Amazon Isn't Too Big to Fail, and Neither Are Non-Profits

Amazon is not to big to fail.

That’s what owner Jeff Bezos told staff recently.

Despite the fact the company is the largest retailer on the planet, it’s future is not guaranteed.

What would cause Amazon to fail?

Not caring about its customers.

“If we start to focus on ourselves instead of focusing on our customers, that will be the beginning of the end,” Bezos said.

“We have to try and delay that day for as long as possible.”

What’s true for Amazon is true for non-profits.

When more time is spent talking about in-house things—what language, messaging, images and words to use to describe the need to be addressed—they are started on the road to trouble.

Don’t get me wrong; all those things are important.

The people non-profits want to serve be described in a way that affirms their dignity and self-respect.

But when more time is spent coming up with the perfect words that will make program staff happy about an appeal, rather than the words that will motivate people to give, an organization has begun that inward and downward spiral.

Hey—I’m not saying the concerns of program staff shouldn’t be heard. There can and should be vigorous discussions.

But there’s a reason why program people do programs, and fundraisers to fundraising: Both know best how to do their jobs.

When it comes to programs, fundraisers shouldn’t tell them how to do their jobs. And vice versa.

But that’s often not what happens. People who know nothing about fundraising—who know nothing about what motivates givers to give—insist on being involved in writing and approving appeals.  

(A former fundraising colleague called this “brilliant spillover;” people who are good at one thing think they are good at other things, like fundraising.)

When programmers start to act like they are the targets of the appeals, an organization is in trouble.

The truth is they are the worst people to approve fundraising copy. They know too much.

Fundraisers need to attract the attention of people who know little, or even nothing, about the need at hand.

People who have a dozen opportunities to give.

Who are distracted by a hundred things in their day.

And fundraisers have to do it in a few hundred words.

Of course, the situations we appeal for are way more detailed, nuanced, and complex than can be described in an appeal letter.

But appeal letters aren’t educational documents. They can inform, but that’s not their main purpose.

Their main purpose is to raise money.

Anything that gets in the way of that reduces their impact.

When more time is spent discussing how to make program staff happy, rather than what will raise the most money, then the discussion has turned inward.

And that can lead to failure.

If a huge company like Amazon is worried about turning inwards, then non-profits should be, too.