“Get them into the kitchen”: zoo donors
I remember this expression from an American fundraising authority in my first years obsessing on the subject.
The idea was very simple: ‘the development process’ is all about gradually turning outsiders into insiders, a process of inviting affluent, influential, talented and/ or well connected individuals to consider our organisation and our cause to be their own, and so perhaps support it accordingly. Americans call it ‘internalising the organisation’s mission’
But when we host such people at the zoo site, we have an understandable tendency to only want to show them the ‘glossy’ stuff.
That’s not what you do with your friends, or people who might become friends. You allow them to see you as you really are. You relax with them.
So I have always thought it important – when the time is right – to invite potential supporters to see the ‘real’ behind the scenes stuff at the zoo, to see our problems as well as our victories. Having a coffee with one of the keepers in their quarters is a more memorable and authentic experience than ‘high tea’ with the President.
Chatting to potential supporter about the quirks, frustrations and small victories of life at the zoo is more important than drowning them in bland, glossy literature. We want our issues and enthusiasm to become theirs, and for the barrier between external and internal to dissolve.
So whether literally or metaphorically, you don’t restrict your friends to the ‘front parlour’ and the china tea cups, you invite them to put their feet up in the back kitchen.
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