The One Resolution Every United Way Must Keep
Happy New Year!
As you recover from that big celebration of the New Year, it is time once again to look forward to all the potential and opportunity that a fresh new year offers. Once a month for the past year and a half we have highlighted a United Way every month in our Doing It Right blog posts. Just click on the “Doing It Right!” link on our blog page and you can see examples of the good things that United Ways are doing.
In the process of putting together the Doing It Right blog posts, we have also been subjected to a whole lot of United Ways that are doing it wrong. In fact, we could show you many more examples of doing it wrong, countless examples illustrating what not to do, but we believe showing you what to do is much more important.
But, there is a lesson to be learned, and a New Year’s resolution to be had, from all of these examples of doing it wrong. Every example of doing it wrong is an example of not following one simple rule:
Help Your Donors Succeed.
That’s it – your New Year’s resolution for 2013 is just that simple: Help Your Donors Succeed. Every example of doing it wrong that we see violates this simple rule.
Do donors support your United Way because of how much money it raises? No, so examples like thermometers don’t help donors succeed and have got to go.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
Do young people have a clue what their local United Way does? Do they even know there is a local United Way? Probably not, so United Ways need to stop treating young people like everyone else and help young people who want to make a difference succeed.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
Should our donors have to understand our secret code in order to understand United Way? Of course not, but yet United Ways spend a lot of effort to try to “educate” donors, instead of enabling their success.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
Are donors able to see how their contribution makes a difference? This should not be such a mystery and donors will succeed when United Ways share the issue they address, the actions they are taking to address the issue, and the results they are achieving.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
Do donors think United Way is helpful? Yep, but being helpful is not good enough, as every nonprofit organization is helpful as well. Donors need to know how United Ways are more than helpful, so that donors will want to accomplish their goals through United Way.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
There are lots of donors out there who would give to United Way if they understood United Way. Focus the message of your United Way, so that donors will successfully recognize the opportunities to make a difference in your community.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
When donors designate their contributions, what does that mean for United Way? It means that other nonprofit organizations are doing a better job at making donors successful.
Help Your Donors Succeed.
This list could go on, and on, but I hope that you get the idea. When a United Way is doing it wrong, it is because they have violated the simple rule of Helping Your Donors Succeed. Please make “Helping Your Donors Succeed” your New Year’s Resolution. After a year of helping your donors succeed, we can talk about more mundane resolutions like losing weight.
From all of us at Perspectives, Happy New Year and best wishes for a successful and rewarding 2013!
