I recently took a flight from New York to San Francisco. On the way, I got hooked into Netflix’s new Inventing Anna.
If you don’t know the Anna Delvey story, I do hope that rock you’re living under is comfy. To recap, Anna is a fake socialite who conned New York’s elite out of tons of money by pretending to be an heiress.
I love a good fraudster story almost as much as I love a gory true crime story.
What I find so fascinating about this tale is not just Anna who created and conned her way into her vision of herself–her very own Galatea. What I find fascinating is the story of all the people she conned along the way who told themselves stories about who they were and wanted to be.
They wanted to be cool. They wanted to be “in.” They wanted to profit off the next big thing.
As humans, we are all the stars of our own movies and we tell ourselves stories about who we think we are.
This is powerful information. Use it for good.
When we invite our donors into stories about impact and the change we can make in the world, we are inviting them to the story of themselves–either who they perceive themselves to be or who they would like to be in the world.
By sensitively probing to figure out the story of your donor, you can help them manifest a vision of themselves through support of your organization.
For example, “I’m the kind of person who cares about kids/oceans/equality/doing the right thing/justice etc. etc.”
Anna Delvey’s true genius was her ability to see people and their desires (greed, power, status, fame). The power to see others and to convert desire for good can be ours if we care enough to pay attention.
- Christina Yuna Lee, age 35
- Michelle Go, age 40
- Soon Chung Park, age 74
- Hyun Jung Grant, age 51
- Suncha Kim, age 69
- Yong Yue, age 63
- Delaina Ashley Yaun, age 33
- Xiaojie Tan, age 49
- Daoyou Feng, age 44
