Overractions

Remember the shoe bomber?  On December 22, 2001,  Richard Reid tried to detonate explosives hidden in his shoes on American Airlines Flight 63 traveling from Paris to Miami. Passengers and crew subdued him, and the plane was diverted to Boston, where he was arrested.  And then, for years, we all had to take our shoes off before going to security at the airport.

Recently, two National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., were shot, and one of the victims died.  This attack, the authorities say, was carried out by a 29-year-old Afghan man.  And now the current administration is cracking down on all Afghan immigrants.  And let’s not even discuss Somali.

This kind of reaction—one thing happens and all things like it are targeted or copied—seems clearly to be an overreaction.  That one person did something doesn’t mean that everyone from the same country, or of the same race, religion, ethnicity is also going to do the same thing.

While most people (at least those I know) in the nonprofit sector abhor this kind of behavior, they actually do a lot of it themselves.

They hear that an organization made $700,000 on their gala—so they want to do a gala also.  Someone gets a grant from X foundation, and they all want to approach that foundation.  Over the years I was an on the ground fundraiser, my more well connected donors would beg me not to talk about their annual gifts (which were still much larger than most people’s major ones), because then everyone in the nonprofit world would be coming to their door.

Which means, of course, that so much largesse is left sitting on the table.

Yes, capacity matters.  Asking say me for $1M gift is probably a waste of time as I don’t have the ability to make such a gift.  But—and think long and hard about this-the value of my ongoing support might just equal (or perhaps exceed) that amount.  If, for example, you had gotten me hooked on your organization when I was in my 30s and making very small gifts indeed, over the next 40 years, my capacity would have increased, my aggregate giving would have grown—and most likely I would have told many of my friends about your fabulous organization.  And who knows?  Maybe one of them—or one of their circle—would make a large major gift.