6.1 Hate fundraising? Try this!
If you hate fundraising you’re not alone. You know that, don’t you?
You’re in the majority.
Has anyone done a survey on how many EDs and Board members don’t like fundraising? I’d guess 93%. What would you guess?
There are those rare EDs and Board members who say, and are telling the truth when they say it…
“I love asking for money. It’s fun! I’m not shy about it at all.”
But for most of us that’s not the case. And here’s what I find impressive…
So many nonprofit leaders hate asking for money, really hate it,
And yet they do ask.
It makes me sad that…
They have to do something they hate to support something they love.
I remember when my friend Kate and I started our nonprofit, I knew nothing about asking for money. So I read books, went to trainings, and studied hard. It got so I really knew my stuff. I could have taught a workshop on fundraising and made it look good.
But still, when I was face to face with a donor…
The ask would stick in my throat.
I kept looking for the perfect script, the magic technique, the trickiest gimmick, anything that might help me.
The nonprofit Kate and I were running was CAP—Child Assault Prevention—a program teaching children how to get away from kidnappers and molesters, and what to do if they were being abused at home. We met kids who literally saved their lives because of what they learned in our program.
So our work was serious, but as many kids as we reached there were so many more who needed CAP which meant we needed more money. I kept working on my ask technique. And I kept failing.
CAP mattered to me more than anything and it was so painful not to be able to raise the kind of money I wanted to raise. Not to be a good provider.
What was it I really needed?
First, I was terrible at asking for anything. I grew up that way.
It was worse than not asking. I was bad at receiving even without asking. I made it hard for my friends to give me birthday presents.
I know that I was an extreme case, but I’m bringing this up because it seems to me that an awful lot of nonprofit leaders are way better at giving than receiving…
Which makes asking harder for us.
What did I need back when I had so much trouble asking? I didn’t need more how-tos. I was drowning in how-tos. Instead, what I needed was a different relationship with asking…
In order to do development work, I first had to do self-development work.
Then, second, I really didn’t like the standard ask I saw in the fundraising books. I didn’t like the pressure part of it. I didn’t like the marketing feel of it. I didn’t like the pushy closes or the subtext of subtle guilt-tripping.
So here I was trying to master an approach that I sincerely did not believe in. No wonder my gears were grinding.
All of which meant that I needed a different way of asking.
On this page I’m going to show you that different way, what I call the Advocacy Ask.
The good news?
This ask deepens your relationships with the people you ask.
The bad news?
This ask is not magic. There’s no guarantee about how much money you will raise if you use it.
But if you hate asking, if you do it but it’s a grind and you don’t do it well, or because you hate it you don’t do it at all and feel bad, then…
You might want to try the advocacy approach.
And see if it works for you.
On this page I explain how the Advocacy Ask works and why it works like it does. On the next page, 6.2, I give you a bunch of examples of what it sounds like in practice.
And if you really, really hate asking, and don’t do it, or have Board members who refuse to do it, you might want to check out 6.3.
The pressure ask
We live in a marketing culture which is driven by imperatives…
“You must! You should! Buy today!”
Marketers tell us what decisions to make…
They don’t ask, they demand.
Marketing-based, pressured asks are the most common kind, and they work. They raise a tremendous amount of money.
There are lots of donors who like that kind of ask. It’s what they’re used to. It’s predictable. And if that’s what they want, you get to decide to give it to them.
But there are a lot of donors who would prefer a different kind of ask.
When I first started asking for money, here’s what I was thinking, though I never put words to it…
I have to get money from you.
Children’s lives were at stake, so it made sense that I would feel a lot of pressure.
I took the pressure I was feeling and put it on my prospect, too. I was starting from a negative assumption…
I believe you don’t really want to give.
So if I’m going to get money out of you, I’m going to have to pressure you or push you or manipulate you or trick you or finesse you. You’re certainly not going to give just because you want to.
You can see how this perspective would put distance between me and my prospect instead of bringing us closer together.
Imagine I said this to you…
Hi, I’m from CAP. Our programs save kids’ lives. If you don’t give, kids will die. So how about it?
Or…
Hi, I’m from CAP. Our programs save kids’ lives. Really good people give to CAP. How about you?
Now I always had a lot more suave than to make such a bald pitch. These are both caricatures of pitches. But I remember doing asks with this kind of pressure as the subtext.
My asking had a constant undercurrent of judgement…
If you give, you’re good, if you don’t, you’re bad.
And…
If I get, I’m good, if I don’t, I’m bad.
Terrible. It’s no wonder so many people hate pressure fundraising.
Do you know the hammer method? You present reason after reason after reason. And if you see a look of doubt in your prospect’s eyes, you hit them with more reasons until you’ve hammered them into submission and they yell uncle by writing you a check.
For a nonprofit that’s dedicated to bringing more compassion into the world, this is a sad way to raise money.
Here’s what I call “The Next Week Test.” Today you ask Jill for money and she says yes. Next week you’re at an event and see her across the room.
Does she turn her back? Does she talk to everyone else but you?
Or does she come over, give you a hug, and say…
“I really enjoyed talking with you about your work. I’m so glad to be part of it now. Thank you!”
The Advocacy Ask
Who are you advocating for? First of all, your prospect.
I sometimes use the word “prospect” as shorthand for a possible or prospective donor. I’ve heard many marketers and salespeople use that term in a cold and mercenary way. But for me, it has a feeling of warmth and anticipation, the sense that here’s someone who might become very important to me and my organization.
That’s the relational way to use the word.
Second, you’re advocating for yourself because you are asking in a way that’s in alignment with your core values.
But third, and just as important as the first two, you’re advocating for your relationship with your prospect.
The pressure ask diminishes us and our relationships with our prospects.
The Advocacy Ask grow us and deepens our relationships with our prospects.
The Advocacy Ask is more challenging than the pressure ask, because you’re developing your relationship with your prospect. And I think this is a good thing that it’s more challenging. I think the pressure ask is too small for activists who are up to big things. It cramps their style.
Asking for a real decision
If you don’t have the genuine freedom to say no to a request…
It’s a demand.
If I try to take away your right to say no, if I do everything I can to make it impossible for you to say no, then I’m trying to force you to give me money.
Sometimes the demand is implied by a single word of judgment or a phrase. I was reading a book last week that advocated against pressure in an ask, but then the sample ask went like this…
“Please take a moment to decide if you’d like to make this excellent investment in the future.”
Whoops. That’s pressure. Not even subtle. If you say no to an “excellent investment,” what would that make you? A dummy? Worse? Someone who doesn’t care about the future?
Once I understood how the pressure ask was a demand, I had to stop, because I don’t want to demand money from anyone I know and care about. I don’t even want to demand it from people I don’t know.
When I hear someone say that asking for money as “a necessary evil.” I think it’s because they feel there’s something fundamentally wrong about how they are asking.
Despite how common the pressure ask is, sometimes it doesn’t work all that well. Like when you get…
A bail-out check.
This means your prospect gives you a small check to make you go away. And you’re glad to bail out, too. You take a $25 check from someone who could give you $100 or even $1,000 because you just want the ask to be over.
It seems to me that the pressure ask could also be called the sacrificial ask. Why? Back in the days when I was sacrificing myself for my work, I got trapped in thinking about fundraising as a sacrificial interaction. Like…
You don’t really want to give me money, but I’m going to pressure you until you do, and therefore your gift will be a sacrificial gift. But hey, that fits, we’ll all sacrificing here.
And think about the implications. Say you read a standard text on fundraising. In the section on “Who to ask” it tells you to go to your friends, relatives, co-workers, anyone and everyone you’re personally connected with.
What happens? You work your way through your whole social circle one by one. You pressure them. You diminish your connection with every person you care about. You make them want to pull back, maybe not see you for a while.
Which means…
You’re sacrificing your relationships for the cause.
This is why I consider the pressure ask to be part of the sacrificial operating system.
And really, how much money would you have to get from a dear friend to make it worth hurting your relationship with her?
When we do an ask what do we want?
“We want a yes!”
That’s the answer I hear pretty much every time I bring up that question in a workshop. It’s the answer I would have given, too, until I got into training with Jim Camp, a top level negotiator who works on billion-dollar deals. And now I have a different answer…
I don’t care if I get a yes or a no.
What I want is…
A real decision.
The most important question I ever have for a prospect is…
What’s true for you?
This may sound noble, but forget noble. Think instead about the freedom this gives you.
Personally…
I don’t want to be dependent on someone else’s response.
I don’t want to judge myself as a success or failure depending on whether someone says the magic word yes or not.
I can’t control someone else’s behavior. I don’t even want to. So why should I judge myself based on whether I’m able to make someone give?
Now here’s a radical question. Are there times when you might not want a yes?
What if you ask Eleanor for money and she’s terrible at saying no, almost never does it, wishes she could, but she’s not there yet? So she says yes and writes you a check, but she doesn’t feel good about it. It’s just one more instance where she’s failed to stand up for herself.
I call that an unhappy yes.
The flip side is what I call happy noes. There are times when I’m glad to get a no.
Suppose I ask Eleanor and this time she says what’s true for her and tells me no. I’d want to celebrate. Take her out to dinner. Dancing. Something.
Or what if you run a children’s program and you ask Henry for a donation, but he tells you…
“Sorry, I give 20% of my income to nonprofits, but they’re all hospice programs working with low-income seniors.”
What a great guy! What’s not to like about that no?
Or what if Stella told you…
“I lost my medical insurance and I have to have an operation, so I’m going to tell you no.”
I’m sure you can think of a dozen more examples easily.
Oh, and one more thing about no…
You get to say no to a donor.
Why would you ever want to do that? I put that question to a workshop once and got 20 answers in three minutes.
One nonprofit turned down $500,000. Half a million dollars! How hard was that? In a sense it was a snap. This was an education program working with teens. The donor wanted to demand a birth certificate from every kid they served. He didn’t want any money going to undocumented teens.
That was a violation of the nonprofit’s mission, so they said no. What did it give them to stand by their mission? It gave them shine. Their regular donors were so proud to be part of a nonprofit that means what it says.
Here’s another situation. What if a prospective donor calls and says…
“I will create for you a $50,000 website and not only that, I’ll handle everything. I’ll design it, write all the copy, update it, and manage it. You won’t have to do a thing, just turn it over to me, and that’s the only basis on which I’ll make this donation. I really want to make a difference.”
Can you turn over control of your core communications to someone just because they offer money? Or would you have to say no?
Your prospect gets to say no and so do you. Which means you’re in a genuine negotiation. It means you’re doing a negotiated ask.
Let’s look at this for a moment from the prospect’s perspective.
When someone calls me for money and they’re doing the pressure ask, I don’t like it. But I don’t have to wait it out.
The minute I know a conversation is headed into an ask, I jump in…
“Are you going to ask me for money?”
That may sound impolite, but the reaction I’ve almost always gotten is relief. This is not true for the pit-bull telemarketers of course. But I’m talking about friends, acquaintances, relatives, or even strangers who are calling as volunteers for a nonprofit.
Relief is what I hear. And that’s a sign that they’re not enjoying asking. Which is a shame.
By interrupting the pressure dance, we can now have a real conversation.
And speaking of dancing, do you know the term “back leading”? That’s when, in partner dancing, the guy is not a good leader so the woman, from the follower position, takes over and leads the steps, sometimes obviously and sometimes the guy doesn’t even know.
What I do when I’m asked for money in the pressurized way, is to back lead. I take the pressure out of the conversation both for myself and for the asker. It sounds like this…
“Are you going to ask me for money? Let me give you a little help here. I’m a very experienced donor and I have no trouble making my decisions on my own. You don’t have to push on me. So you get to relax.
“And here’s something to know, I give a few organizations bigger donations rather than giving small donations to lots of organizations. And I’m already settled in with who I give to. So it’s almost impossible to get me to give to a new organization.”
From here things can go two different ways. If I’m busy or not interested in the organization, I’ll say…
“I’m not a good prospect for you and you’ll do better taking this time to call someone who might be.”
And…
I consider this to be a kindness.
The asker doesn’t have to go through their spiel for nothing. They can in fact make better use of their time elsewhere. If I know I’m going to say no, then I don’t want them to do their presentation and feel like they blew it when they never had a chance in the first place. I want to tell them right up front that there’s no chance.
If, however, I’m interested in hearing something about the organization, I might want to talk for a bit, but still with the understanding that I’m not a good prospect for a donation.
Although sometimes they do get something from me.
Ginny, a coaching colleague, called and told me she had just joined the Board of an organization I know and I love the people there. She started asking for money, so I told her she was going to get a no from me.
Then I said…
“But hooray for you! What a great Board member you are that you’re actually doing fundraising.”
And I was sincerely interested in hearing why she got on the Board. By the time we were done, I offered to come do an evening with the Board on the psychology of asking for money.
They said yes, I showed up, and helped Board members get out of their doldrums about asking..
If I measure that donation in terms of what I would have been paid for my professional time, Ginny got way more from me than if I had written a standard membership check.
And for me, it was a gift I enjoyed giving, because it met my need to contribute in the way I wanted to contribute.
Plus, having met the Board, I now go around raving more than ever about the organization. I’m spreading the word.
Next time someone asks you for a donation, you might want to try back leading. I find it deepens my understanding of relational asking, and my appreciation for it.
So now you can see why I urge you to…
Detach from the yes and let yourself be passionate about getting a real decision.
But what does that mean, a real decision? What’s it based on?
Asking into the need to contribute
If I ask into sacrifice, if I pressure you to give, then what I’m saying is…
“I don’t believe in you.”
And…
“I don’t believe you have a need to care about others.”
What a terrible foundation for a relationship with a donor.
What’s the cure?
Ask into their need to contribute.
This is something I first learned from Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent Communication.
If we speak to the part of the person which needs to make a difference in the world, which needs to make it a more compassionate place, really needs to do that, then we have a very different ask.
We can speak to that need even if we can’t see it or hear it at first. We can take it on faith that it’s there. By speaking to it, we invite it forward. And if it never shows up in the conversation, we haven’t lost anything by assuming the best.
There are two other closely related needs which I recommend speaking to.
We have a need to be seen for who we are.
This is different than bragging or being so needy for praise. It’s a simple, lovely, core need…
Years ago I was helping a small nonprofit theater company with fundraising. The first time I saw them on stage, I was quite taken with them. Once I got to know the nine women who were the charter group and saw what good hearts they had, I was just there. I didn’t have to make a complicated decision about supporting them.
I remember the night they first put my name in their program under the thank yous. My initial reaction was, “Wow, I like that.” Immediately my inner critic jumped on me, “No. Stop it. You’re not supposed to like that. That’s ego stuff.”
But then I gave myself a moment to think it through and I realized that this wasn’t ego. At least not most of it. I imagined a friend of mine coming to a performance, seeing my name in the program, and thinking, “Oh, this is something Rich cares about.”
They would be able to see what I value and who I value. They’d see a side of me that’s different from the child-abuse-prevention guy. They’d see my love for good writing and storytelling.
What I realized that night is that…
Giving to a nonprofit I love is a way of expressing who I am.
It’s a way of being seen. And that’s a legitimate need.
I want people to be seen for who they are when they give. I like breaking the tyranny of the ego interpretation.
Sure if someone is just looking for status through their donation, we could call that ego. But heartfelt giving is different, and…
I want people to be seen for what’s in their hearts.
And being seen is one way we can lead. When we give, we’re encouraging others to do the same. I don’t want people to be modest or retiring about their gifts. I want them to be passionate and vocal and visible about why they love the nonprofits they support.
We have a need to grow.
It might seem strange at first to connect contributing with growing, but here’s what I mean.
When I gave myself to CAP, I grew. Did I ever! A lot of it wasn’t easy. But I developed talents and strengths I didn’t even know I had. I learned so many things about myself. Some of them made me happy. And then there were things I saw in myself I didn’t like, but once I could see them I could set about changing them.
In real conversations…
People make real discoveries.
I believe it’s okay, and more than okay, for an ask to have challenge in it.
I know an organization that’s at the cutting edge of their field. They get lots of criticism. Attacks even. They’ve been vilified by right-wing talk shows. When you give to them, you’re taking a serious stand. As they take on new challenges, their donors take on those challenges with them…
They’re all growing together.
In both senses of that phrase.
There are people, especially those who believe in social change, who very much want to be part of exactly this kind of journey. Let’s invite them to step into the challenge. Let’s give them a chance, as donors, to change their lives.
Let’s give them a chance to…
Give from what’s deepest in their hearts and let that change them.
Yes, you can find people caught in co-dependency who will accept the pressure ask without protest. In fact, they might want you to tell them what to do.
But if we’re doing social-change work, don’t we want donors who make their own decisions?
Don’t we want donors who are taking a stand, not donors who are caving in?
With sacrificial asking…
Our donors are our adversaries.
Because we’re forcing a donation from them.
With the Advocacy Ask…
We’re advocates for our donors.
And…
They’re advocates for us.
Upfront contract about making a real decision
The purpose of the upfront contract is to answer the question…
How are we going to have this conversation?
Are we going to have it…
With pressure or with freedom?
As adversaries or as partners?
Once a prospect says yes to the contract and steps over the threshold, she feels free. Instead of shrinking back, protecting herself from the ask, she gets to bring all of herself proactively to the conversation.
Most fundraising books I’ve read say the number one fear people have when it comes to asking for money, or anything really, is…
The fear of rejection.
But I’ve found that when I tell my prospect it’s okay to say no, and they understand that I really mean it, then…
The fear of rejection is gone in an instant.
The ask is no longer about me succeeding or failing. It’s only about my prospect figuring out what she really and truly wants to do.
The upfront contract is not a magic formula. It doesn’t save us from having to show up. It’s a way of showing up.
And through it…
We do a very big piece of relationship work in a very few sentences.
Notice that the contract itself is an ask. So when I do an ask, I’m actually doing two…
Will you be my partner in this conversation?
And if yes, then…
Does our mission match your need to contribute?
But we also have to deal with interference.
Let’s say I’ve gotten myself completely into the relational mindset, I’ve got the advocacy spirit, I feel no pressure to get a yes, I’m happily anticipating a straightforward, personal conversation. Then I walk in the door and get hit by a wall of resistance.
Getting ourselves out of the pressure mindset, that’s only step one. Step two is…
Making sure our prospect meets us there.
When someone realizes you’re going to ask them for money what’s their first reaction? Are they overjoyed? Or do they start playing defense? Do they put up their “prospect shield”?
Before we ask into the prospect’s need to contribute, we may have to clear out…
Cultural interference
Our culture has a particular attitude about asking for money. Pressure is the default. It’s what people expect. And their expectations might get triggered the minute they know an ask is coming.
Personal interference
Many people have had less than happy experiences with being asked for money. Rarely do they feel seen and heard in an ask, so it’s not a pleasant experience. And it’s easy for those memories to get triggered at the beginning of an ask.
So when we step into an ask, a lot might get stirred up. And we can’t count on our prospect to see that our ask is different if we don’t tell them it’s different. We’re going to have to un-trigger them before doing anything else.
My first focus, therefore, is to make sure my prospect is in my ballpark. I want to know that she has crossed over from the pressure ballpark to the advocacy ballpark with me. When I know that has happened, then and only then will I do the ask.
In sum…
When I ask a prospect for money,
I give her permission to say no,
so she can think about her need to contribute,
then make a real decision,
and tell me what’s true for her.
Now I’ve given you enough about the background of the Advocacy Ask. Time to see it in action which is what’s up next.
