Who’s On The Fundraising Revolution ‘Purge’ List?

October 6, 2016      Roger Craver

There’s no question that if organizations are to thrive in a future marked by fast-moving change a substantial transformation in mindset, methods and metrics is essential.

Over and over The Agitator has attempted to deal with why these changes are essential. A sampling our thoughts on Mindset here. Methods here and here. And Metrics here, here and here.

Slowly, but surely, the traditional and broken approach of applying so-called ‘best practices’ and tribal wisdom is giving way to the findings of truly empirical analysis and the research of behavioral scientists.

Sadly, this already slow transformation in mindset, methods and metrics will be further hampered by the pathetic state of skill, experience and fundamental talent in our trade.

Success today — and increasingly for tomorrow — will require a deep pool of true talent. Instead, we have a talent puddle, and too many organizations are failing to deal with this fundamental weakness.

That’s why I was delighted to read the post by John Lepp of Agents of Good titled The Love Revolution.

John is calling for nothing short of a revolution — along with some hefty pruning and purging of some dinosaurs — in our sector. Let me explain.

As a result of a summer school hosted by AskDirect in Dublin John reports, “my head is filled with some thoughtfulness and wisdom from the best brains our sector offers. Beate Sorum, Rory Green, Tom Ahern, Ken Burnett, Jen Love, Simone Joyaux, Damian O’Broin, Mark Phillips, Simon Scriver.

fistThis collective wisdom or crowdsourced revolution in the fundraising sector “would require a forceful ejection” of what John terms, “the interlopers.”

“Interlopers”, as defined by John and the Dublin Revolutionary Council, are those who don’t belong in the sector.

Regardless of what you name them, John says there needs to be a calling out of the folks who have created “some of the dire situations in which our friends and colleagues have found themselves, in the UK and beyond.”

In case you’d like a quick checklist for identifying “Interlopers” here’s a partial listing from John and his Dublin Revolutionary Council:

  • “You’re an interloper if you are not as passionate about your cause as your donors. Gut check that.
  • You’re an interloper if you only make decisions based on what will bring you the most ROI in the shortest amount of time.
  • You’re an interloper if you’re afraid to be emotional. Emotionally intelligent in your decision-making and relationships with co-workers and board members. Emotional in your language to your donors as you show them their hard work in action.
  • You’re an interloper if you refuse to listen to the new and passionate people who are flooding into our sector with fresh ideas and love for donors.
  • You’re an interloper if you refuse to educate yourself and read and learn from those who have done the hard work and learned the hard lessons.
  • You’re an interloper if you are only moved by money.
  • You’re an interloper if you refuse to learn the basics. The fundamentals.
  • You’re an interloper if you wouldn’t know a donor even if they walked up and hugged you.”
  • “If you’re an interloper … move on.

The Call to Arms

“It’s time for a revolution.

It’s time to let our donors talk to us and leave if they want to.

It’s time to do what’s right, and not just what generates the most cash.

It’s time to get smaller and do work that scares us.

It’s time to simplify process and get work done.

It’s time to open ourselves up emotionally and be judged.

It’s time to let donors control the experience.

It’s time for a love revolution.”

Are you ready to mount the barricades?

Roger

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 responses to “Who’s On The Fundraising Revolution ‘Purge’ List?”

  1. Simone Joyaux says:
    October 7, 2016 at 3:27 am

    Thanks, Roger, for always pushing the revolution. Fundraising isn’t considred a profession. Perhaps because the NGO sector isn’t considered to be sufficiently real and competent?

    After all, let’s remember that business can save the world. All those social entrepreneurs and philanthrocapitalists. They know better than anyone in the nonprofit sector. (I love Mike Edwards book SMALL CHANGE: HOW BUSINESS WON”T CHANGE THE WORLD.

    And we have volunteer boards. And those individuals are often powerful people. And of course, power = knowledge and right and shut up and listen to me.

    Anyway. I’m wandering a bit. It’s 9:30 a.m. in France. The Emmaus truck just arrived to take away old furniture and hundreds of books and and and … We are moving to a new house.

  2. Ian MacQuillin says:
    October 12, 2016 at 8:28 am

    There’s one thing (at least) in this article (and in John Lepp’s original) that’s set a few alarm bells ringing. It’s this:

    It’s time to do what’s right, and not just what generates the most cash.

    This is setting up a false dichotomy (two alternatives being presented as mutually exclusive when they may not be) between doing what’s right and raising the most cash. Well, in some case, raising the most cash may well be the right thing to do.

    It’s also a dubious argument because it pits a concept (moral correctness) against a particular activity (raising cash) but implies or allows the reader to infer that this is wrong. So there are some assumptions going here behind the scene. If you expose those assumptions, this is what you find:

    It’s time to do what’s right [what’s ‘right’ isn’t stated, but it’s probably certain donorcentrist practices], rather than just what raises most cash [‘just’ raising most cash, probably by use of ‘transactional’ processes, is morally wrong; we have to raise cash in a way that conforms to what’s ‘right’, even though what’s right hasn’t been explicitly described].

    So this could be phrased as:
    We have to do what’s right rather than what’s wrong (which is a tautology).

    Or:
    We have to use particular donorcentrist principles rather than doing just what raises most cash.

    Which is not self-evident (unless you take this to be self-evidently true – in which case we’re in ideological territory), may or may not be true in some, all, many, or a few situations, and needs further justificatory argument than simply asserting that one is right and the other is wrong.

    Why am I taking so much time indulging in what I’m sure many will consider to be semantic pedantry to make a fairly nice point?

    It’s this. Since we at Rogare published our ethics white paper last month, about which the Agitator was kind enough to say some very nice things, there’s emerged a type of argument that says, and I’m paraphrasing:

    ‘We don’t need to overthink this with ethics, we just need to do what’s right.’

    I’m deliberately being pedantically semantic to show that deciding what’s ‘right’ in fundraising is not the simple matter some people seem to think it is.

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