Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places

The following text is adapted from a lecture Managing Director and Senior Consultant Doug Simpson gave at ANDPVA (Association for Native Development in the Performing and Visual Arts) on how to (and not to) develop audiences and members in non-profit organizations. I am going to post it two parts.



LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES – PART 1

I'm old enough to remember when small arts organizations burned up volunteer resources running bingo instead of building membership support. When bingo ceased to be a big money-maker, a lot of organizations started running Nevada tickets. Raffles and lotteries seemed like failsafe money-makers for a while, until there were so many of them they fell out of favour.

I also remember when I was running a theatre company in Peterborough so long ago that our big annual raffle featured two new inventions: the VCR and the wind surfer. The Board failed to sell enough tickets, and the Board Chair walked off with both first and second prize. It took me a week of guilt tripping to get him to give them back. But it wasn't just a small market phenomenon. At about the same time, the Canadian Opera Company, with one of the wealthiest memberships in the country, was losing big money raffling off Mercedes sedans and fabulous trips. The whole herd of non-profit fund raisers had to move on and find a new technique for getting money out the community.

But I want to step back from techniques for raising money, and focus on the good old honest practice of audience and membership development. What could be more simple and straightforward than accepting admission money from people who want to experience what you offer, or then to invite them into a deeper relationship with the organization through membership, and in return, giving them a more profound understanding and appreciation of the thing they love?

There's no trickery or salesmanship at root here. It's not about techniques that you can swap with other organizations. It's about establishing and cultivating a unique relationship between your organization and those in the community who appreciate what it does. Underneath all the marketing jargon and sly, seductive direct mail techniques is the genuinely powerful connection between what you do for the community and those in the community who really care about it.

Relationships. That's what we're really talking about. Lasting supportive relationships. Not one night stands, but relationships that have a better than average chance of enduring and becoming stronger.

When I talk in this simplistic way, people get uncomfortable because it sounds too much like a TV ad for an online dating service, not the tricky and important business of membership and audience development. But let me ask you, honestly, what lasting relationship starts with borrowed techniques? How many movies or plays have you seen where some lovesick swain asks his womanizer friend to help seduce the woman of his dreams? Will Smith's, Hitch, is the latest example. Cyrano de Bergerac might be the most famous one. In fiction, as in real life, it works so badly, it's funny.

My contention is that we should let the unique essence of our relationship to members and audiences determine what fund raising and marketing techniques we use, rather than the reverse.

Too often, out of habit or desperation, we employ techniques that fail to present us in our best light, or that attract people who aren't right for us. When that happens, when we don't get the results we want, it's tempting to try harder.

For example, if we budgeted for a 3% response rate to a mass mailing and we only get 1.5%, it's easier to rationalize sending twice as many letters than it is to back up a step and consider whether or not we're sending the right message to the right people, or whether or not we're using the wrong medium altogether.

Seriously think about how many non-profit organizations try to expand their support base by buying mailing lists from other organizations! Yes, you may find a few more prospects, and convert a few of those into new supporters, but the cost is high relative to an approach that is focused on the unique relationship you're seeking and on the need to motivate your future member to become involved with you. It’s worth doing for the 800 pound gorillas in our field, but not for the vast majority of small cultural organizations.

Here's the most fundamental thing I can tell you, and I think it puts everything else into perspective. The currency of membership and audience development, as for all kinds of marketing, is not dollars, not number of impressions, nor privileges, benefits, or services; it is emotion.

Anytime you get someone to get out of their easy chair to start a transaction with you, you first have to convince them that they feel like doing something about what you've offered them. You then also have to convince them to choose your offering over everything else available to them at that moment. And finally, given that it is a non-profit offering in which they are donating to or buying something of uncertain dollar value, you have to leave them with a good feeling: a feeling of pride, of pleasure, and a desire to do it again - donate monthly by credit card instead of once by cheque, for example, or to buy a series subscription instead of a single ticket. By analogy to online dating, this is the true "love connection."

Underneath it all, the currency of the transaction is emotion. Everything else is a secondary consideration that comes into play only AFTER the right feelings are stimulated.

How do we know who to approach and how should we approach them to arouse the right feelings? Let me give you some examples that you might be able to relate to, and think about how your organization behaves when it's looking for love, when it's trying to build lasting support relationships.

Part II - Tomorrow - Concrete examples of successful membership developement and some common pitfalls.