knowabundance.com

Happy Monday!

I went to a fundraising dinner on Saturday night where more than $45,000 was raised in less than 10 minutes.

I also went to the mall on Saturday to buy a top to wear to the dinner. The mall was Christmas-time packed with long lines in every store I entered or walked by.

Even in “these economic times,” there is money. People are buying things they want and giving to causes they care about.

There was no lamenting over the economy during the dinner program. Every speaker focused on core mission and impact.

Personal stories were shared highlighting:

1. the need/problem
2. the solution
3. what had been accomplished so far (because of our support)
4. the continuing need
5. how this need was going to be met (with our support)

Given the challenge “Are you in?” from a dynamic speaker, the stage was set for the fundraising ask. And people responded. $10,000, $2,500, $1,000, $500, $100, $25 gifts were enthusiastically made and gratefully received.

There is money. We might not be raising as much as we did last year – but people are still willing to give.

Adjusting to change, especially change we don’t particularly want and didn’t ask for, can be difficult. We can become myopically focused on what used to be or what we wish was.

Babysitting for a friend this week, I watched her five-year-old daughter dissolve into total misery when she couldn’t have what she wanted. We were eating lunch and she had her food, but wanted it in a blue bowl (which her sister had.)

She became fixated on what she didn’t have, refusing to eat. All she could see was the blue bowl she wanted – not the food that was in the purple bowl she had.

We’re like this sometimes. We focus intently on what we can’t have or what we wish we had and stubbornly refuse to enjoy what we have because it’s not exactly what we wanted (or what we see that someone else has.)

The person who led the giving spree came by our table afterwards feeling discouraged. “I didn’t get any gifts at the $5,000 level.”  Focused on what wasn’t received, he was disappointed.

When the need is great, we can easily slip into seeing only what is lacking. Step back for a minute. What is in your bowl?

(Photograph by Mike McCaffrey)

Happy Monday!

Have you ever been at a social function where you were talking to someone and you could tell that they weren’t listening to you?

While you are speaking, they are scanning the room, looking around to see who is there. Their body and their attention focused not on the conversation with you but on seeing who else they could (or “should”) be talking to.

What did you think of this experience?

Do you treat your donors this way?

“Thanks for the gift, but I’m busy right now looking for a donation from someone else, someone who can give us more or who can connect us to important people, someone who is more valuable than you are.”

or

“Thanks for your support, we appreciate it but can you give us another gift as soon as possible and can you give us more next time?”

With the pressure on to raise money, it can be easy to forget that behind every donation is a live person.

Focused on meeting our money goals, we can quickly fall into the habit of valuing high dollar donors and prospects more than our mainstay “average” supporter. This is a counter productive habit that can cause us to neglect or overlook an important segment of our donor base. These are the supporters who have made their gifts and are ready to be noticed, listened to and appreciated.

Right now every single donor, regardless of the gift amount, is making a stretch to give. With fear driving the economy, everyone is concerned about not having enough, needing to cut back and worriedly waiting to see if things will get better.

This means that every donation that comes through your door is a statement of commitment to, and belief in, your organization and mission. Your job is to value the gift and the person who gave it. The amount is irrelevant.

The key to surviving and thriving in “this economy” is the old mainstay of good fundraising: donor appreciation.

We know that supporters who feel connected and appreciated give more. Don’t ignore the donors that you do have. Remember they made a stretch to give to you – they overcame the fear of not having enough for themselves.

While you’re busy looking to see what you might be missing, you can miss seeing what you already have.

Happy Monday!

Are you living from news headline to news headline?

Waiting for someone to tell you when the economic crisis is over? Looking for the signal that you can stop worrying and trust again in the systems we have built to ensure our survival and prosperity?

Daily we are confronted with this (scary) not knowing.

We don’t know what will happen to the economy, we don’t know when things will get better and we don’t know if things will get worse. All of a sudden what we thought we could count on as a sure thing, a solid foundation – is shifting under our feet.

What do we do now? How do we live with the uncertainty of the unknown?

1) We can freeze. We can stay where we are, “hunker down” and hold on tight to whatever we have and wait until the crisis is over.

2) We can blame. We can direct our anger and frustration at everyone and everything that caused this situation.

3) We can worry. We don’t know what is going to happen but we can imagine all of the worst-case scenarios and try to prepare ourselves for them, just in case.

4) We can Trust. We already know that we have the capability to craft and build new systems. History reminds us of our common aptitude to repair, fix, heal, learn from mistakes, adapt, rebuild, improve on, discover, imagine, invent, innovate and create.

Our instinct is to panic. We like to know what is next. We want to be prepared for what might happen. But our propensity to envision (and focus all of our attention on) worst-case scenarios undermines what we are trying to accomplish.

Focused on the bad and the potential worst we become stuck in fear and stagnant in old patterns. We ignore our capacity to create positive futures.

We obsess over the thought that we might lose everything, missing the fact that our greatest loss happens the moment we abandon our ability to see and appreciate the wealth and abundance of what we do have.

Trust is our best option. We will always have the unknown. Every day we wake up, whether we have money in the bank or not, the element of unknown is there. We can’t control the weather, other people, financial markets, the passage of time or life itself.

But how do we trust when we don’t know what is going to happen? What do we hold on to when what we thought was certain has dissolved?

In situations like this I am reminded of the white-faced monkeys in Costa Rica. Early one morning I was sitting by the Montezuma River when a group of fifteen or so monkeys (including a mother with her baby on her back) appeared in the trees above me and began to cross the span of the river.

To get to the other side, the monkeys had to let go of one tree branch and leap towards another branch across the river, trusting, with each leap, that the branch they were reaching for would hold the weight of their body.

Jumping from tree branch to tree branch, there was a moment when each monkey was holding on to nothing.

I held my breath watching them. How could they do that?  Trust so completely, let go and leap?

If the white faced monkeys thought about everything that could go wrong, if they sat on the branch, looking across the river, calculating the distance and weighing their options, would they still jump?

The monkeys trusted themselves, each other, what they knew, the tree branches, their previous experience, and chance. They risked letting go to reach the other side.

Can we do that too? Trust, let go and hold on to nothing?

We can freeze, blame or worry. We can cling to our branch even as it breaks beneath our weight.

Or, we can let go, reach out and leap into the unknown.

Trust.

There will be a branch there. It won’t be the same as the one we let go of. That’s called change. Our old strategies might not work anymore. That’s ok. We can and will create new ones. Trust. We have met the unknown every single day of our lives thus far and survived. Trust.

With all of our senses wide open to the wealth and abundance within us and around us, there is nothing to lose.

Trust.

—

p.s. Thanks to Esther and Em for reminding me recently of the white faced monkey example of trust.

Happy Monday!

How are you handling the grim economic news?

Fundraising can be a challenge in the best of times but now, with the focus of our attention on how bad the economy is and our anxiety about a continued downward spiral, the task of asking people to share what they have is even more daunting.

How can we live abundantly when we are faced daily with the reality of scarcity?

What is the best way to approach donor (and our own) fears about the economy?

We can take wisdom from a saying that has been part of the English language lexicon for at least 463 years, a phrase that reminds us we “can’t see the forest for the trees.” (Attributed to John Heywood, 1546.)

Seeing only the trees around us is natural of course because that is what is immediate, that is reality, as we know it. We have a vague understanding of “our” trees as part of a larger whole but we don’t have the vantage point to see the forest.

Even though we can’t see the forest, we know there is one because trees surround us.

Abundance and scarcity are like the forest and the trees. The reality of scarcity is relative to our vantage point in the trees and abundance is the forest we are in.

The latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, has a perfect example of the relative nature of scarcity.

In one scene, set in a Bolivian town, the camera focuses on a communal waterspout that is ever…so… slowly… trickling a few drops of water before stopping completely. The desperate crowds of people standing in line with their empty water buckets panic as they realize there is no more water. Frenzied shouting and fighting erupts on the street.

Meanwhile, in another scene, we see a subterranean cave full of water that has secretly been dammed by the villain of the movie. The dammed water gives the villain leverage to manipulate the Bolivian government and make large sums of money through control of the water supply for the entire country.

There is water, but the Bolivians on the street with their empty buckets are living the reality of no water.

We see this same relative scarcity all around us. If our bucket isn’t empty we fear that it will be. We hold tight to our buckets and watch as the waterspout drips…What is damming the water?

It would be easy to make people with fuller buckets than ours into the villains. But as soon as we start to point fingers we see them pointing back at ourselves. The game of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ can be played in so many different ways and who defines the rules?

Is the suffering of a family losing a home because of a bad mortgage deal, or someone laid off from a job, more or less than a child starving to death, or a family sick with cholera and no access to medicine? Even the poorest of countries has its have and have-nots, its affluent and destitute.

As fundraisers we constantly traverse the ever-shifting ground of the have/have not paradigm. Remembering that we “can’t see the forest for the trees” is a tool to help navigate the slippery road and recognize the scarcity mindset that we all share.

Who is not searching for something they think they need? Who is not protecting what they have?

Our inability to see the forest for the trees is damming the water. Abundance is around us and inside us. To see the forest, cultivate awareness of your inner abundance; know that everything you need you already have.

There are solutions to the challenges we face as a global community. Scarcity is a relative reality and not absolute. Reality is the forest and the trees.

Can we see both? Can we live with the knowledge of the forest while we care for the trees?

Happy Monday!

The news about the economy is bad, donors are decreasing their giving because of fears about financial security and you are worried about meeting your fundraising goals for the year.

Wouldn’t thinking positive in the face of these realities mean burying your head in the sand?

Sometimes what we think is true is not true.

The idiom “bury your head in the sand” came from a belief that ostriches burry their heads in the sand when threatened by danger. Ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand.

Sometimes what we think is true is not true.

But the news about the economy is bad, donors are concerned about financial security, you do worry. This is true. But is this all that is true?

Is your organization helping someone in need? Are your programs having an impact in the community? Does your work educate, inspire and connect people? Isn’t this also true?

What is it in us that does not allow the positive to co-exist with the negative, the good news with the bad news. The glass can only be half full or half empty – never just a glass with water in it.

We take a simple childhood story of a girl who played a “glad game” no matter what happened and make her into something we don’t want to be. We define finding something to be glad about in every situation as being “naively optimistic.” Positive thinking is sugar coating reality. We don’t want to be Pollyanna.

So instead we hold on to part of the truth as the whole truth. We tell ourselves that we are not focusing on the negative. We are facing reality. Even though we know that there is black, white, shades of grey and colors too. Even though we know that sometimes, what we think is true is not true.

Alongside this don’t-want-to-be Pollyanna habit, at the other end of the spectrum we have a desire to believe in The Secret and the Law of Attraction. Isn’t it also true that what we think about creates our reality?

There are hundreds of books, articles, websites and blogs which debate all sides of positive and negative thinking, optimistic or pessimistic outlooks and the what is truth and what is reality questions. We might have to wait awhile for a definitive answer…so in the meantime, you can run some tests for yourself. Look at the list of words below and notice how you respond to them.

abundance    lack
scarcity     plenty
generous     greedy
shortage     surplus

How does each word make you feel? Are there certain thoughts that you unconsciously attach to each word? Does your energy go up or down depending on which word you focus on? What happens to your breathing? Does it expand or constrict?

You can test this with your own words and thoughts. And then observe how your thinking affects your interactions with people and how your emotions shape your response to situations.

I know the news is bad and that not everything in your life either at work or home or in the world is perfect. Positive thinking is not about sugar coating reality but about allowing yourself to see that what you think or feel is not the whole truth.

Positive thinking helps create options that don’t appear available when you are focused on how bad things are and trying to predict and prepare for what other horrible things might happen in the future.

Positive thinking is not a magic wand to erase all of your worries or an end to all of your problems. Positive thinking is a tool you can use to shift your thought patterns, expand your perspective, lighten your mood, calm your anxious heart rate and relax your breathing.

Why think positive? You’ll feel better (which is not a bad thing) and have more ability to deal with challenges as they arise, including news about the economy, donor fears about financial security and your worry about meeting budget.

Why not play the Pollyanna game just for fun this week and see what happens?

Let me know how it goes.

p.s. And don’t use positive thinking as a way to feel bad about yourself or to judge others. That’s so not the point.

Welcome to Know Abundance!

A new positive thinking blog for fundraisers – and anyone else looking to supplant scarcity mentality with abundant living.

Delivered fresh every Monday – just when you need a dose of positivity to get your fundraising act in gear.

Know Abundance is living and working from the awareness that there is nothing you need that you don’t already have.

This blog is for you if:

• you worry about how to raise money to support your organization
• you stress about how to get everything done
• you wonder how to manage donor (and your own) fears about economy

Posted every Monday, Know Abundance is:

• fundraising from plenty and gratitude
• positive thinking to help you navigate your work week
• perspective to widen your outlook beyond daily headlines

Know Abundance is a shared journey. I, like you, am learning to live and work in new ways. To shed the thought patterns and beliefs that keep us trapped in a never-ending scramble for time, money, resources, and market share. To embrace the mantra, “Everything I need I already have.”

I know how hard you are working to bring into reality your vision of a better world. Know Abundance is for you. The weekly posts offer tools to see your worry, stress and fears in a different light, to know abundance even in the midst of scarcity.

Coming up in January:

Jan. 12 – Why think positive?

Jan. 19 – Live Your Dreams Today

Jan. 26 – Scarcity as Reality is Relative

I welcome your comments, questions and participation as we learn together.