Is the Energy Getting Better (and what does that mean, anyway)?

Last Friday, the Commerce Department announced the third quarter in a row of economic growth and increased consumer spending. However, according to a New York Times article last week, “While the expansion in output was welcome, it still has not brought the level of hiring growth needed to recover ground lost during the recession.”

What does this mean for non-profits?

Ah, isn’t that the $64,000 question…

To try and suss it out, let’s go back to one of the fundamental tenets of fundraising – the psychological underpinnings of capacity.

Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs is directly applicable here. Maslow believed that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that needs lower on the pyramid have to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed. In other words, if you’re hungry (physiological needs), or you don’t know where your kids are going to sleep (safety needs), you can’t concentrate on pursing friendship (social needs), social status (esteem needs), or strive for justice (self-actualization).

So how does that apply to fundraising?

The fact is, that a huge part of the capacity to give is psychological. It’s based on feeling that you have disposable income – extra to your life needs – and not on actual dollars in the bank.

If you feel poor, no matter how much you have parked in CDs, you’re not going to be a major giver – you’re not going to feel like you have the space in your life to direct some of your assets to a nonprofit.

(Which is one of the reasons for the truism in fundraising that you never ask someone for a major gift who’s going through a divorce; the ground – financial and otherwise – is shifting beneath them and they don’t feel able to be generous.)

Likewise, in Fall 2008 at the beginning of the recession when it looked like people’s investment portfolios were going through some sort of extra-gravitational free-fall, the fear factor – of not being able to meet the physiological and safety needs that are way down towards the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid – was keeping just about every potential donor from making a major gift commitment.

I think that fear factor is starting to lift.

Back to that NY Times article: 

“Nate Evans, who owns a pottery-making business…said sales in 2009 were the worst ever but that they were just starting to see things pick up. ‘I felt like the energy of the crowd was better,’ Mr. Evans said of their first fair this year…‘Most of the people we talked to said it was better than last year. Hey, it’s not great, but it’s better than last year.’”

I guess that’s the watch-phrase of the day…

“Hey, it’s not great, but it’s better than last year.”