Earning Informality

Are you good at the whole self-care thing? I never used to be, but I’m getting better. In fact, I just got back from a two-week vacation. Two! Weeks! I have never in my professional career taken that many consecutive days off. Truth be told, I rarely go a full weekend without checking my email much less an entire vacation. But I needed it. Like, REALLY needed it.

But I also learned a lot. Whenever you go to a new place, you see things with a new lens. Everything is viewed with a fresh perspective and you get to bring that outlook back with you. So, you not only come back rested and relaxed, but you come back with a renewed vision. It’s like you get the benefit of the vacation and then you get the bonus of the vacation perspective when you return. That’s what self-care does.

Self-care is kind of a strange concept. You must do it for yourself, which means putting you as #1. Nonprofit ninjas like you rarely do that. You’re always thinking about others, so putting yourself first feels uncomfortable. But the funniest thing about self-care to me is that you need it as much as the people around you need you to practice it. When I’m a better version of me, everyone around me gets that version. When I’m tired, irritable, or just spread a bit too thin, those around me suffer, too. Even a Snickers can’t help! In other words, your self-care benefits everyone.

And a tremendous benefit of the best self-care, a vacation, is learning some lessons about how other people in other places do things. This particular vacation, I felt like I was taking a master’s class in Unreasonable Hospitality. Literally, this resort we went to knew how to deliver hospitality like no place I’ve ever been. It was, as Will Guidara says in Unreasonable Hospitality, ‘all the excellence, with less of that uncomfortable starch.”

When I thought about that high excellence, low starch ratio, I realized that it works great for vacations but also for donors. People, even you and me, enjoy ease and informality when delivered with excellence. Oftentimes an overly formal experience gets in the way of truly connecting with your donors. So, you need to do what Guidara calls ‘earning informality.’ There are significant parallels here to the nonprofit world:  the difference between being attentive and paying attention.

 Unreasonable Hospitality highlights the concept of being present—oddly, something that you can do much better when you make sure your self-care practices are on point. While the idea of being present can have some hippity-dippity definitions, the book has a great definition “caring so much about what you’re doing that you stop caring about everything that you need to do next.’

And, in the spirit of data-driven decision-making, Guidara studied two Teams of wait staff to see who the high performers were, so their tactics could be replicated. Team A was the Attentive Team; Team B was the Paying Attention Team. Team A did everything right, with extreme excellence. They predicted outcomes knowing when to bring more wine or the check and they efficiently served more customers by turning over more tables. True excellence!

But Team B was surprising. They served far fewer customers because they tended to stick around longer. That meant that the tables didn’t turn, which is usually a bad sign in the restaurant industry. However, the numbers didn’t lie. Team B had much higher check averages and even high tips. They literally served fewer people and made more money! True satisfaction!

 This is what you can learn, transfer, and apply to your nonprofit work.

Left Brain Marketing Methods:  Team B connected with their guests, they paid attention, and ended up connecting in bigger ways than Team A. When it comes to stewarding your donors, you need to decide who the best person on your team is to communicate with each donor segment. Not every donor segment needs to hear only from the CEO or the Development Manager. If they’re a grant recipient, they need to hear from your program officer. If they are a fund founder, maybe the CFO is their best office partner because she knows their spendable and fund balance with a few quick clicks. The bottom line is that each teammate needs to steward fewer donors, not more. Don’t worry about turning over those donor tables, so to speak. You don’t need more donors who don’t have an affinity for your cause and the capacity to do something about it. You need fewer donors who get your undivided attention. Team B wins because being attentive is a form of generosity. Model it.

Right Brain Marketing Moxie:  Team B was present, as I defined above. That presence meant something to their customers. They weren’t attentive in a perfunctory way. This work isn’t like selling Tide where everyone has to wash their clothes. Not everyone is generous. But you know who is—they’re in your database and you can pull those reports and make data-driven decisions to find them and to be present with them. That means paying attention to them. Talk to those donors, get to know them. Build a relationship with them that makes you both feel connected. And when you do that, they’ll respond by rewarding you for your hospitality, not just your excellence. This is a concept in the book called ‘earning informality.’ Don’t let being overly formal get in the way of making a true, philanthropic connection with the donors that have both affinity and capacity—remember ‘all the excellence with less of that uncomfortable starch.”

Not only did Guidara remind me of this, but so did vacation. I’m already thinking about going back to this specific resort. I was fully reminded that I like working with people who do what they do well, who strive for excellence, who care about those they serve, and who love what they do—all that shows. But I also like it when they know my name, remember my favorite drink order, tease me about my crispy sunburn, and wish me a happy anniversary. That combination shows me excellence with hospitality. It felt good to be treated that way and I want my donors to feel that way about me/us. Crazily, it reminded me of that quote in the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love where Steve Carell’s character tells his wife that she’s the ‘perfect combination of sexy and cute.’ I want both!

For far too long, nonprofits have been over-starched, thinking that’s how to show excellence to be taken seriously. When, the fact is, it’s only part of a powerful combination. Some customized, relationship-building, donor-centric connection is how hospitality shows your character. Give your donors a chance to know both sides of you by earning that informality and serving fewer donors really well, increasing your fundraising goals and, ultimately, ramping up your impact.

That’s what I was reminded of through a little bit of self-care. So, yes, take heed about excellence and hospitality, but also take some time off, as needed. Don’t be the personification of hangry. You, your colleagues, and your donors deserve better.

All My Best,

Dawn
[email protected]
dawn brown creative, llc.