Roger recently presented at Fundraising Success’ Engage Conference.

Now, he undoubtedly said many, many wise things, but he read the following fairy tale, which arguably contains the nub of his message. Enjoy!

Snow White and the Seven Small Woods People

There was once an evil fundraising queen. So vain and out of touch was she that she could not bear to think that anyone could do better. Although she didn’t believe in comparative data, KPI’s (something she thought you drank at the Renaissance Fair) nor benchmarks. And she sure as hell would never have anything to do with DonorCentrics or those crazy new people at DonorTrends who measured this stuff.

But, she did have one secret weapon.

She had a magic mirror. And every quarter, or at budget time or just before the next board meeting she would say, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the best fundraising program of them all?”

And the mirror had always answered: “Thou, queen, hath the best program in all the land.”

Meanwhile, unknown to the Queen — who never went to conferences because she knew all this stuff already; had cancelled her subscription to Fundraising Success years earlier; never bothered to subscribe to The Agitator; and heaven forbid she wouldn’t follow Pam Grow or Nancy Schwartz on a bet — other organizations were coming up fast and flourishing.

One day, the mirror answered the queen: “Thou hath an OK, So-So program, almost as good as you had once upon a time. So you’ll probably make it to retirement, but The Snow White Fund is far more successful than thee.”

When the Evil Queen heard this, she turned pale with rage and envy. She summoned her staff straight away. “Contract with the best team of experts and beat Snow White’s Fund,” she thundered.

The managers rushed off and searched far and wide for more list brokers, printers, new premium vendors, strategic consultants plus an alchemist who claimed to turn Facebook into gold. They assembled a team who had nice teeth and understood Powerpoint. A team who preferred to be paid on volume and would also extend credit so the Queen didn’t have to front much money. That way her books would look good to the Wizards over in the forest of Charity Navigator.

The experts, as they so often do, discovered new designer tote-bags, spectacular calendars, and the snappiest address labels in the land. They assured the Queen that Best Practices were now in place.

“High Impact.” “Cutting Edge.” “Paradigm shifting.”  You know, the  Best Practices that had first emerged in 1953.

After a few months, the queen, confident that her strategy was working, inquired of the mirror: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the best fundraising program of them all?” And the mirror replied, “Thou strategy of burn and churn is visible for all to see, it gets thee many lunches, dinners and write-ups by the scribes, but Snow White is still more successful than thee!”

Her blood, full of spite and malice, ran cold in her heart. She could not believe that The Snow White Fund was still thriving despite reports from her spies that the Fund was using that nut case Merlin to build predictive models instead of relying on the usual RFM with a dash of snake’s tongue thrown in.

Worst of all, Snow White was wasting a lot of gold on implementing some strange concepts called donor commitment, loyalty and retention. She had pissed off lots of printers, list brokers and consultants. They would do her in.

The Evil Queen, aware that the hefty consultants’ fees charged her for best practices were now overburdening her treasury in a way she could no longer explain to her board (you can only kiss so many frogs), decided it was time to take matters into her own hands.

She Googled Snow White and found out that she was living with seven small woods people in faraway New Jersey. She dressed herself up as an old peddler, and headed for Hoboken, to the place where Snow White dwelled.

She knocked on the door and cried, “Fine wares to sell!” Snow White looked out of the window and said, “Good day good woman! What have you to sell?” “Good wares, fine wares,” the Evil Queen replied, as some spare address labels and calendars spilled from her bag, along with a couple of drafts of thank you notes she considered absolutely silly and wasteful.

“Oh, we don’t deal in those items anymore, but you can leave a few samples and we’ll use them to show the staff what not to do,” Snow White replied kindly. “Except for those thank you notes. We’d like to see those.”

Snow White felt sorry for the poor old woman carrying a heavy load of wares — and clearly lacking a CFRE — and she invited her inside. She offered her a Red Bull and a mobile phone app for The Snow White Fund.

Just at that moment, the seven small woods people who were all on the staff of Snow White’s Fund came into the room, and submitted their progress reports for the day.

Snow White had determined some time ago that 7 brief focused reports taking a grand total of 10 minutes to read were more effective than 7 full staff meetings a day.

Snow White offered the small woods people coffee and Red Bulls and dealt with them in the kindest of manner. The Queen couldn’t help but notice how enthusiastic the small woods people were and how open and excited they were as they shared their reports with each other and made recommendations for improvement.

Maybe it was the caffeine.

The insolent queen couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. She pretended to be ill and begged to leave. Snow White heartily bade her farewell without realizing she had stolen the “Reports Folder”!

The Evil Queen hurried back to her kingdom, confident she had found Snow White’s secret of success. She impatiently went through the Small Woods Peoples’ Reports and was amazed at how focused, simple and concise the information was. Suddenly, she saw where she had gone wrong.

There,  in black and white,  were the 7 small woods peoples’ key Mindsets, Metrics, and Methods that would save her royal ass.

Here’s what the Snow White and the small woods people saw that the Evil Queen and all her consultants did not:

Mindsets

1. Retention and Life Time Value are King , err Queen
2. Pay for Value and Results, Not Time and Volume
3. Ignore/Avoid the Black Knights

• Too pre-occupied with cost of fundraising/overhead
• Too much emphasis on the new, new thing
• Too little emphasis on testing
• Constrained by silos and territoriality
• Too many meetings

4. Focus on White Knights

• Donor Communication and Consistency
• Donor Services
• All Staff Sells, All The Time
• Staff Training/Continuity

Metrics

1. Key Value Metrics

• Retention rates by year
• LTV by Source
• Annual Return on Acquisition Investment
• $ added for every 1 point addition to retention rate

2. Donor Services

• Thank you process
• Time for response and resolution
• Donor Feedback

3. Beware of too heavy emphasis on campaign by campaign measurement and ROI

Methods

1. Develop sources of investment funds
2. Explain to board and donors the true value of investment in acquisition and retention
3. Survey and pinpoint drivers and destroyers of donor commitment and loyalty
4. Provide feedback mechanisms
5. Focus on donor service. Far more important than you think.

Folklore is silent on the fate of the Magic Mirror, but one report appearing in Fundraising Success and confirmed by Jeff Brooks in Future Fundraising Now claims the queen tossed it out and is now attending conferences … has struck up a friendship with Pam and Nancy … and is reading The Agitator each morning as she sips her Red Bull and pens thank you notes and birthday cards to her donors as she studies this quarter’s donor retention report.

Adapted for the mature fundraising audience by Roger Craver