nonprofit – Page 48 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Solving the age-old battle between fundraising vs grantwriting

December 26, 2012 erik Board development, Fundraising, Planning

It is the end of the year and for many non-profit organizations it means:

constructing an agency budget for 2013, and
putting together a comprehensive resource development plan to add meaning and depth to the revenue side of the agency budget.

In the last few weeks as I’ve talked with various agencies about their resource development planning efforts, I’m reminded of age-old battle:

Fundraising vs. Grantwriting

Donors see government grants as “wealth redistribution” and a substitute for their charitable contributions. Fundraising volunteers (and even fundraising staff) get squeamish about asking other people for money, and they prefer asking government and private sector foundations over soliciting family, friends, co-workers and neighbors.

crowding1 This phenomenon is called the “crowding out effect” and I wrote about it in the following blog posts in 2011:

While I would love for you to go back and read those posts, I also encourage you to read an awesome 2009 research paper written by James Andreoni and A. Abigail Payne titled “Is Crowding Out Due Entirely to Fundraising? Evidence from a Panel of Charities“. They do an awesome job of looking at this from a data perspective, and they conclude the following:

Using instrumental variable techniques, we estimate total crowding is around 73 percent, and that this crowding out is almost exclusively is the result of reduced fund-raising. A $10,000 grant, for instance, reduces fund-raising expenses by $1370, which in turn reduces donations by $7271. Adding this $1370 savings in fund-raising expenses reduces the estimate of crowding out to 59 percent. If charities had maintained their fund-raising efforts, our estimates show that donations would have risen by the full amount of the grant.

hell2 The crowding out effect is real, and it is something non-profit organizations need to understand and deal with. If not, then I advise putting the following age-old expression in a frame above the boardroom door: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how to put the “crowding out effect” in check, and the following few paragraphs are just a few ideas. I think some are good thoughts and others are a little out there, but let’s work together on refining these ideas.

Planning – Planning – Planning

The planning process is not about the executive director putting stuff in writing and handing it over to volunteers for implementation. Planning is an engagement activity.

So, why not introduce volunteers who are involved in the resource development planning process to the research paper by James Andreoni and A. Abigail Payne and ask them: “What should we do about this? How should we accommodate for this in our plan?”

Simply stated . . . planning is the antidote for the crowding out effect.

Fundraising policies

I’ve always seen “policies” as a way of creating hard and fast rules for things that board volunteers and non-profit staff might otherwise find hard to implement if it weren’t “required“. Since so many people find grantwriting easier and preferable to fundraising, I started wondering if there weren’t some policies we could create that could put the “crowding out effect” in check. The following are just a few thoughts:

A written policy prohibiting government and private foundation grant revenue from exceeding a certain percentage of the agency’s overall revenue.
A written policy that commits board members to increasing their personal contributions by a certain percentage whenever grant revenue exceeds a certain level.
A written policy that commits board members to asking a certain number of new prospective donors whenever grant revenue exceeds a certain level.
A written policy that ties the agency’s annual campaign goal to the level of grant revenue. (e.g. every 1% increase in revenue goals from grant writing results in a 2% increase in qualified individual giving prospects and corresponding campaign infrastructure)

Truth be told . . . I’m not a huge fan of this approach, but I do think it is worth continued discussion and dialog.

Board development

I suspect that the best solution is the simplest solution — recruit the right board members.

Smart business people will understand a simple concept like the “crowding out effect”. Put this challenge in front of them and ask them to solve it.

I suspect they will simply conclude that more “fundraising-minded volunteers” need to be recruited to off-set the effects of grantwriting on the agency. After all, isn’t that what they’d probably conclude when it comes to their sales force staff and their business if confronted with the same challenge?

Are you in the middle of writing your 2013 resource development plan? Are you facing some of the same challenges with volunteers regarding the question of more fundraising versus more grantwriting? If so, how are you tackling this challenge? Do you have any suggestions on how to improve upon the recommendations I’m providing in this blog post? Please use the comment box below to weigh-in with your thoughts and suggestions.

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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My holiday wish list for DonorDreams blog subscribers

December 24, 2012 erik Uncategorized

happy holidays I opened my eyes this morning just like I have done on the previous 41 Christmas Eves, and my mind started to race. My family does all of its getting-together and celebrating on December 24th, which of course means:

last-minute gift shopping
last-minute gift wrapping
last-minute cooking

However, in the last 18 months, my family has expanded, and it now include just short of 250 online subscribes to this wonderful blog platform that we call DonorDreams.

While inviting everyone over for dinner tonight is not possible, I thought I’d tell share with you a few things that I’m extremely grateful for this holiday season:

I am obviously very thankful for your readership.
I am grateful every time one of you comment on a blog post and engages in a conversation about one of our non-profit, technology, organizational development or fundraising topics.
I am appreciative of Marissa Garza, whose non-profit technology-inspired blog posts on Monday drive a lot of traffic to the DonorDreams platform. She is an aspiring social media consultant, and I have no doubts that she will get there some day.
I am appreciative of Dani Robbins, whose once-a-month non-profit blog posts about board development are always pitch perfect. I am proud to say that I have a published author blogging for our readers!
I am extremely lucky that one of my good friends, John Greco (who just so happens to be one of the best organizational development (OD) professionals in the Chicago area and also just so happens to also blog), allows me to piggyback every Friday on one of his O.D. topics

So, how does all of this well-wishing and seasons greetings work its way into a non-profit blog post? Well, I have three simple messages for you today that deal with the following:

Your donors, staff, board members and volunteers
A few housekeeping items
What gifts I want from YOU this holiday season

Your donors, staff, board members and volunteers

It is a busy time of the year, but those people in your extended family (aka your non-profit family) need some love and presents, too. Many fundraising professionals might call it stewardship, but today I call it a holiday gift.

As I have demonstrated above with my good tidings and appreciation of readers and contributors, you need to do the same thing with donors, staff, board members and volunteers.

In my humble opinion, it needs to be more than just a holiday card or year-end staff appreciation party. It needs to be personal and from the heart. Here are a few examples:

Tell a board member about something specific they helped with that you really appreciated.
Tell a staff member about something good and mission-focused you spontaneously caught them doing.
Drop a donor a little handwritten note telling them specifically about one thing that their contribution helped accomplish in 2012, and tell than that it wouldn’t have been possible without them.

Sure, it is time-consuming . . . but this is the season of giving.

A few housekeeping items

Over the next week, there will be a few days when you will not get something in your inbox from DonorDreams blog. It isn’t because we don’t love you, but the holiday hop is real and it is hard. In year’s past, I was able to blog ahead of time and use the WordPress blog functionality to schedule posts to launch on holidays.

I am thrilled to be able to report to you that my non-profit consulting practice has taken-off in ways I could only dream about at this time last year.

Work plus holiday hop equals a few missed blog posts during the holiday season.

I assume that everyone will be too busy to even notice, but I am one of the more transparent people you know. I just thought you should know.

What gifts I want from YOU this holiday season

Many of us only know each other digitally. We’re cyber-buddies. So, I realized that you don’t know me well enough to know what to get me for the holidays. From this realization, I decided that I would publish my “DonorDreams Holiday Wish List” for all of you to see and consider shopping from. Here it is:

DonorDreams Holiday Wish List

I am looking for a few more people who are really smart about non-profit related topics (e.g. marketing, volunteer management, fundraising, board development, programming/outcomes/impact, etc) AND good at writing to join the DonorDreams blog team in 2013. There is no pay involved, but it is a lot of fun. If you’re interested, please contact me and let’s talk! If you have always wanted to blog, then this is a great experience and could become a spin-off opportunity for you down the road.
I am looking for 18 new blog subscribers. I had a personal goal of hitting 250 subscribers by December 31st, and we’re very close. If YOU reached out to just one non-profit professional in your network and said “Hey, I subscribe to this awesome non-profit blog and I think you should subscribe, then we would annihilate this year-end goal. Please help?
I would love to see more conversation around some of our blog post topics in 2013. If each of you made a year-end resolution to comment once per month, we would have a vibrant non-profit blog community with tons of learning and fun discussion.

I was going to add a few other things to my Wish List (e.g. that iPad or tablet) that I’m hoping for, but I’ll stop here because 1) there is a big man in a red suit that I’m still counting on and 2) I don’t know you well enough to ask for that kind of gift. 😉

From the bottom of my heart at DonorDreams blog, I wish you and yours a very happy holiday season! And as always . . .

Here’s to your health!

Have you forgotten year-end evaluations and performance plans during the year-end scramble?

December 21, 2012 erik Board development, organizational development, volunteers

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.

It is that time of the year when non-profit leaders set the stage for the next year. This time of the year is always critical and tripping up usually means the next year won’t be a banner one. Here is just a small sampling of what is on the plates of many non-profit executive directors:

Budget construction
Resource development / revenue planning
Program planning
Year-end holiday fundraising and stewardship strategies
Working with the board development committee to complete year-end board volunteer evaluations
Developing annual performance plans for the upcoming year for staff
Completing year-end evaluations

Interesting enough, in my experience, it is the last three bullet points that get swept under the rug by so many non-profit organizations.

Today’s blog post is short and sweet because it is the end of the Mayan calendar and I have a few things to do before the world ends. So, please ask yourself the following questions:

Are you anxious about evaluating your employees?
Have you neglected to put 2013 annual performance plans together for your staff?
Have you let your Board Development / Board Governance Committee off the hook yet again when it comes to year-end board evaluations?

If you answered ‘YES’ to any of these questions, then please “click-through” and read John’s most recent post titled “There Is No Crying In Performance Reviews!”

Not only does he “hit the nail on the head,” but I don’t have any personal stories that are better than the ones he shares.

If you didn’t get a chance to read this month’s guest post from Dani Robbins, then you may want to click here and circle back to her thoughts on year-end evaluations for board volunteers. I urge you to consider what Dani says and compare it to John’s post about employee evaluations. Does John’s organizational development insights and suggestions also ring true when it comes to year-end board member evaluations. If so, what can you do to support your Board Development Committee to have “AUTHENTIC” and “GENERATIVE” conversations with their peers?

Enjoy the last day of civilization as we know it (just kidding) . . . and Here’s to your health!

Non-profit fundraising giant dies at 69

December 19, 2012 erik Fundraising

Yesterday morning Jimmie Alford died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 69. This sad news started circulating slowly as the day unfolded, and then it snowballed into an online viral event and my email inbox is full of people sharing the news, their grief, and their disbelief.

For the last two years, Jimmie Alford has been my inspiration. As many of you know, I resigned from a great job at Boys & Girls Clubs of America almost two years ago to open my own small non-profit consulting practice. Making that decision was one of the hardest things I ever did, but it was Jimmie’s journey line, his bio, and his story that gave me the courage to chase my dream.

My favorite memory of Jimmie is sharing lunch with him at the University Club in downtown Chicago. He insisted that I take the seat with the best view of the Chicago skyline. We talked about our shared passion for philanthropy, and I remember the time slipping through my fingers like sand in an hour-glass.

I had another one of those lunches at the University Club scheduled with Jimmie for tomorrow on Thursday, December 20, 2013.

While I am profoundly saddened that we aren’t able to keep that appointment, I am so grateful for the lasting memory of our last lunch together. I will hold onto that memory forever and treasure it.

I am forever indebted to Jimmie for being a visionary leader and mentor. I have no doubt that he touched countless other fundraising professionals’ lives like he did mine.

Jimmie may be gone, but he won’t be forgotten.

Our collective challenge as fundraising professionals is to pick up the torch and carry Jimmie’s love of philanthropy upward and onward to greater heights.

Please use the comment box below to share one of your favorite memories of Jimmie Alford. If you don’t have one, I also invite you to share ways that you can “pay it forward” and light other people’s passion for philanthropy as Jimmie was famous for being able to do.

Additional obituary links:

With a heavy heart . . .

Cause related marketing 101: Educate, educate, educate!

December 18, 2012 erik Fundraising

CRM1 It is that time of the year when retailers are pulling out every stop in their little bag of tricks to get your attention and hopefully your holiday dollars. One of those shiny objects that some retailers use is called cause related marketing (CRM). Wikipedia does a nice job of explaining this phenomenon: “Cause marketing or cause-related marketing refers to a type of marketing involving the cooperative efforts of a ‘for-profit’ business and a non-profit organization for mutual benefit.”

Joanne Fritz at about.com recently wrote a blog post titled “Hasbro and Macy’s Invite Letters to Santa in Holiday Cause Marketing Campaigns“. She ended her post with this simple question: “Do you have a favorite holiday cause-marketing campaign? Let me know.”

As I sat here contemplating what my favorite CRM initiative has been throughout the years, I remembered that just last week my partner — John — returned from a business trip with a present for me from the Nashville airport. It was a new part of “Mens Lounge Pants” (or as I affectionately refer to them as: “Erik’s Comfortable Fat Pants”)

John purchased those pants for me because the tag said “Your purchase helps kids in need” and he knows that I love charities and for-profit business that help “those kids who need us most”. So, in his mind, this was a win-win because I needed a new pair of lounge pants and his retail purchase would also “help kids in need”.

When John went to check-out, he made an honest mistake and asked the cashier: “So, how does my purchase help kids in need? Which charities does your company support?” Unfortunately, the cashier’s response was less than inspiring. She shrugged and pointed to a point of purchase coin box sitting on the counter top.

Needless to say, John’s enthusiasm for the brand evaporated and when he gave me the present my “blogger curiosity” went through the roof.

As I sat here contemplating Joanne Fritz’s question, I decided to do a little more research on my lounge pants.

I visited the Lifeisgood.com website and clicked around.
I did a Google search.
I checked out Wikipedia.
I even read the Winter 2012 newsletter for the Life is Good Kids Foundation.

After a good hour of clicking around, I’ve come to the following conclusions:

This cause related marketing campaign is a little unusual because it benefits the company’s own corporate foundation and not an independently owned and operated charity. I liken this to McDonald’s supporting Ronald McDonald House.
I’m still not very sure what the foundation actually does . . . training? programming? advocacy? conferences?
This campaign is very glossy and slick. It is one heck of a “shiny object” that appeals to consumers.

However, Joanne Fritz hits the nail on the head in her blog post when she says that great cause related marketing campaigns focus more on the “cause” than they do the “marketing” (which does not mean that the marketing isn’t top-notch).

The big take away lesson for me from “Life is Good” is that effective CRM campaigns must focus on education:

Employees must be able to talk intelligently about the cause, and
Consumers must be able to understand what their retail dollars are supporting.

I’ll end today’s blog post the same way Joanne ended her’s by asking you: “Do you have a favorite holiday cause-marketing campaign? Let me know.” Please click over to Joanne’s site and share your thoughts or scroll down and do so in the comment box below. If you want to learn more about CRM, I suggest clicking over to RetailMarketingBlog.com.

Here’s to your health!

How Google Communities Can Help Your Nonprofit Bring People Together

December 17, 2012 erik Mondays with Marissa, technology

Today was a hard day for me to decide what to write about. I originally was going to focus on how social media covered and reacted to the Sandy Hook Elementary Tragedy this weekend. While this is a sad moment in our history, there are many other outlets covering that information. I’d like to point you in the direction of our friends at about.com. They put together a nice collection of sites people can go to help. Instead, I decided to use today to talk about Google Communities, the newest feature to Google Plus, with hopes that it might help your nonprofit’s 2013 social media strategy.

Now, I know I talk a lot about Google here on DonorDreams. That’s because in my opinion they provide quality free services, individuals and small businesses can use to get their message out there and be productive. The newest addition to the Google toolbox is G+ Communities.

When Google Plus first came out everyone flocked to it to see what it was. Then its popularity fizzled a bit as it did not actually kill Facebook as predicted by some. Recently however, I personally have been turning to Google Plus more and more for conversations about different topics over sharing personal updates with friends. G+ Communities does a great job setting up an environment for that to happen.

When you set up a Google Plus Community, you can decide if it is public or private. Besides naming your group, this is an important decision as it cannot be undone. Depending on the purpose, your nonprofit might want to create both a public and a private community. The public community can be used to share news about your nonprofit and discuss topics with the public that are related to your mission. The private community can be used to give employees or volunteers a place to get information about your nonprofit that others cannot see. Information posted in public communities is also indexed by Google Search and will show up in search results.

One thing I really like about Google Communities is that they can act as a forum. Posts can be posted in different topics to keep things organized. This is different than Facebook Groups where all information is put together in one large ever going stream that people have to scroll through to see what’s going on. If a person just wants to read up about special events associated with your nonprofit – they can with Google+ Communities.

In addition, Google Communities come with all of the other features of Google+, such as photo sharing, event invitations and Google Hangouts. In fact, last Friday, Google Plus just announced 24 new features to their product. I suggest you check them out.

One other important note about sharing information on Google. At the moment, they are not charging people to make sure that people see updates by people, businesses or nonprofits. While over at Facebook, news feeds aren’t receiving all of the information each page a person likes publishes. Getting involved with Google+ might be an over all social media strategy your agency might want to consider for 2013 just for this reason – more exposure without having to pay for it.

As with any online community your nonprofit sets up, it is important to assign someone to keep her eyes on what is going on in that online space. This person should be posting important updates and reading all of the comments left by community members. You want to create a safe space where people can share ideas and want to come back and visit. Because it is a community/forum space, it will require more direction and monitoring that a twitter feed.

I hope that this post served as a great introduction to Google Communities for you and your nonprofit. If you do not think that setting up a G+ Community is right for your organization, I encourage you to at least join some for yourself. Since they have launched I have joined quite a few and been happy with the level of conversation and the resources being shared out there.

What do you think? Are Google Communities a good fit for your agency? Do you use another community focused site already that you’d like to share with the group? Leave a message in comments! I’d love to discuss this further.

Your donors are impressionable. Are you impressing them?

December 14, 2012 erik Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

In a recent post, John shared an experience he had 20 year ago with a housekeeping employee who helped him out as he prepared to facilitate a big meeting. This customer service oriented employee left a lasting impression on John so much so that he can’t shake the memory.

Of all the things we forget as humans, why do some things stick with us for a lifetime?

For this fundraising professional, I look at John’s blog post and my mind starts spinning on the following questions:

How can I leave a last impression on donors?
What techniques, strategies and best practices should use to increase the odds that I am leaving that indelible mark on a donor?

As a newly minted executive director way back in 2001, I made the decision to change the format of my agency’s annual dinner special event fundraiser. As part of the event format, we had our Youth of the Year recipient speak for a few minutes about how the agency impacted her life.

Her name was LaShaunda. As I recall, she was a junior in high school at the time, and she was a reluctant public speaker. Prior to the event, we polished and practiced her speech.

As she stepped to the podium, I paced the back of the room. I was nervous for LaShaunda and I was rooting her on because this was her big moment. What I didn’t realize at the time was that this wasn’t just her moment . . . it was also one of those “lasting and impressionable” moments for the agency and a group of very important donors.

LaShaunda spoke eloquently about her parent’s divorce, running with the wrong crowd, street violence, teen pregnancy and racism. Most importantly, she talked frankly about how the agency helped her through a tough time in her life.

indelible1 In that five-minute period of time as I paced the back of the banquet hall, there was a moment where I stopped listening and worrying about LaShaunda and I focused on what was happening in the room:

You could hear a pin drop. Everyone was locked-in on what this 16-year-old was saying.
I saw the former police chief, who helped found the agency, fighting back tears.
I saw a bank president and one of our biggest donors at the time, wiping tears from his cheek.
At the end of the dinner, the city manager made a bee-line across the room (she literally looked like a salmon fighting upstream as the room emptied) so that she could ask LaShaunda to take a picture with her.

I wish I could say that I was the evil genius who engineered that evening to unfold the way it did. I’d be over-stating things if I took that much credit.

I still periodically come across donors in my community who talk remember that special evening and talk about how moving LaShaunda’s five-minute speech was.

Truth be told . . . I learned a huge fundraising lesson that evening and it echoes what John is talking about in his OD blog:

Donors are people and they are impressionable.
Good fundraising professional should always be focused on how to leave that lasting impression.
This isn’t about manipulation. It is about showing people “how” we’re using their contribution, and “what” the return on investment actually is in human terms.
Facts and figures (e.g. program outcomes data and community impact statistics) are important, but people want to hear about those things as part of a story. Individuals give for emotional reasons. So, you need to connect with them on that emotional level if you want to leave a lasting impression.

What are you doing to make a lasting impression with your donors? The following are two interesting resources I found online that speak to the issue of “making an impression”:

Do you have a story to share with your fellow DonorDreams blog readers about a time you made a lasting impression (aka a transformative moment) with a donor? In sharing that story in the comment box below, would you also share what you think you did right to make it an impressionable moment?

Here’s to your health!

Do your donors think the non-profit sky is falling?

December 12, 2012 erik Fundraising

chicken little2 When I hear one donor say something once, I chalk it up to something interesting. When I hear two donors say the same thing, I usually think it is an interesting occurence. However, when three or more donors express the same sentiment, I sit up . . . take notice . . . and treat it like a potential trend.

Since the Presidential election was decided more than a month ago, I’ve more than three donors say alarming things about the state of philanthropy in this country. Here is some of what I am hearing:

“Congress and the President won’t agree on the fiscal cliff negotiations. We’re going off the fiscal cliff, and charitable contributions will go down.”
“Obama wants to get rid of people’s charitable tax deductions, and this will result in a reduction in donations.”
“The Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans will be allowed to expire, which means wealthy Americans will stop giving to charities.”
“Congress and the President will go off of the fiscal cliff. Everyone’s taxes will go up. Another recession will surely result, and charitable giving will dip as a result.”

I am not exaggerating. There are a number of donors and non-profit board members with whom I have spoken in the last month that think the sky is falling.

At first, I thought this talk was the result of Republican donors being unhappy about a Obama re-election. However, I’m beginning to re-think this original opinion. I honestly think people are getting scared.

There are multiple reasons for this hysteria and probably include a 24-hour media cycle, political rhetoric, etc. Regardless, the ‘WHY’ doesn’t matter . . . non-profit professionals need to focus on ‘WHAT’ they should be doing and saying.

chicken little1 While fear is irrational, it definitely impacts human behavior. I believe most students learn this in Psychology 101. So, if people “think” the sky is falling, it is falling regardless of the facts.

You can passively sit by and let your donors and board members whip themselves into a frenzy, or you can be a responsible non-profit professional and do something about it.

I have always believed that an “ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. In this instance, I believe that good non-profit professionals will inject a calm and reassuring voice into any local discussion being had with board members or donors.

Of course, being calm and reassuring is easier said than done, and it requires a firm grasp of facts. Unfortunately, the facts shift and change and are subject to interpretation. However, I was very encouraged when I saw that BoardSource is hosting a webinar featuring Tim Delaney, CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits. He will speak to the issue of fiscal cliff, capping deductions, etc.

THIS WEBINAR IS SCHEDULED FOR TODAY (WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2012) AT 2:30 PM CST, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN STILL REGISTER BY CLICKING HERE AND FOLLOWING THIS LINK.

Once you get some of the facts about the issues, you should feel more comfortable participating in these type of conversations when they come up with donors and volunteers.

chicken little3 Here are a few quick tips you may want to remember when jumping into these discussions:

Don’t express partisan opinions. Stick with the facts about what is being discussed. I encourage steering clear of expressing an opinion on what you think the impact will be. Put the crystal ball away!
Be reassuring and express confidence that these things always work themselves out in the end. History proves this to be true time-and-time-again.
Remind donors that tax considerations are rarely a motivating factor in most people’s charitable decisions. Donors give to good causes with good missions. Tax considerations (if they are even in the equation) are frequently a final factor and contribute to size of gift and rarely on whether or not to give.
No one can predict the future, and getting all worked up about something we can’t control is an exercise in futility. All we can control is our own actions .(e.g. who do we ask now, for how much as we asking, when are we asking, etc). Let’s remain focused so we don’t accidentally get swept up in something that doesn’t yet exist.

Are you hearing some of your donors and board members wring their hands over this policy debate in Washington D.C.? If so, what are you doing to make sure your year-end giving isn’t negatively impacts? Are you doing anything at all? Are you remaining silent?

If you end up attending the BoardSource webinar today, please circle back and share a few of the details in the comment box below. If you can’t attend, please weigh-in with your thoughts on the the questions I just posed or any of the ideas I just expressed.

Here’s to your health!

Does your non-profit organization have policies about grant writing?

December 11, 2012 erik Fundraising, Planning

grant writing1 This morning I am asking for your help with a small project I am working on. A few weeks ago I agreed to help one of my favorite non-profit organizations with a staff transition. Not only did their development director move on to greener pastures at the end of the summer, but their executive director also recently resigned. So, the board asked me to step into the void and help their management team with a variety of year-end miscellaneous projects (e.g. year-end holiday mailing, 2013 budget construction, resource development plan, etc).

One of the projects with which I provide a little assistance is grant writing. I am part of the review team that proofreads, edits and asks questions before any proposal is allowed to go out the door. I am not the only person involved in this agency’s grant writing process . . . there is a grant writer (who is an independent contractor), a program/operations person and a board member. I kind of like the process they’ve designed. It feels comprehensive, responsible and serious.

The other day someone brought another grant opportunity to the team. It was a RFP that would’ve brought $2,000 in the door that wouldn’t have supplemented existing programming . . . it was an “add-on” proposition. Here is a list of questions that the grant writing team started asking itself:

Is this grant opportunity “budget relieving”?
Are the program costs totally off-set by the grant? Or will the $2,000 grant only partially cover the expenses of the add-on programming?
Are there other reasons (e.g. political, relationship building, etc) for the agency to consider writing this proposal?

Somewhere in the middle of this discussion, the board member blurted out the following really good question:

“How many more $2,000 grants are we going to write?”

ROI This question was inspired by a string of two or three grants in a row that this organization had just written. As a businessman, he asked this question because he is accustom to looking at everything through a “return on investment” (ROI) lens. In hindsight, this is what he saw:

The grant writer was putting in three to six hours researching and writing the proposal.
The program/operations person was putting in a few hours pull together outcomes data and proofreading the final proposal to make sure we weren’t over-promising anything.
The board member, who serves on the management team as the agency searches for a new executive director, is investing a few hours in proofreading and asking tough questions to ensure the organization isn’t over-promising and under-delivering. This is essentially the same role that the executive director would play if there was one on the payroll.
I was back stopping the entire process and doing some same.

WOW! It shouldn’t be a surprise after a few small grant writing opportunities he’d ask such a question.

Of course, this touched off an interesting conversation on many different fronts including a discussion about non-profit fundraising policies.

I promised the group that I would blog about this topic and ask the readership of DonorDreams blog for their best possible world-class coaching and advice.

So, I have a holiday season favor to ask each of you this morning:

Would you please take a minute or two out of your busy schedule this morning and use the comment box below to do one of the following two things?

share your agency’s grant writing policy/policies, or
share how your organization makes decisions on when to write or pass on a grant writing opportunity.

Seriously, your feedback this morning will directly help another organization in its pursuit of developing fundraising best practices. Your participation will take all of a minute or two this morning. Please weigh-in. Your collective wisdom is massive and will bring tremendous value to this organization’s discussion. You can consider the few minutes that you invest in responding to this request as your “good turn” this holiday season. Please pay it forward!

Here’s to your health!

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Help me understand the ways of the non-profit force!

December 7, 2012 erik organizational development

In a recent post, John talked said,”The practice of wei wu wei — action without action — is a fundamental tenet in Chinese thought, mostly emphasized by the Taoist school.” He talked about this organic approach to decision-making in a very personal way, but I couldn’t help extrapolating it to an organizational level and some of non-profit experiences.

If I had a nickel for every time I walked through an organization’s front door and saw everyone practicing wei wu wei, I would be a very rich man. Here are a few examples:

The agency’s revenue budget is overly dependent on one source of funding (e.g. government dollars), but no one is proactively doing anything to diversify their revenue streams.
The board volunteer in charge of the annual dinner is waiting for their fellow board volunteers to report back on the status of phone calls to prospective event sponsors, but everyone is procrastinating until the last-minute and looking around to see what others are doing.
The executive director is sitting around waiting for board members to engage in fundraising activities, but board volunteers are looking at their executive director and/or fellow board members to do something (e.g. lead, engage, communicate urgency, provide accountability, etc).

I love it when John’s blog posts jolt me from my desk chair and cause me to pace around my home office, which is exactly what this one did.

I am a proactive kind of guy. I have a BA and Masters degree in Planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Every fiber of my being leads me to plan and push forward. So, sitting still and doing nothing is antithetical to who I am.

wi wei Moreover, whenever I see non-profit organizations and both staff and board leaders practicing this Taoist approach of “sitting still” and waiting for things to happen, I’ve often observed a train wreck shortly thereafter. However, I know that there are times when John is 100% right and this approach is warranted.

The wise non-profit leader knows when to plan, push forward and engage versus sit still and wait for the right situation to develop and change to occur.

Are you one of those wise non-profit leaders? If so, please use the comment box below to share an example of when taking a wait-n-see approach worked for you. Is it intuition that you use to know when to use an organic versus planned approach?

Oh Obi-Wan Kenobi . . . please help me understand the ways of the non-profit force.

Here’s to your health!