Thanks to Ben at Island94.org for getting me to read Dan Pallotta at Harvard Business.

Memory Fragments by lovefibre on Flickr

Pallotta argues here that since our problems (i.e. hunger) are massive and systemic, the only way for nonprofits to stand a chance of winning against them is to consolidate efforts into one unified effort to eradicate the problem within a stated time frame.  He advocates setting an audacious, specific goal and restructuring our sector around it so that it’s not about the little nonprofit’s mission, but about all of us reaching the goal.  Only this larger vision will shift us away from the “fragmentation and redundancy” we’re currently facing.

I see what he means.

However, I’m coming from a bias against his argument because I don’t like or trust large organizations.  I wrote about it here about a year ago.  To me, they turn humans into numbers and the momentum they build up for the sake of efficiency is actually slow to change with the times.  That being said, when a billion people are starving in a world with plenty of food, maybe it’s ok to focus on efficiency at the expense of personability and adaptability.

Ok, so let’s say Pallotta convinced me that bigger is better and that the process of consolidating wouldn’t completely derail our work for decades.  I still have a couple major questions about how this would play out, and I’m actually quite interested in the answers.

1) How would the consolidated nonprofit system relate to current systems?

Would we be creating a giant system for the sake of efficiency to clean up after the other system? That does not seem efficient to me.

Or will this second giant system fundamentally change the first one?  How will that not turn into a political mire?  And what if it does succeed?  How could something that big phase itself out or radically change itself to pursue a different goal?  Are there any precedents for that actually happening?

2) How is this different?

How would this plan produce an organization whose impact is different from the United Nations and the World Health Organization – benevolent organizations that provide some leadership to their fragmented membership?

What about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – organizations that arguably crippled many countries’ development when they tried to make large-scale change for the better?

And from a national standpoint, how would it differ from the USA’s failed War on Drugs?

I’m not convinced from this one article that Pallotta has hit upon The Answer, but it was a great read that’s provided a ton of food for thought.

This is part four of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  Here’s a link to the series intro.

White Check Mark on Blue by Kylemac on Flickr

I wish that fundraisers would ask me what I care about. I’m not looking to write them essays, but perhaps a few well-chosen check boxes could help them (and me) see if there’s any likelihood of my being a donor.  I further wish they would act upon this knowledge by either telling me how their organization is something I care about or by removing me from their list of people to pester frequently.

At this point in my life I’m most interested in supporting small, local initiatives that are focused on sustained improvement in quality of life.  Check, check and check.  Done.  Was that so difficult?

I realize I run the risk of sounding petulant and self-centered when I ask organizations working hard to assuage the world’s problems to focus on me.

My response is that I’m not raking in the dough in an unrelated endeavor and then carefully considering how I can philanthropically skim off and donate 3% of my accrued annual interest to reach as many less-advantaged people as possible.  That’s just not how I do things.

I believe in small projects that treat people like people, and as such I work for one and try to donate to a couple of others.  And if you’re not obviously that kind of project, you’re wasting my time and your money by half-heartedly flinging large mailings at me as a potential donor.

Please, actually engage or leave me alone.

This is part three of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  Here’s a link to the series intro.

I think it’s a common phenomenon for a given organization to be absolutely convinced that it’s the most important one out there. From that standpoint, it’s understandable that information is often given out with gusto.

I can just see the meetings at some of the huge nonprodits that ask for gifts: “Why send a 1 oz mailing when you could send 5 oz?!”. “Why send a short email newsletter when you could send a enormously long one?!”

If they’d ask, I’d tell them:

The less stuff you send me, the more likely I am to read it.

Less. Please.

This is part two of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  Here are links to the series intro and the first question.

How many requests are too many?

"The heaping pile o' mail again" by Charles Williams on Flickr

I think that sometimes, super-dedicated, highly-motivated nonprofit development staff can get carried away with just how often they and their teams ask for contributions.

A couple years ago, my father’s cousin’s wife passed away.  In lieu of flowers, she asked that donations be made to a certain international nonprofit.  I prefer to focus on local efforts for my regular giving, but I gladly gave to them in her memory.  This organization has been clogging my snail mail at least monthly ever since, despite not ever hearing from me again.  They have not made it simple for me to switch to a different option, such as a quarterly email or an annual snail mail, and I’m neither impressed nor inspired.

My friend (the other Disgruntled Donor) told me that a few holiday seasons ago, her father’s alma mater contacted him by phone six days in a row asking for money.  Just sit on that one a moment and wonder how anyone could have possibly thought that was a good use of time or a respectful way to treat an alumnus.

I get that during tough times and toward the end of the budget year, sometimes pushes are necessary.  At some point the repetitive asking grates. It usually comes across to me as either incompetence or an arrogant assumption that the only reasonable way to spend my money is to funnel it to the pestering organization.  Neither impression inspires me (or anyone else I can think of) to give.

Organizations can avoid crossing that line by asking individuals what kind of volume of contacts they care to receive. They can ask this on a simple survey that also asks how they’d like to be contacted.  Quarterly or biannual requests work best for me, except for one or two organizations that are very close to my heart.  I’m happy to tell this to any organization who will both listen and make that communication process simple and efficient.

Where do you draw the line between what’s a reasonable request rate and what’s pestering?

Have a great weekend, and see you Monday for the third question I wish nonprofit fundraisers would ask me.

This is part one of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  See the series intro here.

How do you want to be reached?

I wish fundraisers would ask me how I want to be contacted.

This is not code for a focus group.  This is not a veiled suggestion for a long meeting where you can discuss my demographic’s preferences and motivations.  Just ask me.

It can be a postcard.  It can be an online survey.  It can be simple.

With a few well-placed multiple choice questions, you’d find out that I prefer to be contacted via email or social media.  You might also find out that I flat-out won’t answer the phone for people who aren’t friends, family, or coworkers.  You may also discover that I can’t stand snail mail (I elaborate on this below).

During the initial disgruntled donors discussion that spurred this series, my friend remarked that she liked when an organization just picked one way to contact her and stuck with it, for example, just four quarterly newsletters mailed to her home.  The short communications survey could find this out as well.

The message here isn’t that quarterly email newsletters are the answer.  The point is that different things annoy different people.  Since this is not difficult information to acquire, store, or act upon,  large-scale development departments should really spend more time figuring out how not to tick off their potential donors.

An Aside: My View on Snail Mail

I recently received an advancement report from my alma mater.  It weighed more than my cat, probably cost significantly more than my yearly rent to put together, and undoubtedly asked me for money.  That’s quite the mixed message.  Was it worth the cost in money and hypocrisy points to send me something I’m just going to unwedge from my mailbox, lug upstairs, then schlep back downstairs on garbage/recycling night?

Please, just email me.

What do you think?

How do you like to receive donation requests?

Which type of donation request is the most annoying to you?

The next question will appear on Friday.

Last week a friend and I were talking about experiences we had as potential donors for a couple of huge nonprofits.  We were unimpressed.

"Donate" by Mindful One on Flickr

I started writing a post about these points, and then I realized it was really several posts.  Thus starts my first official series: The Disgruntled Donor. It will be appearing this week and next on my regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday posting schedule.

The overall theme is that nonprofit development endeavors risk becoming extremely annoying, and therefore self-defeating, when fundraising pushes don’t consider the wants and needs of their potential donors.

I’ll talk about four different questions I wish fundraising campaigns would ask me.  I’ll include nightmare stories that my friend and I discussed, as well as some suggestions for how to get on my good side as a potential landing site for my “extra” money.  Hint: potential donors have different preferences, and we can tell you what they are, and you can choose to not ignore them.

I’m hoping that writing about it might start some useful discussion for nonprofits large and small, and that it might be useful (or at least fun) for the rest of us to share stories of marketing that annoyed us.  Also, frankly, I’m interested in writing about it, and that’s always a consideration.

Here are links to the four questions I wish to be asked:

1. How do you want to be reached?
2. How many requests are too many?
3. How much information do you want?
4. What do you care about?

Volunteering Waning in Recession, Report Says – NYTimes.com.

This article points out an apparent contradiction:

A.  volunteer coordinators saw an increase in volunteers caused directly by said volunteers losing their jobs

B. a huge percentage of people say that they’re reducing their time spent in civic engagement and volunteering

Interesting.

I also love that it covers “do it yourself volunteering,” people getting involved on a local level without getting involved in organizations.  Even as a volunteer coordinator who needs more volunteers, serving through an organization is certainly not the only way to get involved and make meaningful change.  Check out Peter Norback’s project.

And as a last comment, it talks about nonprofits “using” volunteers.  Surely there’s a better verb out there that reflects the complex give-and-take relationship that organizations form with their volunteers.

As the coordinator of an all-volunteer teaching staff, a large and fantastic part of my job is volunteer support.   I don’t know how I ended up with such great people, and I hope they stay forever.  I write this in hopes that more volunteers will contribute the way mine do.

I’d like to put it out there for whomever is listening that the most effective volunteers are not the ones who arrive with their own agenda.

Super Boy by Łéł†Āķ Mă3ý on Flickr

Super-effective volunteers have their eyes and ears open to the needs of the organization. When something comes up and they have the ability to help with it, they speak up and dive in.

And you know, any help is help. Coming in and telling me exactly what you’d like to do is something, and I’m as grateful as I should be and I try hard to work with you.

But take a step back and think how amazing it is when a program realizes it needs something, asks for someone to do it… and then someone does it.

And now think about how well a volunteer gets to know the organization by helping where it’s needed.  Think what a great position this puts the volunteer in to make suggestions, push for change, and bring a relevant and mutually beneficial to-do list to the table.

Are you that kind of volunteer?

Kyllian gaat tekenen by inferis on Flickr

This evening I set up an information table in the front of the library to advertise my free classes for adults that take place in the back.  My goal was to increase our presence in the library and to see if people who were in the library at around class time wanted to be students or volunteer teachers.

People were milling about near me or walking by.  Nobody came up to talk to me for a while.   Then a boy walked by and looked at the giveaway pencils I had out.  He touched one but started to walk away.  So I asked him if he wanted one.  This led to a simple conversation, after which he walked away with a big smile and a sharp new pencil.  About 15 seconds later, a man who had been sitting nearby pretending to ignore me came up to ask about classes.  And a small line formed while he and I were talking.

Smiling and having shiny materials did not cause potential students to line up to talk with me.  Seeing me be nice to that boy is what started it.

My conclusion: people want to work with people who treat people like people.

Notes and Opinions, Together Again

Renner starts out talking about educational psychologist David Kolb’s theory.  I guess Kolb has to be on my ed psych list now because I can’t really handle his premises, at least in their truncated versions in this book.  I highlighted it on the syllabus for future study.

Goal, by It'sGreg on Flickr

I have an issue with the idea that since learning is governed by a person’s needs and goals, educational objectives must exist in order for “the process of learning” to not be “erratic and inefficient.”

1. A need and a goal are different; this appears to treat them as the same thing.
2. Learning does not have to be of constant intensity to be effective.  In fact, I’ve experienced the opposite.
3. There’s nothing wrong with not learning as quickly as humanly possible.
4. I don’t believe that specifically enumerated objectives and “erratic and inefficient” learning are mutually exclusive, which is what this summary implies.

Renner says that in his Learning Style Inventory (LSI), Kolb groups learning behavior into “four statistically different styles.”  Perhaps I’m showing my ignorance of the field, but this phrase is too vague for me to have any use for it.  I get that the phrase implies that quantitative research has been done, but come on.  Impressing me by saying “look!  research!” isn’t enough.  Anyway, the categories are:

• Converger – unemotional, likes things, likes to apply ideas practically
• Diverger – imaginative, likes people, likes multiple points of view
• Assimilator – logical, likes to make theories
• Accommodator – intuitive, likes people, likes to test theories against reality

I can’t decide if I’m a Diverger or Accommodator.  Since I can see it either way, I’d probably test as a Diverger.

Renner says that the purpose of having this model is not to typecast people, but to help with “needs analysis” for lesson and course planning.  Later on, almost as an afterthought, Renner mentions that Kolb lists four abilities all students need for effective experiential learning.  These closely parallel the above groupings: have an experience, think about it from many points of view (Diverger), tie experiences to theories (Assimilator), use those theries to solve problems (Accommodator, Converger).  I’m surprised he didn’t more explicitly tie these together.

Even without making this connection, Renner does specifically say that the purpose of these groups isn’t to typecast people, but to help understand students’ needs for course and lesson plans.  It comes across as a fluffy disclaimer, but I still appreciate the point.  It’s about identifying which strategies tend to feel best to a learner, not giving learners an excuse to hide from certain skills.  (One of my pet peeves is when people use their classification-of-the-day as a wall, proclaiming they “can’t” do a certain thing because they’re This Type of learner.  It’s one thing for self-proclaimed “visual learners” to take meeting notes using graphic organizers; it’s another for “visual learners” to refuse to have a conversation about something.)

Overall, it was pretty fluffy.  I have to say, it seems likely that Renner faced the choice of either providing a cursory and inadequate introduction to Kolb’s work or not mentioning it at all.  I think it’s significant that Renner decided to include it.  The more I think about it, the more I think it’s important to take a closer look at Kolb’s LSI.