Shopping once again on L.L.Bean’s website, my attention was taken by the company’s customer service credo, proudly posted there for as long as I can remember.
During the time I spent in a for-profit business, before beginning my non-profit career, I became aware of the extent to which the for-profit sector was (had to be) steeped in customer service. From that perspective, L.L.Bean’s corporate customer service philosophy and practices are easy to recognize as having an extremely close parallel to what we do in our non-profit world.
Simply, the for-profit world’s “customer relations” is the equivalent of the non-profit world’s donor relations.
L.L.Bean’s customer service philosophy has served them well … over their (almost) 100 year existence, and is an example that we in the non-profit sector must emulate.
The following definition of a customer was a favorite of Mr. Bean’s, and I take license to show how it could/should apply to the non-profit world:
What is a Customer? (Who is a donor?)
(1) “A customer is the most important person ever in this office in person or by mail.”
• What if we were to make that read: A donor is the most important person ever in contact
with this organization.
(2) “A customer is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.”
• How about: Donors do not need us. We need them.
(3) “A customer is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it.”
• How about: Contact with donors is not an interruption of our work.
Our relationships with donors make our work possible.
(4) “A customer is not someone to argue or match wits with. Nobody ever won an argument with a customer.”
• How about: Donors are not people from whom we can demand support.
No organization is entitled to its donors’ money … we must earn it.
(5) “A customer is a person who brings us his wants. It is our job to handle them profitably to him and ourselves.”
• How about: Donors bring us their resources and philanthropic desires.
It is our job to use those resources and meet those philanthropic desires
efficiently, effectively, and as we have promised.
L.L.Bean’s five customer imperatives, after a little adapting to the non-profit setting (and to Bean’s outdoors’ focus), make fine “trail markers” for a truly donor-centric path. But it is to often a path where many people would rather hide behind the trees, ignore donor cultivation and leave all fund-raising responsibility to the development department.
The donor-centric path is blazed by the development director, executive director, and board chair. They are/should be followed by department heads and board members until, finally, it becomes a wide road to organizational success … well traveled by all staff and volunteers.
Our job as development professionals is to show our organizations where the path can take them.
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If you have a question or comment for Tony, he can be reached at Tony@raise-funds.com. There is also a lot of good fundraising information on his website: Raise-Funds.com
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Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
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