Tag: philanthropy

September 14, 2011 DonorDreams Fundraising

Fundraising lessons from Team Obama

Since starting this blog back in May, I have twice posted articles about Team Obama because I firmly believe that non-profit organizations can learn a lot from what our political fundraising cousins are doing on the other side of town. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t just mean that through careful observation non-profits will be able to steal all of their strategies and best practices. I also mean that we can learn from their mistakes.

For example, let’s look at what happened in my household just yesterday . . .

My phone rings. I answer it, and the person at the other end identifies herself as a someone working for an independent fundraising firm who is raising money “on behalf of” the Obama campaign.

Lesson #1: Think twice about farming out your fundraising to external firms. Keep it internal and recruit volunteers from your board of directors and the community to help solicit prospects and donors. There was nothing this woman could’ve done to prove to me over the telephone that she was actually representing the Obama campaign and not some kind of scam. Volunteers have more credibility than any staff person or hired gun.

Without getting into lots of boring political talk, let me just say that I explained to this solicitor that my partner and I won’t be making a direct contribution to Team Obama’s 2012 re-election efforts. Instead, we’ve decided to shift all of our political contributions to a national political action committee (PAC). I told her to go talk to them if she wants our money.

Lesson #2: My partner and I have changed our giving strategy because we feel powerless and unable to hold national politicians accountable to the things they promised (non-profit translation: the talking points from the campaign’s 2008 “case for support” that inspired us to give in the first place because we wanted to invest in that “impact agenda”). So, here is the lesson for non-profits . . . don’t make promises you cannot keep. Not only will it disenfranchise donors, but they might very well shift their charitable giving to third party funders like United Way in an attempt to attach more accountability to their contribution.

After explaining my position to the telephone solicitor three different ways, she started arguing with me. In the middle of her diatribe, she blurted out her solicitation: “Would you consider making a $5,000 contribution today?” I politely said no. She continued with her rant, and then blurted out “Would you consider making a $2,500 contribution today?” I politely said no and referenced all the reasons I gave 5 minutes earlier. Believe it or not, she continued onward and asked if I could just make an exception and contribute $250. Finally agitated, I firmly said that I wouldn’t even consider $25 and that she needs to go talk to the PAC I referenced earlier. I also asked her to update her donor database records so that I can stop getting these phone calls, emails and direct mail appeals.

By the way, this YouTube video does a nice job capturing what that phone conversation looked like. Check it out if you need a good chuckle today. 🙂 However, I think I just cast myself into the role of the “goat” in that video. Oh well!

Lesson #3: When a donor says “NO” there are two things you need to train your volunteer solicitors to do: 1) don’t argue with them and enter into a auction-like bidding war for their contribution and 2) shut-up, listen, take good mental notes, pass the info back along to staff, and enter the conversation into the donor database as a contact record. Hopefully, staff have developed good systems to address these kind of disenfranchised donors with intense cultivation and stewardship efforts before re-soliciting them in the future.

I used to think that United Way’s best days were behind them, but taking a step back and looking at my household’s new political giving strategy has me re-thinking this position. I suspect that if non-profits don’t start investing in measuring program outcomes and implementing an impact agenda, we might be looking at a time of re-birth for United Way.

What are your thoughts about third-party fundraisers and fund distributors like United Way? Am I way off base in my thinking? What about your thoughts on the three lessons I’ve highlighted? How do you train your volunteer solicitors to deal with donors like me? What systems do you have in place to secure donor conversations and react to a failed solicitation?

Please use the comment box below to weigh-in with your thoughts because we can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 13, 2011 DonorDreams Fundraising

Monitor your organization’s heart rate

Last week after my Fitness Boot Camp session, I ran out to Target and bought my first heart rate monitor, which comes in the form of a strap that you fashion around your chest and a wrist watch. I made this purchase because according to my personal trainer I need to intensify my workouts and keep my heart rate in a particular target zone. This, of course, got me wondering. “Do they make heart rate monitors for non-profit organizations?”

While you might think this is a silly question, I urge you to stop and think about it for just one moment:

Shouldn’t board volunteers have a tool to monitor the health of their organization?
Wouldn’t the annual campaign leadership team appreciate something to track the collective progress of volunteer solicitors?
Couldn’t board and staff benefit from a tool that monitors implementation of any number of activities ranging from strategic planning to the health of the agency’s comprehensive resource development program?

I think that there is enormous benefits in developing such a tool, and the good news is that they do exist. While you cannot go online to amazon.com and purchase a heart rate monitor for your non-profit organization, you can roll up your sleeves and create a DASHBOARD or SCORECARD that will do the same thing.

When consulting with Boys & Girls Clubs in Indiana on annual campaign implementation last year, I worked with a number of those organizations on developing a simple dashboard using Excel to track campaign progress. Typically, there were six to eight graphical indicators on the front page of their dashboard. Each indicator measured one aspect of their campaign that they thought was important enough to track. Here are a few examples of what they tracked:

Board solicitation phase – actual vs. goal
Community face-to-face solicitation phase – actual vs. goal
Targeted mail solicitation phase – actual vs. goal
New donor acquisition – actual vs. goal
Donor renewal – actual vs. goal
LYBUNT renewal – actual vs. goal
Individual volunteer solicitor progress – number of pledge cards assigned vs. number of worked & returned cards

Indicator and monitoring tools like dashboards and scorecards allow non-profits to create a sense of accountability and urgency, which are two elements of volunteer engagement that many non-profits find difficult to generate. Additionally, it provides staff and volunteers with a management tool that helps create the necessary performance to avoid failures.

Finally, the good news is that these tools can be used for almost any project/activity. Here are a few links I’ve dug up that might help you develop your own organizational heart rate monitors:

“Dashboards: Track Your Organizational Progress” (Source: Karl Hedstrom of NTEN)
“A Nonprofit Dashboard and Signal Light for Boards” (Source: Jeanne Bell & Jan Masaoka of Blue Avocado)
“Using a Balanced Scorecard in a Nonprofit Organization” (Source: Joel Zimmerman of Creative Direct Response)
“Balanced Scorecard Basics” (Source: Balanced Scorecard Institute)

How does your organization monitor its overall health? Annual campaign? Special events or projects? What have you tracked using your monitoring tools? Please use the comment box to share because we can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 9, 2011 DonorDreams Fundraising

Spotlight: Examples of Really Good Donor Recognition Societies

Thanks to my friend, Susan Rudd, in Bloomington, Indiana I ended up focusing the last 3-days on donor recognition societies. Please don’t misunderstand me . . . I am not complaining. I very much love annual campaigns and individual giving vehicles, and donor recognition societies are a very important tool for any resource development professional focused on individuals (which should be ALL of us because 75% of charitable giving comes directly from individuals).

As I wrote Wednesday and Thursday’s blog posts, I realized that I was focusing too much on institutions of higher education as examples of good donor recognition societies. So, I promised yesterday that I would end the week with some diverse examples from other non-profit sectors. Here are a few that I found that are worth your time reading about and mimicking:

The United Way’s Tocqueville Society — This donor recognition society is for donors giving $10,000 or more to the annual campaign. It is a very traditional approach, and local United Way chapters do a variety of different things to create a sense of engagement for donors belonging to this society. Most non-profit organizations who run annual campaigns have some version of this donor recognition society (e.g. Boys & Girls Clubs’ Jeremiah Milbank Society, etc)

The Boy Scouts of America rolled out a tiered donor recognition society for their Major Gifts program. Local councils are tasked with creating courtesies (aka membership benefits) for people donating to each of these societies. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that special patches and pins are part of Scouting’s benefits program for these societies.

James E. West Fellowship — This donor recognition society is focused solely on gifts to the endowment
Second Century Society — This society is more comprehensive and encourages large “major gifts” to operating, capital and/or endowment funds. It is flexible and covers outright gifts all the way through deferred ones.

The Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago developed a tiered donor recognition society named the Columbia Society for its annual campaign donors. The first tier of the society starts at $1,000 and the highest level is for $50,000 donors. Benefits/courtesies vary for each tier but include typical stewardship-based activities such as newsletters, events, etc.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) developed a similar tiered donor recognition society they called the Federal Club. As with the aforementioned Columbia Society, membership benefits include tickets to events, a special newsletter, and routine e-blasts with return on investment information on HRC’s lobbying efforts and community organizing.

One of the grand-daddies of all donor recognition societies is Rotary International’s Paul Harris Fellowship program. I’ve never seen any non-profit organization so focused on a donor recognition society as I have this one. As with all national programs, the local affiliates are responsible for making membership in this society feel special. However, Rotary International does a great job with recognizing its local affiliates for their work in securing repeat gifts and new donors. We can all learn a lot from Rotary’s work in this area.

Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it is a good start. Does your agency have any fun and effective donor recognition societies that you can share with us? Do you know of any donor recognition societies that integrate stewardship opportunities into their society as benefits/courtesies? Please use the comment box below to weigh-in because we can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 7, 2011 DonorDreams Fundraising

A reader’s question about Donor Recognition Societies

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Susan Rudd, Resource Development Assistant for the Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington, Indiana, about donor recognition societies. So, this is what I’ve decided to do . . . and I will need your help with this. In the space below, I will paste Susan’s email into the blog. I would like you to think about some of the questions she poses and then use the comment box to weigh-in with your best world-class coaching and advice. The more readers who participate, the merrier!

Before I share Susan’s email, let me just say that I am of the opinion that many social service non-profit agencies don’t do a very good job with donor recognition societies compared to other sectors of the non-profit community. I suppose I’m of this mindset because when I’ve seen social service agencies take a stab at creating donor recognition societies, they oftentimes seem to melt into “donor giving levels” (e.g. listed online and in the annual report) with very little else associated with it.

With that being said, here is a copy of Susan’s email:

Hey Erik,

I am really enjoying your blog, thanks for doing that, it’s a refreshing break for me to read it and recharge my resource development batteries.

Question for you, and maybe some fodder for you on your blog. We have had a few conversations with our annual campaign committee and Resource Development committee about developing donor recognition societies. At this year’s “Eat Thank Love” donor stewardship luncheon, we recognized nearly everyone there (and possibly everyone) in some way for what they contributed to the Club. However, we feel like we need a more formalized plan. Nevertheless, when we started talking about how to do this, we ran into walls of questions about how to create and acknowledge those people using a donor recognition society strategy. So here are a couple of questions we have:

* Do we create societies for all donors or just annual campaign donors?
* Should we include in-kind donors? How do you value those contributions?
* We started to look at names of levels (champion, gold, silver, etc) and special recognitions for long-term donors, etc. and got stuck there too. What types of names should we use? Where should we create breaks in the levels of giving for recognition purposes?
* Is there any protocol or best practice to follow when developing Donor Recognition Societies?

Any advice is valued, of course. Wisdom please…whenever, no rush. Thanks Erik.

Susan Rudd
Resource Development Assistant
Boys & Girls Clubs of Bloomington

So there you have it. Thanks to Susan for sending me this email and understanding that she isn’t in this alone because we can all learn from each other!

The challenge is now out there for you. How does your agency deal with Donor Recognition Societies? What is your best world-class coaching and advice for her?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 6, 2011 DonorDreams Fundraising

Killing sacred cows

A few weeks ago, a dear friend of mine from down south sent me this message through LinkedIn:

“I would like to get your perspective on how to handle an advisory board that loves their special event (they gave birth to it), it costs $0.95 on each $1.00 raised and takes months of time and effort. “

My first thought here was: “WOW, it only costs 95 cents to raise a dollar with that special event?”

For those of you who are not familiar with Charity Navigator’s “2007 Special Events Study,” I strongly urge you to read it. They discovered that the average special event fundraiser (when considering direct and indirect costs) will cost a non-profit agency $1.33 to raise $1.00.

I wonder if the aforementioned 95 cent cost included indirect costs like staff time.

Not included in the study (because it would be impossible to do) is calculating the “opportunity cost” involved with a special event fundraiser. In other words, what other fundraising opportunity did we miss out on because we spent our volunteers’ time doing a special event? How much more money could we have raised (and at what cost) if we asked the same staff and volunteers to run an annual campaign pledge drive instead of that labor intensive gold outting?

Here’s the thing . . . volunteers LOVE special events because it is the least scary form of fundraising. They are out selling tickets and feel comfortable doing so because they’ve rationalized that their friend is getting something of value in exchange for their donation; whereas, no one is getting anything in return for an annual campagn pledge.

According to dictionary.com, a sacred cow is “an individual, organization, institution, etc., considered to be exempt from criticism or questioning.” In my opinion, special event fundraising is likely one of the non-profit volunteer’s most sacred cows, and killing sacred cows is hard to do!

If you are determined to kill a sacred cow, then you only have one path to travel . . . it has to be the idea of those people who hold it sacred.

How can that be done? Here are a few ideas:

Engage your event volunteers in a post-event evaluation meeting. Share the Charity Navigator study with them. Calculate the event’s TRUE cost (direct + indirect) and share info, too. Ask them how they’d handle the same situation back home at their place of employment if a product or service was losing money.
Use your resource development committee, as part of your annual resource development planning process, to look at every revenue stream and its true cost. Engage them in reviewing your agency’s resource development policies. If you don’t already have policies setting ROI standards for events, walk them through that exercise.
Pull together a focus group of key donors. Share the Charity Navigator study along with your special event data with them. Ask them for their observations and suggestions. See where the conversation takes you. It might be very interesting! Make sure all of the focus group’s feedback gets shared with the event committee, resource development committee and board of directors.

It is important to remember that special events do serve a good purpose, especially with providing an opportunity to engage new prospective donors. It is never a good idea to just eliminate all events. A few well oiled special event fundraisers (with decent ROI) can serve an important role in your agency’s resource development program.

What advice would you give my dear friend? How do you keep special events from getting out of hand at your agency? How have you killed sacred cows without incurring your volunteers’ wrath? Please use the comment box below to weigh-in on this subject because we can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 5, 2011 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Stewardship opportunity on Labor Day

Labor Day can be a stewardship opportunity. In fact, non-profit organizations can turn most holidays into stewardship opportunities for their donors.

When I was a young executive director, I used to write a letter to the editor of our local newspaper on Labor Day thanking the community’s labor unions for all of their support. In that open letter to the public, I tried to remind people that those unions were part of our community’s fabric and did “good works” that oftentimes didn’t get any press. For example:

The local Service Employees International Union (SEIU) chapter provided all of the volunteers and muscle necessary to run our duck race fundraiser.
The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Home (IUPAT) once marshalled their apprentice program to paint our facility for free.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the Laborers’ International Union, as well as other unions in town were all at one time or another outright donors to our annual campaign.

I chose Labor Day to write that letter to the editor, send letters of appreciation and make thank you phone calls because the stated purpose behind Labor Day is to celebrate “the economic and social contributions of workers”.

Many non-profit organizations struggle with stewarding their donors and instead become solicitation machines (which ironically burns out donors and creates a cycle of turnover). When I’ve talked to my non-profit friends and asked WHY, the most common answer I’ve heard is that time is a limited resource.

So, I encourage you to look at the myriad of holidays on your calendar and ask yourself this simple question: “How can this holiday be used to steward our agency’s donors?” I assure you that with a little effort, you will find the opportunities are limitless.

Does your non-profit organization have any fun and effective stewardship activities and best practices wrapped around holidays? If so, please use the comment box to share because we can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health! And oh yeah . . . Happy Labor Day!!!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 2, 2011 DonorDreams Board development, volunteers

Secret board development memo

For the last four days, this blog focused on board development by sharing input from real, live board members thanks to an online survey I randomly sent out to people in my email address book who I know currently serve on a non-profit board. During the week, one volunteer sent me an “internal memo” from their company encouraging their employees to join non-profit boards.

As a non-profit leader, I always wanted to be a “fly on the wall” in the corporate boardroom. So, I found this memo to be an interesting glimpse into what motivates companies that encourage their employees to “sit” on boards. Here is a copy of that memo (note: I’ve changed names to protect the volunteer who forwarded this to me. Please know that this is a very large firm, which is similar to the example written about in Monday’s blog):

One of [Company X’s] strategic goals are to elevate the Firm’s visibility through leadership in our communities. A key component of this goal is to encourage employees at all levels to become involved with philanthropic and charitable boards. Joining a not-for-profit board:

•   Offers an opportunity to give back to the community in which you live and work
•   Provides networking opportunities with other dedicated community leaders
•   Enhances personal relationships beyond one’s technical circle of colleagues
•   Develops valuable business management skills

If you think you might be interested in joining a not-for-profit board, you are not alone. Most [Company X] employees are not board members, but there is no stopping those with a little passion, dedication and commitment.

Please join Not-for-profit Partner [John Doe] on Wednesday from 8:30 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. in the training room, when he presents “Board Training and Placement”. He will outline everything you need to know to join a not-for-profit board, including:

•   Duties of a board member
•   What to expect as a board member
•   How not-for-profits differ from other organizations
•   How to find an appropriate board to join

The session is open to all, regardless of your position with [Company X]. All you need to bring is the desire to get involved. If you are interested in attending this session please use the voting button above to confirm your attendance and … if you are already on a board; please join us to share your experiences.

For your convenience a calendar invitation has been attached, just double-click it to add this session to your calendar.

I find this memo very interesting because it helps me see more clearly why some people feel compelled by their employers to “sit” on a non-profit board. It is also interesting to see what perceived benefits companies think they receive through their employees board involvement.

If I were still an executive director, I might memorize the contents of this memo, and vocalize these perceived benefits of board membership during the recruitment process. Of course, I’d probably beat a dead horse when it came to talking about board roles and responsibilities (esp around fundraising).

What does this memo tell you? Was there anything you found interesting in the content? If you could, how would you change your agency’s board development processes? Do you see a role for donors in the board development process? If so, what does that look like? Please use the comment box to share your thoughts because we can all learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

September 1, 2011 DonorDreams Board development, volunteers

Board volunteers bark back: Part 3 of 3

Monday’s blog post titled “Hey board members: Sit – Lay Down – Roll Over” looked at board members who agree to “sit” on non-profit boards but don’t seem to understand they’ve been asked to “serve” on those boards. For the last two days, I shared some of the feedback that I’ve received from actual board volunteers. While I will share a few last tidbits of feedback today, I plan on sharing an “internal memo” from a very large company to its employees about why it encourages them to sit/serve on non-profit boards. I suspect the memo will be eye-opening for some of you. Stay tuned!

As you know, I sent an online survey to a number of board volunteers a few days ago with questions about board development. The final question I asked board volunteers was an open-ended question: “There is always room for improvement, even in highly functioning non-profit organizations! What are some things you wish your non-profit board would do (or do better) to get highly motivated and engaged individuals sitting around your boardroom table?” Here were some interesting responses:

“I would start by changing the question to ‘serving’ instead of sitting 😉 Next, is to set the expectation during the recruiting process. I still find that he 80/20 rule applies even when everyone participates. So, the next step is to recruit more and be willing to cut fat at the end of a term. As the quality of participation grows it will spread throughout the board. This is my hope anyway.”

“I think a good bit of it comes from expectations established by leaders on the board. The board members will only work as hard as the leadership team.”

“. . . assign an older board member to mentor new members ( preferably not close friends ), and orient new board members on organization’s day-to-day activities and relationship between national and local organizations.”

“Consistency. We have a board development plan (as well as other plans), but do not operate with it consistently. That is why I answered “no” to question #1. I think our board has great ideas; we just have issues with follow-through/up.”

“First things first, we have to keep the current board members engaged and motivated! This is always an issue. Depending on how your organization is run, you have to shop for board members that have a personal tie to you. I have served as the President of our board with the Boys and Girls Club. When I was little [childhood member], I was at the Boys Club everyday! That’s what keeps me going. In summary, you have to find people who either have a tie to the organization or have a passion for similar organizations. You can’t simply bring in people who are nice!”

“Involved them in committees. If they don’t participate in committees, ask them how they can contribute. If they don’t, they should be removed from the board.”

“We brought on consultants to work with the executive committee. We worked closely with our national organization.”

I think these board volunteers have a number of great suggestions. I especially liked the last one about bringing on a consultant; however, I suspect that you can probably see through my bias. LOL

Please use the comment box below to share what you’re doing at your agency. Are you firing volunteers? Assigning mentors to new members? Using committees to engage existing board members as well as prospective future board volunteers? Are you doing a better job with prospecting and recruiting? We can all learn from each other! I hope you enjoyed the last few days of hearing directly from board volunteers.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

August 31, 2011 DonorDreams Board development, volunteers

Board volunteers bark back: Part 2 of 3

As you know, I sent an online survey to a number of board volunteers. The fourth question I asked board volunteers was an open-ended question: “How would you answer the question posed in the Facebook message from my non-profit friend? As a reminder, her question was ‘What can we do to help shift that mentality – to help professionals and individuals with the means to give that it is a SERVICE to the greater good, not just a spot to occupy around a conference room table?'” Here were some interesting responses:

“Make it clear to prospective board members that they will be expected to do more than attend meetings…tell them specifically what service they will be expected to render.”

“Provide board members with reminders and updates regarding what their time and efforts have accomplished. (i.e. what impact their service has had on the organization). Focus board meetings on completing service and not merely approving what the director or CEO has done in the organization.”

“You give board members assignments with deadlines. This makes them responsible to the ’cause’.”

“Be very specific about expectations before confirming a new board member and then make sure orientation is pointed about what is required of board members. Having a board “retreat” to re-engage board members would be a great way to remind everyone of their commitment.”

“From a non-profit perspective, demonstrating the impact that the non-profit has on the community is probably the best way to shift that mentality. The real key is to shift the mentality of the mentor/supervisor of the professional, so that they look at the service opportunity from a different perspective. Attorneys typically bill by the hour, so we are very conscious of time and the opportunity cost when we are not working on billable matters.”

“At every monthly meeting we began by reading aloud the agency’s mission statement and then individually we reported what we did that month to achieve our board goals (attended subcommittee meetings, went on a fundraising call, meet with staff, etc.) We only took a couple of minutes each to briefly stated what we have done.”

I find it so interesting that our board volunteers point to the prospect identification, recruitment and orientation activities associated with board development as a way to facilitate a paradigm shift, but no one talks about annual year-end board volunteer evaluations. I suspect that many non-profit organizations take time to write technically proficient board development plans, include evaluation procedures and tools, and then ignore (or dramatically underutilize) the evaluation portion of the plan.

Attention non-profit professionals! If you want to change the mentality on your board from “sitting” to “serving,” I strongly recommend employing your board volunteer evaluation tools. While it is not your role to personally do the evaluating, you must provide support to your board development volunteers and coach them through this annual process.

Please use the comment box below and weigh-in with your thoughts on the feedback provided by some of our board volunteers in today’s blog. Do you find annual board volunteer evaluations to be difficult at your agency? Do you have any tips or tricks to share with your fellow readers? A few of the survey respondents suggested that “accountability” needs to be added to a board’s culture . . . how do you accomplish that at your agency especially when many board members are likely your best donors? We can learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC