resource development – Page 18 – The Healthy Non-Profit

Did fundraising cause the recent government shutdown?

October 8, 2013 erik Fundraising

shutdown1 In the weeks leading up to the government shutdown, I heard some rumblings via the news media that Senator Ted Cruz and those aligned with him were dragging things out in Congress to maximize their online and direct mail fundraising efforts. To be honest, I didn’t give much thought to those accusations. They sounded like sour grapes and something partisan opponents would say in the heat of the moment. And then . . . when the government actually shut down, I started receiving a flood of email from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). This is when my fundraising spidey-sense started to tingle, and I started paying attention because there must be lessons to be learned for non-profit organizations somewhere in this mess.

Here is what the most recent DCCC fundraising email said:

Dear Erik —

Boehner’s Tea Party majority is teetering on the edge:

A new poll shows that Democrats are leading SEVENTEEN Republican Congressmen after the Tea Party-inspired shutdown. Guess how many seats we need to win back a Democratic Majority? 17.

Voters are done putting up with the extreme Tea Party antics that have paralyzed the government. We have to act quickly to press our advantage in these crucial races. Will you help us raise $500,000 immediately to take on vulnerable House Republicans?

Donate $3 IMMEDIATELY to the Democratic Majority Rapid Response Fund.

This shutdown could spell the end of the Tea Party controlled Republican Majority.

But if we want that to happen, we have to act now.

Thanks,
DCCC Rapid Reponse

I purposely omitted the hyperlinks and website addresses because my intention is to evaluate language and strategy and not raise money for the DCCC.

So, let’s strip out the partisanship and set aside our personal political feelings. Let’s avoid the temptation to point fingers. Let’s just look at the circumstances, strategies and verbiage in the letter from a “Just the facts, ma’am” perspective.

What do you see? What do you sense?

shutdown3 Here is what I’m seeing:

I see a misspelling in the signature block.
I see a case for support spelled out in five simple sentences.
I see emotionally charged words intended to poke and prod me into action (e.g. teetering, extreme, paralyzed, etc).
I see a fundraising goal clearly articulated (e.g. $500,000).
I see a specific ask (e.g. Donate $3.00 immediately).
I sense the strategy here is to set a very low barrier to entry to entice first time donors. In other words, they poke me, I get upset, and the solution is as simple as just giving $3.00 to make things right again.
I see an email with a small handful of carefully worded sentences fitting neatly on my computer screen. I don’t need to scroll down to continue reading.
I see short easy to read sentences. The longest sentence was 16 words long.

There is so much that you can learn if you just keep your eyes, ears and mind open. Professional fundraisers cram your mailbox and email inbox full of examples every day. Are you paying attention? Because with a little discipline you can teach yourself a lot in a short period of time.

Let’s circle back to the question I pose in the headline of this blog post:

Did fundraising cause the recent government shutdown?

I think a case can be made for the answer to this question being “YES”.

There is so much noise being made in our political arena on a daily basis that many people tune things out. I know that I am as guilty as others in this regard. So, when you have fundraising goals to hit, then your case for support needs to be very big and noisy in order to get people’s attention.

I believe the lesson to be learned here for non-profit organizations is that your case for support is powerful. It is the engine at the center of your resource development plan. It is the jet fuel for all of your fundraising appeals regardless of whether it is a direct mail appeal, email, social media, telephone solicitation, face-to-face pledge drive or special event.

shutdown2 When crafting your case for support, this is what our friends in the political fundraising world seem to be telling their non-profit cousins:

Make it emotional
Focus on an issue that people care about
Choose an issue that donors and the media will talk about and magnify
Wrap marketing efforts around your fundraising efforts
Where possible, infuse advocacy into the appeal

For those of you who are skeptical and find yourself thinking at the end of this blog post that non-profit organizations can’t “manufacture” a crisis and weave it into a case for support like politicians, then let me suggest that you open your mind a little more.

I cannot tell you how many agencies I’ve seen neglect their buildings by minimally investing in maintenance and upkeep. In the final analysis, aren’t those agencies just slowly creating a powerful capital campaign case for support for down the road? Maybe it is purposeful and maybe it isn’t, but the fact that it is a manufactured crisis cannot be denied.

There are plenty of needs and gaps in our communities around which non-profit organizations can build a powerful case for support. We don’t need to manufacture crisis to raise money like our political counterparts, but it does happen more often than you think.

So, what are you waiting for?

It is the fourth quarter and year-end fundraising is one of the biggest shows on Earth. Start writing your case for support document today so you can transform it into an eloquent and powerful fundraising appeal in the next few weeks.

But whatever you do, please don’t “shutdown” your agency to make a buck or two. I suspect donors can only handle this strategy in small doses. 😉

And I am making a mental note to myself . . . perhaps, I need to stop tuning out politicians on a daily basis so they stop doing drastic things to get my attention. 😉 (Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.)

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Cause related marketing saved Tina’s life

October 7, 2013 erik Fundraising

nfl1 Over the years, I’ve urged non-profit organizations to exercise tremendous caution when contemplating a cause related marketing strategy as part of their resource development plan. There was the December 2012 post titled “Cause related marketing 101: Educate, educate, educate!” Then there was the February 2013 post titled “Bad cause related marketing is offensive” based on my personal experience with buying a new pair of glasses at the mall. Most recently, there was “Non-profits must be careful with cause related marketing,” which was based on another personal experience with an internet vendor.

Some people have called me a skeptic of cause related marketing, which is not true. I just strongly believe that media is powerful and employing this strategy wrong can do lots of damage very quickly to your brand. So, when I saw the NFL’s newest “A Crucial Catch” public service announcement during yesterday’s games, I knew I just had to blog about it today.

The commercial opens up with a woman telling us that her name is Tina; she is a New York Jets fan; and she is a breast cancer survivor. As she tells her story, you get pulled in and emotionally connected which is when they drop the bomb. Towards the end of the commercial, she credits the NFL with saving her life. It was because of the NFL’s awareness efforts and cause related marketing campaign that Tina performed her first self examinations. These initial self exams resulted in a visit to the doctor and early detection.

Haven’t seen the commercial? Click here or on the image below to check it out. Trust me . . . it is worth the click!

First, let me say that I forgive Tina for being a Jets fan. 😉

Second, let me congratulate Tina for beating breast cancer and having the courage to tell her story to millions of people.

Finally, I encourage all non-profit organizations who are looking for a benchmarking project, prior to jumping into a cause related marketing campaign, to look at this campaign. It is rock solid and everyone can learn from this textbook example.

The American Cancer Society has raised millions of dollars primarily through two funding vehicles: 1) the sale of pink NFL merchandise and 2) an auction of sports related items by the NFL.

nfl2 If you want to know more about this campaign, Forbes magazine’s Alicia Jessop did a nice job in an October 2012 article titled “The NFL’s A Crucial Catch Campaign Raises Millions for the American Cancer Society” of summarizing the essence of the campaign.

I really love the mutually beneficial relationship between the NFL and the American Cancer Society.

The American Cancer Society gets:

Revenue
Exposure for its brand
Awareness of its issue

The NFL gets:

Positive exposure for its brand (e.g. The Halo Effect)
Awareness of its product (e.g. football) by a powerful segment of consumers — women

The thing I love most about this cause related marketing campaign is the contrast it creates, which in and of itself makes people pay attention to an important issue. What I mean by this is that football is a uniquely masculine product with lots of testosterone, and breast cancer (in most people’s minds) is a uniquely feminine issue (even though there are a small number of men diagnosed with this cancer ever year and countless men and boys are devastated when the women in their lives are diagnosed).

If you want to learn more about cause related marketing, you may want to check of some of the following resources:

about.com: “Three Cause-Marketing Trends That Matter For Nonprofits And Their Business Partners“
Hone Watson Bookmarks: “Cause Marketing The Halo Effect“
Ventureneer SlideShare presentation: “Cause Marketing Basics“

To all of you who follow the DonorDreams blog, let me be one of the first to wish you a happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please practice and promote prevention.

I also want to take a moment to congratulate my sister-in-law who was diagnosed in her early 30s with breast cancer and has been cancer-free for more than 10 years. You’re a fighter and inspiration, Anne! Now please take your brother to a Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving. I’m tired of hearing him whine about it.

Is your organization looking at a cause related marketing campaign? What are some of the obstacles in your way? What are you doing to overcome those obstacles? What does your planning process look like so that you can avoid the bad campaigns I’ve previously written about and referenced in the beginning of this post?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health! (And think pink) 😉

The power of writing it down

October 4, 2013 erik Planning

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.

First let me start this O.D. Fridays post with an apology to DonorDreams blog readers.

For the last week, I’ve been in St. Louis with hundreds of Boys & Girls Clubs from the Midwest and Southwest regions. What an amazing conference with inspiring stories and talented board volunteers and staff members! Hats off to the national staff who planned and executed a flawless conference plan.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing for me and this blog platform.

I didn’t post anything on Monday because my ride to St. Louis picked me up at 5:55 am, and I also missed the mark on Thursday because I needed to be in my exhibitor booth at 7:00 am.

Here are all of the things I’ve been trying to balance this week:

Writing for the DonorDreams blog community
Managing and staffing my exhibitor booth
Organizing and facilitating a training track
Networking
Working with other clients back home who are under contract and in need of attention

For those of you who know me, I usually balance competing projects fairly well. So, why did this week turn out so messy? Why did I drop the ball and not blog on Monday and Thursday?

I think some of the answers to these questions can be found on John Greco’s July 23, 2013 johnponders post titled “Ink It“. In this post, John drills down on the following Chinese proverb:

“The faintest ink lasts longer than the best memory.”

Heading into this challenging week, I didn’t write anything down. I was operating with everything in my head.

I am not just talking about the power of task lists and calendars. This has everything to do with brain science and in some instances personality types.

Now let’s take a 180 degree turn and about-face with this idea.

If you buy into what John talks about in “Ink It,” then what are you doing to encourage your:

staff to write things down?
board volunteers to write things down?
donors to write things down?

Again, we’re not necessarily talking about task lists and time management, which is how I started the post.

What if your board members were asked to write out their personal action plans for the upcoming year?

What if donors were asked to write out their personal stories about why they support your agency? What if you published those testimonials on your agency’s blog or Facebook page?

Would the result be a deeper sense of engagement?

Would board members be more likely to follow through on what they commit to doing? Would donors end up increasing their contributions?

I dunno . . . but if you buy into what John says about the act of writing something down, then these are questions every non-profit professional should be asking themselves.

Have you ever asked donors to share their story in writing? What was the result? How did you use it? What about engaging board members in writing out their commitments as part of a future focused action planning process centered around your strategic planning process?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

A side note of appreciation

Throughout the week at the Boys & Girls Club conference in St. Louis, I’ve been approached by countless numbers of people asking me about this blog.

Just last night, I was dragging myself off of the elevator on my way to another late night bedtime when a fellow passenger (who I’ve never met and don’t know), said “You’re that blogger! I missed your post this morning.”

I just want to take a moment to sincerely thank all of you who subscribe and read this blog. I very much appreciate your time, loyalty and complements.

It is easy for me to get into that “Fred the Baker” from Dunkin’ Donuts mindset of “It’s time to make the donuts.” However, this week reminds me that this blog and your daily work is all about mission-focus, your clients, and making this world a better place.

Thank you to those of you who re-inspired me.

I’m also glad that I’ve written all of this down in ink so that this inspiration won’t fade too quickly. 😉

Here’s to your health!

My day with Jay Love from Bloomerang

October 1, 2013 erik Fundraising

Do you know Jay Love? Of course, you know this gentleman, but you just may not know that you know him. Many non-profit professionals know Jay as the man who innovated the online donor database system known as eTapestry. More recently, you may have heard whispers about a new online CRM product called Bloomerang, which focuses on donor loyalty instead of more transactional metrics found in traditional donor databases. Well, that is Jay’s newest gift to the non-profit sector.

A few weeks ago, I extended an invitation to Jay and asked him to speak to the Fox West Philanthropic Network (FWPN) about donor loyalty rates and the data associated with this phenomenon.

Over the course of an hour or so, FWPN members were exposed to data and lessons learned from the 2012 Fundraising Effectiveness Project. I thought I should share some of those points with you today.

Focus on 10 percent

Jay started his presentation by asking the group a multiple choice question.

“What does a 10 percent increase in donor retention rates mean in terms of lifetime dollars raised?”

a) 50% increase
b) 100% increase
c) 150% to 200% increase

Of course, the answer is the most dramatic answer . . . c) Increasing donor retention rates by 10 percent can improve lifetime dollars raised somewhere between 150% and 200%.

Jay does a nice job of illustrating this point mathematically.

If your organization started with 2,000 donors at an average size gift of $200 and a retention rate of 41%, you would raise $820,859 over 10 years in lifetime giving. With everything else staying the same except moving your retention rate from 41% to 51%, your organization would raise more than $1.2 million in lifetime giving.

These initial slides are designed to get your attention. I know that Jay had my attention at this point.

Do you love your donors?

It shouldn’t be surprising that Jay Love is obsessed by “donor-love”.

One of the statistics I scribbled down on my notepad was why customers of for-profit companies stop doing business with those companies.

According to survey research, 77% of consumers stop frequenting a company because they don’t believe the company is interested in their business.

Jay does a nice job of tell a story about his dry cleaners who after many years of business still don’t use his first or last name when he picks up his clothing. Where is the love? He even conducted an experiment where he started using their first names in an effort to personalize the relationship, but it resulted in no change.

The moral to the story is that when a new dry cleaners shop opens up closer to Jay’s home, he is very likely to switch.

Of course, this is similar with regards to non-profit organizations.

Most donors don’t make a second contribution. Why? Well, simply stated . . . they didn’t feel a connection, which isn’t any different from the for-profit explanation of “they aren’t interested in me“.

How many of your donors are currently shopping for a new place to invest their charitable giving?

The answer is . . . you don’t want to find out! Take an interest and get to know your donors.

Take the time to be personal

Jay talks about the power of a handwritten note. Not only does he keep his handwritten gift acknowledgement letters, but they don’t even fill up one shelf in his office.

The power of handwritten notes really resonated with me because I do the same thing as Jay. I tape them to the door, and generally have a hard time throwing them away.

Are you already sending handwritten notes to donors? Want another idea about how to personalize philanthropy? I really liked Jay’s idea of sending individuals, who make a first time gift to your organization, a “new donor welcome packet“.

Always remember . . . the more personal the gift acknowledgement, the more likely you are to get contribution number two!

Please note that personalized acknowledgements are only one-third of the battle. You need to communicate to the donor that their donation is being used in the manner in which you promised. You also need to demonstrate ROI. However, if personalizing your acknowledgement strategies get you one-third of the way to a renewal, then what are you waiting for?

The final two notes that I took from Jay’s presentation were:

Your targeted and direct mail should use the word “YOU” twice as much as the word “WE“.
Your letters should be written at a sixth to eighth grade reading level.

My advice to you?

Jay was super kind and uploaded his FWPN presentation to SlideShare. If you have the time, it is worth it to click here and view his slides.

I’m sure that you won’t find it surprising that Jay built many of these principles as well as the teachings of Adrian Sargeant and Tom Ahern into his new online donor CRM product. You may want to check out Bloomerang when you have a chance.

Do you use Bloomerang? If so, what has been your experience? Are you tracking your agency’s donor retention rates? What has been your ROI experience. Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

Does your non-profit put its employees first?

September 20, 2013 erik organizational development

In a post titled “People-Service-Profit,” John talks about the impact that Federal Express’ corporate philosophy of People-Service-Profit has on it employees . . . which in turn has an effect on customer service and loyalty . . . which ultimately is reflected on the bottom line in profit

When reading John’s blog post this week, I immediately had two thoughts, which I will address below in two different sections.

Non-profit culture

People who work for non-profit organizations are different. In my experience, they aren’t motivated by the same things as their for-profit counterparts. Here are just a few examples of what I’ve seen people on the frontline of the non-profit sector do:

They often agree to work for less money than they otherwise might earn working in the for-profit sector.
I’ve seen non-profit employees work longer hours than they’re asked (or authorized to do). I’ve even seen hourly employees fudge their timesheet in order to avoid overtime (e.g. they get in trouble for working unauthorized time . . . overtime isn’t part of most agency’s budgets).
I’ve seen program assistants purchasing supplies for their programs using their personal money because there isn’t enough agency funding to do so.

peoplefirst2 The point I’m trying to make is that most non-profit organizations have built a culture that revolves around THE CLIENT. This focal point is so intense that ideas threatening to shift that focus are often seen as heresy.

While many people see a client-focused philosophy as altruistic, there can be a cost to this kind of corporate philosophy.

Low employee morale
Burnout
Cynicism
Poor staff cohesion

Another significant negative effect of this philosophy is “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle”. I talked about this phenomenon in a previous “DonorDreams: O.D. Fridays” post on July 26, 2013 titled “Is your non-profit only living for today? Then you need Picasso!”

In the Picasso post, I describe how senior leadership and board volunteers are blinded by the agency philosophy of CLIENT FIRST, which results in zero funding important organizational capacity building expenditures. The end result is a non-profit that has no capacity and starves itself out of business.

Heck, in yesterday’s post about budgeting, I confessed that when I was an executive director, my finance committee once convinced me to eliminate donor newsletters from the budget in order to balance it. Ugh . . . while this was done in the name of putting the CLIENT FIRST, the result was putting the donor second (which is the person who needs to see ROI on their investment if they are going to renew their support). How did THAT make any sense?

So, let’s jump back to John’s post about company philosophy and FedEx.

If you are an executive director or someone who supervises staff, you should click -through and read the 10 bullet points located in the middle of John’s post. After reading those FedEx examples of how managers should treat their employees, I encourage you to complete the exercise described in the paragraph after the list.

It likely will be an eye-opening experience for you.

The Loyalty Effect

I suspect many non-profit people who are reading today’s post are probably still not convinced that a CLIENT FIRST philosophy can be damaging.

More than a year ago, I wrote a week long blog series focused on “The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value,“ which is a book written by Frederich Reichheld. I mostly focused on translating some of his business themes into resource development messages.

However, one of Reichheld’s bigger points is how employee loyalty drives customer loyalty, which turns into profit on the bottom line.

If you are still one of those skeptics when it comes to this post, look at it from this perspective . . .

Many of your clients have “special relationships” with your staff. In fact, if you surveyed your clients, I suspect they would say they come to your agency primarily because of that relationship and secondarily because of your services. I know for a fact this was true for the kids using the programs at my former agency.

So, investing in your employees results in their retention and loyalty. This in turn keeps your customers coming back, which in turn drives impact and program results. When you communicate this impact (e.g. ROI) to donors, it improves your donor loyalty rates and you raise more money.

Please don’t misinterpret me here.

I am NOT suggesting you shouldn’t strive to make your clients happy and provide them with the best possible programming. However, I am saying the non-profit sector needs to take a page out of FedEx’s book and figure out how to invest in its people. It will make a huge difference in so many different ways!

Putting your employees first IS putting your customers first because your employees will put the customer first especially if your organizational values drive them to do so.

If you have some time this morning, I also encourage you to jump in the “way back machine” and check out that six part blog series about donor loyalty as it relates to some of Reichheld’s loyalty principles:

Want to change? Where to start?

If this post has you thinking about creating a different company culture, you may want to check out a post by Inc.com titled “How to Create a Company Philosophy“. It is definitely worth the click! 😉

Did you click-through and read John’s 10 bullet points? If so, how well did your agency do? What are you doing to invest in your employees? Is your organization avoiding the starvation cycle? If so, how are you making the case for investments in capacity building? Have you ever correlated your employee turnover to client turnover to donor turnover? If so, what have you found? Please scroll down and share your thought and experiences in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Non-profit budget season: The old Texas Two Step

September 19, 2013 erik Board governance, Fundraising

The other day I received an email from an old friend asking me to share my thoughts about the “right way” for a non-profit organization and its board to construct a budget. Do you start with revenue projections and develop the agency’s fundraising plan first? This way everyone knows what the expense budget can’t exceed. Or do you start with the expenses and try to build a revenue budget that supports the organization’s mission, vision and programming?

My first thought when I got this message was: “OMG! It is budget season for many non-profit agencies. Ugh . . . it is almost October. Where did winter, spring and summer go?”

My second thought was actually more of a chuckle because I’ve always thought of budget season as a bizarre dance between board and staff that resembles something like the Texas Two Step as demonstrated in this YouTube video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_H1x2MpeEk]

For the record, I don’t think there is a right and wrong way to undertake budget construction. There are obviously very smart people who reside in both camps — revenue first vs. expenses first. When I was an executive director, I tried to do the uncomfortable thing and sit on the fence. Ouch!

budget The following is a thumbnail sketch of what my process looked like:

I put the budget process in writing with a narrative description and timeline, then built consensus around the importance of following process and adhering to deadlines.
I simultaneously started working with the finance committee and the resource development committee.
The finance committee and I worked with program staff, and everyone collaborated around constructing reasonable expense budgets with mission, vision and quality programming in mind.
The resource development committee and I worked on developing a detailed resource development plan chock full of reasonable revenue projections, range of gifts charts, goals, strategies, volunteer prospect lists, grant prospects, annual campaign prospects, special event prospects, fundraising calendar, and action plans.
Sometime in October or November the two committees met jointly. They shared and compared their work. The FUN was just beginning because there was always a gap on the bottom line.
Consensus was built and both committees went back to work. The finance committee was usually tasked with finding cuts that wouldn’t hurt the agency’s mission or damage its organizational capacity. The resource development committee went back to the drawing board to find reasonable revenue enhancements.
Both committee were tasked with reporting their progress back to the board every month throughout the process. The hard part was staging those board meetings in a manner where generative discussions would happen and result in: 1) board volunteers who didn’t sit on those committees an getting and opportunity to weigh-in and 2) both committees getting an opportunity to engage the larger board in decision-making focused on strategies and tactics (esp. those related to revenue generation).

When the committees converge in the process, the age-old Texas Two Step issue would always float to the top. Do we close the gap with budget cuts or revenue enhancements?

My philosophy was always “revenue first” because I felt like the mission of the organization called upon us to make that attempt first. However, this doesn’t entail just changing projections and modifying our best guesses. It involved adding more prospects, tweaking strategies, and adding revenue streams.

Some years I won this argument. In many other years, I lost this argument, and the finance committee would produce their hatchet. (I am embarrassed to admit that one year I lost the ability to send donors a newsletter thanks to that hatchet. I should’ve fought harder because donors need to see what their investment is doing.)

Ahhhhh . . . You gotta love the old Texas Two Step. 🙂

As I sat on my couch and texted back-n-forth with this old friend, my mind wandered (as it tends to do) and I had a third thought:

If you like sausage, you don’t want to know how it is made!

making sausage I am not suggesting that my process is the right way to put a non-profit budget together. However, I do believe strongly in the following few budget construction principles:

Budgeting is a collaborative activity between board and staff. (Avoid a situation where staff puts it together and the board either behaves like the two Muppets who sit in the balcony or simply just rubber stamps it.)
Projection of numbers (esp. revenue) isn’t a dart throwing activity. It is rooted in historic data, trends, actual prospect names, and strategies. Don’t ever use “plug numbers“.
There is a process with an explicit timeline. It is written out. It is created collaboratively and agreed to by all parties.

Enough of my waxing poetic about how your non-profit should tackling budget season. Here are a few online resources and documents that I found:

Nonprofit Accounting Basic$: “The Budget Process“
Larsen Allen LLP Effect Magazine: “Nonprofits: Improve Your Budget Process“
Clifton Gunderson LLP Count on Insight: “Best Practices for Nonprofit Budgeting and Cash Forecasting“

Is your organization in the middle of its annual budget construction process? What works for you? What doesn’t work? What do you plan on doing differently next year?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!

How will you celebrate your non-profit’s next anniversary?

September 17, 2013 erik Fundraising

anniversary1 Every year, it seems like one of the charities I support is celebrating some kind of anniversary or milestone. Most of the time, it relates to the age of the organization, and it is typically a milestone like 25, 50, 75 or 100 years of existence. Sometimes it is a different kind of anniversary, where they’re celebrating a board member’s years of service or the age of something physical like a building. Regardless of the opportunity to celebrate, a fundraising solicitation is never far behind; however, anniversary celebrations can be so much more than just putting your hand out.

I graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with both a BAUP (1992) and MUP (1994).

I know most of you are thinking “HUH?”

BAUP is a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Planning, and a MUP is a Master’s degree in Urban Planning.

I spent six amazing years learning about the ins and outs of planning from some of the most amazing professors. In hindsight, I was laying a foundation of knowledge and practices that would serve me well as a non-profit consultant almost 20 years later. I have literally lost count of how many plans I’ve facilitated and written since graduating (e.g. strategic plans, tactical plans, succession plans, resource development plans, board development plans, marketing plans, business plans, etc).

anniversary2 A few weeks ago, I started getting email and snail-mail announcing the 100th anniversary of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) at the University of Illinois.

Wow! 100 years . . . how could that be possible?

After some head scratching, I vaguely recalled the University of Illinois was only the second school in the country to offer urban planning curriculum back in the early days when planning was just getting off the ground as a profession.

Normally, I am not influenced by most non-profit organizations’ anniversary efforts to get money out of me as a donor. However, I am amazed at how many times I’ve found myself thinking about writing a small check to my Alma Mater in honor of the department and the people who gave me so much.

After the second or third time of almost making a contribution, I started wondering what DURP and UIUC are doing differently from so many of the other non-profit organizations in my life. So, I went back to the communications materials and mail solicitations and looked for clues. Here is what I found:

Their fundraising effort isn’t front and center. They don’t beat you over the head with their hand out. It is subtle.
Their focus is on sharing nostalgia and memories, and they want this to be a two-way experience.
They’re using this as a donor engagement activity by asking alumni to help them in a variety of ways.

anniversary3 For example . . .

I’ve been asked if I have any interest in becoming a mentor to a student.
They’re conducting a remembrance activity and asking alumni to submit stories about their time on campus with the department.
They’re looking for old pictures for their archive.
Of course, there are two days worth of celebrations and activities on campus in early November where you can walk down memory lane and reconnect with faculty and friends.
Oh yeah, just as a side note, they’re announcing the start of a new scholarship fund for planning students. 😉

Over the years, I’ve read tons of fundraising articles, papers and books. In addition to considering myself a “planner” by education and trade, I also proudly consider myself a “non-profit and fundraising professional“. While my recall isn’t working well this morning, I have some vague recollection of someone once saying that “good fundraising” is 95 percent about listening and engaging versus 5 percent solicitation.

Will I write a small check? Will I attend the anniversary festivities? Will I take the time to submit a remembrance story?

I dunno. Maybe.

What I do know is that your non-profit organization can learn a lot from my Alma Mater with regards to using an anniversary celebration to deepen the level of engagement with your donors and raise a few bucks along the way.

The following links are additional resources I dug up for your review on this subject:

IMPACTMAX: “It’s your nonprofit’s anniversary? Who cares . . .“
Amazon.com: “Celebrating Your Nonprofit’s Milestones: 81 Great Ideas for Planning & Celebrating Milestone Events“
The Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Planning a Successful Anniversary Celebration“

Is your agency planning a big anniversary celebration? If so, please share your plans. Have you ever been a part of another institution’s milestone celebration? What did you like? What didn’t you like? How did they weave resource development opportunities into the mix? Please share your thoughts using the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Trends in non-profit governance?

September 12, 2013 erik Board development, Board governance

great carnac I was reviewing some old non-profit board governance material this morning and came across a document talking about “trends in non-profit governance“. In other words, the person who wrote that paper thought s/he was able to predict the future. Of course, this document was written more than 10 years ago, which got me thinking it might be fun to review some of their trends and determine where they were right or wrong.

The following are just a few of the trends that I found interesting:

As I review this list, there are a number of thoughts and questions running through my head. Let me spill those things out in the following bullet pointed list:

How many non-profit board have gotten smaller over the last decade? I wonder how that is going for them? Are they more effective or less effective?
Wow! They nailed the technology trend. I see many agencies conference calling people into meetings and doing some business via email polling and voting. (Not that I think it is very effective.)
Huh? The FROM-TO pertaining to fundraising is a little comical. I cannot tell you how many non-profit boards I’ve worked with who are very reluctant fundraising solicitors.
Really? Once in a blue moon, I run into a non-profit board that has an annual performance evaluation process in place for their executive director. More often than not, I see boards doing everything in their power to NOT evaluate the CEO.

The following are a few interesting resources I dug up online pertaining to some of these trends:

The Bridgespan Group: “Size of the board“
blue avocado: “Executive Director Evaluation Survey Form“
National Council of Nonprofits: “Ethics and Accountability in the Nonprofit Sector“
The Bridgespan Group: “Recruiting and Vetting Nonprofit Board Members“
nonprofit hub: “15 Ways to Transform Your Board of Directors into Fundraising Champions“

While clicking around for these links, I came across another great document titled “Emerging Trends in Nonprofit Governance“. It looks like it was presented at the ASAE & The Center’s Annual Association Law Symposium in 2009. This document contains all sorts of best practices, and it is definitely worth the click.

I’m not sure if I would put any of these things under the classification of “trends“. I think most of the trends stuff that I’ve reviewed today can better be described as “best practices“.

So, let me go out on a limb this morning and identify what I see as a real trend in non-profit governance . . .

Serving on a non-profit board will
continue to be difficult and entail hard work!

Duh! 😉

I hope when non-profit bloggers revisit this post a decade from now they will be able to say, “That Erik Anderson really nailed that trend.” LOL

When reviewing the initial list of “trends” that I shared at the beginning of this post, what questions and thoughts initially spring to mind? Has your agency made the “FROM-TO” transition on any of those trends? If so, which ones? Are you currently working on any of those changes in your non-profit governance? If so, which ones and what are you doing to facilitate the change?

Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Is your non-profit agency using Twitter wrong?

September 11, 2013 erik technology

A few months ago, I had a horrible experience with my favorite airline. Long story short . . . delay, delay, delay, delay, loaded on the plane, equipment malfunction, delay, delay and finally up-up-and-away. A whole day was lost. However, in that catastrophe, I was able to learn something about Twitter and the new age of customer service. In the last few weeks, I’ve been reminded of this experience when two bloggers talked about Twitter. So, I thought I’d we’d look Twitter a little more closely today, especially as it relates to non-profit organizations.

Tweet: Customer service

As I sat on that airplane for hours with cranky passengers and screaming babies, I remembered something I had read in The Social Media Bible about a similar experience that the author — Lon Safko — had on a Continental Airlines flight. In his example (found on page 8), his assistant used her smartphone and tweeted about her experience making sure to copy the airline on her tweet. No sooner had she taken her seat and a flight attendant was bringing her a glass of champagne with an apology.

With this story in mind, I whipped out my cell phone and started tweeting my displeasure.

Sure enough, the airline’s customer service representatives were paying attention and asked me about the situation. They checked into other flights. They tried to help, and when they couldn’t do anything, they apologized and compensated me with some rewards points.

The point of this story? Twitter is a TWO-WAY communication channel that for-profit companies are learning to master.

I recently read a blog post from Rachel Sprung at Social Media Examiner titled “4 Examples of Excellent Twitter Customer Service“. If you have some time this morning, I encourage you to click-through and read Rachel’s post. She shared additional good stories about Jet Blue, Nike, Seamless, and Comcast. It is worth the click!

Tweet: Donor communication

I am on Twitter every day. I’m not there very long. I’m not a Twitter expert. I’m sure that I am doing lots and lots wrong in the eyes of social media experts. However, I do see lots of content and most of those who I’m following are non-profit organizations.

I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a non-profit organization with a Twitter account engage in a discussion with a donor, client, or almost anyone. I’m sure it happens, but I’ve never seen it and I’m following 1,808 people/agencies.

I recently read a blog post from Steven Shattuck, who is the VP of Marketing at Bloomerang. The post was titled “11 Mistakes Nonprofits Make On Twitter And How To Avoid Them“. And oh yeah . . . does he hit the nail on the head! Here are just a few of the mistakes he points out:

Broadcasting instead of engaging
Talking too much about yourself
Neglecting hashtags
Not tracking results

I won’t share all 11 mistakes, and I also won’t tell you how to avoid those mistakes. Why? Because you need to click-through and read Steven’s post. As with the previous post by Rachel which I mentioned in the previous section, Steven’s post is also definitely worth the click!

Tweet: How should your agency use Twitter?

This is a tough question to answer because I suspect it may vary slightly from agency-to-agency. However, some of the better non-profit organizations are tweeting the following:

picture of the day (demonstrating impact of their programming)
sharing stories about clients, donors, volunteers and board members
thanking followers for sharing content (e.g. “thanks for the RT” or “thanks for the MT”)

Back in the stone age before there was Twitter, I knew non-profit professionals who would dutifully read the newspaper every morning. When they saw an article or something about a volunteer, donor or board member, they would clip the article and send it to the person with a kind note.

What is stopping your agency from clicking through a few of your Twitter followers profiles and re-tweeting or mentioning something about their content/tweet? After all, it is akin to clipping something out of the newspaper, right? And it sends the message — loud and clear — that you care enough about them to read what they are tweeting. Just a thought!

If you want to read more about what other agencies are doing with Twitter, here are a few good online articles that I’ve found:

Sprout Insights blog: “5 Nonprofits Using Twitter Right“
Twitter.com: “Twitter for organizations & nonprofits“
SlideShare presentation from Blackbaud: “Twitter For Nonprofits“

How is your agency using Twitter? What is working? What isn’t working? How are you using Twitter to engage board volunteers? Donors? Clients? Volunteers? Please use the comment box below and share your experiences. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Cash back for non-profit donors? Hmmm … Ah-ha!

September 10, 2013 erik Fundraising

laughing1 Sometimes I see things at just the right time and in the right place, and it results in me seeing something differently. Usually, when this happens it results in an AH-HA moment. This is exactly what happened to me yesterday when I opened an email from my friends at Non-Profit Humour featuring their latest piece of satire (reminiscent of the Onion newspaper) titled “Charity offers cash to get people to donate“.

Here is the part of the post that caught my attention and almost had me fall to the ground in laughter:

“The charity started the program quite by accident when a donor event turned ugly. A frustrated fundraiser couldn’t get key donors to make extra pledges.

“Sara just lost it at our wine and cheese party a month ago, and asked out loud what it would take to get our donors to give. She pulled out a $10.00 bill and waved it around just to make a point and sure enough all of our donors started signing pledge forms,” said Snidely. “That’s when we realized that all the stuff we were doing was all wrong.”

The visual of some fundraising professional reaching her breaking point and waiving around cash for pledge cards was hilarious to me. However, I know that I’ve been close to that breaking point and many of you probably have, too.

And by “breaking point” I, of course, mean being flummoxed and absolutely frustrated by what more it will take to engage donors in a manner that inspires loyalty. Just yesterday in my post titled “Uh-Oh: ‘The only time I ever see you is when you’re asking me for a donation’,” I rattled off a long list of things many non-profits employ as part of their donor communications program. If you missed yesterday’s post, here is that list:

newsletters
bulk email / eNewsletters
annual reports
impact bulletins
computer generated gift acknowledgement letters
handwritten letters
donor recognition societies (featuring stewardship activities)
donor receptions
donor surveys and focus groups

I went on to talk about how important it is to add a Moves Management component to this laundry list that involves engaging your agency’s volunteer solicitors in reconnecting periodically with those who they solicited for your annual campaign.

laughing2 So, the title of today’s blog post had the word “AH-HA” in it, which implies that my friends at Non-Profit Humour inspired a light bulb of some sort.

The thing that struck me while reading their satirical piece was that maybe non-profit organizations would do better with inspiring donor loyalty if they STOPPED looking at the aforementioned laundry list of tools/tactics as a “Donor Communications” program and STARTED looking at it comprehensively as a “Donor Loyalty” program.

The second part of my AH_HA moment was that there are soooooo many great examples of “loyalty programs” that work in the for-profit sector, this situation surely screams out for some young, entrepreneurial non-profit agency to engage in a benchmarking project.

I am literally at no loss of benchmarking ideas when it comes to loyalty programs. Consider this initial list:

Hilton’s HHonors program
Holiday Inn’s Priority Club
United Airline’s MileagePlus
National Rental Car’s Emerald Club (e.g. pick a car from any aisle)
Starbucks’ My Starbucks Rewards (e.g. their gold card)

laughing3 Yes, yes, yes . . . I know what you’re thinking: “Our agency doesn’t have things like hotel rooms, flights and cups of coffee to give away like these for-profit corporations.” But are you sure about that? Because I’ve attended many charity auctions in my life.

You’re already spending money on donors all in the name of “loyalty,” right? After all, those newsletters and special donor receptions cost you money — both direct and indirect costs.

What if some creative marketing genius told you that you could bundle up many of the aforementioned engagement tactics/tools and create a multi-level donor recognition society? In such a brave new world, newsletters, special tours of your facility, receptions and phone calls from board members might be seen as “rewards“.

I’m sure some of you aren’t biting on this idea yet, but you should check-out what the Indiana University Foundation is doing with its donor recognition societies. For example, if you give a combined $2,500 to the foundation in one calendar year, then you can join the prestigious 1820 Society. And membership has its privileges! Just check out these “rewards“:

Invitations to campus and regional events
Insider communication from IU leaders
Other opportunities to stay connected with IU

Some of you are probably worrying about those donors who tell you to: “Save your money and stop sending me stuff and fussing over me! I don’t make a contribution to your agency for you to spend it on recognizing me!”

Ah, yes! Those donors exist. And those donors are loud. However, many of those donors are the same ones who stop contributing because they don’t see their contribution being put to work or having the impact they envisioned.

Your mission — if you choose to accept it — is to engage your donors in a way that inspires loyalty and doesn’t irritate them.

I wonder if there is a for-profit company in your town that will give special discounts to members of your donor recognition society? Oh wait . . . I suspect your National Public Radio (NPR) station has blazed this trail. I’m particularly fond of WBEZ’s High Fidelity monthly giving program (aka loyalty program).

Does your non-profit organization provide donor recognition societies? What types of “courtesies” do you offer those donors? If you’re not buying into today’s big idea about “loyalty programs,” please share with us what you’re doing to inspire donor loyalty. Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts and experiences.

Here’s to your health!