In fundraising, we love to ask: “So, what are the barriers to making a donation?”
Honestly, I’m a bit bored of that question. It’s been answered a thousand times, and by now, we should all know what the usual suspects are that stand in the way of support. But here’s a better question: what are the barriers to getting the job done?
This popped into my head during a conversation with a friend-colleague (you know the type, someone you work with, but also debrief life with over tea). We were chatting about job titles. You’d think figuring out what to call ourselves would be straightforward, but it’s not. Titles can carry unspoken meanings that trigger assumptions about what we do, or worse, what we don’t do. The name itself becomes a barrier.
And once you start noticing these things, like barriers to making a donation, you see them everywhere.
Take income banking, processes that are so convoluted they need a small army and a few sacrificed trees, all of which delay the stewardship comms we’re desperate to send. Or sign-off processes that climb the ladder through every rung of a “democratic organisation” until any energy the idea had has long since expired. And then there’s the death of the brilliant-but-unorthodox idea, the one that gets shelved because it doesn’t feel like the fundraising we’ve been doing for the past 30 years. (And here we find barriers to making a donation raising its head again!)
So how do we shift from “We can’t do that because…” to “That’s a great idea, what would need to change to make it happen?” What if we treated those moments as chances to review how we work and look for ways to do it better?
Maybe the barriers are there because, frankly, change is scary. Personally, I love change. I see it as a giant bucket of opportunity waiting to be explored. But for many, it’s unsettling. Still, like any good problem-solving, we should look to the root cause, not just the symptoms. Maybe, just maybe, some of these barriers are really just fear of change wearing a very convincing disguise.
If we spot a barrier, (a barrier to making a donation – or a barrier to change generally) is that our cue to ferret under the hood and see what’s really going on? Maybe it’s time we stopped framing barriers as something negative, and started treating them as the prompts for progress they could be. Could they actually be opportunities, for us, and for our organisations, to evolve?
As I write this, my brain is already nudging me to think about new ways to present ideas that might otherwise be seen as barriers. I’m calling that a job well done. Maybe even an… opportunity.
