How to ask for a gift ....

Here's a video snippet from the HBO show, Entourage. Matt Damon and Bono are featured as they ask Vince (played by Adrian Grenier) to make a gift to their favorite cause (a children's hunger charity).

Now I wouldn't actually suggest you ask the way Matt Damon does here, but there are some lessons embedded in the video.

Among them:

• Total absence of call reluctance (since he believes in his cause, Matt Damon asks everyone!)


• Asking for involvement in addition to monetary support


• Persistence and the importance of follow-up


• Importance of making your own gift first (because donors, even if they don't ask, will KNOW in their gut whether you've done your part)


• Framing the ask amount in relation to capacity and what other leadership donors have given


• Ask as part of a team, in person (see how much more effective the ask gets when LeBron James joins Matt in the ask)


• How to make it past gate-keepers ("He Jason Bourne-d me!")


• Linking back to the cause when making the ask ("it's for the kids!")

Warning: Some crude language here. Click here to watch.

Finding time to focus on Real Results: Review what you're doing and ...

We seldom take the time to re-evaluate what we're doing to be successful. Over time, our behavior can drift from what we should be focusing on. Here's a powerful but quite short eye-opening exercise. Ask yourself:

What can I do to ...

1. Start doing more of what I'm already doing that produces results? Well, of course, that's self-evident.


2. Stop doing something. Eliminate from your daily habit some low-impact activity (or activities). Look at things that used to serve you well, that you've ingrained in your routine, but that have outlived their usefulness. Time-suckers in this category could very well be little stuff that adds up to a lot of time. Or, maybe it's major, like routinely setting aside your own critical priorities to help someone else with their non-emergency tasks (simply motivated from wanting to be liked or be helpful).


3. Start doing something else? Think of what you're not doing, but have intended to do, filtering in those things that could be make a significant contribution to getting better results.


4. Start doing less of what is proving to be quesitonable? (If you can't stop doing it, at least do less of it.)

It helps to spend about an hour in reflection on these four points, at least twice a year (better yet, quarterly). If you can't remember when you've spent some time pondering these four quesitons, then schedule an hour within the next three days. Turn off the phone and email, and think about this.

Then, settle on at least four things you'll do differently. More of. Stop doing. Start doing. Less of.

I'd love to hear any stories from you about actually doing this!

The Power of Kids

Our desire to help children is genetically inbred; we are hard-wired to care about kids. The impulse is so strong that it even triggers concern far beyond what's rational. I was just watching a news report showing well-intended parents freaking out about the welfare of their child at school. By any reasonable measure, that child is quite safe, thank you.

Going to school today is probably as safe as it was a week ago, or a month ago, or six months ago. But try telling that to the parent! Pity the school administrator or principal who -- in the midst of the media frenzy about swine flu -- is not spending hours implementing precautionary plans for what is arguably not a very real threat in most places. This distracts attention away from teaching and learning, of course. Or, for that matter, making the school site safe from more present and real dangers. But those school officials have no choice for the moment but to drop everything and respond to parents' concern.

That's what got me to thinking about this: the power of kids as a motivator of behavior.

You're a Dad (or Mom). Your child is in imminent peril a few yards away. Would you run to help them? Of course.

Slightly different scenario. Now, in order to get to the child, you have to walk across a 12-inch wide piece of lumber board that straddles the gap. If you slip, you'll fall into a pool of water. Would you run to save the child? Of course.

Final scenario. Your child still needs saving. But now, in order to get to the child, you have to get across a tightrope, and you're 100 feet above the ground. Would you tip-toe across the rope to save your child? Still no hesitation. Yes.

People will do anything for kids. This motivator to action is more powerful than appealing to service of God, love of country, or even self-interest.

That's why so many direct response packages use child images. Given the power of this motivator, you've got to wonder why they aren't even more effective than they already are.

If your cause is in any way kids-related, it's up to you to tell your story so effectively that the reader or listener is impelled to "run across the tightrope" to rescue the child. If the reader or listener isn't motivated to do that, that's not their fault. It simply means you haven't told the story right. I don't mean you should bend it out of shape so as to whip up the type of hysteria we're seeing around swine flu. But take another crack at it. Tell your story better.