Fundraising Planning

I hope you find these tips useful – and even curiously enjoyable.

1.  Over and over I hear about the increased giving through social media, through an organization’s website. But is this giving? Or are people just paying through your website. Were they actually solicited through direct mail or telephone or? “Giving” and “paying” are a distinction that makes a big difference. Read this:  The Agitator Communication Versus Transaction.

2.  Read Norma Cameron‘s A Fundraiser Bill of Rights, posted on SOFII. Thanks, SOFII for sharing this globally. Tom  and I talked about writing one but never got around to it. Wow. Norma! This is great!

3.  Have you seen Every Annoying Conference Call — if it were in real life.  This is sooooo funny and sooooo true and sooooo frustrating.

4.  Check out Pamela Grow’s e-news, February 27, 2014: The cult of donor-centricity. This is sooooo good!

5.  And finally, for today, check out social psychologist Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk: Your body language shapes who you are. Remember that old saying, “Fake it till you make it.” And check out Albert Mehrabian’s communications research:

• 7% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in the words that are spoken.
• 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
• 55% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in facial expression.

When I was the chief development officer at Trinity Repertory Company, 75 volunteers joined me to solicit 500 individual and corporate prospects every single year. Only 10 of those volunteers were board members. The rest were subscribers who loved the theatre.

This annual operating support/core program campaign ran from January through March. The campaign began with a kick-off, mini training, and selection of prospects.

Solicitors signed personalized letters requesting a meeting. And then off they went, those wonderful solicitors. They contacted their prospects personally. Mostly they had face-to-face meetings. Sometimes they solicited over the telephone. (Although I discouraged that, of course.)

The solicitors secured pledges and reported those pledges to the office. The office sent thank-you letters and reminder notices for pledge payment.

And we repeated this process every year that I worked there. Over and over. The first year, it was 10 prospects and 2 solicitors. And then it grew and grew.

Yes, sure…some people didn’t fulfill their commitments (the solicitors!) So I graciously took away the prospects and did them myself or assigned them to other solicitors.

I’m always startled when organizations – no matter the size – tell me they don’t do this every year. Why not? We all know that personally meeting and listening and talking with a donor – and then asking… is pretty much the best way to raise money.

Visit the Free Download Library on my website for sample materials. Check out Andrea Kihlstedt’s book Asking Styles. Visit CharityChannel Press to see all the great fundraising and soliciting books there. Amy Eisentein’s Major Gift Fundraising for Small Shops.  Read Jerry Panas’ book Asking. See Laura Fredricks’ book The Ask.

Please please please…. Do personal face-to-face solicitation every single year to support general operations. Good luck.

I get so frustrated with the term “annual fund.”

What does the term mean? Is it the once per year (how dumb was I) annual solicitation letter that I sent out 30 years ago when I was a development officer? And I even had letterhead that said Annual Fund?

What was I thinking? Did I actually think that someone would be emotionally touched by that term?

Everyone I know tells me that the “annual fund” is the annual letter sent out to everyone for annual operating support. Well… We should all know by know that for the direct mail segment of our donor/prospect base — we should be sending them different themed letters multiple times per year. Even if they responded to a previous solicitation. And why do we do that? Because if they love us enough, they give again. Not to the “annual fund.” But to the sad little kitty who needs a home. And the happy kitty who got home. And for kitty classes to help them develop their family skills so we can find them a kitty family.

And what is the annual fund? It’s everything that the organization does – every solicitation strategy – for the 12 month fiscal year…. To support annual operations / core program support. So that is what the annual fund is. Multiple direct mail letters with different themes spread over the fiscal year going to the direct mail segment. Personal face-to-face solicitation for gifts that support core program support and operations for the fiscal year. The fundraising special event you do each year for annual operating support and core programs.

All that is the annual fund. Not some letter! Please please please.

Next blog is about personal face-to-face major gift solicitation for annual operations/core program.

Imagine me humming Barbara Streisand’s version of the song.

I’ve told you before how much I love teaching in the  Masters Program in Philanthropy and Development at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. Okay. Sure, dorm living isn’t totally great. But honestly – even dorm living has its good moments!

The SMU experience is for those who want to work with a team, your very own cohort. If you want an intense exploration of philanthropy and the NGO sector – and, actually, life and your own philosophies.

Check out these videos that we watched and talked about in the first course, “Frameworks for Thinking and Working.” You can apply these to your management, your fundraising, your leadership…and your life, too.

• Brené Brown’s TedTalk about vulnerability
• The Cleveland Clinic: Empathy – The Human Connection to Patient Care
• RSA Animate: The Empathic Civilisation by Jeremy Rifkin

Maybe you want all your agency’s staff to watch these together and talk. For sure, let’s have the fundraising staff watch and talk about.

Think like a fundraiser, feel like a donor. Very nice blog at Hillborn. Canadian publisher and e-news and blogs and… The author of “think/feel” is Jose van Herpt at Good Works. And she is co-author of a great book on bequests, Iceberg Philanthropy.

For ever-reliable nagging (absolutely necessary!) about measures (key performance indicators/KPIs), read www.theagitator.net. I really like this one at this moment. Lifetime value (LTV) anyone? I sure home so.

For small development offices, read The Grow Report. Good tips. Good resources. Pam knows what you’re trying to do. And here’s a reference from Pam, “a beautiful, thought-provoking piece from Richard Perry of Veritus. Listen to me please.” And Pam asks us, are you listening to your donors? Really?

Read this interesting article by Mark Hierlihy, CauseMark, about selfies. I’m so bored with the focus on self. But when Mark talks about capturing special moments…and the possible use for NGOs…pretty cool!

I’ve said it before – and I say it again, “Social media (and technology) are not the answer to all life’s problems.” In fact, technology and social media are getting to be a problem. Have you seen the “get off the phone video“?

Here’s an interesting question: Do you see your donor services staff as a cost center or profit center? Check out the conversation at The Agitator, 01-13/14.

“What’s attention worth?” asks Seth Godin in his 12-17-13 blog. “Marketers that fail are often impatient and selfish.” (Think fundraisers!) “Impatient, because they won’t invest in the long-term job of earning familiarity, permission and trust.” (Think fundraisers and fundraising and your boss and boards that want money right now! Hurry up!)

Earn! Earn familiarity. Don’t pursue visibility, hoping that “everyone will know you and then send money.”

Earn permission and trust. Remember how important trust is to loyalty. Just read Adrian Sargeant‘s work. Read The Agitator. Read Jeff Brooks and Tom Ahern. Read all the great people.

Now think about Seth’s word “selfish.” So many nonprofit organizations and fundraisers and fundraising programs are selfish. Focused on the organization and all the good the organization does. Forgetting (or on purpose ignoring?) donor centrism and customer centrism.

Wow. Basic flaw. It’s not about you and your organization and your amazing staff. It’s all about the wonderful donor whose investment allows you and your organization and your amazing staff to do stuff. And without those donors, you won’t be able to do much.

You can’t demand attention, as Seth so clearly notes. It’s not about you. It’s about the person who is paying attention. “We call it ‘paying attention’ for a reason. It’s worth quite a bit, and ought to be cherished.”

That’s good fundraising.

I couldn’t resist an extra blog this week – with resources. Yes, indeed.

Check out Seth Godin’s BRILLIANT blog about email and permission marketing. While you’re at it, read Seth’s book Permission Marketing. And just stop these e-mail blasts right now – until you can get it together well.

And speaking of Seth, read his blog of 11-29-13. Read this to your boss and board! It’s all about stories. And not your organization’s stories…the donor’s stories.

I’m late to the party, but have you seen the MARVELOUS info graphic “The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector,” developed by the Master of Public Administration at the University of San Francisco? Oh my heavens. You’ll also find this info graphic at Bloomerang, which I hope you’re checking out, too.

Listen to my interview at the AFP Toronto Congress, November 2013. I’m talking about donors and loyalty and fundraising. Maybe your boss and board should listen to this? You can also see this video on my website.

Have you been visiting SOFII? The best of the best…examples from all over the world. New stuff includes Oxfam Canada’s outreach to donors. Pamela Grow’s 12 days of Christmas. The latest list of fundraising must-reads. Visit my reading room about boards and governance. How about top tips from leading fundraisers? Maybe a nice way to end the year and start the new one.

So that’s it. Enough resources. Enjoy. Learn. Share.

Check out Charles Green‘s The Trust Matters Blog. Read this wonderful book, The Trusted Advisor, co-authored by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford.

I really liked a few of the “Blog Picks o’ the Week” in The Trust Matters Blog. For example:

• Why Experts Are Bad at Sales
• By the way, check out Green’s Trust Equation. I use this sometimes when I’m presenting. TQ = C + R + I divided by S. Sorry I couldn’t make this look like a real equation. Just visit the explanation – and the good visual! – at the Trusted Advisor blog.

And I really liked Think Like a Buddhist, Sell Like a Rock Star. Read about these statements:

• People like to buy, they just don’t like to be sold. For example, donors do want to give. 
• People buy what they need from those who understand what they want. For example, operate as a donor-centered organization!
• People buy with their hearts, and justify it with their minds. Emotions anyone? Neuroscience tells us that emotions are the key decision makers. Is that how your organization writes? Is that how your organization designs its development program?

I hope lots of this sounds familiar. This is your nonprofit’s work…. Selling tickets to your performance. Selling enrollment to your school. Engaging your customers. And who are your customers? Your clients and your volunteers and your donors and…

Maybe you want to subscribe to Charles Green’s blog. For sure, you want to pay lots of attention to trust. Adrian Sargeant tells us that is one of the key drivers of donor loyalty.

Colleague Pam Grow forwarded a question to me from one of her subscribers. That inspired me to write about giving societies. So here goes:

Giving societies or gift clubs or levels of donor recognition with benefits — no matter what you call them — they’ve been around forever. I imagine that lots of organizations find these useful. I suspect that it appears as if these societies / clubs work.

But – and this is a pretty big but – like so much of fundraising, we have only observation but no real research. No extensive, quality-controlled academic research to prove to us that whatever is happening is happening because of the gift club/society/etc. I remember asking fundraising research guru Adrian Sargeant about giving clubs and research. His response was, essentially, “Ah yes, another thing that the fundraising profession has not actually researched.”

So here’s what we intend these societies/clubs to do: Retain donors. Help donors move up the ladder of giving. Of course, the question is, does a society or club help do that? Or did something else produce that result?

What we do know – from research – is this: Loyalty is the holy grail of fundraising. (Thanks to the the Agitator for that glorious statement.) Loyalty is the holy grail of any business. It costs an estimated 10 times more to acquire a new donor than it does to keep a current donor. Loyal donors do, when treated well, often increase their investment. And loyal donors (even giving $50/year for 10 years) are the best bequest prospects.

Research tells us that that loyalty depends upon operating as a donor-centered organization and nurturing relationships with those donors. Read Adrian Sargeant’s research (Building Donor Loyalty, authored by Sargeant and Elaine Jay) to learn about why donors remain loyal. See also, Fundraising Principles and Practice by Sargeant, Shang, and Associates to learn about donor psychology. Read Keep Your Donors by Joyaux and Ahern to learn all about nurturing relationships with donors through donor-centered communications and cultivation, which I now call extraordinary experiences. Check out Pam Grow’s Donor Retention Project, which includes 12 action guides, 12 interviews on CDs, and more – from experts in donor retention.

Just to whet your appetite, here’s a bit of what Adrian’s research tells us about what builds donor loyalty.

• Donors are aware of consequences, e.g., believing that “someone might be hurt if I don’t give.”
• Your service quality (to the donor) is good, e.g., anticipating questions, acknowledging gifts promptly, easy to work with, focused on the customer (donors are the customer!)
• Donors are learning, e.g., you’re taking them on a journey … like through extraordinary experiences that help them feel your impact.
• And there are more reasons and strategies to build donor loyalty. It’s your job to learn this stuff. Read the resources mentioned above.

If you don’t operate as a donor-centered organization, you will lose donors. If you lose donors, you won’t have any loyal donors who will increase their gifts over the years. If your don’t have an intentional relationship-building program, you will lose donors – and donors will not increase their gifts.

Nurturing relationships (donor-centered communications and extraordinary experiences) is how we show and tell donors their impact. Nurturing relationships is how we produce the 4 bullets above – and everything else that the research shows.

Some relationship-building strategies must apply to all donors, e.g., the donor newsletter that tells donors what a great impact they have. If you don’t tell the donor of $25 how important she is and what impact she and her gift produced, why would she ever give again or give more? If you don’t regularly keep in touch with stories and offer experiences to “live” your mission and donor impact, how will the donor feel and engage more?

Some relationship-building strategies should focus on loyalty. For example, when you recognize donors (by name) on your website, in your newsletter and annual report – wherever – use a special icon to designate loyal donors. Loyal donors are very important. Remember, loyalty is the holy grail. In fact, I might even say that loyal donors are more important than Ms. Big Bucks. I just might say that.

Obviously, you have to balance workload and resources. Blah blah blah. You figure it out.

Now back to gift societies / clubs specifically: I don’t like them. Yes, I might choose to recognize donors in “categories” by gift amounts. But I don’t attach benefits. I want maximum flexibility. I want to ask those loyal $25 donors to the insider update along with a bunch of donors who gave $1,000 and a $10,000 donor, too. I invent relationship-building strategies and invite various donors at different times for different reasons.

I don’t do big monstrous parties. I nurture some relationships one-on-one. Some some in small groups of 5 or 10 or 20. And maybe some annual appreciation event. I invite a few people over for coffee and tea and an insider update about how we’re spending their money. You’ll find tons of ideas for relationship-building … a big long list (with no gift societies) … in my book Keep Your Donors. See more ideas in my blogs. See other ideas in my NPQ web column, Unraveling Development.

Here’s the bottom line: If you think some gift club is a quick and easy way to offer a few benefits to get donors to stick around and increase their gifts — then gift societies won’t work. If you think of your donors as ATM machines that finance your mission — then nothing will work to retain donors and increase their gifts.

This is about actually caring about your donors. This is about helping your donors fulfill their aspirations. First get your head on straight about donor centrism and donor loyalty. Then decide if gift societies is a useful strategy.

You might remember the blog below, from December 2012. A brief conversation between Tom and Simone. Well, Tom just sent out an e-news that explores this issue a bit more. Read my blog below. Then read Tom’s newest e-news, “Major gifts or more gifts: Which is better?”

Remember the Pareto Principle, 80/20? And now we know that, at least in a capital campaign, the rule is more like 90% of gifts come from 10% of donors. I want more love than that. I want more donors. I want that broader base. I want that broad base of donors to demonstrate community support. I want a broader base because I believe that philanthropy can (and should) be a democratizing act. I want that broader base to be so loyal that they will give bequests. Loyalty from many. That’s what I want.

So read the old blog below. And read Tom’s e-news. Think about it.

“The rich are irrelevant,” said Tom back in December 2012. And so started a very interesting conversation.

Tom is my life partner and a donor communications expert. We often talk about our shared experience in philanthropy and fund development. Our respective work takes us down similar paths, often diverges, and then reconnects. This philanthropy thing is our life’s work – each of us along and both of us together.

“The rich are irrelevant,” Tom repeats. “You and I are not interested in the rich people. We aren’t interested in the money and the transaction.”

“Instead,” Tom continued, “you and I see giving as the chance to balance the scales of selfishness. Of course, all humans are selfish. Our own biology demands self-care, self-protection, fighting for our own safety and our own way of living. And if history isn’t enough to show us this selfish truth, neuroscience now documents our selfishness.”

Tom continues. “Of course, human beings are insightful enough to know that we’re built for selfishness. Neuroscience proves this, too. So we try to balance the scales of selfish and unselfish.”

Think about it. People balance the scales of selfishness by giving. Giving friendship. Giving advice. Offering time. Investing money.

Philanthropy, voluntary action for the common good, is one way we balance the scales…selfish…unselfish.

But fundraising gets off track. Too often, fundraising focuses on money. Fundraisers and their organizations (too often desperately) search for money…and the bigger the bucks the better.

The bigger the bucks the better. “Fundraisers and their organizations keep searching for the top of the pyramid,” Tom said. “They don’t spend enough time moving the base up.”

Ah yes, the pyramid – and its top. The pinnacle of the pyramid where so few donors reside. And fundraisers focus on the top. Fundraisers and their organizations keep looking up. Too few fundraisers pay too little attention to too few people.

The fundraising pyramid focuses on the rich. The pyramid devalues people. Ascending the pyramid forces fundraising into a particularly narrow focus, big bucks – and only the rich have those big bucks.

There’s an irony in the pyramid…that the people at the top are special and better. The pyramid gives off a certain echo…royalty, for example. Slaves built the Egyptian pyramids for the pharaohs. Talk about “better” and “special!”

Why do we call it a “pyramid?” At least we could call it a “triangle.” There’s no negative echo with a triangle. Maybe we could somehow and somewhat avoid what I call “philanthropy’s moral dilemma” if we called it a triangle.

But more importantly, aiming for the top of the pyramid – or even the triangle – is so limiting. How about we re-conceptualize? Visualize the triangle with a big bulge somewhere in the middle, above the base and below the pointy top. Maybe the bulge looks like cloud cover surrounding the middle of the mountain. Maybe the bulge is like a big donut pushed down over the top, settling around the middle section of the triangle.

“A bequest is usually the largest gift a person ever makes,” noted Tom. And fundraisers know that loyal donors (not necessarily rich ones!) make bequests.

What if fundraising focused on rejecting the pyramid, embracing the triangle, and building the bulge?

What if fundraisers spent more time and energy and expertise and experience moving the base of the triangle into a big bulge right in the middle? Sure…if you can get to the top, go for it. Embrace the rich. Just don’t focus on them.

What a luxury for Tom and me. We can encourage our clients – and those who read our writings and attend our workshops – to transition from pyramid to triangle. We can promote a big bulge.

Yes, the rich can be irrelevant.

P.S. Watch for Tom’s e-news. I suspect he’ll be talking about our talk, too.