Here’s a story I’ve nicked.
Hey, I’m hardly the first blogger to steal someone else’s material. At least I’m admitting to it.
It was told to me by a senior client the other day.
He was talking about the nature of good deeds: of ‘doing charity’, if you like. And what fundraisers all talk about as the reasons people donate or do other good deeds.
And he compared those reasons we give with what would happen if you were in this situation:
You’re walking through the park.
The sun is out, the sky is blue. There’s not a cloud to spoil the view. It’s peaceful, there’s no-one else around, just the sound of the ducks and – what’s that?
A child, crying out in distress.
Then you see them: they’ve fallen in the pond. They’re drowning.
What do you do?
I’ll take a wild guess: you jump in to save them. Which, in charitable terms, is ‘a good deed’.
But what went through your mind first?
Did you ask yourself ‘Can I afford to do this? After all, this is going to cost me a very expensive pair of shoes, can I afford to act?’
No, you didn’t.
Did you ask yourself, ‘Have I got the time to do this? I was on my way to a rather important meeting.’
No, you didn’t.
Did you think, ‘Here’s a chance to meet my need for self-actualisation.’
No, you didn’t.
Perhaps you thought, ‘This is going to be a great story to share with people, so they can see what a good person I am.’
No, you didn’t.
Did you think, ‘I bet the child will be really grateful. Their parents too. I’ll probably get a lovely “thank you”.’
No, not that either.
The truth is, in that situation you don’t think anything. You just act. Because you can’t not act.
The way it was expressed to me was ‘You don’t save the child from drowning because it makes your day, you do it because it makes your day possible. Because it would be impossible for you to walk on past.’
You do it because you have to. Because a child’s life is at stake. Because every fibre of your being propels you into immediate, life-saving action.
There’s something interesting there, don’t you think?
A child’s life is at stake, so you act – without needing any persuasion whatsoever. It’s a 100% response rate.
Yet there are lots of children’s charities, all talking about saving children’s lives, none of which (I’m fairly sure) get anything like a 100% response rate.
But if you could find a way to tap into that innate human instinct to save and protect…
…to find a way to make the situation feel as real as it is when you’re walking through the park and you see a child has fallen in the pond…
…well, then we wouldn’t need all that clever fundraising marketing malarkey.
And we’d all be getting 100% response rates.
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