What Does Your Typing Style Say About You as a Fundraiser?

When I’m practicing the piano, I may look like a howling beagle in a bow tie but, my sweet reader, I’m a dynamic typist. And I’m super stuck up about it.

What Taking Piano Lessons as an Adult Reminds Us About Fundraising

I work with fundraisers, marketers, program staff, and executives who impress me every day with their compassion, hard work, sense of humor, and dedication to the community. It gives me no pleasure to report, however, that some of them don’t know how to type properly.

If you’re typing in front of me and you’re not using the home row, I’m calling attention to it.

I have a theory about how how fundraisers type and how they raise money.

Let’s go deeper. If you dare.

A colleague (let’s call her Cady to protect her identity) and I were passing a computer keyboard back and forth as we composed a letter together. (Note: we have similar/same job responsibilities and we’re friends.)

When the keyboard is in front of me, I place my fingers delicately on the home row. I move across the keys with the grace, beauty, and agility of a gazelle bounding through the lush Serengeti at dusk. Back straight. Elbows in. Eyes straight ahead. Teacher says I’m a good boy. This is me:

These gazelle fingers bring you Fundraising for Breakfast every week

When I passed the keyboard to Cady, however, she reached and ranged and contorted her index and middle fingers all around to hit the keys—hunting and pecking her way through the letter. Back hunched. Elbows out. Pinkies akimbo. Teacher says she’s not a good boy.

This is the closest approximation of Cady’s typing I could find on the internet:

S I D E B A R

Below is a transcript of the conversation we had when we were sharing the keyboard:

Me: That’s not really how you type, is it?

Her (not looking up): There’s nothing wrong with how I type. Focus up. We’re almost done.

Me: I can’t. I’m too upset.

Her (still typing): My way works just fine.

Me: It doesn’t. I’m worried about you.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, but Cady can correct the record in the comments.

Below is actual, documentary evidence Cady provided of her typing. (Major hat tip to Cady’s husband for powering through any confusion he justifiably experienced when videoing this).

In case you can’t read it, Cady typed: “Please subscribe to Fundraising for Breakfast. Dan would appreciate it! Xoxo.” (You might think this would make me feel bad about rolling her about her typing. You’d be wrong).

Watch the above video again and you’ll see what I didn’t notice at first: Cady’s actually pretty fast across that keyboard.

And accurate.

And keeps a tidy workspace.

And writes an awfully good sentence. Her typing clearly gets the job done.

Cady and I type differently from one another and, truth be told, we raise money differently, too. We have different (not competing) approaches, different ways we talk about programs, and different methods for connecting the dots between money, need, and social impact. We make asks differently, too.

Both typing and fundraising both come down to questions of style.

It’s silly to argue whose way is better than the other (it’s not lost on me that I’ve spent the first half of this post suggesting that my way is better than hers). This entire post just boils down to familiarity and comfort—which, I think, can be dangerous things when fundraisers fall too much in love with their own ways of raising money. Doesn’t our fundraising get stale (for us and our donors) if we’re raising the same money, the same way, each time every year? We risk our fundraising becoming generic when we don’t take more stylistic risks to grow as professionals and give our donors a new look at who we are and why we do what we do.

Sometimes, fundraisers (me) need to get off the home row.

And fundraisers hunting and pecking their way across the keyboard would benefit from a visit back to the home row every once in a while.

Always working on growing our styles is worth the effort. I’m going to borrow a little from Cady and, I hope, she can find something to take from me. It’ll keep us both sharp when we’re writing another letter together and passing the keyboard back and forth.

Because she’s a very good fundraiser.

Even if she can’t type worth a damn.

(A special Fundraising for Breakfast salute to Cady for her typing, her sense of humor, and being a great colleague.)