Fine, I’ll Hire My Fundraising Bully. But Then What?
A non-violent resolution to last week's fundraising bullying problem
Well, well, well.
Aren’t you all just a bunch of softy, chewy, syrupy waffles.
Results from last week’s post and poll about whether I fight my teenage fundraising bully, hire her, or tell on her are pretty conclusive.
60% of you want me to hire Scout while only 27% of you thought I should slug my way out of this problem. The tattletales/younger siblings among us come in a distant third.
Fine. You guys win.
Let’s suppose for a moment that Hurricane Scout wasn’t currently tearing through Europe shaking down the Swiss. Let’s say I hired her for a summer fundraising internship. What happens on Day 1 with a young, raw fundraiser like Scout?
I posed this question to a one of you waffle-eaters who works in banking and he gave me a great response. He said (via email): “I hire her. The biggest challenge I see with young people is simply making the ask. [Scout] doesn’t have that problem. I’d always rather reel somebody back in than have to push her forward.”
It’s a smart response. Below are three (and a half) things I need to teach Scout on Day 1 to rein her back in.
1. Fundraising Shouldn’t Feel Like a Stick-Up
When asks happen too abruptly and donors feel like they don’t have the time to consider what you’re asking them for, things go off the rails quickly. Donors get defensive, they don’t feel good about what they’re giving, and then Substack posts get created about the mock terror of it all.
I’m sure I’ve been guilty of doing this too at some point. I’ve probably made somebody feel more pressure than I meant to. It happens. But Scout is ambitious. And I like that about her. The key is helping her be more self-aware during interactions with prospective donors: to keep that impulse alive but in check.
She’s a young fundraiser. Not a bank robber trying to get a teller to empty the vault before the cops roll up.
2. Let Them See You Coming
Scout always catches me off guard. She’s wants something from me while my dogs are freaking out or I’ve got one eye on the road while she she’s trying to sell me hot sauce.
She doesn’t yet know that she’s skipping an important step in her fundraising. She needs to ask me if she can swing by later to talk about her troop’s trip to Switzerland. Or to see if there’s a good time we can do hot sauce taste test as part of a fundraiser for her troop. I’m smart enough to see her ask coming and, like you, I’d be happy to invite her over with my checkbook at the ready.
3. “Scout Stuff” Can Be a Good Answer
In all fairness, I don’t think Scout knows where the money she’s raising will go. I suspect she was told to go out and sell as many poinsettias and bottles of hot sauce as she could.
She might not be able to tell me what the money will pay for, but she can tell me why she’s excited for the trip. Or what her troop discusses when they talk about it around the campfire. Or what she wants to do when she’s there. You know, “Scout Stuff” like that.
Here’s the thing: if she’s excited by this trip, then I will be too. And I’ll buy that second poinsettia that I don’t want and that fourth and fifth bottle of hot sauce I won’t eat because I want a piece of the excitement of this trip.
“Scout Stuff” can be a great answer. But only if she tells me what that means to her.
3 ½. Knock (Don’t Bang) on Doors
I’ll bet you 3 bottles of Scout’s Honor hot sauce that Scout didn’t know (literally and figuratively) that she was banging on my door. She was probably nervous that I’d say no so she came at me with everything she had. She banged on my door when she probably meant to knock politely. Self-possession will come with time and experience—and when she comes knocking for next year’s trip to Brussels (or wherever her troop will go) it will play out differently than this year.
Scout lives in my mind as a quirky mash-up of some of my favorite movie and TV characters from the 1980s:
She’s got that that free-wheeling, never-let-them-see-you-sweat confidence of Ferris Bueller/Abe Froman coasting into Chez Quis for lunch.
I detect notes of Sophia Petrillo’s deadpan sense of humor from The Golden Girls (“Picture it…Baltimore…2024...”)
She reminds me of that one Gremlin that starts out all sweet and cuddly but then eats after midnight (or something) and wreaks havoc on a nice family’s Christmas. (Sorry. I haven’t seen Gremlins in years and don’t remember how it works. But you get the gist).
Above all, Scout’s got that loud laugh, that shouty directness, and that adventurous boldness of Martha Plimpton in The Goonies. (And Scout’s kind of dead ringer for a young Martha Plimpton, too).
And lest we forget, Goonies is a movie about a troop of friends, out on an adventure, searching for the money for a cause that’s important to them. That sounds like Scout to me.
So, thanks, Substack, for helping me remember that you don’t pick a fight with Martha Plimpton in The Goonies.
You put a map in her hands, you give her a Cindi Lauper cassette for her walkman, and you help her and her friends discover how (not where) to find buried treasure.
Thanks for reading, you Goonies.
With all due respect, I think the poll numbers express our collective concern for your welfare in a battle royale with Scout. But you offer sage counsel nonetheless.
In my defense, I’m very conscious of how the people I send out to fundraise are representing the group/cause. Some would react as you did to Scout’s early tactics… but others may now have a deep seeded hatred towards Scouting America due to Scout’s bombardment.
As I was reading last week’s post, all I could think was “Scout must be stopped!”