I’ve done a lot of work on my personal and business values based on the guidance of Dr John Demartini but today I did a workshop with Mark from Common Cause Australia and he’s forced me to look at myself and my audience in a new light. 
Digital content built on the values of the organisation
The Common Cause values research and approach really supported a lot of my philosophy on building digital strategy around content and using the supporter’s values to determine what that content should be. But their insights into “progressive” people and “conservative” people gave me a real shock.
Shock! Conservatives are more positive in their view of the world
Their research on values in the UK and America showed that progressives view of the world is far more stark than that of conservatives. Specifically they were asking these two audiences how intrinsic/ positive and worldly focused their values were. And the results showed that conservatives are more satisfied with the world they live in, but they also see more positive attitudes in humans overall. Whereas the progressives saw the rest of the world as quite negative and more importantly they didn’t see the point in trying to persuade their conservative opposites in the conversation to change.
And in hindsight I’m not sure why I was surprised because it should go without saying that of course if you want change in the world, that means that you’re dissatisfied with what you see around you.
Are progressives the key to change?
And this is so confronting because I fall into the progressive movement and so do most of our non-profit supporters. So if they have a more negative view of the world and they don’t believe the rest of the world will change, that means 1) my peer group has some work to do on ourselves and 2) as a fundraiser I’ve been targeting the wrong people.
Fundraising and why people donate
I learnt a bunch of other fun stuff on the 58 human values that shows that my thinking around being more direct with the donor about why they should give (because its the right thing to do) and not focusing on the financial or tax benefit to them is correct.
I learnt some new training technique for some group exercises that were quite fun (but required a larger group).
I saw another small, start up business in the non-profit space selling themselves and saw some synergies and I found a kindred spirit.
So what did you learn today?