Facing Up to Face-to-face

* Don’t always ask for money. Try to be helpful and informative.

* Offer something worth having (this is called reciprocity; the Hare Krishna people know about its benefits -- it’s why they give you a flower before asking for your gift).

* Get a hold of Harvey McKinnon’s entertaining, informative and stunningly simple little book, “Tiny Essentials of Monthly Committed Giving” (www.whitelionpress.com/TinyCommitGive.html).

Take time to watch how face–to-face fundraisers operate. Most nonprofits using face-to-face have blithely followed the trend of using young people as their (paid) solicitors, and pay them by a combination of low basic salary and per-conversion commission. These young solicitors inevitably tend to stop younger passers-by, people like themselves. But we know regular donors are mainly older people with more disposable income. Ask yourself: Are we not perhaps putting the wrong kind of people out on the streets?

Ken Burnett is author of “Relationship Fundraising: A Donor-Based Approach to the Business of Raising Money” (The White Lion Press Limited/Jossey-Bass Inc.), “The Tiny Essentials of an Effective Volunteer Board” (The White Lion Press Limited, London) and “The Zen of Fundraising,” (Jossey-Bass Inc, San Francisco.), all available via www.whitelionpress.com He can be contacted at ken@kenburnett.com