Salebarn's new enterprise, AUCT.us was formed to increase those "US" things that auctioneers can be involved in, to be better citizens ... crowdfunding, social commerce, social network analytics and friendraising. Friendraising is such an new notion that the word is still not in most dictionaries. If you type the word and you will probably see squiggly lines under it because your text editor doesn't recognize the word yet BUT friendraising already kind of a big deal.
The massively collaborative, crowd-written, crowd-edited Wikipedia, which has come to epitomize the notion of crowdsourcing and shared interest in knowledge, has an entry for friendraising. Of course, the notion of friendraising is still a brand new, still evolving, thinly understood concept. The Wikipedia entry will change -- right now, it is still new and SMALL and quite likely to be somewhat incorrect, even though it is a good starting point.
So far, the Wikipedia "experts" on the friendraising entry have defined the term as just another "form of fundraising that involves befriending an organization or individual for the purpose of helping support the financial aspect of a charity, nonprofit group or other community benefit organization."
Besides just the current deal-based fundraising, what about relationship-based friendraising and the networking that shapes our organizations into the venue where we meet our FUTURE friends?
If we have friends involved in our organizations, won't those those friends likely to tip over their couches to get the change, maybe hit up some of their friends to get involved, to go to their employers for employer-sponsored matching contributions? Won't genuine friends somehow, some way find the money if that money is REALLY needed to do something? Is money really what really makes things happen?
Let's accept the impossible mission to become experts in friendraising. Let's define what friendraising is about in terms of developing relationships with people who will become our FRIENDS because we share the same passion for the same cause ... since these people are going to be our friends, let's leave money out of it at first ... we can talk about money later ... at first, let's start raising a network of new friends in the same way that Amish people might thing about raising a new barn.
The following quote should guide us in how we think about friendraising, about how our commitments shape our friendships and how we make our lives more meaningful by sharing our commitments and our friendships ...
The massively collaborative, crowd-written, crowd-edited Wikipedia, which has come to epitomize the notion of crowdsourcing and shared interest in knowledge, has an entry for friendraising. Of course, the notion of friendraising is still a brand new, still evolving, thinly understood concept. The Wikipedia entry will change -- right now, it is still new and SMALL and quite likely to be somewhat incorrect, even though it is a good starting point.
So far, the Wikipedia "experts" on the friendraising entry have defined the term as just another "form of fundraising that involves befriending an organization or individual for the purpose of helping support the financial aspect of a charity, nonprofit group or other community benefit organization."
Is friendraising ONLY about money? What about skills, creativity, enthusiasm and human capital?
Besides just the current deal-based fundraising, what about relationship-based friendraising and the networking that shapes our organizations into the venue where we meet our FUTURE friends?
Let's accept the impossible mission to become experts in friendraising. Let's define what friendraising is about in terms of developing relationships with people who will become our FRIENDS because we share the same passion for the same cause ... since these people are going to be our friends, let's leave money out of it at first ... we can talk about money later ... at first, let's start raising a network of new friends in the same way that Amish people might thing about raising a new barn.
The following quote should guide us in how we think about friendraising, about how our commitments shape our friendships and how we make our lives more meaningful by sharing our commitments and our friendships ...
"We make a living by what we can get, we make a life by what we give." Winston Churchill
It's not just about giving money. That's too easy. Friends give much more to friends than money. A lot of the networking, energy, creativity and other skills involved in friendraising might be dismissed as just common sense. After all, almost all of us have been making new friends for longer than we've have been able to talk in coherent sentences, so we might already know how to make friends [even if we have forgotten it and prefer to only talk with people we already know]. If we are going to be any good at this, we have to think about structure or architecture ... in other words, in order to RAISE this network of new FRIENDS, we might have to think about how we might engineer and accelerate the development of our expertise in this brand new topic of FRIENDRAISING.
Let's start by brainstorming 100 Ways To Become An Expert in Friendraising ... some of these will be WILD goofy ideas ... we won't be able to do all 100 right away ... but the first step is just brainstorming ... when you run out of ideas, start BlekkoStorming
- Read everything you can find on relationships and networking. List ways that your network can do more to advance each of the following positive attributes of genuine friendship:
- Knowing and liking one another ... beyond the easy, non-committal "slacktivism" of being a social network follower or recipient of the [LIKE] button
- Open, positive communication, interaction, debate and notification
- Demonstrated compassion, care, concern, empathy; being present
- Depth of understanding especially on differences in opinion
- FUN ... collaborative, creative, entertaining effort toward mutual success
- Reciprocal participation and appropriate cross-involvement in other causes
- Open-mindedness, fairness and adaptability without loss of integrity
- Honoring commitments, being dependable, especially in times of need
- Honesty, dignified disagreement and respect for different views
- Everything that friendliness and being a true friend involves
- Develop an systematic adaptation of the Edward D Jones process for relationship-based marketing, setting aggressive goals to make personal, physical belly-to-belly contact with 25 people per day. Find ways, e.g. seminars, tradeshows, events and auctions, to meet larger numbers of people who share your interests to ensure that you make contact with more people who will join your cause, become your friends.
- If you think about the process of networking very long, you start to realize that it is going to be even more necessary in the future to spend [at least] an hour a day on social media marketing and, in particular, you may want to get especially serious about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Master web analytics and related topics [include mobile] to understand how people USE web pages and the internet
- Get serious about social network analytics
- Become a better, more focused, more intuitive listener ... read between the lines as you listen to what someone is saying, as you read their blog posts or comments. It's a lot like making friends when you're two or three years old; you cannot just depend on logical or rational argument ... you have to develop your intuition to really HEAR what someone is saying.
- Beyond just listening to one or two people -- you must find ways to listen to the smartest person in the millions of jabbering voices out there. That means that you must develop ways to use technology to automate your content selection process and transcend the process of reading ... the fundamental notion is there's always a LOT of someones out there who are smarter than you. Even among the people who aren't that bright, there are more than enough good ideas. If you can be a more effective and efficient LISTENER and if you can sift the wheat from the mountains of chaff, there will always someone out there who will give you an idea that will work well [even if they have a wild idea that will never work]. You already know what kind of stuff is just a distraction and completely unworthy of your time.
- Using vertical search engines like Blekko and curating a slashtag is one way to improve and refine your approach to search.
- Become proficient at use a CMS like Drupal to aggregate RSS feeds and manage content from different sources
- Develop curated lists on Twitter; use those currated lists as the basis for daily "newspapers" with services like Paper.LI (@SmallRivers) and TweetedTimes.com (@TwtTimes) come under the newspaper format.
- Develop slightly deeper content, such as curated magazines or course syllabi, with Postano.com (@ilpostano), Twylah.com (@Twylah), Scoop.it (@scoopit) or Learni.st (@LearnistTweets)
- Consider developing content using so-called "summarizers" include Summify.com (@summify), Strawberryj.am(@strawberryapp), Knowabout.it (@knwbt), News.me (@newsdotme), andTopicmarks.com (@topicmarks)
- Investigate the more advanced "text synthesis" robojournalism includeAutomatedInsights.com (@AInsights), formerly StatSheet, andNarrativeScience.com (@narrativesci).
- Master the use of Pinterest in fundraising, especially if much of of your content is image-based, for example, Van Gogh Museum or philanthropies that involve nature [photography]. Everyone should remember that "a picture is worth a 1000 words"and more image-based social networks. It's not just Pinterest, don't ignore Google+ Photos Instant Upload and Picasa OR even FlickR, especially since Yahoo is trying to make FlickR relevant again.
- Real experts assiduously cultivate real person-to-person relationships [beyond just Facebook, Twitter, blogs] with real people who do real things. Finding the rising stars in any industry or important pursuit is matter of digesting and reading a fair amount of deep content every single day. It not about name-dropping or knowing the keywords, it's about really GETTING the ideas -- it's never hurts to be well-read.
- Every commercial niche has one or more trade magazines. That's true also of the fundraising industry. The editors and writers know what is the conventional wisdom for their industry ... seek to know more than they do.
- Examine the advertisements [in industry publications.] Look at WHO is advertising aggressively and who does not need to advertise. Examine why and how they are advertising -- what are they selling, how are they trying to change opinions, what reputation are they trying to build or sustain. Pay close attention to success and, more importantly, the DISRUPTION of success.
- Write an article and submit it for publication in an industry magazine or peer-review journal. Become a published author in the industry. If you have trouble getting an article published, write a letter to the editor or respond to one. Write something, start the process going. People will see your name, read your material and comment ... respond to the comments, interact with your audience ... develop a following.
- Develop an authentic web presence; develop a process for re-inventing it and keeping it fresh ... then develop another one.
- Develop a SERIOUS professional blog or family of blogs.
- Speak regularly. Get comfortable in front of crowds. Practice at Toastmasters or form your own club of speakers. Offer to speak at a local college, club, association, or service organization programming chair the opportunity to have you speak on a relevant subject both at no charge.
- Becoming knowledgable about audio recording and podcasting and then develop a podcast that will attract friends.
- Become a talk radio personality and use the power of personality to build influence, to reach out to like-minded people and, in general to attract friends. While you are "on the air" think about also posting videos and photos, liveblogging, tweeting and doing other things to add depth, to make your show multi-dimensional.
- Run your own seminars. Tie in your seminar with other companies and organizations to build your credentials. Become a technical specialist speaking to businesses, business organizations, banks. Charging for your speech at leading businesses and corporations will add to your credentials.
- Develop an alliance of friends who are using New Media.
- Join a national trade organization for your industry; write a monthly column on interesting aspects of the industry for the organization’s newsletter or magazine. Give a seminar or have a booth at your industry's national or international trade show. Get on boards or committees for the organization that fit your expertise.
- Send out press releases. Mention your credentials, promote your speaking and seminars, share examples of your writing and content. Be sure to mention that are a nationally recognized and published author, a lecturer at universities and colleges, and a nationally renowned expert on your area of interest. In the end, marketing you as the expert leads to more opportunities to develop expertise as a Friendraising [and fundraising consultant].
- Investigate ways for organizations to develop develop networks of friends and networks of networks of friends for developing a large list of guests for event. Make the event virtual so that "expats" and people on the road, away from home can participate.
- Investigate training clinics for benefit auction staff; host/sponsor these training clinics at your site and invite similar organizations from the area.
- Develop a network of professional event planning and benefit management professionals. USE these professionals to make your friendraising and fundraising more successful. Work with several and negotiate the best deal for your organization. Competition matters.
- Use graphic design professionals to develop memorable logos [with your website] for apparel or other items that are tied to your benefit auction, fundraiser, campaign.
- Develop a list of suppliers of key materials and services
- Develop a list of donors and people who will give [promotional] items for being associated with auction.
- Work with benefit/fundraising professionals to develop gamified ideas for unique raffles, silent auctions
- Work with budding app developers to develop an app that showcases their talent AND serves your organization's friendraising/fundraising needs.
- Get the very best beef or pork and have it prepared professionally ... OR better yet, allow people to grill their own steak on their own pitchfork... provide attendees with a education about what they are buying from a beef producer, a locker owner or a chef.
- After hors d'oeuvres and a happy hour ... trying auctioning off LOCAL wine or beer early at your benefit auction [along with corkscrews/openers/glasses. Provide attendees with a education about what they are buying from a sommelier or brewmeister.
- Investigate auctioneer bid calling and ring man training services and host a mini-clinic at your location for organizations in the area.
- Develop a network of different printers to handle your catalogs, placemats, brochures, business cards ... get competitive quotes, "steal" the best ideas.
- If you [and your friends in other related organizations] are going to spend money on supplies for events and fundraisers, then get GOOD at it. Become the "supplier development manager" and procurement HUB for organizations like yours. Get competitive quotes and design suggestions from different vendors; negotiate volume purchases.
- Think about these thirty-two recommendations for philanthropic organizations ... ONE.BY.ONE. ... in this 2011 report on philanthropic giving. In 2010, in the United States alone, there were 1,280,739 registered 501(c)(3) organizations garnering total financial support of $291 billion from American citizens. That's 2% of disposable income; it is highly doubtful that the level of financial support will increase all that much. Even in relatively good times, people tend NOT to give MONEY for a variety of good reasons, but they might be convinced to give more of themselves ... their time, their enthusiasm, their energy, their skills ... partly as advertisements for what they can do or for networking opportunities and partly to connect with their FRIENDS.
- Here are eighty-nine (89) friendraising ideas to adopt as your own from an e-book sold by Help4NonProfits.com.
- Skim the Table of Contents from these 475 books that discuss the importance of relationships in fundraising ... pick the best one out of five to read or skim more thoroughly ... by the time you are done with that you should have a couple hundred good ideas for friendraising.
- As you brainstorm more ideas, do not just adapt neat fundraising tricks and games ... understand the crucial distinction between deal-based fundraising (i.e. checkbook-based one-time transactional fundraising) and relationship-based friendraising which involves reaching something of an agreement that involves long-term cooperation, collaboration and friendship. There are HUGE critical differences between deal-based approach and the relationship-based approach:
- In a deal, the goal is confined to just getting an agreement ... or a check. In a relationship, the goal is cooperating, collaborating, enjoying each other's company, networking on future opportunities, establishing a foundation for working together profitably over the long term, starting from the first agreement, then building far beyond it.
- In a deal, the party you are negotiating with is, to a large extent, is not all that close to you now and won't be in the future. Right now, they support your cause; right now, you are just raising money. In a relationship, the people who are involved are your FRIENDS, you preferred partners in working together, you all share a true belief in the cause [and probably in other things as well].
- Deals are about raising as much money as you can ... in that event, in that evening, in that campaign. Relationships are based on more than just money, they involve "dividing and conquering" the work that has to be done and joint burden-sharing and joint celebration.
- In a deal, you basically hold yourself aloof from the others ... perhaps playing games, hiding information, guarding the responses [to get more money], pressing positions or relying on "ego contests" to get more money. A relationship is for the truly long pull, you need to more relaxed, open, and natural because you can't keep up the "push" for that long. Relationships are about really involving people, so they have ALL of information and there are no secrets so that they understand the needs.
- In a deal, you may exaggerate the urgency of the need or use different tricks to just to get others write the check. Successful friendraising relationships are based on honesty, reliability, and continual, long-term follow-through.
- Deals are static [focused on how much is contribute right now, today], inflexible, with demands for booking the contributions, getting the event totals, just as soon as possible when transaction is completed. Relationships are also based on fundamental agreements and COMMITMENTS, but they are more accommodating, less rigidly detailed and probably far more valuable than just quickie deals. Because relationships take place over time, change needs to be anticipated and managed constructively and creatively rather than ignored or given short shrift because the relationship falls outside of the scope of the initial agreement. Relationships are dynamic and EXPAND as we go through life.
- Not all organizations require relationships in order to succeed; organizations that don't do much are only worthy of quick-and-dirty simple deals. And sometimes, everybody wants a quick-and-dirty simple deal with no strings and no relationship. For example: when someone donates their old car or junk in their basement, they are basically just disposing of stuff and they'd like to maybe try to do a bit of good. Any extra value that they might get from a relationship with an organization would be a bonus but mostly they just want to unload their stuff, support an okay cause and be left alone.
- Ok, that's still not enough ideas yet ... KEEP BRAINSTORMING and get your friends involved in the brainstorming. After all, that's what friendraising is all about!
