Of Cliffs and The Mid-Air Moment

I was quoted this week in a pretty blunt statement: “Board members are realizing they have to walk off the cliff” I tossed off, in an article in this week’s Philanthropy Section of Crain’s New York Business.

Well that’s quite a directive…

But it’s a real acknowledgement of how fundraising is, for many if not most, a stretch far outside their comfort zone. And how it’s taken the past couple of years’ dire economics to push boards into taking responsibility for their organization’s financial survival.

But there’s no turning back now.

As the article makes clear (featuring the gains realized by two Cause Effective clients, St. Nicks Alliance and Hartley House), change-around is possible. After the shock and awe wears off, the strong have come out kicking, cunningly thinking outside the box of their institution’s history – determined to serve their constituency in whatever form it takes.

Cause Effective is in a Capacity-Building Collaborative with the Lawyer’s Alliance and Nonprofit Finance Fund – funded generously by the New York Community Trust – and together with our colleagues we have been reflecting on what is happening in terms of survival strategies in the field.

Here’s what we’ve concluded.

There was a period where many “Too Big To Fail” nonprofits were tottering.

Still happening, for some, for sure.

But there’s another layer of “throw caution to the winds, go for broke and walk off the cliff” folks who choked, and choked again, and then…embraced change.

Those folks are breaking new ground.

We saw this when Hartley House embraced FaceBook-led volunteering to connect with a new generation of donors – and they responded.

Or when St. Nick’s Alliance’s board members challenged themselves to increase their personal “friendraising” as well as fundraising, and became so engaged they ended up increasing their own giving as well – tenfold.

At Cause Effective (and Lawyer’s Alliance and Nonprofit Finance Fund have noticed it too), we have countless other tales from the last several years – of board members (and staff) walking off that cliff. With determination, onto air, without a net.

But with commitment to mission.

So on the eve of the Holiday Season, here’s to them. To the nonprofit leaders, and followers, and admirers, who’re hanging on. Who are making a difference, again, and again, and again.

To Us.

Shoulder To Shoulder

A couple of times a year, I come across the notion that a board of directors is an antiquated fossilized structure designed to mimic a top-down hierarchical corporate culture. Or something like that.

Yet to my way of thinking, the opposite can also be true.

With the right kind of energy spent on their care, boards can be the means to keeping our organizations porous – responsive of and to our publics, constituents, fans/critics, stakeholders. Boards are what keep us beholden to and drawing from our communities – they take us out of our silos and put us in the mix.

Sometimes I have the image of the board and staff standing in a circle holding hands – the organization within and the world without. And the hand-holders constantly shifting perspective from facing in…to facing out…to facing in…to facing out…

So why isn’t board service more like this poetic image?

Let me start by acknowledging how stressful life is. We simply don’t have enough time, those of us who’re trying to manage jobs, families, and volunteer save-the-world interests – to do everything well.

And so we triage. But not with equanimity – with guilt.

And board service is one of the places we can shrink back, thinking “the executive director can/will handle that.” But we know, in our heart of hearts, that that isn’t right. So we snap at someone, or don’t answer emails, or fight over turf, or in some other way let our frustration leak out that we can’t step up to the plate in a way we know we ought to.

Taking the weight off Atlas’ shoulders – and carrying it together.

It’s a radical, collectivist notion, this idea that boards are what position us as shoulder-to-shoulder – and keep us honest.

Try it on for size.

A Moment of Thanks

Thank you…


    Thanks so much…


          For your continued support…


                For your help which enables us to make an impact…


                        For everything you do and continue to do for us…


                               Thanks for “paying it forward…”


                                        How can I count the ways?


A little woozy, just came off writing 100 personal notes on our annual appeal letters.

And it’s almost Thanksgiving, to boot!

But it is a moment for acknowledging what a village we are…as in, it takes a village to create social change.

Scrolling through our list, I see vendors, consultants, clients. Former staff and former board members. Personal friends and, yes, relatives. Fans and colleagues and advisors. And that’s just my list – each of our board and staff members have their own similar lists.

The request? To enable Cause Effective to be there for the nonprofits who need us. It certainly makes it easier to ask for help for others – rather than simply for ourselves.

But isn’t that what we all do – ask for help for our beneficiaries, our clients, our communities?

And so I wear out my hand muscles penning thanks – on behalf of everyone working for community-based change, to everyone who might be part of this family, this village toiling together.

Ownership begats responsibility.

Act as if.

And give thanks – for the gift, for the intention, for the communality.

The Paper Bag Appeal

It's Appeal Time!

All over town, nay all over the country, people are folding and stuffing - and exhorting their board members to write inspiring, heartfelt notes at the top.

What an engine this is... well-oiled and rolling.

And Yet.

I was at a meeting last week where a development director remarked "I could send out an appeal on a paper bag and as long as I got it out early, it would be effective."

Well, kinda sorta.

It does matter that there's white space, and a catchy opening, and that the organization's impact is personified. And that there's a note so the letter is from a person to a person.

But, yes, it could be a note from my board chair on a paper bag, and if she sent it to someone who mattered to her, the equation stops right there.

Should that discourage those wordsmiths among us from carefully crafting a compelling case? No, because that inspires the asker - those note writers - as much as it does the recipient.

But it does mean that inspiring the asker, all year long, needs to be as much of a focus as gathering the names and addresses come mid-November.

The Canary In The Coal Mine

Last week we were sitting with a group of board members, would-be board members, and nonprofit staff…whose boards don’t work.

(Could that be any nonprofit? Nah… But I digress.)

We were talking about what happens when an individual joins a board and is enthusiastic, responsive, ready to roll up their sleeves – and then finds there’s “something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Or not rotten, perhaps, just flaccid.

Sometimes that new member’s energy and vitality points up something you knew but were pushing to the back of your mind – that there’s something wrong here, and that that something has to get fixed.

But without being invited on with that specific request – to be a change agent – the new board member sits there bursting with energy…puzzled.

“Where’s everyone else at this table?” she wonders. “How come they look as pale as ghosts?”

And the moral is – it’s better to be honest. To explain to a board candidate that you are embarking on a board transformation, that they’re one of the first steps in that process (subtext: and that’s why they’re so important to the organization!); and that they have to be patient, purposeful, and determined – to create a new board climate.

Otherwise you end up with a canary in a coal mine – someone who points out how toxic the air is, and who ends up dead in their cage from breathing the atmosphere without protection.

Not to be melodramatic, or anything…

Of Gentrification and Fundraising

We were sitting with a grassroots board last week that’s doing a yeoman’s job of addressing the ever-creeping specter of gentrification in their neighborhood. Hardly a neighborhood in New York where that’s not the case…

This group had actually done an excellent job of defining its values and welcoming those newcomers who shared its ideals into the fold. In fact, several had taken seats on the board and were eager to start a fundraising committee to raise unrestricted funds from their contacts. What’s not to like about that?

And yet…

There was a neon red flag, to mix metaphors, going on here.

First off, to relegate fundraising to the “new folks on the block” was to mimic the larger society’s denigration of the neighborhood as lacking in value. By setting up two classes – the old and the new – and assuming one had the capacity to raise funds and the other was too poor and too lacking to do so…well you can see why we saw that as a set-up for trouble.

Secondly, that fed into a growing segregation on the board, also of the old and the new, where the new delivered and the old talked. Yipes!

Third, by assigning the fundraising duties to the “gentrifiers,” the board was implicitly linking fundraising with “dirty money” – again, shedding the idea that everyone is responsible for the organization’s financial survival.

And finally, and most importantly, this entire organization was founded under the predicate that diversity – economic diversity, ethnic diversity, professional and class diversity – is what makes the neighborhood a wonderful New York pot of stew. Why couldn’t it fashion a board that acted that way as well?

And the fact is, it could.

The board asked two long-time members, fearless organizers from the old days, to serve on the fundraising committee, and appointed one as a co-chair. They brought in Cause Effective to do some board training and work with the fundraising committee to draft a multi-faceted board fundraising plan – this ensured that the whole board spoke the same language around fundraising and that no one was more privileged by their prior experience with fundraising.

Finally, the board devised a set of metrics for success that included factors such as number of new donors brought into the fold, range of donor backgrounds, and variety of solicitation strategies – so the prize didn’t simply go to the one whose asks raised the most immediate cash.

We learned an important lesson with this group, about gentrification and values and fundraising. And that is, that while fundraising can be associated with gentrification and all things bad – hey it’s about the power of money to make things happen, isn’t it? – that fundraising can actually be a tool, a magnifying glass, to integrate the best of the old and new.

And that fundraising can, indeed, be about values, when practiced in a mindful way.

The Impact Gap

Starting to write our annual appeal letter again – Fall is in the air.

It’s always a time for me to wet my finger and stick it in the wind…

But it’s tricky – between when I write the draft, and when it arrives on people’s desks (yes we still do snail mail, it proves effective time and time again) – the world could have changed around.

I remember in 2000 I wrote two endings – that was the election that went on and on…(ouch).

In 2008 I held my breath and couldn’t even write until November 5th.

Occupy Wall Street is the obvious zinger this year. I could write about how so many Cause Effective clients have been working on those issues on the ground for years…and then what?

Will they still be there when the letter hits?

Will the political scene have shifted in some notable way?

Is there an impact I could point to –

Or could I spin a story about how Cause Effective has to be here to help the nonprofits on the ground slog through these issues day in and day out…year in and year out?

Too important too ignore, too volatile to pin down.

Stay tuned to see how I solve this one…..

Shifting Your Seat At The Table

I was sitting around the table with a couple of board members a few days ago. We were chatting about leadership issues from my viewpoint as an executive director – in fact, from my stance as a consultant who deals with executive directors and board members – but at a certain point I realized I’d begun weighing in from my perspective as a board member, in fact as a board chair.

The subject? The age-old “How to get board members to govern from an oversight perspective instead of getting stuck in giving their opinions on the day-to-day?”

Oh, that one.

What was interesting was not the fact that we were having that conversation – who isn’t? – but that we could each speak from our experience as board members and as staff (albeit for different nonprofits).

Each of us knowing what it was like to be a chief staff officer trying to partner with board members, to get them involved in some activities but keep them at bay in others…and knowing at the same time what it was like as a board officer to be working with an executive director whose boundaries were either too porous (asking board members to volunteer at the front desk) or a pure stone wall (distributing financials a half-hour into a board meeting, giving board members no chance for meaningful review).

It really helped to have that dual perspective – it gave me some humility, having struggled on both sides.

My conclusion? That it’s the role, even more than the particular person, that creates the tension. Sure, some people will be obstreperous no matter where they sit, but there are constraints and imperatives from each station that are germane to that outlook.

And that I’d do well to remember this whenever I start to get too pompous about what one ought to do…

In Defense of the Board Fundraising Committee

It might seem strange that I have to write something with this title, but I was at a meeting yesterday where a board member proudly explained: “We don’t have a fundraising committee – we don’t want to relegate that function to a committee. Fundraising is every board member’s job.”

Well yes – but…

It’s the old saw…If everyone takes it home, no-one takes it home. Who thinks about it in the shower?

It is certainly important for every board member to participate in fundraising. To search honestly and deeply for how, in their own lives, they can bring their nonprofit board service to the fore. To be a 360° advocate, raising friends and uncovering hidden fans at every turn.

But there’s something special about a group that is specifically committed to steering the board’s willingness into action, making sure that each piece is more than the sum of its parts. Whose job is not just to do, but to shepherd. And which has the responsibility for driving the big picture forward.

There’s a theory floating around that board fundraising committees – nay, all “standing” board committees – are dinosaurs. That instead of a board fundraising committee per se, what is needed is ad hoc activity-related task forces, like an event steering committee, annual appeal working group, capital campaign committee, etc.

We at Cause Effective have a big problem with this theory. And that is – that this reduces fundraising to isolated strategies, and directs the agency’s attention towards the what, not the who. In other words, the primary driver of board fundraising deliberations becomes What activities should we do for fundraising? instead of Who might care about us and how can we reach them successfully?

The board fundraising committee should be looking at the totality of prospects (friends, fans, volunteers, donors) within the universe in which the organization and its advocates move. That universe, and its interests, connections and possibilities, determines the activities the board should take to raise funds and friends. It’s the old cart and horse.

You may end up at the same place – a series of cultivation activities punctured by a couple of direct asks – but you’re starting from an understanding of the why and the who – which will ultimately result in deeper connections to an ever-expanding donor pool.

This…is what the board fundraising committee should have on its mind, and be mulling over in the shower. The stability, the sustainability, and the grow-ability, of the organization’s circle of supporters.

In Praise of Uninterrupted Time

I spent a half-hour on the phone with someone today.

We reorganized the entire board.

We crafted a vision, considered a few potential courses of action, decided on method and means and timing, and set up our next conversation.

All at 7:30 am.

Depending on your point of view, you may wince at that time frame, or contemplate the opportunity longingly.

But you can’t deny the power of full-throttled attention away from the clutter of everyday life.

The take-away wisdom? We got more out of that half-hour in our respective pajamas that we had for weeks trying to catch each other during the workday. And my mind, which had been racing, slowed down enough that I was actually able to enjoy the rest of my daily obligations.

Productivity comes in strange forms, doesn’t it?

The moral(s) of this tale?

That sometimes you need to embrace a strategy outside the ordinary……
      That it’s all too easy to get stuck trying to accomplish the form you think a task ought to take…
                 And, ruefully, that sometimes if you merge the personal and the professional, you’ll achieve a
                 more fluid execution…
                        And more, not less, peace of mind.

California Musing…

I’ve just come back from spending three days in California talking about how nonprofits all over the country are faring, these days.

The forum was the national Alliance for Nonprofit Management conference. Together with folks from Minnesota. Mew Mexico, Maryland, Ohio, California, New York and everywhere in between, over 100 nonprofit “capacity-builders’ made the space to think deeply about how nonprofits, and the people who run them, are coping.

I’ll warn you, this is not a column that offers solutions.

Some of the profound conversation-stoppers I heard:

As nonprofits hunker down and the more economically marginalized groups go back into their bedrooms, the nonprofit world is starting to become cleaved between two kinds of groups – small, unstaffed organizations, and larger, fully professionalized institutions. Are they really one sector?

In this time of profound change, do boards see their role as protecting the mission...or are they more vested in protecting their organization’s brand than in embracing change? Are boards ready to look at the fundamental business model of their nonprofit?

What is the net result of the deprofessionalization that goes on as a development director, or a chief financial officer, leaves – by attrition or through layoffs – and their role gets absorbed by the executive director? Leaving that piece of work to be done by someone without as much expertise and with multiple other competing priorities?

Are people tuning out from the advice deluge on coping strategies?

As hard as it was to live like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill, the burden now feels like we’re trying to carry a load of mud up the hill, which oozes out at every turn.

Sober musings, all…

Time to Contemplate

I was at a meeting today where board members were being asked to digest a long, complex planning document they’d first seen less than 12 hours ago, if at all.

It had some great ideas.

But it was just too much to absorb “live.”

Now would these board members have pored over the document ahead of time if it’d been sent a week in advance? Maybe, or maybe not.

But by bringing it to the meeting, the executive director all but guaranteed she’d have a “paper board” – a board whose function was to appreciate, not to contemplate.

I don’t think that’s what she intended to accomplish – after all, she went to the trouble of preparing a lengthy exegesis of current trends in the field and their relevance to the agency’s work. If she really wanted a noninvolved board, she could have simply prepared a board packet with financials, press releases and a program update, and called it a day.

So that got me thinking about the power of meetings to force preparation. You know you’re going to face people (especially the board), so you take the time to prepare a thoughtful framing of the issues you want far-sighted deliberation on. Well so far, so good…but the problem was, this executive director should have set a deadline not for the meeting date, but for (a minimum of) a week ahead.

Time to act thoughtfully – not a luxury in these tricky days. A lot depends on our ability to steer our agencies through tea leaves that are murky, at best.

Oxymoron: Relaxing In The Office

In the final days of summer, I’ve been trying on a new discipline – relaxing without being officially on vacation. 

Quite a concept, in the fundraising arena where stress is a constant companion.

So I started thinking about one of the 80/20 rules – the one that posits: schedule no more than 80% of your time because 20% will be added just through day-to-day interactions.

Maybe we should even make that a 65/35 rule of thumb.  But in the nonprofit world right now, where every division is understaffed and we’re all carrying a 150% workload, that’s pretty hard to do.

Sometimes the answer is compartmentalizing.  Training ourselves to see just what’s ahead and what’s doable – not the whole plethora of deadlines, opportunities, and holes in the dike that remain unaddressed.   Trying to focus on a 48-hour span, not on the panorama.  Not as breathtaking – but possibly a little bit more humane.

But that’s easier prescribed than lived.

I tend to see the whole mountain – in fact, that’s one of the key components of the job of development director (and executive director): to see how all the pieces fit together, to sequence and re-sequence the parts as easily as breathing, to always remain aware of the uphill climb and a host of various paths to getting there.

But there’s a serious downside to this wholistic mindset – we’re always aware of what’s next to be done, and that leaves us perpetually feeling as if we’ve got a week’s worth of important tasks to be completed in the next 36 hours.  No wonder the burden never goes away.

Breathing.  Vastly overrated, but there is something to taking a deep breath.  Or taking a walk, reading a poem, emptying one’s mind of the concerns at hand.  Years ago I worked a block away from a terrific gym – I used to go swimming at lunchtime.  My afternoon clients were better off from following my half-hour in the water, into which no voices could penetrate…

We need to create that psychic space, pool or no pool – our work will benefit, our ability to focus will improve, and our souls will be just a little bit lighter.

A better world starts at home…or at the office?

The Danger of Dowagers

We met with a group last week that, by rights, ought to have a robust donor base. Over 100 years old, founded by and affiliated for most of its first century with several of New York’s most august and philanthropic families.

Rescued by a bequest by one of those families last year, from near-death due to mounting debt.

There are many factors that brought this group to its knees like that, but one, frankly, was the curse of the benevolent “fixer.” I’m referring to the long-time (multi-generation, often) donor affiliation which has lost its luster – so that the family members still affiliated are giving out of duty, but are not motivated enough to be asking. The nonprofit was really important to someone a couple of generations back, but not to the folks on the board, now.

So why does this leave a group worse off than groups without this affiliation?

First, because, more often than not, the affiliation with this founding family has enabled the nonprofit to rest on that affiliation – to let its fundraising muscles go flabby. Janet will write a check, goes the history…so why do the hard work of finding and stewarding new donors, when Janet and her descendants will fill the void?

And second, because the group has people filling seats on its board who aren’t fulfilling the board’s primary role – to serve as ambassadors. Other board members get the message that what’s valued isn’t activation but check-writing; and while they may not be able to write that level of check, they’ll give up on the activation too, because it’s not the driving paradigm.

And finally, because having that level of resources on a board, puts stars in people’s eyes. The $500 donors don’t seem worth going after, because you’ve got $50,000 donors within reach.

But do you really?

You may have one at hand, who’ll eventually give you a bequest…but more than that is a mirage.

And mirages don’t cut it, these days...

Tell Me The Worst

This is a companion to last week’s piece, about the importance of trust in board-staff relations to fundraising success – and it’s about laying your cards down on the table.

Board members don’t like surprises. That’s a truism, but as a board member, staff leader and consultant to board members and staff leaders, I understand why it matters. The reasoning is akin to how, as a mother of teenagers, I find myself begging them: “Tell me the worst, whatever it is – but just don’t lie to me.”

What you know, can be dealt with.

What you don’t know, sneaks up and ambushes you.

We’re often called in, these days, on emergency fundraising campaigns. Those “If we don’t raise $100,000 by November we’re out of business” kind of appeals.

When you make that kind of last-ditch plea, people who care about your organization’s work may indeed come forward…but they’ll lose faith fast if it turns out you need that amount and then “Oh, I forgot, I also need $3,200 for the water bill” and “Our insurance is going to get cancelled if I don’t pay the overdue invoice” and “The IRS really does mean it this time, I guess.”

Tell me the worst – and let me, as a board member, be your partner in figuring it out.

Don’t cushion the bad news by parceling it out in drips and drabs.

You may think you’re protecting me by holding the worst back. But it’s going to come out anyway, and nobody…but nobody…likes Chinese water torture.

Trust…And Watch The Money Jar

Last week I came across another case of starvation-by-withholding. Organizational starvation, that is, with the board of trustees as the withholding body.

We see these occasionally, especially in groups that are going through very hard financial times. “How can I be sure this group is going to make it?” wonder board members in their heart of hearts – with the corollary question popping up: “How can I ask my friends to invest in this group when I might have to turn around and tell them it’s gone belly-up…only a few months after I assured them they were putting their money into a going concern?”

So there you have it, in a nutshell – board member hesitation leads to holding back on personal outreach…which leads to less income coming in…which leads to further robbing Peter to pay Paul (grabbing any available cash to pay essential bills, like payroll or the electric bill, even if the monies were part of a restricted donation)…which then leads to even greater board member reluctance given that now they’re wondering if the programs they’re fundraising for, will actually happen in the way they’re assuring potential donor prospects they will.

Groups can start at any point in this cycle, it’s not just triggered by a moment of board hesitation – but you can see how it becomes a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy.

And down we go, with acrimony.

Well now I guess you’re wondering how to short-circuit this spiral.

And the answer is – trust and watch the money jar – in other words, trust the intent, with very very close monitoring, side-by-side, of execution.

In practical terms, this means a small board-staff committee that looks at weekly spending-and-forecasting – what’s coming in, what’s a realistic judgment of what’s going to come in, and what’s gone out and is going to go out when. There’s been loads written in the past 3 years about managing through financial crisis, so I’m not going to go into that.

But the meta picture – the re-positioning so that the senior staff and the board feel they’re on the same side of the table – is the essential, “soft” part of the equation…without that, it just won’t work.

For fundraising to take place successfully, there must be confidence in the future. Trust in the staff, trust in the organizational competence to carry out the plan, and trust that the scenarios being developed are implementable.

Otherwise donors will vote with their feet for the nonprofit down the block, even if it’s not as astute and its strategies aren’t as impactful. And so too with board members – their silence when you ask them who they know who could donate in this time of greatest need, will be an eloquent testament to their lack of faith.

Addressing this crisis of confidence head-on, by creating a “case for the future” with financial and programmatic scenarios that are realistic and achievable, that match, and that contain the fierce vision and urgency of mission, is a key first step towards survival.

And most fundamentally, board and staff leadership together must buy into this case, must believe…

How Much Do You Tell?

We’re working with a nonprofit this summer whose fundraising has an edge of urgency – their cash reserve was small to non-existent at the start of the recession, and by now they’re running a little below empty.

As in – for the first time last month, they couldn’t make payroll.

While they were able to right themselves once a long-committed grant check was cut and deposited, we’re taking a two-pronged approach with them –

• cash flow, cash flow, cash flow and
• shaking the dollars out of the trees

It’s the leaf-dislodging part that I’m thinking about here.

In a case like this, how much do you tell long-time fans, even long-time donors, so there are “no surprises” – but also no alarm bells about the organization’s viability?

In other words, what’s the right balance between transparency and vision?

Between urgency and investment?

Between plugging an unpluggable hole, and giving a “good news” gift?

What’s the “spin”?

With each Cause Effective client we’ve worked on this problem with recently – and believe me, in the last couple of years we’ve become old hands at navigating this – we’ve taken the approach of creating a financial plan that shows how the nonprofit intends to survive…with a hole in the plan, of course, where you’re hoping the donor in front of you will fit in.

In other words, having the solution lined up so you can ask someone to become one of your key steps to solvency – instead of serving as a handhold standing in the way of your organization’s slide towards utter disaster.

You can then combine this financial plan with a compelling vision of programmatic impact, with the ultimate goal of winning the donor’s heart. But if their mind is telling them “this ship is going down…” – well, they’ll hesitate on the way to the bank.

Ya need to have a plan. A feasible plan. A plan the donor can believe in.

What’s the goal?

Paul Connolly’s recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article questioning the long-term net gain from fundraising capacity-building made me think about the difference (in the area of fundraising) between consulting and capacity-building.

It’s a distinction Cause Effective makes when we’re talking to a potential client or funder about our work – “We’re not the kind of fundraising consultants who come in and do your work, becoming staff in all but name.” Like consultants who come in to run your capital campaign, or specialized grantwriters – experts who comes in to take care of that function for you.

There’s a time and a place for that – just like there’s a time and place for hiring evaluation specialists to conduct longitudinal outcome studies. But their work doesn’t leave you stronger internally when they’re done – it just leaves you needing to hire for that function when you need it again.

The other kind of “capacity-building that isn’t” is the feasibility study/plan – when you hire someone to create a framework for you. That’s essential before you begin a new endeavor (like identifying and reaching new donors), but the roadmap alone doesn’t give you the skills or organizational habits needed to carry out the plan (let alone to continue those practices once the plan’s milestones have been reached).

Plans-gathering-dust-on-the-shelf is a long-noted consulting phenomenon, one that’s just as prevalent in fundraising as in strategic planning – and perhaps even more so in fundraising if the plan doesn’t take into account psychological roadblocks to implementation which are just as real as gaps in knowledge.

(In other words, activating a board to routinely cultivate donors at program events is just as important as having the right campaign materials.)

Paul’s finding that there’s relatively little long-term gain from funding fundraising capacity-building refers, I hope, to those options – and not to capacity-building that truly targets transforming organizational culture as well as executing actions.

Food as Glue

Well, no, I’m not actually suggesting that we eat glue – or that we serve it to our board members, no matter how many occasions arise in which we wish they’d just glue their mouths shut.

Because those times – when board members go on and on asking minutia-oriented questions in lands they have no business being (“Why are we paying 10 cents a copy when the place down the road from my office charges 7 cents a sheet?”)…or when they pipe in helpfully with the wrong piece of information to a local reporter (“We’ve had a really hard year – we almost closed our doors!”)…or when they feel compelled to clarify something to a potential donor (“No, all board members don’t give, because some of us are on other boards”) – those are fixable with enough attention on our part to educating board members as to our priorities and how the facts – and the total picture – fits in to those priorities.

But I am positing the power of breaking bread together. The social glue that binds when times get tough and the work gets really hard.

One of our client’s boards does a summer board meeting over dinner and drinks at a local restaurant. I’m sure the annual budget review goes down a little easier after a couple of bottles of wine…. No of course I’m not proposing a drunken “what the heck” attitude toward nonprofit finances – but I am suggesting that if board members are given a chance to enjoy each others’ company, that puts a little “social lubricant” in the bank for the hard issue-wrestling that surely lies ahead.

And don’t forget the power of spouse-wooing. Again, not literally, but hosting a picnic where spouses have a chance to get involved and reinforce their sense being “in the family” will surely come in handy when you’re asking your board members to give up yet another evening to make phone calls or plan the annual soiree, a few months down the road.

Push and pull. Modern life is like that – so let’s use the informality of the summer to build in the conviviality factor in our organizations.

Make Them Fundraise

“Here’s where you whip them into shape,” a voice next to me said. “Make them go out and fundraise.”

Ahh… would that I could just say the word, and the minions would follow.

Life’s not like that.

The situation was actually a board meeting where, as the board member in charge of fundraising, I was supposed to lead the charge into battle. In other words, get the board members revved up about raising $350,000 in the coming fiscal year.

The executive director, giving vent to her frustration, wanted me to berate them. Make them understand the gravity of the agency’s situation if they didn’t “do their jobs.”

I knew, as an imperfect board member, nay an imperfect human being, how I’d feel if berated. Sullen. Defensive. Kind of like a teenager who knows he could do better but just wants to get out of the room.

I didn’t want to be part of that – and I didn’t think that would work.

So I chose to go another route – with a praise-based, “catch ‘em with honey” approach.

I went around the room recognizing something that each board member had done that had contributed to our fundraising effort in the previous year. Even if it was marginally related to fundraising, but took some burden off of staff so that they could concentrate more on fundraising – I made the connection to each board member’s actions.

In other words, I made them feel like a valuable member of the fundraising team.

And then I paused.

“You all know how important this coming year is for this agency – it’s make or break time.” I said. “I know that just as you have all been part of our success in the past, that you will all double your efforts in this critical year – and I’m proud to be a member of your team.

Let’s go get ‘em.”

Success breeds success. Make it happen.

Of de Tocqueville and Exercise Philanthropy

Alexis de Tocqueville is well-known for his observations, while traveling America in the 1830s, on the countless voluntary associations – from musical societies to political parties – that Americans form to accomplish a variety of social purposes.

So, too, under this umbrella, come the myriad -thons (walk-a-thons, bowl-a-thons, dance-a-thons, dress-a-thons) of fundraising infamy.

In an op ed in last Sunday’s New York Times, Ted Gup marvels at the success, and the absurdity, of the walkers against hunger striding across his neighborhood. What better use could their volunteer hours be put to building houses or volunteering in direct service, he wonders?

But ah, this is America – where we love to band together, and to urge others to join the fray – and how we take responsibility for social change. Gup reconciles the appeal of the walks to the accomplishment of public good:

“Where abstract appeals on behalf of the faceless needy may fall on deaf ears, appeals from family and neighbors do not…It personalizes the issue, quite literally turning the abstract into the concrete, converting perspiration into philanthropy.”

Now as a fundraising professional, you might expect that I come down firmly on the pro-thon side. Or even that I shudder at the thought, knowing the work involved (I was part of the initial birthing of Transportation Alternatives’ NYC Century – a 100-mile route bike ride through NYC streets, to mention only one logistical nightmare I was unafraid to tackle in my youth.) But neither of these professional positions inform my take on this phenomenon.

I do applaud the generosity of spirit that leads people to solve problems together. Walking, bowling, dancing, dressing (yes I’ve heard of that one somewhere).

But I also understand how individual effort takes the place of collective, governmental responsibility for realigning the distribution of resources and opportunity.

We can walk all we want, but people will still go hungry, until there is a collective will to shape public policy to change that.

There, now I’ve said it.

Now I have to go back to sending emails soliciting volunteers for the local school’s “Run for Health…”

 .

Time To Retool

So Newt Gingrich goes on a cruise to get time to think.

(Or so he says.)

But those of us in the nonprofit world don’t exactly have that luxury. So how do we get thinking time – that span of uninterrupted brain space to de-pack and put things together in a new way?

Some of us do it through a day of working-from-home. Some take a weekend day. Some come in early, or come in late and leave late – after everyone’s left the office.

Do you notice a theme of solitude in here? For those of us in the field of fundraising – which is all about relationships – there appears to be a yin-and-yang of needing to be alone as a balance to the equation…

Some use summer for this purpose – as a time to clear off your desk, front-load various writing assignments, get set up to sail into a busy Fall.

Whatever tricks you use, it’s essential to take that space, or the job of fundraising becomes simply putting one foot in front of the other…instead of making new connections and finding innovative reasons why as-yet-unknown sources might gain meaning from supporting your cause.

The task of development is adding apples and oranges – putting it together. For every cause there is a reason…and downtime is the space to figure it out.

The Second Shift

I was thinking about this the other day – how technology has enabled all of us in the nonprofit sector to remain firmly glued to the second shift.

It’s the one where you leave work – but you don’t leave work.

Coming at it from a development point of view – gosh there’s always more to push up the mountain.

Coming at it from an executive director point of view – well there needs to be two or three of me, so maybe if I put in a consistent 3-4 hours a day of “stolen time,” I can keep all the balls in the air.

This is especially punishing – or fruitful – for those of us with children. Make it home for dinnertime, or bedtime, then head onto the computer for another couple of hours (or at the least, one hour) of “productivity.”

And while there’s the relief that we can walk out of the office while still fulfilling our job obligations – and concomitantly, can come in late knowing we’ve taken care of the urgent matters – there’s something unrelenting about this intertwining of connectivity and responsibility.

Is this what it takes to get our jobs done? I know it’s not limited to nonprofits, but it’s certainly endemic to them.

One strategy I heard from someone today was – “Take off weekends.”

Another – related one – was that when you have young kids, it forces a balance.

But we can’t all be in that phase of life, forever. And I don’t think a dog provides the same ”Pay attention to me – otherwise I’m going to put my hands on a hot stove” imperative to shift your focus..

Balance. The second shift both allows it – and undercuts it.

The Nay Sayer

There’s always someone with doubts. Pure human nature.


“We tried that [10 years ago] and it didn’t work for us.”


“Our donors won’t give those kind of gifts.”


“We’re not that kind of a board.”

When you’re dealing with a chronic complainer on your board, the best idea is often to pair them with someone who’s relentlessly cheerful – and unflappable.

Or…to take them aside and explain that you’re trying to give the younger generation a chance to flex its wings, and that maybe they could keep a lid on their cynicism just long enough to allow the younger folks to give it a shot.

But when the nattering nabob of negativity is in a position of authority on a board of directors, paralysis can occur.

And that’s in a best-case scenario – worst cases can include acrimony, back-biting, duplicity, or just plain rudeness and contempt.

Believe me, as a board specialist in hard knock cases, we’ve seen it all. Dysfunction can actually be benign – compared with malfunction.

So how do you manage with a nay-sayer on the board who won’t zip their lips? The short answer is: surround them with a cocoon of silence. Practice selective hearing. Focus on the light. Move on around them, despite them, and ahead of them.

But above all, do not place them in positions of leadership, in which they are entrusted with maintaining forward momentum. Because, at heart, they are interested in stopping progress, not stepping into the unknown.

And these days, we are seeing many boards stepping into unfamiliar vistas of fundraising and governance.

And we say - Go!

Where’s Waldo?...A Nominating Tale

This year I agreed to chair the nominating committee. Our charge was to get two new people – the right people – to be co-chairs.

I made a lot of phone calls. Sent a ton of emails. And met several people for coffee, for some reason all at various Pain Quotidians.

They knew I was the Nominating Chair, so the reason I was approaching them was clear from the get-go. Or, at the least, that we wanted them on the slate.

Once we’d gotten through the chit-chat stage of the meetings, I would put a list of position descriptions in front of them and I’d watch them work their way from the bottom up, trying each position on for size.

The first person I nailed told me he had an unpredictable work schedule. I countered with “Let’s not let that stop us – I’ll put in the right team behind you.” Well it turned out he actually did have some control, and in any event would know his schedule 10 days in advance. He looked at the positions, told me he’d call me in a day or two, and then texted me:

“After some thought i would like to hold the position of co-president if the slate is comprised of co positions. It seems to be do-able with my schedule if there is another person.”

Yes!

Now to find the partner. A lot more exploratory emails, demurrals, phone calls.

And then last night, I got there. The second right person looked at the position listings and stopped at treasurer: “I’ve got financial expertise,” she mused.

Then she went on to secretary: “Well I certainly have communications skills.”

And then she looked at me and said: “I am very good with people.”

I raised my eyebrows – and I waited.

“I think I’d like to be a co-chair,” she said.

I tried not to scream.

“I think that would be good,” I said calmly.

It was only after she left the restaurant that I called the departing president who had charged me with the task…and screamed into the phone “She’s going to do it!”

The moral of this story? That leadership matters. And that if you wait for the right people to volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts, their essential sanity will prevent that (or, at the least, they’re going to see if someone else would/could take on the job). But that if you go after the people you desire, with clarity about what you want and how they could get it done, you just might get what you need.

Form follows Function

A million years ago, I wrote my master’s thesis on the contra dance – an early American dance form like the Virginia Reel. I examined how the choreographic structure of the dance – long lines of participants dancing with and then past each other – actually led to the social mixing that was the dance’s earliest function…as a matrimonial matchmaker.

Basically, you had to dance with whomever came down the line – and then you moved on to the next person, again and again. It was a very democratic choreographic form, which is one reason it took root so well in Colonial America.

So why I am mentioning this? Because form follows function, too, at board meetings.

Last night I was at a board meeting that was too large to fit around one table. Terrific, you might say – that group has great attendance!

Well, yes, great attendance – but not great participation.

Board members sat at two separate tables, facing the executive director. One by one, board members would rise to deliver reports, then retreat again to their seats. Some people even had their backs to the person delivering the report, by the accident of the seating chart.

This group was doomed before it even started.

So what’s the answer, besides change the furniture?

Well, first off, change the furniture. Or change the configuration of the furniture. Or move from two hours of 1-person reports to small group breakout discussions. Or sweep the reports off the table into a consent agenda and spend the time discussing the potential long-term impact of a new program direction. Or the ins and outs of an environmental scan…

Somehow, this group needs to break free of the tyranny of the seating arrangement. To make the furniture follow the function of vigorous participatory dialogue – instead of having it predetermine a stilted, formal affair.

Time for the Trees

I was at a one-topic board meeting last night.

And, natch, the topic was fundraising.

The board deftly dispatched some legal issues, financial trend-spotting, and new program development in a half-hour – and took 5 minutes to recognize and thank the executive director for an extraordinary leadership effort in opening a new afterschool center.

Then, with 1.5 hours to go, the board settled in to the question: “What are we going to do to raise money in the next 4 months?”

And without much sidetracking – except to look back at the benefit’s results, and to look forward to potential fundraising activities for the next year – board members rolled up their sleeves.

The result? Plans for a wine-tasting with a take-home fundraising packet…a summer Hamptons house party…a general appeal to parents led by board volunteers…one-to-one calls to select major donor prospects…and the formation of an advisory council to further the organization’s fundraising reach.

Pretty fruitful for one board meeting, yes?

Now there are two elements of note in this tale. One, is the use of a dashboard for pretty substantial areas – finance, legal, new program development – which allowed the board to quickly digest the issues, see where the organization stood, and ask particular questions without having to go through the whole story.

Which gave it more time for the details.  The proverbial trees, in the forest.

Because Two, is that the dance is in the details – and in the relationship between the fundraising committee and the board as a whole.

Sure, the fundraising committee could have come up with these or similar ideas on its own, but then the board wouldn’t have owned it.

But in order not to get lost in each detail, when the discussion got too nit-picky the chair was able to relegate continuing the conversation to the committee to work out the particulars.

In other words, the board came up with an idea, took ownership over it, and then asked the committee to come up with a plan. And, board members got home in time to tuck their kids into bed.

Sounds like a win-win, yes?

Are Individuals Giving Again?

I was talking recently with a fundraiser from across the country who noted, in passing, that during the recession individual donors have held onto causes near and dear – but haven’t embraced new ones.

For us here in New York City, that was certainly true through the free-fall economy of 2008-2009.

But we’ve been finding that, starting last Spring, individuals are giving again – to causes both new and old.

Well maybe New Yorkers are more adventurous (aren’t they always?)…or maybe the economy here in New York hasn’t bottomed out as deep as the rest of the country…but Cause Effective’s clients have been gaining new donors recently in droves.

This doesn’t mean that the nonprofit economy in New York is in rosy shape – the recent State cuts and upcoming City ones are almost insurmountable for many nonprofits – but it does mean that in this neck of the woods, putting effort into reaching and attracting new individual donors is likely to pay off.

In fact, we’re working with a number of nonprofits who were reluctant to go down this road before…and didn’t have to. Now they have to, and while their boards are certainly nervous about fundraising, we’re seeing more and more board members willing to go over this cliff – because it’s clear to them that the old ways of doing business are not viable nor sustainable.

For organizations that have a lot of fans and have never asked them for support, the combination of a strong public presence and board members much more motivated, is pretty potent. Once we help them identify those folks, equip their askers with the right stuff, create structures for cultivation, etc. – they’ve got a lot of people ready to give.

Behavior Mod…For Board Fundraising Success

At Cause Effective, we’ve been thinking a lot recently about how people modify their behavior, and how to use this knowledge to move toward a climate of higher board fundraising function.

One of the things neuroscience is teaching us is about how the brain works. It turns out that to successfully change behavior it’s actually easier to form a new habit – to carve a new neurological pathway – than to break an old habit. That is, to build a new habit in place of an old one rather than to re-pattern an old neurological pathway. So, too, with any kind of behavioral change – it’s easier to create a new pattern than to alter a deeply-entrenched habitual old one.

But what does this have to do with fundraising?

A lot – in how we approach changing (or building) board behavior.

Instead of berating board members for not giving in enough names for the appeal – or any names – and getting fixated on changing that behavior – this means pretending as if your board delivers, and then asking them for something they CAN give. Like asking them to write thank you notes, two per board member – something small, something they can “bring home” for you.

Acting as if you have a board that delivers, and then asking them for an easy lift, to start to change that definition around… is a way to change the underlying assumption about success. That they, themselves, are succeeders.

Think about the level of board fear – hey, staff fear too – about “asking for money.” Think about what a difference an attitude of confidence could make.

I believe that it’s our job to find and name success – those “wins” that tell us that we, as committed individuals who care a lot – can get there.

When board members feel like they’re successful, then success breeds success, and fosters the courage to put forth more effort to achieve greater success. And boy is this true in fundraising, that mountain of calcified board resistance and fear.

In establishing a climate where board members are successful at fundraising, we’re talking about naming a change as small as a board member attending an end-of-year student graduation party and bringing one friend (in other words, bringing someone who’s a potential donor, maybe even a potential board member). It’s up to us to connect those dots – to take a single board action and make it make sense as board success in fundraising.

But even more then that, it’s also up to us to create these small successes. By asking board members to do tasks that are doable, like two thank-you calls; or bringing one couple to the annual event as their guest.

And then congratulating them on it, because nothing says accomplishment like recognition from one’s peers. Having a board member themself describe to their fellow board members what they did reaffirms their own definition of themself as someone who brings in donors. It transforms that simple act – inviting someone somewhere – into a definition of themselves as (the beginning of) a rainmaker.

And who doesn’t want a rainmaker on their board?

SO this is what we need to find – those tiny instances that auger change. Our job in partnering with, nay managing, our boards – in fundraising and in other areas as well – is to find those little moments that are the beginnings of the transformation we’re looking for.

Watch the success, name the success, encourage the success… reproduce the success.

Cookies of the Rising Sun

The bakery on my block is selling “Cookies of the Rising Sun.”  Cookies decorated in the colors of the Japanese flag, their profits dedicated to a fund for the displaced in Japan.

The exercise studio in my neighborhood is running mat classes at which they’re selling “Red Sun Mermaid” t-shirts, with proceeds going to the Japanese Relief Effort.

A group of artisanal breweries is hosting a Brewery bash to help Japanese beer and sake brewers in affected areas.

Giving begins at home.  With who you are, and what you have to offer.  And sometimes, taken from this stance, giving back spurs creativity and results in events far more personal than a straightforward dinner-dance. 

This kind of giving – localized giving, based on who we are and what we do in the world – is collective.  It takes an everyday community, of bakers and munchers…exercisers and trainers… and elevates that activity to a loftier purpose.  It takes our actions dedicated to ourselves, and redirects them to others.

Back in 2008, my kids sold lemonade, along with a number of their classmates, to benefit the Obama campaign.  That’s what kids do – set up lemonade stands.  But here the purpose wasn’t to subsidize yet another Lego set or computer game – it was a higher social good.  So, too, with the brewers, the trainers, and the bakers.

Giving begins with the heart.  What can you extend to the world, and how can you shape it to benefit others?

Remember To Breathe

“As you know things are getting more difficult and crazy here.”

That’s a quote from a friend who went over to Japan just before the tsunami to visit with her elderly parents. And now she’s stuck there.

“They need me for keep their life” she tried to explain to those of us in the States who’ve been begging her to come back to New York.

The burdens…the joys…and the ties…of family.

I wrote back to her immediately sending all my love and energy – and reminding her to take 20 minutes each day to remember that she is loved.

“It’s Good To Breathe” I intoned. In what I hope was a soothing manner.

And then I thought about that metaphor.

Isn’t that what we in the nonprofit sector are trying to do, every day?

Hold up people who need us for keep their life?

Someone asked me the other day why Cause Effective was a nonprofit. At first I was astonished, because it’s so ingrained in me that we’re in it for the social good. Then I realized he was wondering why some “fundraising consulting firms” were organized as for-profits, yet we who did similar work were not.

And it has to do with where we’re coming from. To hold up people who need us for keep their life.

Our abiding belief, at Cause Effective, is that every group that’s vital to its community has a nascent funding base. That every community-based association has its audience, its fans, its donors-in-waiting. And that it’s our fiercely-held mission to help each nonprofit find and connect with the donors right around them…in their home.

My friend in Japan is determined not to leave her parents behind, and she’s trying to convince them to come back with her to the States. But they’re stubborn, and stuck in their ways, and they don’t want to leave their home. Even if scads of radioactivity might be headed their way.

Isn’t that who we’re here for? The most vulnerable of us, the most stubborn and committed, the most loved? People who need us for keep their life?

So for all of us, a reminder: It’s Good To Breathe.

For their sake, as well as ours. For the long haul.

Sorry-Grateful

Not to quote Stephen Sondheim or anything, but these lines are resounding in my head:

You're sorry-grateful

Regretful-happy

Why look for answers

Where none occur…

March into April is always a reflective time of year for me – close enough to the end of our fiscal year that I can pretty much tell where we’re headed, yet far enough out that we can still affect the outcomes. Raise more, spend less… those are always my conundrums. How do I find more resources to support my terrific staff, yet at the same time staunch the flow of any expenses that seem optional at this point in time? This is a yearly Spring dance, made even more critical in the past few years by the relentless outside economic pressures.

You'll always be

What you always were

You're always wondering what might have been…

I’m starting to create forecasts for my FY 2012 budget, and trying to figure out how to put the pieces together. And I’m having déjà vu. Haven’t I been here before? It’s like trying to close a pair of pants that don’t quite fit – making the way I want to grow my agency (expanded program = increased expenses) fit the income I can see coming down the pike.

Everything's different

Nothing's changed

Only maybe slightly rearranged…

So why sorry-grateful?

Sorry that the dance is never-ending; that the age-old stress of making ends meet is magnified at so many levels in the not-for-profit world – in my own agency, a back-end provider of support to nonprofits; in the nonprofits themselves on the front lines; and in the individuals whose lives are touched & whose dignity is saved, through the work of those nonprofits.

Grateful that we have the work we do, that it does so much good, and that there’s an incredibly gifted and committed community of people doing it. And that we do have the resources to keep going, when so many don’t.

Rueful…yet blessed.

The Power of Food/The Power of Community

I went to a tasting today – or, rather, I went to an outpouring of love.

It was a dessert cook-off. People prepared their standout recipes, and competed for various prizes. They paid to get in – a sliding scale that started low and rose pretty high, with the only differential being someone’s capacity to write checks – and the rest of the community, the non-chefs, paid to come in as well.

What did we get?

A chance to peak inside the kitchens of our fellow community members; a chance to appreciate good cooking in the company of our peers; and a chance to laugh together as we attempted the absurd task of trying 50 or so desserts in an hour’s time.

And the ability to cheer each other on (especially the kids – there was a special Junior Chefs division with about 10 contestants).

Food = Love. An age-old theme.

But even more than that, this showed me, once again, the power of special events if they’re really well-designed for the community at hand. We all went home with a glow – and the organization raised some dollars, increased awareness, and created an even tighter bond between participants.

Now I have to come clean – my 12-year-old son and his friend won second prize for their delicious chocolate chip cookies, so the event had a very satisfying end for them. But even before that dénouement, they basked in the appreciation of the 100+ participants, supported each other’s creations, and marveled at the variety of chocolate cakes in the world…while having no idea they were involved in a nonprofit fundraising venture.

They were simply having fun.

We Have A Long Way To Go

That’s what the executive director of a group that’s been totally funded by government for the last 30 years said to me last week.

And amazingly enough, she said it cheerfully.

“We could be making so much more from our event – we make $25,000 and we don’t do a thing,” she explained. “We don’t even ask people – we have over 100 vendors and we don’t ask them for a thing.”

Once her eyes had been opened, she could see what a journey they could take – and the same can-do nature that enabled her to lead a nonprofit with over 100 social work staff kicked in to connect fundraising with her zest for the job.

It’s this can-do nature – so prevalent in the nonprofit universe – that makes change possible, and that, ultimately, leads to institutional resilience. We’re certainly not in it for the money; that same blind determination that leads some people to found nonprofits leads others to run institutions they haven’t founded, even in the face of adversity.

Somehow, we’re optimists – we believe we can make a difference, and that we will – that somehow it’s going to work out. Because it must.

Why else would we still be here, after the battering we’ve been taking for the last 24 months?

I myself am inspired by the fact that this ED saw the glass half-full – she saw where they could go, and how far they were from their destination – and instead of despair, she saw the opportunity for progress.

Now there’s a life lesson…

Is It The Money?

It’s an old truism that development is more than just fundraising.

In other words, you’re only doing part of the job if you’re laser-focused on the funds you’re going after.

Not that bringing in funds isn’t important – we won’t be here (tomorrow) if we don’t bring in funds (today).

But there’s more to life in the fundraising lane than chasing after immediate dollars.

Because there’s more to raising funds than raising cash.

Anyone who’s been in fundraising for awhile knows the importance of tending to relationships, expanding organizational visibility, and building the backbone of a cadre of askers. Among other big-picture agenda items.

But the $64,000 question is: how do you allocate your time, in an era of dwindling resources, to make sure you’re tending the roots of the garden?

And even more profound: how do you allocate the time of your advocates – your board, volunteers, committee members – to make sure the garden’s going to flourish a Spring or two away?

Relevant questions, in the (hopefully) waning days of winter 2011…

Fixing the Board

We’re getting a lot of calls these days to “fix the board.”

Mostly these calls are coming from staff, but sometimes it’s a frustrated new board leader on the phone.

Rarely is it the rank-and-file who’re the subject of the needed fix.

What’s my point?

That it’s about consensual governance.

That we’re not paid enough, any of us, to govern through hierarchy and strife – and that we need to create a climate that celebrates and encourages the best interests of the cause.

While the economy may be “rebounding” in some sectors, in many others, including our own, times are just as stressful as they’ve ever been. Board members are holding on tight, just as we are. Starting from a position that the board has been “lazy” or “uncooperative” or “unwilling” doesn’t call up the desired behavior, nor does it provide the stick that so many are hoping it will. People move towards light, because they see the reason why and they see the path how.

Someone once compared board-staff relations to a marriage, and here’s where I’m going to show my bias. The point is to get along and move closer to the goal – not to be right.

Get the garbage on the curb. Get the money in the door. Same idea…cooperating to create a path that works.

The Observer Effect and the Glass Half Full

I’ve been thinking about how people modify their behavior, and how organizations can move towards a climate of higher board fundraising function.

In the sciences, when subjects alter their behavior because a researcher is watching, that’s called an observer effect. It means that if the subject knows you are there, you never know if what you are measuring is their true reaction, because people (and other sentient beings) try to please. The very act of watching changes the action. Hence the growth of double-blind studies, and other ways to obfuscate the focus of the observation.

But enough of physics and psychology; how does this work in fundraising?

People rise to the expectations we have of them (if they can). They want to please.

In fundraising, putting the behavioral sciences to work means taking tasks out of hidden space and into public space, where others can observe…and appreciate. Out of people’s bedrooms (“Please take a bunch of invites to send out”) and into the board rooms (“Let’s make a date together to meet with Joe”).

It’s one of the differences between giving board members five phone calls to make on their own…or having them participate in peer-based phone-a-thons. And it’s at the essence of why committee meetings are so effective – they provide a space for board members report on progress, and to know that others are watching as they do so.

Would they have done the same thing if no-one could see? Maybe yes, but often not.

This is why bringing in a consultant is often so effective – or one of the reasons why. People simply behave better when they’re watched – they grow into their doppelganger, their better-self alter ego.

But now, let’s combine this with the “glass half full” effect on human motivation: that when we think the glass is half full, we feel buoyed, readier to buckle down and go the final mile. “We’re half-way there!” we think – instead of “Look how far we still have to go.” The message is: “We can do this, we’ve already done it, it might be hard but we’re capable of it and look at the rewards.”

These concepts can work together to establish a climate where board members are successful at fundraising, and share their success, which motivates them (and others) to be even more successful, and so on.

And sometimes it’s up to the staff to find and name that success; it doesn’t always come naturally when board members are in the middle of it. People tend to focus on how far they have to go…instead of celebrating their progress to date. Recognizing board members for little steps taken, in front of their peers – helps them, and their peers, up the mountain.

I think that’s our job in managing our boards – in fundraising and in other areas as well. To remind them of their successes, indeed to name that success, in order to build the confidence – and the courage – to reproduce and build on it.

Watch the success, name the success, encourage the success…