chapter TEN
How to Ask
Organizations need to spend time helping their solicitors become more comfortable with the idea of asking for money and discussing the cultural and psychological barriers that inhibit many of us from engaging in this strategy, as discussed in Chapter Eight. It is equally important, however, to focus on the sheer logistics of asking. Sometimes, after a discussion of the psychological and emotional challenges of soliciting donations, someone will ask, “But what do I wear to the meeting?” or “Do I have to pay for lunch?” or “Can I text the prospect to set up a meeting?” Often it is these details, rather than deep wounds from childhood, that hold people back from asking.
In this chapter we will walk through the details of a personal solicitation. This is a template and you will need to fill in the details of your solicitation based on the cultural, class, and personal variables of each individual prospect and, to a lesser extent, those same variables in yourself. When considering how to adapt the techniques in this chapter, try to sort out what may be coming from your own anxiety and what is actually rooted in culture or class. For example, in many parts of the American South and in a number of Asian cultures, graciousness and politeness are highly valued. As a result, it is considered rude to say no to a request. For that reason, it is also rude to ask someone for something to which they may have to say no. This attitude makes it difficult to ask for money directly. Fundraisers sensitive to these cultural norms might use phrases such as, “Would you think about a gift of $5,000 and let me know later?” or “I am going to leave you some information to look at. We'd love to have you involved, if that is possible.” In other words, you may not expect a definitive answer to your request at the meeting, nor will you be as direct as you might be when soliciting someone from New York City, for example, who expects more blunt communication. In that instance, you might close a meeting with, “Can we count on you to give $X?”
On the other hand, people may say things about their culture that are in fact much more about their own internal anxiety. For example, someone may say, “No one wants to be asked for anything in my culture.” This is unlikely. We have yet to hear of a culture where people did not, from time to time, give each other presents or ask for a favor. Almost all cultures have religious institutions that have figured out multiple ways to ask. And finally, of course, culture is not unchanging, something for which we should be thankful. For example, racism and sexism are very much part of American culture, but we certainly don't want that to continue to be true, nor would we have much patience for someone who justified racist or sexist behavior “because that is my culture.” As we have made clear, fundraising that really helps lead to social change asks all of us to rethink our norms and our taboos about money because they are part of the oppression we seek to address and dismantle.
In the end, the only way to really know what is going to happen when you solicit someone for money is to do it. Do it often enough, with properly qualified prospects, and see for yourself what works and what does not.
THE MOST FORMAL APPROACH
The most formal and time‐consuming approach to a prospect involves three steps:
- Step 1: An email or letter describing the organization or the specific need, including a sentence or two indicating that you wish to ask the prospect for a gift and request a meeting to discuss it further, followed by
- Step 2: A phone call or email to set up a meeting, and then
- Step 3: The meeting itself, in which the gift is actually solicited.
Email is a great gift to the world of personal solicitation because it often saves making a phone call, allows the prospect to ponder your request and respond at a time that is convenient for them, and allows you to consider the response before replying. On the other hand, your email can get lost in the dozens or hundreds a prospect may receive each day. If you don't hear back within a week, then email again. If you still don't hear back, text or call.
Sometimes You Only Need Step 1 or Step 2
Obviously, if you are approaching your spouse or your best friend, you may be able to skip the email or the phone call or both and go right to the meeting. In other cases, particularly for smaller gifts, the email may be enough to result in a donation. In others, the phone call will be enough, or the letter and phone call will move the prospect to give and there will be no need for a meeting. Whether a meeting or follow‐up phone call is necessary will depend on your knowledge of the prospect and how much money you are requesting. Some people are comfortable giving $250, $500, or even $1,000 in response to a phone call—or even a Facetime or Zoom call—from someone they know. In fact, video meetings can be a way of showing a prospect something about your program without them having to travel to you.
Regardless of how generous, easygoing, or committed your prospects are, they will be more likely to give if you follow up your email with something, even if just another email, and they will almost always give more in a meeting than in response to an email. Remember, you are requesting a thoughtful gift—a gift that is big enough that a person needs to think, “Can I afford this? And do I love this organization that much?” You want sufficient time with prospects to answer all their questions and concerns. It takes about 30–60 minutes to have the conversation you need to have, and a 30‐minute meeting seems a lot shorter than a 30‐minute phone call. (The length of the meeting is also affected by cultural and generational habits. In rural communities or when dealing with elderly people who may not leave their homes often, plan to spend more time than you would with a businessperson in the middle of a workday. In some cultures there will be much more “small talk” than in others, and this will add to the length of the meeting.)
The Email or Letter
The email or letter should raise the prospect's interest, giving some information but not enough for a truly informed decision. If a letter, it should not be longer than one page; an email will be even shorter. Its purpose is to get the prospect to be open to the idea of meeting. In other words, the written correspondence introduces the fact that you will be asking for a large gift for your organization and that you want the prospect to be willing to give a short amount of time to hear why you want this gift and why you think this prospect will be interested. No commitment to give or to be involved in any way is asked for in this opening correspondence—only a request for the prospect to discuss the proposition of a gift with the solicitor. A sample email is shown here.
The email is straightforward. Sig knows what the request will be, including the amount and what the money is for. If giving anything to this organization is out of the question, he can decide that now. If giving a lead gift is out of the question, it is implicit from the letter that a smaller gift is an option. His importance to the campaign has been stated, which is flattering, but there is nothing he needs to do at this point.
There are a number of advantages to email; one of the biggest is that the meeting can often be set up without a phone call.
The Phone Call
People make and receive far fewer phone calls now than even 10 years ago. Largely this is because 80% of phone calls made had to do with logistics (“I am going to be late”; “Are we meeting at 7 or 7:30?”). These types of communications are now done by text, and phone calls that might have previously been made to a business to make an inquiry or place an order are now accomplished by going online to a website.
However, it is a mistake to think that the phone is not important in fundraising. If you are the solicitor and you say you are going to call, you must call. Rehearse the phone call beforehand to anticipate questions or objections the prospect may have. Be sure you know exactly what you are going to say from the very first hello. Many people find it useful to write down what they will say, in the same way that one writes a script for a phone‐a‐thon (see Chapter Sixteen, “Using the Telephone”).
The phone call is the most difficult part of the solicitation. You have no access to body language that might help you infer what the prospect is thinking or feeling. You can't tell whether they are frowning, smiling, in a hurry, or doing something else while talking with you. You can't rely on how people sound on the phone. People who are easygoing may sound brusque or harried on the phone. Most likely, we are calling people on their cell phones, so they can, quite literally, be anywhere. One can hear people making hurried plans while waiting for a plane to take off, while walking down the street, or while standing outside a restaurant. It may be hard to hear them, and your conversation may be dropped before you are finished. Other people simply do not like to talk on the phone, and you may interpret their dislike as a dislike of talking to you or a reluctance to discuss a gift. Finally, a phone call is always an interruption, even if the prospect really likes you.
All of these things can make a solicitor anxious; unfortunately, anxiety makes for poor phone calls. Anxious people have a hard time listening to others because they are too absorbed in thinking about what they are going to say next. Practicing the phone call a few times with other people in your organization will help you be calmer.
There are two things that can happen when you make this phone call: either you won't reach the prospect, or you will.
You Don't Reach the Prospect. About 90% of the time that you phone someone you will get their voice mail. When this happens, leave a brief message that includes a good time to reach you and say that you will try again. You can also try texting. With either method, leave three messages before you give up on this prospect. Messages are not reliable. Voice mail is erased accidentally, your voice is garbled and the prospect cannot recognize who called, prospects text you back but you don't recognize the number and don't read it, the prospect gets a message that your mailbox is full, or they mean to call but never find the time, and so on. Again, don't assume that because you can't reach the prospect the answer is no. However, your time is valuable also, and leaving more than three messages for one person is not as useful as moving on to the next prospect.
If you have made a serious effort to reach a prospect and have not succeeded, you may want to ask the contact (if you are not the contact) for more information about the prospect. You may find out that the prospect is out of the country or is tending to a sick relative, or that you can make an appointment with the prospect through a personal assistant, or even that the assistant has the authority to handle these requests. Sometimes what you learn is that the contact is not as close to the prospect as you thought.
You Do Reach the Prospect If you do reach the prospect, first say who you are, then ask if this is a good time to talk. This distinguishes you from paid phone solicitors, who never ask whether it is convenient to talk. Once that is established, get right to the purpose of the call. If you have sent the prospect an email or letter, ask whether they received it and had a chance to review it. Be clear about the purpose of the phone call, which will either be to ask for a gift or to ask for a meeting to discuss a gift. What you do not want to do is to ask for the gift on the phone when you wanted to meet.
Be sure not to read meaning into statements the prospect may make that can be taken at face value. For example, do not hear “I don't want to give” in a statement such as “I'm very busy this month” or “I have to talk to my spouse before making any decision.” Instead, in the first instance say, “I can understand that. How about if we make a date for next month, when things might have slowed down for you?” In the second instance, say, “Would it be possible for me to see you both in that case?” Hear everything the prospect says as being literally true. If the prospect says, “I've already given away all the money I am going to give this year,” then ask if you can meet so that your organization can be considered next year. If they say, “I need more information before I can meet,” ask what information would be most helpful, say you will send it today, and then suggest penciling in a meeting for a later time after the prospect has had time to review the information.
People who make a lot of big gifts will often use put‐offs to determine whether you are serious about the organization and whether the organization can really do its work. This is particularly true for community organizing projects. It is hard to believe that an organization will really face down corporate intimidation or stand up to political power if its members fold at the first sign of resistance from someone they have identified as a person who believes in their cause!
THE MEETING
Once you have set up an appointment, you are ready to prepare for the face‐to‐face solicitation. This is not as difficult as it seems. First of all, the prospect knows from your email or phone call that you will be talking about them making a contribution. The prospect has agreed to see you, so the answer to your request is not an outright no: in fact, the prospect is considering saying yes. Your job is to move the prospect from consideration to commitment.
The purpose of the meeting is to request a specific gift and obtain some kind of answer from the prospect. As the solicitor, you must appear poised, enthusiastic, and confident. If you are well prepared, this will not be too difficult. Board members and volunteers can go with each other or bring a staff person to such a meeting to provide information the solicitor doesn't have. If you do go in pairs, be sure you know who is going to begin the meeting and who is going to actually ask for the gift. Make sure each of you has something to say so that one of you doesn't do all the talking, and remember that going in pairs means that each person has less time to talk.
The solicitor's job is to ask for the gift. The prospect's job is to decide. Among possible decisions are to give the gift requested or a smaller gift, to take time to think about it, or to say no. It is important that the solicitor does not get personally caught up in the prospect's response. You are not a good fundraiser if someone says yes, nor are you a poor fundraiser if someone says no. If you are asking enough people, a certain percentage of them will say no. In fact, a sign that you are not asking enough people is when you go for a long time without anyone saying no.
Meeting Etiquette
Regardless of how well you know this prospect, the subject of this meeting is business. You should begin the meeting with pleasantries, catch up on family and friends briefly, but avoid the temptation to have a long chat before getting down to the subject of the meeting. It is often helpful to say early in the meeting, “Well, you know why we are here, which is to ask you to consider making a gift to Important Group. Before we get to that, however, I wanted to hear how your grandson likes kindergarten/if you found homes for those kittens that showed up in your yard/ if you liked the play the other night.” Don't ask wide‐open questions, such as “How is your summer going?” or “What's new in your life?” You want a question that can be easily answered so you can move into the business at hand.
Show genuine interest in the answers to your questions, or the person will think you were just asking out of some sense of protocol, but do move into the business at hand as soon as you can. “We are doing some really exciting stuff this summer and I wanted to have a chance to tell you about it,” or “Our capital campaign is almost done, and now we can expand our programs, which is mostly why we are here today.” This moves everyone into the conversation about the organization and how a gift will help the organization meet its exciting program goals.
Next, keep in mind that the more the prospect is encouraged to talk, the more likely they are to give. No one likes to be talked at or lectured. Ask the prospect what they know about your group, how they keep up with the issues your group works on, and other open‐ended questions. Share your own experience with the group and tell stories that illustrate facts rather than just giving a dry exposition of what the group does. Sentences that begin, “I am most excited by …” or, “I got involved with Important Group because of my own situation/commitment/longstanding interest in …” are much more likely to be listened to than, “We started in 1997 with funding from the Havelots Foundation.”
In addition to asking questions, pause for a few seconds every few sentences. Wait to see whether the prospect wants to add anything or has any questions or objections. If the prospect says something you don't understand, ask for clarification or say, “Tell me more about that.” If the prospect says something that offends you or that you don't agree with, don't pretend to agree. Don't sacrifice your integrity for this gift, but see whether you can find a way to counter what the prospect said without getting into an argument. You can use phrases such as “I can see why you say that because that is the impression that the media gives, but in fact …” or “What you just said was the prevailing wisdom, but we have discovered that [fact‐fact‐fact], which is why we have designed the program the way we have.” Said without rancor or defensiveness, statements like these can allow the prospect to change their mind without looking ignorant. You can also ask the prospect to explain their position, following the adage, “Get curious, not furious.”
After about half an hour, when the prospect seems satisfied with what you have said, you should be ready to close—that is, to ask for the gift. Repeat the goal of the campaign and the importance of the cause in one or two sentences. Then, looking directly at the prospect, ask for a specific gift: “Will you join me and give $2,000?” or “I'm hoping you can give a gift in the range of $1,500,” or “Do you think you could consider a gift of $5,000?” There are no magic words for the close—what is important is that you figure out a phrase that suits your personality and that includes the range or the specific gift you want. Then be quiet. At this moment, you give up control of the interaction. At last, you are asking the prospect to make a decision. Wait for the prospect to speak, even if you have to wait what seems like several minutes. If you are anxious, time will seem to pass slowly. Keep looking at the prospect without staring. You can breathe easy now because you have said everything you need to say and you have put your best foot forward. Take a deep breath in and release it slowly. Smile a little and don't frown. You want to look relaxed and confident.
The Prospect's Response
At this point the prospect will say one of six things, or some variation on these responses:
- “Yes, I'll help.” Thank the prospect. Be grateful and pleased, but don't be overly effusive or you will give the impression you didn't think the prospect was really a generous person. Arrange for how the gift will be made (by check, by pledge, online, by stock transfer; now, later). The easiest way to do that is to ask, “How would you like to pay that?” Once those arrangements are made, thank the prospect again and leave.
- “I'd like to help, but the figure you name is too high.” This is a yes answer, but for a smaller gift. You can say, “Would you like to pledge that amount and contribute it in quarterly installments over a year's time?” Or you can say, “What would you feel comfortable giving?” or “What would you like to give?” Avoid the temptation to bargain with the prospect. Once the prospect has decided on an amount, follow the procedure in the previous paragraph.
- “That's a lot of money.” This statement is generally a stall. The prospect can give what you have asked, but it is a big gift and the prospect will not be able to give this size gift to other organizations. The person wants to be sure that your organization agrees that the gift is large. Your answer: “Yes, it is a lot of money. That's why I wanted to talk to you about it in person,” or “It is a lot of money. It would be a big help.” Then be quiet again and let the prospect decide.
- “I need to think about it.” Some people truly cannot make up their minds on the spot and, if pushed for an answer, will say no. Reassure them that you don't need an answer today: “That's fine. I know it is a big request.” Then ask, “What else can I tell you that will help you in your thinking?” and answer any remaining questions. End by saying: “May I call you in a few days to see what your decision is?” or “Should we be in touch by email?” Set a time when their thinking will be finished and they can give you an answer.
- “I need to talk to my spouse/partner/other party.” This probably does mean the person needs to talk to someone else; however, it is surprising that the prospect didn't say that when you set up the meeting, so it probably also means the person needs more time. Often it means that the person has another question or objection but is embarrassed to say it. This is called the “shadow question,” and you need to surface what it is. You will do that by saying: “That makes sense. Is there anything your partner will want to know that I can tell you now?” The prospect may then tell you what's bothering them. “My accountant will want to know why you spend so much on office space,” or “My wife will want to know why you take money from Possibly Bad Corporation and will wonder if that affects your work.” You can then answer these objections. You will end this solicitation by getting some agreement as to when the prospect can talk to the person who needs to be consulted and when you should follow up.
- “No, I can't help you.” Although this is an unlikely response at this point, it should be treated with respect. Nod your head and wait silently for a longer explanation. Generally, the prospect will expand to provide a reason. “I just don't agree with your approach. I thought when I heard more about it I might understand and agree, but I don't.” In the highly unlikely situation that you have remained silent for at least a full minute and the prospect hasn't volunteered any explanation for saying no, you can ask for one. “Would you say a little bit about why you are saying no?” or “I am going to be asking other people as well. Are there any ways I can improve?” If you ask nondefensively, the prospect will answer. If the answer is a misunderstanding, clear it up and you may get a yes, or at least “I'll think about it.” Don't spend much time trying to change the prospect's mind or you will seem disrespectful. Often, people who say no to a request like this later say yes as they learn more or have time to think more about what you have said.
Try to end the meeting with a question the prospect can say yes to. “Would you like to stay on our email list?” or just, “What is the best way to get downtown from here?” Thank the prospect for their time and leave. Remember that you have an unspoken but very important agreement with all the people you ask for money: if they agree to be asked, you will respect their right to say no.
Immediately after the solicitation, send a thank‐you note regardless of the response you received at the meeting. “Thanks for your pledge of $5,000. I can't wait to tell the executive director. Your generosity makes a BIG difference.” Or “Thanks for your candid and helpful observations about our new program. I will bring them back to the staff and let you know how we decide to proceed.” If the prospect made a gift, another thank‐you note should come from the organization when the gift is received.
Although it can be anxiety‐producing to ask someone for a large gift, it is also thrilling when a prospect says yes, and it is not a big deal when someone says no. With practice, asking for money becomes easier and easier. Most people are encouraged by being able to set aside their own discomfort about asking for money for the greater purpose of meeting the needs of the organization.