Fitted with high-tech legs, Scout Bassett, at left, and Sarah Reinertsen run together on a track. Photograph courtesy Challenged Athletes Foundation

According to Joseph Campbell, author of “The Power of Myth,” and “Hero With A Thousand Faces” there is only one story.

The story where the hero is thrown out of his home. Then he undergoes the transformation, the struggling in the wilderness, and finally, the triumphant return.

Let’s look at the first part of the story.
I: Departure
1. The Call to Adventure
2. Refusal of the Call
3. Supernatural Aid
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
5. The Belly of the Whale

II:The Journey
1. The Road of Trials
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
3. Woman as the Temptress
4. Atonement with the Father
5. Apotheosis
6. The Ultimate Boon

III: Return
1. Refusal of the Return
2. The Magic Flight
3. Rescue from Without
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
5. Master of the Two Worlds
6. Freedom to Live

Can you recognize this story in your own life?

Are you telling some elements of this story with your appeals, your acknowledgments, or on your website?

If not, why not? Don’t you think your donors would like to read a story too?

For example, say you are working with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
You’re talking about your principal ballerina in appeal letter. How can you make her story more compelling to your audience? Can you talk about her humble beginnings? How some people in her family didn’t want her to become a dancer? How she had to leave home and go through the trials of becoming a professional ballerina? The hours she had to dance on pointe until her feet were bleeding? And her eventual triumph and return to her family? And can you weave that story into the story of your nonprofit, to show how you are there to help dancers triumph over incredible odds to dance for a living? And how it’s so important to keep having heroines in ballerina form in Winnipeg?

Or say you’re working with Knox Parks Foundation.
You want to recruit more people to your Green Crew, which helps people without job skills get horticulture and landscaping skills. How can you make this more compelling to your donors and potential program participants? Can you tell the story of one young man, who came from the projects? Can you tell people that he didn’t have any garden in his neighborhood growing up? Can you tell them how he was so far from nature that perhaps he lived on corn chips and had never eaten an eggplant? Can you tell how he heard about your program, at first didn’t want to go? Can you tell how he eventually left his apartment, and started to come to your program site, to learn to grow his own vegetables, how to get closer to the land, and how he triumphed against the odds to become a master gardener? Can you even tell the story of how he has his own garden now, and his own landscaping business? Can you see elements of Joseph Campbell’s story in his story?

Or what if you’re working with the Amputee Coalition of America?
Can you tell the story of one young girl who had gangrene in both legs, and so had to have her feet amputated? Can you tell how she was teased in school, the sad namecalling, the tears that she shed, how outcast she felt, until she turned 18 and left her small home town, and went out in the world? How she met more amputees thanks to your nonprofit, and how they encouraged her to succeed despite the odds? And how she got prosthetic legs and started to run in marathons? How now she has a partner and a happy life and has learned to survive and thrive in her status as an amputee?

Can you weave stories into your communications so that people know it’s not just a big concrete building that’s getting their money, but a real person, who has triumphed against the odds to make the world brighter thanks to your nonprofit?

How can you start to tell a better story, today?

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get money in the mail

Here’s a prezi that tells you all about how to getting money in the mail through direct mail appeals. It’s so easy!

Was this informative?
Follow me on twitter if you like to get advice about fundraising and getting more money for your charity!

Do you know how they’ve tried to solve this issue in other ways?

Do you know what their dream is?

Do you know their ideal solution?

Say you’re a museum in a small city. Your donors may come to you because they fear they are not having enough fun, not educated enough, or not cultured enough. Perhaps they are just looking for a place to make friends, or get in out of the rain and see something different. Maybe they’re frustrated artists, looking to be inspired. Perhaps they’re rabid historians, looking for connections to help them in their research. They’ve tried going to the movies, they’ve tried going to the library. Your museum is the next stop on their quest for inspiration. Their dream is to live in a world where they are always creating, always inspired. You help provide this by offering exhibitions, lectures, and classes at your museum. What a cause.

Or say that you’re a small nonprofit that deals with domestic violence. Your donors may come to you because they remember their parents fighting when they were little, and they want to help other children avoid being in a negative or abusive environment. It keeps them up at night, remembering the sadness they felt. Maybe they’ve tried to talk with abusive people on their own, but it wasn’t the right approach or didn’t accomplish anything. Maybe they’ve just stood by, listening as abuse took place. Their dream is to live in a world without violence. Your nonprofit provides the solution by offering shelter, counseling women and educating children with your nonprofit, working towards that dream. That is a cause worth giving to.

Think about your mission in terms of what keeps your donors up at night.

Write from that place, where you can get at their deepest fears, and their most cherished dreams.

You will help them understand how giving to your cause can solve their problems and uplift their spirits as you go on to do the work that they don’t have time or resources to do.

What is your safety net? Start planning now!

What is your safety net?

Who can help you when the chips are down?

Here are two ways to create your own safety net.

Number One, build up who you are online.

3 reasons why you should.
1. Layoffs happen. If they happen to you, having people care about what you think is always a good idea.
2. Make your life more significant. Leave something behind. A blog can be the start of a book.
3. Get hired into a field based simply on what you research and learn for your blog. It could be green manufacturing. It could be nonprofits. Who knows where your journey will take you? At the bottom of this blog post, I’ve put my ebook on how to market yourself online better. If you haven’t read it yet, you really should. I would love to hear what you think of it in the comments.

Number Two, constantly keep learning.

What was the last book you read?
Was it to teach yourself something, or was it to entertain yourself?
What was the last blog you read before reading this one? Did you read it to learn, or to laugh?
What was the last class you took? Did you audit a community college class? Did you take a workshop at a conference?
Who was the last speaker you heard? Was the person well-informed? Did you learn something?
And since the best way to learn is to teach, what are you teaching?

If you haven’t been learning, what would you LIKE to learn and HOW would you like to learn it?

If you are constantly seeking to improve your own skills and knowledge, and strengthen your values, and help others, you cannot help but be an asset to an employer, or indeed to anyone who walks into your life.

Just to show you that I practice what I preach, I just finished taking a poetry class with Hoa Nguyen, and I’m signed up to take the next one as well.

Last week I went to the 501 Tech club and heard a speaker talk about how to get your nonprofit organization more engaged online. I also went to the Texas Wax meeting and learned how to package my paintings better. This week I’m presenting at the nonprofit career club in Austin on how to get a better handle on your motivation to find a job. More on that tomorrow.

I have read several books in the last month, including: “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink, “Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Clifton, “Strengthsfinder 2.0″, “Rules of the Dance” by Mary Oliver, “Fearless Creating” by Eric Maisel, “Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper” by SARK, and more.

I read the SmartWoman.com blog by Vicki Flaugher often, and just today she taught me something totally new about how to do a product launch!

What have you been reading? Where have you been going? And what have you been learning?

Please leave a comment and tell me!

How to Turn Your Knowledge Into a Profitable Brand

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Reciprocation
This is also known as the give and take and take. If you give a donor a flower, they might feel more inclined to give money to your organization. This is also the way the free sample works, if you try a product, and then have the option to return it after 24, 48, or 72 hours, you’re much more likely to buy. Monthly giving, assuming you’ve done it well, goes on the assumption that you’ll go on giving after a trial period of 1 or 2 months with your donation automatically deducted from your account. And they are usually right.

Commitment and Consistency
Do you like this?
Do you like that?
Then you NEED THIS!
Getting your donor in the frame of mind to say yes is something that Amnesty international and Mother Jones are doing very well right now. if you care about freedom, if you care about journalistic integrity, etc then you NEED to give to these causes! Of course, you don’t need to give to any cause, but these are certainly good examples of commitment and consistency principles at work.

Social Proof
When you put in testimonials from community members, leaders in law enforcement or outstanding donors in your appeal letters, why do you think this works?

These testimonials and pictures function as a kind of social proof to potential donors that your nonprofit is doing good work. Kind of like a laugh track, it makes you think it’s even more legitimate than it actually may be.

You could even have an anonymous “man in the street” person as a testimonial and it works.

Authority
When you have a celebrity attached to your cause, like Tori Amos and RAINN, you will be able to command a greater degree of respect as a nonprofit. When you have a political figure attached to your cause, people look at their title, their clothes, and the trappings that they have, and decide that your cause is legitimate.

Scarcity
This is your last chance to give! You’d better give today or our anonymous donor won’t match your gift 3 for 1!
Yeah, you know it’s NEVER your last chance to give. But this is yet another way to get people to hurry up and give to you if they’re on the fence.

More lessons from Influence, by Cialdini

Tips for you! Have you tried TwitGrid yet? You could use it to have public conversations with your donors on Twitter!

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Long Tail in Martha's Vineyard, MA

There’s a reason you’ve never seen a full picture of me on here! Yeah, I’ve got a long tail. It’s kind of got a “Puff The Magic Dragon” vibe. But I roll with it.

So, in the spirit of my long tail, here’s what I learned from Chris Anderson’s bestseller The Long Tail, and how this applies to your nonprofit!

Number of words: 1071
Read time: 9 minutes

The long tail is the concept that you can sell products to a particular group of people, over time, and that buying fades away, but never dies as long as you can connect with your truest fans online. So you don’t have to blast out with TV, Radio, Billboards etc, and in fact though this is good, it’s also kind of wasteful when you could be online connecting with the people who really want to hear from you.

I wrote a post yesterday on this, so go there to see what else I learned.

6. One product doesn’t fit all
Tailor your appeals to the 7 types of donors, for a start. That means starting to keep track of your dynasts, your communitarians, your socialites, your religious donors, and so on. A business-minded donor is not going to want to see just a story. They’re going to want to see metrics of how your social service nonprofit saves the county money, or how much they can write off on their taxes if they donate their old copier to your charity or NGO. Just because a picture of a sad puppy works on you doesn’t mean other people are going to respond to that. Get yourself ready to tailor your appeals by sending out batches of 150 letters at a time, each tailored to 7 different types of donors.

7. One price doesn’t fit all.
Just as it’s appropriate to ask some donors to give you $10 a month and others to give you $1,000 per month, you know that people all have different levels of ability to give. You need to spend your time with those who have the ability to give the most. Automate your appeals as much as you can, but make sure that each ask takes into account how much a donor has given in the past, and ask them for just a little bit more. If someone has given $10, they can probably afford to give $30. Make the case for why they should give more now.

8. Lose control: Share information
Transparency builds trust at no cost. If you are honest with donors about the financial straits your nonprofit is in, they will respect your honesty. If you are clear about how much money goes to services, how much to administration, even how much goes towards pencils at your nonprofit, people will understand you better, and realize how much you stretch a dollar to help. You know who does this really well? Yep, that’s right, Imamuseum.org! How can you bring this same level of transparency to your nonprofit? Hire a programmer.

9. Think “and” not “or”.
So if you’re doing 3 things right now to get your development program started, how can you do 3 more things? For example, if you’re doing grants, appeals, and e-newsletters, how can you also do an event, get in-kind donations, and a phone-a-thon? Well, the answer is volunteers and interns. But before that, you need to have a plan. Plan out where people will be trained, when they will be trained, and how they will be trained. Then figure out the highest outcomes you want from their efforts. Bring that vision to them and help them turn it into reality. The more people you have working for you, the more you’ll be able to accomplish. And when you think “and” and not “or,” also think about how people prefer to be contacted. Some volunteers may prefer the telephone, but you can also email them to follow up, or text them. Some interns may want you to not contact them at all. You’ve got to find out everyone’s preferences so that you can make their experience as smooth and satisfying for them as it can possibly be.

10. Trust the market to do your job.
You can try to predict what will make people want to give, but the best thing to do is to measure and respond. For example, you could measure which letters have the greatest impact on which individuals, and respond to that. So if you send out a story-driven letter and 10 people respond and 50 don’t, you can mark these 10 people story people, and try another tactic on the other 50 donors. Perhaps the next letter you send has 2 charts in it which track organizational spending and number of people served. Maybe 20 of those non-givers now respond with money. So you can mark them as chart people and move on to the next donors. This could also be your grant writing tactic, your event tactic, etc.

Bonus! 11. Understand the power of free.
Give a sample for free. This means, for example, you could have an open house for your charity. Let people in to see what you do, firsthand. Get a local coffeeshop to donate coffee and tea, a local donut shop to donate day-old donuts, or a local CSA to donate carrots and celery. You can give people a VISCERAL and tactile experience of your mission. Of course you can deluge people with free buttons, free annual reports, free e-newsletters, free podcasts of your executive director yakking it up as well.

What do you think of the lessons from the Long Tail? Can you see another way to apply this to your nonprofit right now? If so, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you think!

Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter! Because you want to motivate people better!

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Long Tail Parakeet

What is the Long Tail?

It’s a book by Chris Anderson, who talks about the internet’s ability to keep a product going long after it should have stopped selling. The Long Tail means that there are no masses, but lots of people with very specific sets of niches and interests. Mr. Anderson looks at the business models of Zappos, Amazon, Ebay, Apple, Google, and other top American companies, and tries to decipher how they keep up with the changing pace of the business world and the internet markets.

This can apply to your charity, and I’m going to tell you how below.

Number of words: 874
Estimated read time: 5 minutes

1. Make Everything Available
Show your donors how your nonprofit is helping, how your resources are being used, and how they can concretely help today, and I’ll GUARANTEE you get more donations. Transparency is huge. the Indianapolis Museum does this very well. Check out their dashboard which shows everything from how many memberships they have to how many kilowatt hours of electricity they’re using.

2. Help me find it
To reach people in your tribe or very specific groups, make it easy to find your information. Put clear search functions on your website, again, Indianapolis Museum does this really really well. On their dashboard, you can find out everything from how many schoolchildren go through their doors to how much their executives are making, all in one place. This openness and attention to detail makes me trust that they know what they’re doing when it comes to museum education. Crazy, isn’t it? But I think that people who have gotten their stats down to an auto-updated science on their website must have their donation processes together, and have hired the right people to keep all of this running.

3. Lower costs: Move inventory in, or waaaaay out
Amazon does this by offering products on their website that they don’t have, that actually belong to their network of small businesses. When a customer orders something on Amazon, they can tell their supplier to get it to the customer, and take their fee without ever having to worry about touching the product. You can apply this to your nonprofit by farming out your appeal letters to a mail house, letting a printer take care of your annual reports, and creating an auto-email thank you when someone gives online. Your development department will run a lot more smoothly, as your fundraising staff have more time to do major gifts, or create events or other tasks. Another way to lower costs is to partner with other nonprofits who do something particularly well that your nonprofit has struggled with, and allow them to send projects your way that your nonprofit does well. This way, you can both provide better services by playing to your strengths and farming out the rest.

4. Let customers/donors do the work
If you can improve what you are offering to the community, whether it’s an opera, senior services, advocacy, or environmental clean-up, give your donors a say in how you improve. Ask them to come in and investigate how you could do it better. Get your stakeholders to figure out how you could do things more efficiently. Many of them would LOVE to be asked for their advice, and it could make them more loyal donors down the line too, if they know that you care about their opinion.

5. Think Niche: One distribution method doesn’t fit all.
This is why direct mail will never be dead. You may feel completely comfortable with an e-appeal, but other people prefer to get a letter. Still others prefer the fullness of information in an annual report before they give. And then there are people who prefer the phone. And of course most foundations haven’t moved to an online application system yet. They still prefer to get your paper letter of intent, and then your 7 paper-clipped copies of your grant proposal which they send, by mail, to their trustees or board members.

Tomorrow I’ll give you five more things I learned from The Long Tail.

Was this helpful? If so, follow me on twitter, and sign up for my newsletter, where once a month I’ll give you tips and tricks you can use at your charity all year long!

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Are you making MUCH less than you deserve?

Do you wonder what you’re going to do about retirement? About your health if you get sick?

What if in this downturn, your nonprofit decides they can’t afford you anymore?

What’s your plan B or plan C?

You don’t HAVE ONE? Why not?

Now might be a good time to leverage your knowledge into profit.

Here’s how you start to get money on the side.

Figure out what you do best.

Do you love people? Hate them? Somewhere in between? What keeps you up at night about nonprofits? How does your personality mesh with your job? What do you see could be improved about the nonprofit world?

For example, since I like to write and meet people, I started a development consulting business in 2004, and ran it for several years. Then I went to work full time for nonprofits, but I also found some consulting clients to supplement my income. Now I’m back to consulting full time.

Read “Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Buckingham and Clifton. This book will help you build on your strengths, instead of focusing on and trying to “fix” your weaknesses. This can be frustrating, and you don’t have to do it all. Focus on what you do best.

How do you start consulting?

Look at this video by Yaro Starak, who is a pro blogger. He writes a lot about how to become a successful blogger and consultant.

Research and get to know your customers.

Don’t ask anyone’s permission. If you want to be a consultant, then you are one.

Make yourself a website, showcasing your skills. Here is a person who can help you do that.

How to find customers?

Ask people questions in person. Start to go to networking meetings, consultant meetups, chamber of commerce meetings, religious/spiritual meetings, and get out there and meet people in person. This is the best way to drum up new business. Ask for referrals.

The next best way would be to get on idealist.org and look at some small to mid-size nonprofits on there who don’t have fundraising staff, but who, you are sure, could use the help. Then call their executive director and ask them out to coffee to talk about what their biggest vision for their organization is. This is where you get a sense of if they recognize that they need fundraising help, and if they are willing to pay for it.

If they try to get you to work for free, thank them politely and tell them you have another engagement.

If they want to know how much you charge, figure out in advance how much you charge. Is it $18/hr? $25/hr? $100/hr? What do they get for that? And when do you expect payment?

If you try to work full time and then also 20 hours a week at another job, this is going to be difficult, so if there is a cyclical nature to when people need you, then figure this out in advance.

For instance, if you’re a fundraising/development consultant, and a client has an event, you know that if you’re organizing it/publicizing it, you need to allot more time for it, and take a vacation afterwards.

If you’re doing grant research and writing for them, this is easier to do in your spare time, at home.

Stay tuned for the next installment of how to make money on the side tomorrow!

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It goes like this:

Rebel Girl! Rebel Girl!
Rebel Girl you are the queen of my world!
I wanna take you home I wanna try on your clothes

That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood! I’ve got news for you! She is!
-Bikini Kill

So are you the Queen of your Neighborhood? Do you hold your head up high? Do you have a funky wardrobe? When you walk, is the revolution coming?

How do you get to be queen of your particular field? Start today. (This can also work if you want to be the King, or the Sovereign, ungendered.)

A. Get your online presence to be 100% powerful. This means
1. Control the first 3 pages of results about you on Google.
2. Get a portfolio site going of all your best ideas and projects
3. Interact with people and build your community on Twitter, Linkedin, and other social networks.

How EXACTLY do you do this though? Read my crazy free 17 page e-book. It takes you step by step on how to build your queendom of your particular neighborhood.

B. How do you broadcast your regal self out into the world?
1. You don’t have to wear a crown. Make sure your voice and your gestures are appropriate for a leader. Think old-time movie actresses and divas like Grace Jones, Diana Ross, and Bette Davis.
2. Go watch some drag shows! Those ladies have it down. How do they move their heads? How do they use their eyes? How do they walk? How do they talk? They perform power well.
3. Clothe yourself well. This means how would you dress if you had $1 Million dollars? Sure, you might have some favorite expensive brands you can’t afford right now, but can you find approximations of those clothes at cheap second hand shops, Goodwill, TJ Maxx or Kohl’s? Chances are, you can find something similar.
4. Go get yo hair did. Even if it’s just a trim. Whether you’re Queen, King, or Sovereign of your neighborhood, it’s going to make you feel fresher, more ready to take on the world.

C. Revolution!
1. So this means educate yourself on how to build a movement. Start with Kim Klein’s Tools for Radical Democracy.
2. Go to your local Slow Food, Slow Money, Farmer’s Market, Anarchist Collective, Labor Union, Bike Alliance, City Repair Project, Tool Library etc. and start to make connections. Find people and organizations to collaborate with.
3. Read the news, get involved in making small changes in your neighborhood. What can you start to change right now? What nonprofit is working towards some issue you want to have an impact on?
4. Write about your journey, encourage others to come on it with you. Get WILD!
5. Mentor a girl and help her be a queen of the neighborhood too.

Go nuts, seriously. This summer, it’s your time. Let it hang out. Let it all hang out.

Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter because you want more sassy tips!

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Donald Trump
Lee Iacocca-Former CEO of Chrysler
Pat Mitchell-Former head of PBS
Bernie Marcus-Founder of Home Depot
Tom Sternberg-Founder of Staples
Bernadine Healy-Former CEO of American Red Cross
Michael Bloomberg-Mayor of New York City, and 8th richest person in the world
Larry King-Radio personality
Robert Redford-Founder of the Sundance Film Festival and producer and actor in one of my favorite films, “Sneakers”
Martha Rogers-Head of Peppers & Rogers Group
Jamie Dimon-CEO of Bank One
Deborah Rosado Shaw-CEO of Dream Big Enterprises
JK Rowling-International best-selling author
Mozart

Did you know that 60% of CEOS get fired? Would you like to nominate some right now?

Are you ready to get fired? Ask yourself some questions.

Are you prepared to lose your job rather than compromise fundamental values?

Have you developed enough different skills so you always have a backup career in times of crisis?

Here’s some advice from Dr. Bernadine Healy, former President of the American Red Cross, who raised over $3 BILLION dollars for them before being fired. She did all of this, mind you, with a brain tumor.

She says, “Don’t get fixed on things you can do nothing about. Otherwise they will slow you down.”

“If you have faith in your own judgment and the cause is important, and if you have done your homework and sought wise counsel, and if you are driven by the right reasons, you must have the courage to take the personal risk of standing up and being counted.”

“Life isn’t a straight upward trajectory, but I think you will win more than you lose if you stand for something.” -Bernadine Healy, M.D.

Mark Hansen, coauthor of the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul books, was living in his car when they were written. Nobody would lend him money, not even his family. No one would offer any support. Then he wrote this book, and suddenly he was on top of the world.

He says, “If you go for security instead of opportunity you will lose both.”

“Ask yourself, what are the multiple streams of income you can create in your lifetime?”

“Constantly ask the question-What’s the one skill that will double, triple, quadruple my income?”

Lee Iacocca‘s story is startling. He made Ford $1.8 BILLION, and then Henry Ford fired him. He went on to Chrysler and turned them around to make $2.4 Billion. Just goes to show that unfair firings can happen in any industry, at any time, even when you think you’re doing things beyond reproach.

His advice? “Look for bosses who are buoyed by your success. If they seem threatened by it, it’s time to grab a life preserver and swim for shore.”

“Working with a despot, no matter how good you are, can only have two possible endings. Either you become a despot too, or the despot turns on you.”

He says, “If you can’t move forward, go sideways.” and, “Don’t let your love of success justify staying in the wrong place too long.”

Robert Redford says,

“Find your passions and pursue them tenaciously.”

“Embrace a dream. Have you been living out someone else’s script that squelched your dream for the future?”

“Link Your Thinking.” Redford created Sundance, which led to a film festival, which led to a restaurant. He says, “Once you find your primary channel, it can sprout opportunities in one hundred different directions!”

Finally, he says, “Give back. The people who give back the best are the ones who push things forward.”

All quotes from “We Got Fired” by Harvey MacKay, Ballantine Books, NY, NY. 2004

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