Orderly Chaos
Fundraising is orderly chaos. Orderly because the practice comes to us in patterns. Chaos, because those patterns are confusing to work with. The patterns themselves are nuanced but easily taught. Fundraising is hard because of the rest of it - the confusion we bring to the table.
In some ways this confusion is deliberate. We ignore our own wisdom because we find our passions much more enticing. We draw clear boundary lines: "theirs" and "mine" are arbitrary and possessive. We cling to our sense of control.
In particular, we try quite hard to grab the things that make us feel good. Usually they land well in a room or on a bumper sticker. "Billionaires shouldn't exist" is one such statement - it feels quite good to say. "Fundraising is a spiritual practice" is one of my favorites, I say it all the time.
But there's no point in relating to everything as love and light. If you only chase the good feelings, the whole day goes to managing the edges of yourself. You guard your own perimeters, and never walk into the open ground that they fence off.
We get quite good at the patterns. We learn the rules of the game: you eventually know what someone will say, how to overcome any particular objective, how to set up a cadence of contact that brings you from point A to point B. We prove our worth on spreadsheets, reporting back exciting results about IMPACT.
But another way, a different way, is to relate to what it might be or could be - to the space of potentiality surrounding the boundaries you drew. When we shed "this" and "that" - we are left with chaos. Orderly patterns were comfortable. Chaos is ineffable. It's also playful.
As fundraisers our default mode is to create patterns that lead to a moment of decision, a moment where "yes" or "no" determines success. The open moment is unbearable and needs to be filled.
The "no" is hell. All the textbooks and teachers tell us to "get good at rejection", to "overcome rejection". The hidden message is to "avoid rejection" itself. But when we're open to the space between, we are in awareness with of the hell of the no. We have our hands off of the steering wheel. We don't have to avoid something if we value it just as highly as an affirmative response. We can stand in the open ground with another person and let their presence exist.
From this place we ask cleanly - without anything leaning on the giver or the asker. Everyone has felt the weight of someone who needs something from someone else. Can we ask without that lean? The potentiality moves through the space and into result.
Maybe you raise less money doing it this way. I'm not sure. This conversation may be mostly useless - and I mean that in the best possible way. It is a human act that attempts to escape the logic of productivity.
I'm interested in how the act of asking can transcend the value of utility itself. Is there a ground we can stand in where the moment exists? Can we make the donor the Other who is just met, without absorbing them into our aims? Can we recognize their stakes and the way they act on us as raisers?Can we allow them to exist without our ego shaping our experience of them? What about when nothing happens at all - can we find that bearable?
And of course, can we do this without instrumentalizing them for our own purity - "I asked so well, because I just let their presence exist." As an accomplishment this just falls back into the same gold star achievement-subject cycle.