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Helping you win loyal friends through your communications

Hate Fundraising but Love Making Friends? This Book’s for You

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What if joining a nonprofit’s Board meant doing things you love?

Hildy Gottlieb

Author Hildy Gottlieb

Hildy Gottlieb thinks that’s what it should mean. If you’re on a nonprofit Board of Directors and find fundraising next to impossible, run out and get her book  Friendraising: Community Engagement Strategies for Boards Who Hate Fundraising but Love making Friends (2nd edition). You’ll be glad!

Very few of us find it a thrill to ask people for money (and they are mostly on staff, not on the Board). But many of us like to:

  • Learn more about how our favorite organization changes lives
  • Have coffee with a friend and catch up on what we’re doing
  • Write a letter to the editor
  • Interview a local leader about community needs
  • Have a party!

We in the nonprofit sector sometimes shy away from the things we love. We have the puritanical attitude that if we’re having fun, we must not be doing the right thing. It’s time to get over that–for ourselves and for our our Boards.

The 89 strategies that Hildy suggests in Friendraising are not frills. They are necessities! Each of these enjoyable activities is also vital for building the relationships that bring you suggestions, volunteers, partners, and money.

The book includes brainstorm sheets that will help Board members think of people–and not just “rich people”–they could be turning into friends of the organization, and sample questions to ask. It also offers many charming examples from Hildy’s own experience creating the first Diaper Bank in the country. Her stories will inspire you and show you that you, too, can strengthen your organization by doing the things you love.

Friendraising is the biggest part of fundraising. Share on X As a Board member, this book will help you find a way to make friends for an organization that suits your personality.

If you’re an Executive Director or a Development Director, you can use it to help your Board members become excited, active, and proud. Then “the ask” will be up to you, and it will be easy…because you’ll be speaking to a friend.

Putting On the Shoes: What Ray Bradbury Taught Me about Marketing

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“I’ve got to think of reasons for the shoes.”Image

The boy in Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Sound of Summer Running” is Douglas, and Douglas wants new sneakers as if his life depends on them.  His parents think last year’s sneakers are fine.  To Douglas, last year’s sneakers are “dead inside.” But how can he convince Mr. Sanderson, the shoe store owner, to let him buy the Royal Crown Cream-Sponge Para Litefoot Tennis Shoes when he doesn’t have enough money to pay for them?

It’s not reasons that convince Mr. Sanderson.  It’s not even his way with words.  Douglas gets the shopowner to put on a pair of the shoes.

With the sneakers on his feet, down below the suit he wears to do business in, Sanderson feels what Douglas feels. They have summer built in. For Sanderson, it’s a summer far away, running with antelopes and gazelles, a summer as distant as his own childhood.

Even after he agrees to let Douglas work off the price of the shoes by running–literally running–his errands, Sanderson is still thinking, “Beautiful creatures leaping under the sky, gone through brush, under trees, away, and only the soft echo their running left behind.”

Not all of us are marketing shoes.  Some are selling social change.  All of us, though, are Douglas.  We want something that someone else has the choice to give us.  How do we get them to feel, in every inch of themselves, from the ground up, that they want it too?  How do we get them to put on the shoes?

Quitters Sometimes Win

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I quit.

At this time in 2012, I had had it with my job. I’d been the Director of Planning at an anti-poverty agency in Somerville, Massachusetts for nine years.

In that time, the job had changed. It had started out as writing–in grant proposals, newsletters, and direct mail appeals–about the difference the agency made. It ended up being collecting and reporting data to help state and federal agency try to keep our whole program from losing its funds.

That was not the job for me, and it never would be. So, I stayed long enough to put out some fires, to document what I did, and to work through Christmas week so the people who actually celebrated the holiday could get some time off. Then, I quit.

The Dip, by Seth GodinYou would think I’d love Seth Godin’s book The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick).  I thought so too. But I was wrong.

Out of a 75-page book, here’s what Godin said that I found worthwhile:

  • “Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”
  • “Quitting [when you’re at a dead end] is better than coping because it frees you up to excel at something else.”

That’s what I did when I left my job. I could never be great at data collection and reporting. I can be great at communications (and teaching you how to communicate better). So, I quit…and I’m becoming great at what I do.

But the title of the book is a lie. It doesn’t teach you when to quit and when to stick. It just says that if you can’t be “the best in the world” at what you do, then do something else.

What’s wrong with that?

  1. There’s no reliable way to know if you are in “the dip” before your sales (or other numbers that measure success) start to rise, or if you’re in a cul-de-sac. You can make your best guess. But you will never know if you would have succeeded by hanging on longer, or if you would have succeeded by quitting earlier. You have nothing to compare it to. You only live once.
  2. Godin says the only way to succeed is to be “the best in the world” at what you do. He qualifies that by saying it’s subjective–but even so, he’s wrong. Plenty of small businesses do well by being great at what they do and accepting their market share. Enough is as good as a feast.
  3. Success and sales are not the same thing. Even if you’re in business, don’t you hold something more dear than your numbers? (If not, I don’t want to be married to you!)

In the nonprofit world, it’s even more clear. You don’t quit on your clients. Being great at finding people housing but ignoring the fact that they don’t have the income to pay for it is not strategic: it is ineffective and immoral, both. You have to help them find the income (even if it’s not your organizational strength) or get a partner who will do so, You can’t just walk away.

I tried to find a way to like this book more than I do, because I have enjoyed so many of Seth Godin’s blog entries.  Ultimately, though, I quit.

 

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