.

(P.S. Have a cookie. By the time you’re done with it, everything will be right as rain.)

Engagement…

…as in Participation/Engagement/Ownership

…as in the sine qua non of Transformational Giving

…is  is the subject of the free Mission Increase Foundation bi-monthly workshops that I and our Giving and Training Officers will be teaching around the country this month. (Do sign up, hear?)

As I’ve been preparing to teach on this subject in Colorado Springs today, what keeps coming to mind is the world’s funniest joke…and why this has everything to do with Transformational Giving.

In 2002, UK’s Laugh Lab held a contest to determine the world’s funniest joke. 40,000 jokes and 1.5 million ratings later, here’s the winner and still champion:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, “My friend is dead! What can I do?”. The operator says “Calm down. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says “OK, now what?”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that same phone call with ministries attempting to implement Transformational Giving.

“We want to do Transformational Giving,” the call goes. “Can you help us develop a Signature Participation Project?”

“Why do you want to start by developing a Signature Participation Project?” goes my reply.

“Because we need a way to acquire a lot of new donors at a low cost who we can then ask to support our ministry.”

(Blam! Gunshot sounds. Ministry returns to phone after shooting champion. “Now what?”)

Dear ministry interested in Transformational Giving:

Please begin with Engagement and work back to Participation. Only when you know what it looks like for a champion to be fully engaged in the cause can you develop a Signature Participation Project as the first step to getting them there.

If you begin by trying to develop a Signature Participation Project and then ask, “Now what do I have them do? And when do I ask them for money?”, you are still mired in traditional transactional fundraising.

See you at the workshop this month. Or if you’re unable to attend, try the book. They say the book’s always better than the movie, anyway.

Best of/worst of awards are typically reserved for year end blog posts, but I can, in good conscience, forecast the worst Signature Participation Project of this young year:

Movember’s mustache growing campaign “to raise awareness and funds for men’s cancers”.

Think of a Signature Participation Project as the first rung on the ladder to involvement in your cause–one that is:

• short-term
• high-touch
• high-yield (i.e., one sees a major return on comparatively minimal investment)
• understandable without reference to the organization that conducts it
• synecdochic (i.e., it is successful in drawing the participant into deeper relationship/knowledge/involvement/experience with the cause).

Interestingly, the mustache campaign does reasonably well in three of the five categories. It is, after all, short-term, high-touch, and understandable without reference to Movember. We might could even spot them the fourth criteria–high yield–on the theory that, after all, the participant is perhaps really only growing a ‘stache and gathering pledges every time a person notices said growth.

It’s the fifth–and most crucial–category where the ‘Stache SPP lays an egg so noteworthy as to lock up the Worst SPP of 2010 a mere four days into the year:

Synecdoche.

I described it this way in a previous post:

All good SPP’s are synecdochic–that is, by participating in the project, an individual gets to ‘taste’ something of the ministry’s cause as a whole. The root word is synecdoche, which means using the part of something to refer to the whole (like ‘all hands on deck’) or the whole of something to refer to a part (like ‘I got stopped by the police’, by which I don’t mean that 357 Colorado State Troopers pulled me over but rather that a single police officer tagged me for going 105).

(OK. Not really. I think that was one of the Baldwin brothers. But you get the point.)

It’s often a tough concept to grasp, but it’s extremely important. It’s part of why we recommend to ministries not to do golf scrambles or auctions or jog-a-thons: they’re not synecdochic. When you participate in a golf scramble, nothing about golfing gives you a taste of the cause as a whole. Even giving away a brochure about your organization at the golf scramble, or having your Executive Director give a speech at the golf scramble, or having one of your clients give a testimony at the golf scramble, doesn’t make the experience synecdochic (unless, perhaps, you run a golf ministry).

In the case of the Movember mustache campaign, one does well to ask:

In what ways does growing a ‘stache draw the ‘stache grower into deeper relationship/knowledge/involvement/experience with the cause of men’s health?

Contemplate that one for a few minutes and let me know what you come up with. (If you’re a guy, try thoughtfully stroking your ‘stache to see if that generates any insight.)

Movember contends that the ‘stache becomes a symbol for the cause of men’s health like unto the pink ribbon of breast cancer fame. Grow your ‘stache in November of each year, raise some dough from everyone who asks you what you’re doing that for…

…and then forget about the whole thing come December 1.

(Fortunately, Movember’s SPP is better than their videos. Check out Jeff Brooks’ post and judge for yourself.)

Perhaps it’s enough to bring your cause to mind one month a year. Or perhaps it’s enough to hope that growing a ‘stache in November will lead men to new depths of involvement and candor about their health in December and beyond.

Or perhaps it’s time for all of us to commit to coaching our champions beyond project-level participation and into genuine engagement with the cause.

What might a genuinely synecdochic SPP for men’s health look like?

(Editor’s note: Not like this!)

Here’s my own personal vote (which, interestingly, I think could work quite nicely in a church men’s group setting).

Is it as cute or clever or as prone to mass appeal? Likely not.

Does it create a greater likelihood of involvement and candor?

You bet your ‘stache.