Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

<<Note: read Part I of this series here and Part II of this series here.>>

When someone first hears a presentation on Transformational Giving, no response is more common (and discouraging) than this:

“Oh, I see what you are saying.  We already do this at my organization, because we already treat all our donors like friends.”

No, no, no.

No!

So you don’t take a mercenary approach to fundraising, wherein you conceive of your donors as walking ATM-machines, but instead you understand they have real lives, needs, concerns, hopes, dreams and aspirations apart from your nonprofit? 

Bully for you!

You’ve learned to practice common courtesies by not talking incessantly about yourself and your organization, by sending donors a thank you letter in a timely fashion, and by being friendly with your volunteers?

Gold star!

But please do not labor any further under the misconception that what you are doing is Transformational Giving.  Friendraising does not equal Transformational Giving, and in Transformational Giving, friendship is an entirely inadequate metaphor for how organizations should relate.

Two key reasons:

1. For most, friendraising is just a friendlier version of traditional, transactional fundraising (ttf).  The foundational principles of the organization are the same: to promote itself to an audience of supporters and prospects who hopefully will provide the finances the organization needs to conduct its work.  It’s all just kinder, gentler, and friendlier than ttf.
2. From the perspective of the champion, friendraising in a nonprofit context suggests that your “friends” are those you pay to perform a service on your behalf, one you are unwilling or unable to perform yourself.  This is, at the very least, a wildly bizarre conception of friendship, one that would be unrecognizable to most of us outside the nonprofit context.

Readers from Christian nonprofit organizations may be thinking, “But Jesus called his disciples friends, so if I’m to follow Jesus, I should call my champions friends.”  But take a nother look at John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command” (emphasis added).  Jesus here is defining friendship in a particular way, one that follows from his metaphor where he is the vine, we are the branches, and God is the gardener.  It’s our connection to him, and our unwavering obedience to remain connected to him, that he calls friendship.

Which is something a bit different from calling your donors on their birthdays and picking them up from the airport, which is what many nonprofits mean by friendraising.