donor centered – Page 5 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Stop thinking. Stop planning. Start doing!

July 19, 2012 erik Fundraising, leadership

Tuesday’s post “Does your non-profit organization make a difference? Americans don’t think so!” introduced one of the main points in Dan Pallotta’s book Uncharitable, which is that non-profit organizations are under-resourced thus have a difficult time driving results and change. Pallotta argues that the reasons for too few resources are cultural, attitudinal and legal. Yesterday’s post explored what this author believes is at the heart of the non-profit sector’s dilemma. Today, we’re talking about what to do about all of this.

I must admit that Uncharitable was a page turner for me. The more I read, the more I found myself thinking: ” Hmmm . . . I wonder how he suggests we overcome that challenge.” So, words cannot express my disappointment when I got to the chapter where solutions seemingly would be forthcoming and read the following:

“Some readers might expect that in this final chapter I would suggest some dramatic statutory re-engineering — the end of the entire not-for-profit tax-exempt classification or something on that scale. But that is to put the cart before the horse. Even sweeping and fundamental statutory revisions are of secondary importance to changing the way we think about charity.”

After putting the book down and drowning my disappointment in another cup of coffee, I decided to embrace this anticlimactic end to Pallotta’s book. In the final analysis, he is right. Of all the obstacles in the non-profit sector’s way of embracing capitalism and a free-market approach to charity, almost all of them are attitudinal and behavioral barriers and very few of them are structural (e.g. laws and regulations).

At the beginning of every chapter, Pallotta starts it with an inspirational quotation designed to summarize the content of that chapter as well as inspire thought on the part of the reader. One of the quotations was from John Kenneth Galbraith:

“All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.”

From this thought, I take my inspiration for today’s blog post. Since most of this rotten door can be kicked in by changing our beliefs and actions, I thought I would share a few of my thoughts on what typical non-profit organizations can start doing to revolutionize the non-profit sector and embrace capitalism and free market solutions to solve our resource challenges.

Engage donors in this discussion

Penelope Burk tells us to become more donor-centered in our approach to fundraising. Her point of view is centered around the donor, and I think it provides the starting point for this revolution.

There is nothing stopping you from forming an Oprah-inspired book club with your most influential donors. Buy a copy of Dan Pallotta’s book Uncharitable for each of them. Meet with them after reading each chapter. Facilitate a conversation about what it means and what they think your agency should do about it and what it means for their personal approach to charitable giving.

Budget for a profit

There is no law that says your non-profit organization can’t make more money than it spends each year. Stop building budgets that don’t include profit. My suggestion is that you set aside 10 percent of your annual revenue every year for the rest of your agency’s life.

What should this money be used for? Well, that is a discussion for your board of directors to have. So, facilitate it! Some possible ideas include: building a rainy day fund (because you know that storm clouds are always on the horizon), saving for future project, or investing in capacity building and organizational development projects. The sky is limit, and board members need to engage in this conversation to make it realistic and plausible.

Use the power of the markets

In addition to building a rainy day fund with your excess profits, every non-profit agency should have an endowment strategy. Investing money with the intent of creating another revenue stream stemming from investment income has been a non-profit best practice for a very long time. Use capitalism and the capital markets to generate money for your mission.

You don’t need millions of dollars to start an endowment. You can start small and make it a policy or practice to reinvest your earned income back into the endowment.

Yes, of course . . . create a stand along investment committee and set-up policies to guide your agency. This can all start happening tomorrow if you just put your mind to doing it. No one is stopping you.

Follow in Pallotta’s footsteps

Dan Pallotta founded Pallotta TeamWorks. His for-profit company created, planned and implemented the world-famous AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Day events. His company netted hundreds of millions of dollars for the expressed purpose of funding non-profit organizations.

Form a strategic alliance with other non-profits in your community and look at starting a for-profit company with the intent of running a few high-profile special events. This for-profit event planning and management company would not be constrained by rules and laws that strangle your current efforts.

If you are thinking that Pallotta TeamWorks ended up failing and this is a crazy idea, I encourage you to think again. Sure, Pallotta’s company failed, but it left behind an impressive blueprint. I am suggesting that you are smart enough to engage other non-profit professionals and volunteers in your community to review this case study and use those things that work as well as fix those things that didn’t work.

In the back of the book, there is an entire chapter titled “Case Study — Pallotta TeamWorks“. Is there any harm in pulling a group together, reading the case study and talking through questions associated with ‘What if”?

Pallotta has, of course, started up a new for-profit company focused around the points he makes in his book. Click here to learn more about the company he calls “Change Course”.

Many more ideas and your thoughts

Since most of Pallotta’s proposed revolution is rooted in attitudinal and behavioral change, the sky is the limit. He suggests that you start compensating your employees better and attracting more qualified applicants. He suggests investing in advertising. He proposes removing charity watchdog group logos from your letterhead and website.

Like Saturday Night Live’s character Stuart Smalley used to say: “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!” You and your volunteers and your fellow non-profit professionals and their volunteers are smart enough to come up with many more ideas on how the non-profit sector and your agencies can utilize the power of capitalism to monetize your mission.

So, stop thinking about it and start taking some baby steps towards doing it!

Please scroll down and share one idea or thought that you’ve had while reading the last few days worth of blog posts. Let’s engage in doing some brainstorming and start a revolution.

Here’s to your health!

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

Fundraising questions to ask donors and anticipate from them

June 21, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising, volunteers

Last week we started a series of blog posts focused on the art of asking questions, and this theme has carried over into this week. So far, we’ve looked at questions that executive directors should be asking themselves and their boards. We’ve also looked at questions board members should be ask of themselves and their fellow board volunteers. Yesterday, we looked at various questions you need to ask prospective board members before asking them to join your board. Today, we’re ending this series of posts by looking at 1) powerful questions that donors should be asking the non-profit agencies they support and 2) questions non-profits should be asking their supporters.

Questions that donors have of you

Over the last 15 years, I have been part of countless solicitation teams and answered more questions than I care to recall at this time of the morning. While those questions tend to be all over the place thanks in part to “unique circumstances,” there are commonly asked questions that many donors seem to ask after they’ve been asked to consider making a charitable contribution.

What will my contribution help accomplish?
Specifically, how will my contribution make a difference in your clients’ lives?
How financial stable is your organization?
There are so many worthy causes that keep asking for support. Why should I support you?
How much of my contribution directly supports programming and how much will underwrite administrative and fundraising expenses?
Tell me more about your fee structure and why are you charging your clients what you’re charging them? How do you know that is the right amount? Why not more?

The list of FAQs is much larger, but these are just questions that I recall answering over and over again. If you want a more comprehensive list of questions, you may want to read Harvey McKinnon’s book “The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks: And the Answers All Donors Crave“.

Why is it important to know what burning questions to expect? I think there are two HUGE reasons:

If you do a better job “anticipating” these questions and build those answers into your case for support and solicitation presentation, I predict that your annual campaign numbers will start climbing.
There is a long list of fears that get in the way of people volunteering to help your agency with fundraising. One of the top reasons is their fear of not being able to answer questions. Addressing FAQs as part of your annual campaign training program will improve volunteer confidence, reduce the amount of avoidance behavior during the campaign, and result in better solicitations (and hopeful result in better fundraising numbers).

Questions that you should have of donors

As I said earlier, I’ve been on many fundraising solicitation teams, and I’ve seen many things throughout the years. Too often, I’ve seen volunteers rush through the solicitation, get a commitment, and quickly downshift into chit-chat of a personal nature. It is almost as if the volunteer solicitor is non-verbally saying “Phew! Thank goodness that is over.”

I don’t believe there is anything wrong with chit-chat after the solicitation is completed. In fact, there is all sorts of important personal information that could and should be harvested from that conversation, captured on a contact report form, and entered into the donor database. However, most volunteer solicitors don’t receive training on what those conversations should look like.

While it would be easy to use that post-solicitation time to talk about family and personal things, it think the following questions might be more useful in developing a deeper philanthropic relationship with your donors:

If you only had one year to live, what would be most important to you to accomplish?
What are the issues, injustices, principles or causes in this world that get you riled up?
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
What accomplishment or legacy would have ultimate significance to you?
In philanthropic terms, if you had unlimited resources, what would you set out to do?

While it is important to know the names of a donor’s spouse and children as well as where they went to school or go to church, I think it is far more important to understand a donor’s passions, dreams, and desires. Knowing and understanding these things puts you in a position of helping them achieve big things. I believe this is one of the biggest differences between transactional fundraising and donor-centered fundraising™.

I believe these types of questions can transform how a donor views you and your organization . . . FROM fundraising vulture TO philanthropic dream-maker.

Please take a minute this morning to share a commonly asked question that you hear donors asking your volunteer solicitors in the comment box below. Or share with this online community one or two questions that you like to ask donors that helps you better understand their philanthropic hopes and dreams. We can all learn from each other and it is just 60 seconds out of your day. Please?

Here’s to your health!

Donor Loyalty: Inspect what you expect

May 31, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Tuesday’s post titled “Time in the office versus time with donors” begged more questions than it answered. Today, we’re going to zoom in on one of those questions and examine it more closely.

How do you measure relationship building
and the success of such activities?

It was suggested in earlier posts that a weekly contact report is one tool that can be used to track relationship building activities; however, there are other tools that you should consider using in conjunction with a contact report.

Dashboard
Scorecard
Annual performance plan
Weekly or monthly reports
Donor database reports
Moves Management reports

If you want to learn more about organizational dashboards, click here to check out a BoardSource book titled “The Nonprofit Dashboard: A Tool for Tracking Progress“. If a dashboard isn’t appealing to you, then you might want to look into a balanced scorecard approach. Click here to see what Bernard Marr at the Advanced Performance Institute has to say about this tool.

Of course, choosing the tool is probably the easiest part of this decision. The more difficult thing is determining which relationship building metrics to track. Here are a few suggestions:

Number of cultivation meetings with prospects
Increased contribution size – maintained – decreased
Number of face-to-face stewardship meetings
Number of prospects converted into donors
Donor loyalty rate
Donor satisfaction survey score
Renewal rates for year two, year three, year four, and year five donors
LYBUNT and SYBUNT renewals

There are no right or wrong answers to the question of what you should track. I believe that it really boils down to the title of this post: “Inspect what you expect”.

I suppose the best advice I can give to you is “don’t try to make decision by yourself”. I encourage you to engage fundraising staff, resource development committee volunteers, board members, fundraising volunteers, and even donors. There is nothing wrong with pulling together a small focus group, ordering a few pizzas, and engaging them with a few thoughtful questions.

If you are looking for a few good samples, the following are a few links that I think are worth looking at:

DZO Strategists: “The Beyond ‘Cash Fundraising’ Management Dashboard“
Candler County Schools: “District Balanced Scorecard“
Blackbaud: “Embracing Technology for Moves Management® Success“

Using tools and metrics like these should help you answer the difficult question posed in Tuesday’s blog post: “How much time needs to be spent outside of the office compared to behind your desk?”

What tools does your non-profit organization use to track relationship building and resource development activities? What metrics do you hold your fundraising professionals and executive director to? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts.

Here’s to your health!

Stewarding donors this Memorial Day

May 28, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

I always feel funny saying that because this holiday doesn’t feel very happy. After all, it was created to honor Americans who died during war. For many Americans including me, this holiday has taken on additional meaning in that it provides an opportunity to say THANK YOU to all military service men and women for their service.

What can your non-profit organization do to turn Memorial Day into another donor stewardship opportunity? Here are a few ideas:

Send a card to those donors who are veterans and thank them for their service. Not only did they service their country, but they invest in their community by supporting your organization as well as many other agencies.
Write a letter to the newspaper editor about what Memorial Day means to you and your agency. Remind people that sacrifice is sometime essential to preserve values such as freedom and equality. While honoring the sacrifices made by soldiers for your agency and your community, you can also honor sacrifices of time and money given by volunteers and donors to your organization.
Host a patriotic themed stewardship event for your donors.

Non-profit professionals are typically stretched in too many directions because our agencies are under-resourced. It is for this reason that stewardship often becomes a “back burner issue” and low priority. So, why not use big holidays like Memorial Day as anchors in your organizational calendar to remind us to steward our donors?

Does your agency do anything special for Memorial Day? Please scroll down and share your ideas and thoughts.

Here’s to your health!

Work-Life Balance for non-profit professionals? Ask a donor for help.

May 11, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, leadership, 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.

Today, we’re focusing on a post that John titled “At Peace“. In that post, he talks about two different pictures and uses those images to illustrate the point that there is a difference between “at peace” and “getting some peace”.

After reading this post, I couldn’t get my mind off of the idea of work-life balance. This topic of conversation comes up all the time when I’m talking to non-profit professionals. As I previously blogged about in a post titled “Kissing While Driving for Non-Profit Agencies,” non-profit organizations are typically under-resourced. As a result, almost all nof the on-profit professional who I know wear multiple hats, lack balance in their life, and appear to be on the brink of “going postal”.

At Peace? Definitely NOT!

Over the last 15 years, I’ve battled with the ideas that John eloquently lays out in his blog post. The following are just a few things that I’ve tried:

Attending time management trainings (e.g. FranklinCovey, David Allen’s Getting Things Done, etc)
Using various time management tools ranging from FranklinCovey to Microsoft Outlook. I’m now a Android smart phone junkie, who is utterly lost in life when my device isn’t within reach.
Going on vacation
Quiting my job and opening The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

In hindsight, John is so right . . . I was “getting some peace” in most of those instances. So, what can non-profit professionals do to be “At Peace“????

I like John’s suggestion that re-evaluating and adjusting our expectations about what “peace” really means. In his post, he talks about the picture of a violent waterfall, jagged mountains and an angry sky being a picture of “peace”. Maybe accepting this idea rather than fighting against it is more than half the battle.

I also like John’s challenge at the end of his post where he asks the following question:

“Perhaps, when leaders disrupt our peace when making organizational changes, they should orchestrate efforts to enable us to adapt and change?”

As I contemplate this question, I struggle with what those efforts might look like.

So, I have a suggestion for all of you who find yourself struggling with the same question:

Open your donor database.
Run a report showing your agency’s top 50 lifetime donors.
Scan the list in search of a donor who owns their own business, has gone through some change initiatives in the last few years, and appears to be busy and yet peaceful.
Pick-up the phone and call that donor.
Invite them out to share a cup of coffee.
Tell them about John’s blog post topic.
Ask them to share their secrets to success with regards to being “at peace”.
Ask them what efforts they orchestrated at work to help their employees adapt and change and in effect putting their workplace “at peace”.

Not only will you most likely get some great advice, but this conversation will have a “stewardship effect” for that donor. It will deepen a relationship with someone who is already important to your organization.

I like this suggestion mostly because it reminds me of the fact that donors are not just ATMs that produce cash every time we ask for it. Donors are friends and part of our non-profit family. We can put this principle in action by asking them to donate their knowledge and experiences in addition to their financial contributions. In doing so, the relationship gets stronger and grows.

Do you struggle with work-life balance issues at your non-profit organization? What have you personally done to try to achieve balance? What has your agency done to help facilitate this idea of being “at peace”? Have you ever engaged donors in questions like this? How did it work out for you?

Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Happy Birthday to ME! And what can non-profits do with THAT?

May 8, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Yesterday, one of my favorite non-profit executive directors took the time to wish me an early happy birthday and surprised me with a bottle of wine — La Crema Pinot Noir. It was a thoughtful gesture because my partner and I are big “winos”.

The reason I bring it up today can be summarized in one simple word:

STEWARDSHIP

Over the last decade, my partner and I have personally contributed $40,000 to this non-profit organization. In addition to our money, we’ve both contributed our time by helping with special events and working pledge cards for their annual campaign. To say “we’ve drank the Kool-Aid” is probably an understatement.

While we both like to hear about this organization’s program outcomes and community impact, we really get more excited when we hear testimonials or success stories. In other words, numbers and stats are nice, but stories are the payday we crave more than anything.

While the bottle of wine was very thoughtful and much appreciated, a simple birthday card probably would’ve sufficed. A phone call would’ve been really nice, especially if the conversation would’ve included a recent fun success story. The bottom line is that the birthday wishes from this non-profit organization sends a clear message that I’m a valued part of their family. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like being thought of that way.

As I bask in the after-glow of this stewardship touch, I find myself wondering what else could non-profit organizations do around a donor’s birthday? The following is a short, incomplete list representing just a few thoughts:

Send them a birthday card or call them . . . make sure to weave in a story about how their support makes a difference for your clients
If the donor doesn’t like “gift giving and receiving,” then this could be a tribute gift opportunity for your agency. This is, of course, where the donor tells their friends that in lieu of a birthday gift they’d appreciate contributions be made to your non-profit organization instead.
If your agency runs a “birthday club” for clients, then there might be an opportunity to fold donors into the same program using birthday recognition walls or inviting them to attend an organization-wide birthday party where they can interact with clients.
It could be an opportunity to turn a major donor’s birthday into a special event tribute party. The Elgin Symphony Orchestra is doing exactly this in a few weeks by inviting supporters to purchase tickets and attend a birthday bash for Harry Blizzard who is one of their biggest donors and supporters.

What does your non-profit organization do for donors around their birthdays? How do you go about capturing birth dates from donors? What systems do you use to remind yourself of this information? Please scroll down and use the comment box to answer a few of these questions.

Here’s to your health! (Oh, and thanks for the wine, Rose!)

Expounding upon the idea of “Quality Donor Touchpoints”

May 2, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising

Yesterday’s post titled “Non-profit donors: “Should I stay or should I go?” built upon a recent post over at “The Agitator” blog about donor retention. One of the things they said was that retaining donors goes way beyond doing a good job of talking about your mission and your organization. They argued that every touchpoint needs to be quality and inspire a sense of satisfaction for donors.

To put this in context, let’s use a for-profit analogy.

When a consumer goes to Walmart to buy towels, their experience is affected by so much more than just the satisfaction of finding the towels they desire at the price they want to pay. While these are indeed two factors, the following things also influenced that experience and play into whether or not they come back to Walmart next week:

Was the store orderly and easy to navigate?
Was the store well-lit?
Was the physical environment too warm, too cold, or just right?
When they couldn’t find the towels that they were looking for, did the employee who helped them do so in a friendly and efficient manner?
Did the store smell nice?
Did the other customers behave and conform to the social norms of shopping?
Did the shopping cart wheels stick and make it difficult to use?
How much time did customer spend in the check-out line?
Was the cashier friendly and helpful?

There are countless other little details that when added together can result in a great experience which results in repeat business and customer loyalty. Or they can also add up to an unsatisfied customer who won’t return, but will likely bad mouth you to their friends and post horrible things about you on Facebook and Twitter.

The same holds true for your donors!

Non-profit donors need to hear more than just good news about your mission and programs. They also need to hear more than how efficient your organization operates.

Your non-profit organization’s goal needs to be “putting a smile on the donor’s face” every time you cultivate them . . . every time you solicit them . . . and every time you steward them.

Now that is a TALL ORDER when you start thinking about it because there are so many factors (just like in the Walmart example I used). Some factors are easy to influence, and others can be very difficult to impact.

The following are just a few ideas to keep in mind as you contemplate how to ratchet up your donor services:

Communicate with donors as often as they tell you they want to be communicated with.
Communicate only those things the donor has said they want to hear from you.
Only send fundraising volunteers and employees with whom the donor has a GREAT relationship (and this goes for cultivation, solicitation or stewardship activities).
Send donors( who give frequently and recently) a birthday card.
Celebrate anniversaries for “weddings” and “becoming a donor to your agency” (focus these activities on major gifts prospects and donors).
Include the donor’s spouse whenever possible and make the cultivation, solicitation or stewardship experience feel like “family experience” (as long as it feels appropriate).
Let the donor tell you where they are most comfortable being solicited and then solicit them there.
Train volunteer solicitors about the finer points of soliciting a charitable contribution by going beyond the 12-step process of “closing the gift”.

This approach is not intuitive for many non-profit organizations. So, my final suggestion to those of you are very serious about improving donor services is to invite a small group of customer service professionals to participate in a focus group. During the hour that you have them together, educate them about how you communicate and interact with your donors. Ask them how they would go about improving the experience. You might just be surprised at what you learn.

Let’s add to my list of suggestions. Please scroll down and use the comment box to share JUST ONE IDEA on how to improve donor services and increase the quality of donor touchpoints. We can all learn from each other.

By the way, thank you to all of you for helping DonorDreams blog exceed 10,000 page views in less than one year. This milestone is a testament to you and your thirst for engagement. The next big goal is to reach 300 subscribers by December 31st. In celebrating today’s accomplishment and looking forward to the next one, would you please reach out today to one friend, non-profit professional, volunteer or board member and tell them about DonorDreams and encourage them to subscribe? Thanks again for tuning in, and I hope you continue enjoying this online community that we’re building together. 🙂

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit donors: “Should I stay or should I go?”

May 1, 2012 DonorDreams Fundraising

A few years ago I discovered two fundraising bloggers from “across the pond” who collaborate on a daily blog called “The Agitator“. I fell in love and told all of my friends to subscribe if they knew what was good for them. A few weeks ago, The Agitator published a post titled “Flat Earth Fundraising: Ignoring The Leaky Bucket” that was so outstanding that I fell in love all over again.

While Roger hits a lot of hot buttons for me in this post about donor retention, one point struck me particularly hard when he said:

“This means half of your retention battle has nothing to do with your mission features and organizational benefits. A large part of the reason a donor will stay or go is not mission or message or premium offer, it is how she/he is treated when encountering donor services. The opportunity here is not avoiding bad experiences (that is obvious), the real opportunity is recognizing that service can actually improve the relationship and is a critical touchpoint, one that can help to further monetize the relationship with cross-sell and upsell.”

There are big non-profit organizations out there that are well-oiled machines. These types of organizations have fundraising departments and use complicated direct response strategies that would make many for-profit organizations proud. They employ fundraising professionals responsible for managing a caseload of donors and use Moves Management strategies. I suspect “donor services” look very different at a large non-profit agency than it does at a small organization. I’m not saying that it should (maybe it should and maybe it shouldn’t) . . . I’m just saying that it does.

After reading Roger’s thoughts about “donor services” and the role it plays in donor retention, I started thinking about what this means for small non-profit organizations that focus more on in-person, face-to-face fundraising and less on targeted and direct mail.

What does it mean?

It means that the volunteer solicitors your agency recruits to work pledge cards becomes one very important touchpoint for the donor.

Duh . . . right?

As I think back upon my days on the frontline of a small non-profit agency working with volunteer solicitors on annual campaign implementation, I am embarrassed to admit that the thought farthest from my mind was “how enjoyable and fulfilling will that solicitation meeting be” for the donor. In fact, I was more focused on tactical issues such as:

do I have enough volunteers?
where can I host a good kickoff meeting?
how can I inject accountability and urgency into the campaign so that we can finish “on time” and run along to the next fundraising event?

Sure, I provided volunteer solicitors with “training” at the kickoff meeting, but it sometimes felt like an after-thought. As I look back over some of the campaigns I’ve run in the last decade and think about some of the volunteers I recruited, I now wonder how well some of those solicitation meetings went.

Ugh! I would describe some of my favorite volunteers as “major closers”. They are task oriented and would “hunt down” their assigned donors like a dog hunts down their favorite bone. While that approach might have been good for me, I am now worry about how the bone . . .errrr . . . donor felt.

I would also describe some of my other fundraising volunteers as “highly reluctant” and only agreed to participate because I was charming and persuaded them to do so. In spite of all the training, I can imagine that their solicitation calls felt uncomfortable for everyone involved.

I suspect that prospects/donors have the classic song “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” by The Clash running through their heads every time they are sitting down with a volunteer solicitor. This encounter needs to be good. In fact, it needs to be great!

The following are just a few thoughts running through my head this morning on how to get a little closer to achieving this objective:

put lots of time and thought into recruiting “the right” volunteer solicitors who are comfortable and excited about asking other people to consider making a pledge to your annual campaign;
be thoughtful and engage your volunteers during the prospect assignment phase of your campaign and focus on matching people based on good solid relationships;
go beyond the typical training focused on how to make the ask and use the case statement by including tips on how to improve the quality of the meeting itself; and
ask the volunteer solicitor to engage their prospects/donors in a conversation around what their preferences are for post-solicitation communication by the agency.

What is your agency doing to improve the quality of interaction between solicitor-donor and agency-donor? How are you evaluating and assessing the effectiveness of those encounters? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health! (If you want to be “agitated,” go check-out Tom & Roger’s blog posts over at The Agitator. You won’t be disappointed!)

If you want donors to be loyal, then be loyal to your donors!

April 17, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

I know, I know . . . I keep coming back to the issue of loyalty, but I think this is the biggest issue for this generation of non-profit organizations. In fact, I think it will determine who is going out-of-business or being forced into merger/acquisition talks in the upcoming years. It is just that transformative of an issue!

What set me off and down this path again, was an email I received in my inbox yesterday from Gail Perry titled: “Don’t Be a Fundraising Dinosaur: 5 Big Ideas to Adopt Right Now“. It was such a tantalizing and catchy title that I couldn’t resist clicking on it. In about 5 seconds, I felt just like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole all over again. LOL

Gail’s second “big idea” was “Donor retention is more important than cash totals“. I read that header and thought to myself “DUH,” and then I read the following sentence:

“If you can only measure one thing in your fundraising program, then measure donor retention.”

Think about THIS for a moment . . . “only measure one thing” . . . isn’t she essentially saying donor retention is the MOST IMPORTANT thing to gauge how well your resource development program is succeeding or failing?

I think that is exactly what she is saying . . . and that is what got my attention.

It also begs the question: “What should non-profit and fundraising professionals focus on doing to encourage donor loyalty?”

Gail suggested the following few things:

ask your donors for video testimonials, and
ask your donors to do more than just write checks . . . get them involved through advocacy and volunteerism.

Both are great suggestions and you couldn’t go wrong if you decided to take those roads.

However, the words of Mahatma Gandhi keep ringing through my ears this morning as I read Gail’s blog post:

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Essentially, this translates into what I titled this blog post. If you want donors to be loyal to your mission, then you need to be loyal to your donors. What does THAT mean? Well, I turned to Adrian Sargaent for help in answering this question. In 2003, Professor Sargaent wrote an article in The NonProfit Times titled “Keeping Donors Loyal: How to Minimize Attrition on the Fundraising Database“.

In that article, Sargaent makes two great points:

one-third of lapsed donors surveyed said they stopped giving because they found other charities that were “more deserving,” and
engaging donors in HOW they are communicated with and WHEN they are communicated with and WHAT they want to hear is an effective and important strategy in the fight for a donor’s loyalty.

For those of you who read this and think: “We can’t do that. We’re too small. We don’t have the resources to pull-off that kind of donor communication strategy.” Sargaent cuts you off at the knees and suggests that even today’s smallest non-profit organizations can implement a strategy like this because donor database technology is very affordable and powerful.

I, too, was once an executive director of a very small non-profit organization. Back then, I am sure that I would’ve read that database-related comment and immediately come up with more reasons as to why he is wrong: staffing, budget, time, etc, etc, etc.

So, here is my challenge to you today. Rather than focus on the WHY NOT, I challenge you to focus on the HOW. I challenge you to engage board members in this discussion. I challenge you to engage donors in this discussion. While I won’t predict that it will get you to a specific place when it comes to donor-centered fundraising, I will dare say that it will get you closer to answering the question: “How can your organization demonstrate loyalty to donors so that they’ll be better positioned to reciprocate the gesture?”

There must be a million ways for your non-profit organization to show its loyalty to donors. Please scroll down and share a few of the things you’re implementing from a donor loyalty perspective. We can and should be learning from each other. Please share just one idea today!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Gail Perry shared a link to a great resource . . . a sample dashboard that resource development teams could use to measure and capture important donor loyalty metrics. Click here and you will see the two slides by Peter Drury that Gail shared in her blog post. A good friend of mine at Boys & Girls Clubs of America used to say: “Inspect what you expect”. (I suspect he borrowed this quote from someone more famous. LOL) However, the point is still valid . . . you need to have a monitoring and accountability strategy in place as you start heading down these roads that aren’t traveled often enough by non-profit organizations.

Good luck, and as I always: “Here’s to your health!”

Saying “Thank You” in a Donor-Centered Manner

April 4, 2012 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Penelope Burk, CEO of Cygnus Applied Research, has done a lot of research into what it means to be donor-centered. She knows what motivates donors, and she know what troubles donors. If you haven’t purchased and read her book — “Donor Centered Fundraising” — then you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve read her book a number of times and walk away from each experience learning something new.

On page 46 of Burk’s book, she reports the following about what her data says about prompt donor recognition:

“Prompt gift acknowledgement influences 44 percent of study donors’ future giving decisions. 38 percent of study donors receive a thank you letter within two weeks; 54 percent within a month; 8 percent within two months.”

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it is one thing to “academically” understand this concept and a completely different thing to “emotionally” understand it.

Without getting into embarrassing details, I recently made a $1,000 contribution to a non-profit organization. Not only did I get the acknowledgement letter three weeks later, but the letter wasn’t personalized nor did it contain the right information.

Adding insult to injury, this non-profit organization sent me another solicitation within a week.

Truth-be-told . . . I still like this organization. Their mission is awesome and very necessary. I might even go to the event to which they just invited me. However, nothing they are doing can be considered “donor-centered”. The consequence, of course, will likely be falling donor loyalty rates.

So, what is the solution?

Make it a policy of your organization to produce a mail a gift acknowledgement letter within 24 hours of receiving a pledge or contribution of any size. After the board adopts a set of written fundraising policies, they need to hold the executive director accountable for implementation. Remember, that which gets measured, gets done!

All of this policy talk got me thinking about my experiences with organizations and their written resource development policies. In all honesty, I have not seen any written resource development policies recently. Sure, I’ve seen document destruction policies . . . whistleblower protection policies . . . financial controls policies . . . conflict of interest policies . . . BUT no written resource development policies.

As recent as last week, I’ve been asking everyone who will listen if they could send me a copy of their agency’s donor database policy and procedures manual. Yep, you guessed it. Everyone talked a great game, but I only received one sample (kinda).

Why is it that many of us take every other policy challenge that is thrown out way seriously, but seem to cut corners when it comes to resource development policies?

Rolling up our sleeves and engaging fundraising volunteers, board members, and donors in writing resource development policies provides us an opportunity to align our fundraising practices (e.g. gift acknowledgement letters) with donor-centered practices. In turn this activity might help improve our donor loyalty rates.

Click here for some stand alone policies pertaining to resource development.

When is the last time your organization reviewed and revised its fundraising policies? Where are those written policies captured (e.g. SOP manual? RD Plan? Stand along policy documents?) Who did you engage in revising your policies the last time you undertook this task? Please scroll down and use the comment box to answer some of these questions or weigh-in with your opinion.

Here’s to your health!