Posted by Gayle Gifford on November 23, 2011 in 100 Things We've Learned, Tidbits
Archive for the ‘100 Things We've Learned’ Category
A case study: lessons from small organizations in trying to share back office
Posted by Gayle Gifford on June 7, 2010 in 100 Things We've Learned, Fundraising, Nonprofit Highlights
Just released is the case study from the Infrastructure Collaborative of the Land and Water Partnership. You can find it in the articles section of our website: Sharing back office at small nonprofits: A case study of conservation organizations in RI.
The Infrastructure Collaborative was a collaboration of grassroots land trusts, watershed organizations and technical assistance providers in Rhode Island that started in 2004 and is just wrapping up. With support from Third Sector New England, they formed a learning network to consider how they might pilot a model for sharing services that could improve the administrative and fundraising capacity of small conservation nonprofits.
Throughout, all of the members learned a lot about the challenges of building capacity in very small nonprofits. Rather than crafting a typical final report to a foundation, they decided instead to share their experiences in the form of a case study so that others could benefit as well.
Some of the lessons learned:
- In the smallest organizations, capacity is in individuals and their institutional knowledge, not organizational systems. When inevitable transitions occur, built capacity can quickly be lost. Attention must be paid to building sustained people capacity somewhere in the network. Transitions often occur at a rate that prohibits capacity building.
- Small groups need either a large organization with significant built capacity already on their team or they will need a much larger cash investment to buy what they lack.
- Small nonprofits live in the moment, focused on the urgent needs that caused their formation. Rarely planning for financial or operational sustainability, at the extremes they can be alternately overwhelmed by or overlook even key short-term administrative tasks.
- Leadership matters. They never would have moved forward without the steady guiding hand of their two lead organizers. At the same time, leadership changes among the members shifted organizational commitments.
- Hiring staff and vendors is always risky, even with very diligent screening. A bad selection can thwart the best plans, undermine confidence in a project and create fatal delays in implementation.
- Research and development investments need to be much bigger to allow experimentation, buy better solutions, and include enough cash to fail, learn and recover. The investment needed for small nonprofits to launch back office services was much larger than they anticipated.
I think you’ll find their experience very interesting.
(I’ve been participating in the project on and off since its inception. In the early years, I was a volunteer representing the RI chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, which was interested in improving the way it supported very small organizations. Later, I provided some training and technical assistance in fundraising and helped them reflect on what they learned — including helping them draft this final summary of their work.)
7 ways fundraising can be a powerful program tool
Posted by Gayle Gifford on March 18, 2010 in 100 Things We've Learned, Fundraising
The idea that raising money is a great way to strengthen your programs isn’t often discussed in nonprofit circles.
Yes, yes, we’d all agree that your programs are funded by the money you raise and thus are strengthened in that way.
But that’s not what I’m describing. I’m making a case that the fundraising process itself, in particular, donor relationship building, is program building, and not just the means to an ends.
7 Ways Fundraising Can Strengthen Your Programming
- You get out the door and talk to your constituents — the best way to get feedback on the issues and concerns that matter to them.
- You see the real life, real people impact of your work.
- You can educate your constituents — and key influencers – about the importance of your issues and your solutions.
- You can build long-term, good faith relationships that help you weather short-term program storms.
- You create powerful allies and an ready constituency for your public policy reform.
- Over and over, you are forced to confront the quality, design and impact of your programs.
- You continuously test your relevance to your community.
Here’s an example:
When I was development director at a regional environmental organization, my Executive Director and I set out to meet as many of our business donors as we could. Among our donors were many small businesses who gave $50-$250 annually.
This wasn’t surprising as the organization had successfully run a classic annual corporate giving campaign for many years (campaign chair, captains, teams, etc). As both of us were new in our positions, we were eager to meet these donors.
Many were manufacturers, including metal platers, as our region had historically been a big producer of costume jewelry. Metal platers had historically been notorious water polluters. Our organization had aggressively pushed for the toughest standards for industrial pretreatment to force these manufacturers to remove these metals and other toxins from their water discharges into our rivers and Bay.
(Aside: For those of you who get discouraged at the impact you are having, this has been one of the great success stories of environmental regulation. From 1981 to 2008, discharge of toxic metals and cyanide into the two main sewer systems had declined by 97%.”)
But at the time that we were visiting these manufacturers, the battles over industrial pretreatment were still fresh. Cautiously they let us into their plants and shared their stories with us.
The two of us walked many a shop floor and looked at a lot of industrial pretreatment. What we found were business owners who loved the Bay as much as any environmentalist. They were boaters and swimmers and fishing enthusiasts who also loved our state. That’s why they contributed to our organization. While they didn’t always like the positions we took, most of these owners were working very hard to comply with environmental regulations. They were proud to show us their newly installed pretreatment systems and their continuing experiments to “be green” (long before that was a recognized business strategy).
What we also learned was that this wasn’t simple. Too often, as these business owners and their environmental compliance officers reported, the regulations that were supposed to push them along their path were holding them back. Promising innovations weren’t allowed. By complying with one set of regulations they often found themselves wading into a different quagmire with more onerous regulations and hugely costly paperwork.
After dozens of these conversations, my Executive Director emerged with a new perspective on the unintended local impact of what appeared to be well-crafted law and regulations. As a result of his knowledge, Carol Browner, the new Director of the Environmental Protection Agency, invited him to serve on the metal-finishing subcommittee of her aptly named “Common Sense Initiative,” a national project designed to cut paperwork and simplify environmental regulations at the same time advancing environmental protection and fostering industry innovation.
All of which started with our simple goal of wanting to get to know our donors a little bit better.
(By the way, many increased their gifts into the $500-$2,500 range. At least two of the manufacturers became major financial supporters of the organization, giving over $10,000 annually).
How we got the grant – Part II
Posted by Gayle Gifford on February 10, 2010 in 100 Things We've Learned, Fundraising
In How we got the grant – Part I, I started telling you the story of how one organization overcame a long history of rejections to finally receive a grant from a very desired funder.
To quickly summarize:
The international child sponsorshop and development organization I worked for had tried and failed many times to receive a development education grant from the US Agency for International Development.
We learned that one of the reasons for this was that our donor-to-sponsored child and family communications were not taken seriously by the funder and undercut our credibility.
We initiated a process to explain the theory and practice behind our communications program to USAID. As a result of that, the door opened a crack.
Our first three lessons learned:
- Get involved with your colleagues
- Find out what funders think about you
- You have to have and discuss a theory of change
That’s were I left off. On to the next set of lessons.
So, I now had the task of designing a development education program that would win funding and achieve our desired mission impact.
Lesson Four: Build your new program on your existing assets
Because our experience showed that people-to-people contact helped North Americans care about other parts of the world, we knew our development education program could take advantage of our 50 year history of direct communications. Our office was rich with the stories, photos, drawings and reports from sponsored children, their families, our international staff and town or village leaders. Read More >>
How we got the grant. Part 1
Posted by Gayle Gifford on February 3, 2010 in 100 Things We've Learned, Fundraising
Back in the 80s, I was director of development and communications for the US affiliate of an international child sponsorship organization.
Keeping the advertising, invoicing, fundraising, and donor stewardship running was an expensive investment for an organization that relied primarily on monthly giving from tens of thousands of donors.
While that funding model was clearly our strength, it also lost us donors who determined which organization they chose to support solely on the basis of overhead ratios. Overhead costs were lower at colleague agencies that had lots of low-fundraising-cost government grants and commodities passing through their books.
(Note: Why overhead ratios tell only a tiny part of the story).
Which is one reason why we were interested in increasing our revenue from grants (in addition to the good work that we could do with more money.)
In particular, we had our eye on “development education” grants awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Those funds supported programs that taught US audiences about global issues, especially issues facing the world’s most poor and vulnerable people.
We also knew that those agencies that received USAID development education grants seemed to have a “more favored” status within the development community than those who didn’t. AID funding was like a seal of approval that our development education would be recognized by our peers.
Yes, we wanted to be in the “in crowd.” Being “in” often led to more media exposure, more opportunity for partnerships with our colleagues, and, ultimately, more donors and more funding to support our programs overseas.
But year after year (before I arrived), our proposals kept getting rejected. And we couldn’t understand why.
And to put the frosting on the cake, we kept hearing funders and our non-sponsorship colleagues advocate for personalizing international development to US citizens by sharing the stories of real people, families and communities overseas.
But but but… each and every day, we were sending very real and personalized stories about those very same communities and families to tens of thousands of donors in the US.
What were we doing wrong?
Lesson One: Get involved with your colleagues
Luckily, my boss was determined to shift the perception of our agency in the eyes of his international colleagues. So he became very active in the US international development community. He joined committees in strategic networks. He lobbied our international program staff to participate in the US as well. He brought onto our Board of Directors individuals with international development expertise and got them involved in those networks as well.
Through those activities, he also got to work with and come to know the staff in the development education division at USAID. And that’s how we learned what was wrong with us.
Lesson Two: Find out what funders think about you.
Without getting into too much detail, suffice it to say that child sponsorship organizations like ours — the ones that invested in active communications between donors here in the US and their sponsored families overseas — were not seen by many of their colleagues as serious international development organizations. Read More >>
Please spell the name right: #36 of 100 Things We’ve Learned
Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 4, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Communicating, Fundraising
Last week I received a very lovely recognition from an organization for which I have been a very active member for just over 20 years.
I was named a Partner in Philanthropy during our state National Philanthropy Day celebration. I was invited to the luncheon, had my photo and bio in the program, received a lovely pin, and was invited on stage with the other Partners who were being recognized that day by nonprofits they had served.
As I arrived at the check-in table, I received a name tag, pretty recognition pin, my table assignment and a recognition certificate in a folder.
When I opened the folder to view the certificate, my heart sank.
My name was misspelled.
While I tried to resist it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the gift I was being given had been selected for someone else. Like the time I opened a present anticipating something very romantic and found a rice cooker instead.
And this organization — I even served as its board president not that long ago.
I admit it. I’ve got a thing about my first name. I’ve never been particularly fond of it. The only thing that has redeemed my name for me is its spelling. So when I see Gayle mistakenly spelled Gail, I feel particularly rebuked. I can’t help it.
I also use my middle initial L. Routinely. And given the organization that was honoring me, an extra special touch would have been to include the ACFRE credential after my name.
But I’ll shake it off. (I did bring it to the organization’s attention that day. They promised to send me a new certificate. I’ll let you know when it arrives.)
Unfortunately, mine was not the only misspelled name that day. My co-honoree for the organization, who was also a table sponsor, saw her name misspelled as it was projected on the screen with other sponsors. And a dear departed colleague would be rolling his eyes to have seen his name misspelled on screen for the scholarship award given in his memory.
Accidents do happen. I’ve made them myself (it’s a plague to locate all the typos in these columns).
As a fledgling development director, I misspelled the last name of a board member in my first annual report (which had been proofed by others). The misspelling was also a pet peeve of this board member. Like me, he frequently saw his name misspelled. It was tiresome and maddening to him to have to re-educate each new staff member who might have occasion to spell his name.
I’ve worked hard to get names spelled correctly ever since.
So please take the extra time to spell it right. It really does matter to your supporters. We’re not always so forgiving.
Think you’ve communicated enough? Think again (#35 of 100 Things We’ve Learned)
Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 1, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Communicating
Providence started enforcing curbside recycling a few weeks ago.
The new rule is that you won’t get your trash picked up unless both of your recycling bins are on the curb when the trash trucks come by. (A blue one for glass, cans, and plastics and green for paper)
The city began promoting its new policy in September thinking it would give householders plenty of time to get ready before the November 2 start date. Public service announcements were sent to the media, the Mayor held a press conference, school kids were notified, and brochures were distributed to our homes.
Trash collectors even pasted an informational bumpersticker onto every city-issued big green trash barrel, figuring that had to get our attention when we hauled in the barrel at night.
The big day arrived and everyone should have been prepared – right?
Wrong.
Throughout the city, trash was left on the curb wherever there were no recycling bins. Officials reported that trash pickup went down by 63% — which should give you some idea of how many people ignored or weren’t aware of the new policy.
City Hall and City Councilors were flooded with calls from angry residents. A movement was started to reverse the policy (it wasn’t). Over 3,000 bins were sold in two days.
Residents were outraged! Why hadn’t they been told of the new policy?
It takes a lot of repetition to get a message through.
I was prepared for November 2nd. I knew about the city’s “no bin, no barrel” program. But then again, I read the local daily newspaper.
I also listen to my local public radio station, read most of my mail (or at least open the envelopes), and even take in the garbage can once in a while.
(Yes, some gender roles do die hard ).
But what probably made the biggest difference in my awareness?
I ALREADY RECYCLE!
You selectively pay attention to what you care about
As I’ve written earlier, we’ve been recycling for many years. We’ve faithfully sorted our household recyclables since we had access to curbside recycling.
As a colleague reminded me in a conversation a few weeks ago, I’m more likely to pay attention to news about the things that I’m interested in.
As I was already interested in curbside recycling, it wasn’t hard for my personal antenna to pick up the communications about the proposed policy change.
But as my fellow residents confirmed, householders who weren’t interested in recycling didn’t pay any attention to the City’s attempts to warn them, even when the notice was placed right under their noses where they couldn’t miss it.
So, what makes you think that you’ve done enough to communicate with your own constituents?
Whether you are trying to educate me about a community issue, hope to turn me out for a special event, or are trying to get me to renew my annual membership, don’t underestimate what it will take to get my attention.
If you think that you have sent too many communications, like the recycling program demonstrated, you might want to think your strategy through one more time.
Collaboration works when the whole is more than the parts (#34 of 100 Things We’ve Learned)
Posted by Gayle Gifford on November 25, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Effectiveness
In the national rush to accelerate nonprofit collaboration and consolidation, we shouldn’t lose sight of the goal.
At the end of the day, nonprofit collaborations, joint ventures, mergers, or whatever should produce a better result for their community than what any individual organization might achieve working alone.
A few benefits:
- Fiscal sponsorship enables a group to focus on the challenges or needs in its community — the reason it was started – without having to staff finance or payroll departments. In turn, the fiscal sponsor enables valuable mission-related programs to flourish while it puts its excess administrative capacity to better use and gains the additional revenue from the small fee it charges to provide these services.
- Each member of an advocacy coalition realizes the political power of a larger group, or benefits from working with more knowledgeable partners, or doesn’t need to repeat the mistakes their colleagues have made. And often the coalition itself becomes attractive to funders who might have been out of reach, leveraging new resources for its members to advance their missions.
- In the Chattanooga museums collaboration I wrote about in an earlier blog post, the smaller museums gained from the administrative support and the staff expertise of the largest among them. The staff of the largest museum which was providing shared services found their jobs more interesting. And all the museums and the community gained by creating a lively waterfront populated with thriving, well-managed cultural resources.
When collaboration achieves its goal, the whole adds up to much more than just a simple sum of the parts.
Never assume what a donor can give: #33 of 100 Things We’ve Learned
Posted by Gayle Gifford on November 23, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Fundraising
How often have you heard excuses for why a potential donor couldn’t possibly give to your organization or project … before they’ve even been approached!
A typical conversation might sound like this:
Volunteer 1: What about Mr. Potential Donor? I think he might be capable of a larger gift than he’s been giving.
Volunteer 2: Oh no. He’s got a son in college (or substitute another reason such as “just remodeled their house,” or “bought a new boat”) and couldn’t possibly do more right now.
I was reminded of the lost opportunity when we make assumptions of what our donors will or won’t do when browsing through my Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago.
A photo caption caught my eye:
“Home Sweet Home Gala raises $400,000”
Whoa! I had to look again. Yes. It said $400,000. I figured the newspaper must have added an extra zero.
If you live in New York City, raising $400,000 probably sounds like no big deal for a charitable event. But the paper I was reading was the Providence Sunday Journal. The organization was Crossroads Rhode Island, formerly Travelers Aid of Rhode Island, the largest nonprofit provider of homeless services organization in our state.
To put this fundraising total into perspective for you, you’ll need a bit more data about Rhode Island.
- The total state population is just over 1 million, making up just over 400,000 households.
- The largest city, Providence, has a population of just 174,000.
- There are only two Fortune 500 companies in the whole state. And one community foundation.
- The unemployment rate, at 13% in September 2009, is one of the highest in the nation.
Even in a booming economy, $400,000 is a huge fundraising gross for an event in Rhode Island. If I had to guess, it’s probably in the 10 top events in total funds raised.
Very impressed, I had to learn more. So I went straight to the top and called Karen Santilli, the Vice President for Marketing and Development at Crossroads.
“Yes, our September gala raised just over $400,000.” Karen informed me.
No, they didn’t have a Hollywood celebrity or famous speaker, which the other events that raise the biggest money often have.
Seven Years and a Winning Formula
This event started seven years ago when Travelers Aid of Rhode Island changed its name to Crossroads Rhode Island. “The event chair at the time felt strongly we had to do something unique to celebrate the name change and help people remember who we were,” said Karen.
So they put their heads together to create a truly WOW event that would keep people talking and eager to see what they’d do the next year.
#32 of 100 Things We’ve Learned: Tips for business people joining a nonprofit board
Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 27, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Better Boards
Advice to business people joining nonprofit boards.
Congratulations! You’ve just joined the board of directors of a charitable nonprofit.
If this is a new experience for you, you are in good company. Many businesses today encourage their staff to serve on nonprofit boards. You’ll share the experience of board service with individuals from all walks of life.
A few of your fellow board members may already be old hands at nonprofit governance. A rarer few have attended workshops or studied some of the literature on nonprofit board governance.
Many, however, are learning on-the-job…just like you.
… Perhaps your organization provided you with a comprehensive orientation to help you start your work on the board
… Maybe you were teamed with a more experienced director who is serving as your mentor?
With luck, you joined a superb board that’s filled with great role models.
It’s not unusual to feel a little unsure of yourself at first.
You should find the reception welcoming, as most nonprofit staff and directors relish the opportunity to benefit from the business savvy, strategic mindset, professional connections, and access to resources that directors from corporate backgrounds can contribute.
Yet, I frequently hear complaints that all of those desired qualities seem to evaporate as soon as a business person is elected to a board. And I often hear business people describe their frustration with their board service.
So here are a few insights about nonprofits that I’ve realized over the last 30 years — and a few tips to help make your board service more rewarding.
Let me start with the insights.
Nonprofits have a different bottom line.
In business, the bottom line is easy to understand – it’s all about profit. Even if your business advocates a dual bottom line (social responsibility and profit), profit doesn’t take second place.
In a nonprofit, there is no private inurement. The bottom line is the delivery of a public benefit – for example, an artistic contribution, environmental protection, or health promotion.
Determining what that public benefit is, how to deliver it and how to evaluate performance isn’t always easy. Imagine you are on the board of an organization dedicated to the promotion of practices for good mental health. Can you concretely define what success looks like? What evidence would you point to? What changes would your small agency claim responsibility for? These are the challenges that will face you as a director of a nonprofit board.
Nonprofits are valued for their prudence, commitment to service and fiscal restraint, yet are expected to produce significant community benefits.
In the for-profit world, business owners are rewarded for taking risks – usually with other people’s money (venture capital). Under-capitalization is warned against. And a personality like Donald Trump is lionized for his opulent lifestyle and forgiven for past business failures.
Not so in the nonprofit world. Here, individuals are expected to make sacrifices for the common good in the name of service. 
Making do with less is a familiar mantra. Pick up a business publication, and the virtuous charities are the ones with the lowest overhead.
Meanwhile, nonprofits are being admonished to “act more like businesses.” In reality, most nonprofits are extraordinarily small, much more comparable to “micro-enterprises.” According to data available through the National Center for Charitable Statistics, over 80% of registered US public charities had annual revenues below $250,000 in 2004.
At these smallest of nonprofits, nominally-paid staff or their volunteer leadership often have limited experience in nonprofit management and resource development — yet they are expected to operate as efficiently and effectively as multimillion dollar, professionally staffed organizations.
It’s surprising that these tiny organizations get anything accomplished at all. But they do! From the neighborhood soup kitchen feeding the hungry to the volunteer land trust preserving hundreds of acres of open space to the volunteer ethnic organization staging an annual cultural festival for 20,000 participants, many tiny nonprofits are making significant and valuable contributions to their communities.
Nonprofits are expected to consult with their stakeholders and to collaborate with their colleagues.
It’s not unusual for business people to comment on the pace of decision-making that occurs at many nonprofits. Change may happen more slowly than they are used to.
Because nonprofits are accountable to their community for doing good, stakeholders (like consumers, funders, politicians) expect to have some say in their functioning. Read More >>