FundClass Archives:

•

Liz

"6. Have you established a minimum threshold for event net income? Please explain."

This is a great question. I know of one "walk" that charges a $15 entrance fee with only $1.00 going to the agency - the rest to the organizer!

•

Linda

We are in the process of reviewing several things within our small -- 4 people -- non-profit office. This is something we began several months ago as we realized we were careening towards disaster. We had too many projects, too little communication and way too much work related stress. We made a point of pausing in our work -- which has meant a series of retreats -- usually away from our offices -- and really getting "back to the basics".

This meant reviewing, reassessing and identifying our priorities. Because we were trying to do everything for everyone we were overwhelmed. We know that our success depends upon relationships. And we have agreed that quality performance is more important that quantity. We are looking at public relations and have "re-termed" it and now call it "relationship building" -- we define our success by how successful our relationships are. We know that many of our activities may not result in an immediate donation but are part of the cultivation for goal. Most of our donations are fairly large -- this doesn't just happen -- it takes very deliberate and well thought out planning to get there.

While we have had data management software for several years it had not been used effectively to track our activities and our donors. Only recently have we been able to see that the redesign of our newsletter has resulted in more than a 1000% increase in donations that were directly a result of that newsletter. (The previous newsletter must have been going in the garbage and not even looked at.)

We have a long ways to go in utilizing our data management effectively -- but we've begun to have serious discussions about how we should be utilizing it and what kinds of information we should be getting from it. Honestly, I don't know how you can measure your effectiveness without the kinds of information a good data program can offer.

I'm not sure if this is the response you were looking for with your questions, but I hope this helps get the discussion going.

•

Paul

Linda, your thoughts were so on target for my organization that I forwarded to my board members as "food for thought". Also, your group is not the only one feeling frustration.

•

Jon

We are a four year old small Christian School that acquires 54% of it's operating budget from tuition and fees (I guess you could call that our dues) and raises the rest from three annual events, a quarterly newsletter, plus the usual development office (if they breathe ask them) mentality. We use Peachtree for all our accounting and funds management and GifTrak for our donor info.

We have analyzed and analyzed our data right down to determining that our donor base prefers their asks in color on 28lb paper ( by far the highest returns on two mailings done this way)!

We do not pursue unpaid pledges and we set minimums for everything.

Why am I saying this? Just to let you know that after you have worked through all this TEDIOUS analysis your job will be much easier. You can hit the target if you know where and how to shoot!

Now on to the rest of my rambling. The last few postings have been very negative concerning giving to individual charities. The changing economy and recent events have drastically changed giving habits. Come on people! If your job was easy you would get paid better for it. Now is the time for development people to put their best foot forward. The country is in a giving mood and you need to show them why you matter. It is harder because the attention is focused away from you but so what!!! You can do it if you are a positive person. That's what being in development is all about! Go get em'.

•

Tom

I was interested in the "single port of entry" for all data idea. I know what you're talking about when you get different people adding data. Having one person who knows what has and hasn't been input really seems like a good idea.

How do you insure that? Does everyone turn in hard copy to this data entry person or is there a way for people who think at the keyboard to forward their electronic input through the data entry person?

The reason I'm asking is that we're developing a "virtual office" for the center for independent living I'm working with. The idea is that data, wherever it comes into our office (and some of our staffers with disabilities will work from remote offices) gets put in the system database and is available somewhere as a webpage (in some cases in secure areas, though). Are you suggesting some sort of information "choke point" where everything gets looked at before it hits the system for the rest of our office to use?

•

Don

"How do you insure that? Does everyone turn in hard copy to this data entry person or is there a way for people who think at the keyboard to forward their electronic input through the data entry person?"

Another voice heard! But...if there is only a single point...what happens when he/she gets married, has a baby, or takes an extended leave for a sex change operation? While the "single point access" has many benefits...it also makes an agency vulnerable in the event that the "single point" runs off to Central America with a bottle of Tequila and his/her soul-mate on a brand new Harley, in search of the perfect beach and Margarita.

•

Billie Rae

Preface: I am in the middle of our biggest fundraiser of the year, a two-day, statewide conference. It constitutes 1/3 or better of our annual income. Even with the tragedy of September 11th looming, my organization has surpassed our all-time-high sponsorship levels. We are using the trials and tribulations to pitch our sponsors. As a resource development organization, we have identified our members concerns with keeping our economy strong. Think Alaska's oil pipeline...

In response to Tom Kings' question about the single port of entry and Don Murray's concern:

I learned this lesson early in my Human Resource management career. Having just one person for data input is key. There should be no difficulty in having another person take over should that person leave for 6 weeks in the Australian outback on a Harley. The reason is this -- whichever person is keying the information is thorough with each and every record.

Our small office (4 directors, including myself) all hand me the information for the database, contacts, changes in membership lists, business cards, top ten lists, whatever the format.

My goal is that each record to pitch contains a name, title, address, phone, fax or email. If that information is not included I call, fax or email to get it, or get the Executive Director, board member or whomever to get it for me. This ensures the pitch doesn't become a "return to sender", that person "isn't here anymore", or the fax or email doesn't get to them with that all important event notice. All of those come with a cost of time and money.

In these days of electronic list sharing, we eliminate all commas from our mailing address line, the titles and abbreviations are consistent; Ave for Avenue, Blvd for boulevard, VP for Vice President, etc. Whatever is happening, it is easy to spot omissions and errors. Anyone new just takes a sample record and follows it. A small list of abbreviations accompanies the example.

More importantly than all of that is one person can become intimately familiar with who is coming/going, moving companies, and name spellings. This person becomes invaluable for proofreading, and especially for manning event registration tables. They know the membership!!! They know whom is being pitched, and who is new to town.

I have an event notice listing of 753 email addresses and another 800 faxes. Only 1-2 emails per week come back with delivery problems while the faxes are another 5-6 busy signals or manual faxing. This is good data management. This allows you to reach your membership.

Web page "virtual input" is an easy thing to address. The tech person can set up the form for entry to matching your database with abbreviation lists, required field entry, etc. If the person doesn't fill out the form completely, a prompt notice should be utilized.

•

Maria

"While the "single point access" has many benefits...it also makes an agency vulnerable in the event that the "single point" runs off to Central America with a bottle of Tequila and his/her soulmate on a brand new Harley, in search of the perfect beach and Margarita."

If that happens, please let me know, I'll be waiting for them here in Tepoztlan, Mexico, and catch them so they could help me a bit. They won't need to reach Central America. Ja!

•

Penny

I am another lurker who has finally decided to come out of the closet. I also really like the present format of the classes - I find them very useful. I am the Development Manager for a South African NPO working in crisis counseling, support and training, particularly in the field of HIV/AIDS. We are setting up a database from scratch, and I would like to make sure that we record as much information as we will need, even in the future. I would really appreciate it if you could share with me what fields you use in your database, besides name, title and contact details. I hope that if we research this adequately we can avoid having to review the whole thing in six months time when we realize we don't have the information we need for our queries. 

As for the effect of 11 September, we are already feeling this directly. At least two US funders have withdrawn support, saying that AIDS in Africa has paled in comparison to the emergency in the US.

•

Mark

I am glad the lurkers are coming out of the closet. It is good. I would like to see less lurking on all the list-serves. Ultimately, fundraising is about relationship management and keeping the donors emotionally invested in the people and the cause. Our inner city school is also having trouble getting new donors BUT it is better to get the old donors to invest more for the emotional value, which they are doing. If people leave a cause I wonder if we have done the relationship management well. They usually leave because we haven't. Get leads from prior donors that is the key, then relationship management with them is essential. Even when donors leave keep them in the loop. We have found many return later or at least have a strong positive emotional memory about us.

•

Diane

I too have been lurking on this list for quite awhile. I find it a valuable learning tool and have now decided to jump in with two points.

1. The topic of this fundclass is particularly interesting to me. I have worked for non-profits for many years, mainly in the area of annual campaigns. Lately I have become interested in major gifts and planned giving and the progression of a donor's commitment to the organization. This commitment can be tracked on databases and prospects treated according to their involvement with the organization. Which all relates to database management. Data segmentation and analysis is therefore of prime interest to me. However, it is difficult to find non-profits that will invest the time and money in this area, as most of them are understandably busy putting out fires and trying to survive with few money and resources.

I worked recently for a small museum with a very promising pool of donors. They have a wonderful database, which I segmented and coded carefully but it is still mainly used to generate mailing lists. There is no analysis or reporting done. I have been able to convince them of the importance of doing so but other more pressing issues always come up. Have others encountered this problem?

2. At the same organization, the objective was for one point of entry to the database with a supervisor to check entries. It seemed like a good system but no one stayed in the position very long and the supervisor had to train new people often and therefore consistency became a problem. To compound the situation, the data entry clerk and the supervisor both left at the same time and now there is no one left who knows the database. They are in quite a mess. Unless the director of the department also learns the database (and most do not want to spare the time), I don't see how this problem can be avoided.

•

Don

I have been procrastinating and now.... the dragon is in my sights. Our web site is currently being updated to accept on-line payments. Again...seems simple. But we need every advantage now. Our holiday appeal will now include several "more convenient" ways to give.

•

Michael

No dragons slain here. The organization that I direct deals with an activist oriented issue that has virtually nothing to do with terrorism, the US war, etc. There is no way that we can re-define what we do in relation to the events of 9/11 because the events of 9/11 are in no way related to anything that we do. FYI: Our organization is an advocacy group focusing on animal issues.

We have seen two effects since 9/11. First, since much of what we do is raising awareness to the issues that we focus on, 9/11 events (rightly so) have taken the main focus of almost ALL media attention. We had just completed a set of news conferences about 2 weeks before 9/11. These news conferences were extremely effective. The news briefings were presented in 3 sites. Associated Press, the Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 NPR radio stations, 3 television stations, 3 daily newspapers, and several college newspapers covered our efforts. Obviously since we can talk about this in terms of success, our next fundraising effort to our donors should be good. The letter is just about to go out.

Before 9/11 we had intended to have already done another set of news conferences by 10/23. However, the potential for success of these events would be somewhat lowered with the media focus on everything from Afghanistan to Anthrax.

It is currently difficult to tell, but our last mailing had a relatively low response. That is not a surprise, because our end of summer mailing typically is less successful. However, I am concerned what our results will be in coming months.

Also, and this is the area where I have additional concerns, we had just had a large (for us) prospect mailing printed before the events of 9/11. We have sent out several pieces of this prospect mailing. It doesn't seem to be doing badly. In fact the early returns have been heartening.

Thoughts anyone?

•

Nancy

The dragon I am trying to slay is to move from just newsletters and generalized appeals for money, to targeted and specific appeals. "Will you give $100 this year?" Many of our staff and supporters feel that this type of mail is annoying and they are resistant to trying that approach. I hope to have it in place this winter.

Our mission has a direct relationship to lessening terrorism - we train third world development workers, so I'm not expecting much impact of terrorism in the USA on our giving, or a positive impact if any. From my position outside the US, I'd like to advise you to get people back as much as possible to their normal activities and ways of thinking. This was an incident, not an era!

•

Tom

One of the toughest dragons to slay is getting staff and boards out of their old ways of doing things and getting them to try something new. Often, when you try to make changes as simple as using a new logo or a consistent "look and feel", you find that by the time things filter through the layers of entrenched bureaucracies that the project gets done the same way as always.

Of course, everyone perceives that you are, in fact, by merely stating that things need to change, that things have actually changed, when, in fact, everybody is still doing things the same way they always have and ignoring any new directives. Of course, when this year's fundraiser or mail appeal or whatever fails, guess who gets the blame! I had a secretary once who defeated my best efforts to effect change by simply ignoring me and doing the Christmas Campaign the way she always had. By the time I figured out what was happening, it was too late and too screwed up and I didn't last long after donations continued their downward spiral that year.

If you're a newly minted development director, especially, your primary task will be getting institutional "buy-in". You may have to bring them along in small incremental steps. Beware that the logo you are wanting to change may have been (and probably was) designed by staffers who are still there and who went through great pain and suffering in designing the old logo. These guys will resent you and assume you're trying to show how much smarter you are than they are.

The only thing I have found that works is to wade through the interminable process of bringing everyone into the process, stroking egos and in general making the needed changes "their idea". You can accomplish miracles so long as you don't care who gets credit. Of course, the flip side of that is that then everyone decides "Why do we need this guy when we're doing all the thinking here?" and they eliminate your position.

WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF SMALL NONPROFIT DEVELOPMENT! Just remember that we do this because we love it, If you want job security and riches, go to work in a for profit business. Good luck!

•

Tom

"From my position outside the US, I'd like to advise you to get people back as much as possible to their normal activities and ways of thinking. This was an incident, not an era!"

From outside the U.S., it may look that way, but I think it would be a mistake not to recognize that this event has fundamentally changed America's perception of how safe we are here at home. As the full scope of the anthrax attacks is understood, this will only further impact how Americans think and feel.

- We can't even open a letter anymore without wondering if we're going to contract a deadly disease.

- 15,000 children lost their parents on September 11.

- Around 100,000 people lost their jobs so far either directly or indirectly because of September 11.

- Tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are going into harm's way because of September 11.

This is definitely the beginning of an era as far as Americans are concerned. I suspect that recognizing that will be fundamental to our getting back to work and our routines. Whether we're able to have anything "normal" for a while remains to be seen. Even I am reluctant to open junk mail or appeals for funds anymore because I wonder if it may have been contaminated by a mail sorting machine or something. How is that going to impact mail? I suspect we may have to change our tactics as we see how this is all going to shake out in the coming years.

- We may have to do more personalized appeals to get the envelopes open.
- We may have to do more phone work.
- We may have to find new ways to get donations and depend less on mail.
- We may find that more Americans start leaning on the Internet to communicate (viruses on the Net don't kill you - only your hard drive).

If we're raising funds internationally, you may have to treat Sept. 11 as an incident. If we're raising funds in the U.S., I think we have to recognize that it was the start of an era!

•

Vivian

I concur with Tom's thinking and acknowledge that Nancy's perspective is indeed different and current events can be treated differently on her side of the ocean.

•

Vivian

I am enjoying the comments of all the dragon slayers and wannabe dragon slayers.

I am new to my organization (7 weeks on staff). We are a foundation formed to fund the expanded communications ministry of a Christian publishing house. The motto of the publisher has been "crawl-walk-run" and it has served them well. As a nonprofit, they have sustained financially stability and, indeed, made a profit since the late 1970's. Those profits have always been used to purchase magazines, fund new magazines, and add additional resources to their communications stable (cd's, tapes, online presence, etc.). The organization has been largely self-funded in past and has never had a separate development department. They have had grant support from two reputable foundations in the past, but that is all.

Technological advances and recent world events coupled with the expansion of the global church, particularly in Latin America, compel us to expand and extend the vision of the publisher around the world. Established just this year, the foundation is trying to "catch up" and advance plans that address the compelling religious, cultural and political challenges made more serious by the events of 9/11.

The advancement of initiatives that respond to these hot issues and other development matters is in unqualified conflict with the "crawl-walk-run" philosophy. I seem to often be asking, "Wouldn't it be prudent to take the initiative on _________ and get something in place, and then supplement that piece as we proceed?" Case in point: a planned giving program. We have nothing and I am recommending we contract with a firm that is the appropriate fit culturally so that can provide services to interested subscribers, web-surfers, Board and staff ASAP. Later we can develop the marketing plan and "roll out" the program to all of the audience.

We also struggle with how to "turn subscribers into donors." Can it even be done or should we rely on foundation funding, major gifts, etc. and support from direct mailing appeals and website donation? We are creating experience as we go. Initial pilot mailings (dropped 9/10/01) yielded good statistical results with approx. a 7% response. However, our list select on demographics data (home equity and age) was not as good as we had hoped. Consequently, I have found no legitimate donor prospects during follow-up telephone discussions. Can we and should be get the publisher and its Board to give up on the subscribe-to-donor transformation or pursue that fervently while addressing all other publics?

I have dragons 1 and 2 in my sights.

•

Joni

Hear hear to Tom's comments... is it really 15,000 children though?

•

Mary

The dragon I've slain is greater understanding and appreciation of what I do (at a 70-student independent high school). As a volunteer-parent-development coordinator, I created my job -- kinda like a foreigner moving into a homogenous neighborhood. The dragon I'd like to slay is getting school staff and students (since they play key roles in the school) to trust that my recommendations aimed at improving or not ruining our public image are for good reasons.

We have a flat art department and therefore very little student artwork displayed (!!). Parents have tried to remedy this situation, and one thought it might be interesting to hang parent artwork in the entry of the administration building. The first "show" was some photographs. The current "show" features a large oil painting with several human vignettes, two of which show people in the act of what the Bible would call "fornicating." When I stated my objections, there were loud protests that this constituted censorship, and is that the kind of school we want, etc., etc.

•

Tom

"... is it really 15,000 children though?"

That number was quoted on NBC news the other night.

I don't know how that number was arrived at, but the number of persons with
families working in that building was unusually high and the number may include adult children of older workers. With grandchildren, grieving parents and siblings the impact is probably far greater than that! One life touches so many.

•

Lew

What I do not see is any effort to refocus a portion of the great Stewardship commitment that we are re-discovering to the home front. I am the Develop Director for an interdenominational child family "911 Center" in Altoona that offers child mentoring, parent ed., anger/stress management, and work with victims of domestic violence. All of these issues are beginning to be more of a problem as we get into the recession. Here large supporters of United Way have greatly reduced or closed, further putting stress on giving priorities. My project the Veterans Prayer Project which works vet-to-vet with vets in rehab has seen more interest as we prepare to deploy more of the PANG. My opinion is we need a national re-focus on some sort of Operation Home Front that would help people understand that particularly the non United Way agencies are part of the faith/social service infrastructure and are near crisis.

Our normal income in Sept. is $60K this year it was $20!

•

Tom

Lew pointed up the need for "a national re-focus on some sort of Operation Home Front that would help people understand that particularly  the non United Way agencies are part of the faith/social service infrastructure and are near crisis."

I might also suggest a re-evaluation of how and where we fund-raise. With a new agency whose mission is a little difficult to explain to the general public in 10 words or less, I'm not even planning to try and compete in the direct mail fund-raising wars this year. Instead, we are focusing on building collaborative projects that draw down foundation support and federal, state and local grants.

We have to think strategically and plan what we really want for the future. Then we have to bring all the stakeholders to the process and figure out how to leverage funding that will flow through to everyone.

Our agency provides a wide range of independent living services to people with disabilities seeking to achieve a measure of real independence. We are big into information and referral and addressing gaps. We brought some real financial power into our organization by hiring a CPA as our CFO. One of the main reasons for that is that we'll be able to manage grant funds effectively.

The reason we're doing this is that in our area, there has been such fierce competition (and sadly, some financial back-stabbing of partners) among local npo's. It has been very difficult to find a lead agency everyone trusts to fairly manage the funds in a collaborative grant - and most of the RFP's (requests for proposals) we're seeing now are asking to see genuine multi-agency collaboration as a key feature of the grant). 

I would suggest that you find opportunities to get together with other npo's that share your geographical area and other npo's who share your mission. Try to find ways to work together to address problems in your communities rather than focusing on how to fund your agency! Try to find trustworthy partners. By that I mean agencies you can trust with the wallet for the project.

This may not sound right when your ED is wanting you to raise a couple of hundred thousand for some new project he and one of the board members just thought up, but it's really the only way in the fund-raising climate we're seeing today (even before the terrorist attacks). We have to think strategically, collaboratively and flexibly (i.e. creative and adaptive) and we have to address what we do to what the community sees as real needs, not just what our staff wants.  

I worked on a project once where a large agency took the financial lead and took all the money too! Partners literally got no flow through funds. We addressed the problem in the community by organizing small npo's and creating millions of dollars in new projects that left out the untrustworthy guys. Guess who got the message and changed their ways!  Nobody trusts them with the money yet, but we've all learned to work the parameters of the projects we do with them so that we don't have to trust them very much.

Today, I am attending a workshop that brings together about 10 funders from foundations, state, local and federal funding agencies with 35 or 40 DD's from nonprofits. That's how we're changing how we all get funded. As a result of what we've done, our little group has raised more than 25 million bucks between us. I just got a million bucks for my agency. Collaboration and strategic planning works!

•

Mary Kay

I'd like to know what size each of the collaborating organizations were in relation to each other . . . more precisely, the size of the development offices (number of people and amount of $$$ each brings in). We've tried similar collaborative efforts, but it always seems that the biggest org wants to take the biggest share of the profits--even when we smaller organizations offer to do the lion's share of the work on the particular event.

I wonder if this approach works for you because of the nature of people in Alaska--e.g. being more cooperative because of your geography? We're located smack-dab in the middle of Michigan--hundreds of nonprofits, all vying for the same $$, yadda yadda yadda. The term collaborative here seems very superficial.

This is my dragon, and I'm really looking for ways to slay it.

•

Don

I think that your situation is not unique. I firmly believe that a significant shift in thinking must occur in order to survive. While I have shared your mentality for two decades (along with thousands of others), without a significant shift in thinking and a follow-up action plan to merge, marry, collaborate or in some other way, learn to work together....many otherwise viable organizations will simply disappear.

As I told my Board last week at our Board Meeting, ".....we must shed our egos and our ownership mentality. Our organization does not belong to us. It belongs to the community and the children and families we serve, do not care what flag flies over the top of our organizational structure."

Don't give up!! Consider taking a lead role in partnership development within your community. We're all rooting for ya!

•

Cid

Since there has been so much talk about the fear of gifting being down, I wanted to share this with you.

I just came back from Cincinnati's 2001 United Way campaign celebration luncheon. If I listened attentively...

They OVERSHOT their $60,050,000 goal (approx. 1% over prior year) by $5,000. It wasn't easy and they did a special blitz campaign to the largest contributors a couple of weeks ago as they were coming up $2,000,000 short. Development did a great job. Those organizations more than came through!

As they went through various top lists, some companies increased gifting as much as 34%. A local airline increased by $125,000, even though it was shut down this year for several months due to a strike. Some firms put up a tremendous effort by contributing $300-500/employee, one financial services firm gave an average of $1,100-1,200/employee!

Keep on keeping on!

•

Don

While events of our world may have taken some of my energy, I found your class to be informative and quite useful. As a matter of fact, it inspired me to change in several areas as well as providing ongoing inspiration. Thanks for a great class. And to those class Administrators...the silent heroes...thanks to you too for providing and administering this forum.