The Power of One Big Gift

What can one big gift do for you?

Let me talk a little about City Club’s history. Last year was the first time the organization tried raising money, and its fundraising efforts brought in a couple thousand dollars. Not a lot, but a good first step.

This year, board giving was vitally important, and I approached it along the same lines as recommended in the book, with the exception that the board president took the lead and made the asks. I have a wonderful board president and she was happy to take this on.

Early on in the process, one board member pledged $1,000. This was a big gift for us. In fact, it was twice as big as the largest gift we’d gotten the year before. What was its effect?

After another few board members gave, our President was able to send an email to the board and write that with “less than half” of the board giving, we’d already raised $1800. It doesn’t take much to do the math there. This was a really good way to signal that the board should be stretching without having to really spell it out. We did get some small gifts (only a handful below $100) but many gave more than that. In the end, the board of 17 gave on average $219 each. That worked out to be more than we’d made in all of the annual efforts from the year before.

Best of all, we invited members in the annual appeal to “match the board” and made $219 the target.

Guess how much the first gift that came in was for? $219.

This will have implications in the future, too, because we’ll be growing from a strong point. “Last year the board raised $3,700. Let’s aim for $5,000 this year.” And we can tell new prospective members that the board on average gave $219. Our expectations will be high going in.

What would things have looked like if that early gift had been say $200 instead of $1000. Our average would be at least $50 lower per person. Fewer board members might have given as much as they did. Our target ask to “match the board” would have been smaller. And next year we would be saying “we raised just under $3,000, let’s aim for 4 this year.”

One big gift, and its effects will be felt for years to come.

Keep that in mind as you’re soliciting. One big gift (for you), properly leveraged, can have a long-last impact for your organization down the line.

Posted at 10:51 am, December 8, 2009

New letter uploaded!

I’ve uploaded the letter I wrote for City Club into the docs section for any purchasers of the book who want to another example of a solicitation letter. I’ll post more on the effort later.

I’m also consulting with a local “basic needs” non-profit to improve their fundraising. They’re doing some great things and have big plans. I hope to blog more about that later, and might get permission to post some of our efforts.

Sorry it’s been a couple weeks! I’ll catch up with more soon.

Posted at 1:29 pm, December 7, 2009

Writing fundraising Letters

The Artful Manager, a blog for arts directors, has a good post up dealing with the curse of clinical, dry fundraising letters.

“After running more than 2000 fundraising letters through a text analysis system, he found a frightening consistency with a similar, smaller study, which discovered that fundraising discourse:

• failed to connect with and involve readers on a personal and emotional level, and
• failed to tell stories about real people whom readers might actually care about

Instead, messages were clinical, detached, evidence-based, and academic.”

It’s all right to be evidence-based (a bit) in your letter. But the meat of it has got to be an emotional connection between the donor and the cause — the evidence is to show why you are best equipped to connect them with that cause.

Posted at 12:42 pm, November 15, 2009

Open your books

Your books are not a secret.

First and foremost, you report annually to the IRS with your 990 form (if your budget is greater than $25,000). The non-profit GuideStar.org makes searching those forms easy for donors. Whether you know it or not, it only takes a couple minutes for donors to find recent information.

But why force them to go scouting? You want to instill confidence in your donors with how you spend their gift to you. Before annual reports became obsessively bloated, they used to actually, you know … report.

As managing director of the Grand Cinema we didn’t publish a formal annual report, so instead we gave very high-level reports to our members at the Annual Meeting: the big areas of profit (movies, concessions, memberships, donations, etc), the big areas of expenses (cost of movies and concessions, staff, building costs, marketing, etc), plus a very general balance sheet. A lot of non-profits are wary to give this information out, but keep in mind that any donor can find it out anyway. By sending the data out yourself, you can include with it a letter from your treasurer or board president explaining the numbers.

Most donors could not care less. But for those who do, this is an important way to signal that you are a good steward of their money.

Posted at 11:12 am, November 9, 2009

Is talking abut planned giving the same as talking about death?

A lot of people, me included, are scared to bring up “planned giving” with a donor. We’re afraid it’s going to sound something like this:

“Hey, Mrs. Smith, you seem old and frail and ready to die. Would you like to deprive your children of their inheritance by changing your will to give money to us?”

We are afraid to talk about death, and we are afraid to bring up planned giving because of it.

In The Little Book of Gold I suggest making passive requests — a PS at the end of a fundraising letter mentioning that your non-profit can accept planned gifts, or perhaps something on the website, etc. The reason for this is that if you’re just starting out with the professional fundraising system I describe in the book, you probably won’t be ready to identity the prospects for planned giving.

But you should still be prepared to talk to someone who calls you about planned giving or if you find yourself in a position where the opportunity is just too good to pass up.

Here are some quick suggestions:

• Think in terms of assets. A planned gift is usually a gift of assets — like CDs, stock, bonds, or a pile of cash. It’s not usually a gift that comes out of someone’s income. So again, when you’re talking to someone about a planned gift, it’s a question of whether they would like to transfer a portion of their assets to you. The estate planning comes in to the equation only if they want to transfer the assets after their passing. You’re not necessarily talking about death.
• To follow up on that point: there are a lot of ways to give assets before death. Did you know, for example, that someone could give you $2 million and collect an annuity from it that provides them a healthy income to them while you get to keep interest above and beyond that? You don’t need to know all the details about this, since it’s going to have to be worked out by a lawyer, tax-advisor, and maybe estate planner, but you should know that these opportunities exist and can actually be very advantageous to the donor (in terms of taxes).
• Practice. Here’s an assignment. Talk to your spouse and your parents about end-of-life issues. First, it’s a good idea to do anyway. And second, you’ll get good practice. Of course, talking to a donor is a different thing, but if the subject of an estate gift comes up, you at least won’t be going in having never done it before.
• Practice again with the board. If you have money for a workshop, invite someone to come to the board and talk about planned giving and how the board should deal with any friends or donors they might encounter. This has the added bonus of having the board themselves consider their own gifts.
• Go to a workshop. Large non-profits often have workshops for their own donors about estate planning. If you’re not in the target age (or wealth) demographic, you may not hear about these, but if you can get to one, you’ll hear how an estate planner or tax advisor talks to people about this topic. You’ll learn a lot about planned giving and also hear some techniques for talking about “scary” subjects openly.

Posted at 1:42 pm, November 6, 2009

Beware the donor wall

One of the main reasons I wrote The Little Book of Gold was because I see too many small non-profits copying the largest institutions (hospitals, museums, large churches, schools, and universities) on all the wrong things. Yes you should emulate them on a professional, sustainable approach to fundraising. But some things work for them that are much less likely to work for you.

The big one here: major fundraising events like auctions. These make more sense for a prep school or a hospital than they do to a cash-strapped, labor-strapped small non-profit.

The other one: donor walls.

Beware donor walls.

Yes, a capital campaign for a new building should always recognize the donors who helped to build it. If a hospital builds a new wing for tens of millions of dollars, a beautiful donor wall that costs them $50,000 is a drop in the bucket (and good stewardship of the donors).

You, on the other hand, probably haven’t run a multi-million dollar capital campaign. If you’re taking money out of your regular annual fundraising for a donor wall, you might be spending a lot more money than you need to.

“But!” You say, “Every year we recognize our biggest donors on a plaque inside the lobby. If we didn’t do it, we’d upset our donors who like to see their name there.”

If you really feel like you can’t ditch the wall, here’s some helpful tips.

• Consider separate pieces for each name. It is almost inevitable that you will misspell a name, or list someone in the wrong place. If you spent a thousand dollars on a plaque that has everyone’s name on it, one error will cost you another thousand to fix the plaque. But if you had a frame that contained a field of small plaques, an error will only cost you a small fraction of the cost. In addition, if you change the wall annually, you won’t have to reprint your biggest donor’s names every year and your annual costs will go down.
• Consider going digital. A flat-screen TV: $195. A USB drive with a rotating powerpoint presentation: $8. Fixing mistakes on a computer at zero cost: priceless. I joke, but it’s a relatively small one-time cost and you can change your donor recognition in an instant to recognize a new donor or fix an error.
• Don’t give away the farm for annual fundraising. If you’re a small theater and want to recognize donors by putting their names on the armrests of seats, you should only do this for one-time fundraising costs, usually as part of a capital campaign. The reason is that donors are really drawn to these options, and if you give away your seats one year, you’re going to have a hard time the next year when you’re trying to raise money without giving away little plaques on armrests. Or you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot when you need to raise big money, but can’t use your seats because they’re already filled.

Donor walls can be effective tools for stewarding donors. But be practical; give yourself outs in case you make errors and don’t give too much away.

Posted at 11:35 am, November 4, 2009

How NOT to mix fundraising and your mission

The best way to get donors excited about you is to get them as close to the mission as they can get. So instead of “donor cultivation” events, invite them to things you already do.

If you are a community theater, invite your biggest donors (or those you’re targeting to move up) to the cast party. They’ll love it, and if it’s not more than a handful, the cast and crew probably wouldn’t mind either. If you protect a river or lake, get them out on the river or lake on a beautiful summer day and show them what you’re protecting. If your team dons SCUBA gear to check out how a marine habitat is doing, then invite a donor to go with you! (Obvious note: SCUBA diving should not be taken lightly. But even just the offer alone could excite a donor so much that they’ll go get certified. Or maybe they’ll just love you for inviting them.)

If you provide a direct service service, like a shelter for the homeless, this gets a little trickier. Donors are often donors because they don’t want to volunteer “on the front lines” (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that). But there are still ways where you can show them what you do in a setting where they feel comfortable.

These are all really great ways to mix fundraising with the active pursuit of your mission.

But DON’T turn your program people into fundraisers. I have had a program coordinator for a non-profit tell me that he was responsible for raising half his salary. This is an awful place to put your staff. First, they probably don’t know the right way to raise money. Second, they’ll be walking all over your donors or your foundations with way too much urgency and desperation. And third, they’ll be miserable.

He had been allotted 20% of his time for fundraising. Think what he could have done with that time if it had just been phrased a little differently.

“Jack,” his Executive Director says, [we’ll pretend this program worker’s name is Jack and we’ll pretend he works for a land trust], “our budget has gotten really tight and our annual fund is down. I don’t want to lose any ground during this recession and if possible I’d love to actually gain a bit. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to need you to carve out 8 hours a week to help me with fundraising. I’ve scheduled tours of the riverfront property with our donors. I’d like you there to answer all their questions and to tell them why this particular bend in the river is so important to salmon. I could do it, but I want to show off how much you love this place and how beautiful it can be through the eyes of an experienced naturalist. You don’t need to worry about asking for money, that’s for me and the board to do. You just need to help me tell them what we do.”

Of course, there is a lot more Jack could do that would help his ED raise money. He could start Twittering or blogging about his work and his passion for it. He could give a class on salmon spawning to interested donors. He could do basic data entry one day a week to pitch in. His ED should know his strengths and know where he could best be used to help the fundraising effort.

But he shouldn’t be given “the responsibility to raise half his salary.” It’s just bad mojo. It disrespects Jack, his work will suffer, but the biggest long-term problem is that it disrespects the donors, who are suddenly being asked for money too soon, from the wrong person, at the wrong time, or repeatedly, and just get tired of your non-profit all together.

Posted at 12:18 pm, October 28, 2009

Argh. eTapestry drives me nuts.

I’ve used eTapestry as my donor database at two different organizations. It is, so far as I can tell, the best option for small non-profits. It is far more sophisticated than using Access and Excel. Yes, I have an Excel donor database available for purchasers of The Little Book of Gold, but honestly if you can afford to pay for a service like eTapestry, it’s far more powerful. If you have used Excel for a database, you know that while it may start out as being useful, after time it gets harder and harder to manage simply because of the amount of data you’re trying to store.

But for all its strengths, eTapestry still drives me crazy. It’s got so many bells and whistles it’s hard to do the very simple things I want to do with it. It’s got what I would call “feature clutter.” And it happens to often in software and web applications like this.

I’ll tell you right now: I want to launch my own service. Something with the 20 most common features non-profits need. Easy, friendly, and available to people to use without having to take a long training course (it’s hard to use eTapestry without taking one of their courses).

If I ever get it going, I’ll be sure to let you all know. Because it’s something that the non-profit world desperately needs. It would certainly make my own life infinitely easier.

Posted at 4:52 pm, October 25, 2009

Who should ask the board for money?

In my book, I suggest that it should be the Executive Director that begins the ask process of the Board, and I give detailed advice on how to go about it. Technically, I know that this is not how it should be, however.

Boards really should be asked by their peers. The problem is, this can delay you or possibly even derail you entirely. And when it comes to fundraising, that shouldn’t be acceptable. In my experience, many small and very small non-profits are just not ready to handle this, and so I recommend doing it yourself the first year.

Fortunately, at City Club, I have a really wonderful board president. Since September, she and I have met once a week for coffee. We keep our meetings to an hour, knowing that we can cover anything we don’t get to the next week.

Early on I talked to her about the need for 100% board giving. Fundraising was fairly new to her, so I felt like I had a good opportunity to tell her my vision for it, as laid out in the book. (I actually gave her a copy too, so she would see where I was coming from.)

She introduced the topic at our Tuesday board meeting, and I think it went really well. We’ve already gotten a couple gifts and they are all larger than I would have expected, thanks to her ability to frame it appropriately. We didn’t ask for a number, but instead asked for a gift that would place City Club as one of a board member’s largest philanthropic gifts. I think it was well-suited to our board culture.

Throughout the next month she’ll be calling board members and following up with them.

I hope that we will be able to get to 100% by our next meeting.

Posted at 4:02 pm, October 9, 2009

You’ve got to be passionate about what you do

I just added an interview with The News Tribune to the sidebar. I’m very proud of how it turned out.

I always get nervous when I talk to the press and my brain starts panicking at every question. If I say I want to get younger members, does that offend older members? What if I’m misquoted? What if, what if, what if … I’m always glad to see the article, just so I can stop worrying. I believe that my passion for Tacoma and City Club really come through.

Which reminds of something vitally important about fundraising, though, and it’s something I only touch on in my book.

You’ve got to love what you do. And if you don’t, you’re doing a disservice to your mission and your organization.

When I was editor of my high school newspaper, I was so devoted and dedicated to that paper I was a force that pulled many others along with me. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging about something that happened years and years ago (though I kind of am, I suppose). But I learned a lesson there: people respond to real passion.

I re-learned that at the Grand. I love movies. And so running a movie theater was a dream job. So many of our programs started with me saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if … ?” Of course, there are a million steps after that question, including running ideas through sound financial channels and not surprising the board. Many ideas died along the way. But the passion I had for them, and the passion I carried for the ones that did get through, was very clear to see.

Passion will get the attention of your donors. I guarantee it. If you are passionate about your mission and trying new things, they will take note. They will take note and remember it when the request for the annual fund comes through? They will take note of it when they show up for a special event you arranged on the fly.

Think critically, be creative, and have fun. If you’re having fun, donors will see that. Everyone will see that, really. It will help transform your organization.

Posted at 4:30 pm, September 10, 2009

Raising money for City Club of Tacoma

I find myself in the unusual place of having to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.

When I wrote The Little Book of Gold, I was calling back to my experience managing the Grand Cinema, as well as many other non-profits. It was an attempt to understand just what I had learned and frame it in a systematic sort of way. In that respect, the book was just as much for myself as for anyone.

But now, I’m beginning the “fundraising season” at City Club of Tacoma and I find myself in a very similar place as when I started at the Grand: I’m the director of a organization with a long history of quality programming but virtually zero fundraising. The difference is I’ve written a book about fundraising between those two experiences.

So this time I won’t be casting about as I did before. I have the chance to document my experience as I go. This will probably be most helpful to those who have read the book, since I’ll be referring to the book fairly often. So please do consider purchasing it!

But regardless of that, this will be an honest look at our fundraising efforts — setbacks, successes, and everything in between.

First up: board giving.

Posted at 1:54 pm, September 4, 2009