Beyond Hand to Mouth

Tone Deaf

I was invited to an independent school, to tour the new gymnasium and then attend a hosted lunch in which planned giving would be discussed.  I didn’t really care about planned giving or the new gym, but it was socially expedient to just go.  I don’t recall an actual planned giving discussion, but a donation envelope was placed at every place setting.

At our table, the range of comments among the other parents were, in no particular order:

• I only hear from the school when they need money.
• I’ve been paying tuition from my home equity line of credit.
• There’s a good charter school across town.  It’s cheaper to move than pay tuition for three kids.
• I cannot afford to pay for this AND college.
• They nickel and dime us for everything.
• This school gets enough of my money.
• The school will pay for an attorney to draft my will if I leave them a bequest.  Yeah, right. I’ll pay for my own attorney.
• The school has an endowment.  They don’t need my money.
• They’ll just blow my donation.
• My kid graduates this year.  Why do I care?
• I made the mistake of donating a few years ago.  Now they pester me every year for a bigger donation.

However unjust, independent schools are not generally perceived to be a particularly sympathetic beneficiary; certainly not among any of the parents I talk to.  As such, fundraising without regard, or at least some appreciation, of such donor sentiment would arguable fall flat in the current environment.  And yet I get plenty of passive, feel-good requests in the mail.  I don’t even look at them.  They go right into the garbage.

There is an entire fundraising industry, of established strategies and tactics, that I do not always understand.  I have a much simpler benchmark:  me.  I am as typical a potential donor as anyone.  A worthy fundraising tactic is one I might personally (as a donor) respond to, versus tactics that I routinely ignore or which annoy me. In other words, common sense.