Picking up from Friday, the question put by the director of development put Jim in a bit of a pickle. Maybe he had gotten deeper into this than he’d wanted to. He had simply come up with a quick and easy solution to what he saw as a simple problem. The organization would have more money if it won the lottery, and wouldn’t have any less money if they didn’t. It could be a wash or it could be a real win. But either way, they wouldn’t lose. So he said that.
And it was at this point that the CEO, having disciplined himself with a super-human effort, began to speak.
“Jim, I can see what it is you’re saying. But let’s take a step back here, and view the context in which we’re operating, shall we? Most of our supporters today are Baby Boomers or Gen Xers and these guys, unlike their Ike generation parents, have two unique traits. First, when they were young, television was substituted for mother’s milk. They’ve been brought up on cheap advertising, cheap programming, shady marketing deals you can drive a truck through and hundreds of instances of scandal, wrongdoing, skullduggery and greed in both government and the business world. These guys can spot a scam a mile away.
“Secondly,” he was getting wound up now. First Anabell and now this guy, Jim thought. One self-righteous morality-toting crusader after another. It was too much! I'd rather go play golf in the snow and rain, Jim thought.
Craig continued. “Donor motivation rests on two critical pillars. The first has to do with internal motivation, the satisfaction, peer approval, thanks, recognition, mutuality and companionship involved in giving to good causes that produce the kinds of goods that make society livable for many people. And the second has to do with the huge amount of trust placed by any donor in the institution to which they give either time or money. People give to people they trust. People give to institutions and causes they trust.”
Jim was just about to get up and leave. All this talk of trust was considerably beneath him. These people were nuts! What did they know about the world? They were naïve. They were impractical. They were…. well, simply wrong. About a lot of things.
But Craig went on. “If we take money donated for scholarships and buy raffle tickets, that’s bad enough, but, if we win, and pay ourselves the prize of $10,000, we’ve really cheated those who bought lottery tickets in the expectation that someone, some one person, some individual would come away a winner. And, sure, maybe we’ve hoped that such a winner might donate the prize to the scholarship fund, as some have done in the past. But we’ve increased our odds, and if we win we’re paying ourselves the prize. How long would it be before the Baby Boomer donors would hear about that? How long would it be before their trust in Reach for the Stars crumbled? How long would it be before they would be off trying to find some other charity in the world they think they can trust with their money? And how long to you think Reach for the Stars would be in business?”
The room was silent for a while, and, somewhat in embarrassment, Mendel Adams said, “Jim, how do you see this now?”
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