Vuja De!

Dé·jà vu. It’s that feeling you get when you’ve already experienced the present situation. Like when you’ve finally finished the dishes, walk into another room for a moment, and then step back into the kitchen only to find a plate and a spoon in the sink. I swear I just did the dishes, yet here we are again. You feel me?

This type of dé·jà vu moment happened to me all the time when my kids were little. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t still happen sans children living at home. #husband  In fact, I’d often scream out in frustration, “Stop undoing my doneness!” When I uttered those words, they knew momma wasn’t happy. And then my husband goes and creates a song with the same title and now it’s hard to say that phrase without laughing. But sometimes when I get that dé·jà vu feeling, I’ll start singing the song. They all know what I mean.

Then I recently heard the amazing Adam Grant do a Ted Talk where he introduced a similar, yet new, concept to me: Vuja de. He defines this as ‘when you experience something new but it feels like you’ve experience it before.’ For example, when ‘you look at something familiar with a fresh perspective—gaining new insights into old problems.’

I should start out by saying that Adam Grant is flipping brilliant, so I’m not surprised that he came up with this idea. And it got me to thinking about nonprofit fundraising and marketing and communication with your donors by using your left brain marketing methods and your right brain marketing moxie. There’s a lot of application here.

Left Brain Marketing Methods:  The most left brain thing we do as marketers and fundraisers is to determine who we are going to persuade to donate to our organizations. We go back to our donor lists and databases and choices are made or they aren’t. Let’s talk about why we keep using the same data over and over without getting different results.

Right Brain Marketing Moxie:  We often think of the best marketers as being the most original. While it is true that creativity is a primary ingredient here, you still have to take your ideas and execute them—that takes boldness. But Grant says that ‘the hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists.’ Looking through the vuja de lens is where the magic of moxie is found.

So, I declare today backwards day as we explore vuja de!

Left Brain Marketing Moxie:  It happens all the time. Donations are flat. You’re not hitting your target numbers. The stock marketing goes all 2008 on us in 2022. Heck, I’m scared to even open my 401k statement right now.

Almost every time this happens, we look at our message. How can we change the message? Why didn’t they respond to the last message? Did we send the message at the right time? Was the message clear? Over and over again, we blame the message and how it fell flat. It truly is a dé·jà vu moment.

The problem here is that we never flip the script and take Grant’s advice of using the vuja de lens. With your amazing left brain, you need to look at your old familiar data when with a new perspective. Imagine putting your prescription database glasses on for the first time and seeing your donor data in a way you’ve never seen it before. For example:

1. Looking at donors who haven’t contributed in more than 5 years.
2. Looking at donors who have donated every year for decades.
3. Looking at donors who contribute more than three times annually, showing donor loyalty.
4. Looking at past board members who stopped donating after they moved away.
5. Looking at wealthy donors who have never given after years of stewardship.
6. Looking at professional advisors who don’t specialize in clients making financial decisions.
7. Looking at donors who only gave once, in memory of a loved one, per the obituary.
8. Looking at contacts who are of an age to learn about Required Minimum Distributions.
9. Looking at people who once benefited from your organization via scholarships or grants.
10. Looking at prospects who only donate at the end of each year like clockwork.

You see, when there’s a lull in giving or if you’re trying to push your giving envelope, it’s not always the fault of the message—sometimes it’s the recipient—the recipient you refuse to remove from your mailing list.

Luckily, that’s where your left brain comes in. Just grab your decision-making glasses and look at your data with the lens of stampworthy recipients who have both an affinity for what you do and the capacity to do something about it.

Just when you think the left brain isn’t creative, you get vuja de. It’s truly a hallmark of creativity when you reject the default database and spreadsheet and you begin exploring what better donor options exist.

My team executes this task each year prior to the launch of our new fiscal year. The decisions are hard. After all, you’ve always sent direct mail to every past board member. What happens if you stop? Well, besides saving money on a stamp, likely nothing. The world will not stop spinning. Plus, if they didn’t donate before, you’re not missing anything. In fact, you’re saving time and money.

I challenge you to type up a 1-10 list like I did above. It will help you decide who to put in your list or who to take off your list. It feels like cleaning out your closet. In the end, you’ve eliminated a lot of items that weren’t serving you well and you’re left with the best of the best. Try it! 

Right Brain Marketing Moxie:  When it comes to being creative with your nonprofit marketing, usually the sticking point is straying from what you’ve always done. The brochure, the business-sized envelopes, the black and white copy—you know the drill. However, if your results aren’t what you want them to be or if you’d just like them to be a bit better, your current dissatisfaction can be a catalyst for motivated change. Likely, you’ve felt this way before, dé·jà vu. However, today you’re putting your old biases down, flipping them, and reversing them to gain a new insight into an old problem.

First and foremost, you must know that whatever you’re doing now, all the rules and systems and ‘the way it’s always been done’ was created by normal, average people who just happened to come along to create those rules and systems and ‘the way it’s always been done’ before you got there. That’s freeing, isn’t it?

But that defies the magic of moxie. Marketing moxie isn’t just about being creative, but it’s about being original. Grant speaks of child prodigies who ‘play magnificent Mozart melodies and beautiful Beethoven symphonies, but never compose their own original scores.’ Sure, perfecting the old is great, but it doesn’t make it new.

Focusing on improving what you did last year and the year before might be ok if it’s working for you. But if it’s tired and you’re tired and your donor is tired of hearing it—and likely bored—it’s up to you to stop the marketing madness and vuja de it! Perhaps you should stop polishing the old and produce something entirely new. In other words, make your own rules or even change the entire game.

When Al Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over expecting different results, he wasn’t wrong. If you want better results, you have to be original and try something new to you. Maybe the idea isn’t an original to you, but it might be an original to where you work—and that’s all you need!

Don’t be scared to change things up, look through a new lens and try something different. And if you have those who are afraid of what might happen, simply agree to measure your results. If a strategy doesn’t work, stop doing it. If the strategy does work, do it more! It’s that simple. Chances are you’re not measuring your results well now; you’re just accepting them because you’ve always done it that way. But that was before you knew about vuja de.

Maybe it is time to start undoing your doneness, if your doneness is sending out the same end-of-year ask letter you sent last year with a different font. A change of perspective is always a good idea. Keep what works, toss what doesn’t. You can improve your fundraising results without losing your mind, losing control, or losing your cool—just vuja de it! 

 All My Best,

Dawn
[email protected]
dawn brown creative, llc.