How charities “make their moves” on you
Be mindful — one or more of the charities that you support is likely “making the moves” on you. The “thank you for your gift” phone call was “move 1”; the birthday card they sent you was “move 2”; and the invitation to tour their facility “move 3.” Moves Management is a relationship management system that has been a staple of the fundraising profession since the 1970s.
To a nonprofit, you are a “prospect,” and if you have hefty bank accounts and a history of generous charitable giving, you are no doubt considered a “hot” or “top” prospect. If so, prepare to be courted heavily by your favorite charities and be aware of the intent of their moves — a happy marriage of your financial resources to their institution.
Moves are calculated. Like anxious suitors who scour the internet and interrogate friends for morsels of information about their crush, sophisticated nonprofits employ research teams who identify, rate and screen prospects. Through automated processes that “mine” a nonprofit’s database for wealth indicators (zip code, club memberships, etc), to good old-fashioned gumshoe-like detective work, prospect researchers can help fundraising teams make just the right series of moves on you — moves that will help “close the gift” without “leaving money on the table.”
The language of moves management objectifies donors and tarnishes the profession. I find this method especially repugnant when it comes to fundraising for healthcare/medical research — an area of fundraising and communications I’ve been involved with my entire 30+ year career. Imagine sitting in a prospect review meeting and listening to a set of moves being orchestrated for wealthy parents who lost a child to cancer. It’s disgusting.
In a classic article entitled: “What Businesses Can Learn from Nonprofits” that appeared in the July-August, 1989 edition of the Harvard Business Review the management guru Peter Drucker said: “As a rule, nonprofits are more money-conscious than business enterprises are. They talk and worry about money much of the time because it is so hard to raise and because they always have so much less of it than they need.”
Much of this statement is spot on, especially for small, grassroots nonprofits. But many of the biggest nonprofits raise money very easily and have more resources than they actually need. And yet their fundraising machine rolls on and woe be it to the fundraising team that raises less this year than last. These are the organizations who have the resources to employ a team of full-time researchers scouring public records, documents, periodicals and other news sources.
And once they discover clues about your wealth and possible interest in their mission, they will waste no time making the first in a series of moves on you and your wallet.
