Dear Nonprofiteer,
Maybe I’m just being pissy. It’s possible. But….
I’m on the board of two smallish non-profit arts organizations, and a regular financial supporter of several others. I’ve noticed a trend in fundraising appeals- in letters that go out to previous funders, the dollar amount they contributed in previous years is named, with a request for a specific increase in the current campaign. (“Thank you for your generous contribution of $100 in 2011. Would you consider a gift of $125 in 2012?”)
Why should this bother me? But it does. It really irritates me, especially from the organizations that I contribute to generously. And this year, when, as a board member, I was given the fundraising “ask” letters that were going out under my name to my personal contacts, I felt especially irritated to see the request for a specific additional amount. I would certainly never have written my friends directly with this request. Now that the dust has settled and our annual appeal has ended, I intend to speak to our director of development about it.But, in the meantime, could you illuminate me as to when this practice started? Why it started? And whether I should offer, in a kind way, feedback to the other organizations that are asking for a specific dollar amount increase to my giving?Does this bother anyone else? Or am I just being pissy?
Signed,
Possibly Pissy, But Really Very Generous At Heart
Dear Generous,
The practice likewise raises the hair on the back of the Nonprofiteer’s neck. There’s something creepy about the notion that an organization is 1) keeping track of what you’ve given, in violation of some notion of privacy and 2) asking for more, as if in reproach, instead of trusting you to give more if you’re able. But of course they’re keeping track of what you’re giving—how inept would you think them if they weren’t?—and of course they’re always working to raise more—ditto. So the first thing to recognize is that it’s not the practice so much as the expression that annoys you.
The practice is at least 40 years old, and was pioneered by the universities, probably because it’s natural for those institutions to think of givers in terms of the passage of time: the class of 1960 can reasonably be expected to have more resources than the class of 2010. It arose, the Nonprofiteer suspects, in response to the habitual nature of many people’s giving: if they gave $100 last year, they go on giving $100 into eternity. This seems like a great thing and, in fact, is the reason individual giving is such an important source of funds to organizations: while foundations often won’t continue their support unless you do something new and different for every grant, most individuals will just keep on giving unless you affirmatively offend them.
But what you’re saying is that the request for elevated support is just such an affirmative offense.
The problem is that the cost of everything continues to go up, and unless the monetary inflow goes up at the same time the agencies you support will find themselves seriously behind the 8-ball. Perhaps the agencies requesting your increased support would do better if they reminded you of that—”We haven’t been able to give our actors a raise for five years while their rents and grocery bills just keep on rising”—rather than beginning with a flat-out demand that you do more.
The Nonprofiteer prefers to err on the side of thinking that’s what they meant, anyway, and that the only thing they can be reproached with is their effort to raise money based on need instead of on opportunity. Most prospective donors, whether offended by an appeal or not, give money to agencies because of what they’re going to do and not because of how much they need. That, most probably, is the source of your feeling offended by the approach: that what you want to hear is how great they are and how much they can do with your help, not how needy they are and that they’re so desperate for your support as to reach their hands directly into your pocket.
The question of what gets said to people who are getting fundraising letters over your signature—or at least under your aegis—is a separate one. You are utterly within your rights as a Board member to say “I’m happy to solicit my friends but I won’t send out a letter telling them how much to give,” so that the staff can prepare your letters without the offending terminology. Those letters are from you, and therefore should represent your own approach to the people you’re soliciting, whether that’s “This group is in desperate need” or “This is the only group I’m supporting this year because of the fabulous new program they’ve launched.”
In other words, it’s one thing to shake off what you consider a slight directed at you, and another to permit the agency to direct that slight at your friends. In that spirit, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to notify the agencies whose appeals have troubled you that you wouldn’t ask your friends for money with that inflection and that they might consider not asking their friends for money that way, either.
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But consider this. The Nonprofiteer remembers being unable to ask how much something cost in Paris because the straightforward “Combien?” seemed so abrupt and rude but she lacked the syntax skills to soften it, not to mention the language facility to know what phraseology would constitute appropriate softening. People who ask for money and people who get asked are speaking different languages. Those doing the asking never mean to be rude—they just lack the skills to determine what constitutes being polite. Perhaps if you consider the transaction from that perspective you’ll be less annoyed.
