DON'T DO THIS and Raise Money! - You Got This Fundraising
Episode Notes
This episode of You Got This Fundraising is brought to you by www.dawngabel.com. Join Dawn for one-on-one fundraising consulting and other great tips to simplify your fundraising success from an experienced professional.
Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yougotthispod/
Got a question? Email Dawn at Dawn.Gabel@dawngabel.com
Episode Transcript
Have you ever had a friend contact you and strike up a conversation that was out of character and then have them ask you to buy their networking product? Ugh, that is the worst! Now, you are both uncomfortable, but you know she is trying her hardest and so you feel obligated to purchase. Stop, that is NOT relationship marketing. But it is what we are talking about today...Or rather, we are talking about Not doing THAT, whatever you call it! Today, Relationship marketing and what it REALLY means on the You Got This Fundraising podcast!
Hello fellow Simplifiers! I saw a Facebook post this week that said, and I am paraphrasing, Dear Friends, I Don’t want your health food, weight loss supplements, or any other networked item. Please stop messaging me. My friend explained that he had been contacted by a friend he had not spoken to for over a year. I was interested, so I private messaged him and when I asked if he would mind if I paraphrased him on my podcast, he said he was fine I could even directly quote him and use his name because he felt so strongly about this. I have not, used his name that is, but I get it...Don’t you? Who has not been invited to makeup, jewelry, burping plastic, kitchen ware, workout clothes, and MORE networking sales parties or direct solicitations by family and friends who don’t take the time to know if that is something you want to be joining into?
I have a deeply felt bias of these sort of network/relationship marketing, and I use the terms loosely, that goes back to my childhood. When my mother was at her financial lowest after my father had left our family, a distant family member called and asked if we were up to a visit. My mother was excited and went out of her way to be very creative for the company coming. She made a nice soup meal and lovely mint iced tea so our food budget would not be too dented and yet the offerings were tasty. She was so pleased to have someone visit after the trauma of abandonment and divorce that she made us all wear our Sunday clothes and told us not to eat until the guest had made their plate. Imagine my mother’s disappointment that the guest wanted to sell her vitamins! And, although we barely had enough to feed ourselves, my mother politely ordered one bottle of vitamins because she was ashamed to admit she did not have the money. That memory had me shying away from one-on-one fundraising, with anyone I knew, for years, but then I found the secret key to unlock the power of REAL relationship marketing, and that is...interest.
When we have a positive relationship, it is a precious thing. In the best-case situations, we have a ‘know, like, and trust’ bond. My friend probably felt he knew, liked, and trusted the other person, until that person broke that trust and solicited where he had no interest. He was made uncomfortable by the ask. So uncomfortable he went on Facebook to do a blind ‘stop that’ post. How do we have a relationship and not feel like we are damaging the relationship by asking for a donation? Well, it boils down to the donor’s journey. Even with for-profit network marketing, if the individual is not on the journey with the sales person, then we are breaking the trust of the relationship. A clear indication that the person making the ask is relying solely on past relational standing, like my mother buying out of obligation and shorting our survival money. By the way, those vitamins sat on our kitchen table for a long time. They seemed to be her monument to trusting too much and bowing to social pressures. I never saw her buy out of politeness again.
In relationship fundraising, we must be focused on the prospective donor and their interests. Their expression of the need they have feelings for or find a way to elevate their feelings. Is this something they have spoken to you about? Is there a way for you to bring TOGETHER a known interest your prospect has expressed and your project you are wanting to have them involved in? Here is a great example, a philanthropic family was approached to donate to landscaping of an area of town near the local university. The family felt that was a nice project, but did not jump at the suggestion. They politely ate their lunch and left and the meeting the nonprofit had arranged, leaving the executive director with nothing for her efforts. The director was confused. They were university supporters and they were heavily involved in landscaping projects in the city that her organization had been a part of before. Later, there was an opportunity to landscape another area of town that the nonprofit was also working on. A supporter brought the mother of the family with her to a planning meeting. After the meeting, the matriarch of the family became an interested member of the group. She took a tour of the proposed area, attended a lighting presentation by a commercial lighting company that had vintage commercial street lamps, and she even volunteered to water flower pots that were a temporary placement in the area. You know the end of this story, the family ended up being the major sponsor for the landscaping and streetscaping.
We care so deeply for our impact that we make the mistake of assuming even those who know, like, and trust us will feel our caring through our words. Don’t get me wrong, that does work, copy writing is all about feeling the caring through the words, but that is a one-time gift. First time gift retention was 22% last year and will probably be less this year. Our words are the beginning of their journey with their impact. Bring your donor to the impact both literally and figuratively. Don’t ask, show and tell. Involve them in your world. Build their interest and deepen their relationship with the impact. Have them enjoy some of the sights, sounds, and smells of the impact. Visiting the proposed landscaped site and seeing the possibility of the future with drawings, a knowledgeable guide, and some potted plants arranged so those interested see the proposed project and join into the vision, brings a donor on the journey with you rather than you telling them about your journey with the impact of the program.
I can hear your mind working from here--see, hear, touch, smell--that is great for a garden but what about the homeless, cancer, hospice? I get it. I have worked in the medical nonprofit world. I know the privacy issues and the sensory issues. But, don’t let the difficult stop your creativity in bringing your donors on a journey with your impact. Bring the donor with you to places they CAN go and don’t dwell on the places they can’t go. Creative tours are not as hard to dream up as you might think if you put your mind to it. I know a children’s hospital that lined surgical beds up in the hall and had those touring pretend they were there to comfort their child as they waited for surgery. They put baby dolls in the beds and had individuals pair up across the child as if they were parents. It illustrated as no other way could the need for more space for family as they waited for a traumatic event in their child’s life, a surgery.
Another organization brought end of life support to prospective donors by inviting them to a Mother’s Day Service for family of hospice patients who had passed during the year. This became an opportunity for the families to share their hospice experience. If you hear the experience that a family member has with hospice, it is less about the death and more about supporting the living. It also gave the prospective donors the opportunity to remember their own mother’s, grandmother’s, and mother figures by putting a memorial flower, provided, into the larger commemorative bouquet.
Taking the donor on their own journey and understanding their interest level, guides your ability to comfortably ask the donor, when the time comes, to financially support the impact. Comfortable for you AND them. Relationship marketing is about the relationship the customer or donor has with the product or impact, not the relationship they have with you! Let me say it again, relationship marketing is defined by the relationship itself. If the relationship is within the product, or in our case the impact, then it is natural that they would receive you and enjoy the process of making the donation. If they are approached for a donation for your organization and your relationship with them is based on your high school senior year, they will be uncomfortable and so will you. They may make a small donation, peer-to-peer, but then never again donate. Well, you say, at least we have $50 we did not have before. True, but you wasted your time that could have been better spent building a donor that would have a life-time value of $5,000 or more. You also made your relationship with that person strained for all future contact. Are you going to call them every time you need money and no other time? Uncomfortable for them and for you.
Simplify your fundraising success! The podcast today is sponsored by You Got This Coaching at www.dawngabel.com. Simple solutions to your complicated world of nonprofit fundraising. Got to www.dawngabel.com and join us on the journey to your success! There you will find the podcast PDF for today. Take time right now to download our Donor Relationship Decision Tree PDF and think of a prospective donor. Put their name at the top of the page. Follow the thought process for the individual. How do you know them? Does another person connected to the organization know them better? Remember the donor who was brought to the garden tour by her friend, who was already a supporter.
Next, what makes you think they would be interested? On a scale of 1 to 10, are they interested in a project you are seeking funding for? Have they been involved before? Are they close to a person who has received impact from your organization? If they are interested at a level of 8, 9, or 10, take time to give them a call for an appointment to speak about the program. Would that call be better made by someone else in the organization? If they are at 5,6, or 7 level of interest, what involvement would bring them closer? If they are a 1, 2, or even 3 level of interest, why are you thinking of them? Just because they are donors of other organizations and have means does not follow they will be a good fit for a call, even if you know them from high school. That is a relationship between them and your impact that you will need to cultivate over a longer timeline than we are talking about, and if you jumped to an ask meeting, they would feel, as my friend did, insulted and upset enough that they just might make a frustrated post on Facebook.
This episode of You Got This Fundraising is brought to you by www.dawngabel.com. Join Dawn for one-on-one fundraising consulting and other great tips to simplify your fundraising success from an experienced professional.
Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yougotthispod/
Got a question? Email Dawn at Dawn.Gabel@dawngabel.com
