Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change pdfdrive com

What values underpin your philanthropic decision making?
Osborne’s discovery questions generate a conversation. They ask what
people care about and the motivations behind their passion. Perhaps someone
lost a relative to cancer or was moved by an experience with at-risk youth. If
they are now in a position to do something more about the problem, what will
they do?
“In a discovery visit, I’m trying to learn enough about you so I can craft a
strategy that I can develop for you to have a joyful experience,” she says.
How do you like being engaged?
How do we fit?
Osborne’s “rapport building” questions define principles and goals and
connect past actions with future aspirations. They establish a conversation and
build a relationship.
What are the guiding principles that have helped you in life?
What do you hope to accomplish with your philanthropy?
What values do you consistently support?
Osborne asks her questions to get answers, but she also asks to be sure the
other person is doing the talking. She explained to me that her experience bears
out the research: “People forget what they heard, but they remember almost
everything they say.”
Imagine you’re trying to raise money for a new pediatric cancer wing at the
local hospital and you’re looking for community leaders to sign on to help. You
take James out for lunch to see if he will join the cause. You can talk for twenty
minutes and explain the new wing, what it will do, why it is needed, who else is
supporting it, or you can ask James about the initiative.
What have you heard about the project?
How familiar are you with what the new wing will allow us to do?
What do you think it will mean for the community?

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If James says, “This could make a huge difference for these kids,” or talks
about what he’s read or heard about the project, or if he reflects on a friend who
had a child with cancer, he will have joined the conversation more personally
than if he just sat and listened. Your questions prompt him to answer and to
engage. That’s a critical step, Osborne says, if people are going to embrace a
cause for which they’re going to provide significant financial support.
Want to get people to turn out for your class reunion and give money? Get
them talking about what they did the last day at school or about the all-nighter
they pulled when they were working on the hardest paper of their lives. Ask
them about their favorite home game or their best friend. Invite them to tell
stories about what the place meant to them and the difference it made. Then
connect it back to the fundamentals.
How did you use the education you got from this institution?
What values did you learn?
Are there ways you would like to help the next generation of
students?
Your questions move to the next level: how can you work together? They
seek genuine engagement, and Osborne insists that engagement is the key to
philanthropy. She cited a Bank of America study of wealthy people who were
philanthropic. The more they were involved in an initiative, the more they gave
to it. If their children were involved, they gave even more.
Connect passion to mission and you can generate excitement and meaningful
involvement.
“Now I’m excited about the outcome and I start seeing myself as a donor,”
Osborne instructed me. “And [it’s] not just my money, but my interests, my
intellectual capital, my human capital, my network capital, and how I might
leverage all of those things to help solve this problem together with you, in