Face-to -face fundraising is a tough business, full of rejection.  Although your direct mail appeal gets rejected at an even higher rate (unopened, non-response) it’s less personal, less in your face (literally).

Fundraisers need to be resilient.   If you can’t handle rejection, you can’t handle the gig.

As a relevant aside, DVCanvass (our F2F and TM company) is using psychological measures to pre-screen and qualify job applicants for the traits that best fit the job thus increasing their satisfaction, lowering our cost to hire and making the teams more cohesive and productive for your ROI.

One of those traits is being more extroverted (which has its own sub-traits, each different and important).  These people also happen to naturally smile more in lots of settings.   Does smiling make them better fundraisers?  Why would that be?

The F-2F sign up process is the start of a relationship.  We know that tiny modicums of reliability and reciprocity and trust are being established if the process is done well (verus a pressurized, guilt- inducing sign-up).  A smile can signal these relationship dimensions.  Smiling people seem more sociable and willing to cooperate, which are signals of a positive, social exchange.  A smile has also been shown to enhance the pleasure of those seeing it.  Customers are more likely to buy the more genuine the smile.

In a F2F street fundraising field experiment it was found that smiling does impact the way the passerby behaves but not always positively.   Signups are higher but so are harsher rejections.

That same smile that conveys cooperation, reliability and trust in some engenders a feeling of being pressured in others.  These passersby feel uncomfortable having to reject a friendly person, creating discomfort and resulting in a more hostile rejection ranging from avoiding all eye contact and pretending the person isn’t there to verbally nasty comments.

More signups.  More harsh rejection.  It isn’t clear cut on how this plays out in the long-term for the rejected fundraiser on the receiving end of the harshness.  If you run your operation heavily focused on easy-to-collect,  volume metrics (e.g. sign up per shift) then you probably don’t care.

The better counsel is to find agencies using behavioral science to improve their top of the funnel hiring so those smiles are more genuine.  Smiles displayed by fundraisers who are more temperamentally inclined and who are more resilient and better able to process rejection is your better path to success.

But if that seems too involved, just smile and dial…

Kevin