What Taking Piano Lessons as an Adult Reminds Us About Fundraising
Last week I shared my New Year’s resolutions to get in shape, eat more pâté, and launch my own “Men of Fundraising for Breakfast” beefcake charity calendar. (Two of those three resolutions are serious. Try to guess which two!)
I forgot to mention another resolution: practice playing piano this year. Fun fact: Child #1 and I used to take piano lessons every Tuesday night. (Other things we do for fun: pickleball, playing Disco Elysium, watching YouTube videos of patients coming out of anesthesia, and eating Canadian cheeseburgers while trashing Marvel movies).
Our Tuesday night piano lessons ended when our piano teacher moved. I’ve since lost the discipline I had when I was her middle-aged star student. I want it back in 2025!
And there’s a connection between my piano playing and fundraising worth teasing out here. Piano is hard and I suck at it because I don’t practice enough. Fundraising is hard, but nobody ever really gets the chance to “practice” doing it, do they? If you’re raising money for something/someone, you probably don’t have the luxury of dress rehearsals.
I know how to get better at piano, but how do you get better at raising money?
Join me on a musical journey through the Great American Fundraising Songbook.
The hardest part about taking piano lessons as an adult is performing at the recitals.
Picture it: I’m a 40-something-year-old dude visibly struggling in front of kids (ages 8-17) and their parents. Which is fine, but I sometimes felt like I’d be playing and these kids would look at each other like, “somebody come get your Dad off this stage.”
The order of recital performance always went from “youngest” to “most distinguished” (i.e. oldest). And this was never a “we’re saving the best for last, you guys!” sort of situation.
The best player was always some dynamo kid who memorized all of his/her music, looked vaguely bored playing a song he/she knew backwards and forwards, and I swear would make smiling eye contact with me because I was up next.
He/she always looked like some version of this Good Boy:
In contrast, this is what it looked, felt, and sounded like when it was my turn at the piano at the end of the recital:
This isn’t false modesty, you guys. My piano teacher reads this Substack and can back me up: at my last piano recital (having taken piano lessons for like three years), I dressed up as Willy Nelson for Halloween and played “Jumpin’ Pumpkins” & “Pumpkin Pumpkin.” Two kids songs. That’s the level where I peaked.
Here’s a clip of Child #1 I found on my phone playing the piano. He’s very good. It’s not a recital, but it’s the best I could come up with. I’m not posting a video of myself because (a) I already told you I stink at it and (b) I couldn’t find any:
M U S I C A L S I D E N O T E
If you’re considering taking piano lessons as an adult, be forewarned. Your co-workers will want to attend your recitals. Not in a “I want to support you, Dan” sort of way. More like a “I gotta see this and can’t wait to tell all of Marketing about it” sort of way.
I foolishly (foolishly!) shared with a few co-workers that I was nervous about an upcoming recital and they tried to come to it. Can you imagine? Somebody even wanted me to auction off a ticket to my piano recital to support a workplace fundraiser we were doing. Which is hysterical, I’ll admit, but I put the minimum bid at $1,000 so you need to be real committed to hearing my rendition of “Pumpkin Pumpkin” if you want come to my piano recital.
I give my piano teacher a ton of credit. All the kids performing would be nervous, but she ran a wonderfully supportive music studio and everybody (including myself) left feeling good about the music we were trying to make.
I never practiced enough to be good. I practiced enough to pull off a decent Willy Nelson impression of him banging out kids’ Halloween songs on an upright in a Texas honky-tonk.
I suspect that if you’re uncomfortable with fundraising, it’s probably for the same reason I struggle at the piano. You haven’t put in the time to be good at it and everybody is looking at you. There’s only one way to practice the piano: Sit your butt down and work your scales. Practice your songs. Learn the theory. Do the work.
But you’ve probably done more practicing than you think. You have a lifetime of asking for things—from your family, your co-workers, your friends, etc.—and I suspect you’re already pretty good at asking for things. You might not have been asking for money, but you ask for more things on a daily basis than you think.
I do. Scroll back through some of this Substack. Most of it isn’t about asking for money at all, just the different way asks happen, what they sound like, and how they feel when they happen:
You’re better at asking than you think. Maybe you just haven’t worked up to asking for money yet, but it may be the next song you’re working up to, right? And you know what? Sometimes practicing scales is just as much fun as playing Halloween songs in a Willy Nelson wig in front of a bunch of kids.
There are many great tunes in the Great American Fundraising Songbook, you guys. And there’s lots of way to practice them, play them, and sing along with your friends. So go ask for something like you’re a beagle wearing a bow tie.
It’s more fun that way.
Dan! You were an excellent student. I enjoyed your description of your time at recitals. And you played a mean Pumpkin Pumpkin! You made a ton of progress over the years.
Consider also watching YouTube videos of newscasters messing up during broadcasts with Child #1 - it’s a genre of YouTube video that truly never gets old.