|
Conversation recently overheard in a Belfast pub:
Drinker 1: Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?
Drinker 2: Atheist.
Drinker 1: Yeah, but are you a Protestant atheist or a
Catholic atheist?
 This joke contains a miracle: it is cause for celebration that religious differences are the
topic of humor emerging from Northern Ireland. Saturday is the 5th anniversary of the announcement that the Irish
Republican Army was fully disarmed.
Imagine the trust that it took for two factions that had been fighting
for decades - for generations -- to put down their weapons.
Trust is the word of the month. It is the most important element in a
relationship between fund raiser and donor.
Imagine, as you prepare for your next conversation with a donor, that you are entering one of the
following situations:
- A heart surgeon invites
you into the operating theater to help (after you have washed your
hands, of course).
- A war orphan, wakened by
nightmares, puts her head on your lap and goes back to sleep.
- A trapeze artist asks for
you - you, specifically, by name - to hold the net for her final dive from
the top of the tent. You - the
newest clown in the troupe!*
OK, I admit that I have a flare for exaggeration. Fund raising is not as dramatic as negotiating
disarmament, heart surgery, caring for a refugee, or holding a net for the
high wire acrobat. But trust is critical
in every juncture in a relationship with a donor. For instance, when a donor is considering
... whether to welcome you to her home
... how much to reveal about the complexity of her family tree
and the money that grows on different branches
... how much to show you her excitement about your
organization's work
... how to respond to a solicitation
... what names to give you
when asked for other prospective donors
In other words, every time you turn around, the donor
determines how much room you have to maneuver based on how much she trusts you.
If you attend first to being worthy of a donor's trust,
everything else will be a lot easier.
*for another "fund raising is a circus" analogy, see my article The three ring circus in a donor's living room in the current issue of Contributions magazine.
| 
