Each spin of the calendar brings a humiliating reminder: that the things I should know -- and don't -- about philanthropy and its communications could fill Giants Stadium (capacity 80,242). So I listen, read, ask dumb questions (the best kind) ... and annually learn new, amazing stuff. Here are three (of my many) "Eureka!" moments from 2007.
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Eureka #1 -- The phrase "major gifts" is anti-donor.
Words are not innocent. What you call a thing shapes how you think about it. Your choice of terminology can limit your outlook.
Consider the commonly used term "major gifts." It has a technical meaning: gifts above a certain size. It has an organizational meaning: gifts that require face-to-face solicitation. It has a budgetary meaning: gifts big enough to pay back a major investment.
But what does it imply? It implies that some gifts matter, and some don't. If some gifts are major, surely then some gifts are "minor." Dismissible. Not worth the trouble.
Yet in a donor-centered world, that's not true. In fact, it's heresy.
In a donor-centered world, it's not the size of the gift that matters. What matters is the decision to join your merry little band of supporters, without regard to gift size. What ultimately matters is a donor's lifetime value (LTV), an idea championed by researchers Adrian Sargeant and Elaine Jay in their profoundly revealing book, Building Donor Loyalty.
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Eureka #2 -- Charitable bequests are the new low-hanging fruit.
In North America, anyway. The UK pulls in far more bequest giving than the US and Canada; maybe three times as much, records suggest. Here in America (where I sit), we have this HUGE opportunity at our fingertips ... if we'll just reach.
In my previous e-news I recommended a 2007 book published in Canada: Iceberg Philanthropy. Great book; misleading title: it's about new research into charitable bequests (not polar seas). The key finding: More than 90% of typical donors, making average gifts, said they'd be happy to make a gift in their wills. And yet fewer than 10% actually had.
Why so few? The idea of leaving a charitable bequest never occurs to most donors, other research found. It's up to charities to suggest the idea, via communications. One in three bequest-makers, Adrian Sargeant has reported, first encountered the notion in a charity's publication.
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Eureka #3 -- Add 20 points to your IQ. Learn to think creatively.
We all think in ruts. Faced with a problem, our brains soon deliver a solution: a predictable, comfortable, reasonable, tame, tired, and unchallenging solution. It will sort of work, of course. But will it work shockingly, explosively well? Nope. Because it's unlikely to be the best of all possible solutions; it's simply our default solution.
For many of life's little problems, of course, creative solutions aren't required and default solutions are fine. If you have a flat tire, mount the spare: problem solved. But fundraising communications do better when they are uncommon and surprising.
In their business best seller, Made To Stick, the Bros. Heath, warn against what they call "the curse of knowledge." Thinking creatively helps break that curse. Made To Stick teaches six sure ways to capture and hold people's attention. One of those six is "unexpectedness."
From a book called Cracking Creativity by Michael Michalko I learned something fascinating: many Nobel Prize winners have pretty normal IQs. What makes them into extraordinary thinkers? They're creative. They have an uncommon ability to find multiple solutions to the same problem; and that ability to "think outside their rut" leads to startling, earth-changing discoveries.
Thinking creatively is not just rewarding, it's fun. Here's an exercise to get you started in your new creative life. Instead of trying to find the BEST idea for, say, attracting new donors, what's the WORST idea you can imagine? I've used this exercise often in my own work. It always yields unsuspected insights and angles.
2010
