Do the Word

A shout out this morning to Tom Davis, CEO of Children’s Hope Chest. Tom’s first fiction book, Scared, goes on sale today. Tom’s previous books, Red Letters and Fields of the Fatherless, are both good reads for Transformational Giving practitioners.

Tom’s book coming out reminds me to encourage you to check out Children’s Hope Chest’s 5 for 50 site for a great example of an E (Engagement) level champion development strategy.

5 for 50 nicely lays out five lifestyle dimensions of champion involvement. It also embodies one of the hallmarks of E-level development, namely, that when a champion reaches the Engagement level it is virtually impossible for those around the champion to be unaware of his or her commitment to the cause. That’s certainly operative here.

One suggestion for improvement for this strategy as its laid out on the website:

After laying out the five lifestyle dimensions of involvement requested of the 5 for 50 champion, there is but one link, which leads to the donation page. The (clearly unintended) message that’s potentially conveyed to the champion?

The financial piece is the piece we care about the most.

Tom’s books demonstrate that nothing could be further from the truth for Children’s Hope Chest, which is why turning each of the 5 commitments into a drill-down link that offers further information and tools for each undertaking (and dropping out the separate/additional donate link) would more accurately convey the intent of the strategy while moving beyond challenging champions to equipping them via the site.

Regardless, a great Engagement strategy for growing existing champions.

(Side note: I would not recommend 5 for 50 as a Participation strategy for recruiting new champions. It’s not that it wouldn’t work–I’m sure the strategy draws its fair share of new champions–but rather that it’s better suited as a strategy for equipping champions to move from participation to engagement. You’ll note that one of the five commitments–inviting five people to join you on your journey–is a great embodiment of the Transformational Giving principle that new champion recruitment is the responsibility of existing champions, not the organization. And going on a journey with a committed friend is itself a great P-level step for a new champion. Great P-level steps, after all, are short-term, high touch, high yield, understandable with reference only to themselves, and synecdochic.  You can read more about creating effective P-level steps here.)

Continuing on with our theme this week about concrete steps you can take to move your development program from transactional to Transformational, consider this corporate relations gem from Time Magazine.

Corporate relations initatives are either nonexistent or strikingly transactional at most nonprofits. The most common initiative is the corporate sponsorship, which goes something like this:

‘So for a $5,000 banquet sponsorship our executive director will plaster your logo to his forehead, we’ll mention your name in the program, and our next pregnant staff member will name his or her child after your company. What do you say?’

Never mind that such an approach is thoroughly transactional and largely ineffective. Worse, it rarely if ever leads to ongoing involvement in the cause by the corporation. And it doesn’t even contemplate the possibility that we might have a responsibility and an opportunity to coach corporations in relation to the cause.

Consider the appealing alternative reported by Time Magazine:

Carrotmobs.

As the article describes, Carrotmobs are kind of like reverse boycotts. The Carrotmob solicits bids from stores asking what percentage of profits the store is willing to donate to a specified cause should the mob be able to generate business at such and such a level.

While Carrotmobs so far have by and large been focused on the environmental movement, there’s no reason why the concept can’t be applied to Kingdom causes. After all, think of the multiple opportunities for transformation:

• Businesses can be coached on profitable ways to impact the cause
• New participants can be recruited for your cause. As the article notes, ‘Carrotmobs also carry extra appeal during tough economic times. Participants don’t have to donate anything. They just shop for products they were planning to buy anyway, adjusting the time and place of purchase. By doing so, they help green a local business.’

Best of all, it’s a win-win-win proposition. Unlike a boycott, there’s no rancor and no losers.

• The business wins (increased sales).

• The nonprofit wins (businesses–not just the winner but every business approached about submitting a proposal–learn about the cause; in addition, new participants can easily be recruited by the nonprofit’s owner-level champions).

• The champions win (growing in relation to the cause).

Make sure to click through to the article so you can see an example of how owner-level champions and not organizations are tasked and equipped to recruit new participant-level champions for the cause. The story about Tony Montagnaro is worth the click in and of itself. Not only he is an owner recruiting participants, but he created a great SPP (Signature Participation Project) in the process. Not at all bad for a 19-year old who wouldn’t have even survived the wealth screening donor ranking rigamarole in most nonprofits!

Our theme this week is ‘Simple steps you can take to move from transactional fundraising to Transformational Giving in your existing development program’.

Yesterday we highlighted a cool brochure (I think that’s the first time I used those two words in the same sentence).

Today we visit the wonderful world of thank you receipting in order to give a quick shout out to Amy Karjala, the Director of Development of Seoul USA,  the organization my wife and I founded that has soooooooo moved beyond that I need to stop referring to it that way.

(Amy also helped me to write the Coach Your Champions book, so when it comes to Transformational Giving she knoweth of what she speaketh.)

In any case, Amy’s doing something really cool with the Seoul USA thank you receipt letters: she’s using them to grow champions, not just thank them.

Thank you receipt letters are far and away the most opened pieces of mail we send to champions. Weird, then, that we slave over our fund raising appeal letters and acquisition letters but typically spend about 2.5 minutes writing the thank you note for the month.

Not so Amy.

Amy is jettisoning the time-honored (and thus nonsensical) practice of writing thank you letters by month (e.g., the May thank you letter, the June thank you letter, etc).

Instead, she is writing a thank you letter series, in which champions receive letter #1 in response to their first gift, letter #2 in response to their second gift, and so on. Each thank you letter is oriented toward providing the champion with a progressively practical bite-size growth morsel related to the cause and how the champion can impact it.

Most nonprofits do a specialized thank you letter for first-time givers. Many do specialized thank you letters for designated gifts. Amy’s approach takes that to the next level by enabling the first paragraph to be customized related to the gift intent before transitioning to an intentional lesson or equipping moment in the rest of the letter. She balances the thank you and the coaching lesson very nicely, and the lesson never comes across as an ask but rather as a ‘Since you sent us all that money, you might be interested in this opportunity to further impact the cause in your sphere of influence’ moment.

This is a great example of how coaching your champions can be scaled for a nonprofit with a large network of champions.

(Of course, a large nonprofit might respond by saying, ‘Yeah, but our receipting process doesn’t enable us to customize thank you letters that way.’ To which I respond, ‘If there’s ever a process worth reworking to enable maximum personalized interaction with your champions, it’s the receipting process.’)

As Seoul USA champions recognize that the thank you letter contains something even better than a receipt for tax purposes or a Crackerjack toy surprise, I expect the piece to assume even more primacy that it already does in the typical development program.