Easy To Slip By…

My emails come in thick and furious, every day except Friday.

I try to reply in a timely fashion, but…benefit coming up, website redesign, kids gone beserk…you name it, it’s coming at us from all directions.

Which makes it even more important to stop, once every week or two, and go through to catch all you’ve missed.

Especially the thank yous.
It’s so easy to focus on the balls that will get dropped, essential projects that are stuck, meetings needing to get scheduled, all that muck.
But what about the simple courtesies that make life pleasant – and work life even more so?

The secret is…it’s also easy to catch up.
To send a “So sorry this is belated, but I’ve been thinking about how great it was when you…” email that is delightedly received, no matter what the timing.
To send a “Yes I’d love to get together when you’re in town, I was just wondering how you were…” message that reminds someone they haven’t fallen off your radar screen.

To slip in, as it were, a touch…of that human connection that makes our days just a little bit more enjoyable to get through.

I tend to do these sweeps over my email stream early in the morning, so that people get these messages before they’re too tired to see them amidst the barrage of all their email accumulation.


Well, I have to come clean.


I don’t do this sweep at that time of day for a strategic reason relating to the emails’ reception – I do it because that’s when I have the time to focus on this level of detail.


But it helps to start my day off sweet – as well as, hopefully, the day of the recipients.

Raising the Stakes

We just taught a full day seminar yesterday– on upgrading.

Deepening the relationship, we called it.

The message? It’s not about the money – it’s about the motivation.

What is the donor getting out of making the gift, and how can we strengthen that? How can we amplify the donor’s return on investment? How can we draw a donor closer to our impact, so that he or she sees firsthand how their gift is about making the future possible for these kids right before us, or these immigrants laboring to get ahead?

We spent a lot of time at the seminar today talking about transition moments.

From the first gift to the second. (The first gift is made for any number of reasons – it’s the second gift that signals an actual interest in your organization.)

The upgrade conversation, when we start to stand out from the pack.

The capital or “special” gift (I know, all gifts are special…) when we ask the donor to be thoughtful about their impact instead of simply giving from habit.

The take-a-way? There’s gold in these hills all around us. And sure we need to be mindful of adding new donors, but we get so fixated on “getting names” from our board members that we stop focusing so fiercely on mining the relationships that are already started.

It’s a partnership – we say that a lot. But for that to truly be the case, we need to consider our donors as our partners, as equals with interests, wishes, needs… and make choices with our time that support this partnership.

We need to upgrade our input, to upgrade their output.

The power of numbers

I was reminded again this week of the power of numbers to speak…loud and clear.

I’m talking about the gift range chart – that “it-doesn’t-add-up-if-it-doesn’t-add-up” tool that makes the equation between prospects and total raised, pretty darned clear.

In a gift range chart, you list how many gifts at $10,000 you expect, and put names next to them. Then you look at how many gifts at $5,000 you expect, and put names next to them. And so on and so on, down to the small gifts, where the actual names aren’t listed but the vehicles (such as the annual appeal) are, and the expected totals make rational sense with what you really expect to raise.

What we’ve seen happen again and again, is that once you put names next to the numbers…there’s a real sobering moment. In other words, the group of co-conspirators has put together a list that doesn’t, once it’s broken down, add up to the goal.

But the chart, and the numbers, tell that tale. You, as executive director, development director, board fundraising chair, whatever, don’t have to be the naysayer, cause the numbers do it for you.

With the right board members, once they see the numbers don’t add up to the total hoped for, they add some more prospects to the list – and you’re off to the races.

With board members who don’t rise to the challenge – well, at least you know you’re not going to raise it, cause you’re not going to raise it anyway…by wishful thinking. So you can adjust expenses, or do whatever you need to do – instead of getting to the end of a campaign and discovering “Oops, we’re $60,000 short of our goal!”

Numbers don’t lie. Well, sometimes they do, but a gift range chart speaks the truth.