I have never presumed that the job I write about every day is an easy one to do. But I don’t think that until this year, as I struggle to raise sponsorship for running the London Marathon 2012, I fully appreciated just how hard it must be.
I have sat at many fundraising conferences over the past year and a half listening to someone tell the audience not to be afraid of being blunt about ‘the ask’, and to get to it rather than skirt round the side, hoping someone will suddenly proactively offer to give.
I must say, a couple of times I have rolled my eyes at this, thinking it is a bit of an obvious thing to tell a group of people whose job it is to extract money from the public.
But maybe it isn’t. Most of us as humans are programmed not to want to annoy people or make them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. And the thing about asking someone for money, even if it is to help a good cause, is the worry that that you will stir up these feelings in the other person.
To get around this on my own current fundraising journey, I have tried casually mentioning to people in passing that I am running the marathon. I then realise I have played it too cool and so follow up by telling some dramatic tale about how difficult the training is – that my sleep pattern is all over the place, my appetite seems to have trebled, and the other day it took about fifteen minutes to get up three flights of stairs.
And sometimes I then even throw in a quick mention of the fact that I have decided to run it for Asthma UK. By this stage I’m muttering , I’m not even making eye-contact with the person, and I’m pretending to check my phone for a non-existent text message.
Except in the cases of my parents and my boyfriend, who know me well enough to understand what I am trying to say and want to put an end to this silly dance, this approach has not yielded particularly promising results.
So instead I have had to resign myself to actually asking people for sponsorship, however unreasonable that may seem. This, lo and behold, does seem to actually work. There’s been none of the awkwardness I was expecting. Instead people have consistently surprised me with their kind generosity and have been more than capable of simply giving online or offline a suitable amount that they feel they can afford.
It’s still not easy, though. And the truth is, at the moment, I’m finding the process of training for the marathon – something designed to push the human body to its absolute physical limits – far easier than fundraising. I have a renewed respect for you all.