How a Journalist’s Eye Can Improve Fund Raising

The other day, near the university where I teach and raise money, I met with a potential donor for breakfast.

He runs a major public-relations firm. He dresses Brooks Brothers-style, smiles easily, and talks about art as readily as 401(k)’s. Now that he’s over 50, he chooses one of those impossible-to-open packets of raspberry jam for his toast rather than butter.

He likes jazz. He’s learning Russian. He bakes brownies for his mother.

We connected easily and solidly. We parted with handshakes and an exchange of business cards. He might well turn out to be a fund raiser’s dream — a donor himself as well as a bird dog for dozens more.

Back in my office, I sat down to write a report about my meeting so that other fund raisers at the university would have easy access to the details about the potential donor.

I noted the obvious: He was a museum and symphony donor. One of his daughters was a student at the university (she hopes to join the family business on graduation). His mother had graduated from the university. He didn’t quite live and die over the fortunes of the basketball team, but he admitted that when he is sitting alone in a hotel room in Tokyo or Zagreb or the many other places he travels on business, he will always check online to see if the university won or lost.

Many fund raisers would leave it at that.

The journalist in me was just beginning.

I described the ring on the fourth finger of the man’s right hand — silver setting, rubies fanned out in the shape of a quarter-moon.

I noted how he had pronounced “public relations.” Most people will emphasize the second word. He had emphasized the first. When I asked him about this, he told me that he never forgets when running his business that it’s about the public first and the business second.

Three times, I wrote, he had told me that his wife was not a ladies-who-lunch stay-at-home, but a career woman with a tax-law practice. And then I detailed:

• How he slashed at his omelet with both fork and knife, one going in one direction and the other in the other — he is clearly a man who likes to get it done.

• His intent focus on me — he never looked over my shoulder to see who else was eating in the busy restaurant.

• The pride he took about growing up in Mississippi. Clearly this was a man who wasn’t running from being a Southerner, an important factor for a university in Tennessee.

I ended by noting that he had insisted on paying the tab. This was not a person who needed to be flattered or coddled.

A fund-raising colleague read my report and said I had truly put her right at the breakfast table with us. She said it was not a business document; it was a portrait.

Portraits are a way inside a subject, and lifelong journalists instinctively paint them. If more fund raisers learned these skills, they would be more likely to succeed.

Too often, reports on meetings with potential donors read as if a fund raiser has had a meeting with a spreadsheet, not a person.

The prospect is described as if he is a bank vault, not a human being who owns its keys. The tendency to grab for gobbledygook never quits. Phrases like “capacity,” “strategic engagement,” and “donor conversion” abound. The fund raiser suggests putting the potential donor on the organization’s board in hopes that she’ll get religion. In short, there’s a lot of hope and a lot of prayer, but not enough attention paid to what a reporter routinely seeks and routinely sees.

In journalism, the subtlest details often supply the deepest insights. In fund raising, the same is true.

Raising money is all about discovering a person’s passions. A fund raiser can nudge a conversation toward the chance to “make an investment” or to “assure your legacy.” But a great fund-raising report offers what I like to call human touch points that will make a person give. None are of equal importance. None are obvious.

Let’s take another look at my breakfast with the public-relations man, and see how a reporter’s observations might point the way toward a fund-raising strategy:

• Brooks Brothers-style shirt. Says to me that he’s comfortable with being establishment. Probably best to steer him toward making a gift for traditional academic areas rather than something too experimental or esoteric.

• Raspberry jam, not butter. Careful about his health. Must be thinking about staying vigorous and active. Probably not easy to persuade him to make a planned gift.

• Brownies for his mother. Close relationship. Might he be able to influence her to make a planned gift? Might he influence her to make an outright gift? Both?

• The pronunciation of “public relations.” Clearly has a sense of the larger society. Could he be steered toward establishing a professorship in public affairs?

• His wife’s career. Since he mentioned her — and it — with such obvious pride, his wife should be part of all future fund-raising discussions. Maybe their career interests could be blended into a lecture series in the law school about public service.

• Southern pride. He could be asked to serve on an advisory board that plans an annual colloquium to study Southern culture. If he agrees, this might be the way to get him interested before anybody prematurely asks him for a big donation.

• Likes art, likes jazz. One of the toughest gifts to raise is support for summer internships for painters and musicians. Maybe this is the guy.

• Learning Russian. Graduate students who want to attend professional conferences often can’t do so because travel costs are so daunting. Underwriting conference costs for one or two students might get this prospect into the fund-raising slipstream slowly and comfortably — especially if the students report back to him in Russian.

I’ve known many fund raisers who would have collected all this information over breakfast. I’ve known far fewer who would have included all of it in their reports. They might have thought that some or all of it was inconsequential clutter. Far from it.

What fund raisers ought to bear in mind is that, like a good newspaper article, a good donor report is written to be read. It has to be accessible and palatable to any reader, not just the boss or the board chairman.

Not every reporter can see a fund-raising strategy leap from his notebook. But some basic journalistic skills could help more fund raisers turn a speck of raspberry jam at breakfast into a million-dollar gift.

Bob Levey teaches journalism at the University of Memphis. He spent 36 years as a columnist and reporter at The Washington Post. He has also been a senior development executive and a longtime volunteer fund raiser for colleges, arts groups, and health-care institutions.