4 Principles of Positive Influence and 3 Ways to Build a Strong Fundraising Culture
We were delighted to again welcome more than 400 fundraisers from across the globe for our regular Breakfast Club event. They came together to learn strategies, supportive community and to share ideas for growing fundraising income.
Whether you were there, or you missed it and are curious, here is a summary of the ideas.
How to Beat ‘The Curse of Knowledge’
I’ve noticed that while some fundraisers operate as though people either are or are not motivated to donate, the most effective teams understand they have a great deal of influence over their fundraising destiny.
In particular, they believe that what you say, and how you say it, makes a big difference to whether someone feels inspired to give…and therefore to your results.
A major threat to effective fundraising is what Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the excellent Made to Stick call The Curse of Knowledge.
Put simply, if you have worked for a charity for more than a few weeks, there is a high risk that the perspective you have from being within the charity, will harm your chances of communicating persuasively with potential supporters.
Unless we are careful, here are four ways The Curse of Knowledge can harm our chances of fundraising success:
Pitfall 1. Tone of voice. The tone of language we speak in can be very different from the way people usually speak.
Solution. Use everyday language. Find and use real examples.
Phrases like ‘services to combat social isolation’ probably make perfect sense within your charity. But would someone outside your charity use this phrase to describe the problem they are dealing with? Or would they talk about, for example, how ‘lonely’ they are?
Even though your supporter can work out what you mean…that doesn’t mean that speaking or writing in the formal and technical tone will bring your cause to life as powerfully as if you speak in a more conversational tone, ie as if you were having a real conversation with your supporter.
One way to improve what you say and write about your charity is to include more real examples.
I shared an example from the Chief Executive of a brilliant charity that runs cookery classes for older men who rarely cook for themselves. By helping them grow their confidence to cook, these simple classes have been having amazing results, in terms of improvements in the men’s health and in their social lives.
The example that brought it home to me was of a gentleman who has gone from living almost entirely on microwave dinners and other processed food… to now cheerfully batch-cooking home-made curries for himself and his friends.
Of course, sharing real examples and stories about your charity can be easier said than done. On our Influencing Donors and Supporters Team Training we share dozens of techniques to help you solve the problems.
Pitfall 2. ‘Numbers’ just isn’t a normal language for humans.
Solution. Translate numbers as often as you can.
Most charities are rightly angry about the scale of the problem they deal with. And they are often right to be proud of the number of people or animals they help.
The problem is, we usually overestimate how meaningful these numbers are to other people! As Chip Heath and Karla Starr show in another wonderful book, Making Numbers Count, the human brain is just not designed to genuinely ‘get’ what most numbers mean.
The solution? There are four techniques you can use to solve the problem.
I share them all in our Training for Fundraising Teams. We’ve found they are relatively easy to learn, and once you know, they are a very powerful tool.
For instance, one of the techniques is for solving the problem of ‘Big-ism’. This is our tendency to presume that the bigger a number is, the more impressed our listeners will be!
Whereas in fact, we’ve found that using some simple division to show the number in the context of a smaller unit, (for example of time), numbers usually become much more compelling.
One fundraiser named Lizzi, who attended this training last year, found this idea a refreshing change to the approach her charity had been using.
After the training, Lizzi’s charity was in the running to win a Charity of the Year partnership. She was asked to submit an outline of her charity in only 100 words.
She fed back that her charity’s typical way of describing the scale of the problem was in terms of the ‘1100 children who are referred to our services…’
Having understood the lure of ‘Big-ism’, she instead started her summary with: Every 8 hours a vulnerable child is referred for support…’
The result? Lizzi was delighted to share that her 100-word summary was successful – her charity won the valuable charity of the year partnership.
Pitfall 3. Quantity!
Unless we’re very careful The Curse of Knowledge causes us to include too many messages in fundraising proposals, pitches and conversations about our charity.
Solution. Choose and focus on far fewer messages.
There are two major challenges. One is deciding which messages will make the biggest difference to the person you are writing or pitching to.
This is not easy. But the harder you work at gathering insight on why this person would choose our charity when they read this proposal, the more obvious these few messages become.
To be honest, the challenge that is even harder is sticking to just these few messages in your proposal or pitch!
It takes fierce determination to stick to these messages, in the face of all the forces in your own head and in your charity that will potentially water down these few messages. Of course, the other suggestions from your colleagues often sound reasonable.
But it’s a slippery slope. And the more extra messages you include, the harder it is to bring to life the few, important messages in ways which are persuasive.
Katie Hillitt from the charity Refuge, shares an example of the rewards approach can bring in this episode of my podcast: ‘We aced all three big pitches – here’s how’.
Katie and her team had learnt what we call The Golden Thread Principle in our training, and in the podcast she shares the three messages were that they knew would be most likely to inspire their audience to choose their charity.
She said that again and again they kept removing content, so that they could bring to life these three crucial ideas.
What happened? They won the pitch, which will be worth several million pounds to the charity.
They repeated the technique in their two subsequent big pitches this year…which they also won.
We share with you exactly how to apply the Golden Thread Principle in our Writing to Influence Masterclass.
This includes, as Katie and her team did so effectively, how to choose the few important messages that will make the biggest difference, and how to keep your proposal focused on only those most-persuasive messages.
Pitfall 4. We make too big a leap.
Solution. Plan to inspire one step at a time.
One reason fundraising proposals take so long to write, and are less effective than they could be, is that we overestimate how much one proposal can achieve on its own.
We write the document as though it could possibly include everything needed to help someone to make a decision about a valuable grant, major gift or partnership.
While it’s true that some proposals are the only chance you will ever have to inspire someone to choose your charity…the truth is, many proposals are far more likely to serve your interests if you see them as stepping stones that build relationships, rather than the means to secure a gift itself.
On the Writing to Influence masterclass we share a technique that helps you get crystal clear on the strategic objective of your proposal.
Why is this distinction so valuable?
Because when you understand what success looks like (for this proposal or pitch) you can a) increase your chances of achieving that goal and b) often, spend a lot less time writing!
For example, when you realise the main objective of your writing is to set up a chance to chat to your supporter, you are released from the pressure to write nearly so much about your project! And you often get great ideas for how to achieve this next-step goal in a more creative way.
3 Ways to Embed Good Habits and Build a Strong Fundraising Culture
Also at Breakfast Club, we enjoyed a wonderful presentation from the brilliant Shelley Thompson, Head of New Partnerships at Oxfam GB.
Shelley shared that they had really liked the ideas and skills her team had learned and practiced in their Bright Spot team training.
Knowing that success in fundraising is more of a marathon than a sprint, she was determined to keep the key ideas and techniques alive over the long term.
She shared several ways they have been reinforcing an intentional approach to culture. Here are three that clearly resonated with the other fundraisers and leaders at Breakfast Club:
- Everyday language and knowing real stories.
Determined to build a culture where her team know real examples and are confident to talk about her charities’ work in meaningful, everyday language, Shelley now hosts a story-sharing session every 6-8 weeks.
It’s been making a wonderful difference. Shelley shared a particular example of how these sessions helped one fundraiser to improve relationships by bringing the cause to life in fresh, relatable ways.
- Translating numbers into persuasive things to say.
The team also liked the insights they had learned in the training about why human beings just don’t really ‘get’ (feel!) the powerful meanings behind our numbers, unless we proactively translate them. And they loved the Bright Spot techniques they had learned for bringing these numbers to life.
To build these skills and help everyone in the team to continue to benefit from each others’ good ideas, they have implemented a ‘Numbers and Natter’ meeting every two months.
The team now finds it much easier to find and use practical translations of her charities’ important numbers.
Shelley wanted to maximise chances that everyone knew what positive principles and habits they aimed to apply in their every-day fundraising.
She explained how she had really liked the Bright Spot tactic they learned from Grace Cannings of Parkinson’s UK. (You can listen to it here on the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast.)
As a team they used a short team meeting to decide on their approach to fundraising. Crucially, these principles were not imposed by an outside agency. They were ‘designed by the team, for the team.’
The 10 short ‘philosophies’ are team principles which they know are valuable, but which might not always happen automatically.
Here are a few:
‘Have a meaningful conversation’,
‘Find the joy, and share it’,
‘If it’s not on salesforce, it didn’t happen’
‘Stories Stories Stories’.
One thing I always find interesting about this kind of list of team principles, is that to outsiders, some of these ideas may seem fairly obvious. Yes, maybe.
But within the team that came up with them, they are important, meaningful reminders of ‘how we aim to do things every day’.
As Shelley explained, they have found that having a shared language makes it much easier for everyone to keep building good habits and a strong culture.
If you’d like to book your place on this upcoming Masterclasses, here is the link:
Writing to Influence – 10th July, London – This dynamic Masterclass will help you improve your skill and confidence to grow fundraising results when you write to supporters, donors and partners.
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