Jahnke’s Thoughts

The two most successful fundraising campaigns that I have been involved in both had one thing in common: effective matching gifts. I think the most common type of matching gift in higher education does exactly what its name implies. For every dollar that you give, a donor (Atwell match) or a company matches your gift dollar for dollar. Although this increases the total amount of money that an organization can bring it, it doesn’t address the fundamental questions that all donors have: ‘why should I give to your cause, and how will my gift matter’?

At my previous employer MIT, and during our very successful Stanford Senior Gift Campaign in 2009, we chose a different type of matching gift. The style of this matching gift is not based on ‘matching’ whatever amount you’re going to give. All this does is reinforces the idea that the University only wants you to maximize your giving. By contrast, our challenge gifts gave a certain amount of money based on a target goal of the class participating in the fundraising campaign. This type of challenge encourages a different type of behavior than just maximize your individual gift. It promotes the idea of giving, encouraging classmates to give, and maximizing the participation in order to take full advantage of the challenge dollars. In this scenario, gifts of $5 $50 or $500 all have the same impact on the ‘match’.

This past Spring at Stanford, our Parent’s Advisory Board Challenge gave $5,000 for every 10% of the senior class (~1,550 students) that contributed to the class’ fundraising campaign. In other words, when 30% of the class participated, the class gift received $15K from the Parent’s Advisory Board.

A challenge gift framed like this is more inspiring and relevant for Young Alumni and students. Their gifts of $5, $10, and $20 really do have a significant impact with this type of match.  The amount of money given by each individual is irrelevant. Promoting the behavior of giving back to the University is the important goal. With our matching program, the many $5 gifts quickly turn into a $5,000 contribution from the ‘matcher’. It  deals with the common objection ‘I don’t have enough money to give’ or ‘my small gift doesn’t have any impact at such a huge school’.

My goal this year for the Stanford Young Alumni campaign is to find 5 ‘challenge donors’ from each Young Alumni class willing to contribute up to $5K each. For every 1% of the class (approximately 15 classmates) that give, these 5 challenge donors will give $1,000. In other words, if the class gets a 30% overall giving rate, the 5 challenge donors would each contribute $6K as a match.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve written a blog post. A ton of different stuff has happened to me personally, professionally, and academically over the last few months. My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer in late June, and he passed away in early August. That was the first time in my adult life that I had to deal with death, and the first death of a close friend and family member. I started my MBA at University of San Francisco in late August, and am neck deep in my coursework. So far, I’ve met a ton of great classmates and am enjoying my two courses – macroeconomics and learning to lead. At Stanford, our fiscal year recently ended and we have started a new one. Not surprisingly, we had less donors and dollars than in years past, but are pretty on par with our peer institutions. I’ve also finally gotten an iPhone, which has gotten my much more involved with twitter and foursquare. Hopefully, this will be the first of many more frequent postings in the coming weeks. Tomorrow, I’m heading to Stanford very early for a presentation by Charlene Li, the founder of the Altimeter Group.

I read a very interesting post on Get Rich Slowly the other week that I can’t stop thinking about. The author listed 11 bits of wisdom passed down from her father that she tries to live by to be frugal, but this one in particular hit home: eating to stop the feeling of hunger.

I think the reason it has stuck with me is because for as long as I can remember, I have never eaten to stop feeling hungry. Sure, hunger may signal it’s time to eat, but I don’t stop when that hunger feeling goes away. My last year of University, when I started really exercising hard I was eating to gain weight. Consuming 10,000+ calories a day, I would force myself to eat a can of tuna right before bed and make sure I drake two, 3,000 calorie, 120 grams of protein shakes every day. My goal was to cross 200 pounds, but 195 was the closest I ever got, and that took a LOT of effort.

I still feel proud to show off how much a tall, skinny, white boy like me can put down my pie hole, but without the protein shakes and 3 spare hours every day dedicated to lifting weights against the force of gravity, it’s almost impossible to cross 180. I once consumed four pounds of this pig over the course of 12 hours at a pig roast for Jane and Tim’s wedding. Excessive, yes – but man that roast piggy was good.

I think another reason I’ve thought about this phrase so much is because I wonder what the consumption of food and how we expend calories says about modernity and our society? In nature, animals strive to preserve calories and limit physical activity to what is necessary for survival. For me and almost everyone I know, however, the creation and consumption of food is a huge aspect of social life, family bonding and being engaged with the world around us. Stroll through any neighborhood in San Francisco at any given time – going out to restaurants, buying food at farmer’s markets to cook a special meal, and consuming beer, coffee, juice – all are hugely social activities usually not associated with necessity or moderation. In the exercise world, people train for months to run 26 mile marathons, burning calories quickly and squeezing high calorie power gel out of little packets during their journey whist pounding their legs into hard pavement for the camaraderie, exercise and satisfaction of achievement.

After much thought, I concluded that even though it may cost me a lot more money over the course of my lifetime, be bad for the environment, potentially bad for my health later in life, and inconsiderate of those in want of food – I’m going to keep consuming food until I’m stuffed, not just to stop feeling hungry.

One of my closest friends during University plays floor-ball. For my ex-girlfriend Kathryn, it was dance. My old boss at MIT was an incredible artist, with a niche comic book franchise world wide. A lot of the time, I feel like I’m missing my thing. You know, that thing you want to do all the time, and never get bored of. The one that you obsesses over, and are super passionate about. Don’t get me wrong – I have hobbies. I like playing squash, I go to the gym four of five times a week to run or lift weights. I read a lot about politics and current events, and am really in to technology. I’m starting my MBA part time in August and have a full time job. Playing poker and shooting pool always makes me happy. I’ve traveled internationally, and have done a ton of camping and canoeing trips. I guess it just doesn’t seem like any of those are my thing, or that I’m doing them often enough.

I remember in high school, my thing was music. I listened to a ton of it, knew how all the major artists were connected, and played saxophone obsessively. I was good at it, had a ton of people I could play with, and it was great. Jazz band practice for hours every week, the classical quartet, marching band, private lessons, the ska band, jamming randomly with friends in basements. My buddy Nick and I used to skip our lunch periods and play in the music rooms. Then, when I got to University, I stopped making the time and didn’t put in as much effort. I got distracted by school, friends, other priorities – in hindsight – most of them wasteful and self indulgent. I wasn’t in the music department, and soon, the skill curve seemed insurmountable. Now, I can barely read music. I feel embarrassed and guilty. No wonder it doesn’t feel like my thing anymore.

It seems that some people are lucky, and innately know their thing. Photography, a job or business they’re super passionate about and engaged with, a sport or a volunteer organization – there are tons of them. It feels like it’s something very lacking in my life right now. I know it will take hard work, time, effort, and a deliberate thought process. A thing makes life exciting. I could look forward to it, feel energized by it, get inspiration from it, and be creative with it. I need a thing.

The blog is now official, stay tuned for more.