Fundraising – Page 16 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Does your non-profit practice data sharing?

October 23, 2013 erik Fundraising

data1 Last week I was in Reno, Nevada at Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s (BGCA) Pacific Leadership Conference. This week I am in Mashantucket, Connecticut at BGCA’s Northeast Leadership Conference. The common denominator is that I am helping organize and facilitate a training track for executive directors and school superintendents. One of the sessions in the training track addresses the issue of data sharing, and I thought it would be a good topic to discuss today with DonorDreams readers.

Why include this topic in a training track focused on collaboration? Because data sharing is an important part of developing any successful partnership.

In the Boys & Girls Club universe, schools and Clubs share data with each other for a number if reasons including:

It is a way to measure success.
It is a way to improve programs.
It is a way to demonstrate ROI to donors.

Of course, if sharing data was easy, everyone would be doing it. Here are a few obstacles participants identified:

Time
Limited staff
Untrained staff
Lack of reasons for needing specific data
Client privacy
Trust

data2 The following are just a few key strategies identified by participants that will help any non-profit organization sustain data sharing agreements with its partners:

Develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU) clearly spelling out roles and responsibilities.
Seek to understand your partner first before seeking to be understood.
Have a reason for needing the data for which you are asking.
Be mission-driven and focused when it comes to your partnerships and data needs.
Regularly scheduled meetings are communication opportunities.
Make data sharing part of your non-profit culture.
Use the data for which you’re asking and share the aggregated results with your partners.
Use the data for which you’re asking to make important decisions thus demonstrating the importance of it to all stakeholders both internal and external.
Have your data analysis plan written and in place before you collect the data because collecting data for the sake of collecting data is frustrating and stupid.

The following are a few great online resources pertaining to data collection, sharing and usage:

NTEN: “The State of Nonprofit Data“
NTEN: “Nonprofit-Centric Data Sharing Sites
Beth’s Blog: “Liberating Nonprofit Data for Greater Impact“
Spinnakr Blog: “Is Big Data Changing the Scope of Nonprofits?“

I walked away from the three different symposiums that I helped organize and facilitate this month with the following big take away:

If you want to measure the depth and strength of your collaboration, then look at your data sharing efforts.

What does your data sharing efforts with other partners look like? What best practices and key strategies can you share with others? If you don’t share data with your collaborative partners, would you be willing to share with us why not?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. 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

A recipe for securing major gifts

October 22, 2013 erik Fundraising

recipe When I was an internal consultant working for Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), my team was charged with helping local affiliates build their organizational capacity around resource development. In the beginning, there were two sides of our team — annual campaign support and planned giving support. As time passed, our team focused on creating a third vehicle of service — major gifts.

Over the last few years, there have been a number of consultants hired to help develop the pilot project and then ultimately the help with the roll out. Lots of thought went into developing BGCA’s major gifts initiative.

As you can imagine, there is great diversity among local affiliates. Some Clubs are very large and capable, and many others are small and still developing. With this in mind, my former team preferred to develop programs that involved taking simple steps. This approach was the easiest way to ensure all local affiliates regardless of their size and capacity were able to implement any fundraising program.

The following are the 10 steps my team advocated for when teaching others how to secure a major gift:

Develop your internal case for support and menu of gift opportunities
Identify top ‘ready to give’ major gift prospects
Assemble your cultivation team
Develop confidential personal strategy plan(s)
Implement specific personal strategy(ies)
Monitor progress and modify plan(s) as needed
Ask prospect for permission to develop specific proposal(s)
Present proposal in person; modify proposal if needed
Finalize gift when donor is ready
Thank and recognize donor as appropriate

For those of you who think I’ve given away major trade secrets or violated copyright laws, I assure you that I have not.

Of course, I checked the manual for copyright warnings and there were none. The reason being is that these 10 steps are part of the public domain and are common knowledge. Spend a few minutes on Google and you’ll find any number of bloggers and traditional authors who’ve published similar lists.

When I look at this list, I think of any number of recipes that I might find online or in my mom’s old cookbooks. These 10 items are akin to simple ingredients on a recipe card for a yummy dish.

Of course, there will likely be a HUGE difference between me making a recipe and the Barefoot Contessa (aka Ina Garten) making the same dish. I suspect there will be huge differences in results between small and large non-profit organizations. In my opinion, here are just a few things that will make a difference:

how well your donors are being stewarded and depth of relationships
experience of fundraising staff
experience and relationships of fundraising volunteers
resource development systems (e.g. donor database or CRM, Moves Management program, etc)

When Claire published her call for submissions for October’s Nonprofit Blog Carival, she asked her fellow bloggers with tongue firmly planted in the side of her Halloween cheek to consider:

“Do you HAUNT prospects through a series of managed ‘moves’? Do you fly in on a BROOMSTICK and just drop in spontaneously? How do you put them under your SPELL?”

I love these questions. Those of you who regularly tune into the DonorDreams blog know how much I talk about stewardship. I honestly think it is the key to developing relationships and cultivating major gift donors down the road. The following are just a few of my favorite stewardship focused posts over the years:

Does your organization use a similar major gifts “recipe” as the one I shared from my former employer? If so, what steps do you think are the most important? Do you find particular cultivation and stewardship strategies more effective than others? Please scroll down and share your thoughts and experiences in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

More on the government shutdown and the non-profit sector

October 9, 2013 erik Fundraising, Planning

shutdown5 In yesterday’s post titled “Did fundraising cause the recent government shutdown,” we talked about whether or not fundraising strategies are one of the leading factors contributing to our current situation. Today, I want to stay with this topic and look at how the shutdown is impacting non-profits and what you should do in the long-term to mitigate some of these issues.

Those you serve

Last night, I was watching the news and an executive director of a veterans agency was being interviewed about how the government shutdown was impacting veterans. Throughout the interview, he eloquently talked about the impact on:

military support staff
vendors
contractors
VA Hospitals (except for emergency room services)
students waiting for G.I. Bill payments for school costs
disbursement of death benefits to families

While I found all of this interesting, the thing most interesting to me was how his agency was being impacted. Obviously, informational hotlines are not being staffed in government offices. So, this organization is trying to fill that void and trying to answer their questions or get them the information they require.

All of this got me thinking. How many other non-profit organizations have clients who rely on the government for something? And by “things” I mean benefits, services, etc.

I suspect there are many non-profits whose phone lines and case workers are now working overtime to fill the void normally filled by government agencies.

Funding concerns

shutdown4 From what I’ve heard and read, many non-profit organizations are concerned about how the government shutdown will impact their funding. Consider the following:

organizations fund their operations with federal contracts
states receive federal pass-through money which eventually can put state funding to non-profits in question
vendors, who do lots of business with the government, might not be able to continue providing your agency with the services you require
donors who work for the government or receive benefits from the government might not be in a position to pay their pledges or continue their support in the short-term

The longer a shutdown drags on, the more pressure will be placed on many non-profit organization’s revenue models.

Human capital

Just the other day, I was speaking with an agency who runs many of their programs with work-study students from the local college. The question they were pondering was obviously, “What impact might the government shutdown have on their situation?”

There are government programs like work-study and Americorps that fuel countless agencies’ human resources needs.

Unanticipated consequences

Our system of government is large and complicated. There are countless numbers of programs that non-profit organizations rely upon, and there are millions of individuals who are impacted. Some of these challenges are immediately obvious, but many others will only make themselves visible down the road.

When businesses — regardless of whether they are for-profit or non-profit — operate in an environment of uncertainty, crazy things start to happen. Uncertainty and the human experience mix together about as well as oil and water.

While finance professionals brace for instability in financial markets, so too should non-profit organizations prepare for the obvious impacts and attempt to anticipate unexpected challenges.

What should you do?

While you might feel helpless at a time like this, there are some things you should consider:

Pull together an ad hoc committee to assess your agency’s vulnerabilities
Revisit your strategic plan and invest some time in contingency planning
Engage fundraising volunteers in a discussion about how to shift your agency’s dependence on government funding to other more stable sources like private sector fundraising efforts and specifically individual giving

Has your agency been impacted by the government shutdown? If so, how? What are you doing about all of this right now? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Did fundraising cause the recent government shutdown?

October 8, 2013 erik Fundraising

shutdown1 In the weeks leading up to the government shutdown, I heard some rumblings via the news media that Senator Ted Cruz and those aligned with him were dragging things out in Congress to maximize their online and direct mail fundraising efforts. To be honest, I didn’t give much thought to those accusations. They sounded like sour grapes and something partisan opponents would say in the heat of the moment. And then . . . when the government actually shut down, I started receiving a flood of email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). This is when my fundraising spidey-sense started to tingle, and I started paying attention because there must be lessons to be learned for non-profit organizations somewhere in this mess.

Here is what the most recent DCCC fundraising email said:

Dear Erik —

Boehner’s Tea Party majority is teetering on the edge:

A new poll shows that Democrats are leading SEVENTEEN Republican Congressmen after the Tea Party-inspired shutdown. Guess how many seats we need to win back a Democratic Majority? 17.

Voters are done putting up with the extreme Tea Party antics that have paralyzed the government. We have to act quickly to press our advantage in these crucial races. Will you help us raise $500,000 immediately to take on vulnerable House Republicans?

Donate $3 IMMEDIATELY to the Democratic Majority Rapid Response Fund.

This shutdown could spell the end of the Tea Party controlled Republican Majority.

But if we want that to happen, we have to act now.

Thanks,
DCCC Rapid Reponse

I purposely omitted the hyperlinks and website addresses because my intention is to evaluate language and strategy and not raise money for the DCCC.

So, let’s strip out the partisanship and set aside our personal political feelings. Let’s avoid the temptation to point fingers. Let’s just look at the circumstances, strategies and verbiage in the letter from a “Just the facts, ma’am” perspective.

What do you see? What do you sense?

shutdown3 Here is what I’m seeing:

I see a misspelling in the signature block.
I see a case for support spelled out in five simple sentences.
I see emotionally charged words intended to poke and prod me into action (e.g. teetering, extreme, paralyzed, etc).
I see a fundraising goal clearly articulated (e.g. $500,000).
I see a specific ask (e.g. Donate $3.00 immediately).
I sense the strategy here is to set a very low barrier to entry to entice first time donors. In other words, they poke me, I get upset, and the solution is as simple as just giving $3.00 to make things right again.
I see an email with a small handful of carefully worded sentences fitting neatly on my computer screen. I don’t need to scroll down to continue reading.
I see short easy to read sentences. The longest sentence was 16 words long.

There is so much that you can learn if you just keep your eyes, ears and mind open. Professional fundraisers cram your mailbox and email inbox full of examples every day. Are you paying attention? Because with a little discipline you can teach yourself a lot in a short period of time.

Let’s circle back to the question I pose in the headline of this blog post:

Did fundraising cause the recent government shutdown?

I think a case can be made for the answer to this question being “YES”.

There is so much noise being made in our political arena on a daily basis that many people tune things out. I know that I am as guilty as others in this regard. So, when you have fundraising goals to hit, then your case for support needs to be very big and noisy in order to get people’s attention.

I believe the lesson to be learned here for non-profit organizations is that your case for support is powerful. It is the engine at the center of your resource development plan. It is the jet fuel for all of your fundraising appeals regardless of whether it is a direct mail appeal, email, social media, telephone solicitation, face-to-face pledge drive or special event.

shutdown2 When crafting your case for support, this is what our friends in the political fundraising world seem to be telling their non-profit cousins:

Make it emotional
Focus on an issue that people care about
Choose an issue that donors and the media will talk about and magnify
Wrap marketing efforts around your fundraising efforts
Where possible, infuse advocacy into the appeal

For those of you who are skeptical and find yourself thinking at the end of this blog post that non-profit organizations can’t “manufacture” a crisis and weave it into a case for support like politicians, then let me suggest that you open your mind a little more.

I cannot tell you how many agencies I’ve seen neglect their buildings by minimally investing in maintenance and upkeep. In the final analysis, aren’t those agencies just slowly creating a powerful capital campaign case for support for down the road? Maybe it is purposeful and maybe it isn’t, but the fact that it is a manufactured crisis cannot be denied.

There are plenty of needs and gaps in our communities around which non-profit organizations can build a powerful case for support. We don’t need to manufacture crisis to raise money like our political counterparts, but it does happen more often than you think.

So, what are you waiting for?

It is the fourth quarter and year-end fundraising is one of the biggest shows on Earth. Start writing your case for support document today so you can transform it into an eloquent and powerful fundraising appeal in the next few weeks.

But whatever you do, please don’t “shutdown” your agency to make a buck or two. I suspect donors can only handle this strategy in small doses. 😉

And I am making a mental note to myself . . . perhaps, I need to stop tuning out politicians on a daily basis so they stop doing drastic things to get my attention. 😉 (Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.)

Here’s to your health!

Cause related marketing saved Tina’s life

October 7, 2013 erik Fundraising

nfl1 Over the years, I’ve urged non-profit organizations to exercise tremendous caution when contemplating a cause related marketing strategy as part of their resource development plan. There was the December 2012 post titled “Cause related marketing 101: Educate, educate, educate!” Then there was the February 2013 post titled “Bad cause related marketing is offensive” based on my personal experience with buying a new pair of glasses at the mall. Most recently, there was “Non-profits must be careful with cause related marketing,” which was based on another personal experience with an internet vendor.

Some people have called me a skeptic of cause related marketing, which is not true. I just strongly believe that media is powerful and employing this strategy wrong can do lots of damage very quickly to your brand. So, when I saw the NFL’s newest “A Crucial Catch” public service announcement during yesterday’s games, I knew I just had to blog about it today.

The commercial opens up with a woman telling us that her name is Tina; she is a New York Jets fan; and she is a breast cancer survivor. As she tells her story, you get pulled in and emotionally connected which is when they drop the bomb. Towards the end of the commercial, she credits the NFL with saving her life. It was because of the NFL’s awareness efforts and cause related marketing campaign that Tina performed her first self examinations. These initial self exams resulted in a visit to the doctor and early detection.

Haven’t seen the commercial? Click here or on the image below to check it out. Trust me . . . it is worth the click!

First, let me say that I forgive Tina for being a Jets fan. 😉

Second, let me congratulate Tina for beating breast cancer and having the courage to tell her story to millions of people.

Finally, I encourage all non-profit organizations who are looking for a benchmarking project, prior to jumping into a cause related marketing campaign, to look at this campaign. It is rock solid and everyone can learn from this textbook example.

The American Cancer Society has raised millions of dollars primarily through two funding vehicles: 1) the sale of pink NFL merchandise and 2) an auction of sports related items by the NFL.

nfl2 If you want to know more about this campaign, Forbes magazine’s Alicia Jessop did a nice job in an October 2012 article titled “The NFL’s A Crucial Catch Campaign Raises Millions for the American Cancer Society” of summarizing the essence of the campaign.

I really love the mutually beneficial relationship between the NFL and the American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society gets:

Revenue
Exposure for its brand
Awareness of its issue

The NFL gets:

Positive exposure for its brand (e.g. The Halo Effect)
Awareness of its product (e.g. football) by a powerful segment of consumers — women

The thing I love most about this cause related marketing campaign is the contrast it creates, which in and of itself makes people pay attention to an important issue. What I mean by this is that football is a uniquely masculine product with lots of testosterone, and breast cancer (in most people’s minds) is a uniquely feminine issue (even though there are a small number of men diagnosed with this cancer ever year and countless men and boys are devastated when the women in their lives are diagnosed).

If you want to learn more about cause related marketing, you may want to check of some of the following resources:

about.com: “Three Cause-Marketing Trends That Matter For Nonprofits And Their Business Partners“
Hone Watson Bookmarks: “Cause Marketing The Halo Effect“
Ventureneer SlideShare presentation: “Cause Marketing Basics“

To all of you who follow the DonorDreams blog, let me be one of the first to wish you a happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please practice and promote prevention.

I also want to take a moment to congratulate my sister-in-law who was diagnosed in her early 30s with breast cancer and has been cancer-free for more than 10 years. You’re a fighter and inspiration, Anne! Now please take your brother to a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving. I’m tired of hearing him whine about it.

Is your organization looking at a cause related marketing campaign? What are some of the obstacles in your way? What are you doing to overcome those obstacles? What does your planning process look like so that you can avoid the bad campaigns I’ve previously written about and referenced in the beginning of this post?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health! (And think pink) 😉

My day with Jay Love from Bloomerang

October 1, 2013 erik Fundraising

Do you know Jay Love? Of course, you know this gentleman, but you just may not know that you know him. Many non-profit professionals know Jay as the man who innovated the online donor database system known as eTapestry. More recently, you may have heard whispers about a new online CRM product called Bloomerang, which focuses on donor loyalty instead of more transactional metrics found in traditional donor databases. Well, that is Jay’s newest gift to the non-profit sector.

A few weeks ago, I extended an invitation to Jay and asked him to speak to the Fox West Philanthropic Network (FWPN) about donor loyalty rates and the data associated with this phenomenon.

Over the course of an hour or so, FWPN members were exposed to data and lessons learned from the 2012 Fundraising Effectiveness Project. I thought I should share some of those points with you today.

Focus on 10 percent

Jay started his presentation by asking the group a multiple choice question.

“What does a 10 percent increase in donor retention rates mean in terms of lifetime dollars raised?”

a) 50% increase
b) 100% increase
c) 150% to 200% increase

Of course, the answer is the most dramatic answer . . . c) Increasing donor retention rates by 10 percent can improve lifetime dollars raised somewhere between 150% and 200%.

Jay does a nice job of illustrating this point mathematically.

If your organization started with 2,000 donors at an average size gift of $200 and a retention rate of 41%, you would raise $820,859 over 10 years in lifetime giving. With everything else staying the same except moving your retention rate from 41% to 51%, your organization would raise more than $1.2 million in lifetime giving.

These initial slides are designed to get your attention. I know that Jay had my attention at this point.

Do you love your donors?

It shouldn’t be surprising that Jay Love is obsessed by “donor-love”.

One of the statistics I scribbled down on my notepad was why customers of for-profit companies stop doing business with those companies.

According to survey research, 77% of consumers stop frequenting a company because they don’t believe the company is interested in their business.

Jay does a nice job of tell a story about his dry cleaners who after many years of business still don’t use his first or last name when he picks up his clothing. Where is the love? He even conducted an experiment where he started using their first names in an effort to personalize the relationship, but it resulted in no change.

The moral to the story is that when a new dry cleaners shop opens up closer to Jay’s home, he is very likely to switch.

Of course, this is similar with regards to non-profit organizations.

Most donors don’t make a second contribution. Why? Well, simply stated . . . they didn’t feel a connection, which isn’t any different from the for-profit explanation of “they aren’t interested in me“.

How many of your donors are currently shopping for a new place to invest their charitable giving?

The answer is . . . you don’t want to find out! Take an interest and get to know your donors.

Take the time to be personal

Jay talks about the power of a handwritten note. Not only does he keep his handwritten gift acknowledgement letters, but they don’t even fill up one shelf in his office.

The power of handwritten notes really resonated with me because I do the same thing as Jay. I tape them to the door, and generally have a hard time throwing them away.

Are you already sending handwritten notes to donors? Want another idea about how to personalize philanthropy? I really liked Jay’s idea of sending individuals, who make a first time gift to your organization, a “new donor welcome packet“.

Always remember . . . the more personal the gift acknowledgement, the more likely you are to get contribution number two!

Please note that personalized acknowledgements are only one-third of the battle. You need to communicate to the donor that their donation is being used in the manner in which you promised. You also need to demonstrate ROI. However, if personalizing your acknowledgement strategies get you one-third of the way to a renewal, then what are you waiting for?

The final two notes that I took from Jay’s presentation were:

Your targeted and direct mail should use the word “YOU” twice as much as the word “WE“.
Your letters should be written at a sixth to eighth grade reading level.

My advice to you?

Jay was super kind and uploaded his FWPN presentation to SlideShare. If you have the time, it is worth it to click here and view his slides.

I’m sure that you won’t find it surprising that Jay built many of these principles as well as the teachings of Adrian Sargeant and Tom Ahern into his new online donor CRM product. You may want to check out Bloomerang when you have a chance.

Do you use Bloomerang? If so, what has been your experience? Are you tracking your agency’s donor retention rates? What has been your ROI experience. Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit budget season: The old Texas Two Step

September 19, 2013 erik Board governance, Fundraising

The other day I received an email from an old friend asking me to share my thoughts about the “right way” for a non-profit organization and its board to construct a budget. Do you start with revenue projections and develop the agency’s fundraising plan first? This way everyone knows what the expense budget can’t exceed. Or do you start with the expenses and try to build a revenue budget that supports the organization’s mission, vision and programming?

My first thought when I got this message was: “OMG! It is budget season for many non-profit agencies. Ugh . . . it is almost October. Where did winter, spring and summer go?”

My second thought was actually more of a chuckle because I’ve always thought of budget season as a bizarre dance between board and staff that resembles something like the Texas Two Step as demonstrated in this YouTube video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_H1x2MpeEk]

For the record, I don’t think there is a right and wrong way to undertake budget construction. There are obviously very smart people who reside in both camps — revenue first vs. expenses first. When I was an executive director, I tried to do the uncomfortable thing and sit on the fence. Ouch!

budget The following is a thumbnail sketch of what my process looked like:

I put the budget process in writing with a narrative description and timeline, then built consensus around the importance of following process and adhering to deadlines.
I simultaneously started working with the finance committee and the resource development committee.
The finance committee and I worked with program staff, and everyone collaborated around constructing reasonable expense budgets with mission, vision and quality programming in mind.
The resource development committee and I worked on developing a detailed resource development plan chock full of reasonable revenue projections, range of gifts charts, goals, strategies, volunteer prospect lists, grant prospects, annual campaign prospects, special event prospects, fundraising calendar, and action plans.
Sometime in October or November the two committees met jointly. They shared and compared their work. The FUN was just beginning because there was always a gap on the bottom line.
Consensus was built and both committees went back to work. The finance committee was usually tasked with finding cuts that wouldn’t hurt the agency’s mission or damage its organizational capacity. The resource development committee went back to the drawing board to find reasonable revenue enhancements.
Both committee were tasked with reporting their progress back to the board every month throughout the process. The hard part was staging those board meetings in a manner where generative discussions would happen and result in: 1) board volunteers who didn’t sit on those committees an getting and opportunity to weigh-in and 2) both committees getting an opportunity to engage the larger board in decision-making focused on strategies and tactics (esp. those related to revenue generation).

When the committees converge in the process, the age-old Texas Two Step issue would always float to the top. Do we close the gap with budget cuts or revenue enhancements?

My philosophy was always “revenue first” because I felt like the mission of the organization called upon us to make that attempt first. However, this doesn’t entail just changing projections and modifying our best guesses. It involved adding more prospects, tweaking strategies, and adding revenue streams.

Some years I won this argument. In many other years, I lost this argument, and the finance committee would produce their hatchet. (I am embarrassed to admit that one year I lost the ability to send donors a newsletter thanks to that hatchet. I should’ve fought harder because donors need to see what their investment is doing.)

Ahhhhh . . . You gotta love the old Texas Two Step. 🙂

As I sat on my couch and texted back-n-forth with this old friend, my mind wandered (as it tends to do) and I had a third thought:

If you like sausage, you don’t want to know how it is made!

making sausage I am not suggesting that my process is the right way to put a non-profit budget together. However, I do believe strongly in the following few budget construction principles:

Budgeting is a collaborative activity between board and staff. (Avoid a situation where staff puts it together and the board either behaves like the two Muppets who sit in the balcony or simply just rubber stamps it.)
Projection of numbers (esp. revenue) isn’t a dart throwing activity. It is rooted in historic data, trends, actual prospect names, and strategies. Don’t ever use “plug numbers“.
There is a process with an explicit timeline. It is written out. It is created collaboratively and agreed to by all parties.

Enough of my waxing poetic about how your non-profit should tackling budget season. Here are a few online resources and documents that I found:

Nonprofit Accounting Basic$: “The Budget Process“
Larsen Allen LLP Effect Magazine: “Nonprofits: Improve Your Budget Process“
Clifton Gunderson LLP Count on Insight: “Best Practices for Nonprofit Budgeting and Cash Forecasting“

Is your organization in the middle of its annual budget construction process? What works for you? What doesn’t work? What do you plan on doing differently next year?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

How will you celebrate your non-profit’s next anniversary?

September 17, 2013 erik Fundraising

anniversary1 Every year, it seems like one of the charities I support is celebrating some kind of anniversary or milestone. Most of the time, it relates to the age of the organization, and it is typically a milestone like 25, 50, 75 or 100 years of existence. Sometimes it is a different kind of anniversary, where they’re celebrating a board member’s years of service or the age of something physical like a building. Regardless of the opportunity to celebrate, a fundraising solicitation is never far behind; however, anniversary celebrations can be so much more than just putting your hand out.

I graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with both a BAUP (1992) and MUP (1994).

I know most of you are thinking “HUH?”

BAUP is a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Planning, and a MUP is a Master’s degree in Urban Planning.

I spent six amazing years learning about the ins and outs of planning from some of the most amazing professors. In hindsight, I was laying a foundation of knowledge and practices that would serve me well as a non-profit consultant almost 20 years later. I have literally lost count of how many plans I’ve facilitated and written since graduating (e.g. strategic plans, tactical plans, succession plans, resource development plans, board development plans, marketing plans, business plans, etc).

anniversary2 A few weeks ago, I started getting email and snail-mail announcing the 100th anniversary of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) at the University of Illinois.

Wow! 100 years . . . how could that be possible?

After some head scratching, I vaguely recalled the University of Illinois was only the second school in the country to offer urban planning curriculum back in the early days when planning was just getting off the ground as a profession.

Normally, I am not influenced by most non-profit organizations’ anniversary efforts to get money out of me as a donor. However, I am amazed at how many times I’ve found myself thinking about writing a small check to my Alma Mater in honor of the department and the people who gave me so much.

After the second or third time of almost making a contribution, I started wondering what DURP and UIUC are doing differently from so many of the other non-profit organizations in my life. So, I went back to the communications materials and mail solicitations and looked for clues. Here is what I found:

Their fundraising effort isn’t front and center. They don’t beat you over the head with their hand out. It is subtle.
Their focus is on sharing nostalgia and memories, and they want this to be a two-way experience.
They’re using this as a donor engagement activity by asking alumni to help them in a variety of ways.

anniversary3 For example . . .

I’ve been asked if I have any interest in becoming a mentor to a student.
They’re conducting a remembrance activity and asking alumni to submit stories about their time on campus with the department.
They’re looking for old pictures for their archive.
Of course, there are two days worth of celebrations and activities on campus in early November where you can walk down memory lane and reconnect with faculty and friends.
Oh yeah, just as a side note, they’re announcing the start of a new scholarship fund for planning students. 😉

Over the years, I’ve read tons of fundraising articles, papers and books. In addition to considering myself a “planner” by education and trade, I also proudly consider myself a “non-profit and fundraising professional“. While my recall isn’t working well this morning, I have some vague recollection of someone once saying that “good fundraising” is 95 percent about listening and engaging versus 5 percent solicitation.

Will I write a small check? Will I attend the anniversary festivities? Will I take the time to submit a remembrance story?

I dunno. Maybe.

What I do know is that your non-profit organization can learn a lot from my Alma Mater with regards to using an anniversary celebration to deepen the level of engagement with your donors and raise a few bucks along the way.

The following links are additional resources I dug up for your review on this subject:

IMPACTMAX: “It’s your nonprofit’s anniversary? Who cares . . .“
Amazon.com: “Celebrating Your Nonprofit’s Milestones: 81 Great Ideas for Planning & Celebrating Milestone Events“
The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Planning a Successful Anniversary Celebration“

Is your agency planning a big anniversary celebration? If so, please share your plans. Have you ever been a part of another institution’s milestone celebration? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How did they weave resource development opportunities into the mix? Please share your thoughts using the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Cash back for non-profit donors? Hmmm … Ah-ha!

September 10, 2013 erik Fundraising

laughing1 Sometimes I see things at just the right time and in the right place, and it results in me seeing something differently. Usually, when this happens it results in an AH-HA moment. This is exactly what happened to me yesterday when I opened an email from my friends at Non-Profit Humour featuring their latest piece of satire (reminiscent of the Onion newspaper) titled “Charity offers cash to get people to donate“.

Here is the part of the post that caught my attention and almost had me fall to the ground in laughter:

“The charity started the program quite by accident when a donor event turned ugly. A frustrated fundraiser couldn’t get key donors to make extra pledges.

“Sara just lost it at our wine and cheese party a month ago, and asked out loud what it would take to get our donors to give. She pulled out a $10.00 bill and waved it around just to make a point and sure enough all of our donors started signing pledge forms,” said Snidely. “That’s when we realized that all the stuff we were doing was all wrong.”

The visual of some fundraising professional reaching her breaking point and waiving around cash for pledge cards was hilarious to me. However, I know that I’ve been close to that breaking point and many of you probably have, too.

And by “breaking point” I, of course, mean being flummoxed and absolutely frustrated by what more it will take to engage donors in a manner that inspires loyalty. Just yesterday in my post titled “Uh-Oh: ‘The only time I ever see you is when you’re asking me for a donation’,” I rattled off a long list of things many non-profits employ as part of their donor communications program. If you missed yesterday’s post, here is that list:

newsletters
bulk email / eNewsletters
annual reports
impact bulletins
computer generated gift acknowledgement letters
handwritten letters
donor recognition societies (featuring stewardship activities)
donor receptions
donor surveys and focus groups

I went on to talk about how important it is to add a Moves Management component to this laundry list that involves engaging your agency’s volunteer solicitors in reconnecting periodically with those who they solicited for your annual campaign.

laughing2 So, the title of today’s blog post had the word “AH-HA” in it, which implies that my friends at Non-Profit Humour inspired a light bulb of some sort.

The thing that struck me while reading their satirical piece was that maybe non-profit organizations would do better with inspiring donor loyalty if they STOPPED looking at the aforementioned laundry list of tools/tactics as a “Donor Communications” program and STARTED looking at it comprehensively as a “Donor Loyalty” program.

The second part of my AH_HA moment was that there are soooooo many great examples of “loyalty programs” that work in the for-profit sector, this situation surely screams out for some young, entrepreneurial non-profit agency to engage in a benchmarking project.

I am literally at no loss of benchmarking ideas when it comes to loyalty programs. Consider this initial list:

Hilton’s HHonors program
Holiday Inn’s Priority Club
United Airline’s MileagePlus
National Rental Car’s Emerald Club (e.g. pick a car from any aisle)
Starbucks’ My Starbucks Rewards (e.g. their gold card)

laughing3 Yes, yes, yes . . . I know what you’re thinking: “Our agency doesn’t have things like hotel rooms, flights and cups of coffee to give away like these for-profit corporations.” But are you sure about that? Because I’ve attended many charity auctions in my life.

You’re already spending money on donors all in the name of “loyalty,” right? After all, those newsletters and special donor receptions cost you money — both direct and indirect costs.

What if some creative marketing genius told you that you could bundle up many of the aforementioned engagement tactics/tools and create a multi-level donor recognition society? In such a brave new world, newsletters, special tours of your facility, receptions and phone calls from board members might be seen as “rewards“.

I’m sure some of you aren’t biting on this idea yet, but you should check-out what the Indiana University Foundation is doing with its donor recognition societies. For example, if you give a combined $2,500 to the foundation in one calendar year, then you can join the prestigious 1820 Society. And membership has its privileges! Just check out these “rewards“:

Invitations to campus and regional events
Insider communication from IU leaders
Other opportunities to stay connected with IU

Some of you are probably worrying about those donors who tell you to: “Save your money and stop sending me stuff and fussing over me! I don’t make a contribution to your agency for you to spend it on recognizing me!”

Ah, yes! Those donors exist. And those donors are loud. However, many of those donors are the same ones who stop contributing because they don’t see their contribution being put to work or having the impact they envisioned.

Your mission — if you choose to accept it — is to engage your donors in a way that inspires loyalty and doesn’t irritate them.

I wonder if there is a for-profit company in your town that will give special discounts to members of your donor recognition society? Oh wait . . . I suspect your National Public Radio (NPR) station has blazed this trail. I’m particularly fond of WBEZ’s High Fidelity monthly giving program (aka loyalty program).

Does your non-profit organization provide donor recognition societies? What types of “courtesies” do you offer those donors? If you’re not buying into today’s big idea about “loyalty programs,” please share with us what you’re doing to inspire donor loyalty. Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Uh-Oh: “The only time I ever see you is when you’re asking me for a donation”

September 9, 2013 erik Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising, volunteers

stewardship1 Last week I was out with a friend for a glass of wine after work. We hadn’t seen each other in a few months, and we were catching up on lost time. “How are you? How is the new job? How’s your wife? Kids? Grandkids?” You know the drill. It was during this exchange that he dropped the bomb: “So, how is your partner? Ya know … the only time I ever see him is when he is asking me for a donation.”

I’ve been doing non-profit work for a long time now, and I’ve trained myself to recognize this for what it is worth. Whenever I hear donors say something like this, I immediately think of it as a cry for help. It is a donor who is screaming for attention. They want to know:

Was my contribution appreciated?
Is my contribution being put to work in the manner in which I was told it would be during the solicitation visit?
Is my contribution making an impact?

This is classic Penelope Burk stuff right out of her book “Donor Centered Fundraising“.

What does your donor communication program look like? Does it include:

newsletters
bulk email / eNewsletters
annual reports
impact bulletins
computer generated gift acknowledgement letters
handwritten letters
donor recognition societies (featuring stewardship activities)
donor receptions
donor surveys and focus groups

I suspect many of you utilize some of these best practices, but are you missing the most powerful and simple stewardship activity of them all? My gut feeling tells me that the answer to this question is probably ‘YES’.

If you are using a “prospect assignment process” that allows you to pair prospects with volunteer solicitors who they know well, then you need to take it one step further and design a stewardship program around those relationships.

You should not assume that two people who know each other fairly well don’t lose touch with each other. It happens all the time. Take a moment to mentally review everyone in your life with whom you own a phone call, email or letter. I bet that list is longer than you originally thought.

If you want to improve your donor loyalty rate (and stop losing donors for silly reasons), then I suggest you do these two simple things:

Amend your written volunteer solicitor job description to include one more task that includes two personal touches (e.g. phone call or sit-down meeting). The first conversation is a simple touch focused on saying thank you and updating them on how their contribution is being used. The second touch is equally as simple with a reiterated message of appreciation and an update on how their contribution is having an impact.
Develop a tickler system and poke your volunteers when it is time to make these two calls. We’re all busy, and reminders are necessary. You shouldn’t expect your volunteer solicitors to remember when stewardship calls should be made.

stewardship2 These personal touches do not have to be all about your non-profit organization. I suggest that you train your volunteers to be less obvious. For example, both stewardship touches could be as simple as three minutes worth of messaging in the middle of a lunch meeting or after-work cocktail. It should feel organic and nature. It shouldn’t feel forced or contrived.

Making these additions to your donor communication program will likely improve your donor loyalty rates, but it should also help your volunteers become better solicitors . . . less reluctant and more confident.

If there is one thing I hear all of the time from volunteers, it is how fearful they are with “over-soliciting” their friends for charitable gifts. I believe this is rooted in the fact that volunteers aren’t involved in the stewardship process. So, they have doubts that the right things are being done in between solicitation calls to demonstrate return on investment.

So why not involve them?

Oh yeah . . . there is one more added benefit to adding these tactics to your stewardship plan. You end up stewarding your volunteer solicitors at the same time because you are providing them updates to share with their friends and your donors.

Does your agency have something like this folded into its stewardship program (e.g. Moves Management)? If so, how well does it work for you? Have you tracked your success? What was the impact on your retention rates? What were your challenges and how did you overcome them? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

By the way, my partner is a subscriber to this blog. So, my shout out to him is: “I think you should reach out to you-know-who and schedule time to catch up over a glass of bourbon.” 😉

Here’s to your health!