Archives:

There’s a cornerstone of Western thought, called The Golden Rule. Basically, it says (as it says in the Bible), “Do unto others as you would want done to you.”

But it isn’t just in the Bible. Aesop, the Greek storyteller talked about it 4,000 years ago:

The wind and the sun are squabbling. They are arguing over who is more powerful. They agree to settle it with a competition.

How do they compete?

They decide to test their strength by trying to take a traveler’s coat off.

The wind tries first. He sends gust after gust of a cold, forceful, and blustering gale at the traveler. His strategy is to try to tear the coat off.

The traveler only pulls his coat tighter.

The sun scoffs at the wind’s foolishness. It’s his turn.

What does the sun do?

He sends ray after ray of warm, kind, and loving sunshine at the traveler.

What does the traveler do?

He takes his own coat off.

The moral?

Kindness, gentleness, and sophisticated persuasion win where force, compulsion, and coercion fail.

People want to be persuaded, not pushed or pulled; led, not commanded.

Don’t fall into this trap.

Be the sun, not the wind.

Lead with respect for their autonomy. Some of the most persuasive words in the English language are “it’s up to you” and “the choice is yours.”

— Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void

“Kindness, gentleness, and sophisticated persuasion…” these are the tools of the savviest fundraisers. Because they know their job is not about money, but love, empathy and understanding. 

When you get inside your donor’s head, you’re best prepared to make a match between their passions and yours. You won’t succeed by using guilt or coercion. Maybe a little, but it’s not the stuff of which warm, loyal, mutually beneficial, longstanding relationships are made.

I’m here today with some summer reading – a whole beach bag filled with curated resources from across the web  — all to make your job of facilitating philanthropy easier. I hope you’ll find resources in this newsletter to help you lead with respect for the autonomy of others.  No more “us” and them;” only “we.” That’s how you’ll help repair the world.

Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the time hunting and gathering. Find a topic that interests you, and… click away! 

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place.

Thank you for doing such vital work, and giving to others on a regular basis,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars, and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more! 

I’m calling this issue jejune partly as a play on the name of the month we’re in and partly because jejune means “devoid of significance or interest.”

Could that be how you’ve been doing fundraising? Are you relevant, or do you fail to meet folks where they are and fully engage them? Whenever you communicate with your audiences, do you first think “How will this be received?” How other-aware are you?

I like this wisdom from the inimatable Seth Godin:

Are you smart?

Smart is no longer memorization. It’s not worth much.

Smart is no longer access to information. Everyone has that.

Smart is:

• Situational awareness
• Clarity of goals
• Good taste
• Empathy for others
• The ability to make decisions that further your goals

The good news is that smart is a choice, and smart is a skill.

— Seth Godin

This newsletter is designed to make you smart.  And in today’s rapidly evolving world, it’s hard to be smart absent information.  Not just stuff you memorize, but stuff about how people think, feel, act and make decisions. It’s important to stay in tune, both with your audiences and with what’s going on in the world.

Your nonprofit does not exist in a vacuum.

When you stick your head up out of the sand, get clear on your own goals, consider the goals of others, and artfully make a match between organizational and constituent values… then you have something!

I’m here again with my curated list of good stuff across the web designed to make your job of facilitating philanthropy easier. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the time hunting and gathering.

Find a topic that interests you, and… click away!  Whatever type of learner you are, there’s something here for you. Tactical advice. Theory and science. New approaches. Stuff to read. Stuff to listen to. Stuff to watch.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place.

Thank you for doing such vital work, and giving to others on a regular basis,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars, and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more! 

June is about to bust out all over. Please, take a deep breath and some time to smell the flowers. Re-energize a bit, so you’ve got fuel to get back to your important role in making our world — even if just a small corner of it — a better place. What you do means a lot.

“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. 

— Viktor Frankl

Your job as a philanthropy facilitator is to create meaning for supporters. It’s the gift you give, in exchange for the gift they offer. And it’s a noble pursuit.

I follow the musings of Hugh MacLeod, a highly-regarded author and artist who writes on the themes of innovation, creativity, and motivation. I love this:

“Culture is at its core, about creating meaning. Designing purpose. it is about finding that which unites us all. In such work, eventually, your travels will lead you to the great Viktor’s work.

An Austrian Jew, when he was interred in Auschwitz, he noticed that the people who lost all sense of hope were the first to die, and the people who survived were the ones who could still find meaning in their lives, could still find hope, despite their grim circumstances.

This informed his famous idea that the search for “meaning” is the great driver of human experience, which he wrote about in his classic book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”.

We are here to find meaning. That is as true in your business office as it is behind the counter at a convenience store, or working for NASA or Apple, or serving in the US Marine Corps. That is our central driver.

And a good leader never forgets it.

— Hugh MacLeod, The Gaping Void

A good philanthropy facilitator never forgets this either.

I’m here again with my curated list of good stuff across the web designed to make your job of delivering happiness and bringing meaning easier. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the time hunting and gathering.

Find a topic that interests you, and… click away!  Whatever type of learner you are, there’s something here for you. Tactical advice. Theory and science. New approaches. Stuff to read. Stuff to listen to. Stuff to watch.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place.

Thank you for doing such vital work, and giving to others on a regular basis,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars, and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more! 

Happy Spring Friday the 13th! A lovely season, and a lovely date.  You see, both I and my son were born on Friday the 13ths, so I consider it a day filled with new possibilities. And since this is a Spring one, it’s even more filled with blooming potential than usual! So what could be more perfect than to send a shout-out to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the time hunting and gathering the best free content I can find across the globe.

I hope you’ll find a topic that interests you, and… click away!

When you do, if you’re lucky, all sorts of new ideas will start to blossom — making your job a lot more fun and, hopefully, more effective and fulfilling as well.

Whatever type of learner you are, there’s something here for you. Tactical advice. Theory and science. New approaches. Stuff to read. Stuff to listen to. Stuff to watch.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thank you for doing such vital and compassionate work, and giving to others on a regular basis,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars and podcasts, and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!  This year, I hope to see you in school!

It’s not always easy to find all the good stuff across the web. That’s why I do the work for you! Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the time hunting and gathering. You’ll find this is another robust issue.

Find a topic that interests you, and… click away!  Whatever type of learner you are, there’s something here for you. Tactical advice. Theory and science. New approaches. Stuff to read. Stuff to listen to. Stuff to watch.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, who have stood with me and you throughout these rapidly changing times.  

Thank you for doing such vital and compassionate work, and giving to others on a regular basis,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars,  and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!

As you know, I love to curate the best of what I find across the web and offer it up to you here in bite size pieces.  There’s a LOT to chew on in this issue because … I just found that many great resources for you! Find a topic that interests you, and… click away!  Whatever type of learner you are, there’s something here for you.

Sometimes you’ll find tactical advice. Sometimes it’s theory and science underlying the tactics. And sometimes it’s about adjusting approaches to the work in ways that can make a significant difference, not just in what you accomplish but in how you feel.

Speaking of feeling, I’m moved to share this musing from a writer and graphic artist I hold in high esteem:

We, as humans, like to categorize. It makes the world easier to digest.

We fit the people around us into labels: users, coworkers, competitors.

Then they’re no longer just people – they’re the boxes we’ve put them into. And we’ve removed the burden of feeling compassion.

Which is total nonsense.

The world runs on compassion. The world celebrates compassion.

We need to find that presence in ourselves.

We are only as much as what we can give to others.

— Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, who have stood with me and you throughout these rapidly changing times.  

Thank you for doing such vital and compassionate work, and giving to others on a regular basis,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars,  and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!

No joke, there are plenty of resources here to help you! I love to curate the best of what I find across the web and offer it up to you here in bite size pieces.  Find a topic that interests you, and… click away!  Whatever type of learner you are, there’s something here for you.

Sometimes you’ll find tactical advice. Sometimes it’s theory and science underlying the tactics. And sometimes it’s about adjusting approaches to the work in ways that can make a significant difference, not just in what you accomplish but in how you feel.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, who have stood with me and you throughout these rapidly changing times.

Thank you for doing such vital work,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ means a lot, and I am deeply appreciative. This is what enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box every week, give you access to all my webinars,  and offer up exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!

The leap

Marketing Philanthropy facilitation makes change happen. And for humans, the change is rarely linear. There’s a moment before and a moment after the decision is made. Some people find the moment thrilling, others are unnerved by it.

When a salesperson philanthropy facilitator fails to open the door for the leap, the customer donor is ill-served. The status quo is powerful and left to our own devices, many of us would fail to go where we hope to.

On the other hand, when the marketing and sales folks philanthropy facilitators push too hard, trust is broken. People end up being manipulated into actions that they’d rather not have taken, and relationships fall apart.

Forward motion happens when individuals and organizations decide to adopt a posture of possibility. And that’s enabled by marketers philanthropy facilitators ready to help them embrace that possibility.

— Seth Godin

I’ve edited Seth Godin’s words of wisdom to adapt them to the work of the social benefit sector. Yes, we are marketers. Yes, we are fundraisers. Yet, essentially, we are those things in service of philanthropy facilitation. And I see my job as helping you embrace your role as a “philanthropy facilitator” — someone who helps others find their way towards enacting “love of humanity.”

There are plenty of resources here for you to use to help you rethink the way you do things. Rather than saying “yes” and never getting around to it (which makes you feel bad), take some time to sort out the wheat from the chaff.  If you feel inspired to do something, learn to do it the right way. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel! You do need to stay tuned… pay attention… commit to learning… and evolve to working smart, not just hard.

This newsletter is designed to help you. I give you a taste of what’s working/not working for businesses and causes of all stripes. Sometimes it’s tactical advice. Sometimes it’s theory and science underlying the tactics. And sometimes it’s about adjusting approaches to the work in ways that can make a significant difference.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, who have stood with me and you throughout these rapidly changing times.

Thank you for doing such vital work,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ enables me to deliver original, in-depth, actionable articles direct to your in-box. Plus you’ll get access to all my webinars, exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!

One sigh per yes

When a client, a boss or an employee makes a special request, it’s okay to get a little bent out of shape. It might cost you extra time or money, it might be a hassle, it might not be deserved.

And then you can say no.

But if you say yes, then it pays to be in it. 100%.

If you’re not, your yes was worthless. It ceases to be a favor if it comes with grumbling.

Holding a grudge means that our hands are too full to do our best work.

— Seth Godin

Are you holding a grudge that gets in the way of your best work? If your plate is too full, make some time this week to consider what you can say “no” to.  And when you’re saying “yes,” be sure you have the resources to put your best foot forward.

There are plenty of resources here for you to use to help you rethink the way you do things. Rather than saying “yes” and never getting around to it (which makes you feel bad), take some time to sort out the wheat from the chaff.  If you feel inspired to do something, learn to do it the right way. You don’t need to re-invent the wheel! You do need to stay tuned… pay attention… commit to learning… and evolve to working smart, not just hard.

This newsletter is designed to help you. I give you a taste of what’s working/not working for businesses and causes of all stripes. Sometimes it’s tactical advice. Sometimes it’s theory and science underlying the tactics. And sometimes it’s about adjusting approaches to the work in ways that can make a significant difference.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, who have stood with me and you throughout these rapidly changing times.  

Thank you for doing such vital work,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box. Plus you’ll get access to all my webinars, exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!

In my last issue I talked about the extinct ostracod and channeled Seth Godin’s post on the subject. Today I offer up a non-extinct creature, but one with a similar message to offer if you don’t want your organization to suffer the ostracod’s fate.

ostrichism

MEANING:

noun: The act or policy of refusing to face reality or unpleasant facts.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the erroneous popular belief that ostriches bury their heads in the sand when facing danger. From Old French ostrusce/ostriche, from Latin struthio (ostrich), from Greek strouthos. Earliest documented use: 1834.

NOTES:

The ostrich doesn’t really bury its head in the sand. This flightless bird puts its head and neck close to the ground for camouflage. Also, they nest their eggs in holes in the ground. It’s the largest (up to 9 ft or 2.7 m) and fastest bird (43 miles/hour or 70 km/hour) on the planet and can kill a lion with a kick. If you ever upset an ostrich do not bury your head in the sand. Try apologizing. If not, be ready to be ostracized.

USAGE:

“Deciding that ostrichism is the better part of valor, I keep my eyes closed.”
Adam Davies; Mine All Mine; Riverhead; 2008.

— from A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

I hope you’ll open your eyes to all the resources here, and use them to help you rethink the way you do things. Tried-and-true is worth its weight in gold, but tempis fugit. Sometimes you have to throw out the old (not all of it) to embrace the new (not all of it). To do your best work, you have to stay tuned… pay attention… commit to learning.

This newsletter is designed to help you. I try to give you a taste of what’s working/not working for businesses and causes of all stripes. Sometimes it’s tactical advice. Sometimes it’s theory and science underlying the tactics. And sometimes it’s about adjusting approaches to the work in ways that can make a significant difference.

It is my sincere pleasure and honor to help you find the ideas, strategies, templates and tools you need to make our world a better place. Thanks again to my Clairity Click-it sponsor, Bloomerang, who have stood with me and you throughout these rapidly changing times.

Thank you for doing such vital work,

Claire

claire@clairification.com

P.S. Want to resolve to be an active learner next year? Your support via enrollment in ‘Clairification School’ enables me to deliver original articles direct to your in-box. Plus you’ll get access to all my webinars, exclusive monthly tips, bonuses and more!