Ken Burnett blog - Time to reinvigorate the risk-takers

This scares me.

Just like yesterday and two dozen days before, today is another day with no emails taking up my offer. I’m not optimistic about tomorrow either.

Maybe I didn’t make it obvious enough, or sufficiently compelling. Thousands have read it. Perhaps they didn’t get to the point.

Or are fundraisers losing their appetite for innovation?

Is there really no one around with the vision, imagination and impetus to take a risk for the prospect of great reward? Or at least, to check the opportunity out? Have fundraisers become so complacent they’re content to settle for the status quo, to aim low and miss?

How else do you explain this? I’m talking about the offer I posted publicly on SOFII three weeks ago, a brilliant opportunity based upon a proven, glittering track record, one that’s unique in the annals of fundraising.

When legendary copywriter Indra Sinha suggested his most recent advertisement might be his last ever, I was shocked. Especially as that last ad raised shedloads of money and brought new donors in at a spanking profit. I speculated that if approached properly he might be willing to take on other projects. Maybe.

So far, not one fundraiser has even investigated it.

But before I explain the issue, let me tell you a short true story about my great moment, the pivotal incident upon which my career was made.

When I was head of fundraising at tiny, barely known charity ActionAid a print rep came one evening to see me with a revolutionary new format for a machine-enclosable insert, a leaflet with a built-in envelope attached. Nothing like it had ever been seen anywhere before, in the UK at least. I almost bit his arm off to be the first to use it. We shook hands on the deal, but as he was leaving a niggling thought entered my mind, and I stopped him at the door.

‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Why are you giving this new format to piddling little ActionAid and not to one of the big top fundraisers (ActionAid really was piddlingly little then).

‘Easy,’ said the rep. ‘You are the first person to give me a hearing. None of the others would even see me, wouldn’t give me the time to show it to them.’

Wow! I thought. What fools. What absolute fools.

The first use of that insert raised £2 million. It won every award going. ActionAid never looked back and neither did I. My career was made.

The story is told on SOFII, here. Every so often an opportunity comes along in fundraising that is so great you just grab it with both hands. (Incidentally it was through this promotion that I met George Smith, starting a great friendship and thirty-year partnership . Things happen when you have a go, really they do.)

Can this blinkered attitude still prevail? At the individual level of course there must be plenty of good reasons for doing nothing. Or so it can seem to some. But as a sector, we should be ashamed of our slowness to grasp the chances we’re given.

Perhaps fundraisers today can’t see the opportunity. Or are content, like Mark Twain, to recognise opportunity only when it has passed them by.

So why might an ambitious career fundraiser not want to give this a go?

Indra Sinha is a known radical. He may not follow brand guidelines.
He’s likely to be difficult. Challenging even.
It might be expensive.
He might fail.

All true. But in the name of God, why should any of that stop anyone? You might kiss a few frogs. But we all know that’s the only way to get your prince, or princess. More than likely, he'll succeed, splendidly.

Besides, you owe it to your cause. We’re never going to change the world if we don’t take risks or at least check out opportunities.

Or is everyone more concerned to keep their heads down and not be noticed? Content just to preserve their jobs?

‘Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them. You will see.
Sam! I like green eggs and ham!
I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!’

Dr Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham, 1960.

It is generally good to try things, as Dr Seuss so persistently showed to even the smallest children. Perhaps he and his sort are old hat these days and the younger generation is right not to be risking anything that isn’t tried and tested.

I’ve decided that getting old isn’t, generally, a bad thing. My attitude is, the years pass anyway and there’s only one alternative to getting older, which to be honest I find much less appealing. And just because I’m from an older generation doesn’t mean that I’m a grumpy malcontent. Mostly these days I look at what’s coming and the way the younger generation rise to it and think, really, it will be better.

But not this. Our sector’s growing penchant for risk aversion and reluctance to challenge the status quo really scares me. On the day of judgment I would hate to stand before the great fundraising director in the sky and have to explain how I let so many fabulous chances slip through my fingers.

How about you?

Here, below, is the codicil that I added to that astonishing SOFII feature just three short weeks ago.

SOFII asks, is there any cause, anywhere, getting such a return from cold donor acquisition? Particularly, from a method and media so long since assumed to have had their day?
If so, please tell us here so we can share it with SOFII readers everywhere.

PS Now that his time with Bhopal Medical Appeal has come to an end Indra is threatening to set his copywriter’s pen aside, permanently. Which, we think, would be a great loss to effective fundraising. When Ken pressed him on this he said, ‘Well, if you know of any charity with a really interesting challenge, I could, just possibly, perhaps, be persuaded. But only the most interesting, mind…’

SOFII as you know is dedicated to encouraging fundraising creativity and to covering the most interesting challenges that fundraisers face. So we feel we’ll be doing everyone a favour by effecting an introduction to any charity who thinks they might have a challenging project worth putting to the man himself.

Though we’re sure he’s neither cheap nor undemanding, we’re tempted now to say, ‘do yourself and the world a favour and brief Indra to write your next ad’.

But what you do with this is entirely up to you.

If you have a project you wish us to pass to Indra Sinha, send it to SOFII here.

As far as I’m concerned the offer is still open*.

*See how one organisation took up the challenge rather brilliantly, here.