This is Philanthropy

A couple days ago I had a colleague share a story of how she secured a $100,000 gift for her organization earlier this month. At the end of the story about “the ask,” where she shared a few of the nuggets of how the prospect was engaged, how easy it was to talk with him, and how the time passed quickly, my friend Beverly paused and said those words with a gleam in her eye, “THIS is philanthropy.”

She was talking about the ease and joy in the hour plus meeting that resulted in the donor feeling totally listened to, inspired by the project he was going to provide a first gift for, and for the way he felt about making the gift in memory of his recently deceased wife. The meeting was filled with laughter, tears, photos, stories and NOT charts, graphs, and donor giving pyramids.

The interesting thing about this exciting gift solicitation, and I hesitate to even call it a solicitation but really a “nudging of the inevitable,” was that Beverly, the major gifts officer, had never met this donor before. She had her colleague, someone who knew the donor prospect well, set up the meeting and they did their prep work ahead of time to determine who would take what role in the meeting and fully fleshed out the important topics to cover.

There were no sweaty palms or fears that this was difficult. There WAS authentic talking and listening – which I believe is the true definition of communication.

Inviting financial support, when you’ve done your homework can, and should, feel like Beverly described. It should leave you and the donor with a glow of warmth about the good things that can happen because of the gift that was just promised.

The Art of Asking is no big secret. It is practice & planning, a bit of good research, with a dash of good timing and a whole bushel of good communication before, during, and after the “ask”; including the listening part of communication.

Kudos to Beverly for a job well done!