What Makes a Donor Conversation Work

If you hire a firm to run face to face fundraising, the campaign is not really the contract or the plan. It is a very large number of short conversations between a stranger and someone speaking for your cause. Almost nobody evaluating a fundraising partner ever listens to one closely. This is a guide to what should be happening in those conversations, and how to tell whether it is.

What does a good donor conversation actually sound like?

It sounds like an honest explanation followed by a clear request. The fundraiser names the charity, says what a gift pays for, states plainly that they are paid rather than volunteering when the law or the question calls for it, answers what is asked, and then makes one specific ask.

The order matters more than the wording. A conversation that opens with a request and explains afterward puts the person on the defensive before they know what they are defending against. One that explains first gives them something to decide about. That is why training in this work is weighted toward the cause rather than toward closing technique.

The part that is not a matter of style

Some of what a fundraiser says is not stylistic at all. State charitable solicitation laws generally require a paid fundraiser to identify the charity they represent and, when asked, to say that they are compensated rather than volunteering. A team that treats those disclosures as an inconvenience is a compliance problem attached to your name, not a sales advantage.

Why do most people say no?

Because the reasons to decline are ordinary. They are in a hurry, they already give elsewhere, or they do not want to make a financial decision standing up. Very little of it is a verdict on your cause. A campaign judged on the number of refusals rather than on the quality of the conversations will chase the wrong behavior.

The behavior pressure produces is a gift someone regrets, and a regretted gift is worse than no gift at all. It gets cancelled, it gets disputed, and it turns a person who was neutral about your organization into someone with a story about it. The supporters who give in the field and stay are the ones who understood what they were giving to.

How long should a donor conversation take?

As long as the person's questions take to answer, and not a moment past a no. There is no target length worth setting. Someone who wants to know how the money is spent deserves a real answer, and someone who is already walking away deserves a thank you rather than a second attempt.

What a fundraiser should be able to answer without checking

• What the organization does, in one plain sentence a stranger could repeat afterward.
• What a donation pays for, described concretely rather than as a category.
• Who they work for, and that they are paid to be there, if they are asked.
• How someone can give directly through the charity instead, if they would rather.
• Where a person can verify the organization for themselves.
• How to end the conversation when the answer is no, without a second ask.

The last item is the one people underestimate. How a campaign handles a refusal is the part of it most of the public actually experiences, and it is the part that decides what your organization's name means in that neighborhood afterward.

How can a charity tell whether its campaign is doing this well?

Go and listen, without announcing the visit first. Stand within earshot at a site and hear a few conversations end to end. A short stretch of that tells you more than a month of summary reporting, because you hear how your mission gets described when nobody is presenting to you.

Then read the numbers for what they say about behavior. Cancellations soon after a gift, complaints, and donors who say they did not understand what they signed up for are conversation problems arriving late and in writing. Ask your partner what it does with that feedback, and ask to see a specific example rather than a policy.

What to ask a firm before you sign

• How is the field team trained on our mission, and who runs that training?
• What is said in the opening seconds of a conversation, and may we approve it?
• What are team members told to do when someone says no?
• How are disclosure requirements handled in each state we will be working in?
• What happens to a team member who pressures a donor?
• May we observe a working site before we commit to anything?

A firm that welcomes the last question is telling you something. So is a firm that does not.

Universal Events Inc. is a nonprofit consulting firm providing fundraising counsel, community outreach, marketing and event support to nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. If you want to talk through how field conversations are trained and supervised on a campaign, reach us at Corporate@theuniversalteam.com.