Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the value of trust.
This was spurred in part by a couple of pieces of mail I received.
One looked like business mail from our garbage collectors. I opened it because you can never tell anymore what might be a bill and what might be another sales pitch. It was the former – sort of.
They were writing to tell us about their partnership with a nonprofit organization. It didn’t really say much at all, just that they thought this organization was swell and they would be supporting them. There was no call to action at all.
Trust already broken
Now, the organization they mentioned has received a fair amount of negative press in the past couple of years. I think they earned every bit of it – first by getting aggressively litigious with smaller nonprofits and second by supporting positions that would negatively impact the people they claimed to serve. Needless to say, they won’t be getting my support, whether my garbagemen like them or not. And honestly, while I applaud the company for supporting charity, their support of this particular one leaves a negative impression. I’m certain they were hoping to be seen as good guys.
Being unclear about your mission hurts
The second looked like an appeal from an organization I’ve donated to in the past. I opened it and started reading… only to discover that it was really a pitch for insurance. Very odd. Does anyone really make a decision about what insurance to buy based on a pitch from a nonprofit?
A small choice may have a lasting impact
Two pieces of mail, both of which missed the mark, I think. They reminded me how important trust is in our work. In both cases, a business was hoping to benefit from its connection to a nonprofit. They were hoping to transfer some of the trust they imagined the reader had for a nonprofit to themselves.
In the first case, they might have succeeded with people who liked the organization. But it was a failure with me. I think they chose poorly.
In the second, an organization so blatantly sold its good name for an insurance pitch that it undermined my trust in them. I hope they were paid a lot of money for it. But it feels wrong to me.
Trust – in what we say, in how we act – is the most important currency we have. Once we spend it foolishly, we might never get it back.
Photo by purplejavatroll (http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124466731@N01/27687364/)
Great post, Mary! Sometimes people want to collaborate so badly that they let themselves get pulled too far away from where they belong.
Deirdre
So true. Thanks, Deirdre!
I find trust is the bedrock of fundraising Mary.
Major donor relationships are built on trust. People can sense spin. Transparency is key – in fact especially – when things aren’t going as you expect with your programme.
When you think about it you can see why. When someone donates they don’t get a ‘thing’ in return – they are buying your trust that the money will be used in the way you said and it will have the impact you put forward.
It’s trust which will get non-profits recommended by supporters to their networks.
Trust is everything.
Absolutely, Richard! You’re right – it really is at the heart of it. And that does mean fessing up when we’ve made a mistake – or when things haven’t gone quite as planned. I’d hope that most of us know that…
Thanks very much for taking the time to read and comment!
Nice piece, Mary.
I am currently working on a post about the ethical guidelines that we fundraisers are supposed to follow. The second piece of mail clearly illustrates to me that the organization has forgotten about those standards, as from what I gather from your description, they don’t mention that they probably get a commission for each policy sold, and they shared your information with a business, probably without informing you that they would share your information. When organizations do such things, we do lose our trust in them, and without trust, there is no relationship.
Well, I can’t claim to have read it thoroughly – once I saw it was an insurance pitch, I pitched the whole thing.
And it came from the organization – or at least with their carrier envelope… so perhaps my info wasn’t shared outright.
I remember credit card companies pitching organizations years ago to do a branded credit card and push that as a way to raise money… I guess this is similar.
But yeah, I’d much rather have heard about their recent successes, what still needs to be done, etc. I’ll talk to my insurance broker about insurance!