How Not to Ask for Money

Getting People to Give - Why not just ask?

I'm constantly searching for ways to motivate people to give. It all started during a radio fund drive. It was one of my first. Nobody was calling. Of course, we reverted to threatening the audience. In radio they have the ultimate free will. I think we annoyed the audience by threatening to keep playing "Dukey Stick." They either hit the off button or went up the dial. We didn't know. We thought it was hilarious.

Big Mistake

We were supposed to be a jazz station. Why on earth would any Jazz Aficionado stick around to listen to any of that? And by playing it back to back to back to back drove the audience to zero within minutes.

We had a legitimate cause. We wanted funding for a public radio station that had a blend of News and Jazz. We were asking for money in entirely the wrong way. We were sending a message that we really didn't believe in our service.

There are at least nine ways not to ask for money according amnesty-volunteer.org. I think we violated four. We weren't really asking. At least, not about our service. We were totally outside our format and the audience we served. Begging, apologizing or demanding. Donors give because they believe in what you're doing. So, we should  have believed too. I still hear apologizing a lot. Making assumptions. We assumed the listener was on the same wave-length. We thought we were being funny and they would get the joke. In a way, the whole pitch was dishonest. We thought we were better off pitching something other than what we had to offer.  What we should have had the courage to do was talk about what we were and the unique qualities of our service.

What we were can been seen in this video. All we had to do was ask.