Perhaps you missed a deadline, did not hit the mandated number of donor visits this month, or a donor you've been cultivating for some time said "no, not now" to the proposal you were counting on to achieve achieve your fundraising goal for the year.
In dysfunctional teams, such "failure" is often met with criticism, shame, blame, and semi-public humiliation. The implication is: "you're (I'm) a failure". In high functioning teams, errors like these are met with compassion, growth, and learning. The reaction is: "what are you (am I) learning" from this?
Not long ago, I wrote a post on the topic of Excellence vs. Perfectionism. Individuals in perfectionist cultures are driven by the need to always be right. There is an implicit or explicit the goal of not making any mistakes. Cultures of excellence on the other hand are driven by curiosity. Individuals here focus on always doing their best (and they forget the rest). They know that their best can vary from day-to-day, month-to-month, and even year-to-year. After all, a junior fundraiser's best is likely not to be as good as that of the veteran fundraiser who has more experience.
As fundraisers it is also important to keep in mind that many of the leaders in our profession became excellent in their craft/trade on the job (they learned by doing). They went out on donor visits and had conversations They saw what worked, and even more importantly, they saw what did not work. While it's tempting to believe that somehow we can codify all this knowledge into some compendium that can be read and applied, I believe that's a fool's errand. A better course of action is to provide a little structure, and allow those in our charge to, as Teddy Roosevelt said: "fail while daring greatly".
Arguably, the following section of Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech delivered 23-April-1910 at the Sorbonne in Paris, France is the fundraiser's anthem:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
So, what kind of culture are you encouraging? One where F-Bombs are met with celebration or a bar of soap?
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