Creating Donor Centered Communication

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Creating Donor Centered Communication

• What can Aristotle teach us about raising money?
• Bob House
• Pima Community College

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Topics

• Symbols, Communication and Rhetoric
• Organizational Ethos
• The Rhetorical Problem
• Genre and Argument

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• Creating Reality

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Reality and Meaning

• Language __________ Reality.

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Rhetoric and Meaning

• Meaning is symbolic
• Meaning is negotiated
• Meaning is creative
• Meaning is derived in context
• Shared meaning requires persuasion
• Rhetoric is Persuading

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• Words and other symbols
• create reality
• and influence behavior

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All Communication is Persuasive
(rhetorical)Regardless of your
intentionRhetoric makes intentionality a
choice
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Symbols R US

• When was the last time you examined the key words
  and other types of symbols you use to describe
  your organization, mission, outcomes?
• Do the connotations suggest meanings
• that you intend or that you inherited?

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Aristotles Ethos
for we believe fair minded people to a
greater extent and more quickly (than we do
others) on all subjects in general and completely
so in cases where there is not exact knowledge
but room for doubt character is almost, so to
speak, the controlling factor in persuasion
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Organizational Ethos

• Organizational Ethos is the perceived character
  of the organization
• When loyal donors see the organization they see
  themselves

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Creating Ethos

• Rhetors create identification between him or
  herself and the audience
• Rhetors state shared truths
• Rhetors speak to common interests not differences

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Creating Ethos by appealing to the nobler
values of the audience

• Ask not what your country can do for you, ask
  what you can do for your country JFK, 1961

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Speakers Creating Identification

• As I would not be a slave, I would not be a
  master Abraham Lincoln, 1865
• We are a people trying not only to solve the
  problems of the presentbut to fulfill the
  promise of America Barbara Jordan, 1976

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Understanding your Rhetorical Problem

• Purpose goal, ends vs means
• Audience immediate, target, created, agents of
  change
• Persona rhetor / audience relationship
• Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, the Rhetorical Act

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Donors and Potential Donors

• Immediate audience (everyone who received the
  golf tournament invitation)
• Target audience (those who paid to play or agreed
  to sponsor)
• Extended or secondary audience (anyone else who
  noticed, even after the event)
• Agents of change (the two real donors who
  demanded you put the damn thing on)

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Rhetorical Problem, cont.

• Tone attitude toward the subject and audience
• Evidence visuals, analogies, stories, experts,
  stats
• Structure organization of what is being
  communicated
• Strategies language, appeals, argument

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Creating Rhetoric that fits the Occasion

• Epideictic (Ceremonial), Ground Breaking, Donor
  Recognition Events, Memorials, Anniversaries,
  etc.
• Deliberative (Problem/Solution) Case Statement,
  Marketing, Fund Raising Letters, Address to the
  Board or Donors, legislative, etc.
• Forensic (Establishing Facts) Defending your
  organization, legislative or judicial.

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Understanding the Genre

• Forensic Issues of Fact
• Deliberative Issues of Policy
• Epideictic Issues of Value

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Obstacles to Rhetoric

• Organizational Ethos
• Donors prejudices
• Competing Noise
• Argument and Evidence

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Why doesnt it work?

• Mixing genres deliberative elements mixed in
  epideictic events (vice versa)
• Creating a symbolic ethos that appeals to the
  organization but not your donors
• Appealing to the target audience but not the
  agents of change

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Applications

• Mission statement (for whom?)
• Marketing materials (target or agents of change)
• Thanking (polite or rhetorical)
• Events (to what end)
• Iconic Symbols of your Organization

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Rhetoric and Fundraising

• Every communication act is a rhetorical or
  persuasive action
• Every communication act conveys intentionality
  (be conscious of your intention)
• Every communication act creates reality