More Fundraising Coordination Meetings by Phone (part of the listening series)

More Fundraising Coordination Meetings by Phone (part of the Listening series)

by Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru

A short article in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy caught my eye: "Cutting Travel for Meetings Takes a Toll, Says Study" by Paula Wasley. The study was from The Goodman Center on "Dialing In, Logging On, Nodding Off."

The Chronicle article noted that economy moves have cut travel leading to more conference calls. Many of these calls are less than satisfactory: "A survey of more than 1,200 nonprofit and government employees about their use of video and teleconferences and Webinars found that all too often the technology enhanced meetings are plagued by technical difficulties, poor leadership, and lack of participation."

The reason these comments struck a chord with me is that I have done so many Webinars and conference calls with clients that I have seen and felt many challenges. One particularly frustrating one was with a potential client in Montana where we were in their conference room and their key board members were in Colorado and California. At 10 am the technology shut down and we lost everybody outside the room. It turned out their new phone system shutdown everyday at 10 am and we were using it on the first day so they weren't aware of the challenge.

Other challenges can be appreciated from the listening research I did for my book Winning Gifts (see chapter 3 Listen). If 55% of all communication is nonverbal, then conference calls without video don't work well. I find in presenting Webinars the lack of nonverbal feedback makes these presentations far more difficult than live presentations. I can't see people nodding their heads or smiling so there feels like a lack of engagement.

Participation is hard to monitor when there are more than a couple of people on the phone. Everyone is waiting for somebody else. I also find it harder to tell when someone is done speaking than when I'm in a face-to-face meeting.

With one client we've tried video connections between people around the state of California and our meeting site. It's okay, the people in their offices can certainly see more of what we are doing, but we had one poor guy that was patiently listening to the presentation and yet his picture was at the front of the room for 2 hours. He finally moved his laptop camera up to the ceiling so we didn't have to watch him the entire time.

Without visual cues I find it harder to listen to these conference calls. Unless they are highly organized, move swiftly, and use PowerPoint, the meetings can really be slow because people can listen at 500 words a minute while most people speak at 150 words a minute.

Why is this important for major gifts officers? There will be a tendency for your organization to tell you to stay in the office rather than driving or flying to see a major gift prospect. You need the face-to-face time to be effective. Short bursts by phone are fine, but develop a true, authentic relationship requires personal interaction.

And, if you want to develop a major gifts officers team, you need to do it face to face.

Permanent Link: More Fundraising Coordination Meetings by Phone (part of the listening series)

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/07/more-fundraising-coordination-meetings.html