Is the Customer Always Right?

When it comes to marketing, leadership, connection, and inspiring change, there is no one else out there quite like Seth Godin, my guest on this episode of What the Fundraising. Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 20 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, and Tribes (just to name a few of my favorites). Seth has spent his career trying to get us to be the best version of ourselves and when necessary, change everything. 

As the son of parents rooted deeply in the nonprofit sector, Seth grew up around fundraising and regards fundraisers as powerful, professional agents for change. He’s not mincing words: it’s up to us to value and believe in exactly what we bring to the table. And fundraisers are bringing a lot of value to the table - the opportunity to give is a gift.

You’ll want to take notes on Seth’s actionable advice for managing everyday fundraising challenges like internal resistance, demanding donors, fundraising in moments of uncertainty, and why hyper-focusing on outcomes is a recipe for burnout. And of course, because it’s Seth Godin, we had to talk about the need to build real relationships with our donors if we want long-term donors and sustainable fundraising. The pants-on-fire marketing and fake urgency not only shut serious donors down at the moment, but they burn a bridge for years to come. We decide how we show up in our communications; we can’t show up transactionally and then be surprised when we have low donor retention because we designed our fundraising for that outcome. The good news is that there is an entirely different way to fundraise.

Seth’s famous quote, “people like us do things like this” demonstrates the way that donating is an important behavior rooted in identity. We talk about the fact that people not only choose your organization based on their current alignment with your work but inspiring people to give to your organization actually helps people cement their identity. Why does this matter? Because it means that fundraising isn’t just a ‘necessary evil’ to run our programs or a ‘means to an end’. It means that fundraising in itself - the movement of money in alignment with who people want to be - is actually a critical part of building your movement and community all on its own. 

We also talk about how nonprofits should think and talk about ‘failure’. Seth gets that nonprofit work is about constantly pioneering and “doing experiments on the frontier,” which means we’re going to feel anxious, out of our depth, and at risk of failure — and that’s okay! In fact, that’s the point. We’re trying to solve problems that have never been solved before, testing and experimentation is the only way. And while failure is a loaded word it’s actually critically important because then we have learned one more thing that didn’t work. “Publishing your failures is an extremely generous thing to do,” says Seth, who believes the more data nonprofits share the quicker we can figure out what not to do.

There is so much advice jam-packed into this 30min interview and it’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how Seth’s wisdom translates to nonprofit leadership. If we want to change the sector, and we want to change the fundraiser experiences in the sector, we have to change the way we think about the sector and our specific work. My hope is that this episode helps us do exactly that.

Check out The Carbon Almanac to see the work Seth calls the most important project of his career. You should also run and sign up for Seth’s Blog and you can also learn more about his many upcoming workshops at this link.

To get all of the show notes and takeaways visit: https://malloryerickson.com/podcast/episode-68-effective-fundraising-and-power-partner-principles-with-seth-godin/