Building Relationships Through Shared Values

Hello everyone,
 
Spring is here!  I hope you are as excited about spring’s arrival as I am. For me, spring is about renewal and inspiration, from flowers to Easter to the Feast of Purim. I love that I can get outside more, too.

I want to reflect on a past topic that is more relevant than ever: donor competition and values in giving. I used to buy into the idea of donor fatigue. I oriented my first fundraising job around
this idea.  I quickly saw the error of my assumptions on how it limited the growth in relationships with our donors.
I have a pretty hard head, but after hearing from thousands and thousands of donors over the years (face-to-face, by phone, and through surveys research), I finally started to understand that donor fatigue and competition for donor money are really issues of incongruence.  The perception of donor competition results more from poor fundraising than from donors actually causing competition for their dollars. If an organization is truly engaging donors in a value-exchange relationship with a cause they share belief in, then the value exchange Harvard provides will be different from the value exchange Rescue Mission provides. The causes are different.  If a donor stops giving to one organization and starts giving to another, it is not a transplant of giving.  It is an investment in the value exchange that is both unique and specific to that cause. Harvard realizes something different for the donor than the Rescue Mission does, and vice versa.  This holds true even when the causes are similar.  The donor may give to City Rescue Mission and Church Rescue Mission, and still have different values exchanges fulfilled.
 
When you see and hear this enough times from donors in the field, and see the research over and over again, it finally starts to ring true. When we engage donors in a values exchange around their passion for our shared vision and values, that experience and relational exchange becomes unique to our relationship. It’s metaphysical, not utilitarian-based. I’m not selling widgets; I am creating an exchange of values. 
The problem arises when we engage in goodwill, but not shared values and passion. When we don’t engage the donor, build intimacy with them or understand the exchange of values, then giving becomes transactional. It is through this transaction that competition and donor fatigue take hold. This is what ultimately leads to incongruence with the donor. However, the fault doesn’t lie with the donor. It lies in our inability to help them discover their true philanthropic meaning and passion. A happy donor will invest, and want to invest more in an organization that shares their values, vision, and passion. When we stop trying to convince dog lovers to love cats, and instead focus on engaging those who already love cats, donor fatigue and donor competition go away.  We move from incongruence to congruence.  But when the donor is a transaction and is incongruent with our values and vision, how can we expect anything else than donor fatigue and the perception of donor competition?  
 
So consider this as you enter spring: "Are we connecting with people out of shared values or something else?"  If something else, what is it?   I can have a need and still engage out of value.  Jami Coffman, our senior leader over executive coaching, likes to say that "Questions without empathy equal interrogation."  So I say, “Need without value exchange— well, that is transaction." 
 
Our podcast this month underscores this question: do we understand stewardship?  It’s part of exchanging values. 
 
Have a wonderful April!
 
Thanks so much,
 
Jamie