The Vicarious Line

For the last two years I have run an ice climbing festival in the Mount Washington Valley. It is a bit on an anomaly in my work as a nonprofit consultant. The pay is minimal and pulling off an event of this scale so it feels seamless to participants takes a ton of work.

This year is the 19^th Mount Washington Valley Ice Fest, the first weekend in February hundreds of men and women will make the pilgrimage to The Mount Washington Valley to experience the magic of the place I call home. Some of these pilgrims come to learn to climb ice, some to summit Mount Washington, others, to spend a day mixed climbing with local legends like Mark Synnott and Kevin Mahoney or to test their skill on classic lines like Dracula, Drop Line and Great Madness.

In the background, the Sirens of Ice Fest (the crew of lovely ladies who work on this event) will watch six months of work come together, sleeping a few hours here and there, living on Frontside Grind coffee and the generous Flatbread pizzas our friends drop off at IME.

We won’t climb a single pitch of ice the entire weekend and we will be happy for it. Instead we will make sure waivers are signed, clients get to demo the gear they are excited about, guides are well fed and caffeinated, slideshows run smoothly and the keg is tapped and food is on the table when the gang returns from a day our playing.

When clients and others just out for the day on their own walk through the door of IME smiling from ear to ear, laughing with friends, and recanting epic moments from their day we know our job is done. In that moment it doesn’t matter if they climbed Willy’s Slide, Standard Route or tested their skill on Unemployment Line and it doesn’t matter that we haven’t swung a tool all weekend - their send is ours too.

We exchange high fives, share tips about gear, and provide encouragement to do it all again tomorrow.

External Hardrives and Fundraising Etiquette

About 20% of my professional time is devoted to prospecting. When I am not working billable hours, engaging in professional development or straightening out administrative details in the office, I am researching ways to develop and improve my business model.

This evening is dedicated to organizing files with samples of projects from each of my areas of experience so I have them on hand when new clients ask for them. I was only going to pull together a few recent samples. Like all good intentions when you are a little OCD, once I started culling the archives I couldn't stop, I search new laptop, my old laptop and then I hit the mothership.

If our house was on fire I'd save my husband, the dog and the mothership. I realized a few things going through files dating back to 2005.

1) I love what I do for work and always have. The warmth I felt reminiscing about past projects is indescribable.

2) I am fairly certain I was born taking visionary ideas and breakdown them down into excel spreadsheet and actionable lists.

In all of these files I came across several transition documents created when I left my job in Portland and moved to New Hampshire. During this transition I remember the new hire joking with me, begging me to write a book about fundraising etiquette.

The truth is...when I learned about fundraising etiquette I didn't know that is what I was learning. Why? The expert who taught me lived his values, they were more then just work.
I haven't written a book in case you are wondering, maybe one day. Until then here are some things I learned along the way because a brilliant, charismatic visionary who hated organizing information into excel sheets took a chance on young women who loved taking his scraps of paper and scribbled on napkins and turning them into databases.

Appreciation doesn’t mean spending a lot of money.

Organizational culture is what people connect to, from children to the oldest donors they love what the organization is about. So my philosophy is do something to thank people that which fits the your organization's culture. Do not that try to match the dollar amount they have given.

Ex: Flowers are great, but they are dead and most often they are exotic, so they have traveled a great distance to get here at the expense of the environment and the consumer. Send bulbs or a small plant, something that will grow and continue to remind the recipient of their relationship with the organizaiton.

Ex: A major donors makes a significant gift to the organization and you want to take them out to dinner to thank them. You don’t need to take them to Fore Street, all of our major donors can take themselves to Fore Street, they didn’t donate $ to see it blow on dinner and wine. Take them somewhere unusual, offer them a dinning experience they might not have thought of….have you ever eaten sushi? African food?

When to Pay.

One of my favorite questions, here goes my formal/informal strategy.

If you are asking a volunteer, donor, committee member etc to the meeting because they are being groomed to donate, $, time or services. Always offer to pay.

If the meeting is with someone, board member, long time volunteer who you are meeting with regularly.

• Offer to pay the first time and anytime after if the meeting is about asking them to increase their efforts or up there commitment.

• Otherwise my thought is the organization pays the first time and then either split or take them up on their off to pay once or twice.

You are invited to a meeting with a constituent (s). Bring $, it is better to be safe then sorry.

• If you are in a one on one meeting, offer to cover yourself.
• If they pay and you want to contribute
• Offer to cover the ti

In a group situation, bring cash. Offer to cover yourself. There is no reason why you should pick up the whole bill if you didn’t call the meeting.

I always try to keep a mental log of people who I meet with regularly and work on an equitable ratio of organization buys/they buy. I also try to schedule these meetings at off times after the first few, no one needs to be spending a ton of eating out. If you have had a dinner or lunch meeting, how about breakfast or meeting for tea/coffee or a drink.

Alcohol at Events and Consumption

The saying goes everything in moderation, though I have a personal rule never to drink a large events where I am in charge.

When I plan a gathering of adults I generally ensure there is wine (typically not beer b/c it is messy, smelly and makes a lot of trash). My feeling is people are gathering after work after a long day and really appreciate the chance to unwind. Again in moderation, do the math on the number of people coming to the gathering, make sure you have enough for a glass or two a person and nothing more.

Same holds true when holding a gathering at a bar or restaurant, the organization should consider covering glass of wine for everyone….then you are on your own.

If you are having gathering with underage folks, even staff, do yourself and the organization a favor no drinking.

Special Event Detox

This year for the first time in my career I contracted to manage an event for a business. The vision for the event emphasized community, creating opportunity for peak participant experiences and there was even auction beneficiary built into the weekend festivities.

I saw the opportunity to cross train my professional skills; build relationships and explore parallel professional possibilities should I decided to jump ship from the public and nonprofit sectors.

Logistics are logistics so I entered the planning undaunted by this piece.

Securing sponsors proved less challenging then I imagine. The demands of marketing purse string holders are reasonable and formulaic. Consider and generate information on the following and you will likely get support - prove your target demographic and their products are the same; address how participants will interact with their brand and finally bring creativity to the table and share opportunities unique to your event which will show case the sponsor.

This year this event earned more in sponsorship then prior years. Numbers of day participants grew thanks to targeted sign up discounts and social media engagement. Evening activities were well publicized and their numbers soared too.

So why in the wake of this success do I feel disenchanted and uneasy?

Driving to meet another client this morning I imagined myself the subject of a New Yorker cartoon. In the image, two doctors were wringing me out like a bloated washcloth. The spray from their efforts included beer koozies, window decals, keg cups and sundry other plastic give aways (read the made in china, fun for a night toys which fill rural landfills).

Starting to see the challenge?

Don't get me wrong the event was also a blast, the sponsors a delight and the clients talked all weekend about the impact of their experience. Still I can't shake the feeling this way of building community may not be for me.

Time to survey folks and record debriefs, maybe in the feedback I'll find a diamond that sways my vote the other way. For now I am pleased about the success and looking forward to spending the next few weeks working on a groupsite to facilitate social capital building in a rural community and facilitating the mapping of fundraising initiatives to support a community building program for youth facing the loss of a parent to cancer.