The Art of Asking: How I learned to stop worrying and let people help
We’re adding The Art of Asking to the UK Fundraising bookshop on the day that Amanda Palmer presents the opening plenary of the 2016 International Fundraising Congress.
When we really see each other, we want to help each other’ – Amanda Palmer
Imagine standing on a box in the middle of a busy city, dressed as a white-faced bride, and silently using your eyes to ask people for money. Or touring Europe in a punk cabaret band, and finding a place to sleep each night by reaching out to strangers on Twitter.
For Amanda Palmer, actions like these have gone beyond satisfying her basic needs for food and shelter – they’ve taught her how to turn strangers into friends, build communities, and discover her own giving impulses. And because she had learned how to ask, she was able to go to the world to ask for the money to make a new album and tour with it, and to raise over a million dollars in a month.
In the New York TImes bestseller The Art of Asking, Palmer expands upon her popular TED talk to reveal how ordinary people, those of us without thousands of Twitter followers and adoring fans, can use these same principles in our own lives.
Here is her TED talk:
About Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer is a world-renowned singer, songwriter, activist, director, and blogger who first came to prominence as one half of the internationally acclaimed punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls.
She is a fellow at the Berkman Institute for Internet & Society at Harvard University and has shown her underwear on Australian television. She currently avoids living in places including Boston, New York, and Melbourne with her husband, author Neil Gaiman, who is easily embarrassed.
Palmer’s TED Talk, ‘The Art of Asking,’ which she presented at a 2013 TED conference, has been viewed at least 8 million times around the world. You can visit her website and blog at www.AmandaPalmer.net.
- 16 fundraising insights from Amanda Palmer (19 October 2016)
