Resources like time, creativity, networks, ideas, passion and money.  These resources are ours to leverage. Unfortunately, they can get stuck and stalled, in large part, because of the barriers we erect around them.  And the bossiest of barriers: our problematic relationship with money. I work with people on every part of the economic spectrum and everyone – I mean everyone – has, on some level, a dysfunctional relationship with money.

No way around it: we work in the world of money. So we need to understand ourselvesand how we relate to it. Take a moment and ask yourself honest questions about the values you put around money. Do you assign money values coming from a place of fear and scarcity? That is, does talking about money take on a dark threatening posture? Or do you color it with the light, warm values of courage, commitment and love?

In my workshops, I often get questions like these: how do I talk about money for my cause in a way that I don’t feel like I am losing my soul? How do I not walk away from interactions where money is being discussed feeling exhausted and burned out?  How do I relate to someone more deeply than on the basic level of money?

My answer is always the same: ask yourself if money is at the center of your relationships or is it a shared vision for how you will work together to create social change?  If money is at the center, there will always be a skewed power dynamic.  Namely, the people or organizations with the money have the power and the people needing the money become supplicant to them. Then, we are in a competitive, consumer mode where we have to pitch people on why our program, organization, vision is better than another. This has never made sense to me.

Why pitch people on, say, why the environment is more important than ending extreme poverty?  Or vice versa? They are intricately linked and so why be competitive about it?

In fact why pitch at all? The invitation – the “ask” – is not, at its essence, what you can do for me me or how can you help me, but, rather, how can we work together?  This is an important distinction.  Asking someone to “help” creates an inauthentic power dynamic. Helping implies weakness. I counsel people to strike that word entirely from their lexicon.  Instead, invite people to join with you and to stand together in a shared belief that together your resources can exponentially multiply and can make a powerful difference.

From here fundraising becomes much more of an exchange of values.  A vehicle through which we meet at a place beyond help.  It is an entirely new framing, a new way to collaborate that transcends the power dynamic.  This way, money is out of the middle. It becomes a relationship built on a discovery of some of the most basic, human questions:  Why are we here? What might be possible? Who are we? As the great philosopher and author of Money and the Meaning of Life Jacob Needleman says:  “Money can buy anything, except meaning.”  Meaning is the thing we’re going for here. A shared understanding that we are here to serve something larger than ourselves – that thing Plato calls Eros.

Go into conversation with others standing up, never kneeling down. Fundraising is not begging.  We all have something of great value to give each other when we are operating from a place of partnership and collaboration.

And money isn’t the enemy. It’s also not the end. It’s simply a means, a single resource among many that can be activated in service of our work together.

This post also found at Forbes and the Skoll World Forum

Before Jefferson tendered his resignation, he had dinner

Half of fundraisers in the top job want to quit.

That’s the bold headline from a study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy that was released in January.  It was cause for a lot discussion about the dearth of fundraisers and why the profession is so seemingly broken.

The study’s conclusions are unsurprising.  They are also not fundraising specific.  That same research has been done with people in most professions, including medicine, law, teaching and more.  There is burnout, frustration and cynicism everywhere because our culture doesn’t cultivate meaning or recognize its power to transform our experiences.

In 1997, Amy Wrzeniewski at the University of Michigan and her collaborators released a study on the different ways in which we experience work, breaking it down into three categories:

1).  As a job.  It’s about financial reward.  It is simply a vehicle to fund what is meaningful in a person’s life outside of work

2).  As a career.  It’s about advancement. Success is measured by recognition, reputation and results.

3).  As a calling. It’s about making a difference. Work becomes an expression of ourselves in the world.  It allows us to share who we already are – not who we will become – and how our core values and natural gifts are put into action.  People who experience work as a calling often feel lucky to have the opportunity to do their work.

It is our relationship to our work, not the kind of work we do, that matters. The more we experience our work as a calling, the more we experience the personal meaning it has for us: what we stand for and what difference we can make.  It insulates us from a sense of isolation, stress and fatigue and allows us to better tolerate the job and career aspects of our work. Coincidentally, I just interviewed a candidate for one of the top jobs at a friend’s nonprofit.  In addition to resumes, he required all candidates to tell their story in one page or less.  Specifically, he asked them to share:  ”Why are you called to do this work?”  Genius!

The next time you and your colleagues are feeling especially burned out, I recommend you host a Jeffersonian dinner (or a Jeffersonian breakfast, lunch or cocktail hour).  Seated around your table – Jefferson would not be Skyping – share with each other why you are called to do your work and why it’s more than a job or a career for you. If after honest self inquiry you come up empty on “the calling” discussion, perhaps then it IS time to consider something else. But give Jefferson a chance before you hit the quit button.

Start today and make your fundraising events more productive (And yes, let’s get something other than money out of them!)

I have long gone on the record disliking large fundraisers. You know the drill: sitting at a table of ten people, talking to two people on each side of you that you don’t know about their dogs/kids/favorite sports team, listening to long speeches, interminable auctions, and, if you are lucky, having a cool performer bang out a couple of songs to top off the evening (I was just at one where the “cool performer” accepted the honorary award but didn’t perform – geez).

And, to top it off, the non-profit’s staff and board probably spent months twisting the arms of their friends to buy tables, begged to get silent auction items, sweated over whether they could get an honoree that would draw attendees and over-practiced the long speeches they were going to give.

So how can a non-profit make something out of this mess?  While they, hopefully, make some money  - and that is usually the key reason they have these events – they rarely make any new resource connections or find any new, significant, donors.  Most of the tables are full of people who were asked to come to “fill up the table”… hardly good candidates to make transformative gifts.

While I would still recommend the organization have a series of interesting, connective, Jeffersonian Dinners instead of a large fundraising dinner (see the earlier blog posting on Jeffersonian Dinners) there is something quick and easy that the non-profit could do at the dinner to try to find some interesting resources beyond the money.

Take two minutes and, in addition to telling the crowd how amazing your organization is, tell them about a problem you have that you have not yet been able to solve.

For example, if you are a poverty-fighting group in New York City, tell them you are trying to find ways to house the 30,000 people put out of their homes by the last hurricane and you need apartments, construction resources, assistance with the Federal and local govt, etc.  You are forming a small group of people who can help come up with a plan to address that problem.  Put at each seat a card with a statement of the problem and an email address for people at the event to contact if they are interested in helping or have any ideas or suggestions to solve your problem.

If you have a 2% response rate at a 1000 person dinner you are doing great … those 20 people could become donors, real resources beyond the event.

Try it.  You have nothing to lose.  Let me know how it turns out.

Jeff
Walkerjc1@gmail.com

The Course in Exponential Fundraising is a year-long engagement during where we work with 20 visionary leaders from the nonprofit sector who want to both dramatically improve their organization’s fundraising results and be on the vanguard of a new approach to partnerships and philanthropy.

In this short video some of the CEF cohort members describe how the Course fundamentally altered the way they viewed and practiced fundraising.  The Course participants in this video include Charles Best, CEO and Founder of Donorschoose.org, Joi Ito, Executive Director of the MIT Media Lab and others.

Here’s a full list of 2011 and 2012 participants. Check out the broad range of missions of the various organizations:

2012 Cohort:

• Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Executive Director, WITNESS
• Aviva Argote, Executive Director, Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard
• Jeremy Barnicle, Chief Development Officer/Chief Communications Officer, Mercy Corps
• Charles Best, CEO, DonorsChoose.org
• Valerie Broadie, Director of Development, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
• Roger Brown, President, Berklee College of Music
• Richard Buery, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Children¹s Aid Society
• Alexander Chanoff, Founder and Executive Director, RefugePoint
• Nick Ehrmann, CEO and Founder, Blue Engine
• Sylvia Ferrell-Jones, President and CEO, YWCA Boston
• Matt Goldman, Co-Founder and Board Treasurer, Blue Man Group and Blue School
• Suzanne Helm, Vice President, Development, Council on Foreign Relations
• Sarah Holewinski, Executive Director, CIVIC
• Joi Ito, Executive Director, MIT Media Lab
• Audrey Levitin, Director of Development, Innocence Project
• John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design
• Alexander McLean, Director General, African Prisons Project
• Kate Roberts, Founder and Vice President, YouthAIDS/PSI
• Kenneth Watkins, Director of Philanthropy, The Australian Ballet
• Robert Weiss, Vice Chairman and President, X PRIZE Foundation
• David Wish, Executive Director, Founder, Little Kids Rock

The course is designed for Executive Directors/CEOs, Chief Development Officers, Chief Marketing Officers  everyone with key leadership responsibility for mobilizing external partnerships and resources.

CEF 2013
Beginning with 3 immersive days (June 5-7 2013) on the Harvard Campus, participants are exposed to the unique principles of Exponential Fundraising and its ability to fundamentally transform organizations and the people associated with them.  Then, over the course of a full year, there are multiple follow-up sessions including a one-day session on the Harvard Campus at the 6-month mark and another session at the end of the year. Additionally, I personally work with participants all year to ensure that the core principles of the program are being successfully implemented. Deadline for applications is March 31, 2013.

For more information please contact: cefinfo@hausercenter.org or contact me here

The morning of the show, I walked into her room bursting at the seams with the news, singing “Oh What a Night” into a hairbrush. She looked up from her iPad and said: “Jersey Boys? Seriously?”  I wanted to joke that Big Girls Don’t Cry, but now understood she would translate this literally and likely be offended. I was deflated. She wasn’t happy. This was not going as planned.

She said Jersey Boys was too old for her, she didn’t know the music, and she didn’t want to spend her Saturday afternoon that way.

After not heeding my own advice and laying on some sales-oriented cajoling, we did ultimately go.  She got less grumpy especially after her Nutella crepe (I was in full-bribe mode), but in the end she really didn’t like the show.  She said it was corny and she didn’t like being one of the only kids there.

After, I realized that my disappointment was coming from a place of expectation.  I believed she should be grateful and happy with my gift, but the truth is, that isn’t real generosity.

True generosity is relationship. Not what I can do for you, but what can we do together. It’s one of the central tenets of Exponential Fundraising.  As a mutual discovery it is never disappointing.  We are growing together, me to you and you to me.  It’s not coming from a place of personal motivation or gain.

I promised my stepdaughter that the next time I had an urge to do something like this that I’d talk with her before so we could discuss what we’d both like to see and experience together. I told her it may take some “nudging” on my part.  She may not like the thought of going to see an Off-Off- Broadway production of Brecht, but she can be open to my invitation to experience new things, without feeling any pressure from me that she should do or like it. Similarly, I asked her to push me on new experiences as well. She has access to inventive new music, theater and dance and I want her to expose me to it, without any expectation on her part either. This is generosity. This is mutual growth and discovery.

My favorite musical at 11 was Grease.   I can still hear Frankie singing personally to me in his soaring Soprano voice:  ”We got a lovin’ thing, we gotta feed it right.”

She described a lunch with her organization’s board chair.  ”While pushing my salad around , what I was really thinking about was retiling my bathroom.  I was there in body only lured by visions of imported ceramic bathroom tile.  We are talking about the future of our education system here – something I used to be really passionate about – and I there I was just going through the motions.”

In philanthropy, this is a question we all need to consider.   How does saving and changing lives turn into cynicism or burn out?  How could creating and nurturing partnerships to do this work together lead to frustration and a desire to escape?

One of my favorite quotes is from Marcel Proust:  ”The journey of discovery lies not in new vistas, but in having new eyes.”  I sent this to my friend after our meeting and I encouraged her to keep a little journal. (Check out SIM)  Take a minute at the end of each day and reflect on the conversations she had, the connections she made, the new things she learned and discovered.

Try it.  Maybe not in the moment, but at the end of the day.   You will start to feel a shift in how you’re relating to your life and the lives of those around you.  You will start to recognize how creative your life, and your work, already is.  You will see your world through fresh, new creative eyes.

Recently, Gunther and I had a conversation about money and its role in our lives.  Here are some of the excerpts:

Jennifer:  Most of us know that the economy we’ve built is simply not sustainable.  What’s really going on here?

Gunther:  The newest scandal coming out of England around the fixing of the LIBOR index really struck me as the most recent example of how corrupt our financial institutions are.  Of course, it’s not just the financial institutions.  All institutions have become corrupt because we measure their success or failure by a single metric: money.  We see the same kind of thing happening in the classical institutions of education, medicine and law.  What’s happening in politics is obvious.

The latest financial scandal is just another example of this.  To see something like LIBOR – which should be a trusted, accurate number –being fixed for the benefit of the few is an indicator of how deep the corruption goes.

We are living in what Harvard Political Philosophy Professor, Dr. Michael Sandel describes as “market society”.  It’s no longer just a market economy. “Market society” – is an accurate descriptor.  Everything is for sale and has a dollar value on it.  Our decision-making is driven by the question, what is the price?  Money has become the exclusive measure of worth – not principals or other values.  Our lives are almost completely commercialized in the process.  Money has become even more of a God.  We can see more and more of this kind of imbalance in all of our major institutions.  The corruption of the monetary systems is a reflection of a very deep level of fear and mistaken identity for nearly everyone in our society.

JM: What is it about money that infuses so much fear in so many people?

GW:   Money itself doesn’t infuse fear.  The fear is there already in people.

It just gets attached to money as the vehicle.  If someone has a deep sense of insecurity, it doesn’t matter if they have a lot of money or not. Money simply becomes the expression of that insecurity.  In a market society, when we use money as a measure of worth, then it is going to carry the weight of a great deal of fear.

This is essentially a symptom of people having no connection or very little connection to their inner lives or a felt sense of Being.  When there is no inner life to balance the outer life, everything gets measured by external criteria. In our society, we get especially caught up in the metrics of money, which is easily quantifiable and measurable. Fear is nothing more than a projection of people’s own division and sense of emptiness within themselves; a grasping for security, as if that could be fulfilled strictly at a financial level by more and more consumption or wealth.

Like everyone, I am not immune to this.  I’ve had my own issues and projections about money.  I was born in Nazi Germany in 1937.  My parents lived through a number of horrendous years there before coming to the U.S when I was two years old.  I grew up with a core belief/story that I couldn’t be successful or feel a sense of ease around feeling bountiful. I was uncomfortable with money because I absorbed my parent’s belief that they should not ask for anything more beyond the fact that their lives were spared. Asking for anything more was asking for too much.  I grew up with that core story and it took many years for me to deconstruct it.  I would always question and undercut myself when I got close to success as measured by societal norms.  I had a core belief that I didn’t deserve it.

JM:  This idea of breaking down our stories is so central to living an authentic life.

GW:  The way we start to break down our stories and projections is to begin to understand the truth of our Being.  Truly and impartially seeing our own conditioning and how subject we are to that kind of scripted mechanicality is the beginning of real freedom.

The key is understanding our foundational spiritual values and seeing   how they operate in our lives.  When we do that, we can begin to see ourselves and others as more than just consumers.  Our heart of compassion starts to open up.  We stop operating primarily in terms of rank and hierarchies.  We are willing and able to speak the truth because we are connected to our Being instead of trying to placate people or make a good impression out of fear or a desire for acceptance.  We seek more authentic relationships in all areas of our lives including professional and financial relationships.

JM:  This is at the heart of what I teach. Building authentic relationships requires us to know ourselves and also to be able to speak truthfully to each other, to be a mirror for the other and to allow them to be mirrors to us.

GW:  That can be especially challenging when dealing with people of wealth and possessors of culturally defined power.  So few people, including their advisors, tell them the truth.  Sycophants usually surround them.  Part of them has created that need for flatterers and fawners out of their own insecurities.  But there certainly is also another significant part that desires to have real and meaningful relationships.  In other words, friends and professionals, who don’t just prop them up and tell them how wonderful they are, but are willing to speak the truth to them.  This requires deep listening and asking meaningful questions about the meaning of money in their lives.  This points to a level of their Being beyond the surface of their financial status and social identity – an inquiry about their worldview, beliefs and core values.  This has the possibility, although not the guarantee, of opening up a new perspective on living more authentically, which in turn creates more well-being.

JM:  Why are we so often not able to be in an authentic relationship with others?

GW:   Again, when we’re not connected to our inner lives, our Being, we are going to be in this constant dynamic of ranking others and ourselves and manipulating them.  This leads us into a discussion about selling.  I don’t have a belief that selling is in and of itself negative, but selling without other values – without introducing aspects of caring, real engagement, quality, and love – is not going to lead anywhere beyond a superficial level of consumerism for both the seller and the client or customer. But, if there’s a real balance between one’s Being and the outer professional personality, then the work you are doing with others, including selling, is itself a great laboratory to objectively see oneself.  In this way our professional lives provide a great opportunity to impartially see our traits and tendencies and become free of them.

JM:   Why is it so hard to see these tendencies?  Why do we try to escape them by whatever means possible.

GW: Living in a “Market Society” there is a constant, insidious need for achievement and status. Since this is ultimately an impossible task, we medicate ourselves with consumerism, antidepressants, drugs and alcohol.  They become a way of anesthetizing our pain of feeling disconnected with the source of our Being so we can mistakenly continue to focus on the “externals” that carry the promise of happiness.  Again there is nothing intrinsically wrong with achievement, but if it’s carrying the burden of your inner life it’s such a pale imitation of what’s real.  There’s a part of us that knows when we are not connected to the truth of our Being.  That’s the part we need to listen to, and yet that’s the part that gets squashed down further by all the ways we are trying to escape it including multitudinous forms of anesthetization.  We won’t allow ourselves to experience fully deeper levels of our Being.  Later in life, it can take the form of disease and illness.

JM:   One of the things I like about the weekends is that it gives us time to turn away from the striving and achievement and focus on something deeper than consumerism.  Yet I often find myself restless and unable to fully relax then because of some nagging feeling that I should be doing more. What’s your experience with this?

GW: The guilt comes from the widely held belief or core story that we’re not doing enough.  We’re not good enough, rich enough, strong enough, beautiful enough, etc.  There’s intense social messaging that reinforces that, combined with life long religious and mass media conditioning.  If you know that about yourself, that you “buy into” that story in some way or another, even on a small scale, it allows you to create points in your daily life where we can disengage, even if it’s only for a few minutes at a time, to remember your Being or essential nature.  Of course, having some experience in meditation can help create that quality of relaxed attention that supports a creative disengagement.

In Chinese there’s a word Fang Song that translates inadequately as “relaxation”.  But the Chinese idea of relaxation is different than the American, which is typically opening a beer and turning on the TV. A better translation suggests the notion of “relaxed attention”.   A quality of relaxation in both the mind, emotions and body operating in harmony.  Fang Song is simultaneously aware, present and relaxed.  The correct practice of Tai Chi is an example of this.

JM:  When we’re in this loop of more, we do things that are often counter to our own wisdom.  I find myself buying things I don’t need and then later feeling a bit empty inside.

GW:  Yes, there is the challenge of feeling fully connected to yourself when you are in the store.  Having that connection, that quality of presence/awareness gives you the freedom and discernment to say yes or no.  Whether you buy the thing or not isn’t really relevant, it’s a question of whether you felt you really had the freedom to say yes or no.  Perhaps when you’re feeling that need to consume you could go take a short walk or sit somewhere for a few minutes, “relax” in the sense I described and observe yourself.  Make friends with what’s going on inside and then trace it back.  Investigate the story behind the desire to buy something you don’t really need.

JM:  Last question.  Our culture is built on a pioneering mentality that we should be self-sufficient, independent, take care of ourselves.  It seems to me we’ve done this at the expense of community and taking care of each other.  Can you talk a bit about this from a values-perspective?

GW:  “I did it my way” is a myth, perhaps perpetuated, in part by Frank Sinatra’s song by that title.  Even though it’s a cultural anthem of sorts, especially here in America, it is a myth.  Nobody succeeds solely on their own.  We always need others to accomplish ambitious goals.  How we relate to our colleagues and associates is the real question.  Do we relate to them in a competitive, survival based, manipulative or herd mentality? Or as true collaborators?  I like the term “collaborative individualist.  A marriage is a good example of this.  Is your marriage all about you doing things your way, or a balance of both partners’ wishes and goals?   A balanced relationship means being able to have the capacity to truly know yourself, fully embodying and expressing who you are, your values, skills, desires, etc. as well as knowing and celebrating your partner’s values, skills and desires, giving each other room to grow.

I’m 75 years young.  My professional life now is about working with people with whom I feel a bond of connection, care and love; undertaking projects that matter, in order to make a positive contribution and difference in the lives of others.  In other words, working both individually and together with others in the spirit of Collaborative Individualism.

Gunther M. Weil, Ph.D. is the founder, and CEO of Value Mentors.  He is an organizational consultant, family advisor, executive coach, educator and psychologist. For the past 35 years he has provided wise guidance to senior executives, family businesses, and for-profit and non-profit organizations in the areas of values based leadership and organizational culture, innovation, team building, strategic planning, conflict resolution and executive wellness. He has served many institutions in the United States, and Western and Eastern Europe in both the public and private sector with clients from diverse institutions and industries including The MIT Media Lab, CAA, ID-PR, Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, Credit Suisse, AT&T, McCann Erickson, Minolta, the Federal Aviation Agency, the Peace Corps, Young Presidents Organization, HCA/Health One, Team Training International, Naropa University, The Van Heyst Group, Veris Wealth Partners and many others.

Weil earned his doctorate from Harvard University in 1965 and served as a Fulbright Scholar in Oslo, Norway. His early professional mentors included Carl Rogers, the creator of Client Centered Psychotherapy, Arne Naess, the founder of Deep Ecology, and Abraham Maslow, the father of Humanistic Psychology.

Dr. Weil is a licensed Psychologist, and is certified in the HeartMath® Inner Quality Management Program; Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT); and as a Master Values Mentor by the Minessence Group of Australia. He is also certified as a Master Trainer of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). In 2001 he and his wife, Ellen were personally invited by Eckhart Tolle, best selling author of “The Power of Now”’, and “A New Earth” to teach the Practice of Presence.  He is also a 40 year practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan and Master Instructor of Qi Gong.

A QB in the flow state greatly increases the chance for a TD and for your bet to pay off. Flow state, good.

But the flow state is often largely associated with the super jock. We relegate, elevate and restrict the flow state to athletes and other limber performers who wear form-fitting clothing. We think only the Ben Roethlisbergers, Tom Bradys and Olympic athletes of the world can breathe this rarified air.

Yet Mr. Flow State himself – Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – believes you don’t need a BMI of 4 to experience the state of flow in your own chosen field. In his 1990 book, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,” he posits that when operating in the Flow people are motivated by the sheer enjoyment of the challenges of the activity and are, consequently, much more productive and happy. Flow, he says, is at its peak when challenges are high enough to cause growth and expansion, but not so high as to cause anxiety.

Let’s go to the Flow Chart.

In most cases, we pull up short on the vertical challenge axis when asking our board members or other partners to do this or that. We rationalize that we don’t want to overburden them or they’ll feel put upon and leave. But, as you see from the chart, an underwhelming challenge is as risky and deleterious as asking too much. And remember: board members are generally, by definition, extraordinarily talented and motivated individuals. Like Big Ben and, well, OK, Tom Brady.  So tap it. Let it flow.

In fact, use this chart to plan your next ask. Craft a challenge/ask that matches the skills of the Ask-ee. Best case scenario, you land beyond your ask into the Flow state and spectacular, unexpected things start to happen. Worst case, you are stretching your board and partners beyond any previous request.  The worst is not bad, actually.

The chart is also effective for self analysis … point it inward to set your own goals and elevate your own game.  Performing at your best is not only richly rewarding, it’s contagious. Your entire team starts to raise their game.  Now that‘s exponential fundraising.

Well, my blogger red flag goes up whenever I hear “most would agree.” So here’s why “most” end up leaving resources on the table.

Harnessing resources is good, yes, But it’s the natural after effect when you focus on the most important aspect of the process: seeing and clearing the obstacles that stand between you and the flow of resources. Once the obstacles fall – obstacles that we ourselves put up – resources just naturally move toward good ideas and projects.

One big obstacle is the false belief that money is a scarce commodity. Let that one go. Did you know that individuals are expected to put more than 10 times the amount of money into private foundations over the next five years than in the preceding 100 years combined?  That’s a staggering number.  And here, in 2012, you’re smack in the middle of it!

We simply have to overcome the nagging belief that there’s ‘not enough.’  The same is true about other resources: time, networks, creativity, ideas, passions — there’s plenty of all of them out there and our job is to see what obstacles we are putting in the way that’s blocking our receipt of them.

Another obstacle is fear. People use fear to justify inaction. Fear convinces us that the problems in Africa are too big. That the environment is too far gone.  It’s the mind’s way of keeping a safe distance, of telling itself that nothing can be done.  But It’s nothing short of transformational when you, to trot out on an oldie but goodie, face the fear. Look at it, exam it from every angle, and it wilts under the bright, searing light of scrutiny. Remember, though, this is about seeing fear, not fighting it. Fear loves a good fight — and usually wins if you call it out for a school yard brawl.

A final obstacle:  the 30 second elevator pitch. This is a hot button of mine, because it never works. People aren’t parrots. Squawking an agreed upon organizational line doesn’t move the agenda or others forward.  Let your partners discover what to say based on their own experience and their own reasons for being a part of the work you are doing together.   When it comes from the inside out, not the other other way around, it is not only more authentic, it sticks.

She runs one of the world’s largest fashion companies and agreed to see me about working with our organization.  Following my own philosophy – See “Never take a first meeting in an office” – I suggested that we meet at a local coffee shop.  She pushed back, “My office is good. See you Friday at 2.”  Click went the line. Silence. She was gone. I was trapped.

I followed up via email to move the meeting to ANYWHERE except her office. Didn’t work. I was doomed to meet her for the first time in her private fiefdom.  She will be surrounded by interrupting staffers, ringing phones, come-hither computer screens, an imposing desk and more visual reminders that she “doesn’t have time.”

This is a rarity. 99% of my first meetings are at a restaurant or a coffee shop. In fact, this week 4 out of 5 first-time meetings with potential partners is at breakfast. It’s at this initial encounter where I meet people on a truly authentic level. It’s a critical opportunity to connect and accomplish one of the most difficult things to do in fundraising (drum roll … ) get a second meeting.

At a coffee shop you can ask how they honestly feel about their work … a treacherous question while they’re AT work. At a restaurant you can steer her focus from the daily demands of her company … an impossibility while she’s seated at ground zero. At a breakfast diner you can more naturally discuss her leisure time passions … a hurried discussion in the office.

After nearly 6000 face-to-face meetings I can say with confidence this little trick is one of the most important things you need to do as you begin a new relationship.

So, how did the meeting go with little “Miss-hang-up-the-phone”?

As expected.

Where are some of your favorite first-meeting places?