Tag: resource development

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 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

August 30, 2011 DonorDreams Board development, volunteers

Board volunteers bark back: Part 1 of 3

Yesterday’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. So, I developed an online survey and randomly emailed 32 board volunteers. In that survey I asked questions about their non-profit’s board development practices and their opinion on how to recruit more engaged board volunteers. I want to thank the 17 individuals who took a little time out of their day to respond to the questionnaire. I will share the results of my unscientific questionnaire with you today, tomorrow and Thursday.

My first question to board volunteers was: “Does the non-profit board on which you serve operate with a board-approved, written Board Development Plan?” Here were their responses: 14 said YES, 2 said NO, and 1 said I don’t know.

I don’t know about you, but my heart is uplifted to see so many “yes” responses because non-profit agencies will NEVER recruit engaged board members to “serve” on their boards without a written strategy in place. In my opinion, organizations need to have a written board development plan that spells out how to identify, prioritize, recruit, orient, recognize, and evaluate potential prospects and actual board volunteers. I am reminded of this old proverb, “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”

My second question to board volunteers was: “Does the non-profit board on which you serve evaluate board volunteers every year?” Here were their responses: 9 said YES and 8 said NO.

These responses tell me that many board development plans probably only focus on recruiting and very little else. Board development plans that don’t have an annual volunteer evaluation component are missing an opportunity in my opinion. I suspect the biggest reason many plans don’t call for annual evaluations is because people hate to be judged. I suggest metrics such as: board meeting attendance, committee meeting attendance, fundraising participation (cultivation, solicitation and stewardship), and volunteerism. The annual board volunteer evaluation doesn’t have to be judgmental . . . it can be designed as a way to: 1) look back and celebrate their contributions and 2) ask them how it is going and what needs to change in the upcoming year for their volunteerism to be meaningful and rewarding. I’ve personally found that volunteers who are disengaged typically use their annual evaluation meeting to quit or make the necessary adjustments to engage at a higher level.

My third question to board volunteers was: “If you answered YES to the previous question, please check all forms of evaluation that your organization uses to evaluate board members.” Here were their responses:

8 respondents said: Every board volunteer completes a self-evaluation once per year”
8 respondents said: “The Board Development Committee completes an evaluation on each board member once per year”
4 respondents said: “Every board member is asked to complete an evaluation focused on the entire board’s effectiveness”

Multiple board evaluation tools are effective. Self-evaluation allows volunteers to take a good hard look in the mirror at themselves, and peer evaluation provides an external point of view. When done in conjunction with each other, the evaluation process can be powerful. When only one form of evaluation is used, it is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the peanut butter.

Tomorrow I will share a number of respondents’ answers to this 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?” Stay tuned because I assure you the answers are interesting!

If your organization uses an annual board volunteer evaluation process, what are your evaluation metrics? How do you conduct your year-end meetings? Who is involved? Do you think it is effective and why do you think that? Please use the comment box and weigh-in because we can all learn from each there.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

August 29, 2011 DonorDreams Board development

Hey board members: “Sit – Lay Down – Roll Over!”

Have you ever been at a meeting of your board of directors, looked around the table as they methodically plowed through the agenda, and come to the conclusion that no one was really engaged? Maybe you thought … “Ugh! They’re just sleep walking through the board meeting and regurgitating whatever had been fed to them in the days prior to the meeting.”

A few weeks ago, a non-profit friend of mine sent me a similar Facebook message with an interesting question:

“While on a CEO call today at a rather large, rather highly respected law firm, I noticed that the ‘Head Cheese’ stated (more than once) that the partners and associates in his firm ‘sit’ on non-profit boards. It struck me that they have the expectation to sit, not SERVE on boards. Attorneys are notoriously conscious of the words they choose to use. So, it struck me as interesting the first time it came out of his mouth. Then he said it again. And again. 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?”

I thought this was a GREAT observation! It conjured up the image of my dog, Betrys (who is the featured picture in today’s blog post), sitting around a non-profit boardroom table. Being an obedient dog (most of the time), I imagined her doing exactly what she was told by the executive director and agency staff.

I highly doubt that any of us would like a boardroom full of obedient dogs responsible for the future of our non-profit organizations. However, I am left wondering “how many of our non-profit organizations have constructed boards with volunteers whose expectation is to just ‘sit through meetings’ and occasionally pitch-in when told they are needed to do something?”

So, out of curiosity, I put together an online survey yesterday and emailed it out to 32 random non-profit board volunteers in my address book. I asked them questions about their agency’s written board development plan. I also shared the Facebook message from early in this blog post and asked them how they would answer my friend’s question. Over the next few days as I collect responses, I will share them with you here in hopes that we can all learn from each other.

In the meantime, please use the comment box below to weigh-in with what you think the answer to my friend’s question should be. What do you do at your non-profit organization to ensure you don’t have a bunch of dogs sitting around your boardroom table? How do you prospect new board members? What criteria do you use to evaluate those prospects? What does your recruitment process look like? Is there an orientation for new recruits? Do board volunteers get ‘evaluated’ on an annual basis and what does that look like? What role (if any) do donors play in your board development process? Is there a role for donors here?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

August 26, 2011 DonorDreams Board development, Donor-centered fundraising, Fundraising

Tips for surviving a double dip recession

Yesterday I blogged about my neighbor Larry and how I see his handyman business as an economic indicator and proof the economy is dipping again into recession. I also cited recent survey data indicating that donors are planning to tighten their belts in the coming months. If you didn’t get a chance to read that post, click here and then come back for today’s follow-up post.

While there is nothing any of us can do to stop the economic tides from rising and falling, I submit that there are things we can do to prepare for such occurences and the following are a few tips you might want to consider:

Tip#1: Get closer to your donors and not farther away.
Donors are part of your non-profit family. During tough times, families pull together. They don’t ignore each other. Your instinct might be to give donors space, solicit them less, and be respectful of limited resources. Even though these are good intentions, the message you’re sending is that donors are only your friends during prosperous times when they have money. Don’t send the message that donors are only ATMs in your eyes. Find ways to engage them.

Tip #2: Tell donors what you are doing to help your clients get through tough economic times.
Donors like to see “return on investment” when they make a charitable contribution. When recession-thinking permeates our donors thoughts, lets embrace the moment and show them how their contributions are making a difference in the lives of others. Don’t use “guilt messaging” to solicit. Use “we’re all in this together” and “neighbors-helping-neighbors” as part of your stewardship messaging.

Tip #3: Invest in volunteer management and promote volunteerism like never before.
There will be people who want to support your mission, but cannot do so financially during tough times. Providing people an opportunity to support your mission by donating their time will: 1) help you pull them closer and not push them away (see first tip), 2) cultivate future donors (because the recession will end one day and they will be able to donate again), and 3) help your agency’s staffing budget as you might be considering budgetary cuts.

Tip #4: Invest a lot more time in re-building or manicuring your board of directors.
Your case for support will never be greater than now. As you approach board volunteer prospects, they won’t need any convincing that you need as many talented people around your board room table to help make difficult decisions and weather an economic storm. Find the time! Figure out how much time your organization spent on board development in 2010, then double or triple the amount of time you spend on it going forward. Doing so will help you survive and position you to be very strong on the other side of this recession.

Tip#5: Don’t stop soliciting individuals.
Individual giving is where it is at in charitable giving. Spend most of your time cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding individuals and less time on foundations, corporations and government. This is a great time to invest in building your annual campaign or annual fund drive and dial back a little bit on special events. Think about it for a moment . . . during tough times people eliminate “frills” like entertainment. Many of your donors probably see their special event contributions are “nights out on the town with a charitable angle”. I assure you that they look at their annual campaign pledge very differently. Don’t eliminate all of your events, but now might be the time to kill old and tired events.

There are literally two or three more handfuls of tips I would’ve provided, but I’m running out of space. So, I encourage you to use the comment box below to weigh-in with your thoughts, tips and current strategies. We can all learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

August 25, 2011 DonorDreams Fundraising

It’s baaaack: Double dip recession

My neighbor is the owner of Larry’s Home Maintenance, a small handyman business. He has been in business for approximately five years after getting laid-off from his IT job at Motorola. While Larry (pictured on the right) is our friend and handyman (yes, his work is awesome), he is also my “canary in the coal mine”.

When Larry’s phone stops ringing (like it did in 2008), I know the economy is in bad shape and a recession is either around the corner or it is already here. For most of 2011, Larry’s phone has been ringing off the hook. This isn’t surprising because when the housing market is in the toilet people tend to start pouring money into home improvement projects. On average, he has been receiving 20 phone calls per day.

In the beginning of August, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating and the European Union entered into another round of debt crisis discussions involving Greece, Spain and Italy. The future of the eurozone was called into question. When this happened a few weeks ago, Larry’s call volume dropped from 20 calls per day to approximately five. When I saw Larry yesterday, he said that his phone has “stopped ringing”. And he means that literally . . . potential customers have stopped calling.

Larry’s call volume is a lagging economic indicator. It accurately forecasted 2008 and I suspect it is doing the same thing now.

Every non-profit organization has relationships with a “canary in the coal mine” like Larry. They are called “DONORS,” and staying in regular contact with them will help you kinda/sorta predict the immediate future and allow you to take corrective action that might permit you to glance off of the iceberg rather than hit it head-on.

So, if you think Larry is “off his rocker,” you might want to read this blog post from yesterday’s The Chronicle of Philanthropy titled “Two-Thirds of Donors Plan to Cut Back on Giving This Fall“.

If you already clicked the link, read the article and returned to finish this blog post, then you know that 68-percent of survey respondents recently said they plan on cutting back their charitable giving for the remainder of 2011. While I am usually suspicious of “survey data,” the combination of Larry’s situation and The Chronicle’s story has me saying “Uh-Oh”.

Of course, there isn’t anything a non-profit organization can do to change this situation. So, the better question we should all be asking is: “What should we be doing TODAY to position ourselves for a double dip recession that minimizes the impact on our clients?”

I will use tomorrow’s blog post to look at a few options you might want to consider implementing. In the meantime, please use the comment box below and share what you are thinking and possibly planning to do. What are your donors telling you? Share your canary in the coal mine stories. We can all learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC