I was thinking about myself this morning. I know. I usually don’t do that, but this morning must have been special.
Anyway, I was thinking about myself when I was fifteen years old. It was 1981 and Holland, where I was born, was the front runner in the anti-nuclear armament movement in Europe. I was part of that movement and organized a neighborhood committee. I found the letter that I wrote and distributed to all the neighbors. My mother had kept it, bless her heart, and given it to me a few years ago.
It was a short letter, written on a typewriter of course, with a hand drawn map of the neighborhood to let people know where the first meeting would be. It had my home address and phone number. Again, all before cell phones. There was only one phone in the house, which brings to mind the support my parents gave me.
We formed a group and went door to door to talk to people about cruise missiles and neutron bombs. I told the people why I would refuse to join the army in a few years. Holland still had compulsory conscription in those days. I saw no point in joining an army only to be blown to pieces by an atomic bomb in the first 15 seconds of combat. Those were the projected statistics and I knew them and they frightened me.
As we spoke with our neighbors, we also asked them for donations.
When I attended the next meeting where all the city organizers came together, and I brought the money we had raised, the city treasurer told me that we had raised half the money of the entire city.
I can’t prove that. In Holland, they don’t do plaques and awards like they do here. We thought that calling someone worker of the month was too Soviet. But that is an aside.
What I thought about this morning is that at fifteen, I had never read a blog post about fundraising, or a book. Nobody trained me and we certainly didn’t receive a script. Nothing is worse than a fundraising pitch that sounds scripted.
Recently two people came to my door asking for money for the Human Rights Campaign. I am a donor to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force myself, and even though I see the differences between these two organizations, I still think it is absurd that there are two national organizations. So I listened to these two.
Their speech was so clearly scripted, it was almost laughable. Nobody talks like they did, not when they really believe in their cause and their organization anyway. And when I mentioned that I support the NGLTF, they had to tell me that the HRC was the nation’s largest organization, as if I didn’t know that, and if I cared about that. “Oh, they are the largest, well, then let me give you more money.” Somebody told them to say those words at that moment.
You can just picture the trainer: “When somebody brings up the other guys, you know, the Task Force, you should remind them that we are the largest national organization.” I wonder if he put that slight tone of disdain in their minds too, but it was there. Advertisers talk about “overcoming objections” and here was a page from the playbook.
Needless to say, I didn’t give any money.
A couple of weeks ago I heard a much better way to pitch a cause.
I am part of the Rainbow Toastmasters in San Francisco. A great group and most likely the most fun of all the toastmaster groups in the area if not the country. Speaking is of top notch quality too.
One of our members gave the best speech I had heard during one of these meetings. He spoke about his motivation to run the San Francisco Marathon. His reasons were mostly personal, expressing a desire to improve his overall health. He had run marathons before and figured he could do so again.
Running the San Francisco Marathon also happens to be a fundraiser for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In this speech, that benefit clearly came second to the personal motivation.
And that was so refreshing. He could have given a speech about the good cause, about the AIDS Foundation, about the levels of HIV infection, about the need for a national AIDS policy. And all of those things would have been relevant, but none of it would have been true.
Not for him that is. He is in training for his personal reasons and happy that he can support the cause in the process. His personal reasons are compelling enough. He didn’t need to wow me with stories about the campaign.
I am now thinking about running that marathon myself, not this year, but perhaps next year. It sounds like the perfect challenge.
The other part of this speech is that he decided to give it that afternoon (the meeting is at 6). In other words, he hardly had anytime to compose the speech, other than in his head and that can only work if you are telling a true story. He did. Of course, he has technique of story telling under his belt. He has been a member of Toastmasters for several years.
But he could not have composed a more compelling story. And no fundraising professional would have scripted this for him.
I was the best fundraiser in Utrecht (the fourth largest city of Holland) because I wasn’t out to raise money. I asked for money after I had spoken about my reasons for joining this cause, and after asking someone to become part of the movement too. My reasons were personal. I saw a bleak future before me with an absurd level of threat hanging over my head. And I believed that a grassroots movement could create a different future.
Perhaps we should have a moratorium on fundraising advise, stop reading the blogs and the numbers and the pitches and the scripts.
Go out and talk to someone, talk personally and be honest about your motivations. Your motivation is personal and not about the cause.
Then ask them to join you. And if they join you, they may be able to support the cause financially as well. Ask them. I am sure you can be the best fundraiser in the city too.
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