If you have ever worked for a nonprofit, you understand that the week between Christmas and New Year’s is a critical time of the year. This is the time of the year when budgets are made or missed. With all of the pent-up expectation of a child anxiously waiting for Christmas morning, staff anxiously wait to see what the mailman will bring. Toting a Santa-like sack full of year-end donations, the mailman is the jolly “man in the red suit” to nonprofit staff.
However, I’m convinced that too often our approach to fundraising robs both the giver and receiver of joy.
Here are two ways that I’d humbly suggest we rethink end of year giving:
1. Stop the “giving gimmicks.”
Working with a nonprofit, I’ve been barraged by conferences and magazines with “techniques guaranteed to increase fundraising immediately.” Most of the suggestions that inevitably follow often seem phony and insincere. They might work, but they appear to center on techniques to manipulate the giver with a deadly cocktail of guilt, peer-pressure, and incentives.
What if we all simply shared about causes with passion and conviction, but left the gimmicks behind? What if we celebrated when donors found causes that matched their passions, even if that cause was another organization? If we truly believe all resources are a gift from above, what if we were focused on connecting supporters with organizations which match their passions instead of feeling pressure to coerce them to join “our” cause?
2. Go beyond “me-centered giving.”
A recent article from The Wall Street Journal cited an experiment by a pair of Yale University professors which showed how people are more likely to give when they know that they’ll be publicly recognized. The Yale study showed that the probability of individuals giving rose in a significant way when they were promised that their names would be published in a newsletter.
It’s possible, even with our giving, to make it about us. This season, we are invited to find a higher motivation to give.
I love that the end of year giving increase immediately follows the Christmas celebration. Maybe I’m naively optimistic, but I believe some of the increase isn’t due to end of year tax deductibility, or the possibility of getting our names in a newsletter, but rather the result of just having celebrated the most extravagant act of divine generosity.
Immanuel-the gift of God with us.
Giving is simply the inevitable response to a correct understanding of how much we’ve been given. Giving recalibrates our hearts and frees us from the chains of our inward preoccupation.
I hope that this year end is a time of much joy for both the givers and the receivers. May we continue to love, live, and give generously as we follow our Savior’s example.
