Do the Word

Jeff Brooks from Donor Power Blog just posted his newest monthly column for Fundraising Success, What Goes On In The Mailbox? Jeff lists all the things that can go wrong from when your fundraising letter leaves your hands to when it reaches its, um, eternal resting place. Among the potential pitfalls:

• The nondeliverability rate
• The ignore rate
• The instant death rate
• The not-this-time rate
• The think-about-it rate
• The malfunction rate

Surprisingly, though, Jeff leaves off what has to be indisputably the single-most significant response rate inhibitor of them all:

• The ‘when I gave that gift to your organization two years ago I had absolutely zero intention of signing up to be consigned to your mailing list purgatory’ rate

Somewhere in the history of fundraising, we made a questionable determination; namely, that when someone gave us a gift, he or she was utilizing that gift to signal an openness to future solicitation by our organization.

He or she was, in other words, ‘interested’, which, translated into traditional fundraising language, means ‘more likely than someone in the general public not to trash the appeal letters we send him or her in the future’.

And, granted, this approach makes perfect sense in traditional direct mail fundraising, where he who accumulates the largest list of these ‘interested’ folks typically stays in business longer than he who does not. In this approach, one can conveniently overlook the rate that I’ve suggested is overwhelmingly relevant and instead focus on doing the best one can to improve one’s odds on the rates Jeff has suggested in his article.

But what if the future of fundraising doesn’t belong to those who play the percentages best? What if those with the largest ‘donor files’ don’t automatically win in the future?

(I realize that by posing this question I may fall into Jeff’s category of ‘young and inexperienced’, and yet sadly I can’t even offer that as a defense. I’m still repenting for all the trees that I transformed into clever direct mail solicitations during my time at the Los Angeles Mission and as a VP at the Russ Reid Company.)

What I know is this: When I took off my traditional direct mail beanie (complete with analytics propellor), I came to a common-sense conclusion:

• If I send a letter to friends who are passionate about the same cause as I am, and 90% of them throw the letter away, either (1) I am confused to who my friends are, or (2) our relationship is not truly grounded on shared commitment to the cause, or (3, and most likely) I’m sending them a letter that they did not want and that is not an answer to any question they were asking, and thus it deserves to be overlooked.

Jeff notes in his post that ‘there is just a lot going on in everybody’s mailbox all the time’, but have you ever in your life had so much going on in your mailbox that you overlooked a letter from a dear friend or a package that you ordered or a piece of information you requested? Don’t you actually keep an eye out for those day after day until they arrive?

Even in traditional email and online fundraising, opt-in rules the day. It ought to be no less so when it comes to traditional direct mail. Informed consent is the price of entry these days, no matter what the medium.

And when it comes to coaching champions and Transformational Giving, mail has a cherished place (though we can certainly leave off the “direct”). But the strategy is not one of strategic interruption for the purpose of solicitation. It’s not even a clever strategy.

It’s a simple strategy of only sending things through the mail that cause the champion to say, ‘Oh, I’ve been expecting that. Because I asked them to send that to me. And I’m glad they sent it because I will find it very helpful. And I look forward to sharing this with others I know who I think would also be interested in this cause.’

Sound young and inexperienced? Then I would hate to see your email inbox or your RSS feed!

When we coach champions, the greatest joy we can have is not receiving a six-figure gift in response to our solicitation of them or having them invite us for a promising evening gathering with their wealthy friends.

The greatest joy we can have is watching them move from participation to engagement to ownership.

Bob Faulkner is a champion for North Korea through Seoul USA, the organization my wife and I founded going on a decade ago. We met because the good folks at Voice of the Martyrs/US recommended that I talk to Bob. Though he loves the persecuted church at large, he really wanted to focus on persecuted Christians in North Korea.

When Bob and I met (and we’ve only ever met electronically and then talked once over the phone), we talked about Bob’s dreams and goals, and we set to work together on achieving what we discerned that God had called him to do.

Notice I didn’t say, “We talked about Seoul USA and the volunteer and giving opportunities we had available that might interest Bob”. That’s because I was coaching a champion, not soliciting a potential donor/volunteer.

Bob was already writing a blog–a really good one, in fact. So I asked him if he’d like to extend his reach by adapting his blog for Seoul USA and perhaps even posting some unique entries there. So he did. Rather than my wife or I writing the Seoul USA blog, Bob does. And he does a magnificent job.

Bob and his wife, Pyong, and their church now give regularly and generously to Seoul USA, and Bob’s even flying out to Colorado for the Seoul USA banquet on April 2 and heading to Korea with Pyong for the summer to minister with North Koreans through Seoul USA.

Truly Bob has been thoroughly engaged with the cause of North Korea, and he has found Seoul USA to be a God-sent platform for him to grow.

But yesterday Bob did something even more amazing.

Yesterday Bob officially became a card-carrying “O”.

Check out the following email I received from Bob yesterday. Note in it how Bob is not responding to a solicitation from Seoul USA but is responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We are supporting him, rather than soliciting him to support us. And now he is owning the cause of North Korea in his sphere of influence. And that’s what makes him an “O”.

And that is the greatest joy a coach of champions can have.

And now, let’s listen to Bob the champion as he champions:

Had a serious time of prayer today and I truly believe that God is now leading to begin a Seoul-USA-based group in Chicagoland. I did not want to make commitments while I still had so many other irons in the fire. But those irons are growing colder and it’s time to do what I believe is on your heart too.

In keeping with the UU extension vision, but also in keeping with the desires of our own hearts (and Pyong is overwhelmed with joy at the prospect) we’d like to establish, through much prayer, a ministry group that will meet at least monthly, maybe more, to do 3 things:

1) pray fervently. I add the adverb because I know the other group is dying because prayers had become too commonplace and even boring…

2) learn NK facts , both from secular and spiritual perspective.

3) work. Projects will be discussed and assigned.

All of this must flow from our relationship to Seoul USA. You will send us prayer requests. You will suggest the project(s) . Of course we are not denominational in heart and know that the Spirit will speak directly to us also, but your vision for NK will be much or most of what we do. (Happens to be my vision too, by and large!)

This is a turning point. All the elements of this decision were out there, but when God called me aside today to put this in my heart, I knew this was not just a good idea, but a revelation of the “next step” I have been praying about.

May the Lord bless your cause with many Bobs as you stop soliciting donors and start coaching champions!

Speaking of World Gospel Mission, the organization’s Director of Champion Development, John Lee, checked in around 2:30 in the morning, infant son Jace in one hand, Reggie McNeal’s book The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church in the other, and the keyboard at his toes.

John notes that McNeal’s six challenges to the church are spot-on for nonprofit ministries seeking to coach their champions:

Quotes John quoting McNeal:

A church member culture will develop these resources quite differently from how a missionary culture would. Here’s an overview of the distinction between the two cultures in how they approach resource development.

Resource: Prayer
Member- praying for members, church program needs
Missionary- praying for unchurched, outreach efforts

Resource: People
Member- recruiting members into church activities
Missionary- deploying into community

Resource: Time
Member- finding time for church activities
Missionary- creating time for missions expression

Resource: Money
Member- raising money for club activities
Missionary- channeling money to mission initiatives

Resource: Facilities
Member- maintaining the clubhouse
Missionary- seeking ways to move out into the community

Resource: Technology
Member- supporting church ministries
Missionary- creating ministry opportunities in the world

A little cutting and pasting (substitute champion for member, nonprofit for church, cause for mission) and you’ve got a veritable primer in Transformational Giving. Thanks, John. You should sleep less often.

And while we’re shifting paradigms, let me give a tip of the cap to .W’s Matt Dubois who, as he did in the comments a few posts back, would remind us that the shift can’t simply be a shift of activity from internal to external, lest we inadvertently prompt our champions (our ourselves) to think that we’re saved by activity, or that God’s primary concern for us is to get off the couch and just do something.

The real motivation for shifting our focus from internal to external is not just that it is good development practice (which it is) nor that God is wringing His hands and moaning, “Will somebody please do something down there????” (He’s not; after all, this is the God that can raise up a substitute for Esther if she’s too busy, and the God Who can have the rocks cry out if your donor file is too wrapped up in your capital campaign to notice the play on the field).

The real motivation is that once the Spirit of Christ dwells within us, He focuses our attention on the cause/the field/the community and embodying God’s character within that in order to demonstrate the Gospel as we proclaim it. Because that is the character of God, and our ultimate Cause is to embody that.

In other words, His eye is on the sparrow, not the Humane Society.

So take a look at your recent newsletters and prayer letters and communications with champions: Are you informing them about your organization’s latest sparrow saving campaign? Are you soliciting them for  your organization’s latest organization saving campaign?

Or are you coaching them to have God’s heart for the sparrow and to move out in God’s power to bring God’s Word and God’s comfort to–OK, this analogy is breaking down because I don’t think sparrows understand English or like it when people touch them. But I hope you catch my point.

But if cause and organization still seem inseparably intertwined or even synonymous to you as you coach your champions, check out the bedtime story John was reading to his son this morning. I understand it put Jace back to sleep and kept John up all night, excited to put it into practice.