The Little Words Mean the Most

THIS WON'T APPEAR ON MY HEADSTONE

Grafitti on a French school can be quite philsophomorical

Chapter 11

 

Triggers

 

People give because something in your latest communication triggered a response. What was the trigger?

 

First-time donors

You could think of "donor acquisition" as catch-and-release fishing.

         You throw your bait, fly, lure into the water, triggering a response. A youngster bites. You reel in a live one! It bounces like a drenched gymnast in your palm. Someone shoots a photo. You gently remove the hook; reverently slip the fish back into the water. It breathes. Gasps. Rests a moment. Wakes up! You wait until it swims off. You've made one fish a bit wiser. You like yourself. You smile.

         Fooled you. That's an awful metaphor for donor acquisition.

         There's no catch-and-release in fundraising.

         A more apt metaphor is "catch and inspire that fish to grant you Three Magic Wishes." Olympian fundraiser Beth Ann Locke calls it, "Bless and release. You're not looking for all to give. You're calling the champions. The curious...."

 

Magic Wish #1: A first-time gift

Magic Wish #2: Repeated above-average gifts over the years

Magic Wish #3: A charitable bequest

 

By the by, all of the above is what's called "creative writing." It was fun. It is NOT, however, good how-to book writing. It introduces an irrelevancy, which wastes the reader's precious attention and time. It will likely not make the final cut.

 

 

I don't have a desk. I have an altar.

Fasting

The cheapest good wine I can buy; from BOTA, in a box. A cup revealing our politics. One-a-day protein shake. My favorite pen (the uni ball VISION ELITE) on my favorite mineral paperweight, purchased @ the Desert Museum (Tucson), @ a fundraiser. Paperweights keep me from blowing all over the horizon. Are we colonized by our projects? I have 10-15 underway at once.

Proposed: Colonial-period yoga

Down dog. Head pressed against a roaring fireplace screen, scorched black, bearing a pistol-drawn cowboy. It took 4 hours of fooling and feeding, with 3 kinds of pine cones, Concord grape vines, a cheater FIRESTARTER: getting the burn-geometry right. Horizontally. Moving to the teepee arrangement. Moving to Lincoln logs. Warmth. Steady. In control. Comforting. So I stretched. The fish is teaching me to arch my back.

Theology isn't all that hard

I am writing feverishly

my new thing I call a "blovel."

It's my novel I'm writing as public blog posts. "Blovel" like "Bluh-vel" not "Blow-ville" not "Blobville."

Eventually, I'm going to build a special "blovel" website and invite comment, to rewrite the novel before final publication. This will be the first PEOPLE-sourced science-fiction novel.

...Miss Mississippi, Miss New Jersey, Miss Assumptions, Miss...

Spock said

"If you're not fallible, then what can you be?"