BIG’s Blog: Why is Smokey Robinson Scared?

In their 2011 book, The Networked Nonprofit, the authors, Beth Kanter and Alison Fine, make the argument that for people in nonprofit organizations (think fundraisers) who are going to use online tools, technologies, and especially social media, they need to be using the aforementioned themselves. Or, as the authors say, speaking of social media, “it’s a contact sport.”

Are you lamenting that your donor base is getting smaller and older? Every month I run into charitable and religious organizations that either A) do not even have a Facebook page, or B) have a Facebook page, yet no one in leadership or even the senior Development person has ever used Facebook themselves.

And they wonder why their fundraising organization is making no headway in attracting “younger” people!?!?

When I discuss with them the reluctance of either themselves or their organization … I get all the rational explanations. But the truth is, they’re just scared. Scared that they won’t be able to figure it out, scared about something getting posted that shouldn’t be posted, or just scared that people will know what they don’t know.

I understand all those concerns, after all, I’m 60+ years old. But you have to use these new online tools yourself to really understand how they work and their value.

I saw an interview with Smokey Robinson, the R&B singer, a while ago. Smokey is 74 years old and he is still out there performing. In this interview, however, you could see he was scared of the new music world. It used to be that he could write, perform, and cut an album . . . and if it was successful, it would provide him with a nice income stream to augment his live performances. Today, though, the music business is moving to online streaming services like Pandora or Spotify. With these streaming services, people can get their music whenever and wherever they want it. Online streaming is killing terrestrial radio. In fact, streaming is the new radio. In addition, with services like Spotify, you can pick your list of songs, so it’s radio + ownership. No wonder CD sales and even Apple’s iTunes Music Store sales are down. Why would you purchase what you can get on your portable listening device for a flat monthly fee? Music streaming services are the music delivery model in the same way that Netflix is the movie delivery model … a low monthly charge or even free for unlimited service.  

In the interview, Smokey Robinson said he was scared about losing album and song revenue as the old album sales model that he has known all his life was essentially dying.

Is Smokey still scared? Does Smokey subscribe to Pandora or Spotify? I hope he does, because then he would understand that streaming is the future of the music business . . . and if you are a musician today putting out new music, or, in Smokey’s case, have a body of great music, people will listen. And, of course, Smokey will not only get a cut of the music stream income, but he will be building new audiences … worldwide.

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com

BIG’s Blog: Watching Gladiator in an Empty Theater

The movie Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, came out in the summer of 2000. If you have seen the movie then you know it was one of the best epic movies of all time. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching.

Gladiator grossed over $450 million worldwide, making it a huge theatrical success. Yet when I saw it one afternoon way back in 2000, I was the only one in the theater.

Of course, part of that could be chalked up to an afternoon matinee with lots of summer options available, and indeed the fact that it grossed $450 million worldwide in theaters puts this movie (for the year 2000) in the blockbuster category. But even in 2000, the trend toward home entertainment (including watching movies) was well-established. In 1991, the author Faith Popcorn (yes, that was her real last name) identified and described the larger societal trend of “Cocooning” in her book, The Popcorn Report. She described Cocooning as individuals socializing less and retreating into their homes more.   

Of course this “staying in at home” trend was not new, and had been going on since the advent of radio, and then was accelerated by television in the 1950s. I remember when I was growing up that older people [my age now] used to be out sitting on their porches talking to passers by, or be out in the yard talking to neighbors, or even off to social and civic club meetings in the evening. I have observed in third world countries (where poverty prevents the acquisition of much home entertainment technology) that the people are out socializing in the evening. I have also heard that in some European countries, especially the more Latin cultures, that evening socializing culture is so ingrained that it has resisted the rise of Cocooning as it is found in the United States.  

Especially in the US, the Internet is creating the pipeline for all kinds of downloadable entertainment. This technology build-out is solidifying the trend toward more viewing/listening/reading in the home and less outside-of-the-home socializing. And while most of us enjoy the greater menu of in-home entertainment options that our Internet-accessed gadgets provide, we also hunger for human connection.

In the evenings, when we are caught up on work-related stuff, that is “our time” to read, watch, or listen to something of common interest or passion to our family, our friends, or us. And for many people that is when they are online reading and catching up on social media, which, in turn, introduces them to contacts through social media that they may have never heard of.

Cocooning and the connected Internet lead to more opportunities to discover what is out there on the Web. Insofar as your organization is making a focused effort to shift your messaging 100% online where you can deliver all kinds of news and stories about “who you are” and “what your organization is about” … the potential to intersect many, many new potential supporters is huge.

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com

BIG’s Blog: It Happened Again!

John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red sox, recently purchased The Boston Globe . . . and this following the earlier news that The Washington Post was sold to Amazon.com CEO, Jeff Bezos. And a bit closer to home … for me … billionaire investor Warren Buffet purchased the Omaha World Herald.  

Arguably, these guys are extremely smart and savvy investors (all billionaires after all). Presumably they don’t make investments to lose money. Warren Buffet is even on record as saying five years ago that he would not buy a newspaper at any price.

So what’s going on here?

What’s changed?

Here is my take from my own study and the consensus I have gleaned from other commentators. And MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU is that the implications of these billionaires’ decisions have a DIRECT LINK to your success in fundraising very soon.

Simply put … the worm has turned. Savvy investors have always known that newspapers have a strong brand and are trusted in their communities, but the delivery mechanism of newsprint and the business model of printed advertising aren’t viable anymore. People get their news online, and online services like craigslist have decimated “want ads” in the local paper. From the investor standpoint, as the presses shut down, costs drop dramatically, yet people still want news and information and they trust the brand of the newspaper to deliver their local news and information.

Savvy investors know that to make money you “buy low,” and the fire sale prices of these “news institutions” are low, low, low.

The old owners believed that a newspaper is newsprint and without the “dead tree” publication (as a good friend of mine calls it), it isn’t a newspaper. The old newspaper owners only know what they know about how to run a newspaper. Are these old owners stupid or just lazy? I say neither. The old owners just don’t want to step up and make the change; basically they are tired and looking for an exit ramp. They’ll let someone else figure it out.

How will newspapers generate revenue to pay their writers and editorial staff? These savvy investors believe that answer is already here and coming soon … and I believe them. They see that online communications technology is everywhere and that all forms of valuable content is being accessed … and paid for by customers. Honestly, tell me you don’t read the news on your phone, tablet or computer.

But who is going to pay these news organizations like The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, or the Omaha World Herald for their news?

See, that’s what separates some of you from the John Henrys, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffets of the world. You keep thinking like the OLD owners of these newspapers!

How much did you pay to rent movies at Blockbuster? How much do you pay a month to access movies on Netflix or a similar service? How much did your landline and long distance cost before the era of cell phones? And most people pay for their cars and their homes with “affordable” monthly payments.

Do you get it?

Hello! Monthly payments!

  

So how do the travails of the newspaper industry connect to nonprofit fundraising???

Your organization also has a tremendous brand name. You’ve been around awhile. You stand for something and your reputation has trust and respect and this goes double, triple, and quadruple for faith-based organizations!

The print-and-ink world of newspapers is going away even as online media opportunities are exploding … and THAT IS WHERE PEOPLE ARE … ONLINE!

I HAVE NOT READ A PRINTED PUBLICATION OR BOOK IN THREE YEARS AND I AM OVER 60!

You don’t need print to tell your story or reach people to have them connect with and support you. Quit thinking like OLD newspaper owners!

Your organization can be ITS OWN MEDIA COMPANY!

And, just like a fairly famous religious television network, people WILL send you monthly donations to underwrite your work!

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com

BIG’s Blog: It’s a New Year, Time to Take Stock: Have you changed?

Do you ever go to work, get to your office, sit down at your desk and think, "what the heck is going on here?" Or maybe it’s when your mind is racing on your commute to work as you are thinking about your "to do" list, and you suddenly think, “wow, I feel like a cog in a big wheel.”

You stop and wonder to yourself or even say out loud, "when did raising funds become such a mechanized method of working multitudes of people through the steps of a process?"

It's beginning to feel really industrialized, isn't it? It's all about the numbers. It's all about the money. Where has the "soul" of fundraising gone? All that we do sometimes feels like a facade doesn't it, as if we are creating another personality just for our job?

Over the years we have become really good at perfecting our messaging, telling our stories, lowering our cost structure, all to eke out profitability. But . . . It . . . All . . . Feels . . . So . . . Industrialized.

We reconcile that "this is just the way it is." Our JOB after all, is to deliver the bucks. Delivering the bucks is what we are hired to do and if we don't deliver, we are out the door.

But then, it wasn't always this way, was it? Remember when you first started? Remember your excitement of doing your first campaign or sitting down the first time with a potential donor, or meeting long-term donors? 

Yes, something has changed. But it isn’t just one thing, it’s TWO things … IT'S FUNDRAISING … AND IT'S YOU!

Societal attitudes towards philanthropy and giving have shifted over the last twenty years but have massively shifted in the last ten years.

And guess what? Your ideas and attitudes have shifted right along with those of society in general. YOU’VE CHANGED, and so has fundraising. What are those changes? Transparency is expected. Accountability is expected. Expectations of potential donors (yourself included) such as more personalized contact, more attempts to connect the supporter to the mission and the people they serve, as well as connecting supporters to each other. 

So even though your attitudes have changed toward what you expect from a nonprofit that you would support, the methods, the way of operating, the attitudes toward donors in your organization probably haven't changed … not that you haven’t tried! 

But it gets worse . . . 

In what appears to be a mere twinkling of an eye . . . things aren't working in your fundraising plan like they used to. Mail responses are down and costs are going up. Some of your donors are giving larger gifts, but overall, fewer people are giving. Trusted long-term supporters are passing, and though a few leave the organization a bequest, year over year your number of donors grows smaller and older.

So you have two HUGE looming problems don’t you? Well, actually three if you count yourself.

Problem Number One: The generational cohorts that have supported your organization for the last forty years and were the vast, vast majority of supporters, are shrinking due to their age and you are not getting enough younger supporters to take their place. Why are you not getting younger supporters? Because the media and the message that worked for your 70/80 or 90-something parents doesn’t work for the vast majority of Baby Boomers [age 67 and younger] as well as GenXers and Millennials.

Problem Number Two: We already alluded to it in problem number one, and that is that HOW people communicate has changed. You’ve all either heard me say this in talks and certainly in my blog posts: The Internet Changes Everything! This is REALLY important; the people you are missing are 100% online. And though you are playing around with online, you haven’t figured out how to make it pay for itself, let alone become the fundraising vehicle to take the place of direct mail.

And Problem Number Three: YOU … you have shifted your expectations of how a nonprofit fundraising organization should be communicating to YOU as a potential donor, and you desperately want your organization to catch up to your expectations!

But you might need a little help. Our company can help, but so can other consultants.

Help is available.

What isn’t available is a lot of time to make the switch.

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com

BIG’s Blog: Evolve or Die?

The “heart” of successful fundraising is still relationship.

When I talk to my 80-something mother about the “relationship” she has with the different organizations she supports, and I have essentially the same conversation about the “relationship” my 50-something wife has with the organizations she and I support, I quickly understand that each of their definitions of “relationship” is very different.

With my wife, relationship speaks to whom she knows, where they are working and what they are doing. Whereas with my mother, relationship speaks to the story or narrative she understands about the organization built up over decades.

My mother’s “know” is knowledge, the story, the narrative. No doubt the product of the mass communications paradigm we are quickly exiting.

My wife’s “know” is much more intimate and tied to the people and a particular mission and, yes, is driven by online communications.

We are quickly coming to a time when large monolithic nonprofit organizations like CARE, the Red Cross, and the American Cancer Society (and I chose these organizations because they are very large) are going to be under pressure to connect with new, younger generations of potential supporters in a much more intimate and personal way. And, to their credit, I am starting to see some signs of that move. For instance, following disasters, texting $10 has been very successful for the Red Cross, but the test will be how they follow up and develop these one-time donors into annual supporters … even without a disaster. That will take care and nurturing of the relationship.

It isn’t that my mother’s generation was easy and younger generations (beginning with the Baby Boomers) are hard. Rather, I think it’s more that younger generations are very different in what they look for and expect from the organizations they support today.

It isn’t harder vs. easier … they are just different.

Making a determination of “hard” versus “easy” is really more a reflection on what we know … our experience.

But this much is clear . . . going forward, relationship is going to be defined in a more intimate and personal way.

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com

BIG’s Blog: How many Checks do you write?

I ran a mail-order company in the 1980s. We processed thousands (actually, tens of thousands) of checks. How many credit cards did we process a month? Maybe ten. Checks dominated!  

Do checks still dominate your personal life? I’m not talking about your workplace; I’m talking about YOUR LIFE.

How old are you? 40s? 50s? 60s? Seriously, how many checks are you writing a month compared to five years ago?

YOU are obviously living in 2014, yet your fundraising organization is stuck … yes, stuck … in a time warp of the 1980s if more than 20% of your revenue comes in through checks. Some would say I am being “awfully generous” when I say 20%.

So who writes checks today? You think I am only going to mention people in my Mother’s age group who are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Yes, that is true, but I’m guessing you are getting checks today from people in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

And if they are in their 40s, 50s and 60s, then they are just like you, right? They have “to dig out their checkbook” to send you a donation.

It’s schizophrenic isn’t it? You don’t use that many checks, yet you expect the people that are just like you to dig out their checkbook to make a donation to YOUR organization? You have long-since stopped making checks the center of your financial transaction world and you KNOW many of the people who donate to you are just like you … and yet … the check remains THE mechanism of nonprofit transactions.

Why?

Maybe because your primary mechanism to communicate with them is mail. And what is in every mail package? Answer: a reply envelope. And what are reply envelopes for? Answer: to carry the check to you.

Doesn’t it make you wonder what would happen if your major transaction mechanism switched from offline checks to some online payment option? But how is THAT going to happen when your major communications vehicle still includes a reply envelope?

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com

BIG’s Blog: I Never Work on the Last Day of the Year

I never work on the last day of the year, or on any of the other 364 days either.

I grew up in a small rural community in Kansas. For those of you that have only known east coast megalopolis or the west coast LA basin, or the myriad large cities in our country, there is no way I can explain it to you. Life is just simpler and fairly black and white. You learn at an early age in this culture to get up every day and start working.

My first “real job” was baling hay at the age of 11. To be fair-skinned on a clear summer day with the temperature hovering around the century mark as you walk through what seemed like endless fields of wheat stubble or cut alfalfa, picking up and tossing 60 to 80-pound bales onto the bed of a slow-moving trailer was the lot of rookie balers at the age of 11. One of your buddies (everybody that you work with in a small town is your buddy; the term co-worker was a foreign concept) rode on the trailer picking up the bails you had thrown and stacked them six to eight-high, depending on how smooth the field was. The lucky stiff (usually the oldest kid on the baling team, or the farmer himself if it was a small farm) drove the tractor that pulled the trailer.

But the work in the field was just a warm up … no pun intended … for the real work of putting up the bales in the barn. You remember the movies when you were a kid where the train robbers always pulled their bandanas up across the lower half of their face so as to be unrecognizable? Well, all cowboys and farm hands really wear bandanas to this day, and it’s not for robbing trains. You need bandanas pulled up over your nose and mouth when you are unloading the hay bails in the barn so you don’t get choked up with dust. Hay dust is thick in an enclosed barn with not a breath of air moving, and if you thought the temperature was hot in the field, you can only imagine how stifling it gets when the temperature in the barn approaches 115, with no air moving. Dust cakes to the sweat on your face, arms, and down your neck onto your back where it starts to itch like crazy. A real rookie can be spotted by wearing a short sleeve shirt to do this work; you only make that mistake once.

But I was fortunate. My farm-hand experiences taught me at an early age what real work was all about, and from that point on, I have never wanted to have anything to do with it. Lesson learned!

That is why for the next 50+ years I have always … with very few exceptions … done only what I wanted to do even though most people would say I was a hard worker. I would say I did what I enjoyed doing. Big difference!

So then, work is a state of mind. Of course it is how we earn the money that we need to pay our bills, but “work” is a choice. You can either wake up five days a week (or more) and have to force yourself out of bed in the morning or you can choose to do what you love to do.

Right now there are hundreds of people (probably thousands) who work in nonprofit fundraising and hate their jobs, whether the problems are a toxic work environment due to inept or no management, or co-workers constantly sowing discord or lack of direction by leadership or the board of directors. Either way, it leads to plummeting morale and dissatisfaction in the fundraising workplace.

I wouldn’t say it is endemic across the whole of the fundraising world since we work with fundraising organizations that are the exact polar opposite, but I would say it is prevalent in way too many fundraising organizations.

Why?

My sense is that the dividing line between highly-functional and successful fundraising groups and their opposite numbers comes down to leadership. But more than merely leadership, it is about leading with a vision of first, “what you want to accomplish” and then second, “laying out a plan (a roadmap) of how to get there” and finally, “sticking to the plan and measuring your progress along the way to your goal.”

If it cannot be measured, then it should not be done!

This is what separates the successful from what I refer to as the “functioning dysfunctional.”

Apparently the New Year is a time for many fundraising organizations to rearrange staff, add new staff, or create a new organization chart to better accomplish their fundraising goals. Insofar as it is driven by a real vision and plan … then great! But if it is just another attempt at “doing something” to right a failing plan, then it will be like a Jell-O mold. You know what a Jell-O mold is, don’t you? You mix Jell-O and pour it into a mold, refrigerate and what comes out is molded Jell-O. When you hit a Jell-O mold it shakes, just like some organizations announcing some kind of change or shakeup. But because the change or shakeup really isn’t driven by a vision or a plan, pretty soon – just like a Jell-O mold that has been whacked – it reverts back to exactly as it was before the shakeup. Nothing will have changed, except lost time.

No caring leader ever wants to intentionally be a part of that!

Here is a radical thought to start your new year. If you are the leader of an organization that has tried but failed to right the ship and your fundraising organization isn’t moving forward and, frankly, you really don’t look forward to going into work each morning, maybe rather than foist yet another slap to the Jell-O mold … announce your resignation.

Yes, resign! It really isn’t that novel; I’ve done it several times in my career. Quit wasting your life “working” at something that has obviously become unfulfilling to you. You’re clearly smart and talented, but for whatever reason right now your talents are not matching up to what is needed in your organization.

Life’s natural order is birth and death. Death is life’s way of regenerating itself. In your case I’m not talking about physical death, but rather emotional death. There is a reason why people say “my job feels like a ‘dead’ end.”

If you need to wait on a new successor or quickly groom someone from inside the organization to take your place, then announce you are leaving and get on with it!

Your best days are ahead of you!

But please, don’t hang on thinking YOU are irreplaceable. Listen, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable people.  

Quit “working” … go do something you love and are passionate about.

Not only make it a New Year, make it a Happy New Year!

Drip, Drip, Drip.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com