Recently, the Chronicle of Philanthropy highlighted a very successful, and very unusual, success story. Case Western and the Cleveland Clinic, both major institutions in, well, Cleveland, reached across their city and collaborated together to raise $275M for a joint project in their community. When the project began, Case Western was raising money for a $50M project, but with a smart, forward-thinking call in 2012 between the institutions’ two leaders, the project became a $515M, transformative initiative that already has its building and program up and running.
The two visionary leaders and their teams looked for examples of this kind of collaboration, but, sadly, they don’t seem to exist. Undeterred, they moved forward and built an extremely successful medical project.
As a donor and board member for various nonprofits, I was stunned and elated by this statement in the article:
The “fundraisers worked together to develop a list of the donors and prospects they had in common”. Wow!
How can this be? Traditional (arcane, in my mind) thinking says:
Share our donors? Won’t they steal them from us? We worked so hard to get them!
Share prospects? But we did the research! Why should we share them with a bunch of other fundraisers? We spent time and money to get those names.
A bigger project instead of the one we had planned? What if it fails?
What if they don’t pitch the way we do? We’ve created a pitch that works for us, and I’m not sure I want to share our “secret sauce”.
Who gets the credit? Won’t sharing minimize our success? Will people think that we couldn’t do our program/projects ourselves, so we needed to reach out to another organization to be successful?
I’m still uncomfortable about the sharing out donors part. How will we do future projects if our donors now know about this other organization?
Did you really say we have to share our donors?
To me, these are silly comments and concerns, but I understand that they may be real to the fundraisers in the field. But as a donor, I find it ridiculous — actually, offensive — that organizations feel that they “own” me. Do organizations really think that I don’t know the other nonprofits that work in the same space? Do they think that if I give to them, it’s because I’m too lazy to create a relationship with someone from a competing organization? Regardless of how much money I give you and for how long I’ve given it, you don’t “own” me.
As to the pitch “secret sauce”, this is not rocket science. The secret sauce is being respectful, honest, empathetic and forthcoming — and being able to answer all my questions about your organization, even the uncomfortable ones. I don’t think you can get a patent on a pitch.
What if it fails? It’s much less likely to fail with another nonprofit working with you than it is if you do it yourself. The key is making sure that you have a good partner.
The concern about not being strong enough to do it yourself? That just doesn’t make sense. Every day, every hour, I encounter a product, program or system that exists because of collaboration.
Collaboration is not a new concept, and it often, and maybe typically, results in a better and more significant outcome. Others have been writing about this for years, but it just isn’t taking hold (due to the status quo of “reasons” listed above). Check out this article, from Stanford, and this one — both from over two years ago.
By working together closely with another nonprofit, you’re likely to not only meet interesting new colleagues, but also to learn more about fundraising techniques and strategies — all while reaching a common goal. You’ll take that learning on to your next role, and hopefully this “innovative” concept of collaboration will start to stick.
Let’s pay attention and start collaborating.
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- Lisa