knowabundance.com

Happy last Monday of 2009!

I want to thank you for reading our Know Abundance posts this year.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the mix of topics and the new voices we’ve added the past few months.

Your feedback is always welcome. Let us know what you like and don’t like and if there are things you want us to talk more about in 2010.

This blog was started as the economy in the U.S. was tanking and recovery wasn’t in sight. Even then, the world around us was full of abundance. But our focus was on scarcity and lack, panic and fear as we faced the unknown.

We are being asked by necessity to create new systems and new ways of being with each other and living life on this planet.

How do we untie ourselves from an economic model based on endless consumption with scarcity as a key motivator? We realize that everything we need, we already have.

Start with yourself. Give thanks for what you do have. Let that be enough.

“Everything I need I already have.”

“We live in this mysterious world as if we understand it and so wonder becomes lost. We live as if we know more than we don’t know and that isn’t true. Each moment of our lives we stand at a crossroads: we can reduce the profound to the mundane or we can intuit the continuous and vital mystery through which we move.”

- G. BlueStone, A Life of Wonder from Maverick Sutras

(Happy Monday! Today’s post is from Tuti Scott, our leadership expert.)

Anais Nin said “Life shrinks or expands directly in proportion to one’s courage.”

When you are trying to influence someone, when you are trying to have power, it helps to share a vision of the future – to take them some place, and better yet, to use archetypes, stories, and images while painting the picture of a new future.

People love archetypes because they conjure up the notion of all things that stem from that original prototype. Images, literally imagining the outcome you want, helps mobilize unseen energy – a phenomenon which has actually been proven through the study of particle physics.

A practical way to start this process of visioning is in every meeting, whether it be with a donor or a staff member or your boss, in relationship to any project or goal, ask them: “What would success look like?  What would “winning” look or feel like?”

If you can imagine your goal and give it texture and shape, it is much more likely that you all will achieve the outcome you are seeking. It’s all part of “shared power.” If you build it, they will come…

People frequently ask me about female sports champions and what I’ve learned of their careers and their success. I often share stories about coaches who have their athletes visualize themselves at the gold medal ceremony and how this practice motivates and focuses their efforts.

All of the successful athletes I’ve met had this in common: they worked incredibly hard and diligently at their skills and their sport. If you want to reach your goals, then you must believe that if you work harder and smarter, you will win.

Sure, you and all athletes know that you may not win every time and there will always be someone who is more powerful, but in the long run, longevity and “stick-to-it-iveness” will prevail… potentially even over those who may be more powerful! This has been shown over and over in many advocacy efforts for social change.

Look forward with courage, play with ‘winning’ in mind and work hard – these are three essential components for realizing your goals.

Substitute, “This is just the way it is” with “Let’s change this.”

“Follow your passion with persistence, magnified by intense preparation. Use compassion and courage to weave a strong web of connections. Use focused excellence to drive achievements and gain wisdom. It is through the combination of all these things that your power will reveal itself.

{Preparation¹⁰ (Passion + Persistence)}
{Connection¹⁰ (Compassion + Courage)}
{Excellence¹⁰ (Achievement + Wisdom)}
= Power
{P₁¹⁰ (P₂ + P₃)} + {C₁¹⁰( C₂ + C₃)} + {E¹⁰ (A + W)} = Power”

- Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President

Happy Monday!

So what’s on your “to do” list this week? Planning meetings? Paperwork? Data entry? Responding to emails?

What about meeting with donors? Does that show up on your daily calendar anywhere?

If not, you need to rearrange your schedule.

It’s easy to get caught up in office tasks and loose sight of the most important aspect of our job: building relationships with the people who are supporting our work.

The 2009 study Significant Gifts: Where Donors Direct Their Largest Gifts and Why conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University confirms that, “Donors to charitable organizations give more when they are asked in person and when someone they know makes the request.”

and “People give to people, and especially to people they know.”

But it’s not just about us initiating face-to-face meetings – we also need to be available.

A longtime supporter emailed recently to say she’d be stopping by the office and “hope to see you for a few minutes at least.” I suggested we go out for lunch and she replied that she already had plans and said, “I never think of trying to have lunch with you guys anymore because you all seem so busy.”

Later that week another donor sent an email asking if we “might be available for a bite of lunch or cup of coffee…I know you are busy, busy people, so just let me know what might work for you.”

Both of these messages were stop signs for me. What kind of relationship can we have with our donors if they think we’re too busy to meet with them?

What’s the most important part of our job as fundraisers?

You know what it is, so get out of the office this week. Go enjoy conversations with people who are passionate about supporting your work. Be available.

Substitute, “I’m too busy to talk to you” with “Let’s have a cup of tea.”

“With token recognition, donors may see their contributions as transactions, but donors who receive more personal recognition better understand how their gift impacts an organization’s work. That moves them away from transactional giving to larger philanthropic contributions.”

Peter Fissinger
Campbell & Company, President

(Happy Monday! Today’s post is from Sande Smith our Communications expert.)

I admit it. I’ve got Flip fever.

And the fever’s growing now that I’ve won one of those slim Flip cameras! It happened at the recent Pink Magazine Empowerment Conference.

There was a session on social media and meaningful engagement, and because that’s my latest obsession, I went.

Jeannette Gibson, the speaker, was terrific. She’s Cisco’s Director of New Media, and showed some very simple examples of how Cisco has integrated mini-videos – made with the flip – into their communications plans and interactions with customers. (In March 2009, Cisco bought the maker of Flip video, Pure Digital.)

Some examples:

• John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO, answered questions on the future of the company, his vision & goals. The questions were sent through Twitter, and the result was a 4 minute video.
• A product manager sits next to a Cisco switch and talks about the product – an alternative to the printed fact sheet).
• And my personal favorite because it’s silly, surprising and gives you insight in the CEO’s character – John Chambers showing his team how to do duck calls. That video has 23,415 views!

At the Global Fund for Women, we recently made our own simple Flip video. After Christine Ahn, a Progressive Women’s Media Resource Center fellow and Global Fund colleague, came back fired up from a weekend training where she learned to make Flip videos, she and another Global Fundie, Preeti Shekar, held up the camera and asked staff one simple question.

Why do you care about violence against women?

The result is a simple, moving 4-minute video that helps viewers learn more about the people behind the Global Fund and the reasons we do the work we do. It accompanied our campaign for the 16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women, and has almost 200 views.

Of course, you don’t have to use a Flip to create simple videos. The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota created a series of simple videos using a Sony camera (with video capacity) on a tripod. With these fun Happy Birthday videos as the basis, the foundation raised almost $5,000 for their girlsBest (girls Building Economic Success Together) Fund – in less than a week! How did they do it? I called their Communications Director, Mary Beth Hanson, to find out.

“With our 26th anniversary as the basis for our online campaign, I really wanted to expand our social-media tool chest to include video,” said Mary Beth. After watching the carefully crafted and scripted videos of other nonprofits on YouTube, she realized that most were too long and not very interesting.

“So, I decided that our videos had to be short and celebratory with surprising content that would get folks interested enough to return daily – for the duration of the campaign. And hopefully donate at some point along the way.”

To distribute the videos and promote the campaign, the Foundation used a daily combination of its nonprofit YouTube channel, Facebook page, website and email blasts. Not only did the Foundation nearly reach its $5,000 goal, it attracted many new donors, recharged lapsed ones, and inspired current ones. The campaign was a resounding success.

The lessons? “Short is better, fun is great! While the issues we’re working on are serious, we don’t always have to be serious in our communications. It’s really important to provide ways for people to celebrate with you.”

Instead of thinking about how hard it is to make videos and engage in social media, ask yourself what can I share? What moves me? What’s fun?

Substitute,”Long and carefully crafted” with “Short and surprising.”

“Short is better, fun is great! While the issues we’re working on are serious, we don’t always have to be serious in our communications. It’s really important to provide ways for people to celebrate with you.”

- Mary Beth Hanson, Communications Director
Women’s Foundation of Minnesota