Beyond the December 31 Deadline

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As the calendar winds down, many nonprofits rush to remind donors about tax deductions, required IRA distributions, and year-end deadlines. You know donors will be bombarded with requests to give in the next eight weeks—including by you.  

So, how will you make your year-end appeal stand out? Worry less about the calendar and more about identifying a specific, urgent need within your organization that resonates with your mission.

Build your appeal around emotional stories that showcase the need, the potential, and the impact.

For example, if you run a food bank, share the story of a family (or a composite of families) struggling simultaneously with an unemployed parent and a medical crisis who relied on your services while they worked toward stability. Having access to the food bank’s groceries reduced daily worry about meals and kept their family fed and healthy while they dealt with significant life stressors. How could the donor’s gift help you support more families like theirs? 

If you’re a nonprofit offering tutoring, tell the story of how a disruptive third grader flourished in your afterschool program when she found a mentor who believed her when she said the words on the page just didn’t make sense. That child now has an individual education plan. Explain how the donor’s year-end gift will help identify even more students who need additional services.

Donors know how calendars work. Instead of telling them that the year ends on December 31 (“so hurry to get your gift in because that’s best for us!”), show them what their generosity today will accomplish by December 31 of next year. Be specific: “Your gift of $100 will provide a month of tutoring for a child” or “a donation of $500 will fund emergency food assistance for three families.”

Remember, donors want to make a difference, not just meet a deadline. The most successful year-end campaigns don’t rely on urgency alone—they inspire donors with the promise of significant impact and the joy of making positive change possible.

What compelling story from your organization will you share this December?

 

Want to learn more tips on how to approach donors at year-end (and all the other times of the year)? Check out my new book “Finding Funding: How to Ask for Money and Get it.”

The Question You Must Ask

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If you were hired to sell a particular brand of car, and somebody walked into your showroom, chances are you wouldn’t spend much time talking about a competing brand. Toyota salespeople make commission on Toyotas, after all, not on Hondas.

I thought the same principle held true when it came to my work as a front-line fundraiser. When I met with a donor, whether in a casual setting or when asking for a gift, I only talked about what was happening at our organization. I didn’t take what was happening in the larger ecosystem into account.

But as I grew more experienced, I realized that I was treating the donor only as a person with the ability to give me money, not a human being with a myriad of interests, passions, and obligations. They might have the ability to give to my organization, but do they have the willingness? Maybe they are already committed to or interested in another nonprofit that has a similar mission.

Just as I’ve never met a person who only bought one brand of car their whole life, I’ve never met a person who only gave to one nonprofit. Sure, they have their favorites, and those favorites will change over the years (just ask any independent school development director what happens to a parent donor once their child graduates).

So go ahead, and ask potential donors the question: “Now tell me, what nonprofits do you support and why?”

The answer will reveal all kinds of things, such as:

  • Their emotional/historical tie to a cause
  • How life circumstances have influenced their giving
  • Their family connections
  • Whether this is a cause their partner also supports
  • Connections among the various nonprofits they support, e.g. children, women, animals, environment
  • Where your nonprofit fits in their hierarchy of interest and giving 
  • How much recognition matters
  • And, through all of this, their values and passions

So be curious and ask the question that your colleagues are most likely not asking. You might just form the kind of lasting relationship that benefits both your organization and your donor.

Or, you may decide to table this potential donor for now because their current giving priorities don’t align with your organization. That’s not a bad thing—it’s good knowledge to have and save for another time. Because giving priorities, like traffic, ebb and flow, and you want to be ready to catch a ride the next time they are in your neighborhood. 

 

Learn more about being curious in Chapter 8 of my new book “Finding Funding: How to Ask for Money and Get It.” 

Stop Training Your Board (and Start Engaging Them)

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Image: BoardEffect

If you had no interest in becoming a flugelhorn player, and attended a training on how to become a flugelhorn player, what are the odds that you’d emerge from that training a budding flugelhornist?*

Not totally zero. It’s possible you will start researching brass bands. But odds are, a training won’t motivate you to do something you have no interest in doing. There are plenty of other people in that one-off training that will handle flugelhorn duties, right?

You may have figured out I’m not really talking about musicians.

Question: Why do nonprofits keep training their boards on how to become fundraisers before asking the people on the board if they have any interest in becoming flugelhornists, err, fundraisers?

Because we cling to the notion (the hope, dream, prayer…) that when a person joins a nonprofit board, they are ready and willing to take an active role in fundraising. And when these board members don’t fulfill our fundraising expectations, we bring in a consultant to do a “training” to “teach” them real fast what we want them to do. Post-training, we hang our heads in frustration when they still don’t step up to the task. 

So why don’t our boards respond to all that training that we so kindly provided? 

Experience has taught me the following:

  • Expectation is not motivation 
  • Boards don’t raise (or give) money. People, some of whom happen to serve on boards, do
  • Each board member is an individual with their own passions, life circumstances, interests, and capacity. Board members are complex human beings, just like you and me, and don’t respond well to a herd mentality
  • Speaking of humans, it’s awfully hard to get our species to do things they don’t want to do—especially for a salary of $0

But there is hope! Stop treating your board as a conglomerate and start engaging with them as individuals. Take the time to meet with each one, ask about their motivations, and learn where your organization falls on their list of philanthropic priorities. 

Ask how they would be willing to help move the development function forward. From there, develop a plan for each individual and set your expectations accordingly. 

This may not result in your board of 10 or 12 or 20 being the world’s greatest fundraising board, but it very well may result in them being the best fundraising board your organization is blessed to have at this moment in its history.

*A flugelhorn is a cross between a cornet and a trumpet, and a predecessor to today’s bugle. 

 

Learn more about board motivation and raising funds in Chapter 14 of my new book “Finding Funding: How to Ask for Money and Get It.” 

Get Emotional

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Arm holding a heart and brain in balance

Image: Pxhere

Think about all the nonprofits in the world and the number that you personally support. 

Did you do a detailed analysis using a cost v. value matrix to make an informed, rational decision about where to donate your hard-earned money?

Unlikely. It’s much more likely that you support nonprofits with which you feel a personal, emotional connection. 

Emotion is the driver, but logic does help navigate. If I asked why you support the nonprofits you do, I bet your answer would contain a kernel of logic. You’d want to know how the organizations are making investments to eradicate societal issues such as finding affordable housing for our unhoused neighbors, providing care and services for people escaping intimate partner violence, or eradicating cancer.

When it comes to money, we use logic to keep our emotions in check. We want to convince ourselves (and others) that we are being smart about our donation–we aren’t giving money away willy-nilly to just anybody who asks. 

When asking someone to support a cause we love, what kind of approach will be most effective? An emotion-oriented pitch or a logical “best bang for the buck” logic-filled argument?

If your cause doesn’t activate something in your donor’s heart, chances are slim they will go down the logical path with you, even if you make a great case. Why? Because they are already going down that heartfelt path with the nonprofits with which they DO have an emotional connection.

How do we find out if that emotional connection exists between a donor and your cause? Research can determine if someone gives to similar-type organizations. The best way, however, is to just ask.

The beauty of asking, “Tell me, what nonprofits do you support and why?” is that you will get anything but a simple response. You will learn all kinds of things about why a person cares about what they do, their successes and failures, life influences, mentors, family dynamics, etc.—and whether any of that lines up with the work of your organization.

Here’s an example from my career: Why would a group of predominantly Jewish donors give more than $2 million to a private Christian college? 

Because that college was establishing a chair in Holocaust Studies.

And naming it in honor of their first Jewish board member. 

Who was a Holocaust survivor. 

Raising that $2 million was an act of love and respect. Any kind of cost/value calculation was secondary.

At year end, The Chronicle of Philanthropy writes about the donors who made the top charitable gifts that year. I’ve yet to read a story about one of those donors that didn’t contain an intensely personal story related to the cause(s) they support.

Donors are people. Foundations are run by people. People have rich and complex emotional lives. Mining that emotional landscape for the “why” that lies beneath the surface is the most important first step in creating an honest, thoughtful bond between the donor and your organization.

 

Learn more about getting emotional in Chapter 2 of my new book “Finding Funding: How to Ask for Money and Get It.” 

Volunteers: Love ’em or lose ’em

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hands in a circle palms upFive hands palms upLike death and taxes, volunteers and fundraising are among life’s inseparables.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many development shops flounder because they’ve recruited the wrong volunteers and spend too much time catering to their needs, following up on their half-baked ideas or generating mountains of reports that they will never. Or they’ve recruited the right volunteers and haven’t given them good direction, sending them to their own devices, which leads to the same outcome as recruiting a bad volunteer.

Here are some development volunteer Do’s and Don’ts to consider:

 

  1. Don’t ask them to serve on a fundraising committee. This all but guarantees you will recruit the wrong ones. Good volunteers are too busy to serve on committees and bad volunteers are drawn to the idea of showing up for a free lunch every month and offering their opinions and advice. Sharpen your ask on what you want them to DO, not where you want them to BE. If being part of a committee is a absolutely necessary, just don’t lead with it.
  2. Do ask them to help with a task. If you want your volunteers to help you make connections in the community and bring others into your fold, then make that crystal clear when you recruit them. And don’t leave it there; work with them on a plan to identify exactly who you’d like them to recruit and how. Show them a list of folks you’d like to get closer with. If they don’t know anyone on your list and can’t come up with anyone on their own, then don’t recruit them.
  3. Don’t ask them to ask for money. Asking a volunteer to raise money is like asking a bus driver to fly a fighter jet. Sure, it sounds interesting in the moment, but will said bus driver actually ever climb into the cockpit? Heck no! Even if you know that one-in-a-million volunteer who is actually good at asking for money, bring them on in a more general way, and gradually let them work up to that task. Experience has taught me that asking most volunteers to raise money will just scare them away or, worse, they’ll be too scared to tell you they’re scared and will never follow through.
  4. Do ask them to host a party. A volunteer willing to open her or his house to a gathering on behalf of your nonprofit is a great use of effort, time and expense. In fact, ask two volunteers to team up and do it together. I have attended quite a few house parties in my career, and I can scarcely think of one that didn’t go well. One that is well planned, executed and features your mission and leadership is a win-win all around.
  5. Don’t take them for granted. The focus of this piece is how to avoid recruiting bad volunteers, but most nonprofits are blessed with a solid core of top-notch volunteers who have great follow-through, positive energy and do what they say they’re going to do. All too often I’ve seen them taken for granted while we put our focus on the squeaky-wheel volunteers or try to recruit others. Make it a point to do something nice each year for your tried and true.

Campaigns: Public, Quiet, Silent? What’s the difference?

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woman holding finger to mouthIn working with non-profits who are in campaign mode, the only thing that causes more angst than whether they will reach their goal is “when to go public.”

“Going public” is a function of both the calendar and the campaign thermometer. And it is different for everyone.

Here are a few observations to consider in planning the public phase of your campaign.

  • Your campaign is in the public arena the moment your board approves it. It’s unwise to think otherwise or to try to control the flow of information. Milestones along the way, such as the announcement of major gifts or accomplishments, will gradually nudge it into the public consciousness.
  • The quiet/public distinction is mostly an internal one among your board, staff and campaign leaders. There are so many campaigns in process at any one time that your casual observer, even one who regularly supports your organization, really could care less.
  • The quiet/public distinction also is largely a function of campaign staff and priorities. It just makes sense to tackle the larger gifts first because: a) your campaign won’t succeed without them; b) they take the longest time to come to fruition and c) they provide the needed momentum to carry a campaign through.
  • Unless you have limitless staff resources, the folks managing the leadership phase are also the folks who will be managing the public phase. They can’t do both at once. So the best time for them to devote their energy to securing the $100-$1,000 level gifts is when the $1 million gift potential is pretty much exhausted.
  • Ideally you want to be toward the end of the campaign when turning your attention to the “y’all come” portion. It’s just good psychology to ask people to fill the last $500,000 or so of your $10 million bucket with smaller gifts than it is to fill the last $5 million with gifts of that size. It makes their gifts appear larger and their participation more meaningful.
  • To sooth the angst of your leaders wondering about when the campaign will go public, it would be wise for staff to spend some time early in the campaign developing a plan for what the public phase will look like (i.e. a major event, direct mail, a phone campaign, etc.) and inform said leaders that this will be implemented when the campaign reaches 90 or 95 percent of its goal. Often, their angst is less about when the public phase will be launched than what it will look like when it is launched.

The public phase is the costliest, least effective (from a pure fundraising) portion of your campaign. It is less about raising dollars than it is building awareness and leveraging the campaign to build excitement and participation and, hopefully, begin nurturing those donors for the next campaign!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Board Giving

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graphic representing six board members around a tableBoards don’t give money to the non-profit organizations they govern. Individuals who serve on boards do.

Why the distinction?

Because it creates the correct paradigm for how development professionals should be approaching their board members for philanthropic support and measuring outcomes.

If I ruled the non-profit universe, I would ban the term “board giving” from our lectionary when it refers to the total dollar support from the board from one year to the next.

Here’s the problem: Say collective board giving jumps from $90,000 to $110,000 in a given year. Success, right? But what if that jump is attributed to a new board member stepping up with a gift of $30,000 and the remaining board members, who last year collectively gave $90,000, deciding they are now off the hook and dial it down to a collective $80,000. Would you say that your board giving is moving in the right direction?

The reality is that the “board” is not a single-brained collective moving in some sort of unified philanthropic direction. They are individuals, each differently blessed with financial assets and each grappling with the same life challenges, such as aging parents, financial setbacks, divorce, kids in college, as everyone else. And, as the illustration above shows, board composition is constantly shifting. This makes a strictly dollars-raised criteria not very helpful in gauging whether you are maximizing the philanthropic potential from each of your board members.

What would be some better tools for measuring board giving? How about these:

  • Each board members needs to give a gift annually. This tried and true measurement must be a stated criteria for any person asked to join a non-profit board in the 21st Century.
  • Each board member commits to including the organization in his/her will or through another planned giving vehicle.
  • Each board member commits to placing the organization they are serving within the top three of all the non-profits they support. Again, this provides a great place to have that intentional conversation board memberz about where your non-profit ranks on their priority list and what it will take to move it up the ladder.

Develop benchmarks accordingly. Let’s say currently only 75 percent of your board members give annually; 10 percent have a planned gift in place; and 25 percent have your organization in the top three of their philanthropic priorities.

A three-year benchmark might be 100 percent annual support; 20 percent with a planned gift and 35 percent in the top three. A five-year benchmark might be 100-30-50. An every-year benchmark is to commit to having a one-on-one, personal conversation with each board member about her or his philanthropic support.

These benchmarks (tailored and scaled to the size of your non-profit and sophistication of your development program) can be pursued and realistically attained regardless of the relative wealth of your board members and regardless of the composition of the board at any point in time. It also will maximize giving for the board you have now, not the one you had last year or five years ago.

Stop looking at your board as a single entity. Start looking at the individuals who comprise your board and begin approaching the task of “board giving” from this perspective.

In doing so, you will get the greatest support possible from your board as a collective and move much further toward your ultimate goal – creating a strong culture of philanthropy within all levels of your organization for generations to come.

Kill Your Darlings

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Kill your darlings

Anyone who’s been to journalism school knows the phrase “kill your darlings.” It means editing out the words and phrases that you’ve fallen in love with that drag down the clarity and power of your story.

In fundraising, we would do well with an annual review with staff and key volunteers titled “kill your tactics.” Or at least some of them.

In my work both with fundraising professionals and as one myself, I find great propensity to fall in love with tactics. It’s the stuff we actually get to do, to take pride in accomplishment. There’s just one problem with this love affair – when tactics become so ingrained that they become synonymous with strategy.

A tactic can be this: task your board chair to solicit all fellow board members in September of each year. The strategy is this: ensure 100 percent “stretch-level” board participation in the Annual Fund each fall to get the effort off to a strong start and show that leadership is bought in.

But what if your board chair’s idea of soliciting fellow board members is to hand out pledge forms at the beginning of the meeting and tell everyone to hand them back at the with the inspiring message of: “Just put something down so we can count you as a donor.”

Hmmm. Might be time to revisit your tactic here. Or are we so committed to this being the chair’s job, that we have totally lost sight that this particular tactic (which is nowhere engraved in stone) is actually sabotaging our greater strategy? And the list goes on:

  • The event or gala that has outlived its useful lifespan.
  • The “buy a brick” effort that costs more to implement than the revenue it brings in.
  • The Annual Fund drive that has no clear purpose or direction.
  • An “endowment building” effort with no case of how a stronger endowment will make your nonprofit more effective at serving the community.

Before you launch into your next strategic planning process, examine your tactics. Broaden your vision beyond “how can we make the gala better” (i.e. improving a tactic) to “is the gala the best way to bring people together to form community and raise awareness and funds for our mission?” (i.e. focusing on strategy).

Killing your darlings isn’t easy, which is why so many remain on life support year after year. In just about every case of darling demolition I’ve encountered, however, the long term benefit invariably outweighs the short-term pain.

Data-Driven Campaign Planning

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A new, data-driven approach to campaign planning

The time-honored campaign feasibility study is designed to help nonprofits test whether their aspirations and campaign dollar goal are achievable. Done well, it is in effect the “soft launch” of a campaign and sets you up for success.

But the process most consultants use in executing the study is backwards. It usually goes like this.

  1. Client wants to raise money to support a new program, endowment or physical space
  2. Client makes a “guess” about how much they can raise
  3. Consultant helps client build a case for support based on the “guess” goal
  4. Consultant tests case with client’s top donors
  5. Consultant facilitates a wealth screening of client’s donors to determine capacity
  6. Consultant gathers all the appropriate data and delivers recommendations for campaign goal, case and next steps.

When you look at this, immediately a few process questions come to mind.

  1. How does the client derive at the “guess” for a campaign goal? What data is that based on?
  2. Why doesn’t the wealth screening come at the beginning to help inform the goal to be tested?
  3. Why are we testing a dollar goal with key donors before we know whether they have the capacity to actually realize that goal?

Instead, the campaign planning formula at JP Fundraising Solutions looks more like this:

  1. Client wants to raise money to support a new program, endowment or physical space
  2. Consultant/client conducts a wealth screening to determine capacity within existing donor pool
  3. Consultant and client review the data and supplement with potential sources typically not included in a wealth screening (e.g. public funding, grant support, “outlier” donors) and set a target campaign goal base on those inputs.
  4. Consultant shapes case for support where items add up to target goal.
  5. Consultant tests case with top donors
  6. Consultant gathers data and delivers recommendations for campaign goal, case and next steps.

The benefit of this approach is that once we have a realistic range for a campaign goal, we can focus our energy on building a compelling case and determining whether donors who we know have the capacity to support that goal are willing to buy into this vision. If they don’t, then we have a case problem; not a goal problem.

The second benefit is that by doing a statistical analysis first, the nonprofit leadership, including staff, board and volunteers, can proceed with confidence that its goal is attainable. Getting everyone bought into the goal at the outset drives momentum and helps eliminate fear and anxiety, the two most dreaded enemies of motivating campaign volunteers.

For a deeper dive of how this approach can be put to work for you, contact James Plourde at JP Fundraising Solutions for free 30 minute consultation.