How long does it take…

…before you give up on a prospect?

That was the question a board member posed in a fundraising training we conducted last week.

We were talking about the importance of cultivation, and how you have to read the signals of what a potential donor is interested in and try to respond in kind.  In other words, that it’s not about putting what you think is your best foot forward – but about divining the prospect’s intentions and passions and pursing a dialogue about those.

We were discussing the merits of touring a community garden versus visiting the senior crafts hour (which one better conveyed a sense of community need? which was pleasant – good news – but not so lite that prospects would forget the social service underneath the activity’s design?) when a voice popped up from the back of the room. “How long does it take?” asked a middle-aged man sitting near the refreshment table.

Did he mean how long did the entire cultivation process take and why was it so long before you saw any results?

Did he mean what was the formula for success and what effort did he have to put in to be guaranteed to hit the slot machine jackpot?

Or did he mean how long did you have to work at fundraising before you gave up altogether (and what was the alternative, then)?

When we got down to brass tacks, what he was actually asking was how to read the signals.  How many times do you get a “can’t this week” before you give up trying to get someone to come to the Sunday afternoon sing-along with seniors?  How many demurrals do you bear before you stop asking someone to join you at the annual weed-a-thon?  How long do you keep trudging along casting out your net, and hoping that this time you’ll sense a spark of interest?

The answer we had to give him, as folks will guess who know us well, was…it depends.

It depends on the signals you’re getting back.

There are, certainly, people who are trying hard to give you the “not now, not ever” message. But there are others for whom it just doesn’t register high enough on their radar screen – until serendipity comes into play. And of course, for those of us putting the chess pieces of the donor cultivation process together – we know how to make serendipity happen.

It’s kind of like dating – except you’re trying to make a match, light a spark, between the mission and effect of the charity – and the prospect’s viewpoint of the world.  What he or she considers is the way things “ought to be.” And sometimes you have to keep trudging along till you hit the right combination of attention, circumstances, and interest.

And sometimes you read the message in the tea leaves and move on.

There’s too little time, and too many potential prospects, to chase forever after someone because they “have money.”

Potential donors are everywhere, if you know how to uncover them.

On MLK Day: Reflections on Collective Wisdom and Courage

This winter my family and I have been re-watching the seminal 1980’s documentary series Eyes on the Prize about the birth and struggles of the American civil rights movement. It’s gotten me thinking not only about the collective courage and wisdom of the participants and leaders of that sustained struggle, but also about the lessons of that movement for all of us who are concerned with funding social change.

I’ve been especially struck, in that documentary, by the fascinating “you are there” footage of internal meetings between Martin Luther King and his inner circle of strategists. It’s clear that they are aware that this is a long-term struggle with critical actions along the way, and that they are plotting out the chess moves several steps down the line. Patience – and impatience – seem equally compelling and necessary to ultimate success.

So, too, with building a funding strategy. Change moves slowly, human relationships build incrementally, and some of the most important qualities for a fundraising coordinator are far-sightedness and patience – and a burning hunger for a seemingly impossible goal. 


The second notable factor the documentary is bringing home for me is the critical relationship between the masses of individual actions taken by large groups of people, and the success of significant social change strategies.

In other words, how tactics developed by a few are brought alive through thousands of personal decisions to achieve maximal impact.


Well, so what? Activists for social change have absorbed these lessons many times over in the decades since.

But there are lessons here for all of us, human rights advocates and social safety net providers alike, on how to create, structure and sustain grassroots funding for nonprofit causes.

One lesson has to do with the way the civil rights movement was financed – it was a mixture of thousands of participant contributions, often small and usually given through church collections, and larger donations from sympathetic outsiders. And backed up by internal community in-kind support – sharing resources (such as food, transportation, shelter) so that many had less but all had some.

Well, none of that should be a surprise – Fundraising 101 pounds home the notion that a variety of donors, from inside and outside the cause, are necessary with a range of amounts and substances to build a diverse and sustainable base of support.

But there’s something more, about how the leaders of this movement worked through each other and through other people, that holds a critical message for grassroots fundraisers – that we have to trust, and build, structures that involve tens, hundreds, thousands of others in supporting our causes. No matter how skilled we may be, we can’t do it ourselves.

Another, deeper set of lessons comes from my family’s most profound take-away from this documentary: the extraordinary courage of these people – both leaders and “foot soldiers” – in confronting the entrenched power of institutionalized racism in this country, again and again and again.

At the risk of seeming terribly prosaic, the process of fund diversification takes guts, too.

There’s something about asking someone for money – to invest in your cause – that involves taking a personal stand. Explaining your deeply-held values and asking someone to extend themselves to put their money on your line. It involves exposing your innermost core, and for many, it’s terrifying.

Why else do so many otherwise committed people avoid individual donor fundraising?

Mired in the day to day, and worried about the survivability of our organizations through the current economic conditions, it’s hard to place our work in the pantheon of history.

Perhaps there’s a deeper way to do so than this, but it strikes me that achieving the right balance between patience and impatience…far-reaching vision and everyday actions…being rooted in core values and extending oneself into vulnerable territory…is a fundamental legacy to stand on.

Board Members Are Volunteers

Accountability, transparency, standards of performance…

I’ve had the same exact conversation with two different executive directors this past fall.  And as I started onto a third reiteration of this theme just last week, I wondered if the grim landscape for nonprofits nowadays wasn’t somehow a contributing factor.



It goes like this:

Board members are volunteers.  As such, you can’t hold them to the same tight performance standards as employees whose primary job it is to keep the ship going forward.

Okay, hang in there.

Because while this doesn’t give board members the license to be ne’er do wells, it does mean that if you hold a punitive attitude toward them, with “consequences” for missing deadlines, becoming distracted by family problems, or, heaven forbid, getting caught up in their day jobs, you’ll lose them.

Even if the consequences are simply showing them up in front of their fellow board members.  Or in front of your staff.

But even more importantly – it’s just not right.  We live in the voluntary sector with the understanding that we each bring to it what we can.

It might not be what you’d like someone to bring – but it is, given who they are and the pressures on them, what they can live up to.

Now this also might mean that it’s not the right time for someone to be on your board – or that you need to cut them a break for a certain amount of time.  I read somewhere once that the main source of discipline frustration in child-rearing is expecting behavior that’s not age-appropriate. (Always a good thing to remember as you’re trying in vain to keep your 4-year-old quiet in a public arena.)

So it is with board members.  When we expect, hope for, pray for behavior that they just can’t come forward with, that’s the perfect setup for frustration, anger, resentment. (And just the opposite of what I just wrote about in last week’s blog – gratitude for how we support each other in our life-changing work.)

The first ED I had this conversation with had an epiphany:

“Oh, they’re volunteers so I have to have different expectations of them”  he said, with dawning comprehension.

The second bowed her head dejectedly – and I don’t think she was convinced.  She could just see the promised land, of board members rustling up resources…single-handedly running events…strong-arming their contacts into making big gifts – and she wasn’t going to give up that alluring vision.

It’s a tricky conversation, for sure. Because yes, we need to be able to expect adult behavior (“Do what you say you’ll do or don’t say it!”) from each other.

But we also need to be humane and to understand that board members have lives, and pressures, apart from their voluntary duties.  And that their will to, which we love them for, may not equal their can do.

The Practice of Feeling Grateful

It’s that ole “opening the envelopes after the mailman knocks…” time of year, and I’m seeing some trends.

We’ve had a lot of donors stick with us, but drop down. (More $18 gifts than we’ve ever received before.)

A few new gifts of a large denomination – at least one of which we’d been courting for over a year. A nice surprise!

And some old old friends sticking with us…through a year when they’ve clearly made some hard choices…very very moving.

We’ve been sending double and triple thank yous – dashing off an email as soon as the check comes in, then asking the solicitor/contact to send their own note cards – and then sending a formal “thank you” letter/receipt and handwriting a cheery little thank you on top of that!

You can never appreciate someone too much, is my theory. There’s a lot of important and worthy causes out there, and I’m touched by every individual that prioritizes mine.

Can you imagine the good karma flowing around if we all thanked each other for all the effort we put in – to each other, to our organizations, to the world?

I came to work this morning kind of grumpy that the holidays were over, that the weather was so bitterly cold and windy, and that I still have to worry about cash flow.

It feels like we’re in the middle – of the recession, of its effect on nonprofits, of the strain of making ends meet (or not…). Like the light is there, it’s clearly going to end, but that this hoped-for end is just as clearly not very near.

After the mail came, though, and I went into multi-modal thank you mode, I felt like I was living in a different universe. One filled with people who care about each other, who “spot” each other on the balance beam…and who are committed to living as part of the world’s social safety net. A nicer, more bountiful place to live.

The practice – the grace – of being grateful. Try it out.