The #Fundraising Life is Tough, so Laugh More!

Are you able to laugh at yourself?

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not always easy to laugh at oneself. At times, it’s not even easy to laugh at the challenges we encounter in any given day. However, finding the humor with ourselves, and the situations we encounter, can be enormously beneficial.

Consider what actor Salma Hayek has said on the subject:

Life is tough; and if you have the ability to laugh at it, you have the ability to enjoy it.”

Author Kurt Vonnegut emphasized another benefit of laughter:

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”

We can all benefit by laughing more at the daily frustrations we face while trying to do our fundraising work. That’s where Phillip E. Perdue, MBA, CFRE, CDM can help. A longtime fundraising professional, Perdue has written the book May I Cultivate You? Perdue’s book takes a humorous, insightful look at the various aspects of fundraising.

When reading the book, I recognized any number of frustrating/humorous situations I’ve seen over my long career. If you want to have some chuckles and gain some insights about the world of fundraising, I encourage you to pick up a copy. If you want to spread the cheer, you may want to get some extra copies to share with your favorite fundraisers this coming holiday season.

May I Cultivate You? is available on Kindle and paperback. To give you a taste of the book, Perdue has allowed me to share “Chapter Twelve — Your Fundraising Software is the Worst.” Thanks, Phil! This bonus chapter is not available in the print version of the book. Let me know what you think of this chapter:

 

When you begin a new job, someone will give you a log-in for the fundraising software. Moments later, one of your new co-workers will come over and say how much they hate the fundraising software and moan about how confusing, user-hostile and archaic it is. Everyone within earshot will nod agreement.

___________________________  Your passwords go on post-it notes next to your computer. ___________________________

The software will seem to have caused more human misery than typhoid, small pox and opera combined. Which is strange because you thought the software at your last job was the worst. And it was. And now this new system will be the worst. Wherever you are, whatever you are using, it is the pits, the bottom of the barrel.

To be fair, the modern software industry has given fundraisers remarkable tools. But as you know, this is generally an awful thing for a lot of reasons.

Imagine using a 200-lb sledgehammer to kill ants. Or having a Swiss Army knife with 7,000 attachments the size of a pickup truck. Modern development software feels like that to the Liberal Arts majors trying to jockey it. It is too unwieldy for people who use words like “unwieldy.” Mostly, we use the software as a rolodex and a gift log.

It does not help that most of the computers running the software are nearly as old as the furniture they sit on.

And it does not help that as the systems have grown exponentially more sophisticated your organization’s training budget has not increased since 1950. Chances are no one in your shop has had any professional training or knows how to take advantage of all the wonderful features buried away in FundJuggernaut ’98 or whatever you are using. If newcomers are lucky, they will be taught to log-in and look up phone numbers.

When is Fundraising a Laughing Matter?

In the nonprofit fundraising world, we tend to take ourselves very seriously. I suspect that’s because the missions of our organizations tend to be serious and, therefore, our fund development efforts have significant, sometimes life and death consequences.

Despite the seriousness of our work, there are nevertheless times when fundraising is definitely a laughing matter. For example, I discovered recently that fundraising professionals can learn some powerful lessons from a one-minute comedy sketch.

On their Comedy Central television program, the comedy duo of Key and Peele presented a vignette that should be seen by anyone working for a nonprofit organization. It’s funny. It’s brief. It’s full of important lessons.

In the sketch, a man coming out of a building is stopped by another man asking for a donation to “save the children.” The solicitor tells the prospective donor that he can save a child for just one dollar. While handing the solicitor a five-dollar bill, the donor responds, “Who doesn’t want to help a child. I’ll tell you what, let’s save five children.”

[SPOILER ALERT: I’m about to summarize the rest of the sketch and give away the surprise. So, if you plan to watch the video, now would be a good time to do so; click here. Otherwise, continue reading for a detailed description of the scene.]

The solicitor then shouts out to his colleague who races an unmarked van over. The side door opens and five frightened children are permitted to exit. The van, full of additional children, drives away. The solicitor thanks the stunned donor and begins to walk away. As the ramifications of what he has just seen sink-in, the donor realizes he has another dollar and, therefore, he can save another child. The scene ends with him chasing down the solicitor to give him the other dollar.

This one-minute vignette contains many important lessons including the following six: