As the leader of a nonprofit, I ask people for money as a big part of my job—and I love doing it. Making the ask isn’t as hard as you might think. The most effective leaders I’ve seen in any setting—business, government, nonprofit—are driven by purpose, mission, and the sense that their work is making the world a better place. If you approach donors from that standpoint, you’re really just having a conversation about mission and purpose and then asking them to join you. You simply have to blurt out the number and not worry about how many zeros it has at the end. The most I have ever asked an individual to give is $250 million. That particular person said no, but I’m pretty sure he has made a generous bequest to us in his will. What’s striking about these big donation asks is that for most of its history, United Way had no direct relationship with its donors. In fact, in most instances we didn’t even know their names.
United Way’s CEO on Shifting a Century-Old Business Model
In the 1950s the United Auto Workers negotiated a plan that allowed employees at the big carmakers to donate money directly from their paychecks to the local precursors of United Way. For most of the organization’s history, it had no direct relationship with its donors. That has changed. Payroll deductions still play an important role, but United Way is moving to technology-driven engagement that allows individual donors to become more closely involved with the mission.
In partnership with Salesforce, it has created a platform on which donors have their own home pages; there they can track all the gifts they’ve made and all the volunteer hours they’ve committed to causes and find content or policy news or volunteer opportunities relevant to their interests. It has found that individuals who engage with it online give more and continue giving from year to year. Today some 25,000 people have each given more than $10,000 to United Way; more than 600 have given $1 million; and 35 have given $10 million or more.
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