6.3 Discovery interviews - to find new partners and donors

What if you’re stumped? You want new supporters and new donors and you have some names of people you could pursue, but you don’t want to do a superficial, hit-and-run ask that can get brushed off all too easily.

What do you do? How do you connect with a stranger in the way that will work for you?

You could try a…

Discovery Interview.

Which gives you a chance to have an in-depth conversation…

So you can discover if there’s a genuine match.

Does this person have…

A need to contribute what you would like to receive.

That’s the purpose of the interview. What’s the method?

Curiosity.

You use your natural curiosity about people to ask the kinds of questions that will help you get to know your interviewee and what matters to them.

On the surface this kind of interview seems like a very simple strategy. But this is relationship work, so it’s important to go into it bringing your whole self, all of your talents and strengths and experience and moxie.

This is not a tricky technique…

It’s an authentic exploration.

You get to bring your heart. And it matters that you bring your heart.

Why do I call this an interview rather than a conversation?

Because your time is precious. You’re on a mission. This is not a casual conversation. There’s point to it. You’re discovering if there’s a match or not.

A Discovery Interview is…

A focused, intentional kind of networking.

You’re not just doing it to “have more contacts.” You’re…

Doing the work of organizing.

This kind of interview can be a lot of fun, but it’s also serious business.

I learned the basics of this strategy from Jim Camp, a top-level expert and author on negotiation. And the reason I was interested is that I was struggling with fundraising and this special kind of interview was a way to get in the door and focus the conversation.

So on this page I’m going to talk about the Discovery Interview with regard to fundraising and marketing. But on the next two pages I’ll show you how to use it for other purposes.

Let me tell you the story of the first interview I did.

April and Reggie were two architects who ran their own firm together. I knew them from Chamber of Commerce events I went to in my desperate search for business people who might support our child abuse prevention work.

I called up April and said…

“I want to ask you for something special. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to meet with me for an hour and let me ask you a bunch of questions about how you decide on the nonprofit donations you make. I promise you that during this hour I will not ask you for money.

“You’re an experienced donor and you care about this community. I believe you could help us find better ways to talk about CAP and the work we do. I know we can improve. Actually a lot.

“And I’d appreciate it so much if you could help us figure out what we need to do differently.

“But if you don’t have time or this doesn’t sound like fun, please feel free to tell me no.”

Without hesitation she said yes, so we set a time to meet.

I got busy drawing up charts and graphs to show off our rather amazing growth. This was back in the days BC, before computers, so I drew everything by hand and added colors with markers.

When I got to the meeting, I was jazzed. April said she was very curious about what I was going to ask her.

I gave her three minutes of background on CAP, then whipped out my first chart, showing how much funding we had compared to our early days. Then I asked her for her response.

“Oh,” she said. And then she was silent for a moment looking down at the floor. Then she looked back up and said…

“That’s too big.”

I asked her what she meant and she explained that she and Reggie liked giving to start ups. They liked to be there when no one else was. She said it came from their own experience of rough times in the beginning when they were building their business.

CAP was now well past what she considered start up size. And she seemed disappointed.

I asked more questions, finished the interview, thanked her and left, feeling like it was a failure.

But during the rest of the day, insights kept coming to me…

The presentation I was so proud of killed the possibility of a contribution.

There never was any chance for a contribution because CAP was just simply not a match for April and Reggie’s need to give.

I made an assumption that a business person would love to see growth. So maybe it would be good to get rid of all my assumptions and go into an ask ready for anything.

And it would definitely be good to actually talk with the person, back and forth, like real people in a real conversation, and find out what matters to her first, before I do my dog and pony show. In fact, maybe I should just stop doing dog and pony shows.

I also realized that even though I told her I would not ask for money, I was secretly hoping that she would fall in love with CAP and write a check.

I saw that if I was going to keep doing curiosity interviews, I really had to go in with pure curiosity.

So was this interview a failure? Not at all. I learned so much from that one hour.

And there was one more big benefit. The next time I saw April and Reggie at a Chamber event, I went right over and told them how much I appreciated their support for start ups. And it was true. I’m such a fan of people who do that kind of risky giving right at the beginning when it can make a life or death difference for a new nonprofit.

From then on, instead of chatting up April and Reggie in a semi-mercenary way, angling for money, I could relax with them and enjoy their company and feel good about knowing such great people.

Here’s the good news…

You can’t fail at a Discovery Interview.

That’s because…

The only point of it is to discover what you discover.

Now let’s take a look at a story with a very different outcome.

Jess, a friend of a friend, is the ED of an alternative school for at-risk teens in southern California. I had been to one of their fundraising events when I was down there and got to see her in action, along with Colleen, the Chair of her Board.

Their school was in a building they expected would soon be condemned. So they decided to see if they could raise enough money to buy the land and build a new school on the property, which the owner was putting up for sale.

The first person Jess and Colleen called to solicit was Luke, a very successful real estate agent who had given a lot to the community. But they were not able to get a meeting. They kept getting waffles. His secretary would say, ““This is not a good time, call again in a few weeks.”

Jess called me to ask for suggestions. I told her about negotiated asking and she said, “Oh, God, that’s so gutsy. I’m not ready to do that. I’m really not.”

So I said, try just this one sentence. Call and say…

“In this meeting, we won’t ask you for money, we just need your best thinking about building a new school.”

She tried it. The next day they had an appointment set for the next week, and Luke showed. I had seen how very compelling Jess and Colleen were when they were being themselves without any fundraising tricks. If Luke was in fact a kindred spirit as they suspected, I knew that a relationship would ignite. And it did.

Luke got so fired up about the idea, he volunteer to be their agent on the deal. Then he organized other agents to make donations. He gave the capital campaign the initial social proofing it needed to take off with a bang.

Then as money started coming in, Luke went to the owner of the property and even though there were two higher bids from developers, got the owner to commit to sell to the school and to give them time to raise the money. Luke donated his commission which was considerable.

From one sentence which produced one curiosity interview, came a cascade of donations. The school is now built and it’s the pride of the neighborhood.

In a Discovery Interview…

You get to relax.

You get to play.

You get to be nosy.

And…

You don’t have to achieve some particular result.

You don’t even have to ask for a decision.

Which means you get to take the pressure off and…

Be kind to yourself.

Now let’s say you hate fundraising, really, really hate it and so you don’t do it. You can do a Discovery Interview instead. You can ask someone to be your thought partner for an hour.

And what’s the value of this for your organization?

When you take the pressure off, when you promise your interviewee that you are not going to ask for money, she can really listen to you. You can take her deep into your work. She can discover for herself if you work matches her need to contribute. And if it does you might get a donation without having to do an ask, not even and Advocacy Ask.

You might get some very helpful ideas about how to tell the story of your work in different and better ways. I’ve never come out of a discovery interview with nothing. I’ve always learned at least one thing of value that made the expenditure of an hour very worth it.

You’re spreading the word about your work. You’re getting into new networks. And your interviewee might not want to support your work, but might say, “You need to talk to my friend Alan. I think he would be very interested in what you do.

What else might happen?

Over time, as you do 10, 20, 30 interviews or more…

You might start to feel at home talking to people about their need to contribute.

You might demystify asking.

Your fear of asking might gradually dissipate and disappear.

You might discover your own asking voice.

Or you might continue to hate fundraising so much that you never do it, not in any formal, direct way. But you can still bring value to your organization with Discovery Interviews.

Now what about the people you interview? What’s the experience like for them?

Think about this first…

How often has someone asked you about why you give and how you give?

And they were not secretly trying to get into your wallet. They were sincerely interested in you.

In all the times I’ve asked about this in my workshops, I’ve only had one person say they’d been interviewed. One other person said, “Kind of.”

I think this is an indication of the taboo about talking about money. Yet, what I have found is that if you are coming from a place of genuine interest, there are plenty of people who are glad to talk to you about why they give…

Some people are eager to have this conversation and be witnessed in this way.

I’m often struck, too, by how much thought some people put into their giving and how much pleasure it gives them to share their decision–making process.

Here’s an example…

Stella, an ED I worked with, did a curiosity interview with a couple who had been making significant gifts together for 20 years. They were shocked at each others’ answers. They had talked a lot about the what of their giving, but not about the why. They had different motivations for giving the same gifts.

At the end of two hours they were so happy with the interview, they asked Stella to come back the next day and ask more questions.

In discovery interviews, not only do we as the interviewer, discover things, but the people we’re interviewing often discover things about themselves, too.

Of course there are people who will not agree to an interview. But I’ll bet that in almost every case where someone does agree…

It’s going to be a meaningful experience for them.

To make sure it is, though, here are a few things to keep in mind…

1.  The upfront contract
Even though you will not be asking for money, and you’re not even asking for a decision about money, still it’s important to give the person explicit permission to say no to the interview.

One thing I routinely add as an extra permission is to say…

“If there’s any question I ask that you don’t want to answer, just say, ‘Pass.’ You don’t even have to explain, I’ll just immediately move on to the next question.

These interviews get personal, so giving permission to say “Pass” is a helpful thing to do, either as part of the upfront contract, or in the moment when you see someone balking at a question.

2.  Complete detachment from money.
While you might spend a whole hour talking about donations, it matters that you stay detached from getting a donation.

Why do I emphasize this? Because if the person you’re interviewing is a kindred spirit, they might decide to write you a check at the end of the interview. I’ve had that happen. It’s a possibility. But you’re better off if you don’t even think about that.

You’ve made a promise so you’re definitely not going to ask for money with your words. But your energy might ask. Especially if your organization desperate for money, a sneaky neediness might leak into your energy. So I recommend creating a ritual for yourself to let go of any desire for a check before you go out to do a curiosity interview.

And if someone does offer to write a check, I think it’s a good thing to take a moment to re-negotiate. You might simply say, “I promised that I would not ask for money during this hour, so I want to check in with you. Are you sure you want to make a donation? Is there anything else you need to hear about first?”

When you set up the interview, you can say, “During this hour, I will not ask you for money.”  You’re not saying, “I will not ever ask you for money.”

During the interview, if I see that this person is a kindred spirit, then I might want to call back in a month and do the upfront contract for a negotiated ask, or add her onto my list for direct mail, or whatever seems appropriate for the relationship the interview creates.

3.  Really ask your questions.
You’re going to use all your relationship smarts, savvy, and sensitivity of course. But this is not a casual conversation. You’re not just shooting the breeze. Your time is precious. You’re doing this interview because you want to learn and discover and make progress in your ability to ask. You want to see what kind of match there might be between you and your work and this interviewee.

If this experience is going to be meaningful for you and your interviewee both, then your questions have to be meaningful, not fluff. So once you’ve got genuine permission to ask questions, I urge you to be serious about asking.

Who do you interview?
I’d say start with supportive friends so you can build your confidence.

Then perhaps ask family members, father, mother, sisters, brothers, partners, and kids. Notice the similarities and differences between you and them. I’ve asked a number of relatives and even though I knew them well, I was surprised by some of their answers, and the interviews deepened our relationship with each other. Definitely worth doing for that reason alone.

And don’t forget yourself. Have someone interview you. The more you understand about why you give, the more you’re likely to understand the motivations of others.

Then as you get comfy, think about who intrigues you and call them. It might be someone you know, or it might be someone you’ve never met. Giving the permission to say no is a great way to take the pressure out of calling up a stranger.