And consumers are overwhelmed and not paying much attention anymore.  According to David Shenk, in 1965, consumers reported recalling 34% of television ads.  By 1990, that number dropped to 8%.

Between the messaging deluge and the fact that we are remembering less of what marketers are delivering to us, I remain unconvinced that a strategy of repeatedly delivering fundraising appeals through traditional “channels” (face-to-face, phone, direct mail, magazines, even electronically) will bring the levels of gift income your organization needs or deserves.

What if, instead of focusing so much on the channels, we investigated how our donors experience our institutional brand?  What specific experiences do our donors have when they interact with our institution?  And, then, how do we repeatedly engage the senses of our donors and remind them why supporting our institution is important?

In his book, Brand Sense, Martin Lindstrom suggests that we should craft a “Five Dimensional Brand.”  We should communicate our institutional brand through the five senses:

• Sight – the most seductive and powerful of all the  senses – colors impact our emotions and images reinforce beliefs;
• Sound – has the ability to generate mood – just remember how you feel when you hear a favorite song from your college days;
• Smell – research shows that a full 75% of our emotions are generated by smell;
• Touch – has the power to increase well-being which is why we want to “stay in touch,” or feel “touched” when something good happens;
• Taste – the weakest of our five senses, but the power of eating an agreeable meal with friends is well understood.

So, how can we use the five senses in our work as advancement professionals?  Here are questions that immediately come to mind:

• Does your direct mail packaging always deliver a distinctive touch and sight?  For instance, what paper stock do you use for the envelope – standard #10 or distinctive to your organization?
• What about the smells and tastes you deliver during events?  Have you thought about establishing a branded smell at your events?  I know some admissions offices at colleges that spray the scent of freshly-baked brownies so that prospective new students will be reminded of a “warm, home smell.”
• And what about sound?  What distinctive song or tune could you incorporate on your web-page, at events, or through e-solicitations which would remind donors of why your institution is worthy of support?

Yes, we should strategize around the channels we use to communicate with donors and prospective donors.  But by itself, that is not enough.  When we communicate through all five senses we give our institution the opportunity to create deeply-personal relationships with donors – relationships that encourage donors to remember us fondly.

It is estimated that development officers are staying in their positions an average of 1.5 – 2.5 years.  Understanding that quality development work is a relationship-based enterprise and that the total cost to replace an employee rests somewhere around 1.5 times the annual salary, it should be a priority for development leaders to increase the average tenure of team members.

So why do people leave jobs?  Conventional workplace wisdom suggests that money remains the chief reason driving employees to leave one institution for another.

However, workplace satisfaction surveys abound which suggest that money typically doesn’t register as a top job-leaving motivator.  Here is what the HR consulting firm Right Management found after surveying 1,308 people on why they left their last positions:

• Sought new challenges or opportunities (30%);
• Ineffective leadership (25%);
• Poor relationship with manager (22%);
• To improve work/life balance (21%);
• Contributions to the company were not valued (21%);
• Better compensation and benefits (18%)

So, only 18% identified better money as the impetus to leave.  Hmmm.

In Leigh Branham’s book, “The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave,” he argues that the vast majority of people want to feel “trust, hope, worth, and competent.”  His 7 “hidden” reasons why employees leave?

1. Unmet expectations
2. Mismatch skills
3. Lack of coaching and feedback
4. Limited growth opportunities
5. Feeling unrecognized or devalued
6. Overworked
7. Loss of confidence in senior leaders

The lists crafted by Right Management and Branham suggest there are far more effective methods to keep star employees engaged, excited, and productive.

One of the most effective methods is for leaders to regularly and proactively plan for each employee’s growth.  Put another way, the best development leaders systematically have conversations with staff members that explore their likes, interests, goals, dreams, and plans to grow professionally.

What’s the next challenge or position for them?  What do they want to achieve ultimately?  And how can their supervisor help them get there?  It’s a simple but powerful attitude:  Care for each person by accessing their dreams and goals.  Make yourself available as a coach and mentor.  Proactively look for new challenges and create new opportunities.  And do these things regularly.

We do our best development work with donors when we evidence a care about them as people.  The same holds true for each of our staff members.

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice. – Marquis de la Grange

I love this quote.  It can be read as manipulative, but I choose not to. And yes, “accomplice,” does convey wrongdoing of some sort.  But if not taken so literally, it can be read in a way that reminds us of how we should be doing our work:

1. Find prospects with financial capacity and at least some interest in who we are or what we do;
2. Communicate with them about the impact we make;
3. Get them involved;
4. Ask for their advice regarding our work/plans for the future so that we can have even more impact;
5. Explore with them how they can supplement their advice with their financial investment.

Every organization needs more accomplices.  And when you regularly ask for advice, you are one-step away from gaining more.

“The heavy hitters,” I heard recently when I asked this question.  ”These are people of influence and affluence.”    Great!  To our Boards we attract leaders from business, the clergy, political players, and other people of social and financial importance.

And then, if we aren’t careful, we take these typically highly-experienced, big-thinking leaders of men and women and during Board meetings invite them to discuss how to plan a special event.  Or we focus them on a line item in the budget explaining how we are keeping the supplies expense lower than last year.  Or we spend 1/2 hour talking about how we changed the script of our phonathon.  Or any number of tactical, operational concerns.

Is this a good use of their time and capabilities?  Will tasks such as these bring deep meaning to their Board service?

It’s not that planning a special event or analyzing the budget is not important.  Both are.  But when we have these “heavy hitters” sitting around our table, shouldn’t we spend the bulk of our time asking them to help shape the strategic vision for the institution and then ask them to think with us about who else may have an interest in our good work?

Yes, creating Board agendas that spend more time in generative and strategic activities is not easy.  But it’s partly the role of administrators to help craft such agendas.  Yes, it typically means more thought and maybe even more work to craft agendas that ask Board members to consider and discuss topics of consequence.  It’s much easier to have an agenda filled with “report outs.”

Pull out a recent agenda of your Development (Advancement) Committee.  If more than 50% of the time in committee was spent on agenda items that fail to engage them meaningfully (e.g., progress updates, report outs, tactical issues), you probably need to rethink your agendas.

When we regularly tap the creativity and passions of our Board members – when we focus their energy and capacities away from the details of operations and onto the strategic, generative, and visionary – we allow them to truly lead.  We bring more meaning and fulfillment to their service.  And we give our institutions the opportunity to truly advance.

Recently, Seth Godin blogging about Gifts, misunderstood, stated the following:

A gift costs the giver something real. It might be cash (enough that we feel the pinch) but more likely it involves a sacrifice or a risk or an emotional exposure. A true gift is a heartfelt connection, something that changes both the giver and the recipient.

When we engage with donors, do we recognize — do we really embrace — the notion that their giving will change them as much if not more than it will change our organizations and those we serve?

If we did, we would view our work more as a mission, and less as a job.

If we did, we would grow our donor base, not because it happens to be an annual goal, but because we want more people to have the experience.

If we did, we wouldn’t concern ourselves with false notion of “donor fatigue.”  We would create more opportunities and ways for donors to give.

Back in the early 1900′s, Thomas Gonser, who was the founder GGTS, stated he was not a fundraiser.  Instead he was an educator – educating people so that they better understood the ways in which they could invest in the organization and in their own lives.

He understood then what Seth Godin reminds us of today:  a true gift provides grand benefits to all involved.

As I checked into each hotel, I asked the front desk attendants if they wanted my loyalty number.  It just so happened that both hotels were part of chains that I frequent.

At the first hotel, the attendant thought I was asking if I would be earning points for my stay.  She told me that she didn’t need my number because I couldn’t get points for a stay that was paid by the airline.  Tired and weary from the day, I smiled and thanked her for my room.

A few weeks later at the second hotel, the attendant started down the same path.  I would not be getting points for my stay so she wouldn’t need my number.  I almost smiled and walked away again but didn’t.  ”No, no,” I said, “I’m not wanting points for this stay. . . I understand I’m not paying for this so I’m not getting points.  I’m asking you about capturing my number because I’m wondering if you want to know who is in your hotel?”    She looked at me funny like she was trying to figure out what I was talking about.

After an odd pause, her reply, again, was simply, “I don’t need your number since you aren’t paying.”

If these hotels acted comprehensively in support of their customer loyalty programs, they would always ask if customers have their loyalty number.  Not so the customer can get points, but so they can better serve their most loyal guests!

After a frustrating evening of delayed and cancelled flights, the maddening rearranging of schedules, and coming to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t be sleeping in my own bed, they missed a huge opportunity.

Just imagine if 5 minutes after I checked into my room I received a knock at the door and there was a smiling hotel attendant with a cookie and a bottle of water.  And just imagine if this attendant simply said,  ”We are sorry your travel plans have been cancelled, but we are glad you are with us tonight.  Thank you for being a member of our loyalty club.”  Do you think I would remember that?  And do you think that would strengthen my brand loyalty to that hotel?  Absolutely!

I started to think how many times we may miss opportunities to give a special touch to leadership donors and other key individuals at events, performances, or other gatherings?  How many times do we miss opportunities to let them know that we are celebrating with them, or mourning with them, or laughing with them.

We have opportunities each day to strengthen key relationships through seemingly small actions.  It doesn’t take a lot of effort or energy.  It simply requires us to ask ourselves a similar question that I asked during my layovers:  ”Do we want to know who is in our hotel?”

When work was primarily about mass production – be it producing cars, steel, widgets, or even paving roads – workers routinely exercised “workplace governors” to keep the pace of the production at a level which would guarantee more work in future.  Work too much and too hard and you just might not have the work to come back to tomorrow – thus, no paycheck.

However, today we toil in a different vineyard.  Instead of worrying about “working ourselves out of a job,” we should be acting as if we are trying to work ourselves out of a job.

Think of it this way.

In today’s reality, there is much less “mass” and much more “customized.”  Much less focus on “production” and much more on “relationship building.”  And “customized relationship-building” is the opposite of “mass production.”

There is little to no duplication.  It matters what individual donors believe, request, and enjoy.  The interactions we have can be wildly diverse.  The idea of “quality control,” has been replaced by the concept of “value-add.”

Want to raise more money for your organization?  Build more meaningful, personalized relationships with individuals who have financial capacity.  That’s our more chaotic, non-assembly line reality.

It doesn’t matter if you enter gifts, run the phonathon, direct the annual fund, manage a portfolio of major donors,  serve as vice president, or even CEO of the organization.  The focus of each of those positions should be to help create more personal and meaningful relationships for the organization.

When we act like we are trying to work ourselves out of a job, we encourage and “grow” those around us, we enhance the systems in our office so that personalized service provided to our constituencies becomes habitual, and we individualize our strategies.  We are entrepreneurial.  We respond creatively.  We are anti-mass production.

Unlike the assembly-line of years gone by, our results are enhanced when we add value to every aspect of the advancement process.  Our jobs have changed and so should our thinking.

Recently I read some fascinating research on community college presidents completed by Matt Thompson, a good friend and thoughtful higher education leader.  Matt’s research re-introduced me to the concept of verstehen – a concept associated with the eminent German sociologist Max Weber.

Essentially, verstehen is a German word that is loosely defined as understanding the meaning of someone’s actions by attempting to understanding their point of view.  It is empathy in action.

Weber suggested that sociologists (or anthropologists for that matter) do their best work when they practice verstehen – when they attempt to understand or comprehend the people and the cultures they are studying not from their own perspective as a researcher, but from the perspectives of the people themselves.

Weber suggested that doing “research on actors without taking into account the meanings they attribute to their actions or environment is to treat them like objects.”  Hmmm.

As development professionals, we don’t spend our days doing sociological research.   However, Weber’s notion of verstehen is helpful.  To do our work well, we have to know and understand, as completely as we can, the drives, interests, values, perspectives, and attitudes of our donors and prospects.  And we should know these things from their perspective, not our own.

What does your donor in Cleveland, OH, believe about philanthropy and why does he believe it?  How does your donor in Atlanta, GA, make her philanthropic decisions and why is this decision-making process logical to her?  These are the types of understanding we need to have in order to do our work well.

So, how do people in your organization interpret the actions of donors and prospects?  Do we really view donors as individuals – attempting to understand them on their terms, as Weber suggests?  Or, do we view them as objects from which we need to get something?

If your organization uses the phrase, “giving units,” you just may have your answer.

Is that it?  Is that all that happens?

Despite all the talk about “engaging donors,” I’m afraid to say that for many educational, healthcare, and non-profit organizations, the answer is “yes.”

So, what else should we be doing in response to a donor’s gift?  Here are 3 simple responses, which, when included in a letter with a gift receipt, could transform your organization’s relationships with its donors.  After expressing ample gratitude in the letter,  why not:

1. Invite them to join you at an event or other activity.  A student fine arts performance or an athletic event on your campus.  The concert by the Woman’s Choir that is being given during the Christmas season at your hospital.  A community festival or event important to your organization.  Or, if they live outside of your region, alert them to an outreach event that you are planning in their area.
2. Ask for their advice.  Let them know that your development office is seeking donor feedback on how your organization can make the donor experience more meaningful.  That you’d like to talk with them via phone for a 10-15 minute survey.  Develop questions if you don’t have some good ones and conduct a survey.  Imagine what you just might learn.  And imagine how many relationships you may strengthen.
3. Let them know you’d like to visit them.  Even if you already know them, a statement such as, “Our institution is enjoying such momentum currently.  I would welcome the opportunity to visit with you and share the many positive developments.”

Our work is about building purposeful relationships with donors.  Saying “thanks” in response to a gift is appropriate – but it is also the bare minimum of responses.  To generate the kind of engagement we say we want with our donors, we must stretch beyond extending gratitude and, instead,  extend ourselves.

We see this principle at work in easily-recognized statements such as, “we’ve always done it this way.”  Or, “I’m going to do what I’ve always done and let someone else worry about it.”

However, homeostatis can rear its ugly head in other ways as well.  Think about how we compare our organization to others.  Typically, we will find a set of “peer” and/or “aspirant” organizations by which we will judge our progress.  All of these comparison organizations will be similar in some fundamental way to ours.

But what if we decided to compare ourselves to organizations distinctly different from our own?  Very rarely do we do this.  We don’t reach out beyond our “industry-type” (i.e. education, healthcare, social non-profit) to compare and learn from organizations different from ours.

The development leaders of an education institution don’t have a regularized method to learn from the development leaders in healthcare.   Similarly, the small community non-profit typically assumes there isn’t much value in hearing how the large national organization organizes and manages its major gift process.

In my  work as a consultant I am often asked to include “references from organizations similar to ours” when I submit a proposal.  This is another example of a homeostatic mistake.

When we limit our comparisons to those who look like us, talk like us, and serve like us, we run the very real risk of losing our creative edge and becoming typical and average.  In order to learn we must stretch beyond what is known, comfortable, and typical.

Homeostatis encourages us to stay the same and to mitigate the effects of our environment.  But it is only when we do the opposite that we give ourselves the chance to do something really special.