The public trust with technology, religion, business, education, government, media, and institutions generally continues to deteriorate. This understanding represents a decision-point for advancement folks.
We can either bemoan the fact that building trust with donors is harder today than ever before – which is accurate.
Or, we can buck the current cultural trends and actually build lasting trust with our donors.
When we choose the latter, we must prepare ourselves to share a level of organizational transparency that is not typical when compared to other business, government, education, nonprofit, and organizational entities. We must be willing to share our shortcomings as well as our achievements, our fears as well as our joys, our weaknesses as well as our greater strengths.
The conventional wisdom, of course, is that we build confidence and trust with donors by only showing one side of our organization’s outcomes. We think that showing only the commendations, only the successes and achievements, only the positive distinctives, only the “wins,” as the way to encourage donors and others to support our efforts.
But this approach is misguided and, ultimately, moves donors and potential donors to a place of disinterest. No human entity or relationship is perfect. No organization is without weaknesses. No initiative is without concerns. Smart humans understand this.
When we only show the glossy, positive side of our work and efforts, our best donors sense the lack of transparency. When we fail to be candid, we trigger the natural human instinct to be cautious, to be skeptical, and, ultimately, to distrust.
The most consistently effective way to build trust with others is to invite them to help us be better tomorrow than we are today.
Which, of course, means, that we, first, have to admit that we can be better.
