Meredith Hilt is no zombie

So, we’ve all had a lot of fun this week talking about the City of Elgin’s upcoming zombie-inspired Nightmare on Chicago Street, using this Halloween event to shed some light on the serious nonprofit subjects of return on investment, volunteerism and special event fundraising. I wanted to end the week talking about the same things, but in a kinder and gentler way. So, I invited Meredith Hilt to be a guest blogger today.

Meredith has her own blog on WordPress — “mhilt” — that focuses on corporate giving and sustainability. Recently, she posted a blog that addressed Seth Godin’s recent event-critical blog post titled “Gala Economics“. After reading Meredith’s post, I knew I couldn’t have said it better. She really brings some balance to what I’ve been saying all week and sums everything up nicely. So, I invited her to re-publish her post here on DonorDreams, and she graciously accepted. Let’s learn a little more about Meredith before reading what she has to say about Seth Godin’s opinion on Gala Economics and special event fundraising.

Meet Meredith Hilt . . . She is a former grantseeker turned grantmaker. Currently, the executive director of the Tellabs Foundation and senior manager of corporate responsibility, she started a blog on WordPress for those of us who are interested in corporate giving and sustainability. Her teachable point of view is concisely captured on her “about page” when she says: “Many times we work alone. Development officers, grantmakers and sustainability managers are often part of small departments. It’s important for us to work together and stay connected.  We’ll test ideas, share advice and shed light on good work. Hopefully, even more good will result.”

I love Meredith’s blog. I recently subscribed to her blog using her RSS feed. I hope you will do the same. Without further ado, here is her guest post:

Galas: good or evil?

Marketing wizard Seth Godin made waves with his recent post, Gala economics. He describes galas as “a ridiculous way to efficiently raise money for a good cause.”

Ouch. The truth hurts.

It’s hard to argue that events are expensive. Consider the cost of the food, decorations, invites, entertainment and (here’s the biggie) staff time. It’s a big bill. Then add what individual attendees might spend on shoes, tuxes, accessories and dry cleaning – it’s even bigger.

Seth also contends that “…the gala is actually corrupting. Attendees are usually driven by social and selfish motivations to attend, and thus the philanthropic element of giving–just to give–is removed.” But, in a room full of 500 people, there are a lot of motives. Some pure, some not. Same is true for any form of giving.

Personally, I’ve had similar reservations about events. Back in my fund development days, I coordinated several fundraising events each year. I preferred grantwriting, which seemed much more efficient. And I didn’t have to wear heels and a headset.

However, I believe galas have their place in the nonprofit community.

Event fundraiser Shannon Doolittle, responds to Seth with a thoughtful post, Stop with the gala bashing already. I agree with her view that events should be mission-driven, unique and donor-centered.

Events do good by celebrating both donors and the nonprofit’s clients. I’d add that galas give your donors an opportunity to introduce new people to the cause. Good events can also create media opportunities.

If I could change just one thing about nonprofit events, I’d have fewer of them. Stop doing the ones that are barely breaking even. Or are indistinguishable from everyone else’s “rubber chicken” dinner.

Each organization should have one or two really good events, and drop dead weight. Because quality, worthwhile events strengthen the nonprofit community.

Huh? Fundraising zombie volunteers cost money?

As most of you know, I’ve been talking this week about the City of Elgin’s upcoming Nightmare on Chicago Street special event and the role that area non-profits have been asked to play. While I won’t re-hash the story for you here, I encourage you to go back and read Monday’s post titled “Beware of Fundraising Zombies” and yesterday’s post titled “Fundraising zombies ‘doing the math’.” These posts along with what I write today focus on special events and how non-profits need to be especially careful about measuring “return on investment” (ROI) and thinking through how many events are too many.

So, while emailing back and forth with a very smart and dear friend of mine yesterday about this topic, they said:

“Come-on, Erik! What is the big deal with non-profits recruiting some of their volunteers to help the city out with their day-of-event operations? Sure, the ROI is poor, but there really isn’t any cost related to doing this. Right?”

As you’ve guessed, my response was “No, you’re wrong. There is a cost that no one is considering.” and thus the final chapter of my zombie fundraising posts was born.  Here is the explanation:

  • When a person agrees to volunteer, they are making a contribution of time to that particular non-profit agency. Right?
  • Most people consider “gifts of time” to be more valuable than their “gifts of money”. I’ve heard people say this often, and I know you have, too.
  • There are studies that show the “value of a volunteer’s time” is calculated to be $21.36 per hour. Don’t believe me? Click here to see the research for yourself.
  • The cost for a non-profit organization to build the necessary infrastructure to run a volunteer management program is calculated to be $300 per volunteer per year according to a study by Pubic/Private Ventures titled “Making the Most of Volunteers”. For some organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, these costs go up to $1,000 per mentoring match. Click here to review the evidence yourself.
  • In my experience, a person’s volunteer hours are not an endless pool that non-profits can keep tapping over and over again. While it isn’t set firmly in concrete, most people have a limit to how much time they are willing to give. If you follow this logic, then recruiting a volunteer to work the zombie event means the non-profit is possibly forgoing future “contributions of time” from those volunteers for the charity’s projects back home.
  • Applying the concepts of ROI and “opportunity cost” that were discussed in yesterday’s blog post, let’s look at this entire thing from a different angle. Each charity receives 100 tickets that they sell for $5.00 each, resulting in $500 gross income. Let’s just say a participating non-profit recruits FIVE VOLUNTEERS who each contribute FIVE HOURS on the day of event. To put this into financial terms . . . 5 volunteers multiplied by 5 hours each and then multiplied by $21.36 per hour equals $536.00. This doesn’t even include allocating the costs associated with maintaining the agency’s volunteer management infrastructure.  It also doesn’t include the time associated with ticket selling if the agency asked volunteers to help sell its share of tickets to this event.

Drumroll please? My conclusion here is that non-profit agency gross $500 in ticket sales, but invest $536.00 of volunteer time as part of this special event collaboration. While I won’t go so far as to say the agency just lost $36.00 (even though I am really tempted to draw that conclusion), I think you can agree that this investment is looking less attractive by the second. Right?

Let me just be clear. I support this event and think everyone should attend. Who can’t agree that zombies and Halloween are fun. For the third time this week, I am encouraging everyone to buy their tickets at the door. By doing so, you’ll send a message to your favorite non-profit organization that you love them and won’t support this kind of counterintuitive fundraising behavior.

Let me doubly clear. I don’t think the City of Elgin is trying to hurt the non-profit sector. I know that this idea of involving non-profits in revenue sharing for this event was borne out of the desire to be collaborative and helpful during tough economic times. Additionally, it is the city’s economic development mission to drive foot traffic downtown to benefit its downtown merchants. This event should do exactly that, which is why I tip my hat to the city for trying to do “something”.

All I am saying is that non-profit organizations need to start looking at fundraising in a different light because their decision-making on these issues can and does have a real impact. Everyone — including the non-profit agencies, the city, donors, agency staff and bord volunteers — plays a role in doing this.

How does your non-profit organization evaluate its fundraising and resource development activities to ensure what you’re doing makes sense? Do you have a real and engaged resource development committee? What does that committee do? What efforts and considerations go into creating your agency’s annual written resource development plan? Do you have one? What does it look like? How much of these activities are ‘put on staff’ compared to collaborating with board volunteers, fundraising volunteers and donors to help find these hidden facts and answers?

There has been decent activity over the last few days with regards to usage of the “comment box” for this blog. Let’s keep up that awesome effort. It will take you less than 30-seconds to type your thoughts into the comment box below. Please do so because we can all learn from each other!

Here is to your health! (And I hope this will be the last zombie inspired post for a while . . . Have a Happy Halloween! In the spirit of Halloween fun, my gift to you is this YouTube video of President George W. Bush talking about zombies. LOL Enjoy!)

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

Fundraising zombies “doing the math”

On Monday, I stirred the pot with my post titled “Beware of Fundraising Zombies!” and there has been lots and lots of reaction.

First, let me say thank you to everyone who read that post. Second, let me give an extra special thank you to those of you who forwarded it to others (I always appreciate that). Finally, let me clarify that I am not suggesting donors stop supporting non-profits who are selling tickets to the City of Elgin’s Halloween zombie event. What I advocated for in the post was donors boycotting those agency’s special events, but still sending a check to their charity for the full amount of what they would’ve spent at the event.

I am not suggesting that we put anyone out of business, and perhaps calling for a “boycott” was a bit dramatic . . . but it did get your attention didn’t it?  However, I am seriously suggesting that donors can play a huge role in helping non-profits change their behavior when it comes to the art of fundraising.

Perhaps, the most interesting thing to me that came out of Monday’s blog post and subsequent reaction is how many people apparently still grapple with the idea of “return on investment” and what Charity Navigator points out in its study on special event fundraising.

So, I’ve decided to use a purely hypothetical example to clarify this concept. Let’s just say a non-profit organization decided to run a rubber duck race raffle fundraiser. Drilling down into the hypothetical numbers, we might find something like this:

  • Gross income = $185,855 (remember that the “in-kind” prizes and media sponsorships are included in this number even though they aren’t cash)
  • Gross expense = $128,305 (again, remember that in-kind donations are washed out on both sides of the budget)
  • Net income = $57,550 (but this only accounts for “direct costs” and doesn’t take into account hidden indirect costs)
  • Let’s hypothetically say the agency’s CEO spends 60% of his/her time over a 12-week period working on this fundraiser. The agency’s Development Director is far more involved and easily sinks 90% of their time into this project during the same time period (this fails to account for the months of planning time incurred throughout the year). Finally, the poor administrative assistant is typing their fingers to the bone entering donations into two separate computer databases. Add up all these salaries and it probably comes to approximately $25,000, which means net income falls from $57,550 to $32,550.
  • It should be mentioned that at least 100 volunteers were hypothetically mobilized to make this event happen, and each volunteer probably averaged 10 to 15 hours (which included some combination of staffing two or three duck sales remotes, attending a few meetings/training/kickoff, and the day-of-event operations).

Without allocating other indirect costs (e.g. insurance, utilities, rent, gas for the duck van, payroll taxes, employee benefits, etc), let’s just say this event netted a realistic $32,550. The reality is that most special event fundraisers are not as productive as this hypothetical duck race example and end up closer to ZERO dollars raised or worse yet they end up “in the red” when all of the direct and indirect pennies are counted.

But wait! There is more . . . this duck race analysis wouldn’t be complete without factoring in a small concept like “opportunity cost“.

This same hypothetical non-profit agency ALSO runs an annual campaign (e.g. pledge drive where volunteers ask donors and community supporters to make a direct contribution and forego the fanfare of an event). Drilling down into the numbers, we might find something like this for this hypothetical agency’s annual campaign:

  • Gross revenue = $68,322
  • Gross expense = $4,174
  • Net income = $64,148
  • Add indirect costs that come from staff involvement (e.g. CEO, Development Director, Administrative Assistant) and another $7,903 of expense magically appears and the net income drops from 64,148 to $56,244.

Hmmm …. what would happen to this hypothetical agency’s annual campaign if the Duck Race was cancelled and those 100 duck volunteers all agreed to help with the annual campaign?

Let’s say these 100 volunteers all made face-to-face visits with five new donor prospects to the annual campaign. This represents an additional 500 people receiving visits and solicitations. Let’s also pretend that the “average size gift” to the annual campaign is $100 (it is usually much higher in my experience). This would push annual campaign net income up from $56,244 to $106,244.

Of course, there would be a loss of $32,550 in Duck Race net income in this scenario, but you just picked up $50,000 from shifting volunteer resources to a more productive fundraising activity. In other words, this hypothetical agency just LOST $17,450 by running what looked like (at first blush) to be a highly successful duck race special event. (Some agencies would look at this unrealized $17,450 and think it looks remarkably like a part-time employee position)

Yes … there are holes to be picked in this hypothetical story. For example, there is value in the publicity this non-profit receives from their Duck Race media sponsorships. The 500 new annual campaign asks might not all materialize into pledges. And the picking can go on and on and on. However, please keep in mind that this was a quick, rough and hypothetical example. You can ignore everything I just wrote and it doesn’t get us around the fact that there has been a study by Charity Navigator that empirically proves that special events don’t make money.

To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that non-profit organizations stop doing special events altogether. If they can plan and implement cost-effective events that bring additional intangible benefits, then please add one or two of these events to your annual written resource development plan. If you need help with a Resource Development Audit or writing a Resource Development Plan, I know where you can hire a really talented consultant who is dying to help you.   😉

However, when your local municipality asks that you sell tickets to their special events (with the promise of netting a few hundred dollars) and asks you to recruit your volunteers to help with day-of-event activities, then perhaps you should think twice about committing your agency’s limited resources in such a way.

Again . . . one final disclaimer. I think the Nightmare on Chicago Street is a great event idea. It is fun and an innovative way for the city to entice residents to rediscover downtown and its merchants. I encourage people to attend, but I encourage them to buy their tickets at the door and not from the non-profits who are selling them. In my experience, non-profits don’t sit-up and pay attention to issues like this one until donors start speaking up. This is a golden opportunity to make a point. Please join me in doing so.

While I appreciated all of the supportive emails on Monday, I encourage all of you to weigh-in with your thoughts by using the comment box below. Let’s all learn from each other. We can disagree and do so in a respectful manner. After all, this is what America is all about.

Here is to your health! (Sorry for the super long blog post this morning . . . zombies always get me going. LOL)

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

Beware of Fundraising Zombies!

I’ve finally had my fill of special events ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

In my hometown of Elgin, Illinois, the city will host a “zombie-themed” Halloween event for adults on October 29, 2011. It is being promoted as “Nightmare on Chicago Street“. While this sounds fun and I am sure it is a great idea to entice people to visit our starving downtown merchants, I was shocked and disappointed when I heard that city staff, council members and our newly elected mayor were promoting this as one of their strategies to help area non-profit organizations during tough economic times.

Here is the back story in a quick nutshell.  The City of Elgin is facing tough times (as are most municipalities) and is projecting a $4.5 million budget deficit next year unless belt-tightening occurs. There are some who want to cut city spending to support non-profit organizations that align with key community strategic priorities. Please understand that the story is much more complicated than this quick synopsis, but let’s start here.

With non-profit organizations starting to light their torches and grab their pitchforks, someone at city hall came up with the genius idea to sell this event to non-profits as a way to make some money. Again . . . here it is in a quick nutshell . . . non-profits have been given 100 tickets on consignment, they sell tickets for $5.00 each, and they get to keep the profits (aka $500.00). In exchange for the city’s incredible generosity, participating non-profit organizations are supposed to rally their volunteers to help out on the day of the event.

Hmmmmmm? Where do I start?

  • Wow, really? An opportunity to net $500? Thanks! Let’s get real . . . weeks of ticket sales and a bushel basket of volunteer hours all for a $500.00 return on investment is paltry. In fact, a good non-profit agency can sit down with an individual donor and walk away with a $500.00 pledge to their annual campaign with a simple one-hour investment of time.
  • The ONLY reasons that intelligent non-profits organize a few well-run annual special events is to: 1) raise awareness of their brand and 2) create a venue for new prospective donors to join the party and get to know the charity in a fun atmosphere. This city event accomplishes neither of these goals for any of the participating organizations.
  • Most importantly, when will ANYONE out there read the “2007 Special Events Study” commissioned by Charity Navigator? Special event are a terrible way to raise money. The study found that the typical non-profit organization ends up spending $1.33 to raise $1.00 (looking at direct and indirect costs) with a special event vehicle.

My advice for Elgin area non-profit organizations — act like Nancy Reagan and “Just Say No!” Stop selling your tickets. Turn your tickets back into the city. Don’t recruit your volunteers to work this event. It isn’t worth it, and more to the point . . . you are being poor stewards of your organization’s resources if you go down this road.  Frankly, I can’t think of a bigger non-profit sin.

 

My advice to the City of Elgin (or any city doing this kind of thing with their non-profit sector) — do this event and do it in style. The downtown merchants are in desperate need of your help. You need to drive traffic downtown. However, you need to stop exploiting your influence with non-profit organizations. It just isn’t cool! You know non-profits will jump through any hoops you put out there for them because they mistakenly believe that currying your favor might lead to city grants or government funding. Start partnering with non-profits by reaching out to those who align with the city’s strategic interests. This collaboration could include any number of things: helping identify grant opportunities at the state and federal level, partnering on grant writing,  and providing access to key city resources including your employees (e.g. volunteer opportunities, etc).

My advice to donors — Go to the Nightmare on Chicago Street or whatever your local municipality is organizing. We need to re-ignite our collective sense of community during these tough economic times. With regard to Elgin’s event, DO NOT purchase tickets from your favorite non-profit organization. You are doing them a great disservice, sending the wrong message, and enabling bad fundraising practices. Instead, pay the extra $2.00 at the door and send a personal check to the charity you would’ve bought your tickets from (because a direct donation to a non-profit’s annual campaign is the least expensive way for an organization to raise funds). As a matter of fact, I encourage donors to go a step further . . . send a message to those non-profits who are selling tickets by boycotting all of their events for the next year. Whenever you get an event invitation in the mail, just send them the money you would’ve spent. If no one shows up to their events, non-profits will stop organizing them and you will have more time to spend at home with your family.

OK . . . there are lots of people having fun with the Nightmare on Chicago Street (and countless other special events being organized in other communities) as evidenced by this YouTube video on Elgin zombies and this YouTube video of pumpkins and ghosts on Chicago Street. Have a ton of fun, but join me in sending a strong message to non-profit organizations about being more attentive to concepts like “return on investment” and being “good stewards” of their agency’s resources.

Where is your organization regarding the question of special event fundraising? How do you perceive the government funding trends? What are you doing to insulate your agency against city council and city staff belt-tightening initiatives? Please weigh-in using the comment box below because we can all learn from each other.

Here is 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

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
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

From the mouths of donors: Part 1

After more than 60 posts to this blog over the last few months, I’ve decided that many of you are probably tired of hearing me pontificate day-in-and-day-out. So, this week I am changing things up a little bit. Last week I launched an anonymous online survey via various social media channels and my email address book. I’ve picked four really awesome responses to share with you this week that I think provide excellent lessons for non-profit and fundraising professionals. Enjoy!!!

Again … the survey was anonymous because I wanted the truth, the whole truth and nothing up the truth. Here is what the today’s highlighted survey respondent said:

Question: Using the comment box below, please write a paragraph or two answering some of the following questions. Of the charities to whom you currently donate money, which one is your favorite?  How did you first learn about this charity? Why did you make that first contribution? Why are you still contributing? How do you know that your contribution is making a difference? What does the charity do to demonstrate it is having an impact?

Answer: I really don’t have a favorite.  I learned about most of mine by working at them either by a job or volunteering at them.  I made my first contribution by being asked.  Yes, I still contribute to most of the places I’ve worked at or volunteered.

Question: Understanding that these are tough economic times and no donor’s contribution ever should be taken for granted, what does your favorite charity need to do (or show you) in order to renew your support and/or increase the size of your contribution?

Answer: I think most of the charities I give to do a good job thanking me for my donation.  The size really wouldn’t change too much since I’m not too rich.

Hmmm … what a humble donor, but aren’t most of them? Here is what struck me about this person’s responses:

  1. They reaffirm something that I once learned from a co-worker, which is that volunteers make great donor prospects. If you want to grow your annual campaign or special event, look no further than the volunteers working throughout your organization. If they think highly enough of you to volunteer their time, then they most likely think highly enough of you to make a contribution. What is the harm in asking? In the end, it is their decision.  Click here to read what “The Chronicle of Philanthropy” has to say about “Turning Your Volunteers into Donors”.
  2. In this donor’s second response, they seem to be satisfied when their charities of choice do a good job of thanking them for their contribution. Now, you’re probably thinking this practice is common place, but Penelope Burk found in her donor research that only 39% of respondents ALWAYS receive a thank you letter. This means that 61% only received a recognition letter MOST OF THE TIME or SOMETIMES (Source: Donor Centered Fundraising, pg 38)

If you don’t have an organized, well-run volunteer management program, it sounds like you might be missing out on something.

How does your organization reach out to volunteers? What lessons and best practices can you share? Have some of your volunteers become donors? What has been your experiences? Please use the comment box below to share because we can learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Who’s on first?

Since I quit my job and started work on opening a consulting practice, I decided to take some time-off this summer to work on “me” which included getting involved in a few volunteer opportunities and miscellaneous projects. I am so glad I decided to do this because it has served as a gentle reminder that well-run meetings and a sense of organization is critical for any non-profit organization to engage and inspire volunteers.

Have you ever found yourself sitting in the middle of meeting thinking that you are in the middle of this very famous Abbott & Costello sketch titled “Who’s On First“?

Well, I have felt this way on a few very recent occasions and it can be very frustrating, which is why I thought I’d share some thoughts today on how to stop chasing your volunteers from the room. Here are just a few simple ideas:

  • Develop an agenda — this way people know what is being discussed and decided.
  • Send the agenda out in advance of the meeting — this way participants can formulate and focus their thoughts and not just organically babble.
  • Recruit a volunteer leader who can stick to the agenda — this minimizes time “down the rabbit hole” and keeps people’s time from being wasted.
  • Take meeting notes — meeting notes with a section focused solely on “action items” will remind participants who agreed to do what and by when. It will also ensure we didn’t just meet for no reason and keep us focused on actionable tasks. Send the meeting notes out immediately after the meeting as a reminder rather than handing them out at the beginning of the next meeting.
  • Honest recruiting — be clear in writing with a volunteer job description during the recruitment process. There is nothing worse than showing up to a meeting and finding out it is something very different (and more involved) than what you thought you had agreed to do.
  • Find painless ways to coordinate schedules and schedule future meetings — Try setting a future meeting date/time while you have everyone in the room. If that isn’t possible, use easy and free technology tools like Doodle or Tungle.  Stop the endless and confusing email threads.

As the Baby Boom generation retires (e.g. potential volunteers) and the volunteer-minded Millennial generation comes of age, non-profit organizations need to get better at volunteer management. Those who fail to do so will fall short in the following areas: board development, program/operations, and fundraising & resource development (e.g. annual campaigns, special events, etc).

Here is one interesting handbook resource I ran across online from the University of Texas at Austin titled “An Executive Director’s Guide to Maximizing Volunteer Engagement“. I thought I’d point those of you toward this manual just in case someone you know wants to stem the tide of volunteers who have been seen running and screaming after meetings.

The ideas in today’s post are only the tip of the iceberg. Please use the comment box to share how you have dealt with a frustrating volunteer opportunity. If you are a non-profit professional, please weigh-in with additional engagement strategies or things to avoid. We can learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Gross or net?

Last week, a very dear friend of mine emailed me with a question. She was wondering how is the right way to report to her donors and the public how much money one of her special event fundraisers had generated. Is it more transparent and appropriate to report the event’s “gross income”? Or is it more honest to report “net income”?

As I typically do, I went to the great “internet oracle” called Google and conducted a search on the question. I didn’t find anything exactly “on point,” but I did find some very interesting stuff that I think is worthy of sharing:

Getting back to the original question: “how to report special event revenue to donors” … perhaps we should try to first create a litmus test to measure “transparency related questions”. I think a transparent non-profit organization might exhibit the following traits:

  • always telling the truth
  • sharing all relevant fact with stakeholders
  • being accurate and authentic
  • being upfront and avoiding surprises

Here is what guidestar.org says about “non-profit transparency“.

Applying a “transparency test” to this question, I lean towards the conclusion that it is appropriate to share ALL relevant information about the special event. Why not tell donors that the event grossed $X and costed $Y, which resulted in net revenue of $Z?

That is just my two cents … what do you think? How does your non-profit organization report its special event revenue to donors, board volunteers and the community?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
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