Beyond newsletters

My last two blog posts have been about transitioning your boring, ineffective newsletter into something more “donor-friendly” and effective. Today, I will attempt to put a cherry on top of this “donor-centered” sundae, but talking about those things that non-profit organizations need to do IN ADDITION TO just mailing a newsletter. Again … I want to give credit where credit is due. Penelope Burk is the author of “Donor-Centered Fundraising” and she does a much more eloquent job of discussing all of this in her book.

So, after Penelope goes in-depth on her ideas on how to transform your newsletter into a donor-centered communication tool, she gently reminds us that our work is just now beginning. Briefly, here are some of her other thoughts (pages 104-108):

  • Use email to communicate with those donors who give you permission to do so. Talk about the IMPACT a donor’s contribution is making.
  • Use your website to post important information for your donors and demonstrate to the world how to be transparent and accountable. (See page 106-07 for Penelope’s website content ideas)
  • Visit your donors in-person and invite them to visit you and the programming in which they are investing.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told by resource development and non-profit professionals that they are hesitant to bother their donors because they are too busy. The next time you hear this from anyone, I encourage you to share this data quote from page 107 of Penelope’s book:

“72% of study donors have been invited on-site to one or more not-for-profits they support to see their work first hand. 77% of this group said that this is appealing and that the invitation is appreciated even when they are unable to go.”

It is true that we need to be respectful of our donors’ time, but we need to balance that with being respectful of their investment.

I will end today’s blog with a “tease” … tomorrow we will talk about which donors we should focus more of our energy on? In the meantime, please use the comment box below and weigh-in with your thoughts on the following questions:

  • What does your non-profit organization do in addition to a newsletter to inspire donor loyalty?
  • What did your last donor stewardship visit look like? Were there any surprising revelations or actions that came out of the visit?
  • When a donor has told you that they’re too busy to meet with you or visit your program, how have you handled it and made lemonade out of lemons?

We can learn from each other … please jump into the conversation.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1021153653
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Fundraiser-in-Chief?

My partner and I have been bombarded in the last few weeks by the Obama fundraising team with countless solicitations. There have been phone calls, emails and even snail-mail appeals. There is even one interesting email enticing us to donate in order to get entered into a raffle for a chance to have dinner with the President. Ohhh, let the fundraising fun begin!

After closing the “Dinner with Barack” email, I randomly decided to look at the Wikipedia page for “fundraising“. Interestingly enough, the only picture on that page was of U.S. President Barack Obama.

These two unrelated things in my life got me thinking. “Is Barack Obama not just the Commander-in-Chief but also the nation’s Fundraiser-in-Chief?”  Here are some of the thoughts floating around in my head as I contemplate this question:

  • Team Obama raised approximately three-quarters of a billion dollars in 2007-08 and experts are predicting they will top the $1 billion mark in 2011-12. I don’t know of anyone who has done that in any sector.
  • Team Obama raised their money from approximately 4 million donors, many of which were individuals.
  • Many fundraising experts who looked closely at the numbers said the Obama people did very well with getting small donors to contribute to their first political campaign and then did an even better with getting small multiple gifts from those same donor.

While I’ve come to learn the hard way that political fundraising is very different from doing so for a non-profit organization, I still believe the upcoming Presidential campaign fundraising efforts (all of them and not just Team Obama) are worth watching because there will likely be some interesting take-away lessons for social service non-profit organizations.

Team Obama did much to move the needle with regards to making political fundraising more “donor-centered” and less “transactional” compared to previous campaigns, and they seemed to do so using a blended approach of traditional fundraising (e.g. events, mail, phone, face-to-face) and e-philanthropy (e.g. email, website, social media, text, etc).  I personally came to these conclusion because of the countless “update emails with videos” I received in 2008. It was obviously an attempt at stewardship and a way of demonstrating ROI to individual donors. It must have also been successfully because of the number of small donors who made multiple contributions.

In addition to non-profit resource development professionals getting an opportunity to observe up-close-and-personal donor-centered techniques being applied, I think it will also be interesting to watch how 2008 Obama donors behave in 2012. There were lots of promises made in 2008. As non-profit organizations have learned (mostly the hard way), when we over-promise and under-deliver, donors tend to be a little more reluctant to renew their contribution.

Finally, I’m also interested in watching how “transparency” in political fundraising continues to evolve in 2012. Have you ever checked out The Huffington Post’s “Fundrace” resource? Unfortunately, I have done so and found myself sucked into countless hours of looking up friends, family and donors to see who was donating what and to whom. Interestingly, I found my personal contributions to be under-reported. I wonder if that was a problem that resulted from having to reconcile contributions made via so many different avenues (e.g. website vs. snail-mail vs phone).

So, I think the jury is out on whether Barack Obama is our country’s Fundraising-in-Chief and the proof will be in the 2012 numbers. What do you think?

Were there any best practices or lessons learned that your non-profit used after the 2008 campaign? Are you watching anything in particular from a fundraising standpoint as we head into 2012?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1021153653
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Searching for a donor-centered fundraiser

As I said on Friday, I am currently reading the book Co-Active Coaching as part of a business coaching certificate program. While digesting this text, it caused me to reflect back on Penelope Burk’s book, Donor Centered Fundraising. I think this is happening in part because when I read Penelope Burk’s book, I kept asking myself questions like “what would that look like in practice?” and “what skill sets would a donor-centered resource development professional need to possess?”.

I think some of the coaching material I’m currently reading fills in some of those blanks in my head, and I want to share those thoughts with you here today.

Chapter 5 in Co-Active Coaching talks about how one quality of a successful coach is “curiosity” and one skill set required to be curious is being able to ask powerful questions and dumb questions (which can also be quite powerful).  On page 79, the authors list a few example questions:

  • What does what you want look (or feel) like?
  • What about that is important to you?
  • What else?
  • What will you do and when will you do it?

I now see the importance of limiting the number of “Yes-No” and “Why” questions because these questions can be intimidating and limit discussion. Likewise, I found myself thinking that open ended and naturally curious questions help deepen understandings and in turn deepen relationships.

If I was an executive director again and looking to hire a development professional with donor-centered fundraising skills sets, I suspect I would build a search process around finding someone with the following qualities:

  • listening skills
  • curiosity & engagement
  • action-oriented
  • life-long learner
  • authenticity
  • the ability to create accountability
  • connectivity & relationship building

Have you ever hired a donor-centered fundraising professional? If so, what qualities, characteristics, competencies and skill sets did they possess? What were some of the questions you used to tease these qualities out of your candidate pool? Please jump in and share.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1021153653
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

A dog’s life: Part 5 of 5

This is the last of five posts focusing on Frederick Reichheld’s book “The Loyalty Effect” and how the concept of “loyalty” effects for-profit and non-profit corporations equally. If you don’t own a copy of this book, I suggest you buy it, read it, and change your approach to doing business.

So, we’ve talked about the economics of creating loyalty, the three cogs in the loyalty machine (customers, investors, and employees),  the benefits of creating loyalty, identifying and cultivating the right customers, investors and employees, and the importance of measurement systems with connectivity to incentives & org culture. Today, we will end this “loyalty series” with a brief (and incomplete) discussion about “how to build loyalty”.

Here just a few things Reichhold says in his final few chapters that hit me as important:

  • We need to keep circling back to the question of “how do we build value” for customers, investors and employees. Filtering everything we do through this lens should keep us on the path towards building loyalty.
  • When starting to develop a loyalty-based program, we shouldn’t start with “tactics” but rather we should think strategically. There is a time and place for developing operational tactics, but it is later in the change leadership process.
  • Loyalty leaders are guided by principles: 1) focus the organization’s mission around loyalty and not revenues & profit and 2) use partnerships to “align, motivate and manage”.
  • Loyalty leaders use other loyalty-based companies to benchmark against and learn from (e.g. State Farm, American Express, Northwestern Mutual, A. G. Edwards, Chic-fil-A, and Leo Burnett).

When wading through all of these concepts, two things stuck out: 1) non-profit leaders need to focus on creating “value” for donors and employees and 2) we need to better utilize the power of “partnerships”.

From a non-profit perspective, it is hard to know what “creates value” for donors because many of them are not receiving anything tangible in return for their contribution (special event donors are obviously an exception and so are some NPR pledge drive recipients). What one donor perceives as value might not be seen as valuable by someone else. This is where the idea of “partnership” comes into play and what Penelope Burk says about a donor-centered approach to fundraising. In other words, we need to engage our donors in answering the questions around “creating value” (note – she surveys tens of thousands of donors every year in search of this question). Here are a few ideas you might consider for your organization:

  • Annual in-person meetings with our Top 50 or Top 100 lifetime donors with frank and open discussions about what the non-profit organization can do to create value
  • Focus groups with diverse donor groups and even lapsed donors with frank and open discussions about what the non-profit organization can do to create value
  • Donor surveys getting at the idea of “donor satisfaction”

Of course, tactically speaking there are many different “loyalty tools” in our resource development tool chest (e.g. newsletters; e-blasts; stewardship receptions; programs; activities; volunteer opportunities; mission moments; etc). However, unless we understand what our employees, board volunteers, and donors “value” as part of their involvement with our organization, we cannot effectively employee these tools.

It essentially boils down to communication and follow-through on what you learn.

The other aspect of “partnership” that we haven’t really talked about for non-profit organizations is how to engage and connect customers, investors and employees (aka donors, board volunteers and employees) with each other. One easy way to do this is through any planning process (e.g. resource development plan, strategic plan, stewardship plan, etc). Remember — planning is a means and not an end. Or stated another way — planning is an “engagement activity” and a process that you employ with those you want to get involveddown the road in some capacity.

The idea of building a “loyalty-based” organization is complex. So much so, that Reichheld didn’t just write “The Loyalty Effect,” he also wrote a follow-up book titled “Loyalty Rules” and developed an interesting website with additional resources. My five-part blog series just scratches the surface of this topic. I encourage you to do a lot more reading and then circle back share what you’ve learned with the rest of us.

I’ll end on this note … making the transition from a transactional resource development program to a loyalty-based and donor-centered culture is not something that can be done overnight. It is a change initiative that probably will require you to engage external assistance to help you and all of your key stakeholders frame and guide the process. (That is my self-promotional message for this week. LOL Enjoy the weekend & I’ll see you again on Monday)

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=1021153653
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847