Werth-It Fundraising Blog

I was in Malaysia to teach fundraising to the international directors of Outward Bound, a terrific organization that teaches people how to handle physical and emotional challenges. I told them I had to go through an Outward Bound course before I spoke, so that I could use what they were teaching others to teach them. Bless them, they put together a whole Outward Bound team of people just to teach me, in the days before the conference started, which as anyone who’s ever done a conference can tell you that he days right before are the most miserable part. Here’s what I learned…

The Outward Bound challenges included a ropes course, a trust exercise, belaying people down a cliff, hiking over a waterfall and sailing without anyone on board who knows how to do it, just doing it from instructions, and camping in the jungle (no bathrooms for miles!). Mind you, we’re in the Borneo jungle. One of the most important exercises, to me, was something called Jacob’s ladder. You have to get up the ladder, but it’s about 20 feet high and there are only about five rungs spaced four feet apart. It is, however, at least five feet wide. I looked at it and said, “I know for a fact that I can NOT get up that ladder.” However, I did. How we did it is that the two most limber people, who could get up the ladder, went up and then reached down and helped up the rest of us.” The lesson? Sometimes, the only way you can do it is through teamwork: people can help you if you think to use them.

“I’m afraid that I’m the fat kid in P.E.” The first night, after a trust exercise, the instructor asked us what we feared most. A Muslim Malaysian man said, “I’m afraid I’m going to be the fat kid in P.E. class.” First, I was amazed that they also call it “P.E.” and not something else. I guess that’s worldwide. But mostly, I was amazed that everyone around the table all nodded and shared the same fear. I thought it was just me. We were all afraid that we wouldn’t be able to do the physical work (and it was tough), and that everyone would know it. That’s a universal fear across cultures.

Snakes. During the discussion of safety before going out camping in the jungle, I raised my hand and asked about snakes. The instructor said, “Oh, the snakes aren’t going to bother you. They’re more of a danger here at the dorms, because people leave food, and food attracts rats, and the snakes eat the rats. You don’t have to worry about snakes in the jungle. No, what you have to worry about is the earwigs.” Yes, earwigs. It’s true that they actually crawl in your ear. (If you’re delicate, skip to the next paragraph.) The only way to get an earwig out of your ear is to pour in oil and hope it kills them or they float out, or both. I’m not sure the instructor was going to mention it, except I asked about the snakes. You know, some things are on a “need to know” basis, and you really don’t want to know.

“It’s not spicy.” Another thing I learned is that Malaysian food is so spicy that if someone there says, “Try this, it’s not spicy” then you can expect that it’s the equivalent of the spiciest food you could order in a Thai restaurant in America. Not to be too detailed, but I had internal problems my entire trip and for a month after I came back! However, now I can eat and enjoy spicier food than I ever could before. I figure that if I could eat it there, I can eat it here. So, a great lesson (and one that comes up weekly), is that if you can do something briefly in a learning session, you’ll be able to do it ever afterward. I keep that in mind when I teach fundraising and I have people just practice asking for money. If they can do it with me, they can do it later, too.

In Malaysia, they speak three languages. I assumed that everyone spoke English as a second language, but really it’s their third. They speak a language at home with their families (and Malaysians have dozens of ‘home’ languages), then they learn Malay at school (I’m told Malay is pretty simple) and everyone speaks it outside of their home, and then they also learn English to deal with the bigger world. Wow. And we can’t even get Americans to speak one language!

You know the expression “Tastes like chicken”? I taught it to the Malaysians on the Outward Bound tour. At first, they laughed, thinking that I was joking that Americans think that every exotic food tastes like chicken. Then, they understood that I was serious, that it’s a real expression that Americans use, and they really laughed hard! It was astonishing to them that Americans think that anything unusual must be compared to a common experience.

I also learned that Malaysians had to hide out from the Japanese during World War II, and that many people spent four years eating tapioca root, which looks kind of like a really giant white sweet potato. I tried to explain tapioca pudding, which comes from this root, but the idea that tapioca is a round little tiny ball that makes a dessert was just inexplicable to them.

My final lesson came from the conference. It was during the 2000 U.S. presidential elections. The international officers of Outward Bound were all knowledgeable about the American elections and had opinions on the candidates. I was surprised, since most Americans couldn’t even name the leaders of Canada and Mexico, our closest neighbors. At the time, I also thought, “Oh, I’m going to miss the whole thing” not thinking there might be a contested election and it would go on for a couple of months after I got home!

By the way, Outward Bound taught me a great deal. I would highly recommend the experience to anyone, and I use what I learned at least once a month ever since. I appreciate that they put me through their five-day course before I taught fundraising to them.

Would you like me to teach you fundraising? I teach fundraising to nonprofit staff and board members through one-day seminars; please contact me, Katherine Wertheim, CFRE, at katherine@werth-it.com for details.