The importance of intuition in non-profit work

January 25, 2013 erik organizational development

Welcome to O.D. Fridays at DonorDreams blog. Every Friday for the foreseeable future we will be looking more closely at a recent post from John Greco’s blog called “johnponders ~ about life at work, mostly” and applying his organizational development messages to the non-profit community.

In a post titled “I Have Leemers,” John talks about the power of intuition and the resistance he encounters from leaders in his workplace when it comes to making decisions based on these gut feelings.

Let me start by making a confession. My Myers-Briggs personality type is ESTP, which means I am:

Extroverted
Sensing
Thinking
Perceiving

This is what personality type experts will tell you about intuition and people like me:

“ESTP’s least developed area is their intuitive side. They are impatient with theory, and see little use for it in their quest to “get things done”. An ESTP will occasionally have strong intuitions which are often way off-base, but sometimes very lucid and positive. The ESTP does not trust their instincts, and is suspicious of other people’s intuition as well.”

As a non-profit and fundraising professional, I can honestly tell you that I’ve always felt like I’m at a disadvantage because of my intuition deficit. It is for this reason I work extra hard at trying to develop the intuition side of my personality.

Impossible you say? I don’t think so. I’ve heard personality type experts compare work like this to right-handed people learning to write with their left hand. It isn’t impossible. It is hard to do and will never feel “normal,” but it is doable.

So, you might be wondering ‘WHY’ would I ever attempt to do something like this? Well, I personally think intuition is a very important attribute for successful non-profit people. Let me give you two examples.

Fundraising

As part of any good annual campaign, you schedule face-to-face meetings with donors. In those meetings you make the case for support and ask them to pledge/give a specific dollar amount. It sounds something like this:

“So, Sally . . . I am hoping that you would give some thoughtful consideration to making a contribution of $1,000 this year to support some of the programs we just talked about as well as everything else this agency does to make a difference in our community.”

That $1,000 ask amount is determined at a committee meeting as part of prospect identification-evaluation-qualification exercises during the campaign planning phase.

As an ESTP, I love prospect identification-evaluation-qualification because it feels like we’re making a decision based on facts and data. We’re looking at the donor database and a prospect’s giving history. We’re looking at a prospect’s life circumstances (e.g. divorce, kids in college, retirement, etc). This decision is based on things that this Sensor can wrap his arms around.

However, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in the middle of a solicitation call and my intuition is screaming at me. As John said in his post, I heard those Leemers saying things like:

Abort! Abort! This donor isn’t ready to be asked.
Uh-Oh! We’re asking for too much.
Eeeek! This person is in love with the agency, and we’re asking for too little.

In every instance, I’ve always stuck to the plan and continued forward with the solicitation and asked for the amount determined by the committee. I can also tell you that every single time, I’ve walked away from the meeting thinking, “Damn, I should’ve gone with my gut feeling.”

I will become a better fundraising professional if I do a better job at developing my intuition.

Board Development

Did you read my blog post yesterday titled “The Chicago Cubs Convention through non-profit eyes: Part Three“??? If that wasn’t an ESTP’s point of view on board development, then I don’t know what is. LOL

The main theme of yesterday’s post was how important it is to develop data-based metrics to evaluate board volunteer prospects.

As with the fundraising example that I just talked about, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve walked a board prospect through a recruitment process and those Leemers were screaming at me:

This person won’t be a good fit for this board.
This person needs other experiences first (e.g. fundraising) before joining the board.
This person is saying ‘YES’ but I can’t put my finger on why they should be saying ‘NO’

Again, if I had a dollar for every circumstance I stuck with the plan, closed the deal, and those Leemers were right, then I’d be a very rich man.

I believe intuition is an important board development tool that needs to be in every non-profit leader’s toolbox.

As it relates to me, developing my intuition muscles (even a little bit more) and combining that with my “Sensing” abilities, will help me become a stronger leader, professional, consultant and coach. So, it isn’t about doing less sensing and more intuiting, it is about “balance” for me.

Please scroll down and use the comment box to share an example of when you listened to (or didn’t listen to) your Leemers in a non-profit context. Are you in the same boat as me and need to further develop your intuition? How are you going about doing that? We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

The Chicago Cubs Convention through non-profit eyes: Part Three

January 24, 2013 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

This last weekend I attended the Chicago Cubs Convention with my family. As we drifted from session to session, I couldn’t help but see all sorts of blog themes and things that non-profit organizations could learn from this major league franchise. Over the last few days I’ve shared a few of these observations and hopefully stimulated a few new ideas for you and your agency. In Tuesday’s post, we talked about stewardship. Yesterday, we discussed shared vision, values, and culture. Today, I am ending this series with a few words about statistics and predictive value.

On Sunday morning, the last session of the entire convention was titled “Stats Sunday,” and the session description read as follows:

“You know what a pitcher’s ERA means and how to calculate a hitter’s batting average, but do you know what WAR stands for or how to find someone’s OPS? Baseball is full of new-age statistics. Jim Deshaies, Len Kasper and WGN’s Bob Vorwald will help break it down for us in this special offseason edition of “Stats Sunday.”

Essentially, this session was all about the things you learned about baseball scouting in the Oscar award nominated movie and best-selling book “Moneyball.”

During the hour-long session on new baseball stats (e.g. BABIP, OPS, OPS+, UZR, WAR, WHIP, etc), we talked about at least 10 new statistics that help baseball scouts determine one simple question: “Will this ball player be a good addition to our team and help win more games?”

As I am apt to do, my mind started wandering during this session, and I found myself wishing that non-profits would someday develop a set of predictive statistics to improve the art of board development.

I have sat in countless board development and nominating committee meetings, and they all feel like that scene in Moneyball where Brad Pitt is talking to his “old-school baseball scouts” about free agents and they start sharing anecdotal evidence about girlfriends and physical attributes. If you don’t know what I’ve talking about, you might want to check out this YouTube movie trailer that contains a portion of that scene in it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFXDnhvd1WQ]

You know what I mean . . . what do the discussions sound like around your board development table? Here are some of the things I keep hearing:

Are they too busy?
Do they serve on another board?
Will they say ‘YES’ if asked?
Who is the best person we should send to ask?
Do they have money? Do they donate to us or others?

Too many agencies are essentially asking: a) do they have a pulse? b) is their wallet thick? and c) will they agree to do it?

I dare to dream about the day when board volunteers have their own “baseball-type card” with statistics on the back that measure a board member on the following concepts:

How active and engaged is this person in your mission?
How effective is this person at securing resources for your cause?
How many people in this person’s network have been exposed to your agency because of this person? How many became volunteers? How many turned into donors?

As the days have passed since attending this session, I now realize that smart non-profit thought leaders are working on projects like this. Of course, the board development metrics out there aren’t as fancy as what baseball scouts use, but here are a few interesting websites and resources that you may want to check out if you are thirsty for board development change and want to shake up your board development committee:

Do a little daydreaming with me today. What would the back of a non-profit board volunteer’s baseball card look like? What would you like to measure? What type of predictive statistics do you wish existed that could be used in a board development committee meeting to help evaluate your volunteer prospect list?

Come on . . . take a few minutes and do some dreaming. Who knows where it might led for you and your organization. Many years ago someone just like you in Major League Baseball did the same thing and it transformed an entire industry. Uh-Huh . . . you could very well be the next big non-profit thought leader. Please scroll down and share some of your amazing thoughts, ideas and questions in the comment section below. You don’t need to do this alone. 😉

Here’s to your health!

The Chicago Cubs Convention through non-profit eyes: Part Two

January 23, 2013 erik organizational development

This last weekend I attended the Chicago Cubs Convention with my family. As we drifted from session to session, I couldn’t help but see all sorts of blog themes and things that non-profit organizations could learn from this major league franchise. I will use the next few days to share a few of these observations and hopefully stimulate a few new ideas for you and your agency. In yesterday’s post, we talked about stewardship. Today, I thought we could talk about shared vision, values, and culture.

In many of the sessions, it wasn’t uncommon for someone to reference something called “The Cubs Way Guide“. They always described this guide as an organizational manual that describes what they believe and how they do things. Here is how President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein described “The Cubs Way Guide” in February 2012 on the Cubs’ website:

“The Cubs’ way really boils down to the people — the players, obviously, but everyone, all the scouts and all the people in uniform in the Minor Leagues and the big leagues. For us to teach the game the right way, it’s more than words on the page. It comes down to how deep we dig to get connected to players to teach the game the right way, how much we care, how committed we are, how hard we work. There’s a lot that goes into this and building an organization.”

At Saturday’s convention, here are some of the phrases I heard people use to describe this manual and organizational resource:

It is a document that is a few inches thick.
It is what we believe as an organization.
It embodied the organization’s philosophy and approach.
It spells out how to prepare players for the big leagues.
It lays out for coaches at every level of the minor league and major league how to teach players how to play the game. Instruction can get as detailed as which foot hits the bag when players make a turn on the bases.
It lays out a vision and plan.

I walked away from each of these sessions wondering the same thing: “I wonder what such a manual might look like for a non-profit organization?”

After a few days of day dreaming about this topic, here are a few of my thoughts on what your organizational guide might contain:

Shared values
Shared vision
Code of ethics
Conflict of interest policies
Protocol on how to recruit community volunteers and prepare/position them for joining the board some day. (e.g. getting them involved in a committee, working a few pledge cards, etc)
Procedures on how to identify, cultivate, recruit, orient, train, rotate, recognize, and evaluate board volunteers.
Steps on how to hire new staff.
Rules on how to conduct outreach/recruitment of clients.
Etiquette on how to prepare for board meetings and committee meetings (e.g. agendas sent out a certain number of days before the meeting, meeting notes and action item memos going out a certain number of days after a meeting, elements of a productive board meeting, etc)
Code of behavior regarding how to engage, solicit and communicate with donors (e.g. Donor Bill of rights)

I suspect that I could make this list go on and on and on if I wanted.

If you started thinking to yourself when reading my list that you already have some of this in place at your organization, I suspect you are probably on to something. Some of this might already be included in your strategic plan, board development plan, resource development plan, stewardship plan, etc.

However, the genius of “The Cubs Way Guide” is:

It is all in one place, not in a series of documents sitting on a number of different book shelves.
It creates a central focus. It becomes the heartbeat of your organizational culture.
It is easy to reference.
It is easy to create training opportunities around it.

cubs way2

What are your thoughts about creating an organizational “How To Manual” for your non-profit organization? What would you include? Who would you involve in this project? What elements already exist that you might fold into such a manual? How would you use it to transform your organizational culture? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts because there is nothing new under the sun and we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

The Chicago Cubs Convention through non-profit eyes: Part One

January 22, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development

This last weekend I attended the Chicago Cubs Convention with my family. As we drifted from session to session, I couldn’t help but see all sorts of blog themes and things that non-profit organizations could learn from this major league franchise. I will use the next few days to share a few of these observations and hopefully stimulate a few new ideas for you and your agency. Today, I want to drill down on the idea of stewardship.

In one of the sessions that I attended, there sat Cubs General Manager Theo Epstein and the brain trust for the entire Chicago Cubs organization. There was a lot of talk about improving the stadium, improving the product of the field, and a lot of blah-blah-blah. I’ve attended a number of these conventions, and I always marvel at how I am paying them to market to me. I also can’t believe that the script never seems to change very much.

However, something struck me as very interesting this year. It was Theo’s second convention since being hired, and I heard him say this:

“The Cubs have a covenant with the fans.”

This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard him say this. I heard it at last year’s convention. I’ve heard it and read it in various media interviews. And this time it sparked the following questions and thoughts:

I wonder what he means by that?
He is emphasizing this point . . . this must be part of a larger narrative?!?!
This sounds and feels remarkably similar to non-profit stewardship efforts. Huh?

So, I went back to the basics and looked up the word “covenant” and thefreedictionary.com defines it as follows:

“cov·e·nant (kuv’e-nent) noun. 1. A binding agreement; a compact.”

Of course, every time I hear this word it takes me back to my childhood and confirmation classes. There are obvious Biblical connotations.

I believe that when Theo talks about this covenant with Cubs fans, he is referring to:

Transparency,
Accountability,
Reporting,
Recognition, and
essentially demonstrating that the team is doing what they say they’re doing.

Isn’t this exactly what non-profit organizations mean when they talk about stewardship? I believe so.

If you agree, then this raises another interesting question: “With whom does your agency have a covenant?”

I believe that non-profit professionals and board volunteers form a covenant with many different stakeholders such as: donors, clients, collaborative partners, staff, funding partners and institutions (e.g. United Way and other foundations), and the at-large community. While there are common threads that run through each of those covenants, there are also some unique promises being made by your organization.

Have you ever thought through this part of your social contract? If not, then I suggest this might be an interesting “generative discussion” at an upcoming board meeting.

After a little more thinking, I started identifying ways the Chicago Cubs try to hold up their end of this covenant. For example:

The annual convention is in part an accountability exercise where ownership, management and players open themselves up to answering questions (e.g. ticket pricing, player acquisition, organizational development philosophy, etc).
The Cubs talked a lot about investing time and resources last year in fan surveys and focus groups.
The Cubs publish a magazine called “Vine Line” in an effort to keep fans informed.

How is this any different that what some non-profit organizations do with newsletters, annual meetings, and donor communications.

As I always say . . . “We can all learn from each other.” And I do mean ALL because the Chicago Cubs Convention proves to me that there is more commonality between for-profits and non-profits than we care to admit.

What is your non-profit agency doing to fulfill its covenant? With whom do you think you have a covenant? What tactics are you using? Where do you find your inspiration and new ideas? Who do you see doing a good job with this?

Here’s to your health!

Facebook Graph Search will impact your non-profit social media strategy

January 21, 2013 erik Fundraising, Mondays with Marissa, technology

Last week, Mark Zuckerburg and friends held a press conference announcing a new feature for Facebook. No one had any real idea of what it was going to be. Were they changing privacy setting again? Did they buy another social media network? Was Facebook finally going to make a Facebook phone? It turns out that none of those questions were the topic for the press conference and what they announced was a change in “Facebook Search” with something called Graph Search. Today, we are going to take a look at what Graph Search is and how it will impact the social media strategy of your nonprofit.

What is Graph Search?

Facebook has tons of information on every user. Just think about it. Not only does Facebook have your name, but it knows where you live, what school you attended, what music you listen to and even in some cases what toothpaste you prefer. What is Facebook going to do with all of this information? Make it searchable.

Graph Search will change how people use Facebook for searching for information. It has been said that Mark Zuckerburg wants people to use Facebook as their internet and never leave the page. Instituting Graph Search will make that possible.

Currently, if you try to use Facebook Search to find a name of a company or a person, it isn’t very helpful to you. It is easier to go use a search engine like Google to find the information you need.

With Graph Search you can search for topics such as – people who give to charity – and it will bring up a list of your friends or people who live in your area that give to charity. The search results will be based on who you know and where you are located. Because of this, it is important to note that two people could search for the same topic and get different results.

How Will Graph Search Impact Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Strategy?

Before answering that question, let’s think about how Facebook has changed in the past few months. At the end of 2012, Facebook began to limit the amount of times a post from your brand page (not your personal page) would show up in your supporters News Feed. To get around this, they introduced Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts causing people to pay money to get their message across.

With the launch of Graph Search, the number of “likes” on your page and the amount of engagement will be more important than ever. These two metrics will determine where you show up in Graph Search search results. Because Facebook has shortened the visibility of a post by a page, your non-profit might want to start thinking about allocating some money for a promoted post every now and then. This can help expand the reach of your message outside of your current supporter base and help you in both the short-term and long-term.

What Can Nonprofits Do Now to Prepare for Graph Search?

Graph Search is still currently in beta, but there a few things that you can do to your Facebook page to make sure it is ready to go when Graph Search launches.

Create Engaging Content – Post frequently and use photos to create a community on Facebook where supporters want to comment on or like what is being posted.
Fill Out Your About Section – Make sure you have all of the information filled out in your Facebook profile. Don’t forget to include a location as this is one of the main data points for Graph Search.
Plan Ahead – Take some time to think about what this change in search will mean for your organization. How will you grow support with more “likes”? What content are you publishing and when? What posts are most successful? For more help on what posts people are responding to, check out your page’s Insights data.

It will be interesting to see how Graph Search pans out and what impact it will have in the land of search engines. I am interested to see how Facebook plans to monetize their search. People take what their friends have to say seriously. So, a more personal search might be what non-profits need to gain more support.

Hopefully this post helped clear up what Graph Search is and helped you to start thinking about how it will impact your non-profit organization.

What do you think? Will Graph Search make an impact? How are you going to change your organization’s page to prepare for Graph Search Launch? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

Are you a “Fred the Baker” type of non-profit leader?

January 18, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, Planning

In a post titled “Tracking,” John talks about the power of planning by sharing an amazing story about a stretch of mountains in the Alps that is next to impossible to pass. Instead of waiting for the train technology to catch up, Europeans decided years ago to build train tracks through that part of the mountains in anticipation that train technology will one day produce an engine with enough horsepower to get the job done.

Reading John’s post made me think of the countless non-profit executive directors and fundraising professionals who take on the role of “Fred the Baker” instead of embodying the spirit of those European planners who built those train tracks.

What? You don’t remember who Fred the Baker is? Check out this YouTube video and ask yourself this simple question: “Do I look like this every day and evening on my way to and from my non-profit job?”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=petqFm94osQ]

The story that immediately comes to mind and is very common and why many non-profit organizations can’t seem to get a major gifts program off the ground. When asked what is stopping them from building the capacity to add a major gifts program to their fundraising program, the explanation looks and sounds remarkably like “Fred the Baker”:

The day-to-day, month-to-month routine is so fast and mundane that there is no time for planning.
In January, we do the dinner.
In February-March-April we do the annual campaign.
In May we do the golf outing.
Etc, Etc, Etc

I recently had the privilege of working with a group of non-profit volunteers who said . . . ENOUGH . . . let’s build some train tracks.

They understood the following:

They didn’t have the right staff in place to implement a major gifts initiative.
Their technology (e.g. donor database) needs a lot of work to support an initiative like this.
Their resource development practices and systems need to change (e.g. stewardship)
They might even need to change the people sitting around the table.

Yet, none of this stopped them from working on those train tracks. They made it a goal in their resource development plan to some day have a fully functional major gifts program. They then look realistically at what they could start doing rather than what they couldn’t do and came up with the following handful of objectives for this year:

Develop an internal case for support.
Develop a menu of gift opportunities.
Identify a small handful of potential major gift prospects.
Develop personal confidential personal strategy plans for each prospect.
Engage in implementing each plan and start cultivating.

They are laying train tracks for the future and doing what they can today in anticipation for what they want to happen tomorrow.

How are you ensuring that you and the folks at your agency are NOT “Fred the Baker”? Do you use the planning process (e.g. strategic plan, board development plan, resource development plan, marketing plan, program plan, etc) to lay future train tracks for your organization? Do you have a great success story that you want to share? Please scroll down and use the comment box to jump into this discussion because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Managing the dualism of being a non-profit board volunteer

January 17, 2013 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

I recently came to the conclusion that there is a strange dualism surrounding the roles and responsibilities for a volunteer serving on a non-profit board. These two different roles can compete with each other and create a weird destructive dysfunction if non-profit staff don’t do their job and keep things in check.

A few months ago I witnessed something that my mind just couldn’t process, and it has been rolling around inside my head ever since. Let me try to summarize it:

Non-profit staff recruit a volunteer to join their board.
The volunteer happily joins.
Staff work hard to get the volunteer engaged in various projects.
The volunteer happily gets engaged.
Staff try engaging the volunteer at an action plan level of a particular project (e.g. specific tasks, deadlines, etc).
The volunteer become the chairperson.
Instead of doing what is expected of a chairperson, the volunteer turns around and acts like staff works for them and starts re-assigning tasks to staff.

A little too abstract. OK, let me provide an example to clear things up.

Once upon a time, a board volunteer agreed to chair a special event committee. Once they agreed to provide leadership to the committee, they started tasking staff with doing things that might otherwise be considered the role of the chair. Here are a few examples . . . 1) please email the committee and tell them I wish to meet at a certain time and location, 2) please recruit the following volunteers to sit on my committee, 3) please check on a certain volunteer and make sure they are doing what they said they would do.

In this example, staff recruit a volunteer chairperson to help them accomplish some work. The end result is that the volunteer acts like staff works for them and sees their role/responsibilities as telling staff what to do. Staff scratch their head wondering why they needed to recruit a volunteer because they know what needs to happen . . . they needed help doing those things and not someone to tell them what to do.

Believe it or not, I see this happen all the time and I now have a theory.

The following is an excerpt from Guidestar on the subject of non-profit board roles and responsibilities:

“Nonprofit board members have two basic responsibilities—support and governance—each requiring different skills and expertise. In the role of “supporter” board members raise money, bring contacts to the organization, and act as ambassadors to the community. Equally important, the “governance” role involves protection of the public interest, being a fiduciary, selecting the executive director and assessing his/ her performance, ensuring compliance with legal and tax requirements, and evaluating the organization’s work.”

I think I see a weird dissonance starting to form between these two basic responsibilities.

Huh?

Well, one of the basic roles of a nonprofit board volunteer is “SUPPORT” . . . which I read as rolling up ones sleeves and helping get stuff done. The other role is “GOVERNANCE” . . . which I read as making sure certain things are getting done and providing some oversight.

Am I over-generalizing to make a point? YES, but I think I am still going somewhere.

If clarity isn’t established from the very beginning, it is reasonable to expect confusion. It is from here that I believe situations and examples that I provided earlier grow legs and get ugly.

If non-profit staff want to avoid these weird sand trap situations, they need to be serious about using best practices when it comes to volunteer identification, recruitment, and management.

Use a written job description
Seriously engage volunteers in orientation and continuous training opportunities
Invest time in evaluation and work on creating a culture of honest feedback

I think it is also important to mention here that providing a volunteer with a written job description is not where the magic occurs. Learning and understanding comes from the frank and honest discussion that occurs during the recruitment meeting. For example, the job description is the “MEANS” and not the “ENDS“.

Have you ever had to deal with a situation like this? How did you fix it? What tools and processes do you use to set expectations up front with volunteers to avoid confusion and role blurring down the road? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Dealing with bullies in your non-profit boardroom

January 16, 2013 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

I was just talking to a group of volunteer board members and the topic turned to “bullies in the boardroom”. I suspect that you know what I am talking about. This person takes many different forms, such as:

The need to always be right.
They dominate the conversation.
They may talk over other people.
They get angry and aggressively assert their opinions.
They mock people who don’t agree.

As you might imagine, a conversation like this quickly turns to the question: “How do you handle board volunteers like this?”

Being a former youth development professional, I decided to look for general resources on how to deal with bullies and see if there might be commonality between how to deal with a school yard bully versus a boardroom bully.

I actually found a really good blog post at wikiHow titled “How to deal with bullies” and there was some very nice advice that crossed over such as:

Show minimal reaction to bullying
Help others
Do not make jokes at your own expense to try to prove that there is nothing they can do to hurt your feelings

Of course, some of the other suggestions fell flat for me like “Take Karate”. LOL If you have a moment, I really suggest that you click the wikiHow link and scan that article because bullying is a big deal issue in all walks of life.

There are two other thoughts that immediately come to mind when discussing this topic:

Board development
Firing board members

Board Development

You can solve your agency’s bully problem before it even starts if you get serious about board development. Your recruitment process should not be hasty. It should feel like a dating process with multiple steps. For some reason, that song “Getting to Know” from The King & I comes to mind. Do I need to say any more? Click here to visit the National Council of Nonprofits’s webpage if you need some basic board development tools for your agency.

Firing a volunteer

I always hate this discussion because I believe it should never get to this point. However, a bully in the boardroom is an intolerable situation, and it needs to always be dealt with. There is no easy way to do this, and it is always done with a nervous stomach. I could write page on this subject, but our friends at Nonprofit Hearts did a nice job with a post they titled “Firing a Board member with grace“. I suggest you click over and read what they have to say. They even do a nice job with dialog.

Have you ever had to deal with a bully in your nonprofit boardroom? What did you do that seemed to work? How did it turn out. We can all learn from each other. Please use the comment box below to share some of your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Avoid 19th Century donor cultivation tactics

January 15, 2013 erik Fundraising

Here is a tip for all of you fundraising professionals and volunteers out there: ” Women are powerful donors in their own right, and we settled most Women’s suffrage issues almost a century ago.” Those of us who cannot understand this simple yet powerful idea are “cruisin’ for a bruisin’” as a friend of mine used to say.

You’re probably wondering where this is coming from . . . so let me provide a little context. In the last few weeks, I’ve heard people twice say something that made me wonder if we were living in 1913 or 2013. Here are the two examples:

Some very nice woman was receiving an award and there was a group discussion about whether or not to tell her or surprise her from the podium. The decision was to talk to her husband and ask him to make the decision.
One group wants to get closer to a donor because he is one of those “very influential philanthropists” in town. You know the type. So, the decision was to start cultivating his daughter’s husband.

The first example is innocent enough and didn’t raise any red flags, but when put together with the second example it just got me thinking about the concept of “Women in Philanthropy”.

Did you know that Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis’ Center on Philanthropy has an internal division named the “Women’s Philanthropy Institute“? Here is a blurb from their website:

“The Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) studies how and why gender matters in philanthropy. Men’s and women’s motivations for giving and patterns of giving differ. What works for men in philanthropy may not work for women. As women’s economic power and educational achievements continue to increase in the 21st century, women are leveraging that power to influence philanthropic decision-making and to transform the philanthropic landscape in many ways.”

When I read something like this, it makes me immediately think:

Wow! Men and women make philanthropic decisions differently. I wonder how I should incorporate that from a strategic and tactical perspective into a written resource development plan?
If women are as influential as they appear to be in philanthropy, then why are we still doing these weird cultivation dances with their fathers and their husbands?

Am I off base? Maybe a little, but I know that I am close to hitting on something big.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a board volunteer who is a strong woman. She and I are working on a fundraising project together, and she talked about a conversation that she and her husband had about a particular charity. To make a long story short, here are the highlights:

She is concerned about the organization’s financial health.
He knows his wife too well and knows that she will give this organization more money to help them out.
He strongly stated his wishes not to let their philanthropy get out of hand because he wants to retire in a few years.

I look at this conversation and now see things very clearly. She is the person who makes charitable giving decisions in that family. He is pleading his case to “The Decider”. I wonder how many charities don’t see that and try to engage him first?

Still not convinced that your agency needs to do a better job planning for and engaging women in your resource development efforts? Then please consider what Betsy Brill wrote in Forbes magazine on August 18, 2009:

“Women now control more than half of the private wealth in the U.S. and make 80% of all purchases. According to Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, women will inherit 70% of the $41 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfer expected over the next 40 years. In addition to controlling wealth and consumer activity, women tend to donate more of their wealth than men do. A Barclay’s Wealth study titled Tomorrow’s Philanthropist, released in July 2009, showed that women in the U.S. give an average of 3.5% of their wealth to charity, while men give an average of 1.8%.”

What is your non-profit agency doing to make this adjustment? Will the next generation of philanthropists in America be dominated by women? Please use the comment box below to share what your agency is doing about this resource development trend?

Here’s to your health!

Setting your non-profit agency’s 2013 social media goals

January 14, 2013 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

Happy 2013 DonorDreams readers! I hope the year has started off well for you. The beginning of new years are always a time of reflection for me. I like to look at what I did last year and see what I want to accomplish this year. This usually results in me making a number of lists that either get fully or partially completed by the end of the year. I thought, that in the first Mondays with Marissa post for 2013, we could sit down and look at how to do the same for your nonprofit agency’s social media strategy.

Whenever I take the time to look back on the year, I start by asking myself a bunch of questions about the year that just ended. When looking at social media, the same process can be helpful. Here’s a list of questions to ask about the social media success of your organization.

On which social networks did you have an account?
How many posts did you make on each network?
Which networks warranted the most engagement? This includes: likes, retweets, replies, comments, reblogs, ect.
What type of posts resulted in the most engagement? Were photos more successful than text? Did you experiment with videos? How did those work?
Which days were the most successful for encouraging engagement on each social media site? Are Tuesdays and Fridays your best Facebook days while Wednesdays and Thursdays are your best Twitter days? If you blog regularly, don’t forget to look back and see which days resulted in the most views and comments. Was there a pattern with the posts on those days?

Based on asking these questions, you can use the answers to help form your plan for 2013. These additional questions can help flush out the details.

Which social networks were least successful? Are they worth your attention this year?
Which social networks were were you not involved in last year? Would you like to try a new one?
Have you started a blog for your organization? If not, why? If so, do you have an email subscription service set up?
Based on your numbers from last year, what are your goals for 2013?

You may be wondering where you can get all of that data. Well, Facebook Insights is a great place to start for Facebook. If you were using the application Think Up, you should have an archive of all of your numbers from last year. Twitter just made your history downloadable so that’s a place to start. Even if you aren’t able to get specific numbers as to which posts were the most successful thinking about your social media involvement in this way can help you set up some healthy goals for 2013.

I’d love to hear some of your social media goals in the comments below. Please take a moment to share what you’re most looking forward to accomplishing in the social media space in 2013?