If

If you did not know me and I approached you on behalf of a good cause, would you write me a large check, say the equivalent of one month’s rent or mortgage right then and there? If you did, you would be most unusual. Chances are you would not give more unless or until you got to know me and, through me, the cause I represented.

If I asked you to give me a list of your loved ones and closest associates so I could solicit them, would you immediately comply? Chances are you would not no matter how much you admired the cause. You wouldn’t like it if your friends did that to you so you apply the Golden Rule.

If I asked you if I could use your good name to solicit others, would you agree? Chances are you would not despite your belief in the cause. Since you did not know me, you would have no idea how I might use your good name.

If, on the other hand, I approached you on behalf of good cause and asked if you might lend your talents to it, might you not be inclined to ask exactly what I had in mind?

If I were able to show how you could make a difference to that cause and, in so doing, a concrete difference in the lives of others, might you not be willing to learn more?

If I involved you in that cause and you were able to see the difference you could make, might you not naturally share your joy with your loved ones and closest associates? Would you not readily lend your name to that cause without qualm especially if the person who brought you to it proved to be so emblematic of it?

If, through your involvement, you could see where your money would make a difference, might you not be more than willing to write a check that was the equivalent of one month’s rent or mortgage? And the person who brought you into the cause and showed you the difference you could make before asking for your support, would you describe him/her to others as a “fundraiser” or as an agent of a most worthwhile and rewarding cause?

And, finally, if you were asked to help raise money for the cause that had become so important to you, would you just go ask others to write a big check?

Just asking.

Fund Raising Carts and Relationship Horses

The vast majority of philanthropy-seeking organizations profess a desire to “build a relationship” with those that might support them. All too often, however, the only part of the institution professing it is the fund raising arm. That places a powerful condition on the proposed relationship. The real message is, “We want to have a relationship with you if and as long as you give.” Or, to put it even more baldly, “We want to have a relationship with you as long as you do what we want.” Change those “we’s” to “I’s” and imagine the same thing being said on a first or second date with someone with whom you aspired to have a second or third date. If you were on the receiving end, I submit it would not warm the cockles of your heart or cause you to want the courtship to continue. How many of us would enter into, or stay long in, such a one-sided, conditional relationship?

It is one of the greatest and most prevalent weaknesses of many philanthropy-seeking organizations. They profess the right things but behave like a bad date. They advance their conditional agenda before a relationship has had a chance to form. Ironically enough, all the evidence shows organizations will raise far more money and over a longer period of time if they lead with the relationship horse but many continue to put the fund raising cart before it. It makes for a useful mental image – a lot of nags nudging errant but ornate carts from behind while being routinely out-paced by a few horse-driven carts, with the caption over the former saying, “Do they have better carts than us?” rather than musing “Maybe this would work better if we pulled these wheeled things behind us.”

What do you think? Am I being unfair? Well, let’s look at higher education. The colleges and universities that have done the best job of building relationships with their students and sustaining them with their alumni enjoy the highest rates of annual alumni giving year after year, decade after decade. There is so much to be learned from them about creating and perpetuating communities of shared purpose and shared rewards. Yet, as alumni participation across all institutions of higher learning has declined for seventeen straight years, notwithstanding some creative accounting done by some to improve their rankings by U.S. News & World Report, most of the institutions going in the wrong direction have not studied the exemplary learning communities or surveyed their own students and alumni to gain an honest assessment of the state of those relationships. I cannot feign insight into every institution or pretend that I have studied them all but I have interacted with hundreds in conferencing , training, consulting and researching capacities; there the trend is quite pronounced: The fancy carts continue to draw far greater attention than the magnificent creatures pulling them.

Yes, I know institutions have to be practical. Those that lead them have to be wary of investing in abstract ideals at the expense of practical return. They can’t go around building relationships with anyone and everyone and hope it will bring in more support. But if they do well by the constituents currently within their fold, if they listen to them and attempt to respectful and responsive in building communities of shared purpose, and if they selectively and substantively sustain engagement with those who believe they have an obligation to society, they will realize the greatest returns. Doesn’t it make sense that the better we care for our horses, the faster and farther our carts will go, week and after week, year after year, decade after decade.

Where Philanthropy Begins and Ends

“Charity begins at home” is often interpreted, somewhat literally, to mean that the first order of altruism is to take care of those closest to us. If we wanted to reveal more of its meaning by re-stating it as a sterner injunction, it might be “Don’t do for others what you have not done for your own.” In that light, we can see that charity that did not begin at home would be hypocritical – and hypocrisy not only connotes a breach between word and deed, or belief and behavior, but the doing of things for self-serving appearance rather than selfless service.

While I agree with these primary interpretations of that famous proverb, I would hope our reflections wouldn’t stop there. There are layers of rich meaning within it that are worthy of exploration and mining. For example, it can also mean that the example and inspiration of charity begins at home, that a charitable home is the fount of a virtuous cycle, that the progeny of such loving homes carry the example forward and express it throughout their lives. It also means that the intention of charity should begin at home, that if we do not believe it is more blessed to give than to receive, and live out that belief, we are not worthy recipients of the generosity of others. If we ask for charity or philanthropy, we must provide something of commensurate societal value in return. The more we ask, the more we must return. It means that we cannot take more than we give or ask of others more than we have given or are prepared to give. Therein lies an essential ethical compact, the basis of every sound relationship and the foundation of any well-functioning community, society or civilization. It is a compact that was deeply comprehended by the greatest of our founders and the most impressive perpetuators of the American ideal. It is at heart of the American philanthropy, a revolution that has brought about the greatest voluntary transfer of wealth in human history.

Philanthropy is charity’s far-seeing cousin. It, too, begins at home. Philanthropy-seeking organizations, as the very first order of business, must establish creeds and back them up with deeds that demonstrate a love of, and service to humanity, in part or whole. They cannot, by virtue of the creed alone, feel entitled to philanthropy of others. They cannot expect to receive what they have not given or are prepared to give.

So this is my concern: In too many instances, fund raising has become detached from institutional intent and institutional commitment. Too many institutions have fallen into the habit of asking more without defining who will be better served – or how and when – if more is given. They have rested their claims on noble-sounding causes or high-toned but self-important purposes like “excellence” without holding themselves to explicit performance standards or precise “services to be rendered” in return for the support they so fervently seek. “Excellence” is defined as the act, condition or quality of being “eminently good.” For philanthropy-seeking organizations, the question is not what they aspire to be good at but in service to whom.

“Fund raising” and “philanthropy” are not synonyms, though they are often used as such. Even though fund raising owes its existence to, and is animated and actuated by philanthropy, we can see the self-serving cooption of the former in the name of the latter. Short-sighted fund raising seeks to have institutional purposes served while institutions (or organizations or causes) practicing true philanthropy work to define shared purpose with those who have and might support it so that “we the people” can work toward a more perfect union and strive, in ever more tangible ways, to make real our pledge of “liberty and justice for all.”

I believe those that practice true philanthropy, the kind that begins at home, will attract the best leaders, the most dedicated workers, the most conscientious and accomplished fund raisers and, unsurprisingly enough, the most astonishingly generous donors. Those that do not, that seek to raise fund for their own purposes and aggrandizement will deprive philanthropy of its deeper meaning and higher purpose. The former is not more idealistic than the latter; it is far more practical, attainable and sustainable proposition.

Predicting Campaign Success

A number of very useful analytical tools are available to organizations to help them determine if they are ready to launch and sustain a campaign and, if so, to set an ambitious but attainable goal.

One of the most useful is a capacity analysis in which a prospect pool is carefully evaluated to determine the number of viable prospects, the capacity and propensity of each to give and at what level, and the number of additional prospects that will be required at each giving level to reach campaign goals of varying degrees of difficulty. By assigning probability ratios to prospects on the basis of philanthropic propensity, a consultant can project campaign totals that an organization has a low, medium and high chance of reaching. Client organizations, with the benefit of sound analytical foundations, can then decide on the degree of risk they are willing to assume.

Another tool, often used in conjunction with a capacity analysis, is a feasibility study in which an organization’s top prospects are interviewed by a consultant. In the course of the confidential interviews, prospects are generally asked to opine candidly on the quality of the organization in question, the strength of its leadership, how convincing its case for support is, and the approximate size of the gift they envision making. A consultant would expect to find a large number of the organization’s trustees on the feasibility study list and, in the course of interviewing them, to hear that those who govern and guide that institution believe in it the most, and steady ready to provide the strongest levels of support. In most successful campaigns, board members provide 20 percent or more of the total proceeds. But we would be unwise to assume that is automatically the case, even if a majority of board members say during the feasibility study that they will be making large gifts.

I have seen too many instances where a campaign falters because board giving has fallen short of expectation, much to the consternation of the fund raising staff who then struggle to secure more support from prospects who have not been as deeply informed or actively engaged as their trustees. To avoid such a situation, I recommend conducting another simple analysis to determine an organization’s true fund raising capacity: look at how much time the full board has spent on advancement or campaign issues at each of its meetings in the past two years. If the board has given only an hour or less here and there, it’s a very bad sign.

That’s right, the allocation of board time in the past is the most concrete evidence of how much time a board will dedicate to the task in the future and highly predictive of how much board members will give over the course of a campaign. It makes sense, doesn’t it? What people have done is more is more predicative of what they will do than what they say they will do irrespective of what they have done. A true campaign is a huge undertaking, and not just for the advancement office. It is a means by which an organization reimagines its future, rededicates itself to new levels of service, and seeks to align its deepest and highest purposes with those of like-minded philanthropic intent. The years leading up to a campaign should be ones of deep reflection and intensive planning, and the board should be very much at the heart of those efforts. If the board has only involved itself in the review of the advancement operation and used its meetings to only get brief updates on fund raising results, the organization’s ensuing campaign is highly likely to fall well short of its real potential and board giving will be disappointing.

Conversely, a board that goes into annual retreat in each of the years of preceding the campaign, and that dedicates 40 percent or more of its agenda to intensive institutional planning, exploring various sources and uses of funds, including the special role of philanthropy, is highly likely to be dedicate a large portion of its time to the success of the campaign and to see it members provide strong leadership gifts. The more time one invests in an enterprise, the more determined one is to see it through.

As is the case with all prospects, the more time we spend with our board on substantive issues, and they with us, the better our chances of securing their strong support.

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I’d appreciate the opportunity to go into more depth on these at other issues with you at upcoming conferences. On June and 28, I’ll be in Charlotte, NC, leading a seminar on “Building a Fundraising Partnership Between Development and Academic Leadership.” For more information, please click on the link below:

http://www.academicimpressions.com/events/event_listing.php?i=1094&q=8302v274891yT


On July 18 and 19, I will be co-presenting with Jason McNeal in Boston on “Growing A Strong Board/Advancement Operation.” For more information on that conference, please click on the link below.

http://www.academicimpressions.com/events/event_listing.php?i=1104&q=8303v274891yT

Creating A Culture of Philanthropy

In the next few blogs I will offer specific ways in which colleges and universities can create and deepen a culture of philanthropy, to include culture of “accountable gratitude” that will sustain it over many years.

The seeds of true philanthropy should be planted at freshman convocation. All too often, colleges and universities merely exhort their new charges to give by stressing the critical importance of private support to the life of the institution. But creating the rationale for fund raising is not the same as creating a culture of philanthropy. The latter could be achieved if the president were to say,

“Today, we formally induct you into this institution. In so doing, we provide you a wealth of life-changing and life-deepening opportunities. The more effort and open-mindedness you bring to the task, the more this remarkably rich culture will yield, though the full value of it all may take decades to realize. We also pass along a gift of immense, immeasurable value, one that previous generations have passed on to us. Each generation of students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and friends has enhanced its value. In the dedication to their duties and to the place itself, each has added depth and dimension.

Many have given of their time, talent and treasure. The impact of their generosity is all around you, in the quality and capabilities of the faculty, in the range and depth of curricular and extra-curricular programs, in the beauty of the campus, the elegance of the architecture, the functionality of facilities, and in a thousand other ways that are less perceptible but nonetheless most certainly redound to our repute and ennoble our ethos.

Today, the generations of (institution’s name) bequeath this gift to you, the Class of (graduation year). In philanthropic support alone, we estimate the sum total of their support to be a stunning (amount). Today, we ask only that you enjoy that gift, and make the most of it, in every way possible, while you are here. But when you leave and start to benefit from what you have been given here, we ask that you begin to think about doing for the next generation what the previous one did for you. The farther you go down that road and the more you achieve, the more we hope you will reflect on the gift that was presented to you today, and ask yourself in what state your generation will leave it. To date, each generation has left a greater gift that the one it has received. We hope and trust your generation will do the same. In presenting this great gift of generations past to you, we remind, therefore, you that the future greatness of this institution is now in your hands. “

I hope you see how the framing of an inter-generational compact is far more effective in creating the long-term conditions for philanthropy that the mere exhortation to give. In my next post, I’ll offer another example of how we can continue to inspire and foster true philanthropy.

The Kind of Campaign We Need

The kind of campaign more institutions should be running is much different from the campaigns we have been running for many years. This new campaign would:

-not be framed or announced in terms of dollar goals but mission goals;

-have evolved those goals from soul-searching, participative discussions with current and prospective donors who shared the institution’s core values;

-not speak to how the institution would benefit but how the funds secured would benefit those the institution serves;

-have created means and mechanisms, including the creative and selective use of volunteers, to ensure those services were delivered cost-efficiently;

-make clear it would persist in the pursuit of those service goals over time because this would not be about getting a certain amount of money within a certain amount of time but about fulfilling a mission no matter what;

-demonstrate where cuts had been made or how costs had been contained to ensure clarity of mission and reassure donors that their contributions would add strategic value and advance core purposes;

-be nested in a 10-year plan to demonstrate a commitment to continuity of purpose; and

-seek to achieve the highest degree of participation from its external and internal stakeholders to ensure that the mission was widely understood and deeply held.

When times were good and lots of folks had growing financial reserves, you could get away with a “comprehensive campaign,” which was all-too-often a roll-up of internally generated wish lists. Now the times call for something more purpose-driven and service-oriented. Even in difficult or uncertain times, many people will give generously if a philanthropy-seeking organization shows them precisely where and how they can make a significant and lasting difference.

Philanthropy as a Value Proposition

Philanthropy is about a value proposition. Yes, donors “give,” rather than “buy” but they still assign a relative value to the causes and institutions they support. In short, they give more to some and less to others. So how do they make those calculations and what can we learn from them?

Donors give the most to organizations whose mission best corresponds to their own value systems and/or those with whom they enjoy the closest and deepest emotional connections. The two are inter-related in that donors grow closer to causes that share and advance their values, and become more aligned with an institution’s values if it nurtures deeper emotional ties with them.

Yet many philanthropy-seeking institutions diminish their perceived philanthropic value by:

1. Speaking to the functions they perform rather than the values that underpin them. West Point, for instance, does more than prepare officers; it asks them to live by a lifelong code of “Duty, Honor, Country.” The articulation of that code taps into something far deeper, and therefore creates a more powerful connection .
2. Failing to show donors how gifts advance institutional values. Even when institutions espouse deeper values, they don’t always link them to their fund-raising initiatives. A university may say it is committed to admitting students on scholastic merit, then finding a way of meeting their financial needs, for instance, but they must show donors how each new gift is creating a new opportunity for another worthy striver. Too many prospects are subjected to too many requests to give to a worthy cause without being shown the growing human impact of their giving. If they are asked to give more merely to maintain the status quo, the philanthropic value of that organization will decline in their estimation.
3. Soliciting before eliciting the value systems of those that might support them and, therefore, failing to understand and align with them.
4. Forgetting to reinforce donors’ values systems or deepen emotional connection in their gift recognition, donor relations and stewardship functions. Value systems can sometimes be most effectively reinforced through the use of symbol and ritual in various events but very few organizations think in these terms. Imagine if “grateful patients” who had given generous gifts were invited back to the medical center where they had been treated each year for a “State of Care” address, either about all the center is doing to in general to provide more sophisticated and human care, or about a particular “center of excellence” such as cardiovascular or cancer care. Imagine further if that medical center arranged for their grateful patients to have their cars valet parked and be greeted by a member of the staff who personally ushered them to the auditorium where the address was to take place. Imagine further if at the front of the auditorium there was a receiving line of staff, nurses and docs celebrating their arrival and, symbolically, their survival. Imagine further still if they were then led to VIP seating in the front of the auditorium and recognized at the outset of the address by the most prominent personage at the center who said, “We want to start this ceremony by celebrating not what we have done or are doing but what you have achieved. We want to not only share with you what we have learned and what we hope to accomplish but to ask that you share with us so that we may learn from your inspiring example. “ And, finally, imagine if they left with some simple pin or certificate that somehow signified that they were the heroes of the hospital’s medical staff. This reversing of the spotlight, away from us and on to them, of celebrating the survivor through the imaginative use of ritual, is exactly what has allowed the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure to enjoy such significant fund-raising success.

When philanthropy-seeking organizations listen to and align with the values of those that might support them, they create communities of purpose. When they work with their potential supporters to carefully define the larger possibilities of those shared purposes, they create the foundation for productive philanthropy. When the stop expecting their supporters to laud their accomplishments and begin bestowing recognition of the achievements of those who have and might support them, they begin the process of building reciprocal relationships, of giving and receiving. As they do, their perceived philanthropic value grows and their connection to their supporters, and their supporters' affinity for them, deepens.