Tell Your Story

Friends,

One of the pleasures of writing a blog is that you start paying attention to other blogs. I've been watching one for a while--Don't Tell the Donor.org, which is one of the most irreverent sites I've found in the nonprofit blogosphere. The site's conceit is that the author maintains anonymity because he/she works for a nonprofit and risks being fired if the opinions expressed go a bit too far. The author doesn't blanch at being a social critic of the practices and excesses of the nonprofit world, and the posts are insightful and supportive of those of us who work for or with nonprofits.

A recent one, entitled, The best fundraisers are those who can tell a story, features a video of Professor Brian Sturm from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: "He describes storytelling as a way of organizing information, conveying emotions, and building community."

At our 2007 conference--MajorGiving: The Conference 2007, we held two breakout sessions all about telling your institutional story. While everyone's story-telling ability varies, it's clear that being able to talk about your organization in the most compelling fashion is a sure-fire way to gain attention and audience.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I held a "buzz party" for the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF), on whose board I serve, and one of whose stories (a rather compelling one about their courage to produce a controversial work over the objections of a couple of board members) I told at the major giving conference. Because we live in Winchester, Virginia, which is about 40 minutes from CATF's home in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, we wanted to introduce the theater company to our community. We rented the local arts council, hired a local 15 year old jazz sax prodigy, and slaved to do the hors d'oeuvres ourselves. About seventy people attended, and for all of our efforts, what mattered the most was the mesmerizing and compelling story of the theater and its upcoming season that was presented by CATF's Producing Director. There's a certain evangelical quality about him, and I began to appreciate how this man lives and breathes the mission of his organization. The audience at the party was spell-bound, and I was told by at least a dozen of them that they were planning on attending this season.

I think we do a disservice to the organizations we serve when we don't communicate our mission and service in an exciting way. Humans respond to narratives, and, just as all books, plays and movies are, in essence, variations on the same myths that have been told for thousands of years, making our institutional stories new and relevant is central to our ability to win the hearts and minds of our donors.

Keep messages about your organization fresh and exciting and donors will respond!

Talk to you soon!

Bob

One Bloated Incentive Per Donor

Friends,

OK, I fell for it. The incentives offered by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), appealed to my lust for new technology and a deal that was almost too good to be true--for $400 I would provide a poor child in a developing country with a laptop, add to the trove of technology in my home, and receive $400 worth of T-Mobile internet hotspot access. Seduced by the Maharishi of M.I.T., who spun this latest romp into venture philanthropy, I skipped the math, ignored my blogger/critic curmudgeonly spirit and nearly tripped over myself to take advantage of this offer.

As you may know, I have been critical of gimmicks in fundraising. I believe that the best fundraising practices--barring emergency appeals for tsunamis and hurricanes and the like--are about relationship building rather than mass marketing. OLPC is a classic example of incentive-based fundraising that does little to engender a long term relationship with the donor. And this project is one where their vaulting ambition o'er leaped itself, as the pitch was even more about the technology than the mission or the communities being served. OLPC's website is clever, but it seems to promote the toys rather than the outcomes. Even its wiki is light on stories involving communities being transformed by the technology--and you have to work hard to go beyond the hype.

So what have I learned?

• Shame on me for bobbing for the bauble--I should know better.
• The world would be better if all children had access to this type of technology, but after reading about numerous shipping delays (interesting article on the Boston Globe website), I'm skeptical that this foundation has the ability to deliver. Furthermore, they have failed in their efforts to collaborate with a variety of important manufacturers (including Microsoft) and countries that have their own manufacturers and requirements.
• Perform more due diligence about any nonprofit before donating. Not only is the delivery mechanism suspect, but the technology itself is controversial, and it has been harshly criticized (OLPC seems to be reeling from a stinging article in The Economist).
  
• Be wary of promises and examine each nonprofit's track record.
  
• If you're a startup nonprofit with a great idea, don't forsake the donor. The nature of the emails I received from OLPC was presumptuous. The marketing hype promoted the enlightened self-interest of the donor, but I found the follow-up messages about the delays to be fatuous and downright insulting. Over the course of a month, all they did was reinforce my fears that the organization was run by arrogant messianic geeks who were contemptuous of anyone who didn't drink their Kool-Aid.
• Don't make a gift in order to receive something in return. Give because you believe in the mission, vision, and values--and the track-record--of the organization.

I give to many nonprofits--more to those with which I have a personal interest. This is the first time since my first few gifts to public broadcasting where the "thank you"incentive helped draw me in. And it has left a sour taste--about the organization and about my all-too-human response to succumb to the hype. I'm not putting the hex on OLPC, and I wish them good luck. I ponder, however, over how successful new venture philanthropy will ever be. When people ignore Santayana's advise--in this case as it relates to a long, illustrious tradition of institutional advancement--they risk not only repeating the mistakes of the past but creating new, monumental blunders.

Talk to you soon!

Bob

No Laptops in Sight

Friends,

I have been a big fan of Nicholas Negroponte ever since my latent inner geek became unchained when I read Stewart Brand’s 1988 book about him, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M. I. T. Over the years, his think tank and laboratory has been the leading edge in all things digital, and his own writings in Wired, many of which appear in his 1995 book, Being Digital, provide historical perspective, prognostication, and peroration.

I was not surprised when he turned his attention to the developing world and created the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC). It's a great idea--at a low cost distribute special laptops to third-world children that can function in the harshest environments and network together wirelessly, and package it as a "gimme" for American donors. Here's the pitch: for $400 you give one and you get one. Even better, OLPC managed to get T-Mobile to provide all "donors" with a free year subscription to their internet hot spots at Starbucks and airports around the country--a $400 value. Everybody wins with this deal!

Well, I was excited and made my “contribution” of $400 in mid-December, understanding, of course, that I might not receive my laptop until right after Christmas—this was made clear in my thank you letter on December 20th. On January 6th and 10th I received identical emails thanking me for my gift and advising me of my order reference number. Then, on January 20th, they sent me an email message to tell me that my laptop was in the queue for shipment and that I would receive another email on the 23rd to tell me when I could expect it to arrive.

I found this strange, and I wondered whether there was a supply/demand problem that would affect third-world children from receiving their laptops--after all, that's what this program is all about.

On the 24th my email from them advised me that they were awaiting the arrival of new inventory and that I would hear from them in a couple of days. On the 31st, they finally acknowledged a problem and advised that I would receive my laptop within 45 to 60 days, and that a dedicated phone line was set up to handle refund requests from those who want to reconsider their "contribution." They also finally touched on the mission side of the equation:

In the meanwhile, please know that laptops are in the process of going to Mongolia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Haiti as part of the "give one" side of the equation. Fortunately, OLPC's mission of getting laptops to the children in these countries has not been delayed. In Mongolia , the children are already enjoying themselves and learning new things with their XO laptops. Please see: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ulaanbaatar.

A week went by and I finally decided to ask for a refund. I called their number, and it took twenty minutes for the person on the other end to locate my gift, perhaps because my reference number was different in three of the emails. Upon finding it, she asked if I would accept a $200 refund so that a laptop would still be provided to a child in a developing country. I explained that they failed to gain my confidence in their ability to deliver on anything and that I would rather re-direct the funds to a philanthropy in which I felt confident. She said she would pass my comments and I would receive a refund on my credit card within seven business days. Three weeks later, there’s been no credit to my account.

Why am I not surprised?

In my next post, I’ll share some lessons learned from this experience as well as general observations of incentive-based philanthropy.

Talk to you soon!

Bob