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…

The Value of Snow Days

There was a lot of groaning in my household this morning, at the decision to keep the NYC public schools open.  And while I pushed my kids through their disappointment and out the door, I realized that I, too, was a little chagrinned.  I was looking forward to having a day to catch up, reassess, and think strategically.

Maybe, I thought in the shower, this is a sign that I need to build in some reflection time.

I know one nonprofit that does Thank You Thursdays.  And another that does Friendraising Fridays.  Without carrying the alliteration too far, maybe, to be successful fundraisers, we need to build in a Strategic Snow Day – oh, about once a quarter. 

What might we do on a Strategic Snow Day?

Reconsider friendraising lists and think about who’s grown closer who could now be asked to become an asker…examine key written materials and decide which ones need freshening up…analyze appeal returns to pinpoint minor shifts which could portend potential major donor interest…et al. 

There are so many ways in which we get into the rut of “the usual,” as we try to carry out a development function in which the tasks – and the need – are overwhelming and never-ending.  Assumptions that we made a year ago – or several years ago – may no longer hold, and not just in a negative sense:  it may be that someone’s exhibiting increased interest and we’re not picking up on it because we’re not paying attention.

Strategic Snow Days.  A chance to pay attention out of the ordinary – to pick up a piece of the puzzle and turn it over to see if it might now fit in a different way.

In late 2008, at the onset of the recession, Dr. Paul Light, Professor at New York University's Robert Wagner School of Public Service, and a nationally prominent commentator on the public sector, made a dire prediction.

“More than 100,000 nonprofits will fail within the next two years,” Dr. Light pronounced.

One hundred thousand was a nice round number, and it got picked up by the media everywhere. Funders and nonprofits alike reacted in hushed and horrified tones.

Soon it didn’t just sound like a prediction – it sounded like fact.

Did this statement move the nonprofit sector towards resiliency?

To me, that’s the central question.

The number, Dr. Light now explains, was actually picked out of thin air at his frustration that nonprofits were whistling past the graveyard, in denial at how bad conditions for the sector were going to get.

And while it certainly got bad (and looking at the New York State cuts, we’re not nearly out of the woods yet), 100,000 nonprofits haven’t gone under – not by any stretch of the imagination.

Nonprofits have struggled and cut (and hemorrhaged) and affiliated…and retreated into semi-dormancy…but there hasn’t been a mass extinction.

In fact, the evidence is that the number of real nonprofits folding/merging is nowhere near Professor Light’s number.

[I say real nonprofits because the IRS’s recent requirement that all nonprofits – not just those with annual financial activity over $25,000 – file tax returns, will result in the demise of a number of dormant nonprofits…but the vast majority of those exist only on paper, not in the flesh.]

So the question, looking back at Dr. Light’s statement, is not truth – but impact.

Did Dr. Light’s prediction spur nonprofits to take the deepening crisis more seriously?

For some, yes.

Did Dr. Light’s prediction help engulf our sector in a quicksand of gloom that took nonprofit leaders some time to climb out from?

For some, sure.

And did it lead certain politicians, and funders, and even nonprofit leaders, to write off the nonprofit sector, assuming it was too fragile and too marginal to respond to the forces marshaled against it?

We’ll never know.

Dr. Light was attempting to help nonprofits adapt, and some times we need a gun to our head to change.

But is the stick (or loaded gun) the most effective way to generate a response from beleaguered nonprofits?

At Cause Effective we’ve seen both ends of the spectrum:

1. We’ve witnessed nonprofits exhibiting exhilarating resiliency in the face of extraordinary adversity;
2. And we’ve come in after nonprofits have grabbed hold of any available dollar, no matter how devastating the potential consequences (I’m thinking in particular of a nonprofit I just counseled that spent its restricted funds once its reserves were gone…)

As fundraising strategists, we’ve certainly been in the eye of the storm. And what we’ve seen is that creative responses to adversity grow more easily from a sense of possibilities, not a terror at inevitabilities.

Same goal, different means.