No Is Part of the Relationship

I had an exchange with a salesperson this week that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

They were following up with me about something they wanted to sell my company. I hadn’t responded yet, so I wrote:

“Thanks for your patience. Email gets pretty busy with client needs. I’ll talk to my partner about this and be back to you soon.”

The next morning they responded:

“To ensure that I am on the same page, when should I expect to hear back from you?”

My first thought was genuinely: was this written by AI?

So I asked.

Nope. They had written it themselves.

And at that point I told them we were no longer a prospect.

I also told them why.

What I had said in my first email was true. My email gets busy because I am working with nonprofit clients. Those clients are very strapped, very attacked and doing very crucial work. I care deeply about where I put my time with them. I also care about where I put my time with my family, my friends, my colleagues and myself. There is not an endless supply of Sarah to distribute among everyone who would like some.

I had responded to this salesperson. I had told them I would talk with my partner. I had said I would get back to them.

And instead of accepting that, they asked me to tell them when they could expect my attention.

That might seem like an incredibly small thing. It is an incredibly small thing. But I recognized something in it that I think is worth paying attention to, particularly for those of us who raise money.

People want to be nice.

People want to be responsive. We don’t want to leave somebody hanging. We don’t want another person to think badly of us. We don’t like disappointing people. We feel a little tug when somebody asks us again after we haven’t answered. Sometimes we take the call just because saying no to the call somehow feels harder.

Those are lovely, human things.

And they can be used as leverage.

I don’t know what was happening on the other side of that sales email. Maybe this person was taught to follow up this way. Maybe their company requires it. Maybe they have a manager looking at their numbers. Maybe they genuinely thought they were being helpful and efficient. I don’t know.

That’s why I said as much in my response. I don’t need to decide that this individual person is terrible in order to reject what happened between us.

And this is where I start thinking about fundraising.

Because we know a lot about how to get people to say yes.

Fundraisers have been taught to keep following up. To create urgency. To get the next meeting scheduled before we leave this one. To remind someone what they said they cared about. To get a specific commitment. To overcome objections. To make it harder for a prospect to drift away.

Some of those practices can be useful. Following up is useful! I follow up with people all the damn time.

But I want us to be much more curious about the moment when a relationship practice becomes a pressure tactic.

Especially because nonprofit fundraising operates in a world of care.

We are talking to people about things they care deeply about. Their neighbors. Their children. Their communities. The planet. People who are sick. People who are hungry. Art and beauty and justice and belonging and all the other things humans have decided are worth putting our resources toward.

That care is powerful.

So is our desire to be seen as generous. Our desire to be helpful. Our discomfort with disappointing someone. Our relationships with the people doing the asking.

I don’t think those are weaknesses. I think they’re part of being human.

But if we know they’re there, we have a responsibility not to turn them into tools for getting what we want.

Values-based fundraising asks us to work with the power people already have. That includes their power to give money. It includes their time, relationships, skills, ideas, testimony, attention and care.

And it also includes their power to withhold all of those things from us.

That’s the part that can get uncomfortable.

Because if another person actually has power in the relationship, they might use it in a way we don’t like.

They might not take the meeting.

They might say they’ll get back to us and then not get back to us.

They might give less than we hoped.

They might stop giving.

They might care about our mission enormously and decide that right now their money or time belongs somewhere else.

They might say no without giving us a reason that we consider sufficiently good.

Can we let them?

Not because we’re passive fundraisers. Not because money doesn’t matter. Money matters enormously. I want nonprofit organizations to raise the money their missions deserve. I want fundraisers to ask clearly and confidently for meaningful gifts. I want us to follow up.

I also want us to notice what we’re doing while we’re doing it.

Am I listening to understand what this person is telling me, or am I listening for the opening that will get me closer to a yes?

Am I following up because relationships need attention, or because I know ignoring me gets harder every time my name appears in their inbox?

Am I making an invitation, or am I creating an obligation?

Those aren’t questions a sales cadence can answer for us.

They require self-awareness. They require listening. They require us to tolerate not getting what we want sometimes.

And, maybe most importantly, they require us to believe that another person’s niceness is not ours to spend.

No isn’t the failure of a relationship.

No is part of the relationship.

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