Curiosity Didn’t Kill These Fundraisers—It Made Them Unstoppable

Remember, behind all your work there are people. It’s your job to learn more about them.

One of your best tools is curiosity.

One study published in Harvard Business Review, found curiosity builds trust and improves relationships in the workplace. It also builds trust between you and donors. Jon Simons, Executive V.P. of DBD Group, suggests curiosity is a muscle. It atrophies if you don’t regularly exercise it.

To build your curiosity muscle, Jon suggests:

• Put down your phone and learn a bit about your Uber driver.
• Read a biography of someone who interests you.
• Have lunch with a donor or volunteer you’ve known for a long time and see if can learn three new things about their background or interests.
• Listen to your spouse or children and challenge yourself to stay present and connected during the whole conversation by asking questions.

4 Ways to Put Curiosity to Work: Show Up and Get to Know What’s Around You

Remember, your goal is to really be present. Put away your cell phone or anything else that will distract you. Listen and observe more than you show and tell. As it is said: “You have two ears, one mouth; use them in that proportion.” Also use your two eyes. Note body language, facial expression and tone of voice. You’ll learn a lot.

1. Get to Know Your Work Colleagues

The Executive Search firm, Lindauer, shares the experience of one of their placed development officers, Colleen Fox, who serves as Chief Philanthropy Officer for the Providence Inland Northwest Foundation. Colleen actually scrubbed in to observe a surgery at the hospital for which she raised funds! She claims the experience transformed how she talks to donors about the impact of their support.

“I wanted to better understand the projects our donors funded. But I came away with a whole new level of respect for the skill and complexity of the healthcare team’s work.”

Not only does she now speak with donors with a first-hand understanding about what happens in the operating room when a patient needs lifesaving care, she also developed trust among the staff who provide services.

“After seeing me interact with patients, and understanding the care I brought to those encounters, doctors were not only more comfortable with me, they were also much more willing to refer grateful patients to the development team more generally.”

2. Get to Know Your Programs and Beneficiaries

When I led development and marketing for the San Francisco Food Bank, one of the things my E.D. insisted on was all development staff getting out into the field to observe our work. One afternoon, several of my annual campaign staff visited an elementary school where we distributed school snacks and also ran a weekly pantry for families. They came back to the office on fire!

“The kids don’t even have working drinking fountains! When they get all sweaty on the playground, the only thing they have to drink are the juice boxes we distribute. This isn’t right. We need to do something. Right now! Let’s let our donors know about this.

I also recall a time when I led the philanthropy team at Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. We scheduled a mini-van tour of our programs for some of our board and committee members. One stop, our Adult Day Health Center, particularly moved them. They visited older adults, saw them getting nutritious meals, exercising, playing games, making music and art, and more. They asked them questions about their backgrounds, what they most enjoyed and just generally got curious about their experience. And, they were blown away by viscerally understanding the concrete impact of their support. Later that night, we happened to be holding a fundraising phonathon. One of the board members told me:

“This is the easiest fundraising I’ve ever done. I am asking directly for the people we visited today. I know what is needed, and I know what donor dollars can do. This feels uplifting, not scary.”

3. Get to Know Your Donors

“Fundraisers who prioritize curiosity over solicitation tend to build stronger donor relationships. Instead of leading with “Here’s why you should give,” shift to “Tell me about why you care.”’

— Amy Eisenstein, Capital Campaign Pro

Donors don’t give just because you’re a “good guy nonprofit.” They give because something about the impact you create resonates with their personal passions and values. If you don’t take the time to learn what these are, you’ll miss the mark in making your appeals. As a result, you’ll leave a lot of money on the table.

To learn more about donor passions, ask open-ended generative questions.

Great questions open up dialogue, rather than shut it down. Any question that can be answered with a simple “yes/no” is one you want to avoid. Instead, aim for questions a journalist might ask – with emphasis on “what” and “how” (“why” can seem a bit intrusive). Try some of these [there are more here]:

• How did you first get involved with this cause?

• What about this interests you?

• What else motivates you?

• Tell me a little more about that.

• How might you approach this problem?

• Where do you see the greatest area of need?

• What would the dream be? 

• What stirs you about that?

• What else may be possible? 

4. Get to Know Your Strategies and Systems

We live in a rapidly evolving, technology-powered world. Trust comes at a premium, and organizations must earn it. This means building relationships and investing in human-centered communication, personalization, feedback and fact finding.

Don’t just keep doing what you’ve always done, without asking what you might do instead.

Organizations relying on static, mostly outbound fundraising and marketing strategies and outdated, difficult to use systems will fail to thrive. There’s a lost opportunity cost inherent in every strategy. For example, you may in the past have raised significant dollars from grants or events, but those strategies may no longer yield the same results. Or you may have bought into the overhead myth, strangling your growth by limiting investment in fundraising (seeing it as a cost center rather than a revenue center).

The key to success is getting curious and being adaptable.

Or, what Daniel Pink calls out as attunement, buoyancy and clairity – the new A, B, Cs of sales. The paradigm for success today is transformation, not transaction. This means listening hard, so you make donors feel like the essential change makers they are.

5 Specific Action Steps

Before the impulse evaporates, pick at least three people to call or visit this week or next. Select people you want to get to know better. A donor, colleague, direct report, supervisor or anyone else with whom you would benefit from building a more meaningful relationship. 

Let’s call this person, with whom you’re ready to get curious, Angel.

1. Schedule a Listening Visit

Invite Angel to have a quick chat right now if they’ve got the time. Or invite them to have coffee, a tour, or even a casual Zoom call to learn about their interests later. Leave a voice message if you miss them, including contact information so they can reach you back. Tell them you’ll try again. Follow up with an email to verify the meeting, set it up, or thank them for the chat.

TIP: If you’re calling donors, remember this is not a request for money. Not at this time.  Suggest virtual coffee, tea or cocktails. Or offer to visit or take them out for a snack. Or maybe take a walk together. Get creative with opportunities to engage proactively. One genuine face-to-face or voice-to-voice conversation – where you listen more than you talk – can be as powerful as a full year of mailings, email and your whole range of content marketing strategies.

2. Prepare to Listen More Than You Talk

Invite Angel to share their story and experiences. If there’s something you recently shared (a phone call, event conversation, email or text exchange), go back to that and pick up where you left off. Or, if they’ve recently experienced a life cycle event, ask them to tell you how it went. Or ask if they read your latest newsletter or email update and, if so, what most interested, concerned or surprised them.

TIP: Take a few minutes for normal conversational chit-chat. Don’t get stuck here; you have a different purpose. If either one of you talks nonstop, that’s not a conversation. You may not know exactly where you’re going with today’s conversation, but you do know it’s a journey of exploration. Your job is to guide Angel towards something new, or at least to encourage them to look at something in a new way. Embrace your role as a donor experience transformist.

3. Share a Vision, Not Just a Need

Invite Angel to share their vision around the work you do together. This may be an event in the news and how it may be related to your mission, or just a general inquiry around what they’re thinking about your organization’s role in the world this year vs. last. 

 TIP: Energetically check in around something specific for which you’d like feedback (e.g., recent Gala, conference call, free event, annual report mailing, online appeal, volunteer activity, new program announcement).

4. Get to the Heart of What’s on Their Mind

Remember to make this a “tell me about you” situation. Choose your words with economy. Ask brief “how” and “what” questions.

TIP: Try to get to the heart of what’s bothering Angel about the current way things operate. “How would you describe the kernel of truth for what’s troubling you?” “How did this miss the mark for you?” “What could have been better?” 

5. Listen Energetically for Places Where Their Energy Shows Up

Notice if they smile, breathe deeply, relax their stance or fold their arms, hunch their shoulders or furrow their brows. Ask questions that bring them back to their own relaxed or energetic place – a place from which talking with you feels freeing and, perhaps, fraught with possibility. “What would be a metaphor to describe how you’re feeling about this?” “What image comes to mind when you think of how this could be better?” “What would it be like to work from that image?”

TIP: Co-create. Only through active listening and encouragement that draws the other person out do you really learn and get close enough to them to understand where they’re coming from. Rather than falling back on just guessing or assuming, actively imagine the possibilities together.

No One Can Stop You Now!

Engrossed curiosity and energetic listening are your best tools.

What curiosity took from the cat, it gives to bold fundraisers. Be bold!

Remember: Being a philanthropy facilitator is a full-time job.

Want to Excel at Major Gifts Fundraising?

It’s always a great time to work on YOU, and boost your career, by deepening your skill set. Mastery of major gift fundraising is always in demand, and for good reason, because there’s no more cost-effective form of fundraising. Plus 80%+ of your annual contribution income will likely come from 20% or less of your individual donors. The ROI is huge.

You’ll learn LISTENING, plus all the steps along the way that will get you comfortably to the point of being ready to ask. I’m partnering with The Veritus Group to offer you their amazing Certification Course for Major Gift Fundraisers. It helps to be taught by the very best in the business, and Richard Perry and Jeff Schreifels of Veritus 100% share my approach to fundraising. You’ll get incredible ongoing support, peer connections, valuable certification and 36 CFRE credits. Most important: You’ll walk away with an action plan so you can put your learning to work — right away! DON’T DELAY — A new cohort begins soon!

Questions about this course? Ask me at claire@clairification.com. I promise to respond directly!

Photo by Your Fellow on Unsplash