[Mpls] FW: Financial contributions to the City of Minneapolis

[Matty Lang]

    Thanks to Patrick for the helpful information.  And thanks to Sheldon for the great  suggestion.  Minneapolis  can rest assured that the check is in the mail as soon as this months’ payroll  clears—Monday for sure.  Don’t expect  much, however, as my gift will be based on my ability to pay.  No matter how many times I ask them, my  financial institution of choice (sorry Bill, it has the word ‘union’ in its  name!) will unfortunately not allow me to write checks that my account can’t  cash.  
          There are a number of reasons—with which I will not bore  this list—for my desire to make a financial contribution to the city.  The main reason is so that the next time a  friend (or foe), during a rational conversation about the state of our city,  suggests that I should volunteer to have my “taxes” raised to foot the bill for  a better X,  I can reply that I’ve been  there and done that.  On to the next idea  please.  
          The suggestion that voluntary contributions are equal to  taxes is false.  As we learned long ago  (Was there a School House Rock tune on taxes and if so what was the tone?  I don’t remember) taxes are involuntary  assessments while contributions are voluntary gifts also going by the name of  donations.  No matter how hard our  governor tried to convince us otherwise in the recent past, taxes are like fees  especially in the sense that one is expected to pay.  By their very nature donations are not  expected; they are asked for on top of normal expectations and thusly are not  given at a high rate.  
          Many organizations ask for donations.  That’s the number one reason that individuals  and businesses give donations—because somebody asked them to give.  Minnesotans (especially Minneapolitans) are  very generous with their giving.  For  this, I commend all of the givers in this list’s membership.  The state offers us the chance each year to  make a financial contribution in addition to our tax assessment.  They make this offer in writing.  In other words, they ask us to  contribute.  Without checking the stats,  I’ll bet the house (I really don’t like to gamble) that less than 10% of us  generous Minnesotans take the state up on its offer.  Granted, this is a weak ask as the state  would increase their compliance rate by investing in a more elaborate  relationship building program for prospective donors, but is this what it or  the City of Minneapolis should be spending its time and resources doing?  I argue no.   Patrick confirmed my suspicion that the city
 needs to expend  considerable resources to properly process a donation—even an unsolicited  donation.  Most effective organizations  work to reduce their fundraising overhead as the city (us) does by assessing  taxes rather than organizing bake sales.   This allows the city to efficiently collect its (our collective)  resources. 
          So how much does Minneapolis  take in each year in donations?  In the  spirit of brevity I won’t trot out the census stats to do the math, but in my  nine plus years of fundraising from individuals and businesses the average gift  of a first time donors is in the $20-$25 range while donors who already have a  giving history with the organization average in the $30-$40 range.  For most organizations these averages are  achieved by soliciting many small contributions and a very few large contributions—based  on the givers’ ability to pay.  These  donors, of course, were asked to give.   The City of Minneapolis has  not asked anyone to make a donation to my knowledge so we’ll drastically drop  the 10% giving rate to 5% for these purposes.   One doesn’t even need to do the math to imagine what we could NOT fund  with a donation mechanism in Minneapolis.    
  
  Matty Lang,
  Not usually making random donations in Central
  
    
  
    

		
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