Is Your Organization Worth Supporting?

“Have you donated to help the Ukrainian military?”

A lot of organizations and groups depend on donations to pay staff and keep the doors open.

That said, there is a phenomenon that can be observed in these same organizations:  top staff and board members may not feel their own organization is doing work worth supporting.

Don't believe it?  

Ask them how much money they have raised this last year. What new money-making idea did they initiate or create? What letter, phone call, or meeting did they initiate to ask for a donation?

When people tell you they think asking others for money and time is distasteful, what they are really saying is that they do not think the organization they work for is worth supporting.  

The organization may be "interesting".  It may be "important'.  But it's not worth actually asking folks to support financially.  

It really is that simple.    

What's refreshing about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is that he thinks Ukraine is worth fighting for, worth dying for, and worth asking people to support through donations of weapons and money.

Zelenskyy's "ask" is not transactional; he's not saying donor countries will directly benefit from their donations of weapons to Ukraine. 

Germany will not get a direct benefit from cutting oil and gas imports from Russia. 

The British economy will not shift into overdrive because it stops accepting Russian rubles and starts sanctioning oligarchs.

Zelenskyy is not selling simple self-interest; he is selling a more basic and important idea: freedom and liberty.  

And he is saying -- and showing -- that millions of Ukrainians "on staff" are willing to stand and fight for freedom and liberty too

And guess what?  Every one of them is willing to ask for your support.

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This was written in May, and is being reposted following Zelenskyy‘s address to Congress.