Fact Sheet Number 8:

Empowered Fundraising:
Radical Generosity – the Power of Philanthropy to Change the
World

By John Croft and Dot Green Tuesday, 27 May 2008

INTRODUCTION TO DEMYSTIFYING MONEY

Empowered Fundraising is about transforming people’s relationship with money.

Empowered fundraising is a means of creating opportunities for people to engage
with their own greatness. This is far from our current attitude to money or to
fundraising.

Without doubt our current relationship with money is the source of one of the
greatest wounds most individuals carry – it is a source of their alienation from their
own ability to create what is of true value - a sustainable future that works for all, and
thus is an alienation from their own deepest sources of creativity.

Empowered fundraising, in the words of Lynne Twist, aims to inspire, educate and
empower you to realign the acquisition and allocation of financial resources with
your most deeply held values.1 The approach is committed to providing programs
and resources that shift your relationship with money from dependency, confusion
and disempowerment to one of freedom, meaning, and contribution.

Conventionally we all have an “identified though largely unconscious and

unexamined relationship with money that shapes our experience of life and our
deepest feelings about ourselves and others”. This comes from the way in which we
use and create money in our communities.

Economists, tell us that money has a number of different functions.

Economically Money functions

1. As a means of exchange; money overcomes the problem of barter as a

means of facilitating exchange, in circumstances where the “double
coincidence of needs” is not found. This refers to a barter transaction where
one person has something required by another, and they have something to
trade of agreed equal value. Failure to meet these conditions means that a
barter transaction cannot occur.
2. As a measure of value: money is a means by which different persons can
agree upon an assessment of how much they value some good or service, in
the same way that an inch or centimetre is an agreed measure of length. To
serve as a measure of value, money must be divisible into agreed units, have
an agreed and recognisable value and to be countable. As Lynne Twist says,
“Money is often given more value than life itself.”
3. As a store of value: To function as a store of value money must be able to
be saved, stored and retrieved, without major loss of value. This function,

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 however, can encourage hoarding, which, if money is not reinvested, removes
money from circulation, so increasing its scarcity in the community.

In addition to these economic functions, and in part as a result of them, money also
has a number of often unstated political functions, resulting in part from the way it is
created.

Politically Money functions

4. As a means of rationing access to scarce goods and services: Many

goods are in short supply, and therefore cannot be made universally available.
By rationing these services and making them only available to those with
money, a monetary system can ensure that goods are rationed to those with
sufficient purchasing power.
5. As a means of making money: The golden rule of economics is
sometimes stated, as “those who have the gold make the rules”. Because
credit money is a demand for future payment, it can be used to purchase the
goods and services of commodities today in ways that can be used, not for
meeting immediate needs, but instead solely for the purpose of making yet
more money. As a result those with access to credit money tend to grow richer
faster than those without such access.
6. As a means to power: Because through a credit system, money can be
used to increase one’s stock of money, money also serves a political function,
giving differential access to the goods and services that confer social, political
and economic power within a community. “Fiat money” is money that is
created out of nothing but is declared to be in existence by government or by a
central bank. Fiat money may be subject to inflation, through imbalance with
the circulation of goods and services, and can reduce the power of some whilst
increasing that of others.

Close examination of these different functions of money within any community,

demonstrates that not all of these functions are strictly compatible, and some
functions are in fact mutually contradictory. These contradictions mystify the nature
of money, and make it more difficult for the normal person to understand. Thus
money as a means of rationing access to goods and services, may tend to allocate
financial resources to meeting the luxurious “wants” of those with greatest
purchasing power, rather than in meeting the real needs for “subsistence” of the
poorest sections of a community. The way corn is currently being used for biofuel
rather than feeding people in the Third World is an example in point.

Another example concerns money as a store of value. Thus money can be used as a
means of making money, and this results in capital flows away from communities
where the ease of making more money is restricted. In these cases the use of money
as a means of exchange or a measure of value is restricted as money flows towards
those communities where the ease of making money is more plentiful. The scarcity
of money in the former communities is not due, necessarily, to any shortage of skills,
of resources or of a local demand for goods and services – it may be due purely due to
the scarcity of money. This scarcity of money may result in people seeking access to
money in inappropriate ways, resorting to criminal activity or prostitution. For
example, the adage – “he who pays the piper calls the tune” is directly relevant to
community or environmental organisations. When such organisations are

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dependent upon government or business corporations, this will severely limit their
ability to take a critical role vis a vis these institutions, without it directly interfering
with their own continued economic viability.

This confusion about money also extends to the “creation of money”. Our money
today is created through fractional reserve banking. Here money is “created”
through loans given by banks, which inject “new money” into the economy. This
ensures that whilst the principal of a loan may be created, the “interest” on that loan
becomes a future demand, associated with repayment, and thus the “lender” gambles
that they will be able to recover more money from the loan than they lent in the first
place. Because only the principal is immediately created, economic growth and the
injection of yet more money is an imperative, and failure to achieve such growth will
result in widespread bankruptcy. These circumstances create insecurity as they also
ensure that the amount of money is always perceived to be in short supply. As a
result in “monetary societies”, money comes to be one of the central linchpins of our
lives, and “everyone is interested in money and almost all of us feel a chronic concern
and even fear that we don’t have enough or will be able to keep enough of it…. Many
live openly with the accumulation of money as our primary goal. No matter how
much money we have or don’t have (we) worry that we don’t or won’t have enough”2.

As Lynne Twist says in her book “The Soul of Money”, these characteristics have a
strange effect. “Each of us experiences a lifelong tug-of-war between our money
interests and the calling of our soul. When we're in the domain of soul, we act with
integrity. We are thoughtful and generous, allowing, courageous, and committed. We
recognize the value of love and friendship. We admire a small thing well done. We
experience moments of awe in the presence of nature and its unrefined beauty. We
are open, vulnerable, and heartful. We have the capacity to be moved, and generosity
is natural. We are trustworthy and trusting of others, and our self-expression
flourishes. We feel at peace within ourselves and confidant that we are an integral
part of a larger, more universal experience, something greater than ourselves.

When we enter the domain of money, there often seems to be a disconnect from the
soulful person we have known ourselves to be. It is as if we are suddenly transported
to a different playing field where all the rules have changed. In the grip of money,
those wonderful qualities of soul seem to be less available. We become smaller. We
scramble or race to "get what's ours." We often grow selfish, greedy, petty, fearful, or
controlling, or sometimes confused, conflicted or guilty. We see ourselves as winners
or losers, powerful or helpless, and we let those labels deeply define us in ways that
are inaccurate, as if financial wealth and control indicate innate superiority, and lack
of them suggests a lack of worth or basic human potential. Visions of possibility
dissolve. We become wary and mistrusting, protective of our little piece, or helpless
and hopeless. We sometimes feel driven to behave in ways inconsistent with our core
values, and unable to act differently.”3

The result is a deep division in our way of being, in our behaviour, and in our sense of
our own character and integrity. This dichotomy, this break in our truth, not only
confuses us around the issue of money, it also keeps us from integrating our inner
and outer worlds to experience wholeness in our lives, the exquisite moment when
we feel at peace in the moment, a part of and one with life. This quieter experience of
wholeness has been largely lost in our culture, overtaken by the noise and scramble
around money. The gap exists for all of us -- myself included -- and is at the very

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heart of the toughest struggles in life for all of us. It is sustained, as Lynne Twist says
in her Video, by three powerful myths.

• The myth of scarcity: that we don’t have enough (time, money, love etc) to
meet our needs.
• The myth that more is better: that if we could have more (money, time, love) if
would improve situations.
• The myth that this is the way it is: that no alternative way is possible.

In the name these myths of money we have done (and continue to do) immense
damage to the Earth. We destroy rainforests, dam and decimate rivers, overfish
oceans, rivers and lakes, and have poisoned our soil with chemicals from industry
and agriculture. We have ghettoised whole segments of society, forcing them into
slums and shanties, exploited whole regions and nations and forced young into
selling drugs or their own bodies for money. We use money to assign age-old
inequalities between men and women and distort people’s expectations and
obligations in reference to the pursuit of money. While people are prepared to
challenge and critique almost every other aspect of life, few ever challenge the role of
money in establishing what is worthwhile in human life.

This behaviour, motivated by the scarcity of money leads the personal growth
movement to speak of abundance. But abundance is the flip side of scarcity thinking,
meaning it's just as negative and we don't need to go there. A more empowering story
is the story of “sufficiency” of “enoughness”. As Gandhi said “There is enough on our
planet (whether you believe it or not) for each one of us to live a healthy, productive
and happy life. There is not enough for just one greedy man”. Needless to say this
greed is usually motivated by the desire for more money. Enough is a belief in
ourselves, it's a simpler way to live, to focus on what we actually have in our lives and
appreciate it, instead of flying past enough, not even seeing it, trying to get more,
more and still more. The great scarcity myths: "there isn't enough", "more is better"
and "that's just the way it is." Such attitudes affect us all, whether we live in poor
Third World settings or we are super rich CEOs of major corporations.

Healing our relationship with money is an important part of moving from an

industrial scarcity economy (built upon unceasing growth of consumerism and
waste) to a sufficiency economy (built upon “enoughness” for all beings, human and
non-human, and increasing as a result the resilience for communities and
environments). This is the central task of our age. Empowered fundraising helps
with this process.

CASE STUDY 1: THE PILGRIMAGE PROJECT

In 1997 a Gaia Foundation project group, forged during a workshop run by Joanna
Macy in Denmark, Western Australia was immensely touched by the story of
Novozybkov, a community of 50,000 people of the Bryansk region of Russia,
arguably the most radioactive town still inhabited after the Chernobyl disaster. To
draw attention to the role Australia was playing in the disastrous nuclear industry,
and to prevent Uranium mining commencing in Jabiluka, in the Kakadu National
Park against the wishes of the Aboriginal custodians, a group of five people came
together with the intention of bringing two people from Novozybkov to Australia, to

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be involved with an anti-nuclear pilgrimage to all the potential Uranium mine sites,
and to spread awareness of the damaging nature of the nuclear fuel cycle and of
Australia’s role within this deadly industry. It was decided to take a cameraman and
a journalist on the pilgrimage with the possibility of creating a permanent record of
the journey.

The group decided to depart on the 6th August 1997, the forty second anniversary of
the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. They had 10 weeks to raise the
approximately $100,000 needed for the project. With support of the database
supplied by the Greens, over 5,000 letters were sent out begging for money, and the
sum of only $400, barely enough to pay for the postage, was received. It was clear
that this would not work and that a different system of fundraising was required. If
we continued going like this, trying to run “raffles”, “lamington drives” or “jumble
sales” we’d finish many thousands of dollars short of our target. At that time I had
been marginally involved in another case of empowered fundraising in Western
Australian town of Katanning, and so knew that a different system of raising funds
through mobilising a whole community by donor directed philanthropic
contribution. With a number of others involved in the Pilgrimage Project we knew of
the work of Cathy Burke, an Australian fundraiser who had been working with The
Hunger Project for a number of years, and had personally been involved in raising
millions of dollars for Third World communities.

We are all connected in invisible networks of personal friendship and acquaintance

that help define who we are. These friends are themselves centres of other networks,
that spin quickly into the millions and hundreds of millions. Some people are nodes
and hubs of extensive networks of information and interconnection. Others are
linked through fewer but deeper relationships. Building a truly sustainable world is
going to require the mobilisation of these networks in the task of changing
government policy and industrial practice and in building the life sustaining
communities and ecosystems we will need for our future. Cathy showed the
Pilgrimage Project, that by mobilising these networks with common purpose and
commitment, we could raise the funding we needed for the project.

But the old attitudes to money built around lack, scarcity and insufficiency were
deeply rooted. Some were a little threatened by the novel approach and so did not
attend the first or even a second Empowered Fundraising workshop. It was only
with the running of the third two day residential workshop that all people on the
team became enthused with the new approach. As a result within 10 weeks we were
wildly successful at raising the funds needed and the Pilgrimage Project, launched
from St Georges Cathedral, Perth, was launched.

CASE STUDY 2: THE TOWN OF KATANNING

Katanning is a community of about 5,700 people in the Upper Great Southern of the
Western Australian wheatbelt, provided many of the features of a successful
fundraising mobilisation. In the late 1980s it was a town that lacked adequate
recreational facilities. For many years the community had spoken of what needed to
be done, but nothing had ever happened. It was clearly a case of “everybody”,
“anybody”, “somebody” and “nobody”. “Everybody decided that something could be
done, anybody could have done it, somebody should have done it, but nobody did it.

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As a result everybody looked for somebody to blame, it could be anybody, but
nobody took responsibility”.

Eventually the community decided to do something about it and set up a committee

made up of community people with some councillors and staff involved to create the
centre the community needed. Within this group it was essential that there was a
commitment and belief in the project – and those people on the committee needed to
have made a contribution themselves both financially and in terms of time,
committed to the project, proportional to their capacity. These people were later to
become the most important fundraisers, and it is essential that these people are not
asking others to do what they are not prepared to be doing themselves. People can
clearly detect such hypocrisy in the body language when it occurs. The group
comprised those who were considered Peak Community Leaders of the project (2
former Shire Presidents and others), they were people who were recognised in the
community as having the ability to help form and shape public opinion.

The committee then set about working for a considerable time on the proposal within
a concentrated period of work for 6 months, meeting every 2-3 weeks. To ensure
community participation and involvement the Committee was chaired by a
community member. Over this time it also formed a number of sub-committees to
assist in the efforts.

The Shire of Katanning did all the secretarial support, behind the scenes work, but
this committee was divorced from the Council, in order to ensure that when they
went out to ask people for money, the Council would not be involved. This was an
issue because ethically it violates the duties of Council officers to ask for donations,
as the Council was already collecting rates from people in the community to meet the
needs of the community.

The Council then undertook to employ a professional fund-raiser - Ern Flint from
Sydney, New South Wales. The Council engaged him on a Council Contract, as a
contract fundraiser. His professional services were engaged to coordinate the
campaign.

To begin with in 10 days he interviewed a cross section of 60 people from the

community with an hour of time being spent with each person. This allowed the
identification of a great deal of other information. A Committee of 3 people was
formed and given an office in the Shire. This committee had the task of bringing
these 60 people together. From within this group, two sources of funding were
sought

1. Direct donations from contact from community people

2. Corporate sponsorships from local business persons.

Em Flint then went out with 12 people on the committee to talk to people about
making contributions. He was also responsible for developing Donor Gift Recipient
status (auspiced through the Australian Sport’s Foundation), which made it easier to
sell the whole concept to the community.

The committee then went through the rate book of Council and split people up into
contributor groups – Community Donors, Corporate Sponsorship, and Contributions

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in Kind. Sub-committees were established, and each sub committee was chaired by a
person on the peak committee. New people were encouraged to get involved in each
sub committee to spread the load.

Training was provided by the coordinator to the sub-committee, and this passed on
those skills of ways to engage in building a genuine and authentic one-to-one
relationship with all potential donors.

Through Feb – March publicity was also placed through local press, mail-outs were
organised to individuals and the campaign built up to a climax.

The group targeted potentially larger givers first. This raised people’s sights as to
what was possible, and created a sense of infectious enthusiasm within the
community as to what was possible. By building these personal one to one
relationships with potential donors and then enrolling these investors in seeking
further contributions, the community mobilised its family, friendship, collegial and
community networks and succeeded in raising $1.5 million for the project within 10
weeks.

EMPOWERED FUNDRAISING – A WORKSHOP APPRAOCH

So how can this training and campaign style approach lead to empowered
fundraising?

A focus upon scarcity leads to a competitive win-lose zero-sum games of "you or me"
- world of winners and losers. In such circumstances cooperative behaviours are
irrational as unless you can help me win, our association is unproductive.
Empowered fundraising however challenges this ethos and leads to compassionate
cooperation, a win-win positive sum game of "you and me" where we are gathered
together on a common productive purpose.

If money is a measure and store of value, then “how we use our money reflects our
values in life?”. And if we sincerely hope for a better world, then we must use some
of our money in accordance with our life values – values for personal growth,
strengthening the community or service to the Earth. At the moment we seem to be
using most of our money for mere survival (if poor) or to make more money (if rich).
Both attitudes are motivated from the notion of the scarcity of money. Both produce
a scarcity of true community value, and weaken community spirit.

But there is an alternative. We can start using some of our money with the
motivation to coming from our sense of sufficiency, to invest our souls in the
transformation of this world, to join those who are engaged in this effort, then I
believe with this means we truly can change the world, and build the life sustaining
culture of the future. This approach gives us a chance to move beyond our
immediate personal comfort zone of non-action, into a new realm of engagement and
participation in building such a better world.

How can this be done? Firstly a community issue of importance is required. There
are many such issues present in our community. We at the Gaia Foundation believe
the projects worth supporting meet three conditions –

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It has to be a project of

1. Personal Growth - commitment to your own healing and empowerment

2. Community Building - strengthening the communities of which you are a part

3. Service to the Earth - enhancing the wellbeing and flourishing of all life

STAGE 1:

Once such a project is created and there is a team of committed people working to
bring such a project into fruition, the costs for the project need to be estimated, and a
timetable set for the completion of the fund-raising, and the launch of the project.
The group is then ready for their first Empowered Fundraising workshop.

Ironically, the secret of a fundraising workshop is not about money at all. It is in

reality about building a community of relationships – where each relationship is
based upon links forged on risk, trust and intimacy. It is essentially a process of true
“community building”. Unfortunately for us, community, like money is greatly
misunderstood. It comes from three words; “com” (in Latin) meaning “with” or
“together”; “munis” (in Proto-Indo-European) meaning “the changes or exchanges
that link” (and is the origin of our words for both “municipality” and “money”; and
“ity” (from Latin, “itatus”) meaning “small”, “intimate or ‘local”. Generally a
community in our everyday life is seen as an accidental group of people who share
only a little in common, but properly defined it is “the local changes and exchanges
that link us together, in an intimate fashion”. A true community is determined by the
quality of communication that ties the group together. It is a relationship built upon
one’s deepest values, and upon the offer of making a difference to life itself. The
greatest gift in life is living according to one’s deepest values, and empowered
fundraising is a giving of a gift of this true community to as many people as possible.
Raising the funds for your project is really about building the relationships that will
sustain you both – the giver and the receiver – for a long time to c0me.

When soliciting for donations, given the conventional views about money, it is all too
easy to come as a mendicant, a beggar, coming from lack or scarcity, seeking
something in a situation of dependency upon those who are more powerful and have
greater resources than oneself. Such a scarcity motivation will automatically be
communicated and will activate scarcity in others, and they will feel reluctant to
contribute to such a project. Faced with such a spirit, as a result people engaged in
fundraising often attempt to organise something else - a raffle for instance, or a stall,
selling goods for cash. But such an attitude reinforces the disempowering belief that
the cause for which you are seeking money is somehow worthless or valueless, and
people will only contribute out of a desire to be a “winner”, or a “consumer” of
another kind. This further reinforces the scarcity consciousness about the issue of
money and will minimise your chances in the future. Again this leads all people
involved to feel the cause is in someway worthless, or valueless, and leads even the
people committed to the cause to dread the task of fundraising. But through
empowered fundraising there is another way.

Everyone, no matter how poor or wealthy, has a balance point, a point somewhere
between a token and a sacrifice.

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 • A token is where people may just reach into their pocket and give their loose
change;

• A sacrifice is where a person gives so much that they go without food or

shelter, or some other important personal need is unmet.

This balance point depends upon the individual personal circumstances of the person
involved. Each person has one, and no-one really understands where your personal
balance point is except yourself. You are the expert in understanding the nature of
your commitments in life, as only you have the understanding of where this point
lies.

The second realisation is that the balance point of different people, wealthy or poor,
is functionally equal to the balance point of another. Conventional “scarcity based”
fundraising is inclined to consider donations from wealthy people as of more value
than is those of the poorer groups in society, but this just reinforces the power
structure beliefs concerning wealth and poverty. It is the funds in this balance point
that represents the ultimate disposable income. In a third world setting, the balance
point of a poor peasant earning less than $1 per day may be a few cents. For the head
of a huge multinational corporation it may represent even hundreds of thousands of
dollars. The secret here in “Empowered Fundraising” is that all balance points are
equal, and should be treated equally. $10 from a widowed pensioner may represent a
greater sacrifice than $10,000 from a millionaire.

The first task for a person involved in an Empowered Fundraising workshop is to

identify their own personal balance-point. Then, in order to experience the
“enoughness”, each person is encouraged to take a small step beyond this balance
point, to stretch them beyond their personal comfort zone. This is the primary
contribution that is necessary. Each person involved in the fundraising campaign
makes such a personal commitment of just beyond their “comfort zone”, to ensure
that they are in integrity, and are not asking others to do something they are not
prepared to do themselves. It is important to realise that anyone seeking to raise
funds by this method of “Empowered Fundraising” is not asking someone to do
something that they are not prepared to do themselves. Having estimated their
balance point people then write a personal dated I.O.U promissory note for that
amount and date it according to when those funds will be made available to the
project. These promissory notes are then collected and totalled. It is amazing how
quickly these funds total up, and projects which may at first glance appear
impossible, suddenly are realised to be do-able.

For example at an Empowered Fundraising workshop held at Schumacher College,

Dartington, in Devon, England, held in February 2007, over ₤27,000 was raised
within a few hours from a group of 17 people for projects to assist raise awareness of
the problems of Climate Change. The Western Australian Forest Alliance in April
2008 raised $13,700 from a group of seven people, in a workshop creating a project
with a budget of $100,000.

Empowered Fundraising is always a case of the exchange of a truly reciprocal value,

it is not the seeking of an unasked for gift. In giving money, the person who makes

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this donation is getting the value of participation and engagement in a powerful and
potentially life changing and rewarding project that aims to make a positive
difference to ourselves, our communities and our Earth. Not everyone has the time
they can commit to such a project. In “Empowered Fundraising”, this is the
reciprocal value that is given, and thus rather than just a donation, such a
contribution has much of the nature of an investment in the future – an investment
in generosity from which all in a community will benefit ultimately, rather than such
as normally the case, coming from a position of “scarcity” from which a single private
individual may unduly benefit, often at the expense of ourselves, our communities or
the planet.

Because of our monetary caused wounds, suffered at the hands of the ways we use
money, it is all too often the case that an individual feels that a person who declines
to make a contribution and who says “No” when asked, is in some way rejecting the
person asking by rejecting the values of the person who is asking. It is easy to
internalise this as a negative feeling. The secret to empowered fundraising is to have
the “No” have the same meaning as a “Yes”, as both are an opportunity to establish a
deeper relationship with that person, a relationship based upon value rather than
upon superficial interests held in common. In asking you are offering a genuine
invitation to become involved, and an authentic invitation is based equally upon the
power to decline as to accept. Being disappointed by the “no” response will always be
communicated in one’s body language, and this acts as a form of coercion that aims,
rather than an invitation, as a form of manipulation, to get the person to say “yes”.
This is also motivated by our “scarcity consciousness” and is a form of
disempowerment.

When given a “No”, however, the person involved should always follow up with three
further questions.

1. Could I ask “Why”? We are sincerely interested in learning of the reasons why
people either accept or decline our invitation, our offer to participate?
2. Would you like us to ensure that you are to be kept informed about how this
project is going?
3. Do you know anyone else who may be interested in such a project, to whom
you could introduce us?

Once again, there should be no obligation for anyone to answer these questions, as
any sense of obligation will ultimately backfire upon the project. A person who is
dissatisfied will tend to tell many more people than the one who is satisfied in such
circumstances.

This exchange of information about the project will keep the community
relationships alive, and may, at a future date, lead to a person who originally declines
the offer to engage with the project, to participate in some other, perhaps even more
valuable, way.

Empowered fundraising is always as a result of face to face engagement with a

person. It never proceeds on the basis of a “cold ask” of the door-knock appeal or the
telephone enquiry. This is not to say that telephoning a person is possibly important
but it should be for the purpose of arranging a face-to-face visit, or an appointment
at some mutually convenient location. On such an occasion, the relationship is

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always one in which you already have some depth of friendship, intimacy or
acquaintance. The person you phone or speak to is someone with whom you have
had some prior contact, maybe only intermittently, but you are known to them.

How does one proceed from here? Once each participating member has made their
personal balance-point contribution to the project, each participant in the
Empowered Fundraising Project is encouraged to make a list of 10 people, from
within their personal network of family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances, whom
they intend to ask within the next 3 weeks. Based upon the nature of their already
established relationship, each participant estimates where that person’s balance
point may be. This is the amount that a person will be asked for; it doesn’t matter at
this time how accurate your assessment of their balance point is, they will be free to
amend it either up or down when the approach is made.

Once this is done, the participating individual identifies the first three people they
will approach, over the next week. They then form themselves in pairs, to role-play
the nature of the request. The first task of the role play is to share with their partner,
the nature of the relationship one has with the person who will be approached, and
the nature of the place and circumstances in which the approach is going to be made.
This allows the partner to feel into the character of this person and “enrol
themselves” into identifying how this person may possibly respond. In asking such a
person it is important that the following approach be clarified.

1. Firstly, clarify that you clearly understand the nature of the project and can
explain exactly what it is and why it is important.
2. Secondly, establish as early as possible before the event that you are going to
be asking the person to become a participant, who will engage in some way
with the project.
3. Thirdly, after you have introduced the nature of the project, share with them a
little of the nature of “empowered fundraising” and the concept of the
“balance point”.
4. Then inform them that you have estimated their balance point to be $XXX,
and ask them for that contribution. Once you have asked the person it is
important that you remain silent and allow the person to respond. Don’t try
to fill up any silence that may result at this time with further justification or
explanation.
5. At this point the person asked may either accept, increase or decrease the
amount you have asked for, or decline altogether. As before, be gracious in
accepting whatever occurs at this point
6. Finish by asking the three questions identified above.
a. Could I ask “Why”? We are sincerely interested in learning of the
reasons why people either accept or decline our invitation, our offer to
participate?
b. Would you like us to ensure that you are to be kept informed about how
this project is going?
c. Do you know anyone else who may be interested in such a project, to
whom you could introduce us?
7. If the person has accepted your offer to participate, you may like to share a
little of what you have learned through the Empowered Fundraising
Workshop, and ask if they would like to participate in such a training event.

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Once person A has had a chance to “role play” such a request it is the chance for
person B to have a turn. Once each person has had a go, it is a chance to debrief
on how that felt. What were the feelings that arose with the request? How did
the person in the role of the other feel about the openness, honesty and
authenticity of the invitation to engage and participate? What could have been
improved?

The conclusion to this exercise is to build a team of support for those who are
going to be making the requests. The first member of this team is their “buddy”
with whom they have role-played. People at this time exchange names, addresses
and contact details, and let the “buddy” know by when in the next week you will
be making your first contact. One at this stage promises to engage with one’s
“buddy” at a time of mutual convenience to share how the approach went and
what was the result.

It is important at this stage to collect a copy of all of the names and amounts that
people on each list will be asked for. These figures can then be totalled as this
will, together with the first promissory notes, be the sum that will possibly result
over the next three weeks from the Empowered Fundraising approach. Once
again, it is my experience that people are amazingly surprised at just how much
money could be raised.

STAGE 2:

It is rare that a single Empowered Fundraising Workshop will be sufficient to

raise the funds identified as necessary for the project. There is also a need to
establish the kind of coaching relationships that will assist those who have made
the promises achieve the targets they have set themselves. As with the Katanning
project, much other work needs to occur behind the scenes. Is Donor Gift
Recipient status required for tax deductable contributions? Can an auspicing
body be found who will be prepared to extend and lend its credibility to the
project? How will participants in this process be kept informed of its progress?
How can the relationships that have been created by Empowered Fundraising be
maintained and extended? Those people who have volunteered to contribute in
kind, either by proving time or materials to the project, how is this to be
organised and acknowledged appropriately? Money in these circumstances is
always a means to an end and should never become an end in itself.

Albert Einstein once remarked “No problem can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it.” The current problems of our world are created
ultimately by the economic, social and political rules we have chosen for our
money system, our social interactions and our political decision making
processes. If we are to build a sustainable world for all, then this requires us
changing our awareness of these things, and even more importantly, as Gandhi
said for us to become “the change we wish to see in the world”.

But attendance in an Empowered Fundraising workshop is not enough to change

our scarcity consciousness, nor the rules of money upon which our lives are
currently based. While a person has participated in an Empowered Fundraising
workshop, the world as a whole has not altered. It is still the world that created
our original concepts about money. Once the workshop is finished, an individual

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 will start being more empowered with the concept of sufficiency and enoughness,
but this feeling will fade over time, and the old scarcity consciousness will return.
In such circumstances, an Empowered Fundraising workshop will be worse than
useless, as not only will it have not made a difference, but the individual person
who has completed such training, will finish feeling that they now know
everything about how to raise money for their project. This is a mistake. A
workshop without appropriate follow up will quickly revert back to the status quo
ante, back to the way things were before.

For this reason it is important to have correct follow-up, and to build and
maintain a structure of support and follow up for all participants and to contact
them individually as soon as possible after the gathering so as to help anchor and
reinforce the realisations they have internalised.

Also no two Empowered Fundraising workshops are ever the same. Each is
unique and each will uncover slightly different aspects of the issues that are
addressed. It has been said, that the best way to learn something at depth is to
teach it to another. Each person who comes to an Empowered Fundraising
workshop is to be encouraged to once a year undertake a retraining and to ensure
that one has both a mentor and is a mentor for another. Mentoring involves that
you are

Available. Make yourself available about 15 minutes a week. In that time,

you can help with an approach, discuss meeting roles, doing evaluations, and
answering questions.
 Respectful. One of the things that makes a mentor wonderful is how
many different people come to be involved in Empowered Fundraising. Be
respectful -and learn from- those differences. True respect demands that we
treat the other person in a respectful manner, too.
 Supportive. We support each other, but we also support the project. Be
encouraging.
 A good listener. Often simply listening, without trying to solving a
problem, is all the speaker really needs. Hearing the problem out loud can
lead to a solution. A good listener is also an active listener. Pick up clues about
the person’s concerns by noting posture, tone, breathing, or the amount of
time they spend on a subject.
 Patient. Important things can take time. You cannot hasten the
blossoming of a rose, and developmental processes all take time. This is
important.
 Confident. There is a reason this person asked for you to be their mentor.
Reflect that in your demeanour—be self assured and friendly.

An Empowered Fundraising workshop, if you are the presenter, is the best way to
learn and impart the skills for oneself. But if this is the case it is always important to
have time for an evaluation and celebration at the end. In the evaluation get people
to share the following.

1/ To what extend did the workshop meet the needs of all participants. Don’t be
afraid of negative criticism, or the fact that people may not have all of their needs met
– it gives a chance to be more on target next time.

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2/ What unintended outcomes or “Aha” moments did the person discover? Always
in such circumstances there are creative “Eureka” moments when people come to see
things in a new way, and understanding these are useful
3/ In what ways could the workshop have been improved if it had to be run again?
Collecting this information will ensure that as you run these workshops each one will
be an improvement upon the last.

Celebration is an important part of any project, and the most important part of a
celebration is the recognition and acknowledgement of what has been truly achieved.
No project is truly over until it has been properly celebrated, so make sure you leave
some time at the end for this to occur.

CONCLUSION – WHERE TO FROM HERE?

So there you have it. If you are interested in persevering with the Empowered
Fundraising approach, please contact me and let me know. I too am still a novice at
this system, although I have used it for many projects. I too am learning all the time,
just as you will be once you start. In life there are many worthwhile projects we allow
to become still-borne for lack of money. With Empowered Fundraising, lack of
money can never again be used as a reason for not persevering with any worthwhile
endeavour.

It has been stated that Wolfgang von Goethe is supposed to have said “The moment
one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur
to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events
issues from the decisions, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents
and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have
come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it. Begin it now.” Try your own Empowered Fundraising
campaign and watch the magic happen.

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1
From Lynne Twist’s web page
2
Op cit
3
Lynne Twist (2003) “The Soul of Money: Reclaiming the Wealth of Our Inner Resources” (W.W.Norton, NY)