I’m a writer and I love it.  For me there’s absolutely no better way to spend my working hours than to work with words, arrange them just so on a page to capture and sustain a reader’s interest…motivate that reader to take action (whatever action my client wants that reader to take) …then turn that reader into a committed friend and donor for one of the many great organizations DSA partners with.

 I also hate it.

 Gene Fowler, a writer with whom I’m not at all familiar, but whom I trust just the same because he understands writes, “Writing is easy:  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”

 Writing’s also like designing. Or developing strategies. 

 If you spend any time at the computer composing words or designing packages—or if you spend hours coming up with ideas to bump results, land new donors, revitalize giving and build your organization, you experience the same thing: blood, sweat and tears.

 Well, you’re not alone. And you’re not without resources.

 First, a plug for DSA. We’re here to help out in any way we can. Our Creative Services Department is now under the new leadership of one Billy Vaudry. This man with the charming southern drawl brings with him tremendous knowledge, success and energy. We have writers and designers who dig direct response and making it work…savvy strategists…big-brained analysts… online gurus…anybody you need to get your job done.

 But if you’re on your own, I suggest you add www.sofii.org. to your list of ready resources.

 SOFII ( The Showcase of Fundraising Innovation and Inspiration) has been online since founder Ken Burnett launched it in 2007.

 Ken Burnett, now retired, is a big shot in the world of fundraising in the United Kingdom, and has raised tens of millions of dollars for nonprofits around the world. He came up with the idea for this free, online library of fundraising winners because he wants to make effective, innovative ideas available to everyone – big budget organizations as well as those working on a dime.

 He knows the importance of a good idea as well as the power of stealing (or in his words, pinching) one. One of his biggest successes as a fundraiser was for a tiny charity called Book Aid International. He writes:

 “… I’d introduced an idea called the Reverse Book Club …you pay £6.00 per month and three books get sent, in your name, to Africa, where they are needed. Now, several years later, I am held in high regard at Book Aid International because the Reverse Book Club, it turns out, has saved them.

 “But I didn’t have the original idea. I borrowed it. Well, I stole it actually, from the American Bible Society.

 “As far back as the 1970s, I just happened to know, they had a scheme called The Reverse Bible of the Month scheme. You pay $3.00, they send a bible in your name to someone in China.

 “Why should God have all the best ideas? I pinched it. And adapted it. And gave it to Book Aid International. I was just lucky that I knew someone who knew someone who knew about the Reverse Bible of the Month scheme.”

 His pinching (not plagiarism, mind you!) from ABS, and applying to another helped a fledgling charity grow and prosper. 

 Pinching pays off!

 Hence the SOFII Foundation was established and the website launched. Today, folks responsible for generating millions of dollars year after year to keep their causes going are welcome (even encouraged!) to borrow from some of the best fundraising projects ever.

 While nothing replaces the hard work of sitting down before a blank screen and placing the words or images just so, outside input provides a great amount of fodder. Besides, I believe someone in the Bible even said there’s no new thing under the sun!

 Over the years my personal library has grown to include some outstanding resources, SOFII included. I’d recommend you add it to your list of resources.  Who knows what you might pinch that will help your work pay off big for your organization!

 Among the 229 current exhibits available for perusal, pinching and adaptation here are three you no doubt heard about in Sunday school but never connected with fundraising:

Paul the Apostle’s appeal to donors to secure new, regular, and committed donors in Corinth for famine relief and ongoing good works.
Moses and the tabernacle…how he understood both his audience and the nuances of fundraising to generate enough money from a tribe of wanderers to build a tabernacle.
King David and the most successful major donor banquet of all times. How he raised $400 million in pledged gifts in one night at a major donor dinner!

One thing I appreciate about our DSA leadership is their willingness to provide information to those who need it, but lack the resources to engage our services. I think SOFII is like that as well.

 I hope this link gives you ideas and gets your creative juices flowing whenever you need them.  Pinch away!!

I love direct response.  I admit it.  I’m a response junkie that needs my regular fix of direct response marketing.  It doesn’t matter if it’s from the many catalogs in my mailbox each day to the hundreds of emails I receive touting everything from ministry needs to cheese (not to mention bow ties!). 

Every time that I go to my mail box and there’s nothing in there, I have to say I begin to experience some withdrawal symptoms.  In fact, I may be the only one who reads this blog who has a link to Ronco in his favorites list (you know, the Pocket Fisherman people).

One of the reasons that I love direct response is that you get to see the transaction.  Quickly.  It’s the scorecard of success.  Within 30 days you know how successful your direct mail campaign was . . . within 5 days you have complete results on an email blast. 

Having worked not only with not-for-profit organizations but with catalog and insurance businesses, transactional data is critical to long-term marketing success.  The data tells the whole story. 

Or does it?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what focusing on the transaction does to the customer or donor.  If the only (or even primary) thing I’m concerned about is the transaction, I turn my customers or donors into nothing more than wallets. 

They have something that I need (money) and I have something for them (either a product or service or the satisfaction of doing good). It’s just an exchange where buyer and seller swap something of value.

Ouch! No one wants to be considered a wallet!

And the terms we use in marketing reflect this – share of wallet, event triggered marketing, etc.  Even the ones that reflect on the customer, like customer relationship management, are too often focused on what happens when customers transact with an organization.  Do we really believe our customers/ donors want to be managed?

It’s not something that we do intentionally but we miss the point none the less.

If we truly want to have lifelong connections with donors and customers, we have to look beyond the transaction.  Genuine relationships can be developed when we focus on the donor or the customer first – their needs come first rather than our need to “sell” something to them.

I can’t help but think of all I’ve read about Nordstrom’s and the “Nordstrom Way” or L.L. Bean.  They got it right.  They focus on the customer.  At Nordstrom’s you don’t have to be a daily customer for the sales people to know your name and your interests – not so much to sell you something as to meet your needs.

I know of a few non-profit organizations that act that way, too.

Would you introduce one of your major donors to another organization because it fits that donor’s interests better than your own organization? Now, that’s donor focus!

What about calling your donors who might have been impacted by a natural disaster; not to ask the donors for support but to make sure that they were doing ok?  That’s taking relationship seriously.

Those are just two examples of what some of DSA’s clients are doing that put the focus back where it should be – on the donor.

Last month I wrote about the gift of listening.  It’s something that I should be practicing more myself. In our busy lives we too often try to substitute tactics for genuine relationship. But the truth is that good, lifelong relationships don’t happen magically. They happen through hard work. 

But, great relationships can be the most rewarding experience of our lives.

I just saw that 40 other billionaires have taken Warren Buffett’s and Bill Gates’ challenge – to give the bulk of their wealth to philanthropy either in their lifetime or on their deaths. 

One of those who took the challenge was Lorry I. Lokey (the founder of Business Wire).  He participated in a session moderated by the Chronicle of Philanthropy a number of months ago where not-for-profit development officers asked questions of him as a major donor.  In response to one question, here’s what he said:

“I like gift officers who approach me on a peer level and truly are friendly whether or not I say yes.  And if I become a donor, I, in effect, am adopting that organization as if I worked there or owned it or had close experience with it.  It becomes an investment I want to follow and see success. My grants are not gifts. They are INVESTMENTS!!!”

Notice his comment about whether he says yes or not.  He’s looking to build relationships with those organizations in which he’s investing. 

I recently heard of an organization that effectively told one of its major donors to stay out of the way – just give the money and they’ll do the work.  They don’t want relationship . . . they’re looking at donors as wallets.

What a difference.

Donors (and customers) want relationship with and through organizations not just to transact with them. Look at Starbucks or Apple. They don’t have customers, they have rabid fans. And, many are investing not just their money but themselves into the missions of the organizations they support. 

Would you take a challenge with me?

For the next 30 days, consciously determine to focus on building relationships with your partners.  Do the hard work of relationship building by listening more and valuing all the ways people interact with your organization, whether there’s any immediate income or not. 

As the famed advertising giant Leo Burnett always said: “when you reach for the stars you might not always get one, but you won’t end up with a handful of mud either.” Reach for the “stars” of relationship – they might not always turn into life changing relationships, but you will gather a lot more partners in the process.

Rule #3
 Neither you nor I get to make the rules
        An extremely frustrating fact is neither you nor I get to make the rules.  They just exist! Hard Knocks U is the most common school for learning them.  Indiana University is the only place I’m aware of that offers a formal accredited degree in Philanthropy. 

          “So,” you might ask, “If the rules aren’t written down, and few people can tell me what they are, how do I know they exist?”  If the words, “Trust me” don’t satisfy you, you may want to keep reading!

          As a person committed to learning the fine art of fly fishing for trout, I’m always in search of mountains with cold-flowing streams. You need mountains in order to have the melting snow that runs off into the valleys where streams are born.  Fishermen call these water-flow beginnings head-waters.  Just as one has to have mountains, because they’re necessary for trout, it’s necessary to know the rules to be an effective fundraiser.  Now, there’s always excitement in finding a new place to throw in a line.  Finding a new fundraising rule can, in many ways, produce a similar sense of discovery. 

          I wish I could create mountains!  I truly do!  Living here in Illinois, we have what I would consider a serious shortage of them.  If you were to look on-line for Trout Fishing in Illinois, as I have, you’d see that it says, “See Wisconsin!”  I’m not kidding here, it really says that!  But, I don’t get to create the mountains; that’s been left to a higher authority than me.  So, I have to go in search of them.  It’s much the same with the rules of fundraising.  Neither you nor I get to make them, they just exist. 

          This past summer I went in search of the so-called mountains of Wisconsin.  Having spent many of my growing-up years in the Pacific Northwest, I grew up with ranges of magnificent peaks all around me, and a few glistening volcanoes as well.  What I found in Wisconsin resembled hills more than mountains, but they still left me breathless… 
The Bohemian River, On My Own
         Last night I said goodbye to John Matenaer, my fishing guide.  For the last three days, we’ve been fly fishing in what’s called the Driftless Area of Southwestern Wisconsin.  It’s called this because when the massive glaciers flattened out the Great Lakes area of the Midwestern United States, it didn’t drift into this place.  As a result the high hills, low valleys and cold spring creeks have all been wonderfully preserved.

          I’m particularly excited today because I’m getting to fish totally on my own.  John’s patient teaching over the last three days has prepared me for this solo effort.  And I know where I’m going!  Our third day together, John took me to a place called The Bohemian Valley.  It’s a narrow scratch in the surface of the earth where Amish farms abound and cattle graze.  And as I’ve now learned, where cattle graze, the weeds lining the river are mostly gone.

          As a novice fly fisherman, weeds can be a daunting enemy.  Frustration and swearing abound when I’m fishing in amongst them. They reach out and grab my back cast more times than not.  The small river becomes just a narrow corridor with weedy hands reaching out to grab every movement of my fly line.  Tangles and frustration usurp the peace and serenity associated with the sport.

          So today, it’s the Bohemian for me!  The cows have eaten most of those weedy little irritants and the water is very accessible.  I’m so excited, as I pull up and park in the gravel at the side of the road, I can feel myself shaking with anticipation.  I’m in a hurry to get on the water and catch all the trout I missed yesterday.  And…I’m doing it on my own!

          After I suit up in my waders, boots and vest I string up my rod, tie on a black ant and head toward the fence.  There’s a wooden ladder built into the fence just large enough to let a person over into the cow pasture.  The bottom rung is loose, as John had commented the day before, so I step on it lightly and then onto the soft earth of the pasture.

            As soon as I’m over the fence I begin my stealth mode, since the river is just a few feet away.  It’s sunny and warm, making any movements detectable to the skittish brown trout that lay in the pools.  I’m walking hunched over, making sure my shadow doesn’t fall upon the river.  I carefully keep my rod tip from hanging over the water so I don’t unintentionally announce my arrival.

          Ahhh, John has taught me well! 

          Stopping just short of the first pool, I take a deep breath, which is increasingly difficult as I’m almost panting with the anticipation of catching my first fish of the day.  I reach down to my reel and unhook the loop of line wrapped around it.  Reaching up to the eye on the rod, I carefully remove my little speck of a black ant.  It is a dry fly, tied with a white tuft of something on the top to make it easier to see when it’s drifting downstream.

          Sidling up to the water, I pull some fly line out of my reel in preparation for my first cast.  I’m truly shaking now with excitement.  Lifting the rod tip, I begin to false cast in order to shake some line out so there will be enough to lay it softly down upon the pool.  It’s time; I cast to the spot, just short of the pool where I’ll begin the drift.  But there’s no line!  No drift!

       I feel the awful tug of the dreaded weeds behind me.

       I’m shocked!  There aren’t any weeds here.  That’s why I chose this spot.  Looking back over my shoulder, I see one lonely uneaten weed standing there defiantly.  It has grabbed my fly.  I sigh, lower my head and begin to think, “Oh no, not another day of this.”

       Turning toward the weed, I slide my hand down the line until I can follow it back, away from the river, feeling for the fly.  It’s not only snagged, but it’s tangled into a total mess.  Discouragement engulfs me.  It’ll be several minutes of sorting through entangled line before I can re-approach the water now.  Shaking my head, I’m thinking about the past three days and I hear myself saying out loud, “John would be dying with laughter if he saw this.”

       It’s a bad tangled mess. 

       I take a deep breathe and recite to myself the mantra of all fly fishermen, “Tangles are just part of the process.”  The trick now is to calm myself down; the fish will still be there waiting.  For now I just need to concentrate on the tedium of releasing my fly from the spaghetti-like mass of fishing line.

       There may be many ways to approach this, but only one real solution.  I have to get the fly back to its intended place of lying freely at the end of my 5X fishing line.  Sliding my amber prescription sunglasses down my nose, I look over the top of them to have more direct sunlight so I can see the frustrating mess.  Since I am now an expert tangler, I’m sizing up this mess to determine the extent of the problem.  It’s pretty bad.  There are knots, loops and no instructions!  So I have at it.  After about 10 minutes of working away on this Rubic’s Cube of fishing line, I begin to feel the heat of the sun on my shoulders.   This is when I begin to think seriously about cutting the line, retying the fly, resetting the strike indicator, adding a new piece of lead and starting over.  But, I’m also reminding myself that this is a part of the sport, and learning how to get out of a mess that I alone have created, is a discipline that I need to master.  So I fight back the panic of taking the easy way out, and keep feeding the fly through yet another tight loop of line.   Somewhere, about this time, I begin thinking about the clock.  I still have to drive the 5 hours home tonight, and time is being wasted on discipline.  I keep stuffing the thought down into my now frail psyche, and keep holding the tangle up so I can see it better.  Am I making it worse? Or am I making progress?  There’s a point at which all fishermen have to ask these two key questions.  I push on through this latest wave of temptation to cut the line, and feed the fly through yet one more loop.

       It’s now been 20 minutes and I’m suppressing the urge to scream.  I think to myself, “The hills are alive with the sound of screaming.” Back to the mess.  It’s actually starting to take a predictable form.  If  I feed this piece of line through that opening, it might allow me to move the fly one step closer to freedom.  It works!  I can see the end now.  A few more twists of line and I finally have it.  About this time, the thought strikes me that my feet are turning numb from standing in one place.  It’s been a full 20 minutes, and I haven’t even touched the water.

       At this point in my 3 plus years of fly fishing, I’m beginning to develop a kind of philosophy about entanglements.  Successful perseverance in untangling a fouled line is almost as exciting as catching a fine brown trout!  It’s a little crazy I know, but this is what happens to my mind when I’m out in the sun this long, and trying to make the most out of my mistakes.

       Okay, so everything is finally where it needs to be and I begin thinking about re-approaching the river.  I give the weed one final look of disdain, reach over and snap the sucker off.  There! Now, I’m ready!

       Creeping closer to the river, I begin looking for the trough or pool most likely to be holding a nice, fat, brown trout.  I reach up and adjust the strike indicator (a little half inch plastic floating ball).  I pull it down toward the fly about 6 inches, as though I know what I’m doing.  It’s time.  Cast, drift, nothing…cast, drift, nothing.  Another fishing mantra pops to the surface of my consciousness, “Three casts; three steps.”  I make one more cast and decide to move on.

       Walking up and away from the water, I walk about a half block before I spot a hole that I had fished, with John, the day before.  Weeds are low and reaching out over the river, leaving about a 2-foot opening in the center.  All of a sudden I see movement in the water!  A trout rises to the surface, eats and disappears.  He leaves his rising ring on the surface.  My heart soars!  He’s in there and he’s feeding!  It’s black ant time!

       Now I know I have to lay the line down very gently over the ring.  Again, there’s only about 2 feet of open water with weeds to each side.  I have to nail it perfectly or risk tangling again and spooking the fish.

       I take a step down from the bank and into the slow moving water.  This is a defensive tactic so my back cast won’t find yet another errant weed.  I make one false cast to let out some line, and then whip the tip of my rod forward toward a second trout rise.  The line moves silently forward, laying perfectly… into the weeds on the left.  “Crap!”  I tug the line very gently, hoping for an easy solution to my predicament.  No good.

       There’s only one way out, and I know what I have to do so I lay the rod down on the left bank.  Moving slowly, I creep, hunched over, up the slope and up onto the flat of the pasture.   I’d seen John make this move many times over the past three days, and it has saved the opportunity.  About 15 steps through the pasture, I turn toward the water and slip down onto my creaking knees.  I ease my body forward until my hands touch the ground, and I begin to crawl toward the weeds that are holding my god-forsaken black ant.  The ground is sloping down now as I crawl forward using my elbows.  I’m moving very slowly through the dirt, the footprints of cattle and their favorite contribution to society, cow patties.  Thankfully, they are old and white.  “Now, this is what I call fly fishing,” I hear myself whisper.  The bank begins to get steeper as it nears the water.  My butt is sticking up in the air and I’m moving forward ever-so-slowly.  Any movement of the weeds along the bank, and the fish will be gone.

       I’m in total focus mode now.  I don’t care how stupid I look to passing cars or Amish wagons.  I don’t care that I’m butt-end up crawling through cow crap.  All I want is to retrieve my fly without moving the weeds.  I stop.  Reaching forward as far as my arms allow, I feel for the fishing line and locate it.  Sliding my right hand up along the line, with my left hand I carefully bend some of the weeds, just a tiny bit, so I can continue running my right hand up to where the black ant is lodged.  Contact!  I wrap my fingers around the fly and snap off the weed leaf that’s holding it.  Ah!  The sweet moment of success is about to be mine!

       Now, all I have to do is to crawl backwards up the sloping bank, through the cow patties, to a point where it’s safe to rise back up to my knees and then stand.  Sounds easy enough, but crawling backwards uphill is much more challenging than downhill.  It takes concentration and a fair amount of faith that all of the cow patties are white.

       I’m now back on top, lying face down in the pasture.  I check to make sure I haven’t dropped the black ant in all the maneuvering.  It’s still there, in my right hand.  I pull my knees up under me and flounder to my feet.  Still walking hunched over, I carefully pull the fishing line along with me until it clears the weeds hanging out over the water.  Now, I’m back to the fishing rod lying on the bank.  It’s only been 15 minutes, but it feels like an hour.

       “Okay,” I say, “Let’s see if I spooked him.”  Stepping back into the water, I see the most wonderful sight I could hope for, another trout rise, yes! It’s still in between the overhanging weeds.  Now, it’s at this point that fisherman earn the mantle they wear proudly, “A little bit crazy.”  I square myself up, check my line length and cast into the great unknown.

         Boom!  The brown trout takes the black ant!  My little friend has done his work, now I must do mine.  I pull sharply down on the fly line.  He’s hooked!  And it’s a beauty!  I let him fight a little, and allow him to take as much line as he wants to.  I don’t want to break him off now.  He turns toward me and I begin to reel like a madman.  As he comes closer, I’m getting even more excited.  He’s at least 15 inches long; big for this part of the world.  I wrestle him to the point where his open mouth is just above the waterline, right at my feet.  With my left hand I reach back and grab my fishing net that’s hanging limply on the back of my fishing vest, keeping my eyes on the trout the whole time.  I can’t lose him now!

       Joy engulfs my soul!  He’s safely in the net, and I’m walking up out of the water to gaze at my prize and take a picture before I release him.  I’m laughing and giggling, which leads to whooping and shouting.  Now this is fly fishing!

        This is fundraising, too!  As you know, it involves a great deal of preparation, entanglements, an extreme amount of patience and discipline.  If I could make a weedless world I’d do it, at least during fishing season, but like the Rules of fundraising, I don’t have a vote.   But the joy of accomplishing our mission is worth all the weeds.

Rule #2
 Not Everybody Knows All the Rules…including old guys like me.
          When I first began raising funds, what seems like 200 years ago, I did well to find my way to my desk or the copy machine.  We didn’t have computers or e-mail yet, there was nothing like FedEx, or even fax machines.  I think we had a telex, you know the kind of loud pounding equipment that you always see in World War II movies?  Thankfully Gutenberg had invented the printing press by this time so we did have books; and I read everything I could get my hands on.  Mostly, I was left to reading direct-response tomes written by what I imagined to be funny little guys in glasses and bow ties, sitting at the end of the hall in commercial advertising agencies.  Even then, in 1980, Madison Avenue was just beginning to believe in direct response as a legitimate channel for communication and sales; the largest single substantiating fact being that it was an entirely measurable form of advertising, and the best thing was, you could determine the effectiveness of a campaign within weeks!  Guys like Richard Hodgson and Bob Stone no longer had to wait for the Arbitron or Nielson Ratings to tell them their Market share.  They could create their own market share by the use of direct-mail, coupons, newspaper inserts, flyers or door-hangers.  And then came Ron Popeil, the famous TV infomercial pitchman, who launched the revolutionizing Pocket Fisherman and was later replaced as the on-air infomercial guru by the late Billy Mays! 

      In the 1980’s, fundraising executives were just then discovering that blue Sharpie underlining and the bolding of text in direct-mail letters, made a positive difference in their response.  So they marked up everything, including each other I imagine, in blue underlining and giant parentheses until they discovered their next magic bullet–personalization!  It was with great joy that they tested the use of mailing labels against addressing with dot-matrix printers that could actually print directly on the envelopes!  Ah, it was a glorious time; the search for magic bullets was on like a gold rush.  Fortunes were made by enterprising consultants as they offered up their next big thing.  

          During this same time, in the world of philanthropy, there was the beginning of a quiet movement taking shape.  In some cases it was forming within the ranks of nonprofit organizations or ministries; the fledgling for-profit agencies serving nonprofits also made significant contributions to this effort.  This grass-roots migration came in the form of discovering principles vs. tactics.  I’ve chosen here, to call them The Rules, which I’ve already admitted, goes against my aversion to authority, but still seems to be the best way to articulate the unbroken truth of the principles that produce the greatest net income for nonprofits. 

          People like Claude Grizzard, Maggie Haggberg, Jerry Huntsinger, Tim Kersten, Jim Killion, Jerry Panas, Richard Perry, Russ Reid, Bob Screen, Wiley Stinnett, Bill Sturtevant, Richard Viguerie and Mal Warwick emerged as the practitioners of proven principles in fundraising.  There are several others not mentioned here, not by intended exclusion but, perhaps, rather by my lack of knowledge, unconscious jealousy or just plain petty disrespect.

          I have personally had the honor of knowing most of these folks, worked directly with several of them and learned from them all.  They each have their own areas of strength, but in general they have contributed greatly to the advancement of philanthropy by their discovery and use of the rules of fundraising.

          It’s difficult to find people inside or outside the nonprofit world, who have knowledge of a significant number of the rules.  Many people believe that their background in marketing or business qualifies them to serve as fundraisers; a great number of them have found that it’s rarely the case.  Fundraising has its own rules, and most find themselves struggling until they discover this ego-bruising truth.