SUBSCRIBE!

How-to Library Index

NEW BOOK - JUST RELEASED

ENTER BOOKSTORE

The Popularity Contest
Why big-time conferences choose the wrong presenters
by Ken Burnett

This year I’ve been saying no to most of the usual raft of invitations to speak at fundraising seminars and conferences around the world.

This isn’t just because I feel I’ve been there and done that (or as Yogi Berra, catcher for the New York Yankees, used to say, ‘it’s like déja vu all over again’), though I certainly feel that at times. Nor, (though this may have been the case once or twice) have I been pre-emptively declining invitations before I’ve been asked, in a calculated move to preserve my self-respect in case the organisers have finally realised that I’m past my sell-by date. 

No, though in part all of the above apply, I have to confess that much of the cause for my not playing this year is down to a growing disenchantment and disappointment with fundraising conferences and their organizers; a questioning, sometimes, of their motives for why they do what they do and a feeling that if they really were to act in their public’s interests rather than in the interests of themselves or their organizations then they should be doing some things a bit differently.

This may seem a harsh judgement, and perhaps it is. I realise I risk being labelled a grumpy old git (though I have to say the description isn’t without appeal, for me). But it has to be realized that fundraising conferences are cash cows for the associations, institutes and alliances that stage them. And we all know that when commercial interest appears, ‘doing the right thing’ has to watch out.

Let me rush to reassure anyone who might worry otherwise that I do have the highest of regard for the good people, mostly unselfish volunteers with no personal gain in mind, who put in the effort, energy and professional skills necessary to mount a good fundraising conference. I’ve been there and done that and I know well how so much is so often left to so few, how thankless the tasks can be and how onerous, stressful and time-consuming they always are.

Inevitably some of the carping that follows can be put down to sour grapes from a pillar of the old guard. The comparative youngsters that I see mounting today’s podiums seem so much slicker and more assured than we were in my day, so much better performers, with such super-duper visual aids and access to slick diagrams and smart statistics. How can an old improviser like me compete? Maybe I shouldn’t even hope to.

But that’s not my concern. What follows are.

• Nonprofits pay to send staff to conferences for good reasons

These usually don’t include having a good time, at least not high on the list. Mostly they want their people to be exposed to new ideas, stretched and challenged. They want them to work hard and learn lots, not to be comfortable and entertained. They want value for their investment, not warm glows, nice though these may be. They want exposure to critical analysis and sharp new thinking, not familiar old song and dance acts.

• Content is more important than presentation

By a long way. Yet consistently at fundraising events it is the good presentation that is marked high, while content barely registers. Good stuff from a fair to average presenter is frequently lost, but how often have you heard remarks like ‘I love listening to him. Even if you don’t learn much, he’s always great.’

When faced with a choice between substance and show, sadly evaluation forms persistently show that the froth of the superstars will win every time. It’s something seasoned speakers learn to exploit.

It might be difficult to ensure that content is the main consideration, but organizers should still aspire to it.

• Where is the challenge?

Should delegates always be comfortable, reassured and hear only what they already approve of? Or should they be stretched, encouraged to work and exposed to some things that might take them outside their comfort or complacency zones?  Should they come to sessions equipped with pens and notepads or should they sit back with folded arms thinking, ‘OK, entertain me’?

At a recent convention in Europe I was part of a group delivering a challenging session on board-building. Later, with a colleague, I presented the final, ‘inspirational’, closing plenary.  Evaluations for the board session were mixed, because some participants clearly disagreed with our calls for radical reforms while others reckoned they were doing it already, so thought they knew it all. The plenary, though, was evaluated in percentage terms in the high 90s, because it was a great show.

The issues the boards session uncovered were, I’m sure, more radical, important and valuable. But I know which one I’m most likely to be invited back to do.

• How are necessary but perhaps unappealing subjects guaranteed air time?

While a good presenter can always strive to make the mundane interesting, some subjects, like perhaps benchmarking, research methodology, or race and gender issues, will always struggle to get good ratings. Should these therefore be excluded in future? Perhaps. But evaluation scores might not be the best guide. Other criteria are clearly needed.

• What is the role of fundraising managers in this?

Fundraising leaders should hold conference organizers more accountable for the fare they dish up to their staff in ‘company’ time and at company expense. Fundraising leaders (who often don’t attend these seminars themselves) should regard them not as a jolly outing or long service reward but as a substantial investment of time and money and a chance to get just a bit ahead. They should hold their staff more accountable for which sessions they’ve attended, for what they have learned and for how they’ve otherwise benefited.

• How are vested interests kept out, or at least controlled?

Here I’m not just railing against the occasional rogue sponsor who seeks to control program content, though that is surely to be guarded against (I have seen sponsors in the U.S. allowed to spout promotional nonsense from the stage simply because they were picking up the tab).

I’m also wary of commercial interests that hijack the program from the inside, thus ensuring that they populate platforms with speakers of their choosing who promote their version of the party line.

In the worst example I know of, delegates to a major annual convention began to voice concerns as to why the same consultant seemed to be delivering the opening plenary year after year. He was good, sure, but he was also the main organizer, the driving force on the program committee. He was selecting himself each year for the top slot, and the program organizers saw nothing wrong with that.

In preparation for this article I contacted the organizers of some of the major international conferences in the fundraiser’s year, to ask for their published criteria for speaker and subject selection. All were helpful and each gave me something, but they were not what I would have hoped for. In the main they were tips for speakers on things like handouts and the need to rehearse. Mostly, the criteria that selectors might use to help prepare a sound and balanced program were thin or don’t appear to exist as such, at least publicly. So I’m forced to conclude that, as in past years, past evaluation scores remain the organizers’ principal guide.

These, I suggest, are often an ineffective guide and actually misleading at times. Basing future speaker and subject selection solely or even mainly on past evaluations may give audiences much of what they profess to want but little of what they, or the people who pay them to be there, actually need.

So what am I really trying to say here?

Just that for our major conferences clear, balanced and appropriate criteria should be prepared and published so that those who pay for delegate places can ensure that program content at these events is based on something more sophisticated and more helpful than mere past evaluations.

Of course it’s a competitive market and organizers need to get bums on seats. Still, our professional associations at least should be very careful to keep possible conflicts of interest in their place, to focus on genuinely useful content and to ensure that presentation and showmanship are considered and allowed for when they interpret the real meaning behind evaluation scores.

When George Smith ran the International Fundraising Congress in Holland he ensured standards by personally interviewing every speaker. That’s how it became, for a while at least, the best fundraising conference in the world. Such diligence takes effort, but it pays off and these cash cows are well worth that. But voluntary action never thrives when subordinated to commercial interest.

I’m sorry if this polemic offends, though not much, for as I come to the end of my fundraising career I’ve realised that it’s more important to risk offence and say what one thinks, even if that counts against you in the ratings.

But then I’m not up for re-election. In a campaign in the UK to discourage home births some years back (the opposite of current government policy) doctors ran a poster in their surgeries that proclaimed ‘the first three minutes of life are the most dangerous’.  Underneath a copy that I saw, some wag had written ‘and so are the last three’.

I think I agree with him.

Ken Burnett is author of Relationship Fundraising and other books including The Tiny Essentials of an Effective Volunteer Board (The White Lion Press Limited, London) and The Zen of Fundraising, (Jossey-Bass Inc, San Francisco.). All can be ordered from www.whitelionpress.com). He can be contacted on ken@kenburnett.com.

How-to Library Index