Genuine gratitude

Photos: Markus Spiske on Unsplash

This webpage is for trust fundraisers with three or more years’ experience. Beginners should use this page instead.

A lot of trust fundraisers don’t seem to show genuine gratitude that easily. This matters – you can hear it on the phone and it helps with your writing.

For some recipients of your thank you, a stock response seems doesn’t quite fit. They’ve given of themselves – their time, or their money. They may be doing it partly because they’re looking to fulfil an emotional part of themselve. Suppose you had spent time buying someone a present, you send it to them and the reply was basically an acknowledgement or it seemed completely formulaic, with no emotion behind it. How would it make you feel? About the future relationship?

On the other hand, a response that is more alive stands out. The Head of Grants at Age Concern England used to say that the most rewarding grants made were not those that funded staff at a big Age Concern, but the ones for a few hundred pounds to a small group. It seemed to matter so much to them. He told me that story about four times over the course of the three years I was there, so it clearly meant something to him. 

Thoughts about cultivating gratitude

1. Barriers to gratitude

For us, thanking can feel like just a process. You come into the office, there are umpteen tasks and one is thanking a funder. It’s the umpteenth thank you letter you’ve written this year. It’s all couched in market-eeze. You’ve “retained” the “donor”, maybe they’re “upgraded”, it’s progress towards your target. It might be enough simply to recognise this isn’t entirely appropriate, when you sit down and write.

It’s also possible to resent rich people. I was a Marxist in my 20s and 30s and the culture around giving can still feel a bit uncomfortable. The richer people are, on average, the smaller the percentage of their income they give. It’s worth remembering that these people are at least trying to be the “good guys”. They are the ones who give the most, who are bucking some of the trends to see themselves and their family and friends as needing almost every penny for themselves and to keep up with the Joneses (or maybe: Abromoviches). They’re spending quite a bit of time and effort in most cases. To encourage the best in people is not to say you admire everything about them. You’re seeing them at their best and that’s surely something to encourage, rather than deterring it with emotionally blank responses.

A third point is that you can feel like one functionary talking to another. It’s some grants officer’s job to give you the money. Occasionally it seems to strike them as odd if you’re gushingly enthusiastic on the phone. They get paid for it just like you, so why be grateful? Well – they have recommended you for a grant, rather than someone else. Being a grants officer is good for the ego, but it’s hard work, they’ve done quite bit in giving you the recommendation. In the Age Concern example above, the Head of Grants was a functionary, but gratitude seemed to have an impact.

Finally, being grateful can involve opening yourself to acknowledging a little vulnerability and difference in status. You need their money – not just as a charity, but towards your target, sense of achievement, etc. However, that IS the real world and there can be strength from acknowledging the truth. That said, if you’re skilled and work hard, you won’t be fired because they decided not to give – there aren’t enough trust fundraisers available for your charity to behave so foolishly. So you aren’t that vulnerable, in the real world. And yes, they have more status, but your job is possibly more interesting than a grants officer’s, because you have the time to get invested in things (so you might allow them to bask a little in their position).

Research has found a lot of benefits to an attitude of gratitude in life: https://positivepsychology.com/benefits-of-gratitude/. It would be strange if the very people your work depends on, who you keep thanking, weren’t recipients of your genuine gratitude.

2. Ways to cultivate gratitude

• Acknowledging what you owe them. They’re keeping you in work. And what you’re doing is wonderful – your applications are changing lives. That’s even true if the service has been going for years – few services are protected from cuts and the money finally has to come from somewhere, even if theirs is just a small part of the whole. You could be selling paperclips, instead you’re making the world for a better place – and it’s because of your donors.
• Connecting with your care about the work. Why do you do the job, rather than business to business sales, say? Have you met or read about someone and it touched you? Why do you believe in the cause? The person you’re about to write or speak to has helped that cause.
• Think of someone you do feel grateful to. What does that feel like? Can you extend that feeling to the person you’re writing/speaking to? Our situations are down to chance in some ways, maybe you could even imagine a world in which the two person you feel grateful to and the person you’re writing to had swapped places. Give what your letter recipient and their trust have one, don’t they deserve gratitude?

There are lots of online resources about cultivating gratitude. Here’s one with more academic research behind it: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_ways_to_cultivate_gratitude_at_work