Rethinking Donor Competition
Hello everyone,
I hope you are as excited about spring’s arrival as I am. For me, spring is about renewal and inspiration, such as flowers, Easter, the Feast of Purim, and many cool spring things.
I want to reflect on a topic I was discussing this week - donor competition and values in giving. I have a pretty hard head, but after hearing from thousands and thousands of donors over the years (face-to- face, through survey and by phone), I finally started to understand that donor fatigue and competition for donor money are really issues of incongruence. The perception of donor competition is more a result of poor fundraising than 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 ‘Cause X’ provides will be different from the value exchange ‘Cause Y’ provides. The donor who gives to Harvard will not receive the same exchange of values as they do when giving to the Rescue Mission. They are different. While a donor may stop giving to one organization and give 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 is true even when the cause is 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, you finally realize it rings true. It took me awhile, but I finally saw it. 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. The problem arises when we engage 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, but rather with our inability to help them discover their true philanthropic meaning and passion. A happy donor will invest, and want to invest more, when an organization 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, as you enter spring, consider this, "Are we engaging out of need or out of shared value?" I can have a need and still engage out of value. Jami Coffman (our senior leader over executive coaching) says, "Questions without empathy equal interrogation." So I say, “Need without value exchange, well, that is a transaction."
Thanks so much,
Jamie
