Excellent Advice to Fundraisers from the 1890s
Plucked from Copperbadge over on Dreamwidth:
In 1890, fresh from a successful fundraising campaign (a "subscription canvass" as they were usually known then) on behalf of the not-yet-extant University of Chicago, Frederick Gates was asked to advise a colleague on tactics. The result was a memo which acquired the title "Keep absolutely and serenely good-humored" despite that being a misread in the text. Gates outlined in nineteen points the basic structure of fundraising as we know it today; even in the information age, not a lot of what he says needs much adaptation to be relevant. And the combination of good natured faith in humanity, total sneakiness, and mild cynicism never fails to amuse me.
Various versions of this can be found online, but this one comes from the archives of the University of Chicago, who ought to know.
The following memorandum was written by Mr. Frederick Gates on May 26, 1890. As secretary of the American Baptist Education Society, Mr. Gates was one of the most important figures in the early history of the University of Chicago. With William Rainey Harper and Thomas W. Goodspeed, he was instrumental in calling the attention of Mr. Rockefeller to the opportunity for a great university in Chicago. He and Dr. Goodspeed managed the canvass for $400,000, which matched Mr. Rockefeller's initial offer of $600,000. Later, Dr. Gates became Mr. Rockefeller's charitable agent.
Soon after Dr. Goodspeed and Mr. Gates completed the canvass for $400,000, a friend of Mr. Gates having a somewhat similar canvass to make in a distant city invited suggestions as to methods of canvass or rules of procedure which the experiences of Dr. Goodspeed and Mr. Gates found useful. Mr. Gates reproduces these rules here as furnishing a detailed picture of the daily wrestling of two canvassers with their work.
(1) Dress well. Put on your best clothes and let them be costly. Let your linen be immaculate. See that your boots are polished, and also that your hands are kept clean and your hair well brushed, not only in the morning, but kept so throughout the rough and tumble of the day. To this end, it would be necessary to go into hotels occasionally, consult the bootblack, the lavatory and brush up. This is no trifling thing. People size up one's importance and dignity very largely by his personal appearance and the size of their gifts if not indeed any gift at all will depend not a little on their estimation of the importance and dignity of the canvassers. People are judged by these apparent trifles of personal appearance far more than is often supposed, and the streets of Chicago soil a person hourly.
(2) Keep absolutely serene and good humored. Mark, I say, good humored, not gay. Enter the room in genial and radiant good nature and allow no lapse from this for an instant under any provocation. At times and perhaps when you least expect it, you will have justification for irritation, but under no circumstances betray the least suspicion of irritation. Be armored habitually against it.
(3) Provide yourself with an elegant personal card and put on that card nothing whatever but just your name. Cut off all your titles and do not let the card indicate even your business. For you must keep your work so advertised through the daily press, through intercourse with reporters, through news items communicated from time to time, that every man in town will know you and your business so soon as he sees your card. Many business men receive only through cards sent in to their private offices.
(4) On entering, go straight to your subject without palaver; ask if a few minutes can be spared for you and do not press your work without consent but do not allow the impression of the first sixty seconds to be that you are in for a long talk. On the contrary in various indirect ways, awaken the happy anticipation that your stay will be brief without being abrupt. This you can do by going straight to the point at once. If you find your man busy and preoccupied do not press the matter but with the utmost cheer and good nature say you will call again at a more convenient time. With care you can do this so tactfully that he will perceive that you really understand his preoccupation, sympathize with it and do really respect it.
(5) I said in my second point that you must keep good natured. I now wish to say that you must keep your victim, if I may so call him, also good natured and this throughout. Constantly endeavor to make the interview continuously pleasant for him. If you find him embarrassed at any point relieve that embarrassment. For illustration: He may be embarrassed by the smallness of the amount which he can give. The best class of men often are. Reassure him on this if you find he needs it and on any other point of embarrassment.
(6) If you find him big with gift, do not rush him too eagerly to the birth. Let him take his time with genial encouragement. Make him feel that he is making the gift, not that it is being taken from him with violence.
(7) Appeal only to the noblest motives. His own mind will suggest to him all the more selfish ones, but he will not wish you to suppose that he has thought of these. He will wish you to believe; he will wish himself to believe that he is giving only from the highest motive.
(8) I have hinted in another connection that you should keep your enterprise well exploited to the public through the daily press. Never let a week pass without some public notice of your work. This will be our most distasteful duty, but it will become less so after you know the ropes. Your name should always appear in connection with your work. You must stand before the public as a public man and the distinct representative of your cause. You will find this to be of the highest importance in your private daily canvass. I do not mean that you need to secure any newspaper praise whatever, but you must secure such a place in the public eye that private business men will feel honored by having you call upon them and be well informed regarding your cause and regarding you as its exponent when their eyes meet your visiting card.
(9) It is of the highest importance that you have a companion in your canvass. In all respects on a par with yourself. That you and your companion know each other intimately. That you study team work. So that you do not collide but by study of your man, know which is to take the ball and which is to lead in the principal play. Your victim will, himself, unconsciously and instinctively decide with which of the two he prefers to talk. Let him make his choice. Two is a majority over the one whom you are seeking to gain. TWo is five times as good as one from every point of view. There is wisdom underlying Christ's sending forth his disciples not single, but in pairs.
(10) Let the victim talk freely, especially in the earlier part of the interview. While he is thus revealing himself, he is giving you the opportunity to study him and all his peculiarities. By the time he is through you will be prepared, if you are alert, with your plan of successful attack. Never argue with a man; never contradict him. Search out the true points in his views or excuses and cordially acknowledge them; seek in the main to agree with him and where necessary to combat him do so only by way of slight modification of his views. Never oppose anything which he says, that you are not absolutely bound to oppose by the very essential nature of your mission. In all else yield. If your man is talkative, let him talk, talk, talk, give your fish line and listen with the deepest interest to every syllable.
(11) If he is taciturn, do not try to make him talk but keep your own mill going while you watch his face. Never permit any embarrassing silences.
(12) Withdraw with cordiality when beaten. That is to say: When you fail to get your subscription at the time, which will be four times out of five, from our experience. He will watch closely in what temper you withdraw, but make him feel that the interview has been a distinctly pleasurable one to you. Even if he declines to give, make him, if possible, a friend of the college for all time.
(13) But though he declined, do not regard or let him regard the matter as closed. You will be near him again in a few days and things may then look different to him. Anyhow you have enjoyed the call and would like to call again.
Dr. Goodspeed and myself finally secured some $20,000 in Chicago from men who had declined to give so often and so positively that we had ceased to have the slightest hope of securing a dollar from the whole bunch. It is a good plan never to allow a man to give a final no or to commit himself in words definitely and finally against your cause. If you see it coming, if it is evident that he is making no progress, or progress backward, excuse yourself before the fatal word has come out and withdraw so as to give you an excuse for coming again.
(14) From the beginning, watch for signs of weariness or impatience. Cultivate the instinct of knowing you have done all you can do for that time and at that point cut off the interview and go.
(15) Aim so to conduct a canvass as to raise up a permanent constituency for the cause. Try to make every man you canvass a friend of yourself and of the college whether he gives or not. Aim to make your visit so pleasurable, if possible, that your victim will be distinctly glad to have such pleasing gentlemen call upon him again.
(16) Never tell a man how much you think he ought to give. Do not do it even if he asks you as occasionally a man will. Instead of answering his question, you can say to him you will be glad to tell him what others are giving, if he desires to know, but that you cannot presume to name any figure for himself. Indeed you assure him that you do not presume to know that he should give anything, least of all, how much.
(17) Accordingly, seldom try to get the last cent possible. Never exhibit the least disappointment in the smallness of a man's figure and express yourself with the greatest cordiality and gratitude even if you are secretly disappointed in the smallness of the gift. I need not say never permit your victim to suspect it even if you are disappointed.
(18) Before entering on your canvas, meditate long on the downright merits of the question and do not ask a man for a dollar until you are in the depths of your soul satisfied that, viewed from the highest motives, your cause fully justifies all the gifts and the sacrifices you ask. Allow nothing to induce you to undertake a canvass that does not possess you though and through.
(19) Work continuously, rapidly, and at a hot pace. If your work flags you are gone. Never allow in yourself the smallest relaxation of the nervous tension, and if not in yourself, so also not in your friends or the public until your work is done. Canvass every day and all day, going rapidly from man to man, rain or shine. Read nothing, write of nothing, think of nothing, so long as your canvass continues, but the canvass. Speak publicly on that subject only, bringing every ounce of vital energy, every moment of waking time, into the service of the canvass. Regard every suggestion involving interruption, delay, or postponement as treason. Whatever success we achieve, or in my observation, others have achieved under similar circumstances, has been due mainly to the energy with which the subscription once undertaken has continued.
This rapidity of movement keeps oneself in tension to do his best work. It brings the success, small though it may be, that tends in the aggregate to keep up courage. It keeps your work before your friends and the public. It tends to give it a gradually increased momentum. It gives you something of advance to report each day or each week. Gradually the work gathers volume, force, breadth, momentum until at least it becomes irresistible and rushes on to a successful culmination. This insistent and persistent energy is the easiest road, as well as the shortest and leads straight to the goal.
Finally, if one adopts these rules and others like them, which will suggest themselves, one will be likely to find, which we found in our Chicago canvass and indeed which I learned in the canvass in behalf of the Pillsbury Academy in Minnesota, before I entered on the work in Chicago, namely, the great majority of men -- ninety-nine out of every hundred -- are in fact pleased and secretly complimented to be courteously and respectfully invited to contribute to a great cause by the men having that cause in charge. In Chicago Dr. Goodspeed and I invited many, many hundreds of men, the larger number of these several times over, before our canvass was concluded. I scarcely can recall in the whole experience two instances in which we were not courteously and graciously received.
In 1890, fresh from a successful fundraising campaign (a "subscription canvass" as they were usually known then) on behalf of the not-yet-extant University of Chicago, Frederick Gates was asked to advise a colleague on tactics. The result was a memo which acquired the title "Keep absolutely and serenely good-humored" despite that being a misread in the text. Gates outlined in nineteen points the basic structure of fundraising as we know it today; even in the information age, not a lot of what he says needs much adaptation to be relevant. And the combination of good natured faith in humanity, total sneakiness, and mild cynicism never fails to amuse me.
Various versions of this can be found online, but this one comes from the archives of the University of Chicago, who ought to know.
The following memorandum was written by Mr. Frederick Gates on May 26, 1890. As secretary of the American Baptist Education Society, Mr. Gates was one of the most important figures in the early history of the University of Chicago. With William Rainey Harper and Thomas W. Goodspeed, he was instrumental in calling the attention of Mr. Rockefeller to the opportunity for a great university in Chicago. He and Dr. Goodspeed managed the canvass for $400,000, which matched Mr. Rockefeller's initial offer of $600,000. Later, Dr. Gates became Mr. Rockefeller's charitable agent.
Soon after Dr. Goodspeed and Mr. Gates completed the canvass for $400,000, a friend of Mr. Gates having a somewhat similar canvass to make in a distant city invited suggestions as to methods of canvass or rules of procedure which the experiences of Dr. Goodspeed and Mr. Gates found useful. Mr. Gates reproduces these rules here as furnishing a detailed picture of the daily wrestling of two canvassers with their work.
(1) Dress well. Put on your best clothes and let them be costly. Let your linen be immaculate. See that your boots are polished, and also that your hands are kept clean and your hair well brushed, not only in the morning, but kept so throughout the rough and tumble of the day. To this end, it would be necessary to go into hotels occasionally, consult the bootblack, the lavatory and brush up. This is no trifling thing. People size up one's importance and dignity very largely by his personal appearance and the size of their gifts if not indeed any gift at all will depend not a little on their estimation of the importance and dignity of the canvassers. People are judged by these apparent trifles of personal appearance far more than is often supposed, and the streets of Chicago soil a person hourly.
(2) Keep absolutely serene and good humored. Mark, I say, good humored, not gay. Enter the room in genial and radiant good nature and allow no lapse from this for an instant under any provocation. At times and perhaps when you least expect it, you will have justification for irritation, but under no circumstances betray the least suspicion of irritation. Be armored habitually against it.
(3) Provide yourself with an elegant personal card and put on that card nothing whatever but just your name. Cut off all your titles and do not let the card indicate even your business. For you must keep your work so advertised through the daily press, through intercourse with reporters, through news items communicated from time to time, that every man in town will know you and your business so soon as he sees your card. Many business men receive only through cards sent in to their private offices.
(4) On entering, go straight to your subject without palaver; ask if a few minutes can be spared for you and do not press your work without consent but do not allow the impression of the first sixty seconds to be that you are in for a long talk. On the contrary in various indirect ways, awaken the happy anticipation that your stay will be brief without being abrupt. This you can do by going straight to the point at once. If you find your man busy and preoccupied do not press the matter but with the utmost cheer and good nature say you will call again at a more convenient time. With care you can do this so tactfully that he will perceive that you really understand his preoccupation, sympathize with it and do really respect it.
(5) I said in my second point that you must keep good natured. I now wish to say that you must keep your victim, if I may so call him, also good natured and this throughout. Constantly endeavor to make the interview continuously pleasant for him. If you find him embarrassed at any point relieve that embarrassment. For illustration: He may be embarrassed by the smallness of the amount which he can give. The best class of men often are. Reassure him on this if you find he needs it and on any other point of embarrassment.
(6) If you find him big with gift, do not rush him too eagerly to the birth. Let him take his time with genial encouragement. Make him feel that he is making the gift, not that it is being taken from him with violence.
(7) Appeal only to the noblest motives. His own mind will suggest to him all the more selfish ones, but he will not wish you to suppose that he has thought of these. He will wish you to believe; he will wish himself to believe that he is giving only from the highest motive.
(8) I have hinted in another connection that you should keep your enterprise well exploited to the public through the daily press. Never let a week pass without some public notice of your work. This will be our most distasteful duty, but it will become less so after you know the ropes. Your name should always appear in connection with your work. You must stand before the public as a public man and the distinct representative of your cause. You will find this to be of the highest importance in your private daily canvass. I do not mean that you need to secure any newspaper praise whatever, but you must secure such a place in the public eye that private business men will feel honored by having you call upon them and be well informed regarding your cause and regarding you as its exponent when their eyes meet your visiting card.
(9) It is of the highest importance that you have a companion in your canvass. In all respects on a par with yourself. That you and your companion know each other intimately. That you study team work. So that you do not collide but by study of your man, know which is to take the ball and which is to lead in the principal play. Your victim will, himself, unconsciously and instinctively decide with which of the two he prefers to talk. Let him make his choice. Two is a majority over the one whom you are seeking to gain. TWo is five times as good as one from every point of view. There is wisdom underlying Christ's sending forth his disciples not single, but in pairs.
(10) Let the victim talk freely, especially in the earlier part of the interview. While he is thus revealing himself, he is giving you the opportunity to study him and all his peculiarities. By the time he is through you will be prepared, if you are alert, with your plan of successful attack. Never argue with a man; never contradict him. Search out the true points in his views or excuses and cordially acknowledge them; seek in the main to agree with him and where necessary to combat him do so only by way of slight modification of his views. Never oppose anything which he says, that you are not absolutely bound to oppose by the very essential nature of your mission. In all else yield. If your man is talkative, let him talk, talk, talk, give your fish line and listen with the deepest interest to every syllable.
(11) If he is taciturn, do not try to make him talk but keep your own mill going while you watch his face. Never permit any embarrassing silences.
(12) Withdraw with cordiality when beaten. That is to say: When you fail to get your subscription at the time, which will be four times out of five, from our experience. He will watch closely in what temper you withdraw, but make him feel that the interview has been a distinctly pleasurable one to you. Even if he declines to give, make him, if possible, a friend of the college for all time.
(13) But though he declined, do not regard or let him regard the matter as closed. You will be near him again in a few days and things may then look different to him. Anyhow you have enjoyed the call and would like to call again.
Dr. Goodspeed and myself finally secured some $20,000 in Chicago from men who had declined to give so often and so positively that we had ceased to have the slightest hope of securing a dollar from the whole bunch. It is a good plan never to allow a man to give a final no or to commit himself in words definitely and finally against your cause. If you see it coming, if it is evident that he is making no progress, or progress backward, excuse yourself before the fatal word has come out and withdraw so as to give you an excuse for coming again.
(14) From the beginning, watch for signs of weariness or impatience. Cultivate the instinct of knowing you have done all you can do for that time and at that point cut off the interview and go.
(15) Aim so to conduct a canvass as to raise up a permanent constituency for the cause. Try to make every man you canvass a friend of yourself and of the college whether he gives or not. Aim to make your visit so pleasurable, if possible, that your victim will be distinctly glad to have such pleasing gentlemen call upon him again.
(16) Never tell a man how much you think he ought to give. Do not do it even if he asks you as occasionally a man will. Instead of answering his question, you can say to him you will be glad to tell him what others are giving, if he desires to know, but that you cannot presume to name any figure for himself. Indeed you assure him that you do not presume to know that he should give anything, least of all, how much.
(17) Accordingly, seldom try to get the last cent possible. Never exhibit the least disappointment in the smallness of a man's figure and express yourself with the greatest cordiality and gratitude even if you are secretly disappointed in the smallness of the gift. I need not say never permit your victim to suspect it even if you are disappointed.
(18) Before entering on your canvas, meditate long on the downright merits of the question and do not ask a man for a dollar until you are in the depths of your soul satisfied that, viewed from the highest motives, your cause fully justifies all the gifts and the sacrifices you ask. Allow nothing to induce you to undertake a canvass that does not possess you though and through.
(19) Work continuously, rapidly, and at a hot pace. If your work flags you are gone. Never allow in yourself the smallest relaxation of the nervous tension, and if not in yourself, so also not in your friends or the public until your work is done. Canvass every day and all day, going rapidly from man to man, rain or shine. Read nothing, write of nothing, think of nothing, so long as your canvass continues, but the canvass. Speak publicly on that subject only, bringing every ounce of vital energy, every moment of waking time, into the service of the canvass. Regard every suggestion involving interruption, delay, or postponement as treason. Whatever success we achieve, or in my observation, others have achieved under similar circumstances, has been due mainly to the energy with which the subscription once undertaken has continued.
This rapidity of movement keeps oneself in tension to do his best work. It brings the success, small though it may be, that tends in the aggregate to keep up courage. It keeps your work before your friends and the public. It tends to give it a gradually increased momentum. It gives you something of advance to report each day or each week. Gradually the work gathers volume, force, breadth, momentum until at least it becomes irresistible and rushes on to a successful culmination. This insistent and persistent energy is the easiest road, as well as the shortest and leads straight to the goal.
Finally, if one adopts these rules and others like them, which will suggest themselves, one will be likely to find, which we found in our Chicago canvass and indeed which I learned in the canvass in behalf of the Pillsbury Academy in Minnesota, before I entered on the work in Chicago, namely, the great majority of men -- ninety-nine out of every hundred -- are in fact pleased and secretly complimented to be courteously and respectfully invited to contribute to a great cause by the men having that cause in charge. In Chicago Dr. Goodspeed and I invited many, many hundreds of men, the larger number of these several times over, before our canvass was concluded. I scarcely can recall in the whole experience two instances in which we were not courteously and graciously received.