Nonprofit Dating

I've frequently drawn the parallel between romantic courtship and the process of "romancing" a prospective donor. Something draws the two parties together (their eyes meet across a crowded room?). After some time, once you know this person is "the one" for you, the object is to pop the question at the right time. Presumably not the same evening you first encounter them ("hey baby, wanna get married?!") ... the premature ask. But also not after dating and going steady for years and years and years ... the "cultivate, cultivate, cultivate, cultivate, cultivate" phenomen.

Five or six weeks ago, I came across this video which pokes some fun at how some of us choose to speak when first approaching a prospect, the language set that sounds so stilted. Today, I ran across it again, and decided I just had to share it. So, if a nonprofit were a guy and the donor a girl, it might go something like this ... click and enjoy.

By the way, this was done using a free, do-it-yourself movie creation service called xtranormal. "If you can type, you can make movies," they say. You choose the setting, the characters, and then type in dialogue. Voila -- an animated movie that you can then blog, share on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube, or whatever. I immediately registered for a free account, but I didn't start playing around with it. Knowing me, I'd have gotten sucked into the tool for hours. But it seems like a great idea for animating a message inexpensively. It will be interesting to see how it is used by community benefit organizations.

Started in marketing - drifted toward engagement

Someone posed a question to me: What do you know now that you wish you'd known then?

(In truth, I bristled at this. I like to be the one posing the questions!)

But it boils down to this. At the start of my career, I was involved in a one-to-many gig. It was public relations, outreach, marketing. Whatever you call what I did back then, it was all about getting the word out to as many people as possible. Not a bad thing; just presumptuous. It presumes the mass audience gives a damn about what I'm talking about. These days we'd refer to this approach as "push marketing."

Over the years, I discovered a more effective way. Not one-to-many. No. One-to-one or one-to-few is ever-so-much-more effective in the end, especially when the "one" or "few" you relate to are known to care about the cause I'm representing.

Instead of me telling you my story, and me hoping you will do what I want you to do, I get to know you. Relate to you. Become involved with you. Call it what you want. I personally like the term engagement, mainly because I like the dating-to-marriage metaphor that it evokes.

When someone is engaged to you (with you), your beloved doesn't walk into the room and hand you a four-color brochure listing his good qualities. He doesn't force feed you his list of projects he's implementing. He doesn't spend his time droning on and on about his great past accomplishments. While you know quite a bit about his past, it's not because he told you his life-story right off the top, or in one sitting.

No. You got engaged to (engaged with) the other person because you came to figure out that you care about the same stuff. You care about each other: he about you, and you about him. If I were to eavesdrop, I'd hear you sharing with each other your hopes and dreams, and joint plans for the future. Together, you would craft the terms of your relationship, your promises to each other, your intentions for spending a long time together, supporting each other, for better or worse. That's much more along the lines of how we should be "engaged" with a donor. Shifting this mindset entirely changes the conversation.

So, what I know now that I wish I knew then is: It's all about the relationship, a two-way relationship. If the relationship is founded on me always getting you to do what I want you to do, then it's headed for, uh, well, a messy divorce.

But if I engage you as one who cares passionately about a shared cause, you will do whatever you can. It's really that simple.