How Fundraising Is Basically Formula 1 and Why I am Now Obsessed
Can I make a confession?
This summer, I have become completely obsessed with Formula 1.
Not the Brad Pitt movie, which I have yet to see. No, I’m talking about the actual sport of Formula 1 racing.
My wife and daughter think I’ve lost it. My youngest son doesn’t care either.
But my 12-year-old? He’s locked in with me. We are officially Formula 1 junkies.
What’s the big deal? It’s just cars going in fast circles around a track. Right?
Wrong. That’s NASCAR which is totally lame and completely different.
F1 is something else entirely. It’s chess at 220 miles per hour. It’s split-second decisions worth millions of dollars. It’s hundreds of people (drivers, engineers, mechanics, and a whole slew of others) working together toward one impossible goal.
It’s 20 of the world’s best drivers navigating 190 miles of adrenaline-fueled hairpin turns with nothing but a few inches of carbon composite between them and a steel-reinforced concrete wall.
And watching it as obsessively as I have, of course, I’m seeing parallels to fundraising.
Each team has sponsors. Each driver is only as good as his last race. Ouch. The best drivers make it look effortless. And as much as the driver matters, the car they’re driving is everything.
But the biggest parallel I’m seeing?
The difference between being careful and courageous.
Imagine you’re coming up behind another car on a straightaway. Your McLaren is faster than their Ferrari. You’ve practiced this moment over and over again. You know you can make the overtake happen.
But there’s a wall on one side and another driver who might not see you coming on the other.
You have fractions of a second to decide.
Do you play it safe and wait for a better opportunity? Or do you trust your skills, commit to the move, and go for it?
The great drivers don’t hesitate.
They read the conditions. They trust their instincts. And they make their move.
What I’m realizing as I watch more and more of these moments is that the drivers who win in F1 aren’t necessarily the ones who never crash.
They’re the ones who know when to be brave.
The same is 1000% true in fundraising.
That moment when you’re sitting across from a donor, and you can feel the conversation shifting. The energy changing. Their body language opening up.
You know it’s time to make the ask.
But instead of trusting your preparation and going for it, what do you do?
You talk about the weather. You ask about their grandkids. You find seventeen ways to avoid the actual conversation you came to have.
Do you know what I’m learning separates the good drivers from the great ones?
Relentless courage under pressure.
Not recklessness. Not taking stupid risks.
Relentless. Courage.
The courage to go for the overtake when the opportunity presents itself. The courage to trust your team’s strategy even when it looks crazy. The courage to push when everyone else is playing it safe.
Most importantly, the courage to go for the win instead of just trying not to lose.
When was the last time you approached a donor conversation with that kind of courage?
You’re probably thinking, “Michael, I am not a professional race car driver. I can’t make risky moves with donor relationships.”
You’re right. You can’t be reckless.
But you can be relentlessly courageous.
You can trust that the people you’re inviting to give want to help solve the same problem you’re working to solve.
You can stop tiptoeing around conversations and start having them directly.
You can stop worrying so much about the perfect moment and start creating moments through your own boldness.
Most importantly, you can stop driving defensively when you should be racing to win.
Ayrton Senna, one of the greatest F1 drivers of all time, once said, “If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you’re no longer a racing driver.”
I’ll let you draw your own parallels to fundraising with that one.
Before you do anything else today, will you do me a favor?
Will you think about one donor relationship where you’ve been playing it safe?
One conversation you keep putting off because the timing isn’t perfect? One ask you’ve been dancing around? One relationship where you keep talking about everything except the reason you’re really there?
Now ask yourself what would happen if you approached that situation with a spirit of relentless courage? Not recklessly. Relentlessly. Courageously.
What would you do?
You’d go schedule that meeting.
You’d practice your ask until it was as smooth as Oscar Piastri coming out of Turn 1 in the rain at the Belgian Grand Prix last weekend.
Then you’d go for it.
No apologies. No hedging. No “if you think it might be appropriate.”
Just you, your passion for the mission, and a clear invitation for them to join you in changing the world.
What’s the worst that could happen? They say no?
In F1, drivers crash at 220 mph and are back in the car the next weekend. Sometimes even the next day.
I think we can handle a polite decline from someone who respects our work from time to time.
Happy Friday Friends!
-Michael
P.S. If you want to understand why I’ve suddenly become so obsessed with Formula 1, watch the Netflix series “Drive to Survive.” Fair warning … You may find yourself yelling at the TV about pit strategy by episode three. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.