What Smart Fundraisers Can Learn from Duke Basketball

Since Duke has just won the national NCAA championship, it’s time to talk about the famous rivalry between UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke.

What can smart fundraisers learn from a famous college basketball rivalry?

I STARTED my fundraising career at Duke. BUT – I attended Carolina and have two degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill (Tar Heel Blue Heaven), just 15 miles down the road from Duke.

As a Duke fundraiser, I had a bit of a tough time during basketball season cheering for Duke – as a loyal Carolina graduate! But I mustered up my enthusiasm, even – as a loyal Tar Heel – if my heart wasn’t completely in it!

I learned much of what I know about fundraising at Duke.

Even back then, they were a sophisticated fundraising machine. I was a Major Gifts Officer; I had a goal and I knew what my job was.

And I was just amazed at the attitude of the fundraisers at Duke:

“We are SO GREAT that you are lucky to give us money! . . . We are just terrific! . . . We are where it’s happening! . . . . You need to be on board with Duke because we are the BEST and we are going places.

No kidding. There was this sort of “go go” attitude where nothing could stop them and they were all winners.

Wow.

Then I went over to Carolina after two years in this positive, upbeat, big-time atmosphere. I was recruited to head up the fundraising program at the Kenan Flagler Business School at Chapel Hill.

I was so surprised to see the attitude about fundraising at Carolina. It was verrrry low key – “old South” gentility. Not brash “new money.” It was an attitude I was very familiar with – having grown up in the South.

See here in the South, you don’t want anybody to know how smart you are.

You downplay everything. You never brag. You are “nice.”

Think Gregory Peck in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The old rumpled searsucker suit. Or if you are old enough, thing Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC) at the historic Watergate hearings in 1970. They were both brilliant men but they cloaked their abilities in a slower, southern style that often misled people to think they were not so smart.

Anyway, which university do you think raised the most money? DUKE of course!

Here’s the lesson for smart fundraisers: People want to give to a “go -go” organization. They want to be part of a wildly successful enterprise run by smart capable people!

You have to TELL people what a terrific job you are doing. You have to SHARE success stories.

Remember donors will never give to a sinking ship. But they will give to a ship that has its sails unfurled heading off to conquer new worlds.

(By the way, Carolina quickly wised up and changed its fundraising approach!)

Sign up for my weekly newsletter and get your FREE seminar
"Asking for Gifts: How to Never, Ever Get Turned Down".