{"id":199,"date":"2013-12-12T15:55:29","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T20:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/?p=199"},"modified":"2013-12-12T15:55:29","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T20:55:29","slug":"a-fundraising-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/2013\/12\/12\/a-fundraising-rant\/","title":{"rendered":"A fundraising rant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>[ Note: \u00a0in accordance with accepted fundraising practice, I hereby present a link that you can click if you just want to give some money to the Legal Information Institute<\/a> without having to read the rant that follows. \u00a0Two rants, really, because this is a rant about a rant. ]<\/p>\n

Two fundraising-related things went across my radar screen this morning. \u00a0\u00a0The first was a post in Jeff Brook\u2019s excellent \u201cFuture Fundraising Now\u201d blog<\/a>. \u00a0The second was a TV ad for a child-hunger-relief charity. \u00a0They crashed together with a loud clang.<\/p>\n

I have learned a lot from Jeff Brooks over the last year, almost all of it absolutely on-target and helpful. I\u2019ve been trying to educate myself about fundraising and fundraisers, so I went from reading 20 or so fundraising blogs intermittently, to steadily reading the best and most useful. \u00a0His blog really stands out from the pack. The ones I read attentively are selected both for usefulness to a novice like me, and \u00a0because they often promote fundraising ideas and messaging that I find at least counterintuitive and sometimes very difficult to agree with. \u00a0That\u2019s good for me, and for the LII\u2019s fundraising appeals. I lack experience, and I know it (and I\u2019m about to demonstrate that).<\/p>\n

You should read the Brooks piece here<\/a>. \u00a0The thrust of \u201cWho\u2019s destroying your fundraising messages<\/a>?\u201d is that inexperienced executive directors are gutting fundraising efforts by insisting on dry narratives that contain only facts, figures, and program descriptions that lack emotional appeal for donors. \u00a0Of course fundraising messages need to connect with donors at an emotional level — that\u2019s just good sense. \u00a0\u00a0But the hyper-emotional appeal is not the only available strategy, and I don’t believe that it is equally effective for all people, all organizations, all causes, or all donor cultures.<\/p>\n

It can surely be taken too far. About a half-hour after I read the Brooks piece, I saw a TV spot for an organization that works with child hunger. \u00a0\u00a0A Very Well Fed Fellow In A Bush Jacket, wandering around in an Impoverished Place That Is Clearly Not The United States, shows us a parade of impoverished children. \u00a0Pictures of the starving are accompanied by a grandfatherly narration about how much they\u2019re suffering. He ends with a description of \u201clittle Daniela\u201d who will \u201cbe hungry again tonight\u201d. \u00a0That\u2019s when the bell went off. \u00a0Why, after her stint as a spokesmodel, is she going to be hungry? \u00a0They couldn\u2019t leave a tip? \u00a0I really hope \u00a0the sound guy or the cameraman or Bush Jacket Grandpa gave little Daniela a Clif bar and a bottle of water. \u00a0Or maybe they just threw the gear in the Land Cruiser and tooled off to find more kids who are starving in an appropriately photogenic way.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an extreme example and — let me say it again — I\u2019ve got no beef with the idea that good causes have to find ways to connect with their supporters. However challenging it may be, we need to demonstrate the impact of what we do in ways that are effective and meaningful at an emotional level. \u00a0Of course we do. \u00a0We want people to support us. We want to show both the value that our work has for real people, and \u00a0that their support is being used in ways that are actually accomplishing something in the world — and that means show, and not just tell. \u00a0\u00a0But to insist that every mission and every program provide a 100-kilonewton tug to the heartstrings is sometimes inappropriate and sometimes — very infrequently, but sometimes — counterproductive for the mission of the organization.<\/p>\n

To the fundraiser who found his ED so uncooperative, I\u2019d say this:<\/p>\n

a) Many EDs, as people, are simply not comfortable making what they see as hyperbolic, hyper-emotional statements about what they do. \u00a0They don\u2019t do it in person and they don\u2019t like seeing their organizations do it. \u00a0\u00a0They feel like they\u2019re showing their underwear in public, making claims and being manipulative in a way that is fundamentally immodest. \u00a0Most of them are deeply (and emotionally!) committed to the cause they work for, but they\u2019re shy about how they say so. \u00a0They believe in appeals to reason; they find them highly motivating. \u00a0And by the way, that\u2019s true of the geek culture here at the LII and of the donors (who tend to be geeks, lawyers, or both) who support us. \u00a0The very popular book, \u201cKiss, Bow or Shake Hands\u201d, a collection of crash-courses for those doing business with other cultures, spills a lot of ink over the question of what other cultures accept as evidence; it\u2019s worth thinking about. \u00a0Some of those cultures are closer to home than you think.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that EDs who don\u2019t like hyper-emotional appeals don\u2019t respect the work of fundraisers, or that they don\u2019t understand it (though very few, including me, actually do). \u00a0It\u2019s that they believe in policy and they believe in technical and structural solutions, and in order to be successful program directors they have learned to channel their own emotional energy into the dispassionate place where administration, evaluation, and strategic thinking have to take place. \u00a0The best fundraisers I know are completely schizophrenic — warm on emotional appeals and personal connections, dead cold on the numbers and on evaluation.<\/p>\n

Besides, there\u2019s a way to deal with this. \u00a0How come the copywriter didn\u2019t suggest to his ED that they simply do an A\/B test? \u00a0The ED is persuaded by numbers. \u00a0Give him some.<\/p>\n

b) Somebody I once did theater with used to insist that the first rule of comedy is this: If you bring a paper shredder onstage somebody\u2019s necktie *has* to go into it.<\/p>\n

In other words, you have to deliver on implied promises. \u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m \u00a0not sure what the stewardship implications of highly emotional appeals are. \u00a0My guess is that those who write them are figuring that that\u2019s somebody else\u2019s problem, or that rationality and practicality can come later. \u00a0\u00a0If I call the children\u2019s charity and say, \u201cHey, how\u2019s Daniela doing?\u201d, are they going to have an answer for me? \u00a0What if I decide that Daniela\u2019s the only kid in the entire world that I\u2019m willing to sponsor? The deliberate impracticality of strong emotional appeals raises practical issues. They can, and do, implicitly overclaim. \u00a0Just as the heart responds to the emotional appeal, the heart envisions a happy solution that may or may not be possible for the organization to deliver. \u00a0If we imply a promise to change the world overnight, what happens when we don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

c) \u00a0I\u2019ve seen copywriters who can\u2019t find an emotional hook for their message give up and look no further, or worse, fabricate something. \u00a0They assume that if they can\u2019t summon up an emotionally appealing beneficiary in the first hour they work for the organization, then there is no message to be had. If they stop there — and some do — they end up knowing far less than they ought to \u00a0about the mission, operations, and impact of the organizations they work for. \u00a0If they can\u2019t find an \u201cif it bleeds, it leads\u201d story to tell, they think there\u2019s nothing to say.<\/p>\n

Trust me, every organization has a story or two to tell that will make a connection with donors, and I suspect that in dismissing everything that doesn\u2019t have immediate and obvious emotional impact a lot of very valuable stuff gets lost, including, sometimes, the true appeal of the organization (one of ours is objectivity, see below). \u00a0The answer to that ED and his problems with your heart-rending story is to simply ask him why he does what he does. \u00a0And ask the rest of the staff. \u00a0And ask the donors why they give. \u00a0Find out what your organization does, how it does it, and what the people who do it feel about what they do. \u00a0Be creative.<\/p>\n

d) Overfocus on emotional appeals can, in some fairly rare cases, distort the organization\u2019s mission and dilute its effectiveness. \u00a0The LII is, I think, one of those rarities. \u00a0I\u2019m well aware that Special Snowflake Syndrome is a risk for all EDs, but I really do think that what we do here is a little different and more challenging.<\/p>\n

Our job here is to make legal information available to people — Federal law and regulations, and the writings of the Supreme Court — all products of public institutions that at any given moment may be more or less popular with potential donors. \u00a0We are based only on the Internet, where we attract more than 24 million unique visitors every year. \u00a0We know very little about all but a very few of them. But every donor or audience survey we have ever done in our 20-year history lists objectivity<\/em> as a key component of our value in the minds of those we serve. \u00a0We don\u2019t want to compromise that with over-emotional appeals that would, inevitably, try to make their case by invoking partisan sentiment about government. \u00a0\u00a0We\u2019ve seen this happen in other organizations. \u00a0We have many colleagues and allies at organizations that promote government transparency. And we\u2019ve watched over the years as some of those organizations have rallied their troops and raised money by taking deliberately oppositional stances that diminish their effectiveness with the very people in government whose help they most need. \u00a0Whipping up the emotions rallies the supporters and it brings money in the door, but it can also make a lot of people less cooperative.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: \u00a0the right answers are negotiated between the two poles represented by the ED and the copywriter. \u00a0And then they\u2019re tested. \u00a0I wonder how much of the money that was lost by the organization in the Brooks story was lost because the copywriter was trying to teach the ED a lesson.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re grappling with all these questions here at the LII. Going into this season we\u2019ve thought a lot about our impacts, our message, and what we want to say to the thousands of people who give us a little bit of money because we helped them, or because they want to help someone else. \u00a0Because we deliver our services in what is essentially an anonymous, broadcast medium, it can be hard to know what concrete benefits we have for a particular individual in a particular place. \u00a0We know that we help a lot of them for not very much money (about 5 cents for every person we serve in a year). \u00a0They have their own reasons to need access to law, and the law is itself, in turn, \u00a0a tool for accomplishing something in their lives, for solving problems that they have. \u00a0To borrow a bit from Harvard Business School marketer Ted Levitt, we sell electric drills to people who want quarter-inch holes. And, come to think of it — they don\u2019t really want the holes, either. They want to hang something on the wall, and we don\u2019t know what.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re learning a lot more about what some of those purposes are and how we can change and improve our collections and our technology to help them find and understand what they need. \u00a0We don\u2019t have very many dramatic stories to tell — yet. Our biggest job is to help people reduce the amount of drama in their lives, by helping them solve problems that involve getting a little knowledge of what the law says. \u00a0Among the people that we help are lawyers at non-profit organizations (literally hundreds of them) who would rather spend money on their mission than on access to the tax laws<\/a>. \u00a0So we are saving the world — we\u2019re just doing it through others, one statute at a time.<\/p>\n

We offer that — all 500,000 pages of information — \u00a0freely, to 24 million people each year, at a cost of about a nickel apiece. \u00a0We do it without drama and with as much objectivity as we can manage. \u00a0\u00a0We\u2019d like your help. \u00a0Please give by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019ve got a good story to tell about how we helped you, please send it along.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ Note: \u00a0in accordance with accepted fundraising practice, I hereby present a link that you can click if you just want to give some money to the Legal Information Institute without having to read the rant that follows. \u00a0Two rants, really, because this is a rant about a rant. ] Two fundraising-related things went across […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}