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Creating the Best Relationships Includes Others – Our Partners

Marcy Header Issue 14

You CAN’T, and shouldn’t, do it alone.

I used to try to do it all myself.  I’m smart, dedicated, passionate and pretty darn talented at creating sincere relationships that benefit all involved – personally and professional.  And for sure….by the time you get someone else involved, you could do it yourself THREE times over, right? 

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!  

Relationships are murky, but they add SO much to our lives.

Let’s look at our kids.  Sure, we are their parents. But navigating growing up involves more than you. Here’s an example of potential “partners” that help us raise kids (and I’m sure I’ve missed some). Our kids have opinions and beliefs that are shaped and reshaped by so many others and these partners change over time. Your kids certainly pick up your values and beliefs, but you aren’t the only one influencing what choices your kids make – the good and not-so-good ones. 

Creating our major giver relationships also takes partners 

 

Spend some time thinking about ALL YOUR potential donor partners! 

Ask your major donors, “Who are all the people you think about when you think about our organization?

Are you getting all these partner dots connected?

Certainly every donor has a unique experience with you.

Did they volunteer before they gave? Do they know others who have deeply benefited from your services? Do they really KNOW what you do? Do they feel like they have “friends” within your organization?  Is your organization a community connection for them? Are they clear on the impact various giving will have?

EVERYONE has a unique role and opportunity to be part of your organization’s culture of generosity – from the receptionist to the most major giver. Partners can help all around the Cycle of Successful Relationships.

How? Let’s take a tour 

1. Consider Shared Values and Interests

People like people who are similar to themselves. So, if your board and staff think about others they know who share their values and interests, chances are they will share an interest in your organization. Don’t just ask, “Who do you know who has money?” Ask, “Who shares your values and interests and would be in a position to also want to invest in us, as you have?”  This is a great way to add to your donor base.

2. Begin the Conversation

That tough 1st appointment. Are you having trouble getting that first visit? Partners open doors. BUT, they must trust that you will handle people they suggest with respect and not “Go for the ask” on the first visit.  Tell your partner what you will do during this initial conversation — get acquainted, share impact of the organization, get their advice, get a deeper feel for their values and interests, what else in the community is important, look for a next step.

3. Creating a Joyful Giver 

What partners will help you provide the most amazing experiences and passion for what your organization does? A student, a camper, a member of your friends group, a successful client, a staff member, a board member, another donor? And, as you engage partners more and more, they have more and more stories to tell– and they will! Brainstorm the best ways to connect and educate with your partners and ask them to take the lead. Sometimes, it seems hard to get on your major donor’s calendar. Well, an interesting partner will often make it happen! These folks ROCK at telling your story.. but more importantly, they can become a part of other givers’ lives – everyone wins. Think about it… don’t you tend to go with a friend to volunteer or attend an event? Help create these friendships.  

4. Making an Artful Ask 

Partners may be a good fit for smaller asks, but 95% of all board members and other partners HATE this piece. Frankly, it is ALL they think about when they hear the word “fundraising.”  I believe you will be so much more successful if you just take them out of this piece EXCEPT to go with you to share why THEY give. Let the professional speak the Ask.  

5. Being a Grateful Recipient 

This is THE BEST PLACE to engage your partners! As development professionals, we often have grand intentions of elaborate (or ANY for that fact) thank you experiences, but we just don’t get them done. Get a few partners together and explore, “What can we do so that our donors are crystal clear on just how very much we appreciate their giving?” and brainstorm. Ask if they might be comfortable taking that appreciation step themselves.  Bingo! They will get the hang of it – taking you far beyond the thank you note or phone call. It’s exciting and important because the donor deserves to enjoy the giving! (And sure, great stewardship also leads a donor to ask, “What else do you need?” which takes us to the next giving opportunity!)

Now, what do YOU need to do?

1.  Change your mindset about using partners from, “It’s a bunch of wasted time” to “It helps me best engage my donors.” Make this a priority!

2.  Be patient. Yes, it can take a long time to get a board member or another staff member to help at first. It’s worth it.

3.  Complete the circle. Be sure when you ask others to be a part of this, you stay in touch with them about the progress.

4. When you tell donor stories, mention everyone involved – from the receptionist to the Top Dog.

5. BELIEVE THIS –  It better serves your donors to have multiple connections to your organization… beyond you. It’s sort of a power move by some major giving officers to want to be the only one. That’s not best for the donor or the non-profit.

6. Educate your partners on the power of their partnership. Show them my cycle and explain how they don’t have to ask for money to really help you! Every time your colleagues do their work well, relationships are built.

7. Remember that your partners are benefiting too!

8. Get going! Right now – mid-year – is when you need to be making GREAT visits to set the stage for year-end asks.  Get these appointments done. It will give you a comfortable and wildly successful year end! 

Invest in Joy!

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Creating White Space in your Life – Part 2

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The bad news is time flies – the good news is you’re the pilot.

In the last Artful Action, I gave you eight take aways to create WHITE SPACE!

White space is the open space between blocks of copy or graphics.

The amount and location of white space gives you a feeling that reading a piece will be easy or challenging.  It also gives you the mental pause to digest and reflect on what you’ve read.

So it also is with your life.

Planning those moments of openness gives you the space to reboot your too-full and too-bombarded brains. It also gives you the space to be creative – able to do more than just numbly (and generally too quickly) react.

When I coach individuals and non-profits, I see environments that are out of alignment with time on several levels.  Today, I’d like to look at how some organizations function and steps you can take FOR YOU to be happier and more productive WITHIN these environments.

Does this sound like your non-profit organization?

  • There is a “do more with less” mentality.
  • The Board vomits ideas, and you jump to add them to the list without considering the impact on staff, systems, budgets and current priorities first.
  • The goal is to stay one step ahead of the shark biting you in the butt…meet today’s crushing deadline.
  • There is judgment around “value” based more on frantic activity than actual productivity.
  • There are bosses (cultures) who have absolutely no boundaries on their time and expect you to be the same. This blurs the lines between work and personal and both seem “on” all the time for everyone.

How do YOU Create a Better Relationship with Time?

1. Take control of your time

To control your time you must first understand how you are thinking about it, where it is going now and how you can redirect where you spend it.

What is your MINDSET around time?

I will begin where I always begin.

“We Become What we Think About” Earl Nightingale – the Strangest Secret.

So how we THINK about our time impacts how we FEEL about our time. How we FEEL about our time impacts the ACTIONS we take and our ACTIONS create our results. (Enough time)

How are you thinking about your time?

  • “How will I get this all done?”
  • “There is SO much to do.”
  • “Nobody else around here does anything.”
  • “I don’t have quality time with my family.”
  • “I am CRAZY busy.”
  • “There is never enough time.”
  • “I am exhausted.”

What you tell yourself IS what you experience.  So begin with, “I Create My LIFE” and take responsibility for deciding that YOU control your time.  Change how you talk to yourself about your time.

  • “I GET to do these visits/projects/tasks today.”
  • “I can focus 100% for this time on Johnny” (Moms, put down your cell phone, PLEASE)
  • “Today I will get this most important task done.”
  • “I am totally unplugged now.”
  • “I am clear on what is more important.”
  • “I take action in my time and focus.”

Nothing I teach you from here will make any difference if you continue to tell yourself you are crazy busy and overwhelmed. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.  

PROTECT YOUR TIME

NEXT understand that there is a difference between protecting your time and managing your time.

Protecting your time means you TAKE AND PLAN YOUR TIME according to your thoughtful, planned goals.

Managing your time is applying those tools and techniques you have all heard to try to maximize what you can get done in every minute – to perform at peak proficiency.

Too many of us only work on managing our time while allowing others to dictate how we spend our time.

In order to TAKE AND PLAN YOUR TIME, you need to know where is goes now.

About 3 times each year, I do a Time Audit. This is when I judiciously and honestly (this is not easy) track what I do in 15 minute chunks for 2 weeks. This includes how many times I jump to email or texts (for some this is Facebook) while allegedly doing a task.  This is eye-opening.

After you see where your time goes now, figure out where you need to better DIRECT it.

  • Delegate.  Determine your time cost per hour – delegate anything less expensive than what you make per hour – house cleaning, filing, etc.
  • Decide what is Urgent versus Important.  Important has to be discovered. Urgent is someone else’s agenda. Always seek clarity with your supervisor.
  • Take the Kolbe A Test. It will tell you how you work and where you need support.
  • Manage what you measure. Pick the key facts that speak to where you are trying to go.  Take charge of your data! Too much adds to the overwhelm. Number of visits instead of dollars is a great place to start.

2. Proactively manage those times when “everything happens at once!”

Schedule time to look ahead for “high-stress” times. You can see the potholes coming. For me, it’s a big client event, a band gig, flying out to speak, kid’s birthday all at once.

Be honest here – you see this coming. Proactively manage these times. 

  • Set clear priorities and when you are asked to add tasks, seek clarity on priority with what you are currently doing. I had a workshop participant who was constantly on email to the point where others ask me to speak to her about being engaged.  She said her boss was sending her emails and she was panicking about how she would get these and current tasks done.  After some coaching, the boss said he was just moving these things to her to get them off his mind and really hadn’t addressed a deadline. When she asked these to be prioritized, he was glad to do it in a way that worked for both.  He also was not intending his email to be read during the workshop. Really that was her unwillingness to turn it off, not his. He would have preferred she was fully engaged in the workshop.
  • You know when your child was born – you were there. Your friends/parents/key donors birthdays, anniversaries, do NOT Change. Give yourself a tickler to get a card, gift, order balloons well ahead and DO IT (or delegate it).
  • Ask others to shift to make these situations workable.  Sometimes, it’s better to celebrate a personal event on a different day so the key players can be ALL IN. How this works is largely dependent on how you feel about it – your mindset.  Are you apologizing or creating an exciting time, just on a different date?   
  • Build space into project timelines.  Look at everything you commit to in light of everything else you are doing – not just what this one task takes as if you had nothing else to do!  

3. Embrace structure as a source of freedom

The dog runs free in the dog park.  On a leash, he’s stuck at your pace and path.  The fence gives him this freedom.

Your Calendar is your friend.

  • Group like-work together so you get on a roll.
  • Block off time for recurring tasks. Maybe this is “write thank you notes” from 8:00-8:30 three mornings each week.  
  • Eat that Frog. Begin with your biggest, ugliest task each day and get it done.  You will be FREE of the weight of the big task the rest of the day.
  • Set (and keep) appointments for working on tasks. Block time to write that visit follow-up letter and then don’t let anything stop you!
  • Plan for the knowns. Hedge against “everything happening at once.”
  • SLEEP. For goodness sake, GO TO BED.
  • Create RAPS. Relationship Action Plans for each major donor gives you the freedom to know what comes next.
  • Schedule time to THINK.  This is the time you stare into space – a bit glazed looking.  But your mind is working – not frantically, but creatively.
  • Exercise. This can be as simple as standing up and stretching for 30 seconds.
  • Find something that takes your mind away. For me, it’s my band. I can’t sing and think about other things.  But take care here to prioritize the time this takes into the overall plan.

4. Manage yourself during times of overload 

  • Breathe. It’s always available to you. There is nothing like a few deep breaths.
  • Silence.  Step away and watch a second hand for 60 seconds. Go to the bathroom and hide in a stall if you have to.  
  • Laughter.  Just start laughing – really.
  • Mind-consuming activity.  I sing! What can you do?
  • Ask yourself, “What thoughts deserve my full attention right now?”
  • Break away for a bit.  Just yesterday I stopped to watch a sunset.
  • Ask yourself – “Am I hungry? Am I tired?” It makes a massive difference.  
  • Delay key conversations.  “This conversation is very important to me and I need a bit more time to reflect.”

Yes, the bad news is time does feel like it flies, but the good news is you’re the pilot.  And when you protect your time and prioritize what is most important, personally and professionally, you win!  

Thank you for allowing me to share this time with you. I am honored you made this a priority for you!

Invest in Joy!

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Creating White Space in your Life – Part 1

Issue 12 blog

Do some days feel too packed to even begin? 

Do your “smile” muscles hurt? Have you fallen asleep in a movie?  (Be honest here – my 19-year-old son has.)  Are you pushing through a fog all day? Do you feel like you’re ON all the time? Is it summer, but you feel like you’re drowning? Are you mentally exhausted?

This is not an age thing or a non-profit or fundraising thing. It’s a SPACE thing. It’s when there is NO WHITE SPACE on your calendar or in your brain! You are too FULL!

Mobile giving, monthly giving, tours, major gifts visits. You could literally be on a free webinar from 6am until midnight every day. Club leagues, summer programs, free concerts, movies on demand. There are so many options to choose from.

If you are like most people, you are overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time. As you struggle to get caught up, new tasks keep rolling in…like the unending waves of the ocean. Those ocean waves can be warm and caressing, or they can knock you over leaving you feeling panicky like you may
drown!

Let’s grab some white space and protect our time. 

What is White Space?

White space is the strategic pause taken between activities

The term came from literally looking at the white space on the calendar and realizing that on the days with more white showing, people were more effective and projects moved faster.

Think of an appeal letter. Narrow margins, tight line spacing and solid words look like a piece that’s a chore to read. White space is critical to how compelled we feel to even begin to read a letter, magazine, or book.

So, too, with your mind and life.

White space TIME can be created in tiny spots as small as 10 seconds. These intentional, thoughtful pauses laced through the busyness of the workday are the oxygen that allows everything else to catch fire.  They allow us to reconnect to us. 

As an advancement professional, you can use White Space to REBOOT and CREATE!

1. To recuperate, reinvigorate, restore, reconnect, reboot your taxed mind.

Our brains get fried. We become mentally exhausted.  There is a mindset component to this – the role telling ourselves how we feel plays.  But studies tell us we need downtime to “recharge our batteries.”  Just like our phones run out of charge, we too will be dead if we don’t stop to get plugged in and soak up energy.  Phones recharge faster when they can just charge…not work at the same time. While we may find time with friends enjoyable, time totally alone with our thoughts gives our mind the space to shutdown and reboot.

2. To create, innovate, renovate, plan.

In our daily push to reach the end of the task list, we move, usually at a breakneck pace, to cross off the list of mainly urgent (not important) tasks.  To mentally set aside the minutiae of the day opens up space to focus on big thoughts.  It gives us the room to evaluate if “we’ve always done it this way” is a good enough reason to KEEP doing it this way.  It allows us to think ahead (what a concept!)

As an organization, you can create a culture with built-in white space to think before acting (or reacting), set a pace that is productive yet avoids burnout and creative decline, and protects high-value action (personal visits) over technology (keying in data)

In an organization where white space is used strategically, Juliet Funk shares that staff will be ENCOURAGED TO…..

1. Schedule time between meetings to prepare and/or reflect on the content.

2. Control the amount of data and dashboards experienced so that they can be informed without being overwhelmed.

3. Create specific designated times for creativity and innovation.

EIGHT TAKE-AWAYS ABOUT WHITE SPACE

1. Everyone needs WHITE SPACE – a feeling of openness in your mind and schedule. How you “set your mind” to creating and enjoying this space is individual. How you think about your white space determines the complexity of the schedule you enjoy.  White space is not doing mindless activities like Facebook, TV, solo-drinking.

2. You define your white space by creating structure. Scheduling as little as 5 minutes of silence staring into space will make a difference in your overall feeling of calm.  Many mini-sessions are generally more impactful than fewer longer sessions.

3. Protecting your time (not managing it) means you place the same level of importance on your own work and personal “get to do” lists as those of others. Respecting yourself generates respect from others.  You are not selfish. Placing other’s needs before yours is a choice you make. You create the expectation for others about you. You can change it.

4. Placing white space in establishing timelines and deadlines produces healthier, more productive partnerships. The old “underpromise and overdeliver” holds true if managed with space. Look at each project within ALL your projects.

5. Protecting your time means you are PROACTIVE, not reactive. Every time you look at an email popping up, Facebook, a text message – you have turned over control of your time to someone else’s agenda.

6. Constantly evaluate with other priorities and timelines or tasks and projects. Give yourself a list of questions to ask when taking on new tasks. What can be delegated to someone else?

7. Your mindset controls your perception of how full your days and life are. Much of how you think is impacted by the rest you get. Rest is dependent on white space.  Sleep is white space.  GO TO BED

8. Your ability to select your most important task at each moment, then start on it and get it done quickly and well will be key to your success. YOU deserve to have White Space in your life.

I want you to enjoy success AND WHITE SPACE in your life!  It is always your choice!

Invest in Joy!

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Does Your Mindset Impact Your Life – And Your Fundraising Results?

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Since age 17, I’ve been fascinated with the power of our thoughts.  “We become what we think about!” It has more to do with how your life is going than anything else.

3 Ways Your Thinking Impacts Your Life and Your Fundraising Results

1. You CAN change your thoughtsMind

It’s important for you to simply acknowledge that your thinking impacts how you FEEL inside. Thoughts generate an emotional charge.

If you are thinking happy, positive thoughts, you will find that you’ll feel much happier. And if you are thinking sad or depressed thoughts, you’ll find yourself sinking lower and lower into pessimism.

If you are aware of your thoughts – then you can change them.

Think of a light switch – if a thought wanders into your mind that is unhappy, critical or disempowering, try saying to yourself –

“Nope, I’m not going there.”

breath2. Just breathe

Our breath is always right there…ready to give us pause to think, calm down, consider.

When you are triggered, you can sloooooow down the drama simply by taking a deep breath.

And do you know what?  Those around you will be triggered to breathe too! It’s also a “leadership: strategy.”

3. Choose your words carefully

There are SO many tools I could share, but for me, remembering the influence of the words we utter on our thoughts and those around us is SO important. “We’ll never raise that much.” “Why is this so hard?” “I do all the heavy lifting around here.”

Our words are containers of power for ourselves and others.

Personally and professionally.  Do donors want to work with folks who say one thing to their face and another behind their back? “Pick the low hanging fruit?” Really? How we talk about our donors gets into our thinking and influences the authenticity of our relationships. Here are my alternative words for our common fundraising terminology.

Words

I believe that our inner game determines our outer game. We too often look at the fruit and aren’t happy –but we fail to look at the roots that produced the fruit!  When we sharpen our awareness of what we think we can choose to change it!  It’s a life-long practice, but I believe nothing is more important than to manage your mindset.

Bottom Line: we can manage our mindset and attract MORE good results into our lives.

It’s why I spend an entire morning on mindset tools at my MORE Major Gifts workshops! Join me June 12-13 in Chicago. I think you’ll think, it’s a great workshop!

“We become what we think about!” Happy Thinking!

Invest in Joy!

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info@marcyheim.com

(608) 772-6777

Marcy Heim Consulting | The Artful Asker
2679 Fahey Glen
Madison, WI 53711

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