Hello. I’m Jane Pfeiffer, founder and president of Fieldtrip, and we’re a team of passionate and creative people that lead non-profits through a very daunting journey of solving for IDKs. IDKs are costly, expensive, and also invisible. They don’t show up on the balance sheet. They don’t show up at the agenda for the board of directors meetings. “IDKs” are “I don’t knows.” And they exist in the minds of everybody that isn’t intimately close with your organization. It’s the thoughts like “I don’t know you. I don’t know if you can help me. I don’t know if I can help you. I don’t know if this problem can be solved” or “I didn’t know you were still there.” And until we solve some of those issues or understand how to break through that, it’s an invisible and expensive barrier. So imagine the amount of human effort and time that your organization is spending trying to engage people when perhaps they don’t believe that the social condition you’re working on can be solved. Why would they care if they don’t have that belief? Historically, nonprofits tend to focus on this large scale magnitude of the issue, which makes it even more daunting for an individual. And that individual being an individual consumer, or a person, or even a corporate sponsor, it’s not until they have some type of belief that they will willingly invest. So I don’t pretend that these issues are simple or that there’s an off the shelf solution. But what I mean is when you are facing a brick wall of opposition or a brick wall of, I don’t know, flip the narrative as if that’s what’s in the mind of the people that you’re speaking with. And instead of leading with your passion and hoping that’s enough to convince them, make a one to one connection. Focus on the singular stories, the moments of triumph that show that a small donation or a small act or just helping one person can have a ripple effect of positive change by focusing on that smaller piece of a global problem, it becomes more tangible, more possible, and easier for the individuals we need to convince to invest in the mission that you so passionately believe in. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week.
