ROI – The Healthy Non-Profit

Non-profit professionals need to take a page from the Wizard of Oz

July 15, 2013 erik Fundraising

oz the great and powerful This last weekend the Redbox near my house finally had a copy of “Oz: The Great and Powerful” in stock. I love the Wizard of Oz and couldn’t wait to see the prequel to this iconic film. My childhood is full of memories of watching the original movie around Thanksgiving time every year. I also remember all of those Wicked Witch induced nightmares that would follow. However, this time around . . . I walked away with some non-profit and fundraising thoughts.

Without spoiling anything for those of you who haven’t seen “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” it should come as no surprise that there are parallels between the original movie and the prequel. For example, in both movies as the Wizard and Dorothy make their way to the Emerald City for the first time, they meet up with a cast of characters who join them on the journey and play valuable roles down the road.

Another parallel comes at the end of the movie. In the original film, the wizard presents “The Three Gifts“:

The Scarecrow get his diploma in lieu of an actual brain
The Cowardly Lion gets his medal in lieu of actual courage
The Tin Man gets his heart shaped clock in lieu of an actual heart

A similar scene occurs at the end of “Oz: The Great and Powerful“.

Some people might conclude cynically that these are acts of a powerless person who is posing as a great and powerful wizard and relying upon his background as a con man and traveling circus magician back in Kansas. I am not of this opinion and invite you to refresh your memory of how things went down by watching this short YouTube clip of the scene in question:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky7DMCHQJZY]

What I see is a smart man who knows his limitations and is doing a masterful job of working within those limitations to give deserving people what they want and need.

While watching the parallel scene in “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” I had a fundraising revelation. It was rooted in a conversation I had with a fundraising professional last week. She was concerned about a few board volunteers who are always chirping about how their non-profit organization needs to be run more like a for-profit business and how greater attention must be given to concepts like “return on investment” for donors.

While program outcomes and community impact are on the lips of many non-profit professionals nowadays, the reality is that not all non-profit organizations are the same. For example, it is probably easier for a non-profit youth development agency to demonstrate outcomes and impact than a domestic violence shelter for women. It is also most likely easier for a non-profit health clinic to show ROI than an art museum.

ignore the man behind the curtain If your agency is not in a position where you can make your donors’ wishes come true, then you better have skilled staff who possess talents and skills like The Wizard.

Just to be clear . . . I am NOT suggesting that you need to hire snake oil salesmen. What I am suggesting is that you identify and hire talent staff who:

understand what you donors need and want
understand what the agency is capable of and not capable of providing
have the ability to identify similar things that can be provided in lieu of what the donors desire

In the movie, The Wizard knows that he can’t give the Scarecrow a real brain. So, he gives him a college diploma instead. He also gives a wonderful explanation of why it is as good as having an actual brain. In the world of philanthropy, your non-profit staff may not have good impact data on how much less violent the world is for women because of your shelter, but you do have wonderful stories to share with donors about how for one night you made a world of difference in one woman’s life.

If you go back and watch that Wizard of Oz YouTube clip again, I suspect you will see many important skill sets — traits —

tin man heart

characteristics being demonstrated by The Wizard that are equally important for fundraising professionals and non-profit staff:

persuasion
well-spoken and clear in thought
thinking fast on your feet
great storyteller
showmanship

On a side note, I also just love that scene in the movie because of how it relates to our work as fundraising and non-profit professionals. Did you catch what the wizard said to the Tin Man when presenting him with his pseudo-heart? If not, here is the quick transcript:

“Back where I come from there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phil….er…..phil…er…er….good-deed-doers and their hearts are no bigger than yours, but they have one thing you haven’t got! A testimonial! Therefore, in consideration of your kindness, I take pleasure at this time in presenting you with a small token of our esteem and affection. And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.“

LOL . . . phil….er…..phil…er…er….good-deed-doers . . . I LOVE IT!!!

Does your non-profit organization have a “wizard” working behind the curtain of your donor communications program? How are you determining what donors want to see and hear? How are you still giving them what they want when it may not be realistic? Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other!

For those of you who are big Wizard of Oz fans like me, I wrote a multi-part series of blog posts two years ago with a Wizard of Oz theme. I will re-blog those posts this week. I hope you enjoy this week’s trip down the yellow brick road.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
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Does your non-profit organization have policies about grant writing?

December 11, 2012 erik Fundraising, Planning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s to your health!

Social media ROI — Non-profits shouldn’t make it difficult

August 9, 2012 erik Fundraising, technology

At the end of Tuesday’s post titled “Are non-profits yelling at their donors using social media?” I promised that I’d share a few revelations from a social media conference that Marissa and I attended last week hosted by SkillPath Seminars. Yesterday, I posted “Answers to the two most popular social media questions asked by non-profits,” and today we’re talking about that thing that for-profit companies are obsessed with and non-profits seem to struggle with . . . RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI).

“43% of current social media marketers haven’t measured ROI.”

This number was shared with Marissa and me by our lovely SkillPath Seminars trainers at last week’s social media conference. They cited this information from King Fish Media in 2010.

Well, if I were a betting man, I would guess that this number is much, much higher when you just look at non-profit organizations using social media.

Let’s be honest. Most non-profit organizations are stretched too thin. So, asking employees to track a lot of stuff as it relates to your social media presence just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Right? However, it is important to measure something. Right? After all, resources are tight and you are dedicating time and resources to this thing called social media. If the ROI is very poor, then you probably have 101 ways to better spend those hours and dollars.

Additionally, keeping an eye on certain metrics also helps you evolve your social media presence and approach because when you see that something isn’t working then you stop and when you see something is working you do more of it.

This brings us to the big question . . . “What can non-profits easily measure and how should they do it?”

Looking across the fence at our for-profit cousins, I can tell you that they start by asking “What is most important to the success of the company?” It usually boils down into one of four things: conversion rates, generating sales leads, increased site traffic/number of new customers, and brand awareness.

Once they narrow their focus, they then pay a visit to their social media analytics buffet and look around at all of the yummy things that you can track including:

web traffic
viral video activity
bounce rate
page views
comments
social bookmarks
inbound links to your website
ratings
number of new followers
comments / mentions
leads generated
downloads
uploads
engagement activity

As we discussed in yesterday’s post — “Answers to the two most popular social media questions asked by non-profits“– your organization probably uses different social media platforms to achieve different objectives in your resource development plan (e.g. Facebook = stewardship; Twitter = cultivation; etc). So, it makes sense that what you measure might look a little different for each of the platforms your agency uses.

If I were using Facebook to steward donors and didn’t have enough time or money, then I would simply track: 1) how many Friends does my Facebook page have (and how did that number change in the last year), 2) how many “likes” and comments did my posted content generate, and 3) how many Facebook friends remained a donor to my agency in the last year (e.g. donor database loyalty report cross referenced to Facebook Friends list)?

If I were using Twitter to introduce and cultivate new prospective donors, then I would track: 1) how many Followers does my Twitter account have (and how did that number change in the last year), 2) what is my Klout score and level of online influence with my Twitter followers, and 3) how much traffic back to the agency’s website comes from Twitter (e.g. Google analytics from your website will tell you this number and much more).

As I’ve just done in the last two paragraphs, I suggest you do the same for each of your social media platforms: 1) determine your target audience and main objective for each platform and 2) select a small handful of metrics from your analytics program (e.g. Facebook Insights, Google analytics, etc) that make the most sense for what you’re trying to accomplish.

But wait . . . there’s more!

Measuring data for the sake of measuring data is a waste of time. You need to turn your data into something “actionable“. Here are just a few thoughts:

include it an annual performance plan for the employee who is responsible for managing your social media communities
build a social media dashboard and share with your marketing or resource development committee every month
place it on committee meeting and staff meeting agendas and facilitate conversations around the questions: “What does the data tell you?” and “What should we do differently with our content?”

Here are a few links that you might also want to read on this subject from me, Marissa or others:

Keep it simple. Don’t go overboard. And whatever you do, make sure you use the data.

Does your agency use social media? Are you measuring stuff? What are you measuring? Why are you measuring it? What are you doing with it? Has it made a difference in anything you do online or offline? Please scroll down and share answers to these questions or whatever else is on your mind in the comment box. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!