By Janine Vanderburg, President/CEO JVA Consulting

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Rio de Janeiro, taking in the extraordinary sights, sounds and spirit that made the New York Times list it as the # 1 destination to visit in 2013.

Any visit to Rio has got to include the made-famous-by-the-song Ipanema Beach, so we stopped there. And the onslaught by beach vendors began for any food, drink, clothing, accessories, gifts that we could possibly want–and lots that we didn’t.

Because fundraising for our nonprofits and causes is never far from my mind, I started watching the vendor’s pitches. Some lessons for fundraising quickly emerged.

Most vendors approached into our space (loosely defined as a cluster of chairs, umbrellas and beach towels) and pushing their wares at us, shouting the name of whatever they were selling. They seemed to have marginal success. I thought of this as the equivalent of direct mails or email campaigns to “cold” lists, or asking random people who are not connected to your organization or its mission to contribute.

The two most successful had an interesting combination of interesting wares and approaches. One twirled a large umbrella with bikinis handing from it rhythmically down the beach—and typically people approached him, eager to try them on (how they did that is another blog 🙂

Another woman moved to set points at the beach which had clusters of people soaking in the sun. There she demonstrated the features of the light print dress she was wearing (on shoulder/off shoulder, wrap around, etc.), while pulling others out of a large container. She too was swarmed with women seeking to buy the versatile coverups.

And the big lessons, which are embodied in JVA’s guiding principles to fundraising:

•    Have interesting “wares”—e.g, effective programs with proven results—to sell

•     “Pull” potential people towards you through effective engagement, marketing and social media, instead of pushing your way into their space.

They’re lessons we’ll be incorporating into JVA’s next Development Director Intensive, sharing lessons of how you can more fully engage potential donors so that they are “pulled” to your organization and cause using social media and other means of engagement.

And for all of you who are smaller organizations, wondering how you can possibly engage in social media, we’ll be sharing the lessons we are learning by participating in the Denver Business Journal’s Social Madness contest. You can support us in doing that by voting and engaging with us on Facebook and Twitter.

To register for the next Development Director Intensive on July 17-18, 2013 click here.