How about we skip the webinar and take a lapsed donor out to lunch?
Giving USA & End of Audience Theory
When we change the way we communicate, we change society. - Clay Shirky
If you really want to understand why giving is down, instead of signing up for a webinar promising an in-depth analysis by a panel of fundraising wizards, how about taking a lapsed donor out to lunch? If doing that is all but impossible because you’re too afraid to pick up the phone, you’re overwhelmed with the amount of data you’d have to sift through to identify that donor, or your boss has you panicked about tablecloths and wine for the fall gala, anything you’re going to hear in that webinar isn’t going to help. I’m not kidding when I say that lunch with a handful of your lapsed donors is the best possible way to understand why giving trends are what they are. No one is going to give you more sincere feedback, and you won’t have to worry that their ulterior motives are just to harvest emails.
There are two things I think you will discover by having lunch with a lapsed donor that you’re not going to learn anywhere else. First, I think you will discover that your donor has opinions about their giving experiences that they alone are best qualified to share with you. Second, you will begin making sense of what Clay Shirky calls “end of audience theory” which explains why today’s donors have no interest in the passive, predictable role that twentieth-century fundraising assigned to them. Some could have made sense of this after Lisa Greer published her book a couple of years ago, and an op-ed in The Chronicle of Philanthropy this week affords a similar opportunity. If we’re not affording our donors a platform to voice their opinions, they will most certainly find one themselves.
This is what I remember some of us missing about the platform Greer began creating for herself a couple of years ago. As I watched the initial response to her book emerge, it was obvious to me that the Guardians at the Gate were oblivious to what was really happening. What should have been top of mind wasn’t whether we agreed with what she said, but that she had begun creating a platform from which to say it and managed to get the likes of Seth Godin to endorse it. Instead of getting ourselves tied into knots over what she had to say, what we needed to recognize was the fact that she was exhibiting behavior that her parents' generation didn't. Today’s donor is not a passive consumer who sits quietly in the audience; and, if that’s the only role we have for them, their giving will reflect it.1
Do more listening than talking. - Theodore Wagenaar
In much the same way that Greer did, Theodore Wagenaar, a professor emeritus in sociology at Miami University in Ohio, found a way to voice his opinion about the recent findings from Giving USA - a take I suspect most of us will overlook. By the looks of it, Wagenaar wants us to stop fooling ourselves into thinking that what doesn’t work actually does. For example, he doesn’t want to buy a $300 ticket to an event at the yacht club “where the very wealthy can solidify their status.” Wagenaar might want us to remember what we read in The Seven Faces of Philanthropy: that only ten-percent of us are “socialites.”2 He reminds us that these events have a tendency to exacerbate the social divide between our donors and those we serve and that he would much prefer a “hot-dog or ice-cream social at the park” that creates greater proximity between himself and those whom our organizations are serving. Perhaps this isn’t the last time we will hear from Mr. Wagenaar.3
Wagenaar explains that he’s a Baby Boomer in his mid-70s, forthright about what he’s inclined to support; and he explains that most of his initial gifts, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, are essentially “trust gifts” - a giving tactic employed by savvy donors who want to know whether an organization knows what the hell they are doing. Wagenaar perhaps fits into the profile of a mid-level donor whom a lot of firms are talking about as of late; however, his tone suggests that he’s not interested in anything conjured up by someone who thinks that they are the next Don Draper. Rather than gimmicks, what Wagenaar wants is to have someone call him back, to understand the effect that a gift like MacKenzie Scott’s should have on his own giving, and to have assurances that an organization is actually doing what it says it will. In short, what Wagenaar wants is a lot of what Greer told us she wanted, too.
Since becoming a major donor, I’ve been lied to, manipulated, and strong-armed - all in the name of giving. - Lisa Greer
What Greer and Wagenaar have done is help us see that the nature of their relationships with the charities they support isn’t that of a passive consumer. They have demonstrated an unwillingness to sit passively in the audience while those of us on the stage get the privilege of changing the world on their behalf. This is the essence of Clay Shirky’s “end of audience theory” which explains the effect that changes in technology are having on our behavior. The broadcast era is over. Despite having evidence of this reality all over the place, it doesn’t look like the fundraising department got the memo.4
Shirky was one of the earliest to begin articulating the effects that hyper-connectivity and user-friendly technology would have on the way we interact with the rest of the world. The effect is an irrevocable shift from a broadcast model in which a relative few control the message to a democratized model where the message is co-created. Shirky’s insights about what it means to live in the twenty-first century is why we encourage our clients not to see themselves as master technicians attempting to manipulate and control their donor’s experience and, instead, engage their donors in ways that allow them to play active roles in creating meaningful experiences for themselves.
What you won’t hear from those theorizing about recent giving trends is that the era of easy fundraising is over. They won’t own up to the fact that what made a lot of our jobs particularly easy throughout the twentieth century was that the donor conceded to being one and the same as a consumer. That’s no longer the case. Our donors want to play an active role in determining what their giving experiences are; and they, more so than anyone else, are best qualified to explain to us what those experiences might look like. Arguably, the lunch table is one of the best places for having these kinds of conversations.
Turning around the latest giving trends doesn’t necessitate anyone reinventing fundraising or starting another movement. We simply need to embrace the fact that philanthropy has always been a social endeavor or, as author Mike Martin describes it, a “cooperative human activity” that “requires the active involvement of both givers and receivers.” Organizations that recognize philanthropy as a cooperative human activity embrace the messiness of genuine relationships, prioritize meaningful conversation over mere connections, and create places where a sense of belonging is afforded to those giving and those receiving.5
If your organization wants to understand how to raise extraordinary levels of support by way of meaningful relationships and higher expectations, our team at Responsive would welcome the opportunity to help you do that. If you’re interested in learning more, email me and/or our managing partner, Michael Dixon. We will be happy to volunteer an hour to get to know you and to explore with you what a partnership with our team might look like.
Host the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow?
We would welcome the opportunity to host the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow in your community. Since 2014, our team has been organizing high-quality, one-day roadshows in partnership with nonprofit leaders who want to showcase their space and champion thought-provoking and highly-interactive fundraising training for their nonprofit community.
Our hosts have included the Children’s Defense Fund in DC, the Henry Ford Health Center in Detroit, Cause Leadership in Toronto, Mission Capital in Austin, North Texas Food Bank in Dallas and The Gateway School in New York City. If you’d like to explore the idea of hosting the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow, reach out to us today.
Greer, L., Kostoff, L. (2020). Philanthropy Revolution: How to Inspire Donors, Build Relationships and Make a Difference. United Kingdom: HarperCollins Publishers.
File, K. M., Prince, R. A. (1994). The Seven Faces of Philanthropy: A New Approach to Cultivating Major Donors. United States: Wiley.
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, June 25). Clay Shirky. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 06:12, June 28, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clay_Shirky&oldid=1161833671
Martin, M. W. (1994). Virtuous Giving: Philanthropy, Voluntary Service, and Caring. Ukraine: Indiana University Press.