Photos: Craig Dennis on Pexels and (insert) Matthew Henry on Burst
This webpage is for trust fundraisers with three or more years’ experience. Beginners should use this page instead.
Engagement
What’s in it for them?
Sophie Bennett, Head of Trusts at the National Trust, gave an Chartered Institute of Fundraising First Thursday talk. At it, she suggested that, within your group of donors, there could be a small number who could be upgraded significantly. So, it’s about understanding them and approaching them in the right way.
Digressing for a moment: Bill Bruty has followed 100 trusts for many years and has said a number of times that he doesn’t believe you can permanently upgrade trusts – you might get them to go up, but they usually eventually revert to the same level. I’d only finesse that statement by saying: in my experience it does happen sometimes, even if Bill’s right generally. Anyway, back to Sophie’s point…
She would say it’s about: what’s the most value we can add for this funder who has potential, what is the best way we can work with them, rather than what is the most we can get out of them? It will hopefully naturally lead to the latter and you have to keep that in mind, but the relationship, rather than the big ask, is the direct aim.
As Rob Woods suggests in a number of podcasts, this increases your ability to be brave with the funder. The reason is that it’s less “high stakes” to speak to someone about something that helps them than to ask them for something for yourself.
Phone to thank them
Sophie also suggested in the same event: phone the instance you hear you had a grant: they’re lovely calls. There’s a separate webpage about planning thank you calls to get more from them, but the fairly rapid response clearly has something to it.
Language
Major donor expert Louise Morris makes a point that applies to some extent to trust fundraising as well: if the terminology we use to describe what we’re doing wouldn’t be appropriate to use to their faces, why are we using it? She highlights that the way we speak seeps into how we think, our culture and how we then treat donors. So, if you wouldn’t be comfortable describing a trust as a prospect, to say you’re cultivating them or stewarding them, it’s not going to build deeper connections.
Social media
Sophie suggests trying to engage with trusts through social media. It was said in the context of finding different angles to reach people. Her suggestion was that Trusts personnel might be scrolling through their social media and make a connection that way.
While we’re on the topic of social media: telesales guru Art Sobczak recommends researching the person you’ll be calling / working with, as well as the organisation. he argues that your calls (in his case_ really stand out. He clearly doesn’t think it’s stalk-y in normal cases, though he posited situations in which it might be (a male teleseller asking a woman about something a bit personal). He gives an example of coming across a tweet his prospect had made that said how much she loved “skinny margaritas”. In a subsequent call, he mentioned the post, asked “What’s a skinny margarita?” It led to them having a good laugh. He eventually got the business. GDPR would be a thing here, though – it would be best to at least disclose your search and your follow up email ought to reference your privacy policy in the small print at the bottom.
Competitive, macho funder??
If your funder is an alpha male from a highly competitive and macho culture with huge egos, I wonder whether the work of Oren Klaff, in particular Pitch Anything, would be worth trying. It’s about creating a frame that includes your superiority and talks a lot about sending signals of power. Given how polite and “touchy feely” our world is and the fact you’re appealing to generosity, I think you’d need to read the book and work out how to adapt it. It’s very interesting, though, because it’s so different – I think you could stand out if you’re nice enough.
I definitely think that one idea from Pitch Anything is a good general fit: projecting a sense that you’re a very high quality project that you invite them to be part of, rather than showing neediness or desperation.