To avoid disappointment

Best thing about watching Avatar in 3D?

According to my girlfriend, it’s that behind the dark glasses, no-one can see you cry when the blue people get killed.

I enjoyed it very much – you just have to tell yourself beforehand that being the highest-grossing film ever made doesn’t mean it’s going to be the best film ever made.

Because expectation is everything. If you over-deliver on someone’s expectations, you’ve got a happy audience, cooing at computer-generated hovering mountains.

Under-deliver, and you’ve got a webbed-toed Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

There’s a parallel in fundraising.

When we recruit new supporters, we set their expectations. We usually tell them that when they become a supporter, a) we’ll really appreciate their kindness and b) their kindness will make a real difference.

But do we make good on those expectations? Or do we disappoint them?

I can still remember my first-ever big disappointment. I was about seven.

It was Christmas, and I wanted an electronic organ. Christmas Eve I went to bed, frantic with excitement, unable to sleep, listening for Santa. 

 
What I heard, from downstairs, were the unmistakable reverberations of a full-sized church organ, with those giant pipes filling the air (and presumably literally filling the lounge of our three bed semi). Wow. This was going to be the best Christmas ever.

It was many years later before I realised that I must have just heard Christmas Mass on the TV. As, on Christmas day I unwrapped not a 20 foot high church organ, but a Bontempi keyboard. That couldn’t manage chords, only one note at a time (I can still remember the key numbers for Jingle Bells).

I was dreadfully disappointed, but I think I managed to hide it from my parents.

Charity donors, however, don’t hide their disappointment so readily. They just stop giving. They cancel their direct debits, they stop responding to appeals and they never get round to mentioning you in their will.

So we shouldn’t disappoint them. 

Which means remembering one very important, but often overlooked fact: charity donors don’t give us money for nothing.

They give us money because they expect us to make good on our promises (the ones about appreciating their kindness and their money making a real difference). And to avoid disappointment, we should live up to those expectations.

The charity Action for Children is good at this.

Everyone who responds to one of their direct mail appeals, for example, gets a follow-up letter. It doesn’t ask them for more money. But it says thank you for their gift (quoting the amount they donated), tells them how it might be used, and gives them a positive update on the appeal they responded to. 

Telling them, for example, what the child mentioned in the appeal is doing now, some little slice of life example of what they’ve been up to.

It’s pretty straightforward stuff. But it makes a connection. It creates a rewarding relationship. 

And, just like in Avatar, it shows that even in a tough old world, it’s ok to believe in happy endings.