Pledgers who don’t give

You’ll always have some people pledge who never follow through.

There seem to be three categories of this kind of giver:

1) The person who pledges and never gives.
2) The person who pledges, gives a few times and then isn’t heard from again.
3) The person who pledges and gives seldom and randomly thereafter.

Of these, the first two are most common in my experience. Dealing with non-giving pledgers is tricky business. You don’t want to seem too eager to get their gifts by sending a slew of reminders, but some communication is prudent. Do take into account the personality and circumstances of the giver when deciding how to approach them. Some people have good and sincere intentions but simply forget, every month. Some people may be out of a job or lose a job after committing to a regular donation. If said donor is generally jovial, I’m more likely to approach them more often and more bluntly.

Two things I’ve leaned on are thank-yous and Christmas gifts. We’ve made a practice of sending donors small notes of thanks in the middle of the year, as well as inexpensive gifts around Christmastime. I use these as a reminder to people that they are a part of the team, although after a certain “point of no return” — that is, if a person hasn’t given for, say, 18 months or more — I’ll drop them from the thank you list.

In truth I don’t think this tactic has actually revived any of the non-giving pledgers. Even the two, that I can think of, “jovial” donors that I’ve given face-to-face or phone reminders to haven’t begun giving regularly, or at all.

Thus it seems to be a fact of living on support: You’ll always have some people pledge who never follow through. Plan on it when creating your budget and fundraising strategy!

Faith rewarded?

Our finances are getting a little be touchy — not that they’ve been anything to lean on — as we come close to a time when the money seems to, very frankly, be running out. We have a number of expenses, health related mostly, that we could cut but have decided are important enough to stick with until the bitter end.

We do have health insurance, but we don’t use it. In fact we’ve never used it. The expenses related to my wife’s health are through a specialist outside of our state, and is the kind of doctor health insurance companies scoff at anyway. Costs associated with this doctor can average around than $200 or more a month. We also see a chiropractor. Before moving to work with the ministry we did this regularly, but couldn’t afford it just after moving. When I began having mild dizzy spells after sitting at length in front of a computer, which is what I do all day working with the ministry, we both (for different reasons) began seeing the back-cracker regularly again. This costs us $140 a month. And the dizzy spells haven’t returned!

We’ve been able to manage these two costs, although my wife hasn’t been taking the supplements she needs to be all of the time. But since she quit working earlier this year things have become progressively slimmer in the checkbook department.

Earlier today I moved $750 from our savings to our now meager checking account to cover some other unexpected expenses. I felt the need to see the dentist after a tooth, which has bothered me in the past, became a bit sore again. The tooth ended up being fine for now, but my wife is also in need of new glasses. We’ve gone the cheap route for glasses the past four years, but are feeling like this pair needs to be a bit more tailored. Between the dentist and new glasses we’ll easily spend $400, if not more.

Just after getting back to the office today my wife called me. She reported that the mail was just delivered, and it included two things: A large package of nonsensical papers from the health insurance company, and a personal check from one of our donors. The check was in the amount of $500. This will easily cover our dental and optic needs for the month, and should allow me to restore the money I moved from the checking account.

Such uncanny timing has happened in the past, in fact with this same donor. Her commitment is truly inspiring.

Now if we only had about five others like her, in giving and commitment!

What constitutes justifiable spending?

Earlier this morning my office mate shared a story with the rest of us. He told us of a friend, of modest means, who asked his very well-off friend a question. Modest means asked how a person could justify spending $2 million dollars for a home, as very well-off friend had done. Very well-off replied that the millions he spent on his house were less than 1% of his annual income, and how could modest means justify spending 20-30% of his entire income on housing?

(For a bit of context, we were discussing the merits of purchasing a Wii. All of us in the office are of very modest means. We also all work in the internet industry, and thus are — from time to time — intrigued by video game technology. I gamed on a Wii for the first time just two weeks ago, and must say it’s quite fun.)

The above example, of course, is not really an apples to apples comparison. The idea of two million dollars to me is, well, unfathomable. I won’t even pretend to understand the budget of a person whose two million is a measly 1% of his annual income. Those of us around the M-DAT office would be living in cardboard boxes if we only spent 1% on housing, as would most Americans. Bear in mind I’m coming from a very run-of-the-mill perspective here, living in a small community where housing prices are generally considered “affordable.” I’m not in certain real estate markets, where a cool two mil might get you a two bedroom flat.

And thus it’s very, very difficult for me to comprehend how I might spend even one million bucks on a house. Of course, unlike many American dreamers, I have a staunch aversion to McMansions — to all things oversized, overstuffed or generally inconsiderate of practical spatial considerations. I don’t need three-gazillion square feet; nay, I don’t even want three-gazillion square feet. I don’t say this to knock people who want to recreate the open prairie in their master bedroom closets; it’s just my personal preference. I’ve said before that there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with a large house (speaking outside of cultural, social and sustainable concerns).

In many things I’m not a very detail-oriented person, much to the chagrin of most employment classifieds. However, when it comes to architecture (and most things visual), I’m extraordinarily particular when I can be. Thus, if I built my own million-dollar home, for me to give attention to an exponential myriad of details — resulting in a significant cost increase — is feasible. Construction methods, materials, moldings, sustainability and so on.

Still, I cannot imagine my own precisely detailed, non-McMansion ever cresting the two million dollar mark.

While traveling in late May we visited people who support my wife and I in our service with the non-profit we work for. Somehow, over dinner, Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges came up. This led to a brief discussion about Walton’s failed attempt to purchase The Gross Clinic late last year. Our friend across the table listened in cynical disbelief at the 60 million dollar figure the painting eventually sold for, lamenting how people like my wife and I struggle to live in a missional and support-based lifestyle when numbers like these are somewhat regularly thrown around for paintings. And this is a serious consideration. What if Philadelphia, instead of raising $30,000,000 in pledged money (in order to secure the $60,000,000 plus loan) for a painting raised the same money in two month’s time to feed, house, cloth and provide jobs for the roughly 25,000 homeless people in the city? If a metropolitan area can mobilize so quickly for a painting, why not for people?

And I say this as an artist.

I wish someone would buy my paintings for sixty million, or six million or even six hundred dollars, knowing such financial tension exists in a lot of people’s personal budgets. I’ve come to a point where I desire to not pass judgment on how people spend, knowing the difficulty of such decisions. I say “desire to not” because it’s very difficult to not pass such judgment (as a human being) living on support.

Getting back to the Wii, my boss was having a hard time justifying the $249 he needed to shell out for the system when the people depicted on posters around our office live on that amount of money in an entire year. My officemate, friends with modest-means, noted that even people who live on so little spend 1% of their income on entertainment.

Why people give

From Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing blog:

“People take action and give for deeply personal reasons. The more our messages resonate with our audience’s perspective, the greater power they contain. No one has ever told me that they gave because of a beautifully crafted mission statement or an attractive brochure. No one.”

I can personally point out a few notable exceptions, particularly a certain kind of business-minded male. These types, which I’ve come across at least two or three times, are extremely interested in the direction and business plan/model of an organization.

I would also add that a number of our own donors seem to give because of relationship. Katya’s examples from the aforementioned post elude to this but she didn’t say the word relationship. I’m convinced some of our donors don’t have the foggiest idea of what we do — other than “it deals with the internet” — but they give because they know us and trust us. This is somewhat frightening to me.

Her thought is on track though, and missions may be a bit of a different ball game than what she’s used to playing. People don’t generally give because of mission statements or brochures (although these surely won’t hurt, as my wife the wordsmith and myself the designer will tell you).