fundraising – Page 27 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Your donors know when you’re lying

February 22, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development

Welcome to O.D. Fridays at DonorDreams blog. Every Friday for the foreseeable future we will be looking at posts 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 “My Son Knows When I’m Lying,” John talks about one study that claims that people lie two or three times every 10 minutes. He uses that study to transition into talking about “microexpressions” and how our faces betray us all of the time.

John’s blog post got me thinking about how many non-profit organizations lie to their donors.

OK . . . I’m sure some of you think I’m being harsh, but I don’t necessarily mean big lies that come with legal complications. Here are a few examples floating through my head:

“Please join our board. It only involves coming to one meeting, once a month.”
“We do a great job at measuring our outcomes and impact, which is how we know your contribution makes a huge difference.”
“Yes, we’re going to miss our development director something fierce, but they left to pursue a once in lifetime opportunity.”
“We doing a great job weathering the economic downturn. We are on a good fiscal footing.”

Little white lies. We tell donors these things all the time. In fact, the list goes on and on (but I certainly hope it isn’t anywhere close to the two to three lies every 10 minutes that John referenced in his blog post). We do this for any number of reasons including:

We don’t want to worry or concern our donors.
We fear that if they knew the truth, they’d stop donating to us.
A wise person once said, “If you like sausage, you don’t want to know how it is made.” 😉

With all of this being said, John’s blog post also got me thinking that about how donors probably see right through all of it. If this is true, then it begs the questions:

What do white lies do to our organizational credibility?
Do our microexpressions betray us enough to have an impact on donor retention rates?
Is there a better way to steward donors where we can avoid little white lies and be more transparent all the while cultivating a deeper sense of donor engagement?

I ask lots of questions today and offer no tips, tricks or solutions; however, I don’t think there are easy answers that I can offer you. Regardless, I suspect many of you have thoughts on this subject. How are you working hard at being more transparent and honest with your donors? What strategies and tactics do to you use? Please scroll down and share a quick thought or idea in the comment box below. 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
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Donor retention in two easy steps

February 20, 2013 erik Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Last week I spent an hour on the phone with Jay Love, the founder and CEO of Bloomerang, which is the new online donor management and retention service. Jay is the same guy who brought eTapestry to the non-profit industry before selling it to Blackbaud a few years ago. It was during the product demonstration with Jay that I had the following thoughts:

Donor retention is a huge issue that is killing too many fundraising programs.
There are tons of tools and best practices available for those wanting to tackle this problem.
The root problem contributing to the donor retention epidemic is likely lack of resources and time for most non-profit organizations.
The solution doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, simple solutions are probably the most sustainable.

Let’s take a few minutes to flesh out a few of these thoughts.

Donor turnover is an epidemic

Allyson Kapin at frogloop blog did a nice job of capturing this issue and included an awesome infographic from Bloomerang in her post titled “Strategies to Increase Nonprofit Donor Retention Rates“.

Non-profit donor retention rates currently stand at 41%.
The turnover rate is getting worse not better.
Our for-profit cousins do a substantially better job with customer retention. Their retention rate is 94%.
Non-profits seem to do better with retaining larger donors than smaller donors.

The problem is likely rooted in the non-profit sector’s short-term view when it comes to revenue generation. So, we over-invest in cultivating new donors and under-invest in stewarding existing donors. When we do invest in stewardship activities, it is focused on larger donors and not the base of our giving pyramid — smaller donors.

Best practices and tools

Penelope Burk tells us in her book Donor Centered Fundraising that donor retention is as simple as:

Thanking donors promptly. Being enthusiastic. Being personal.
Circle back around to donors and show them that you’re using their contribution in the manner that you told them you would when you originally solicited the contribution.
Circle back around again and tell donors what impact / outcome their charitable had with your clients and throughout the community.

Of course, the devil is in the details. I believe it is HOW you go about accomplishing these three simple principles where people get tied in knots and lose their way.

Consider this list of donor retention tools and communication opportunities:

There are countless donor management services and products (e.g. Blommerang, eTapestry, Results Plus, Raisers Edge, etc).
There are countless social media tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Constant Contact, etc).
There are paper newsletters and eNewsletters.
Annual reports
Impact reports
Annual meetings and town hall meetings
Mailings and phone calls
Personal visits

In fact, Penelope Burk spends a number of pages in her book talking about what the donors who she surveyed like and dislike.

Back to basics

If there is one thing I know about the vast majority of non-profit organization, it is that they are busy and overwhelmed. Looking at the donor retention statistics and the long list of remedies only adds more fuel to that fire.

So, it makes sense to simply.

If you’re a small non-profit organization and want to improve your donor retention rate, do the following two things:

Set aside one afternoon every month to call donors who made a contribution in the last four weeks. Get through as many as you can. Make sure you are enthusiastic about their gift and generally tell them how you plan on putting their gift to work. Ask them how they would like you to communicate with them in the future (e.g. newsletter, eNews, snail mail letters, etc), and make sure you follow-through on your promise.
Set aside enough time in your weekly schedule to sit down with one of your top individual donors every week. Share a cup of coffee or buy them lunch. It doesn’t matter. While you have a little bit of their time, casually share success stories. Tell them that those successes wouldn’t have been possible without their help and generosity. Do this once a week and you will meet with your Top 50 individual donors over the course of a calendar year.

I have worked in small non-profit organizations. Doing these two things is not unrealistic for an executive director or fundraising professional.

What is your agency doing to stem the rising tide of donor turnover? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

State of the Nonprofit Sector: Remainder of 2013

February 14, 2013 erik Uncategorized

Good morning, DonorDreams blog subscribers. I thought I’d give you a day off from my random non-profit and fundraising thoughts by offering you an awesome guest post by Ashley Halligan. She is a managing editor at Austin-based Software Advice and a very talented freelance features writer. Check out her book project on Facebook: facebook.com/contemporarypilgrim Enjoy!

State of the Nonprofit Sector: Remainder of 2013
By: Ashley Halligan

Six weeks into the new year and last year’s reports are coming to surface helping shape the expectations for the remainder of this year in the nonprofit sector.

With the beginning of President Obama’s second term, a recovering economy, and a fiscal cliff, nonprofits have – well – a lot to discuss and anticipate in 2013.

Several reports have been released in the past month that indicate 2012’s performance and trends, offering insight as to what to expect this year. Among those things are hiring trends, succession planning, adoption of mobile technology, social giving campaigns, and, most predictably, differing opinions on the impact of tax reform and proposals on the missions of nonprofits.

More Hiring & Succession Strategizing

The Improve Group and Nonprofit HR Solutions released a report that showed 44 percent of the nation’s nonprofits planned to create new positions this year. Positions in direct services in fundraising were at the forefront of organizations’ plans to hire.

According to the same study, 70 percent of nonprofits lacked a formal succession plan, though those who had implemented a strategy reported that it brought their organization peace of mind, developed talent, and retained staff. Experts expect focus in this area to become a primary area of focus this year.

Deploying More Technology & Social Giving Campaigns

Another main area experts and reports agree on is the increase of technology deployment in the nonprofit sector. In particular, a Blackbaud report shows that mobile technology will be significant this year with more than two-thirds of surveyed NPOs planning to utilize more mobile tech this year.

Additionally, more and more nonprofit technology companies are emerging giving organizations in this sector far more options, ranging from fully integrated suites to specialized programs for basic needs like fundraising or donor management.

This year a bigger emphasis is expected to be seen on social giving campaigns as well. The 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report says to expect three things:

The monetization of Facebook
More usage of Google+
Increased fundraising efforts through Twitter

Some are Weary of Tax Uncertainties, Others See Promise

Tax promises and concerns, however, are still at the top of mind in the nonprofit sector. Till months pass and charitable giving trends can be analyzed, long-term impacts of the American Taxpayer Relief Act can’t be certain. Some think the act could positively impact giving by $3.3 billion, while others still fear proposed tax ceilings fearing a negative impact of the same amount.

This is a big year for nonprofits. A lot is yet to be determined. What is your take on the state of nonprofits for the remainder of 2013? Feel free to leave your comments below or reach out to us directly.

There are no magic pills in fundraising

February 13, 2013 erik Fundraising

Has something ever drifted into your email inbox with a subject line that you just could resist opening immediately? Well, it happened to me yesterday when an email arrived announcing that Future Fundraising Now blog just completed a post titled “How to plug along like a fundraising machine,” and like the cat, curiosity got the best of me and I clicked it open right then and there.

What I read was something so simple and yet so true. It stuck with me all evening and carried over to my first cup of coffee this morning. The secret to becoming a “fundraising machine” really is simple.

I encourage you to click over and read what Jeff Brooks has to say, but the gist of it is this simple:

Follow the process for whatever fundraising project you’re working on.
Don’t cut corners.
Practice perseverance.

Simple yet so right on target!

Some of you might be asking yourself, “What ‘process’ is he talking about?” So, the next two sections more closely examine two fundraising processes that oftentimes get their corners cut.

In-person solicitation of a donor

There is a process that successful fundraising volunteers and professionals follow when sitting down face-to-face with a donor to ask for a charitable contribution. It is rooted in best practices and centuries worth of learning the hard way.

It is what I was taught, and I simply call it the 12-step process for making a face-to-face ask.

Make your own gift
Think about the clients (don’t psych yourself out by thinking about the money)
Choose good prospects (aka no cold calls)
Call the prospect and set-up the meeting (and don’t accidentally ask for the gift on the phone)
Prepare for the meeting
Talk about the case for support (e.g. tell impactful stories that demonstrates ROI)
Share your commitment (e.g. tell the donor how and why you are involved)
Ask for the gift
Be quiet!
Answer questions
Set another call/meeting to follow-up (esp. if you didn’t get the pledge right then and there)
Express thanks for time and consideration

Ta-da . . . process. This is one example of what Jeff was talking about in his blog post. His point was that people who are fundraising machines embrace a process like this and execute. People who are less successful, cut corners and are simply not as successful.

Keeping fundraising volunteers engaged and focused

There is a process that successful fundraising professionals follow when trying to keep board members and fundraising volunteers focused and engaged in reaching a campaign goal. As with the process highlighted in the last section, it is rooted in best practices and lots of trial-and-error.

Think of the following concepts as less of a sequential process and more like nine different cogs in the same machine working together to achieve the goal of “volunteer engagement“.

Planning
Setting expectations
Training
Organization
Well run and important meetings
Accountability
Urgency
Recognition
Mission-focus

Ta-da . . . process. This is another example of what Jeff was talking about in his blog. Successful fundraising professionals do these things like a chef following a recipe. The end result is an engaged group of board and fundraising volunteers who achieve their campaign goals. Those people who ignore some of these concepts usually end up falling short of their campaign goal.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look more closely at a few examples:

What happens when meetings are run without a lot of direction (e.g. without an agenda) and things seem to drift and go on forever? In my experience, people stop coming to meetings. In other words, they disengage.
What happens when there is very little urgency to raise money (e.g. deadlines are fuzzy and there are no scheduled report meetings)? In my experience, people drag their feet and prioritize the campaign to the bottom of their task list. In other words, they disengage.
What happens when there is very little mission-focus and the campaign focuses on the theme of ‘we need some money to keep our doors open’? In my experience, people resort to quid pro quo solicitation techniques and start procrastinating. In other words, they disengage.

The bottom line

Do you have professional fundraisers, board members and fundraising volunteers who you see cutting corners or not adhering to “process”? If so, the question is simply this: “What are you going to do with them?” Because they will not produce for you in the way that you need.

Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box below. Are you thinking re-training is the best strategy? What about termination or reassignment? Or is the problem YOU? If so, then what? What do you need to do differently to create the fundraising machine your agency so desperately needs?

Here’s to your health!

Start talking to donors about THE WHY and THE WHERE

February 12, 2013 erik Fundraising

On May 9, 2012, I blogged about something I thought was the next best thing since sliced bread. It was a post titled “FREE fundraising movies every Monday morning? Sign me up!” Not only did I write about this awesome service, but I took my own advice and signed up. I just love starting my week off with a short three-minute video nugget of fundraising goodness. So, when I opened yesterday’s Monday morning movie email and saw that the topic was “Articulating your vision to inspire others to give,” I knew it was going to be a great week.

One of the reasons I love these Monday morning fundraising videos is because they always make me stop and think. Yesterday’s video didn’t disappoint. It made me stop and think about my last few donor interactions. It even caused me to reflect back on the last time I was solicited by a charity. In this reflection exercise, here is what I found:

Sometimes my solicitation visits focus on big picture stuff like “mission.” These discussions focus on the question of WHY. They are 50,000 foot discussions, and some donors like to hear this message over and over again.
Sometimes my solicitation visits focus on big picture stuff like “vision.” These discussions focus on the question of WHERE (and a case can be made for WHY). They are also 50,000 foot discussions.
Sometimes my solicitation visits focus on the little picture stuff like “programming.” These discussions focus on the question of HOW (and a case can be made for WHAT). They are not 50,000 foot discussions. These conversations are in the trenches.
Sometimes, when I am having a good day and the donor is generous with their time, my solicitation visits are a combination of the last three bullet points.

The interesting thing I discovered when looking back is that each of those solicitation calls looked really different because each donor imposed their own set of constraints on the visit. One donor only had 15 minutes to give me; whereas, another donor is a real detail freak.

I’ve been known to say things like, “The golden rule in fundraising is ‘Know Thy Donor‘” or “Donors are like snowflakes because they’re all different“.

I am inclined to double down on these last two opinions after thinking about my last few solicitation visits. However, if you want to make a generalization about fundraising and donors, then this week’s Monday Fundraising Movie makes a great point. Many of us are getting so wrapped up in demonstrating ROI to our donors that our case for support drifts toward disproportionately talking about programming. This can limit our effectiveness because many donors give because they are inspired to do so, and many of the inspirational tools in our fundraising toolbox deal with our vision.

The next time you find yourself sitting down with a donor, try sticking to this simple script:

Tell them about the need in your community. Share a few statistics with them, but personalize it with a story about one of your clients.
Tell them about the vision your agency has for the future and how it impacts the need you just shared with them.
Tell them about how you know your agency is on the right path toward achieving this vision. Share a few outcomes/impact statistics with them, but personalize it with a story about one of your clients.
Of course, end all of this by asking for the donation or pledge.

If you practice, I bet you can do this in 15 minutes. I also suspect that you will become one very effective fundraiser.

Has your agency’s case for support started leaning more towards programming and operations in recent years? What have your last few solicitations looked and sounded like? What do you like to hear when getting solicited by other charities? Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Fundraising is broken. Fix it.

February 7, 2013 erik Fundraising, leadership

Good morning, DonorDreams blog subscribers. I thought I’d give you another day off from my random non-profit and fundraising thoughts by offering you an awesome article about DONOR COMMUNICATION, STEWARDSHIP AND RETENTION from a guest blogger. This guest post is from Nathan Hand, who is a fundraising professional in Central Indiana. Check out his blog posts at NonprofitNate.com. Enjoy!

It happened again. And I’ve had it up to here (*as he raises his hand 2 inches above his head*).

This post may get me in trouble but this is important.

I was visiting with a community business leader yesterday. He told me that he and his wife had supported an organization several times over the years,but he hadn’t heard from them in 14 months. The communication he received yesterday was a solicitation for a significant gift. Done via email. Out of the blue.

If that doesn’t surprise and horify you, it should, but surely this will. He politely declined. In his words, he and his wife had understandably ‘moved on’. In return, he immediately received a ranting email from the fundraiser calling him out for his lack of support.

Ho.Lee.Cow. Stop it already!

What happened? Where did this go wrong? It’s an epidemic racing across the country and affecting every cause. It’s destroying the field of fundraising and the nonprofit sector. And I don’t blame the fundraiser (entirely). For those unaware, data released recently from Compasspoint should have fundraisers and nonprofit CEOs more-than concerned. (Download and read the full report)

Simone Joyeaux summarized politely:

“In summary, here’s the scoop: Development officers quit. Bosses fire development officers. Boards don’t play. Organizations don’t get it. This vicious cycle threatens financing of the sector. And, this has been going on for years and we aren’t really fixing it.”

Why?

I think it’s a lack of patience and focusing on true philanthropy. Organizations are spread too thin (few staff, barely funded), causing the organization to put undue pressure on their fundraisers who then pressure donors and send clear signals of desperation (cue the story above) and have completely unrealistic expectations on top of it. It destroys any hope of a positive relationship and future with those donors. No wonder half of all donors don’t renew!?! We’re waisting an incredible amount of time and money recruiting/aquiring folks only to treat them horribly and then we have the nerve to wonder why they don’t stick around!?!?

Phew. Enough ranting. What’s the solution?

CEOs – Realize that donors want and expect to hear from you. Fundraising should be YOUR priority, not something you hire someone to take care of. Be intimately involved in the process, in the hiring and for goodness sake, pay a competitive salary to attract and retain talent in a relationship-based position. Understand that the development director’s job is to pull levers and orchestrate you, the board and other major advocates in engaging your network to build support for the organization. Until they’ve been a part of the team for several years, they won’t have the relational credibility to be successful. Like sales, financial advisors and other relationship-based business, the first few years are establishing repor and won’t bear fruit for some time.

Development pros – You’re more to blame than CEOs. Yes, I said it. This is YOUR profession. It doesn’t mean you should do it alone but OWN this issue. Fix it for yourself, then your organization, then help others do the same. Do your homework before taking a position. Then do it again. A strong relationship is imperative with the CEO. Spend some time with them. If you don’t get more than an hour or two – that should be a clear sign that they don’t understand the magnitude of hiring a development pro. Meet with the Board Chair. Talk about these issues. Push them on their fundraising philosophy and how they and the board have been involved thus far and how willing they’ll be in the future. Make sure they understand there’s no money-printing press in the back. And look in the mirror! It’s easy to point fingers but make sure you have the patience to do this work, understand how to navigate the involvement of others and balance the slow, relationship-based part with being strategically assertive and making asks when appropriate.

It’s not a big deal. It’s just the future of the entire sector we’re talking about…

What do you think? Do you struggle with this? Is there a different problem we should be zooming in on?

Not fundraising? Not engaged!

February 6, 2013 erik Board development, Fundraising, volunteers

Dani Robbins is the Founder & Principal Strategist at Non Profit Evolution located in Columbus, Ohio. I’ve invited my good friend and fellow non-profit consultant to blog the first Wednesday of each month about board development related topics. Dani also recently co-authored a book titled “Innovative Leadership Workbook for Nonprofit Executives” that you can find on Amazon.com.

Multiple conversations about the same topic with the leadership of a variety of organizations tend to lead to blog posts. When that happens, it is usually prompted by a question, though the question is rarely about the actual issue at hand. The issue that is really the issue at hand is usually behind the issue that is being presented.

For those of you know me, it will come as no surprise to you that I spend a lot of time thinking about the situation behind the situation. (When you make your living telling people what you think, you’d better have thought extensively about whatever they might want to know.)

When it comes to Boards and fundraising (and quite a few other topics as well), the issue behind the issue is often “engagement”.

The question I am being asked a lot lately is “How can I get my Board to fund raise?”

If your Board is not fundraising the way you want them to, I submit you do not have a fundraising issue; you have an engagement issue and possibly a Board Development issue.

Boards that are engaged, raise money. Boards that are not, don’t.

What is the emotional energy of the people in the room during a Board meeting?

When I ask this question while facilitating a session, I set up the answer on a scale of 1-4, with one being “I can’t believe I left my office for this” and 4 being “I feel privileged to be in this room.” Where do your Board members fall?

Mission moments, generative discussions and strategic conversations are engaging. Upholding the fiduciary responsibilities, while critical for an organization is also, for the most part, disengaging. It’s boring. It’s necessary but it’s still boring and boring is disengaging.

Every time I facilitate a planning session with a Board, someone comes up to me and says something to the effect of “That was great! I’m so happy to be talking about strategy and issues and not about the building” (or the finances, or fill in whatever you are sick of).

We engage Board members initially by talking to them about our organization’s mission, the impact it makes in our communities and our vision for changing our corner of the world. They join our Boards in order to help us do those things – and then we never talk with them ever again about any of it. Ever.

We talk with Board members about money — what we spent and why we need more of it. We talk with them about fundraising, and why they need to do more of it. We talk with them about the problems we’re having, and what we need from them to fix it.

We don’t talk with them nearly enough about what they want, about why they joined our Board, and what they hoped to get out of their service.

It is a great opportunity to change the discussion; change the topic; change the impact; change the engagement level.

Call a retreat. Take a survey. Add some client stories to the agenda. Have a strategic planning strategy session, and then continue to talk strategy throughout the year. Present a horizontal scan and discuss how it will impact your clients, not just your agency, but your clients. Introduce some generative discussions at a Board meeting. Here are a few ideas how from my favorite Board book Governance as Leadership:

“At the end of discussions give each member 2-3 minutes to write down any thoughts or questions that weren’t expressed.
Randomly designate 2-3 trustees to make the powerful counter arguments to initial recommendations.
Ask a subset of the Board to assume the perspective of different constituent groups likely to be affected by the decision at hand.”

Find out what people expect when they joined your Board and meet their expectations. You’ll be glad you did and so will your Board members. They might become so engaged, they might even start telling people about your agency, and asking people to support it.

How Storify can help non-profits raise awareness

February 4, 2013 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

If there is one thing Social Media is about, it’s sharing — sharing information, photos, videos, statistics. If it can be displayed on a screen, it can be shared. Sometimes, it can be hard to keep track of all of the items being shared on a single topic. That’s where Storify comes in. Today, we are going to look at how your non-profit agency can use Storify to share social media updates with the world.

What Is It?

Storify defines itself as:

“Storify helps making sense of what people post on social media. Our users curate the most important voices and turn them into stories.”

I like to think of Storify as a personalized social media newspaper. Every now and again, I’ll see a Storify link in my twitter feed. I will click it to find a collection of status updates, tweets, photos, and articles on a topic that was important to the user. As the recipient of the Storify story, I find it brings attention to articles or updates that I may have missed on a specific subject.

Why Use It?

Storify can be a great way to share with your social media followers updates on a certain topic. For example, let’s say your mission has to do with cancer research. Once a week, it might be nice to collect stories about the advancements in cancer research, put them all together in an easy to read format, and share it with others.

What I like is that Storify gives you a way to provide context to the articles to which you are linking. Many times the hardest job a non-profit organization has is educating the public about their mission. Storify provides an easy format to do just that.

Additionally, Storify is a great search engine for finding content on different subjects. Even if you don’t use Storify to share articles and updates with others, it can be used as a powerful search engine to find what people are saying about your organization and its work.

Furthermore, once you publish a story on Storify, the service will notify the people quoted in your story to let them know they are being featured in your story. This can help you raise awareness about your issue faster and facilitate networking connections through social media.

Finally, Storify offers complete flexibility when it comes to how you share your curated stories with others. You can share it as a link to various social media networks or embed it right onto you website. Storify provides you with the code to do it, which makes it as simple as copy and paste.

How to Use It

Signing up for an account is simple. Just go to Storify.com to get started.

The whole interface is drag and drop so it makes deciding where things go very simple. Use Storify to share news about upcoming events, issues important to your mission, or collect when your organization is mentioned elsewhere on the web to share with members of your team.

See how The Weather Channel used Storify to collect stories about the latest winter storm.

I would just like to note that I was not compensated in way to write this post. I just think that Storify is a powerful tool that non-profits could use to raise awareness.

What do you think? Is Storify a tool for your non-profit? Do you already use Storify? If so, what do you believe to be most impactful when using the service? Share answers to any of these questions below in the comments section. I’d love to hear from you!

Are you too busy or are you just prioritizing?

February 1, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, Planning

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 “Take Your Time,” John talks about the difference between not having time and not taking the time to do important things. I especially love how he starts his post off with a quote from The Merovingian in The Matrix, who said: “Who has time? Who has time? But then if we do not ever take time, how can we ever have time?”

I’ve been stewing on this for days because if I had a nickel for every time I heard a non-profit professional say something about not having enough time to do something, then I’d be a very rich man. Here are a few very real examples:

I didn’t have time to recruit an annual campaign committee and engage them in writing a plan.
I don’t have time to work on adding a major gifts initiative to our agency’s resource development program. And don’t get me started on planned giving.
Critique meeting? Are you kidding? We don’t have time to do that. We’re already late for the next special event.
I didn’t get around to writing an annual performance plan for my direct reports because there just wasn’t enough time.

I am the first person to point out that the non-profit community is severely under-resourced, and this means time is a precious commodity for non-profit professionals who are wearing multiple hats. HOWEVER . . . John pulls no punches when he says: “When we say we don’t have the time to do something, what we’re really saying is that something is not a priority.”

So, I find myself wondering:

Why is a written annual campaign plan (aka project management plan) not a priority?
How can it not be a priority to write a performance management plan for your direct reports?
What can be more important than working on complex fundraising tools that will bring in more funding?

I will be the first person to admit that I sometimes find myself practicing “avoidance behavior;” however, I know that this isn’t productive. More importantly it is destructive behavior and something that a non-profit organization cannot afford.

Do you find yourself routinely saying: “There just aren’t enough hours in the day to . . .”? If so, then I strongly suggest that you do an informal self assessment. You can accomplish this by doing the following:

Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper,
List all of the things you find yourself saying that you don’t have time to do on one side,
List all of the things you decided to do that same day on the other side of the paper, and
Go item by item and ask yourself: “Was this more important than . . .”

You may just discover that you’re not prioritizing your time effectively. Or you may not. Regardless of the outcome, I think this process is good to go through periodically just to make sure you’re prioritizing your time effectively.

If you do go through this exercise and discover that you are doing a good job with prioritizing your time, then please stop saying that you don’t have enough time. Own the fact that you have limited time and need to make tough decisions about what gets accomplished. Once you start doing this, you might be surprised at how many people start telling you that what you’re deciding not to do is very important. Once THAT starts happening, then you have achieved the necessary leverage to turn the tables and ask them to please lend a hand with what they have just described as a very important task.

How can they say ‘NO’?

Do you find yourself saying that you don’t have enough time? How do you ensure that you’re prioritizing effectively? Please scroll down and share your best practices with your non-profit friends and family in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Your non-profit event isn’t over until you critique it

January 31, 2013 erik Fundraising

For the last few months, I’ve been involved in the planning and implementation of one of my favorite non-profit organization’s special event fundraisers. I was reminded last night at the post-event gathering of how important critique meetings really are to the long-term success of a special event. I was also reminded that post-event evaluation needs to focus on so much more than simply the question “Did we make our financial goal?”

Before last night’s meeting, staff gathered information on the following metrics:

Amount raised vs. event goal (e.g. revenue)
Amount spent vs. event budget (e.g. expense)
Costs as a percentage of amount raised
Number of donors
Number of new donors
Number of repeat donors
Number of lapsed donors
Breakout of various revenue streams compared to previous years (e.g. ticket sales, sponsorships, raffles, auction, fund-a-need, etc)

After getting past the numbers, deeper questions were asked about process such as:

What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to recruiting the committee?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to event planning and project management?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to selling sponsorships?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to securing auction items?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to conducting the raffles?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to check-in and check-out?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to the script and program?
What did we do well and what should we have done differently when it came to post-event communication and stewardship?
Should we change the event theme? Has this event gotten old and stale? Is it time to change format?
What are three things we must tell next year’s committee to keep doing because it really made a huge difference?
What are the three things we must tell next year’s committee to re-examine and change because it was a challenge?

No one likes to look in the mirror and talk about room for improvement; however, there is another way to look at these type of activities. A post-event critique meeting is like writing a “love letter” to next year’s event planning committee. I believe that if it is done in this spirit, then this activity becomes significantly easier.

At the end of last night’s post-event meeting, we also talked about the importance of building a binder that can be passed along to next year’s committee. Of course, the notes from last night’s meeting would be included as would budgets, invoices, invitation lists, volunteer prospect lists, etc.

There was celebration and lots of hugs and appreciation was exchanged. Wine, popcorn, and awesome parting gifts for everyone!

How does your organization handle itself after the event is over? What do you look at? What questions do you ask at the critique meeting? What goes into your binder? Please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!