Tag: authenticity

The Authenticity Trap

Steven Screen  |  Repeat

I’ve written before about how making sure your fundraising is “authentic” isn’t always useful. 

And here’s a new idea: to grow, most nonprofits must do things that do not feel authentic.

  • Keeping detailed records about each major donor doesn’t feel authentic – in fact it feels weird at first.  Yet it’s part of a professional approach to major donor fundraising and is part of any major donor management system.
  • Sending 70+ e-appeals a year doesn’t feel authentic – what kind of person would do that, and who even has the time to do that?!?  But it’s part of a professional email fundraising program, and has been for several years.
  • Having an appeal letter that’s not in the Executive Director’s “voice” doesn’t feel authentic.  Yet at larger organizations the ED doesn’t even see the appeals, because there’s a staff of professionals who have been given the authority to replace the ED’s voice with whatever tactics and approaches raise the most money. 

Here’s the thing: none of those activities feel authentic, but they sure are effective.

They might not feel authentic to you at your stage of growth, but they absolutely feel authentic to the larger organizations that do them every day.

So as your nonprofit thinks about how to grow, don’t get stuck in the authenticity trap.  Focus instead on what will get you to your next stage of growth and impact.

Consistency

Steven Screen  |  Repeat
consistency

As you grow in fundraising experience, you understand that consistency is often more important than sincerity.

In any particular moment, sincerity (like authenticity) is a byproduct of feelings at that moment. And feelings change all the time.

This makes “sincerity” not the best foundation for a fundraising program.

What if, on the day you write your year-end appeal, you’re sincerely thinking about another job opportunity?

What if, when the time to deliver your speech at the event finally arrives, you’d sincerely rather be in bed?

Now “consistency,” on the other hand, is reliable. Steadfast on behalf of the beneficiaries and cause – no matter how you’re feeling that day. Willing to be vulnerable enough to ask boldly, no matter the day. Willing to show up in donors’ inboxes even though you feel like you’ve said everything before.

That sounds like a great foundation for a fundraising program.

Sincerity and authenticity are, of course, needed in a fundraising program. But for your mass donors, if you want to grow, fundraising done consistently will outraise sincere fundraising done occasionally.

Authenticity Isn’t Always Useful

Steven Screen  |  Ask
authentic

In the nonprofit world we tend to embrace authenticity.

It’s assumed that if we’re authentic, and the fundraising we create is authentic, that we’ll attract more people to our cause. More money will be raised, and we’ll do more good.

But there are clear limits to this line of thinking. 

Say you’re at an organization that has eighteen different programs. But your fundraising is most successful when it focuses on one particular program. Furthermore, that program has a holistic, whole-person approach to caring for people of all ages.  But the fundraising clearly works best when it asks donors to “feed one child.”

In that scenario, any fundraising you create that focuses on “feeding a child” will feel wildly inauthentic to program staff and anyone who understands the depth and breadth of your work.

However, the fundraising you create that focuses on “feeding a child” serves your mission by helping donors understand a powerful part of your organization’s complex approach.

Think of a college professor. Can you imagine how an accomplished astrophysicist – tenured and with a long track record of publishing cutting-edge research – feels when teaching “Astronomy 101” to a bunch of college freshmen (some of whom are hung over)?

Do we think she feels “authentic” giving those lectures when she could be discussing the latest findings with her peers? 

Probably not. She does it because it’s part of the job, and because it’s likely there are some future astrophysicists in her class.  How will they get excited about the subject if she doesn’t show up in an engaging way? Furthermore, she can’t show up in class and talk to the freshmen like she talks to her peers.  She makes the generous choice to speak to them in language they’ll understand.

Fundraising is the same. There are some donor communications we need to make – even if we don’t prefer them – because it’s part of the job. 

And how will the future volunteers / donors / advocates get excited about our work if we don’t show up – speaking to them at their level – in an engaging way?

There’s nothing wrong with communicating authentically. The trap is when “communicating authentically” comes to mean “we talk about our work in one particular way that feels authentic to us.” 

Nonprofits should make the generous choice to talk to different audiences in different ways: we should communicate about our work differently to institutional funders who are experts in our fields differently than we communicate to mass donors.

Our primary focus should not be on being authentic to ourselves, it should be on being relevant to the particular audience being communicated to.