Crafting the Transformational Giving Experience

Part One: Setting the Compass

A few weeks ago, I visited a small bakery. I paid with a credit card and opted for the e-receipt. Soon after, a link to a customer experience survey appeared in my inbox. Improving the customer experience has long been a part of the hospitality, healthcare, automotive, restaurant, and point-of-sale retail industries. In a world where the competition for resources is fierce, and profit margins razor-thin, loyalty matters. Some not-for-profit organizations are joining this trend. They are intentionally working to create a positive, if not life-changing, giving experience. When organizations create a giving experience that changes the way the partner understands their life-purpose and impact, that giving experience is transformative.?

To be sure, most not-for-profit leaders will tell you that they love their financial partners. Few, however, take an honest look at the giving experience they create. They assume that the work they do gives them the right to ask for a financial gift. However, the world of fundraising has changed. There has been a continual unabated shift away from the centrality of the organization toward the centrality of the partner. Today’s donors have an abundance of choices and causes in which to invest. The space is highly competitive. The truth is that sometimes even the most well-intended non-profit leaders, who love their partners, create a less than transformational giving experience.

How others experience us, individually and organizationally, is often determined by what we value. The central value question was posed to our advancement team by Dan Glaze with the National Christian Foundation:?Do you want something?from?the financial partner, or do you want something?for?the financial partner? The question you choose to work on through the deployment of resources, the setting of goals, the configuration of staff, and the communication agenda reveals who you are as an organization. If the financial partner’s giving experience is not a core organizational value, it will be a challenge to allocate the time, resources, disciplines to create transformation. More importantly, the steep competition in the current market space, and the rising expectations among donors will make financial partner acquisition and retention difficult. When partner experience is a core value, it will become a stated operational priority bringing the very best of leadership’s time, energy, and commitment. When that happens, the giving experience flows from who you are and not just what processes you put in place.

The first step in crafting a transformational giving experience is an honest self-examination of the values that drive partner contact. Is what you want?for?the financial partner clearly defined at every point of the giving experience??Those who I have coached know what’s coming next: fundraisers make the ask, but organizations raise the resources. Successful fundraising is the byproduct of great culture. The right culture understands that partners matter.?Have you ever heard the saying, “No money, no mission?” That kind of language belongs to a culture that is dangerously close to harboring contempt for partners because… it is about the money. It looks past the partner to the gift.?Partners matter. No partners, no mission. Without partners, you do not get to do what you do. With them, they get to impact the world through you. Therein lies your significance. This kind of thinking demands organizational humility. You get to be a part of?their?impact on the world. When a financial partner makes a major gift, they are relinquishing part of the resources entrusted to their care. They are giving you something of who they are and sharing something of what they hope. Your task is to honor that relationship and teach the financial partner what they mean to you as well as what the gift means to the mission.?

In the past donors gave to causes they believed in. Today, financial partners are creating positive change in the world. Those words “gave to” and “are creating” are the heart of the matter. Crafting an experience that is transformational for the financial partner and the organization starts with who you are as an organization and what you value. The clarity about what you want to create in the world is matched only by the clarity about what you want to create in the financial partner.

The clarity about what you want to create in the world is matched only by the clarity about what you want to create in the financial partner.

Once you get this right the compass is set. Now you can begin the art of crafting experience. Next, we will talk about the nature of experience and how we can tap into experiential memory and link what you do with who your partners desire to become.?Here is a hint: you won’t get there emulating the gimmicky practices of those who sell products that offer little if any lasting value in the world.?

Let’s stay in touch!

David Lee