What’s your motivation for helping someone else?
What’s your motivation to give to an NGO/nonprofit/charity?
If you’re a fundraiser, these are all important questions to consider yourself when — and ideally before — asking a potential donor for money.
The first reason for this is that a fundraiser needs to understand, acknowledge and fully respect the fact that donors are human beings. Donors are not aliens from another planet who, as a different species, don’t operate from the same set of basic tenets as the rest of us. And they give philanthropically for myriad reasons, which — and this might surprise you — are generally the same laundry list of reasons regardless of how much money the donor has. Everyone, you see, can be a donor.
It’s important to accept that premise, especially now, in this moment in time where giving among low and mid-level donors is decreasing. If you do accept that donors are humans, then you can approach your fundraising in a honest, respectful and empathetic way that is much more likely to succeed than not.
I was doing some research on this recently and found this study from over a decade ago, by accepted thought leaders in philanthropy. My guess is that the information and recommendations in this study are still used by fundraisers today. (The study doesn’t seem to have been updated.) The study classifies donors based on income, education and geography (for the most part) and then prescribes specific strategies for pitching a cause, based on those classifications.
I find this report, and its recommendations, problematic, and they feed directly into false assumptions about prospective donors. These false assumptions in turn create behavior on the part of fundraisers that isn’t helpful, and, in fact, may actually turn off a potential fundraiser completely.
Here are the main recommendations from that study:
When approaching people with an income of less than $100,000, or those with (a) high school education or less, emphasize how your organization helps people meet their basic needs or helps people help themselves.
When approaching prospective donors with income of $100,000 or more, or those with a college degree or above: Emphasize how their gift helps them help those with less (for equity). Demonstrate how your organization can “help make the world a better place” or, if more appropriate, help make the community better.
As I see it, this is a great example of what’s wrong with philanthropy and fundraising today. It assumes that people — prospective donors — who don’t have a college degree, OR make less than $100K/year (equivalent to $127K/year in today’s dollars) have completely different motivations and different ways of expressing their interest in donating than people who have college degrees or make more than $127K/year.
The assumption, as I see it, is that the prospects in the “have degree/have money” category are of more value — and, I’m guessing, are worthy of more time spent — than the prospects in the “lesser” category. This is offensive and just wrong.
Not only does this not make room for the many hugely successful people without college degrees, but it also suggests that teachers, for example (who typically earn less than that $127K/year) need to be spoken to about giving in a different way than those whose incomes are higher. Most glaringly, this approach leaves no room for the millions of people in tech, for example, who make modest salaries, but have valuable stock in their companies. Or even….people who are highly intelligent, make a decent living, but don’t meet that income threshold.
On the flip side, putting people/prospective donors into different boxes as suggested means that I would be approached with the “make the world a better place” thing, because I couldn’t relate to the “help people help themselves” thing.
By now you can hopefully see how silly this is.
Let’s stop with the short-sightedness and rigidity that characterizes much of fundraising today. Understand that there are a lot of people out there — all kinds of people — who, when given an opportunity to donate in some way, would be happy to, if they were only approached with respect. Doing otherwise is unsustainable.
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- Lisa