nonprofit – Page 41 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Donor says: “Less selling. More serving.”

April 18, 2013 erik Fundraising

Over the last few days, I’ve had the pleasure of doing one-on-one donor interviews for a client of mine. I just love it when I get an opportunity like this because there is nothing more enlightening than chatting with someone about their philanthropy.

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes develop a blind spot about what I think donors know versus what they don’t know when it comes to the fundraising profession. For me, it is that “Wizard of Oz” moment where the wizard is discovered by Toto and his response is: “Ignore the man behind the curtain.”

So, it is always startling to me when a donor engages in a fundraising process conversation with me. This is exactly what happened yesterday during one of my donor interviews.

The donor I am referencing simply said:

“The non-profit sector needs to have a paradigm shift. They need to move from selling to serving.”

This opened the door to a rich conversation about the importance of stewardship and loving your donors. (Believe it or not the words ‘stewardship’ and ‘loving your donors’ came out of his mouth and not mine.)

The idea of putting less time, energy and effort into SELLING and redirecting it into SERVING (e.g. stewardship) has been top of mind for me lately because I signed up for Pamela Grow’s four week eCourse titled “Monthly Giving: The Basics & More!”

Literally, the night before this donor interview, this is what I read in the first week’s materials:

“One of the most amazing things about monthly giving is that once a donor signs up for a monthly giving program, you can stop asking them for money, because the person is giving you money each and every month. Instead of making regular asks, you can focus 100% on stewarding your donors. Imagine, donors that get tons of attention from your non-profit, and none of it an ask!”

I’ve always been fascinated by monthly giving, but I’ve never had an opportunity to develop or run such a program. So, my curiosity got the best of me and I signed up for this eCourse.

I’m not suggesting that the silver bullet for your resource development program is a monthly giving program. Heck, I’ve only read the first week’s worth of reading materials. Truth be told . . . the case for support is compelling, and I’m excited to learn more.

At the intersection of this eCourse and yesterday’s donor interview, I am left wondering what other non-profit organizations are doing to shift more of their time into stewardship activities?

I suspect the reason monthly giving programs are appealing is because it recognizes a basic truism, which is there is only so much time in a fundraising professional’s day and the money needs to come in the door. Investing in the development of a monthly giving program creates an environment where solicitation time can be converted into stewardship time.

I’m going to stop here because you need to sign up for Pamela’s eCourse if you want to learn more.

What are you and your organization doing to invest more time into “serving your donors“? What does that look like? How are they responding? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comment box below.

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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The best advice I ever got . . .

April 17, 2013 erik Board development

On Monday, Dani Robbins’ Non Profit Evolution blog started off with these words, “The best advice I ever got as a nonprofit CEO was . . .” Since reading those words, I’ve had a delightful dinner with Dani at a great Indian restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, and we talked a lot about those days when we were both young non-profit executive directors.

For some reason, I can’t get the words from her Monday blog post out of my head. Every moment that my mind gets a chance to wander, it comes back to a simple question, which is “What was the best advice I ever got as a non-profit CEO?”

Honestly, there was so much advice that at times it felt overwhelming. EVERYONE had an opinion because EVERYONE thought they knew how to do my job. I believe this is a cross that every nonprofit executive director must bear.

Of course, there was someone in my life who could do my job because he had done it before. His name was Fred Paulke, and he was previously my executive director at another agency.

I bring Fred into the conversation because there are two great pieces of advice that Fred gave me, and I can’t decide which one is “the best“.

Committing yourself

The first piece of advice was to stop “over promising and under delivering.”

Fred did a resource development audit for me, and one of his findings was that I had a tendency as a young executive director to over promise and under deliver to board members and donors.

Embarrassing? Ummmmm . . . yeah!

However, true friends tell you when you have a bugger hanging off the tip of your nose. Am I right?

So, the best advice I may have ever received is “STOP DOING THAT!”

In fact, I believe the advice was to “find ways to reverse this habit and start under promising and over delivering.”

Simply put, every time you under deliver you’re eroding your credibility. If you do this enough times, board members and donors will cease believing you when you tell them that you will do something for them by a certain time.

Additionally, being late with something that you promise a board member or donor (or anyone really) is nothing short of: 1) poor customer service, 2) poor stewardship, and 3) unprofessional.

Truth be told? I still struggle with this today. This simple idea turns out to be not so simple.

Do you also struggle with over promising and under delivering? Don’t quickly dismiss this question. Give it some thought.

Do you tell board members that you will have board materials out one week in advance and actually get it into their hands three or four days in advance?
Do you tell donors that you will get their gift acknowledgement letters in the mail within 24 hours of receiving their contribution and actually take two or three days after a big event?
Do you intend to publish your newsletter quarterly and actually only get around to it twice a year?
Does your website and Facebook page go weeks or months without getting fresh content?

I suspect that many of us struggle with this issue, and it isn’t because we’re bad people. I think most of us are eager to please and want to do good.

If you struggle with over promising and under committing, you may want to check out Tiffany deSilva “Seamless Success” blog post titled “Overwhelmed? You Might be Over-Promising and Under-Delivering“. She has a few simple tips to help you knock it off.

Prioritizing

The other great piece of advice Fred gave me when I was a young executive director was this:

10% to 20% of the people you meet and work with are going to love you (and will likely love you through thick and thin);
10% to 20% of the people you meet and work with are going to be critics (and will likely never like you or what you’re doing)
There will be 60% to 80% of the people with whom you meet and work that don’t have any opinion of you and your work. They are a blank slate and persuadable (at least in the very beginning of your relationship).

Fred explained that it would be really easy to spend all of my time with the people who love me. Who doesn’t love a “love feast”??? It also would be really easy to spend all of my time trying to win over the critics.

If you are interested in getting the best return on investment on your time, his advice was to focus on those in the middle. Doing so is a sure-fire recipe for success.

The reason I love this advice is because the moral to the story pertains to how important it is for executive directors (and really anyone) to prioritize their time, energy, and resources.

So, what is the best advice you’ve ever received as a non-profit executive, fundraising professional, or non-profit volunteer? Do you have tips to share on how not to over promise and under deliver? Do you have best practices on prioritizing your time? Please pay-it-forward today by sharing your thoughts in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

On which level of fundraising hell will I see you?

April 16, 2013 erik Fundraising

Let me start today’s post off with this simply observation: “Jeff Brooks is an evil genius!” If you aren’t subscribed to or periodically clicking over to read Jeff’s blog — Future Fundraising Now — then you don’t know what you’re missing.

When I started blogging two years ago, I did a little research. While I found a number of great tips, one piece of advice really resonated and stuck with me. If you want to become a great blogger, then you need to subscribe to and read other blogs. In other words . . .

read a lot,
pay attention to what others are doing,
be open minded and willing to adapt,
participate and collaborate with others, and
commit to becoming a life-long learner.

If you read my blog regularly, then you can probably tell that I took this advice to heart and I consume a lot of other people’s blog content.

One of the blogs I follow regularly is Jeff Brook’s Future Fundraising Now. In addition to awesome content, the thing I really love is that his posts are always short, sweet and to the point. I am envious of his brevity (something with which I obviously struggle).

So, why am I using today’s post to proclaim my blogger crush on Jeff Brooks? Because for the last few Mondays he has kept me in stitches with his nine part “Fundraising Hell” series where he modified Dante’s Inferno for fundraising professionals.

While he still has a few weeks to go, you should take a few minutes out of your busy day to read his first seven posts (remember they are short unlike mine):

As many of you probably do, I periodically look back upon my career and reflect upon the mistakes I’ve made. When I’m feeling charitable, I look back upon my “lessons learned.” When I’m feeling pitiful and sorry for myself, I look back shamefully and wish there was a “do over button.”

Before being introduced to Penelope Burk and her donor-centered fundraising paradigm, my after-life probably would’ve been spent in fundraising hell on “Level 4: The Greedy and Wasteful“.

Are you a non-profit professional who strives to be a “life-long learner“? If so, how do you do that? What resources do you consume on a regular basis that adds to your knowledge base and feeds your non-profit soul?

Looking back upon your fundraising career, in which level of fundraising hell would you have found yourself if you had not started walking the path of righteous fundraisers?

I will end today’s post by asking you a BIG FAVOR. Please share with me other blogs that you follow and believe bring you tremendous value from a non-profit and fundraising perspective. I want to beef up the BLOGROLL section of the DonorDreams site by including websites and blogs you find inspirational and helpful.

WOW! There are three paragraphs of questions embedded in this mornings blog post. Well, you know what to do. Please scroll down to the comment box and share a few of your thoughts. Why? Because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health! (And here is hoping you avoid fundraising hell! LOL)

Boys & Girls Club of Elgin about to have their “Lion King moment”

April 12, 2013 erik 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 “Born, Not Made,” John questions an assumption he made early in his professional career about whether or not leaders are born or made. He also introduces the concept of “servant leadership” and sets it apart from other ideas pertaining to leadership. John frames the central question as: “Can caring, and a willingness and commitment to serve, be learned and/or developed?”

This November 2012 post came back to me because I’ve had “leadership on the brain” for the last few weeks.

On Monday, April 15, 2013, the Boys & Girls Club of Elgin will have its “Lion King moment” as it holds its new executive director on high and introduces her to the community. Click here or on the YouTube video below to remember what that moment looks like. 😉

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YHzhevY1Jk]

Her name is not Simba. It is Cathy Malkani. I’ve known her for more than a decade. She has been an executive director of a Boys & Girls Club before. She and I worked together at Boys & Girls Clubs of America on a 3-year project in Indiana called the Lilly Endowment Capacity Building Initiative. She was the leader of that project.

Cathy isn’t just a Boys & Girls Club professional. She replicated her leadership and success in other places like a homeless shelter named Hebron House of Hospitality in Waukesha, Wisconsin as their resource development director.

I’ve seen Cathy lead, and I’ve seen it up close and personal. While I think she is a “different kind of leader” — servant leader — the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what I think. The reality is that the Elgin area community gets their opportunity in the next few weeks to make that assessment for themselves. Essentially, the Club (and Cathy) are entering into a critical period of time because:

“You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

Having watched the Boys & Girls Club of Elgin’s board search for its new leader, I am struck by how important “process” was in making this decision. After all, if you believe that leaders are born and not made, then it becomes fascinating to watch a volunteer board do the following:

identify and recruit an applicant pool,
develop interview questions designed to tease out an applicant’s leadership skills, and
ultimately decide who they will hoist above their heads and proclaim their leader.

I am also a believer that leadership is situational. So, I found it interesting to watch this non-profit board decide what their agency needs at this point in time and how they matched those needs up with a variety of different well-qualified candidates.

Do you think leaders are born? Or do you think they are made? Have you seen non-profit organizations go through an executive search? Do you have any observations or best practices to share from that experience? Please use the comment box below to share.

ALSO . . . please use the comment box to welcome Cathy and wish her well. Do you have any good advice about what her first 90 days should look like?

Here’s to your health!

Great non-profit advice from those boxes in my basement: Part 3

April 11, 2013 erik volunteers

On Monday, I shared with you that in the corner of my basement, there is a small mountain of boxes from my last place of residence. I’ve decided after seven years, none of it can be very important. So, I’m opening the boxes and starting to trash the contents. In the very first box I found a treasure trove of training materials from when I worked for the Boy Scouts (BSA) as a District Executive in the 1990s. I decided that the readers of this blog might find some of it helpful and useful. On Monday, I shared with you BSA’s tips for running an annual campaign. Yesterday, I offered you the Scouts’ perspective on volunteer management. Today, we will look at volunteer retention.

Unlike the last two BSA documents that I blogged about, this last one was not what I would call “simple”. It was not a brochure or a laminated card for your wallet. It was a 32-page manual titled “Selecting District People,” and Section VIII is all about “Volunteer Retention“.

I really love how the BSA starts Section VIII off with the following limerick:

There once was a chairman named Tad,
Who recruited new people like mad;
A whiz we all thought,
But the trouble he brought
‘Cause they left ‘fore they served; it was sad!

I think this really says it all! Don’t you?

The BSA credits the Boy Scouts of Canada with coming up with the following “seven keys to the care and maintenance of volunteers:”

Recruit the volunteers you need.
Reclaim the volunteers who left scouting.
Refuse/reject volunteers who are not suitable.
Retain the volunteers you have.
Recognize the volunteers you have.
Rotate volunteers who need more challenging work.
Refer the volunteers who move.

Wow . . . seven ‘”R’s” . . . pretty clever. 😉

This section goes on to offer many different retention ideas, and the following are just a few:

Know your volunteers’ interests and align their volunteer opportunities with those interests.
When you see a volunteer exhibiting “burn out,” don’t wait until it is too late. Engage these volunteers early and help them change to new duties.
Volunteers sometimes drop out for personal reasons (e.g. health issues, divorce, work stress, etc). When this happens, keep in touch with them and invite them back when the situation is resolved.

For me, a good volunteer program has one central value that guides it . . . volunteers are members of your family and should be treated as such.

Just a few days ago, I received an email from my online friend Joanne Fritz at about.com. One of her stories was titled “What Do Your Volunteers Want? 10 Ways to Make Volunteers Happy“. She really takes the issue of volunteer retention to a new level. If you have a minute or two in your busy non-profit day, I strongly urge you to click-through and read this post. I know it will generate a few “AH-HA” moments for you.

While the mountain of boxes in the corner of my basement is still large, I’m stopping this series of blog posts here before it gets too stale. Besides, I’ve only gotten through one box so far and I have to pick-up the pace. LOL 😉

Is your agency trying to build a volunteer recruitment and management program? If so, how is it going? Do you track volunteer retention? What are you doing to improve your retention rates? Please share a few of your thoughts and ideas in the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Great non-profit advice from those boxes in my basement: Part 2

April 10, 2013 erik Board development, volunteers

On Monday, I shared with you that in the corner of my basement, there is a small mountain of boxes from my last place of residence. I’ve decided after seven years, none of it can be very important. So, I’m opening the boxes and starting to trash the contents. In the very first box I found a treasure trove of training materials from when I worked for the Boy Scouts (BSA) as a District Executive in the 1990s. I decided that the readers of this blog might find some of it helpful and useful. On Monday, I shared with you BSA’s tips for running an annual campaign. Today, I will offer you the Scouts’ perspective on volunteer management.

The document I pulled out of the box is super simple. It is a brochure titled “Six Major Tasks for Volunteer Success: To Strengthen District Committees and Commissioner Staffs“.

Define Responsibilities. Volunteers must know what is expected for them to be successful. Carefully define, in writing, the responsibilities for each position.
Select & Recruit. Fit the right person to the job. Consider each prospect’s skills, interests, and other relevant factors. Consider the variety of motivating factors for people getting involved. (And then BSA instructs its employees to use recruitment best practices and references other manuals)
Orient & Train. Provide each person with prompt orientation on the individual assignment and with adequate training to be successful. (Again, BSA references another three manuals for training curriculum)
Coach Volunteers. Provide ongoing coaching as needed. Build a volunteer’s confidence and self-esteem. Help conserve a volunteer’s time. Coaching should be provided by the appropriate chairperson or professional.
Recognize Achievement. Prompt volunteer recognition has an important impact on the tenure and quality of service in the district. Recognition must be sincere, timely, and earned. Use the great variety of formal BSA recognition items, but also be creative with frequent locally devised thank-yous. Even more effective may be the personal “pat on the back” for a job well done. Recognize volunteers on a face-to-face basis, from a person of status, and preferably in front of the volunteer’s peers.
Evaluate Performance. Help district volunteers regularly evaluate how they’re doing. (Would you be surprised to learn that they reference yet still more manuals)

For those of you worrying that I’m violating copyright law, rest assured there is nothing on this brochure that indicates this is copyrighted. Additionally, these six points are all best practices dating back to Biblical times (maybe I’m exaggerating . . . or am I?). Finally, I am infamous for ending my blog posts by saying something like “please share your thoughts in the comment box below because we can all learn from each other“. I guess I’m just imposing my teachable point of view on the Scouts.

C’est la vie!

Reviewing this old 1997 BSA volunteer document, I am struck with the following thoughts:

It is super impressive that the BSA seems to have a manual for everything, which gives new meaning to the expression “They wrote the book on that.”
BSA is dependent on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to implement their programming. It makes sense that they’ve invested countless time, energy and money in developing resources. I wonder if there are collaboration and strategic alliance opportunities for your organization around volunteer recruitment and management. What’s stopping you from reaching out to your local council and starting a dialog?
Boiling it down into six simple tips is misleading and confusing because the devil is always in the details. It is easy to say “Coach volunteers,” but the trick is doing it. There is nothing simple about these six steps, and the BSA has been honing their expertise in the area of volunteer recruitment and management for more than a century.

Is your agency trying to build a volunteer recruitment and management program? If so, how is it going? How many manuals have you developed and on what subjects? Have you hired a volunteer coordinator yet? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

High Functioning and High Profile?

April 9, 2013 erik Board development, 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 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.

There are some very high-profile and high functioning Boards on which community leaders serve with distinction. There are other high-profile yet lower functioning Boards on which people serve because they believe in the mission and it’s also good for their company, career or ego. It’s hard to tell which is which, and it may even be hard to decide which you want.

High profile Boards where nothing strategic is happening but everything is basically fine may be enough for you. Then again, it may not. Even if it is, “basically fine” is hard to qualify. How do you know?

If you are invited to serve on the Board of a respected community organization, the best – and really only – way I know to find out what type of board it is, is to ask lots of questions. Those questions include asking about a typical meeting, about the agenda, topics covered and the quality and quantity discussions; about the CEO and how he or she operates.

Is it a yes Board or a working board?
Is it a Board whose meetings include generative and strategic discussions or one that solely focuses on its fiduciary responsibilities?
Does the organization have a vision of where they’d like to be at some specified point in the future?
Are there organizational values?
Do they align with your values?
Is there a strategic plan?
Are there goals the CEO is working toward?
What are they and by who were they set?

The answers will tell you a lot.

If a typical meeting has no written agenda, you know going in that conversation is likely to wander off topic.

If the meeting is described as primarily votes and committee reports with approvals to follow or the vote being tabled until the discussion at hand is taken up by the committee, with others invited to attend, you know there is a Chair who knows how to run a meeting and who is also running a primarily fiduciary focused Board.

If there are robust discussions that challenge the status quo, decisions that move forward the organization’s vision and generative discussions that consider all constituent groups’ positions, you have a Board that is fiduciary, strategic and generative.

Alternatively, if there is very little discussion, you may have a high-profile but lower functioning Board. Further evidence of this will be if there are no organizational values, no vision, no strategic plan and if the goals were set by the CEO for the CEO.

The CEO’s goals are usually tied to the Board approved strategic plan. In the absence of a plan, the Board sets the CEOs goals and evaluates the CEO based on the accomplishment of those goals. CEOs that set their own goals without any Board input also tend to set the direction for the Board, both signs of a lower functioning board and also an indication of boundary issues. Other evidence of boundary issues, though on the other side, includes Board meeting topics that are operational in nature.

Boundary issues mean the Board acts on things traditionally done by the CEO, and the CEO performs duties traditional completed by the Board. The combination creates a lower functioning Board that, high-profile or not, may not meet your Board service goals or its governance responsibilities.

As described in a previous post The Role of the Board, “the Board is responsible for governance, which includes Mission, Vision and Strategic Planning; Hiring, Supporting and Evaluating the Executive Director; acting as the Fiduciary Responsible Agent, setting Policy and Raising Money. Boundary creep makes the accomplishment of governance responsibilities challenging, which in turn compromise the achievement of high functioning.”

Of course, high functioning and high profile Boards are not the only options. The opposites, low profile and low functioning, are quite prevalent and also easier to spot.

Like anything, it’s important to know what you want out of your Board service before you determine the Board that is right for you to serve. High profile doesn’t necessarily beget high functioning. What’s right for you?

As always, I welcome your experience and insight.

Great non-profit advice from those boxes in my basement: Part 1

April 8, 2013 erik Fundraising

In the corner of my basement, there is a small mountain of boxes from my last place of residence. It is stuff that was deemed unimportant at the time of unpacking, but important enough (for whatever reason) not to throw away. Of course, almost seven years later none of those boxes have been touched, which begs the question: “Can any of it be important and can we trash it?”

I opened my first box last night and found a treasure trove of training materials from when I worked for the Boy Scouts as a District Executiv in the 1990s. Yes, I did have the internal fortitude to put all of it in the recycling bin this morning. However, I decided that the readers of this blog might find some of it helpful and useful.

Throughout the week, I will periodically post some of the wisdom from those training documents here on DonorDreams. Hopefully, you will find some value in it.

Today, I will share with you the contents of a laminated card that measures two inches wide by three inches tall. The title on this card reads: “Elements of a Successful FOS Campaign.”

FOS is an acronym that stands for “Friends of Scouting,” which is an annual campaign pledge drive that every district executive runs in the beginning of the calendar year.

This laminated card contained the following eight pieces of advice for running a successful annual campaign:

Follow the plan.
Recruit the “right” volunteer.
Conduct effective prospect and evaluation meetings.
Conduct quality kickoff meetings.
Schedule report meetings.
Hold a first-class victory celebration.
Follow up in a timely manner.
Follow the plan.

Succinct. To the point. Right on target.

Does your agency run an annual campaign pledge drive? If so, what is missing from this 2×3 laminated card? Anything? What advice would you add? Or did the scouts hit the nail on the head? (And isn’t it amazing how much you can capture in such a small space when you put your mind to it?)

Here’s to your health!

The Millennials are coming: Non-profits will either evolve or die!

April 5, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, Planning

In a post titled “Survival Is Not Mandatory,” John talks about our always changing world and workplaces and how we need to evolve in order to remain viable and relevant. His conclusions are simple: 1) Evolve or die and 2) Survival is not mandatory.

Sometimes timing is everything. When I read this blog post, I was on the treadmill with my new iPad with Morning Joe on the television in the background. The television talking heads were droning on about marijuana legalization and they flashed the following graphic on the screen:

My first reaction was “Huh, it’s interesting that the opinion lines recently crisscrossed.” My second reaction was “Hmmmm, where have I seen another graphic like that?” And within moments, I remembered that the other similar graphic was this one about same-sex marriage:

These two thoughts were colliding in my mind as my feet trudged along on the treadmill, and then my eyes went back to my iPad and John’s blog post about change. My first thought was “What is driving all of this immediate change so quickly?” And my second thought was “I wonder what implications these trends may have for non-profit organizations, fundraising, resource development and philanthropy?” Almost immediately, I remembered seeing the following chart in a Giving USA Spotlight newsletter:

It was at this point I realized the meteor has hit our planet, the weather patterns are changing, and change is starting to happen rapidly. The change we’re experiencing in our society is exponential.

If you are scratching your head and find yourself saying “HUH,” then I encourage you to look more carefully at the previous graphic. The oldest members of the Millennial generation are already in their 30s. Combine this with the fact that the Millennial generation is almost as large as the Baby Boomer generation (e.g. 79 million Boomers vs. 75 million Millennials) and then factor in the 51 million GenXers, and you have the recipe for rapid change.

Still not convinced? The consider the fact that every day for the next 19 years it is estimated that 10,000 Baby Boomers will retire EVERY DAY. In 2014, Millennials will make up 26% of the workplace and this number will soar to 36% by 2020.

Let’s face the grim realities here:

Every single day there are a number of Silent/Greatest generation and Baby Boomer generation individuals who are dying and retiring.
Every single day there are a number of Millennials who reach voting age and enter the workforce.

LOL . . . I am reminded of that famous quotation by Ross Perot speaking to that “giant sucking sound”. In this instance, I don’t think we’re talking about NAFTA. In this example, that giant sucking sound is the vacuum being filled by Millennials.

So, what is the end result? What does all of this mean for non-profit organizations? Fundraising? Philanthropy?

Well, I am not a fortune-teller, but the following thoughts have crossed my mind:

The workplace characteristics for non-profit organizations will change quickly.
The donor profile will change quickly.
The client profile will also change quickly.

I suspect most “best practices” won’t change (e.g. face-to-face solicitation is the most effective way to secure donations), but I can imagine that strategies and tactics need to adapt and evolve. For example . . .

We know that once a donor retires their charitable giving habits seem to change. With 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring every day, I suspect resource development plans need to evolve because at this point in time Boomers make up the bulk of most agencies donor databases. (Did you know that 69% of Boomers donate to charity compared to 33% of Millennials? Source: Center on Philanthropy Panel Study)
We know that direct mail is effective with Baby Boomers much more so than it is with Millennials.
I suspect that fewer Millennials physically own checkbooks than their Baby Boomer counterparts.

(I wonder how eBanking impacts traditional charitable giving systems?)
We know that Millennials volunteer at higher rates than any other generation.

John ends his post by simply stating “But survival is not mandatory.” This revelation is striking because it causes me to wonder: Which non-profits are going to adapt? Which agencies are going to die? How will those who survive evolve and adapt? When will that process start? When will resource development plans start to reflect these changes? Who will step up and lead on these issues?

If you are feeling overwhelmed, I can appreciate that, but paralysis is the enemy of evolution and adapting.

My best suggestion to those of you who don’t know what to do or how to proceed is commit yourself to learning more. Click here to read a great publication titled “Charitable Giving and the Millennial Generation” from the Giving USA Foundation at The Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University. There are a lot of great “AH-HA” moments in this publication. Hopefully, it will get you and your organization pointed in the right direction.

As many of you know, I am a GenXer. As I finish this blog post, I suddenly have a song running through my head and I can’t get it to stop. Upon a little reflection, I now realize that this song is my generation’s anthem and characterizes our lifelong struggle with Baby Boomers and Millennials. Click here if you want to get inside my head and enjoy what I am sure will become my generation’s rally cry. 😉

Please scroll down to the comment box and weigh-in with any thoughts you may have about the questions I posed a few paragraphs ago. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit lessons in a pot of split pea soup

April 4, 2013 erik Fundraising, organizational development, volunteers

After last weekend’s Easter celebrations, I had a lot of ham leftovers. So, I decided to do what I normally do . . . I went to the store and bought all of the ingredients for split pea soup. This is what my mom did when I was a kid, and this is what I now do as an adult. Unfortunately, this year’s undertaking went horribly wrong, but the good news is that I walked away with a story that all non-profit organizations will appreciate.

I worked on this pot of soup all day long on Monday. Split peas, celery, carrot, onion, garlic, bay leaf, salt, pepper, marjoram, and leftover ham from Easter. Boil . . . then simmer . . . then gently heat throughout. Stir, stir, stir some more. Taste, stir, taste, stir . . . you get the idea.

As this process unfolded, I kept retreating to my home office to work on projects for clients. Long story short, I got really wrapped up in something work-related and forgot to stir the soup for an hour-and-a-half. Needless to say, I burned the soup. Here was what I ended up doing between 6:00 pm on Monday night and 11:00 am on Tuesday morning in an attempt to remedy the situation:

Call Mom and cry . . . then ask for her expert advice.
Transfer soup from burned pot to new pot.
Add water.
Add more spicing.
Add more onion, celery and carrot.
Add more peas.
Add more ham.
Add more spices.
Go to Google and search: “I burned my split pea soup.”
Read lots of crazy internet content about how to fix a pot of burned split pea soup.
Deep breath . . . add a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter to the soup.
Cry some more because now I had a pot of burned peanut butter soup.
Sleep and dream about burned peanut butter (supposed to be split pea soup)
Wake up to attend a meeting at a local coffee shop. Bringing a mug of my burned soup to the meeting and ask friends to taste it and weigh-in with their opinions.
Call Mom and brother fromon my way home from the Tuesday morning meeting to beg for any advice they may have been holding back on.

Let me stop here and bridge this topic over to our work as non-profit and fundraising professionals.

As I look back upon my time on the front line, I dealt with a ton of burnt pots of split pea soup. Here are just a few examples:

Hiring the wrong person to do a job.
Recruiting the wrong person to help with a fundraising campaign.
Recruiting the wrong person to serve on the board of directors.
Asking the wrong board members to serve on the wrong standing committee.
Investing way too much time cultivating a prospective donor who had no intention of ever making a contribution.

In each of these business examples, I did the same thing as I did with my pot of soup. I kept sinking more time, energy and resources into fixing a situation that just wasn’t fixable.

In the case of making the wrong hire, it was additional meetings, coaching, corrective action plans, and more corrective action plans.

In the case of the fundraising volunteer, it was additional meetings, taking tasks off their plate and doing it myself, and recruiting a co-chair and other volunteers to supplement the work I originally had counted on them to do.

My partner (and the love of my life) is a corporate sales tax guy. He hangs around accountants all day long, and he is constantly telling me:

“Sunk costs are never a consideration!”

As much as it pains me to say, he is right.

As for my pot of burned pot of split pea soup, my mother and brother convinced me to throw it out and start from scratch on Tuesday morning.

All of those sunk costs kept making the pot of soup bigger and bigger, which is what made throwing three gallons of soup in the trash so difficult. If I had only listened to what my partner is always telling me, there would’ve been a lot less food (and money) going in the garbage.

As it relates to your non-profit organization, it is important to remember that your time is money. This means hiring the right people and recruiting the right volunteers is very important. Failing to do so is the equivalent of making an ever expanding pot of burned split pea soup.

You might as well open your wallet and start burning dollar bills. It is the same thing! And what non-profit organization has enough money laying around to do that?

How do you make sure you are hiring and recruiting the right people? How do you know when to pull the trigger and cut your losses when it comes to volunteers and staff? Please use the comment box below to share stories or best practices because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!