When Things Become Challenging, We All Need Some Inspiration

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first big challenge we have faced, collectively or individually. Today, it is not the only challenge that confronts each of us. When confronted with difficulties, it’s easy for us to experience frustration and stress. We can even lose our will to continue to move forward. We can doubt ourselves and lose our way. We can feel burned out and uninspired.

From time to time, we all need some inspiration.

Saint (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta understood that. On the wall of one of her homes for children in India, someone had hung a poem by Dr. Kent M. Keith. He wrote the poem in 1968 and revised it in 2001. During his long career, Keith has served as a YMCA executive, President of two private universities, and CEO of two nonprofit organizations. He understands the pressures faced by those who work in the nonprofit sector. He also understands our need for inspiration.

My wife recently shared Keith’s poem with me. I enjoyed it so much, I decided to share it with you. I hope you like it as much as I do. If so, you’ll find some information at the end of this post for how you can get a free copy of Keith’s latest book.

Here is The Paradoxical Commandments:

The 4 Pillars of the Donor Experience

Your nonprofit organization has a serious problem. While you are expending enormous energy to attract, retain, and upgrade donors, things aren’t working out as well as they could. As a sector, charities are doing a horrible job of hanging on to supporters.

Let’s be clear. The low retention rate among donors is not their fault. Instead, the fault rests with charities that do not ensure a donor experience that inspires long-term commitment.

Fortunately, there’s something you can do about this. You can enhance the experience of your donors and thereby increase your chance of retaining them and upgrading their support. A new book by Lynne Wester, The 4 Pillars of the Donor Experience, will show you the way.  Lynne is the principal and founder of Donor Relations Guru  and the DRG Group. In addition to her books and workshops, she created the Donor Relations Guru website to be used as a unique industry tool filled with resources, samples and thought leadership on donor relations and fundraising.

I first encountered Lynne several years ago at an Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference. She was leading a mini-seminar in the exhibit hall hosted by AFP. As I was walking past, her talk stopped me in my tracks. She was entertaining while talking about a subject that seldom is properly addressed at fundraising conferences. And her thoughts about donor relations resonated with me. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Lynne’s latest book, which is graphically beautiful and accessible, breaks down the philosophy of donor engagement while providing concrete strategies, tangible examples, and a whole slew of images and samples from organizations across the nation who are doing great work. The book is interspersed with offset pages that really drive home the theories outlined and provide specific examples that nonprofit professionals constantly crave and request. You’ll find key metrics, team activities, survey questions, and so much more. If you want to improve your organization’s donor retention rate, get Lynne’s book and improve the donor experience.

I thank Lynne for her willingness to share some book highlights with us:

 

When I sat down to write The 4 Pillars of the Donor Experience, I wanted it to be a continuation of our thought work in The 4 Pillars of Donor Relations. But honestly, I wanted it to be a book that was read beyond donor-relations circles and practitioners and instead shared across departments and read widely by the nonprofit community.

Why? Because we have a huge problem facing our sustainability in nonprofits and that is donor retention. With first-time donor retention rates hovering below 30 percent, and overall donor retention less than 50 percent, we are in danger of losing our donor bases. We see this in the fact that 95 percent of our gifts come from five percent of our donors and, in higher education, the alumni giving rate is falling each and every year. My belief is that most of these declines can be attributed to our behavior and our insistence on ignoring the donor experience.

The donor experience is everyone’s responsibility and it requires much more than a thank you letter and an endowment report. It is a mindset. The four pillars—knowledge, strategy, culture, and emotion—can be applied in a wide variety of areas.

Knowledge is essential because it lays the foundation for all of our actions with donors. Far too often, we make dangerous assumptions that affect the donor experience. Getting to know your donors is essential. Look beyond the basic points of information and dig into a donor’s behavior and also communication preferences. Gathering passive intelligence is inextricable from the practice of crafting the donor experience. Seeking active intelligence is essential. What information are you gathering through surveys, questions, and intelligence gathering? Intentional feedback can help you prove your case for additional human and financial resources, new programs or initiatives, and gives you new content and activity to test.

In addition, consider how you can use this information to enhance the donor experience for all donors, regardless of level. Curiosity and tenacity are encouraged in this space. Being intentional is a mindset, a new way of operating and data drives all that we do. It’s your responsibility to gather as much data as possible to help build the strategic case for your donors and their experience.

The Secret You Know but Do Not Know You Know

There’s a powerful fundraising secret you know. Unfortunately, you probably don’t know you know it. Yet, knowing it is essential to your fundraising and career success. 

While scanning year-end articles, blog posts, and webinar offerings about fundraising, you might be overwhelmed by the huge volume. You might also suspect that all you have to do to become a great fundraising professional is master the numbers and techniques involved in the development process.

Even my recent blog posts have focused on how-to information. However, your fundraising efforts and career are about more than numbers and skills. Don’t believe me? Let me ask you some questions. When you woke up this morning:

• were you excited to get to the office so you could generate that report your boss asked for?
• were you thrilled that you’d soon be listening to a webinar about donor retention?
• were you energized by thoughts of the upcoming staff meeting?

When you accepted the job offer from your current employer, I suspect you weren’t thinking of reports, webinars, and staff meetings. Instead, you were probably thinking about the organization’s mission. You likely thought about how fun it would be to join a great team to help fulfill that mission.

That feeling might now be somewhat buried. You might not think about it much. However, at a deep level, it’s that feeling that probably gets you out of bed and to the office each morning. Passion for your organization’s mission is easy to forget when facing day-to-day demands.

In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to reduce our jobs to a set of numbers. How many donors did you acquire? Renew? Upgrade? How many major donor prospects did you visit? How many of those prospects became major donors? How long does it take to send out a thank-you letter? How much money did you raise this year? You get the idea. It’s easy to get caught up in the process and begin to lose sight of what is most important.

You will never be truly effective unless you constantly remind yourself of why you really do what you do. You won’t be able to inspire prospects to give, and you’ll likely experience premature burnout.

So, if you want to more effectively inspire people to give and if you wish to have greater career satisfaction, spend more time focusing on what the money you raise will accomplish. For example:

Delivering More of My Own Bad News

If you’re a longtime reader of my blog, you know that I’ve been in an ongoing battle with cancer since 2014. If you’re a relatively new reader here, I want you to know that I have an exceedingly rare form of cancer known as Appendicial Carcinoma with Pseudomyxoma Peritonei (PMP).

So, why am I once again writing about my health?

The reason is that I’ll soon be undergoing another extensive surgery. That means that for now, and for at least the next few months, I need to focus 100 percent of my energy on preparing for surgery and focusing on my recovery. So, I’ll be taking an indefinite leave-of-absence from my blog, professional life, and most social media activity. I look forward to re-engaging as soon as I am able.

Meantime, if you want to learn more about my situation, just search “Pseudomyxoma Peritonei” on this site using the search bar at the right.

I also want to thank you for being a loyal blog reader and for being supportive of my various efforts, in various ways. I’m already looking forward to the day when we can re-engage.

Finally, I want you to know that I recognize that we all face challenges. So, I’m going to share with you just some of the quotes that have lifted my spirits during my darkest hours; I hope some of them will inspire you as well: