King Harold and the Starlight Fantastic – Part 2 of 2

You'll recall from yesterday that it looked for all the world like Sir Mark was in a bit of trouble in the "Starlight Fantastic" with King Harold…

At the point we left off, we see that Sir Mark went out and spent considerable staff time developing the project. He went to the village designer and spent a lot of money on a snazzy brochure he called a “coffee table” brochure. He went to Philanthropy Solutions to get a video done about the project for presentation to his donor prospects. There was a lot of activity in Sir Mark’s tent, and people could see things were really happening at a furious pace.

But the preparations took Sir Mark and his staff all year to accomplish. One problem after another came up and had to be solved; an addition to the plan here, a revision and re-do there. The work became very intense. But good Sir Harold and the executive committee found itself at the end of the year looking at the budget, and still wondering where all the dollars were. One member of the committee said, “King Harold, if you’ll permit me, I thought we were going to plug that gap with new revenue. What happened? Did someone fall into the moat, or was Sir Mark consigned to the dungeon without your knowledge? We had a great plan, I see lots of activity. But where’s the million dollars we were short at the beginning of the year?”

What really happened was that Sir Mark never actually could bring himself to draw up a list of prospects; he never really visited with any prospects; he never actually made any presentations or asked for money from any prospects. The brochure turned out wonderfully! The video was top notch, a very compelling dramatization of the project. But no money!

By the end of the year there was no more money in King Harold’s treasury than was seen at the beginning of the year. And yet, when anyone looked back, it seemed that Sir Mark was always in a hurry, always pressed for time, continually had lots of things going on. He was carrying out a lot of activity all the time, but, in the end, there wasn’t much more to show for all that activity than there had been in years past. His projects were wonderful on paper, but they just didn’t result in more money.

The reason this happened was that Starlight Fantastic, through its executive director, had not developed any way to help Sir Mark be accountable for his actions on a day-to-day basis. And as a result of that, nobody became aware for a very long time that, Sir Mark, deep down in his internal mechanisms and make-up, just didn’t like people that much and was afraid of them; he was unable to bring himself to go directly to anybody and ask them for money. But this didn’t show up for several years, because he effectively covered this personal and professional problem up with beautiful plans, a lot of activity and many good things to look at.

But the other side of it was that King Harold had never set any standards of performance for Sir Mark, and had never put together an evaluation process by which those standards of performance would be enforced. He really didn't know what Sir Mark was doing on a day-to-day basis, and he had never taken the time or even given substantive thought to how he might help Sir Mark achieve his financial goals the way he was achieving other productivity goals.

So one day, King Harold, as Sir Mark’s executive director, decided something had to be done. He picked up the phone and called Philanthropy Solutions and asked John Fike what he needed to do to get better performance from Sir Mark. After a half hour's conversation and having received some pertinent exhibits from that trusted source, King Harold knew exactly what to do. He first asked Mark to list on a sheet of paper, at the end of each week, how many donor prospects he had called, and how many visits to donor prospects he had made, how many prospects he had asked for financial support, and what the responses were – yes, pledge, gift, or no.

Next, he took Sir Mark’s plan for raising money, and divided the fundraising goal of $1 million into 52 weeks of the year, and set a financial goal of $20,000 for each week or $85,000 each month of the year. He gave Sir Mark a 25% factor for "slippage" each week and 15% each month.

Finally, with great regularity, King Harold scheduled appointments with Sir Mark on Monday morning of each week to review the previous week’s accomplishments and the month’s anticipated new revenue goals. He took the time to coach Sir Mark and to praise him at every step of the way. He even included a performance bonus at the end of the year IF, but ONLY IF, the $1 million goal was reached.

The result was that in 6 months, Sir Mark had accomplished his $1 million goal, and everyone, including Sir Mark himself, was totally surprised! Starlight Fantastic began to climb out of its financial woes and went on to become a healthy, successful and highly esteemed charity within that community. King Harold was pleased as punch, and the Knights of the Funding Grail became the heroes of the kingdom!