3 Limiting Activist Habits to Avoid

I’ve been learning a lot about professional and personal relationships these days, and continually trying to reassess my approach to others. A relationship is much like a dance between 2 individuals, which involves grace, balance and counterbalance, exploring boundaries, occassionally stepping on toes, trying to guess the other person’s next step. Ideally, it’s an experience that 2 or more indivuduals co-create, ideally in a mutually enriching, enjoyable, safe, and positive manner.

I’ve certainly stumbled in relationships, and regrettably, a few are beyond repair. It’s these blunders that have caused me to reflect upon what works, what should be avoided, and from what place should one approach dealing with others. I’ve noticed some distinct differences in the way relationships are conducted in the business world as opposed to the nonprofit world. While it would be simplistic for me to state that relationships are more genuine in one world over the other, I’ve certainly noticed some recurring themes in the nonprofit world that I would like comment on.

I recently had an embarrassing encounter when trying to introduce a new friend, a fantastic wildlife photographer, to a long time friend and collaborator who is an environmental activist and sustainability consultant. They both have a passion for rainforests, sustainability projects, and Latin America. My new friend expressed interest in buying land in Ecuador and developing sustainability workshops. My old friend organizes sustainability workshops in Latin America. As I am an avid, and constant networker, I immediately thought they should meet each other, as I believe in the benefits of creating new friendships and strenthening community. I made an email introduction stating that they should connect on the basis of their mutual interests and shared love for Latin America and the rainforest.

To my embarrassment, my old friend responded to the intro with a long pitch email about her expertise, article attachment and a price quote for her time. My new friend, who had actually lived and travelled extensively in South America, found this approach rather off-putting and premature. I ended having to send several more emails in damage control.

My old friend expressed to me her frustration about the difficulty of earning a living as an environmental consultant where she is overwhelmed with “leads” that take up her time, extract all kinds of information from her, and who never lead to any consulting gigs. She also appreciated my feedback to her approach, and recognized her need to re-evaluate her relationship to others, as well as how to manage her time as a consultant.

She mentioned that her work as a fundraiser caused her to consider every person she met as a potential “donor” and subsequently the relationships became “hollow”, based more on the end goal of getting money rather than enjoying the person for his or her true merits.

I understood her frustration around the difficulty of earning a living as a highly specialized environmental consultant with a niche target market of NGOs, conservation professionals, and wealthy, educated, socially-aware green investors that would value and pay for her expertise. Sadly, I’ve noticed in the nonprofit sector, the constant need to chase after funding for vital programs and administrative overhead tends to manifest itself in 3 negative behavioral traits (all of which I’ve been guilty of myself).

1) Poverty Mentality

There never seems to be enough money to keep all the vital and valuable social services running in the world. Charitable programs are necessary. Many are chronically underfunded; few are revenue-generating. Most grasssroots organizations are entirely sustained on a shoestring budget by a dedicated team of staff and volunteers who can barely eek out a living.

Unfortunately this chronic lack of programmatic funding exacerbates “poverty mentality” which is more a state of mind that creeps out of the program and pervades into one’s personal and professional life.

Of course it’s always preferable to have a well-funded program, and having more money means you can do more wonderful things to save the world with it. However, when life is experienced from a place of lack, it then becomes difficult to see and appreciate those valuable things that are there in front of you.

2) Gimme Gimme Gimme (or everyone should fund my project).

Because it’s easy to get caught up in your project (after all, everyone loves rainforests, right?) this can often translate into the belief that everyone in your sphere of influence should donate to your project, cause, organization or at least work on it.

What’s worse is when this translates into a sense of entitlement that everyone MUST donate to your project, cause, organization or at least work on it, and if they don’t, you’re secretly pissed at them, because you work 24/7 on it.

This mentality skews relationships from a place of equality, mutual respect, and open inquiry towards a “what can I get from this person” mentality – will it be money? value-added services?

Granted, this dynamic can be as prevalent in the business community, except in the private sector there is a tacit understanding of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”, whereas in the nonprofit sector, what you can “get out of the other person” will be mentally written off as a “donation.”

Sadly, I noticed that in my nonprofit and social activist community, favors seem to be a one-way street, recieved as some kind of entitlement. By contrast, in my community of friends and colleagues who are business professionals, there is more awareness that no one truly has to do anything for you. I have found that if I step out of my way to do a favor for business colleague, I tend to see timely reciprocation and appreciation, more so than among my do-gooder nonprofit activist friends.

3) Taking the moral high ground and failing to listen

Nonprofit fundraisers and activists are often highly educated people who have taken below market salaries to work on worthy, interesting, heroic causes and cool projects. This scenario can often illicit a sense of self-sacrificing superiority and judgemental behavior towards mainstreamers who are not actively trying to save the world.

Interestingly, one would think that the social sector would be endowed with a higher level of social consiousness, and therefore more positive, ethical behavior. However, I’ve found just as much power-grabbing, back-stabbing, and unethical behavior in the nonprofit sector as in the private sector, except it’s a little more annoying when everyone claims to be doing good.

Because activists are often at the pulpit educating the masses of the evils of multinational corporations, GMOs, and greenhouse gasses, we often fail to listen. And because we don’t listen, we don’t realize we are shoving an unpalatable message down other people’s throats and fail to understand why more people won’t wear hemp and drive veggie fuel cars.

We tend to assume we have the answers and then proceed to tell others what they should do. In the case of my well-meaning friend, it would have been better if she had gotten to know my new friend a little better, heard about his experiences in Latin America, asked questions, ascertained where her insights and experience might me appropriate to his needs before trying to upsell him on anything.

Unfortunately her approach put him off and shut down what could have been a rewarding dialogue and future collaboration had the relationship been cultivated more naturally.

Which brings me to 3 antidotes to these negative behavioral traits.

1) Have gratitude, believe in abundance

It’s easy to believe that all social ills can be solved with money and that there is never enough money to solve all the problems in the world, like starvation, disease, war, etc. And indeed some regions of the world are wealthy while other regions suffer from a chronic lack of basic necessities.

My point is not to argue whether there enough physical resources exist – more to encourage a shift in attitude around the question of abundance. Sure, it would be great to have more resources, more funding, bigger and better programs. But sometimes you just have what you have.

Your whole quality of experience as an activist, fundraiser, program manager will be remarkably different if you begin with an appreciation of what you’ve already raised and what you can do with it creatively. By coming from a place of gratitude, rather than entitlement, disappointment, or frantic urgency to raise more and more cash, you will likely affect more positive change due to the attitude you bring to the project and the people around you.

Just as much as a huge allocation of cash can be mismanaged and wasted, a small amount can be made to go a long way. If you come from the perspective that there is always enough to affect some postive change, chances are, you will succeed and inspire more people around you to help and to give.

In addition, gratitude is an excellent reminder that not only did someone find it important to help your project, they found it important to do it through you. They could have just easily contributed to another project or a similar cause but NOT through you.

I notice that when I am in a place of gratitude, I tend to recognize and act upon opportunities to reciprocate favors or help out others than if I am in a mindframe of scarcity and feeling entitlement.

2) Start from a place of friendship and shared interests

Any time you perceive another individual to be a potential “donor”, “contact” or “client”, you’ve already placed limitations and agendas on that relationship. Chasing high net worth individuals and establishing a relationship based their money and not on their inherent value as a human being quickly becomes transparent. Besides, most high net-worth people who are used to being courted for their money can smell this tactic a mile away.

The truth is, both you as an activist fundraiser, and your potential donor, client, professional contact have shared interests, and those interests are real. By beginning with your shared interest – be it the rainforest, indigenous issues, wild cat conservation – you can at least begin a dialogue, cultivate a relationship, then grow a friendship. A money transaction be most likely to occur when sufficient goodwill and trust have been cultivated.

This dialogue doesn’t even have to begin as a face to face interaction. That’s what annual reports, websites, blogs, newsletters, public events and other communication channels are for. In many cases, that’s all the dialogue that’s needed for a person to decide to give to your cause.

At least get a website

If you are a really small shop and don’t even have a website, then you will need to invest the time in developing a solid referral network and personal one to one relationships so that the other party can get a good sense of who you are and what you can offer. As this can be a lot of work, and duplicated work as you will have to repeat your story to each new individual, it may behoove you to get your credentials up on a website and let your website do the talking.

3) Listen with honesty, humility and a genuine sense of inquiry

Activists love to tell people what to do. Most people don’t like to be told what to do. Most people, when they get involved with an organization or social cause, want to derive a sense of participation, personal enrichment, and learning.

As an activist, organizer, fundraiser, or consultant your best recourse is to listen, question and understand how you can create an experience that is rewarding to your constituents.

I learned this lesson best from the business community. In the private sector, I noticed that the most successful sales people are those who have a relationship approach to sales, rather than a selling approach to sales. The best account reps are those who ask a lot of questions, and then start to hone in on the right questions. Then, they’ve figured out what it is you really needed help with, and then before you know it, they’ve advised you, answered your questions, solved your problem and upsold you on a product you are more than happy to pay for. The fact that they will invest a certain amount of time in educating the customer is a given.

Fundraising and social activism is not too different from sales. You are selling a vision of a better world to your constituents, and cultivating their trust that you can solve those problems. Your competitors are other compelling organizations in your space. Your value-add is that you can do a better job, or provide a unique solution. Expect that you will have to invest time into educating your constituents before they support you.