Flat Hats and Flowers

It was a Thursday night at about 7:00 p.m. when my husband arrived at the Marion General Hospital Emergency Room. It wasn’t a life-threatening event, but our 2-year-old son, at the time, fell in the slippery bathtub and hit his chin just right. Just right means a small gash that left the bathroom looking like a crime scene on CSI Las Vegas. As a police officer, my husband works well under pressure, so he handled the blood, stitches, and tears like a champ. He even managed to clean up the mess, give the boys a bedtime snack, and tuck them in—all before I made it home for the night. You see, I didn’t even hear about all the ‘excitement’ until I arrived home at about 10:30.  I was at my night class, just as I had been every Thursday night for the past two years. It wasn’t easy getting a Master’s Degree when my kids were only 2 and 5--having a superhero husband helped.

Let’s be realistic, life is messy…glitter messy. And frequently (read: all the time) when I was working full-time and completing my second degree, my house resembled the before picture on any home improvement show. True, there was one time I panicked when I realized that my kids knew the theme song to the show, Cops… ♪♫♯ ”Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” ♪♫♯  But, overall, they were happy, healthy, and loved. They bonded with Daddy on Guy’s Night and gained an appreciation for learning as they watched me study, write papers, and create presentations. In fact, when our youngest son was in middle school, he even crafted a PowerPoint presentation as a method to persuade us to allow him to play Rated M (Mature) video games. Every kid creates PowerPoints for his parents, right? He was organized and outlined one convincing point on each slide. Alas, it didn’t work. We essentially told him he could play M games when he was, well, M. The point is, our kids gained a true appreciation for working hard, sacrificing for the greater good, and being brave, even when you’re not at the ER when your son’s getting stitches. 

I think about those days this time of year when many of our friends and family members don those quirky-looking flat hats and walk across the stage to grab that hard-earned diploma. Some degrees required years. Most required caffeine. Some degrees required loans. Most required grit. All required late nights, lots of papers, and a support system to keep them from quitting when they didn’t think it was possible to read another chapter or understand the foreign language known as Econ.

It’s like the Snicker’s campaign that asked, “Who are you when you’re hungry?”  Then, you get to choose the Snicker Bar that best describes you! None of them are very flattering. But, sometimes when you’re hangry (hungry + angry), you need something, or someone, to talk you off the ledge so you can regain your Zen again. Every student who walks across the stage to receive a diploma had that!

The dedication to persist until that diploma is hanging on the wall is admirable. It’s also why the Community Foundation has so many donors who contribute to educational attainment efforts. They know that education impacts the overall quality of life for a person, a family, and a community. And they also know that it’s hard—so every bit of financial aid, every scholarship, every note of support, and every supporter counts. If you don’t like where your future or the future of your community is headed, do something about it. As someone smarter than me once said, “It’s not enough to hate the weeds. You must love the flowers.”

That’s why we’re in the nonprofit business isn’t it? We hate those darn weeds. But we love to stop and smell those roses. The point here is, controlling the weeds doesn’t have to stifle the creativity of the flowers. If we're brave enough, we can have the best of both worlds. 

In business, and yes nonprofits are businesses (with missions), our Boards looks closely at those Marketing line items in our budgets. Compare that line item to the donations that are coming in and you can easily see what you’re doing well and what requires your attention. As much as we love the facts that those left brain numbers point out, they do tell a story that you need to hear in order to make good choices.

I love it that my CFO knows that every color copy costs 6 cents. I love it that we can calculate exactly how much a direct mail piece costs per batch. And I love that we can compare the amount raised with the amount spent every year. It’s a line item that I’m proud to prove the Return On Investment. If the right brain says we must spend some money in a marketing line item, that’s fine; but the left brain says that we must prove that there was an ROI—and that’s also fine. As Will Guidara says in Unreasonable Hospitality, “Control doesn’t have to stifle creativity”…but sometimes it does.

You already know this. Should you buy the gold address labels? Should you print anything in color? Can you buy a donor a gift? If so, how much is too much? The left brain is always going to be calculating the expense of everything—that’s what those left brainers do—and we’re thankful to have them on our teams and Board to track that kind of thing. But as Guidara says, “at what point do you need to trade some control in favor of trusting the people on the ground, the people who are connecting in real time with your team and your customers”? Boom! That’s the $64,000 question!

Just as there needs to be a balance in the left brain method and the right brain moxie of every communication you send out to your donors, there is left brain corporate smart and right brain client smart. And the best solution is typically somewhere in the middle of those two. That’s where The Rule of 95/5 that I recently wrote about, Grace Notes, comes in. You can be 95% frugal, counting down every dime, and 5% foolish, counting on donor delight. It’s all about balance.

So, the moral of this story is this:  Just as a graduation is a beautiful ceremony marking the commencement of the next chapter, the creativity found on those decorative flat hats makes it memorable. You can have both. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s do-able. But you just might need to budget a little bit extra for some Snickers. They’re helpful for those moments when you needed to be talked off the left brain ledge until you regain your right brain Zen—a friend taught me that. 😉

All My Best,

Dawn
[email protected]
dawn brown creative, llc.