Fundraising Best Quotes

The best entrepreneurs are not the best visionaries. The greatest entrepreneurs are incredible salespeople. They know how to tell an amazing story that will convince talent and investors to join in on the journey.

Learning to embrace and savor rejection is one of the best things that entrepreneurs can do. Launching a startup is the time to find your ever-optimistic inner child again.

Give the man a fucking Oscar then.” Rio’s eyes continue to flicker to my roommate. “As much as it’d be an absolute honor to be punched in the face by Ryan Shay, I don’t know that a fundraiser is the best place for that.

One of the best ways to attract capital is to outperform the competition.

The work I do is not exactly respectable. But I want to explain how it works without any of the negatives associated with my infamous clients. I’ll show how I manipulated the media for a good cause. A friend of mine recently used some of my advice on trading up the chain for the benefit of the charity he runs. This friend needed to raise money to cover the costs of a community art project, and chose to do it through Kickstarter, the crowdsourced fund-raising platform. With just a few days’ work, he turned an obscure cause into a popular Internet meme and raised nearly ten thousand dollars to expand the charity internationally. Following my instructions, he made a YouTube video for the Kickstarter page showing off his charity’s work. Not a video of the charity’s best work, or even its most important work, but the work that exaggerated certain elements aimed at helping the video spread. (In this case, two or three examples in exotic locations that actually had the least amount of community benefit.) Next, he wrote a short article for a small local blog in Brooklyn and embedded the video. This site was chosen because its stories were often used or picked up by the New York section of the Huffington Post. As expected, the Huffington Post did bite, and ultimately featured the story as local news in both New York City and Los Angeles. Following my advice, he sent an e-mail from a fake address with these links to a reporter at CBS in Los Angeles, who then did a television piece on it—using mostly clips from my friend’s heavily edited video. In anticipation of all of this he’d been active on a channel of the social news site Reddit (where users vote on stories and topics they like) during the weeks leading up to his campaign launch in order to build up some connections on the site. When the CBS News piece came out and the video was up, he was ready to post it all on Reddit. It made the front page almost immediately. This score on Reddit (now bolstered by other press as well) put the story on the radar of what I call the major “cool stuff” blogs—sites like BoingBoing, Laughing Squid, FFFFOUND!, and others—since they get post ideas from Reddit. From this final burst of coverage, money began pouring in, as did volunteers, recognition, and new ideas. With no advertising budget, no publicist, and no experience, his little video did nearly a half million views, and funded his project for the next two years. It went from nothing to something. This may have all been for charity, but it still raises a critical question: What exactly happened? How was it so easy for him to manipulate the media, even for a good cause? He turned one exaggerated amateur video into a news story that was written about independently by dozens of outlets in dozens of markets and did millions of media impressions. It even registered nationally. He had created and then manipulated this attention entirely by himself.

There was a time when our minds were always on a roll. We used boxes and sticks to become astronauts and artists. We created fantasy characters and outrageous worlds. We drew whimsical pictures and cooked up wild ideas. We were complete originals.

FUND-RAISER: Hello, can I speak with Mr. Smith? MR. SMITH: Yes, this is he. FUND-RAISER: I’m calling from the XYZ Committee, and I wanted to ask you a few important questions about your views on our economy today. Do you feel that if things stay the way they are, America’s best days are ahead of it? MR. SMITH: No, things will only get worse. FUND-RAISER: Are you going to sit and watch President Obama take the White House in November without putting up a fight? MR. SMITH: No, I’m going to do anything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. FUND-RAISER: If you want do something today to make sure that doesn’t happen, you can give to XYZ Committee, which is working hard to fight for you.

The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working just a little bit harder: a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vote, the next committee meeting. These noble efforts aren't even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they are tending the seaweed on its watery grave. The times call for a new generation of book hunters. Like the book hunters of the Middle Ages, the new book hunters take it as their mission to uncover and salvage the best of what came before: to cherish it; hold it up for praise and emulation; study it; above all, to love it and pass it on.

FOLKSBIENE, an impoverished, frail Yiddish theater company in constant danger of annihilation, had outlasted all the giants. The year of Schwartz's death the little troupe moved into the Forward building, guaranteeing it a permanent home with four walls and a roof, plus heat in the winter, fans in the summer, and best of all, continuing subsidies from the newspaper and the Workmen's Circle. Sporadically, other Yiddish productions would take place in New York, but they were one-shots, musicals, and charity fund-raisers. Ensconced in their new place, Folksbiene managers claimed that theirs was the oldest continuously operating Yiddish theater in the world. As proof, all past productions were listed year by year, ranging all the way back to 1915. It was an impressive roster. Among the authors included were Sholem Aleichem, Leon Kobrin, and both Singer brothers, Israel Joshua and Isaac Bashevis; also the Russians Alexander Pushkin and Maxim Gorki; and such American authors as Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O'Neill, Sherwood Anderson, and Clifford Odets. It didn't matter how well attended those shows were, or how well acted, or the duration of their runs. The point was that the Folksbiene had survived, just as the Jewish people had survived. Together, they were the keepers of the flame. It was a very small candle in a very big city.

For me, that translated into fund-raising. I knew that I could and I would raise any amount of money to get that job done. Fund-raising to end hunger wasn’t just a job or a fad or a political statement for me. It was an expression of my own soulful commitment, and as such, I could only do it in a way that would call on people to reconnect with their own higher calling, or soulful longing, to be the kind of people they wanted to be, the kind of difference they wanted to make, and see how they could express that with their money. So rather than feeling that fund-raising was a matter of twisting arms for a donation or playing on emotions to manipulate money from contributors, it became for me an arena in which I was able to create an opportunity for people to engage in their greatness. It was in this soul-searching dimension of fund-raising, in these intimate conversations, that I discovered deep wounds and conflicts in the way people related to their money. Many people felt they had sold out and become someone they didn’t like anymore. Some were forcing themselves to do work that wasn’t meaningful. Many felt enslaved by their experience of being overtaxed by their government, or felt beaten down by their boss or by the burden of running a family business or employing others. Their relationship with money was dead—or, more accurately, dread—and there was hurt there. There was resentment. There were painful compromises, a kind of rawness. People were bruised and battered there. Not everyone, but many people were very unsettled and uncomfortable and just not their best selves in their relationship with money. They felt little or no freedom with money, no matter how much they had. This lackluster relationship with money wasn’t for lack of expert advice or practical tips. Money-management strategies were plentiful, but the concept of personal transformation was a stranger there. What became clear was that when people were able to align their money with their deepest, most soulful interests and commitments, their relationship with money became a place where profound and lasting transformation could occur.

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Remember, the best salespeople don’t pressure. They’re simply adept at helping others make decisions they really want to make. They know that everyone likes to buy but no one likes to be sold. Similarly, your supporters like to give but they don’t like to be solicited.

We all live under the same sky, but we don’t all have the same horizon.

As someone once said (and no, it wasn’t Einstein), “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.” Let us never confuse the two.

Do you believe you’re an outgrowth of a living sphere? A huge mass rocketing through space faster than a bullet shot out of a gun around another ball of fire? You may know it, but you don’t feel it. If you did—and I mean deep in your bones—it would profoundly change the way you live your life.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

W. Edwards Deming wrote, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.

This self-reinforcing delusion is the real definition of insanity. We’re insane to think we can save or consume our way to peace and happiness. We’re insane to believe we can control people or work them to the brink of meltdown with no blowback. We’re insane to imagine that we can ravage the Earth to our hearts’ content. We’re insane to focus on the urgent at the expense of the important. And we’re insane to use the same thinking and methods and expect wildly different results. Have you been doing pretty much the same things over and over?

We live in an age of distraction, of overwhelming amounts of conflicting information and competing priorities. And these complications can easily derail our progress on the bridge of belief. Belief requires focus. It demands that we follow the lead of our feeling mind, of our intuition and assumptions. Distractions and difficulties turn on our thinking mind, which undermines belief by overriding our instincts.

ignore all of that doubt-inducing information and be driven by curiosity and passion.

Belief is a personal construct, an emotionally-colored fusion of imperfect mental processes like perception and memory.

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fund-raising calls; I have to depose a witness that day!” Sure, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that’s fine. But when we can’t buy new beakers for the science lab and your daughter’s lack of a STEM education leads her to a life as a Hooters waitress, don’t cry to me about chicken wings. Unfortunately,

Approaching Existing Investors If you ever need to raise more money, there’s no better audience than your existing investors! I find that the best way to reach out is with a super short email blast. For example: “Dear Backers, [2-3 sentences on what you just accomplished, extremely excited] We’ve also got a very exciting opportunity. Based on our milestones, we are gearing up for a serious product launch and will raise another $1M at a special-priced note to accelerate a few components. If you’ve wanted to get more deeply invested, now is the time. I imagine this being accounted for very quickly, so please ping me ASAP!” You might want to send a couple of “momentum” emails leading up to this message so that they’re already excited by the time they get the email from you.

Rejecting Investors If you’re in the fortunate position of having too many interested investors, good work! However, this can be a tricky situation. You want to keep all relationships intact to the best of your ability. If you need to pass on someone, say something along the lines of, “We unfortunately had to move forward with investors with whom we have longstanding relationships, or started talking to earlier. However, you're someone that I think can add tremendous value to our company. I plan to keep you in the loop on progress and well ahead of future raises.

The Perfect Pitch Here’s the general framework for successful pitches: 1. Here’s how the world works today. 2. Here’s how the world should work in the future, but here’s what’s broken/missing. 3. Here’s why no one has been able to solve this problem so far (potentially reference folks who have tried and failed). This is a massive opportunity. Whoever solves this problem is going to have to do X, Y, and Z, but will be rewarded heavily. 4. Here’s the secret to how we’re going to fix this. A secret can be a unique insight, approach, technology, invention, or some shift or change in the world that has opened up an opportunity with you being the first mover. 5. Here’s why we’re going to execute the best (best team ever, traction thus far if applicable, your unique experience as a founder, etc.).

The best “champions,” or intermediaries through which to meet investors, are other founders and mentors who are not investors themselves.

The best way to get to know an investor is through dialogue, not decks. I’ve raised tens of millions of dollars without decks.

We ought to forget all this silliness about fund-raising and public relations and get back to what we do best. Educating the young.” As we watched Babson laugh and

It goes without saying that charities need to use smart business strategies to meet their goals. Pyramid and populist fundraising don’t fit the bill because they assume all donors are created equal, and we know they aren’t. Instead, you should give priority treatment to the best donors and prospects. Doesn’t it make sense to use your precious time and valuable resources on finding and retaining more people who are not only passionate about your cause, but also have the capacity to make serious impact, instead of spending tons of money on low-dollar, low-capacity donors and then trying to move them up the pyramid?

Supporters want to be engaged. They want to be involved. They want to be captivated and engrossed in your mission. The best way to do all this is by harnessing smart strategy with the power of technology to provide scale and efficiency that simply weren’t possible until now.

Transparency, honesty, collaboration, and consideration: there’s a reason they work in the business world, and it’s the same reason they work in the charitable sector. I maintain that my early success in marketing and advertising was not because I was the best con artist. It was because I’d internalized these concepts and implemented them routinely. As you will soon see, the overarching lesson is that making people feel good generates returns.

The best way to reinforce your efforts to build trust is to adopt an attitude of giving to the donor with no expectation of getting anything in return. It boggles my mind when I hear fundraisers say, “Always ask for the gift!” with no thought about whether or not they’ve given any value to the donor first and often. Fundraisers need to be fair, respectful, and kind. They need to give before they can receive.

The most surprising supporter of the treaties outside the Senate was the Oscar-winning actor John Wayne, a conservative Republican and icon of cowboy integrity. Wayne’s first wife was Panamanian, and his next two were also Latinas, and he and Torrijos had become fishing buddies. He let Bob Pastor—Carter’s top aide on the issue—ghostwrite dozens of letters and articles in support of the treaties, many of which pointed out that “General Torrijos has never followed the Marxist line.” Wayne contacted every senator and, as he told the president, “all the people who write me hysterical letters.” When Wayne saw Reagan’s fund-raising letter attacking the treaties, he privately scolded his old friend: “Dear Ronnie,” he wrote. “I’ll show you point by God damn point in the treaty where you are misinforming people. This is not my point of view against your point of view. These are facts.”VII

Not satisfied with the status quo, fundraising leaders are change makers – they see ahead to what the organization could accomplish to fulfill its mission and set a path toward attaining it. They are influencers in the best sense of the word as they draw upon their communication skills to share their vision for the future.

It’s naive not to believe that powerful individuals within the major power centers of society—Hollywood, media, government, academia, religion, and science—are committed to brainwashing the masses into believing lies about reality, human nature, and behavior. They are already planning to persuade humanity to go along—willingly or unwillingly—with the elite’s socialist-utopian vision of the future. Why would they do that? The secretive ruling elite want to turn our world into a global socialist or communist state, which will enable them to acquire dictatorial power and amass even greater wealth. Their globalist game plan has nothing to do with what is fair or best for everyone. It is strictly about what is better for them, because they literally view themselves as the rulers of the planet and see us as “useless eaters” who exist to serve them. Many will find this difficult to accept, because they have been brainwashed to believe the globalist elite want to share their wealth and a create a better world for all mankind. Unfortunately, that is a total lie and not even on the menu.14 Do you really think when a major politician such as Hillary Clinton described a large segment of American voters as “deplorables” that her remark was just a slip of the tongue? This is what Clinton said at a LGBT fund-raiser before introducing actress Barbra Streisand: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”15 That’s how the globalist elite view much of the world. They speak of the need to “cull the herd”—a truly chilling turn

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There are many different Sponsor Programs available including several that give you a competition-free exclusive position. Sponsors are needed for each hour for the phone banks; for the Interview Area, where guests are interviewed by celebrity hosts; for table banners; and much more. There are even a few 1 and 2 minute Video Presentation Opportunities (company exposure) available. In all cases, representatives of your firm come on the show for you, your people, and your products. We will also assist you every step of the way with your employee fundraising event or other promotion, to raise the funds for your sponsorship. There really is no good reason not to participate. As a sponsor, you'll be showing your concern for the community, in connection with a situation that, at one time or another, will affect over 35% of all families! Arthritis is one of the most common, frustrating, debilitating diseases. It is understandably of great concern to a great many people. Also, the Arthritis Foundation has an excellent track record in terms of appropriate use of funds for research and education (rather than organizational overhead). We believe that real cures for arthritis are just around the corner; you can help get us there! With our Telethon on Channel 10, we will benefit from their superior production capability, involvement of their popular celebrities, and advance promotional opportunities. Our Telethon will be on for several hours immediately before and again immediately after an NBA Basketball Game, which we believe will increase our viewership. And, of course, we're mixing our live, local show with a “feed” from the National Telethon, featuring major Hollywood entertainers. Everything points to our highest, most responsive viewership ever! You'll be in good company, too, with local and national sponsors like: Thrifty, Sears, Allstate, Greyhound, Prudential, and Procter & Gamble. To summarize, you have an opportunity to … Help a good, worthy cause Gain valuable TV exposure and publicity Get all the benefits with little or no money out of your present budget — we'll work with your employees to raise the funds! Possibly have exclusive position, if you act quickly Have complete, step-by-step assistance from our staff Why not give me a call; let's arrange a meeting where I can personally explain the different “standard opportunities” available and then “brainstorm” with you about the best way for your business to participate. There's no obligation, of course, and certainly no pressure, but, together, we just may figure out the perfect situation for your business. Thank you for you consideration, Joel L. Beck Telethon Chairman for the Arthritis Foundation JLB/va _______ Letter reprinted with permission of Dan Kennedy (writer) and Joel Beck, former telethon chairman, Arizona.

Later that week, on the plane home, Ross wrote me a scathing eleven-page confidential report. He called my "$2 billion by 2020" vision "statistically impossible" and "ridiculous," and listed my blind spots as a leader. "Charity: water is a shop of 15 people, but a team of exactly one. You," Ross wrote. "You control everything, You even run everything. You are the product design guy. The merchandising guy. The fundraising guy. The message guy. Probably even the check-signing guy ... Metaphorically, if you're still in the club biz, you can either be the bartender or running the show ... You can't mix the drinks and run the whole club." Ross said I needed to start thinking like a CEO, which meant grow up, stop worrying about day-to-day details, and start focusing on big-picture, multi-year goals. "Whether history records you as a success or failure," Ross warned, "will depend on whether you can shift from living in today to living in tomorrow." It was some of the best advice I'd ever gotten. p221

In fact, it was a deeper version of the lesson I had been trying to teach to fellow fundraisers in Chicago. Listening to others and sharing mutual hopes and fears as Obama had done with us in Louisville was indeed effective, but it was not a tactic. It was not part of a strategy to multiply in order to win. That would have been the Pyramid mindset. Instead, listening and sharing and being open was the campaign. It was both the means and the end. A listening campaign for a listening government. The “how” was the “what.

People are drawn across the bridge of belief by their anticipation of a better experience and a better life. Effective leaders ignite people’s imaginations by painting vivid, compelling, and personally relevant pictures—ones that move them. As John Quincy Adams made clear, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

As the best ballroom dancer to have pitched for the Yankees—as far as anyone knows—I’m often featured as Marge’s dance partner at local fund-raisers. I’m like the talking dog; it’s not that the dog speaks well, it’s that he speaks at all.

Facebook embedded staff in Trump’s campaign team in San Antonio for months, alongside Trump campaign programmers, ad copywriters, media buyers, network engineers, and data scientists. A Trump operative named Brad Parscale ran the operation together with the embedded Facebook staff, and he basically invented a new way for a political campaign to shitpost its way to the White House, targeting voters with misinformation, inflammatory posts, and fundraising messages. Boz, who led the ads team, described it as the “single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.