“The well-off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds, and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’ “

Since then, the gap between the rich and poor has only widened in the US.

The rich and poor rarely live in the same neighborhoods anymore.   Heck, the well-off don’t even need to mingle with the less fortunate or use public services if they don’t desire, with private schools, private beach clubs and swimming pools, private country clubs, gated communities and isolated vacation enclaves.

So, if you are an affluent individual who never sees the poor or has no need to associate with the less-well-off, and if you are relatively immune from the cutback in government services, how do you come to understand the desperate lives most people live each day?

I worry about the impact of this social isolation on philanthropy.

Yes, as the sheer numbers of the affluent continue to grow, charitable giving grows. But where does the money go? What institutions, serving what classes of people, benefit from this giving?

If we are most influenced by the people we hang out with, and the wealthy don’t know the poor, and the poor don’t have access to the wealthy, will we continue to see great stratification in resources among the nonprofits that serve the less-well-off and those that serve the poor?

At the AFP Massachusetts Chapter conference last November, I listed to a panel of development directors from prestigious private universities and medical institutes share details of their billion dollar growth campaigns. They noted they were aided by close to 200 fundraising staff.

As I listened, I couldn’t help thinking about the homeless outreach program and food pantry I consulted with, that, with just about 3 staff members, none in development , is serving the exploding food needs of individuals and families in my city. In just over a year, they went from serving 250 people a month to over 6,300, half of whom are children.  Their total income? According to their 2010 990 it was $176,848.

Obviously, not all of those with great wealth have turned a blind eye to the poor — the Gates come to mind. But as a profession, we need to be at the leading edge of a sector wide dialogue about how to help the isolated affluent discover and fund the other extraordinary and deserving nonprofit institutions — those that serve another segment of people who also deserve great education, great art, food on the table and a place to call home.

We owe this to our neighbors. And to the legacy of Dr. King.

“In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Notice those checks, stars and caution signs?

Clearly these are meant to serve as rating systems for viewers. Missing a check or star? The system implies that your organization may not be 100% up to snuff –or else it might be hiding something.

While I’ve done my ranting about rating systems (see my posts  below), I’m afraid that your organization is stuck  with this new configuration.

By now I’m sure you know that Guidestar is a go-to site for the media, funders, bloggers, benchmarkers like me or others individuals who are curious about your nonprofit. Online donation sites like Network for Good, Facebook Causes or Change.org link up and pull their data from Guidestar.

So, get thee to Guidestar.

Login (you’ll need to register if you haven’t, the basic edition is free), search for your organization’s name and pull up your Guidestar profile. You may be surprised at how many checks you are have or are missing. Try printing out a report and you’ll quickly see what is incomplete in your Guidestar profile.

Follow the button that says Update Nonprofit Report to review the instructions for updating your information.  Read about the options for earning the Guidestar Exchange seal, for posting reviews on GreatNonprofits and developing a self-assessment impact profile through the new Charting Impact (please share your experience with our readers if you have completed an impact profile. I noticed that only 104 organizations have).

You’ll need to decide just how much you want to commit to updating. The new check view system is clearly designed to get you deep into the world of Guidestar and its partner organizations.

And please come back and share your experiences. Happy 2012.

Related posts

Fundraisers, do you know what your 990 isn’t telling donors about your nonprofit?

My worst nightmare is now true, sloppy ratings of nonprofit effectiveness in Haiti

Thank you, Guidestar, for hearing our concerns

A while back I was facilitating a workshop on donor and member renewals. To get started, I asked the room — board members and staff of environmental organizations — to explore their own personal giving by sharing their own experiences as donors or members. I asked them to think about experiences that really stood out, good or bad.

Bob’s* wife, an artist, was interviewed by the local newspaper. In the article, she shared her fondness for a particular repertory theatre which she said was one of the things she loved best about her State.

Not too much later, the couple attended a play at the named theatre. As they arrived, they noticed an envelope on their seat. Inside the envelope was a note to his wife from the theatre, thanking her for mentioning her love of this theatre in the newspaper article.

Also inside was a gift certificate for coffee and dessert after the show at a nearby restaurant.

WOW!

An unexpected and lovely thank you. A real show of gratitude. Needless to say, this particular act made a lasting impression… and really cemented the love of a fan.

I just finished reading the recently released report Growing Philanthropy in the United States. The report summarizes two think sessions held with top leaders in the nonprofit world this past year.

While I’ll have more to say about this report in coming posts, it’s worth underlining the major problem the report seeks to address:

While overall, the dollars given to charity have increased, individual charitable giving in the USA as a percentage of after tax income  (2%) has remained stagnant for the last 40 years.

The report noted low retention rates, especially for donors new to a cause. It recommended that charities need to do much, much more to understand the individual behind the giving and build relationships that matter.

So what does this all have to do with saying thanks?

Past studies have shown that a top reason that donors say they stop giving is indifference by the charity they give to – a feeling that they and their giving don’t really matter.

In her book, Effective Donor Relations, my friend Janet Hedrick CFRE, eastern region development manager for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, strongly pushes the attitude of gratitude as an essential factor in building donor loyalty.

What is gratitude? It’s meaningful, thoughtful, heartfelt and individualized appreciation.

And when that appreciation is unexpected, it packs a powerful punch.

What thank you has taken your breath away lately? I’d love to hear.

**************************************************************************

*Not his real name. But definitely a real person.

The Trustees of Reservations saved Crane Beach for me.

We spotted this message a half-mile ahead of the entrance to one of New England’s finest and least disturbed large coastal preserves in Ipswich, Massachusetts. I don’t think I could say more with fewer words. (I would have made the name much bigger, but modesty suits the Trustees’ reserved Yankee demeanor.)

My first thought: the perfect mission statement! Of course, the actual Mission for the Trustees of Reservations has to spell things out. Here it is: “The Trustees of Reservations preserve, for public use and enjoyment, properties of exceptional scenic, historic, and ecological value in Massachusetts.”

A true Mission needs that clarity, but I’ll take the tag line on this sign for brevity, completeness and memorability.

The Crane Beach and Crane Estate property is one of more than 100 places the Trustees have preserved and maintained for public use in Massachusetts. It happens to have special significance for me. I went to high school down the road in Hamilton and I spent a lot of sunny days on the dunes there with friends. My sister and my best friend’s sister both held wedding receptions at the Crane Estate overlooking the beach.

But I haven’t been there for decades and I haven’t given the place much thought in the meantime. Fortunately, the Trustees of Reservations have been on the job. So, when we needed a beautiful biking destination on a sunny summer Sunday, Crane Beach was waiting for us… and tens of thousand of others. Well done, Trustees!

1. What’s working?
2. What isn’t?
3. What are your recommendations for change?

I’ll be forever grateful to my graduate program in organization and management at Antioch University New England for revealing these three simple questions. I don’t remember whether it was faculty member Peter Smith or Marsha Greenberg who shared these organization development gems with us, but thank you to both of you. The questions have remained with me and they are at the core of my own work today.

What I like about these questions is that you don’t have to hold a master’s degree in organization development or anything else to use them within your organization to help solve problems, improve programming,  or make operations more effective.

Of course, the answers will be different depending on whom you ask. Each person has a different experience of an issue and a different level of knowledge and expertise. That’s why we consultants gather and synthesize input from many perspectives as it helps us get a well-rounded view of your situation.

In asking, it is critical to be a neutral listener, someone who is willing to put aside their own assumptions and really listen to what is being said. After you’ve synthesized what you think you’ve heard, share your analysis with the people you’ve spoken to and ask them if you understood the situation correctly. You want to reach agreement on your understanding of what is working and what isn’t.

Hopefully you will have many recommendations for improvement. Do some additional study before you jump into making changes, however. You’ll want to explore more fully which recommendations might work best for you. And you’d also be wise to seek out possible solutions that no one raised simply because they didn’t have the knowledge of other approaches.

What questions do you use in your organization to help you solve problems or challenges that you are facing? I’d love to hear from you.

Because behavior changes like these are driven by face-to-face contacts and peer pressure, not our logical minds, according to Alex Pentland of MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab, interviewed on NPR’s Here and Now recently.

“We’re not really as rational as we think we are.” he told Here and Now host Robin Young. “If you want to change their behavior, giving people arguments is probably the wrong thing to do.”

Pentland studies human behavior using smart phones and other devices to track his subjects’ every movement and social interaction. He also uses phone polls to supplement the tracking data with subject reports on everything from their opinions to their weight. These “digital bread crumbs” give Pentland a huge amount of new and highly accurate data about what people really do all day (and night).

“What are the behaviors that lead to decisions?” Pentland asks. In study after study, he finds that it’s who we spend time with, not what we learn consciously, that predicts our decision-making. “Most of the decisions you make about behavior are ‘when in Rome do what the Romans do’ behaviors.”

In a study of students in an MIT dorm, Pentland discovered that face-to-face contacts led one-third of students to change their Presidential preference in the 2008 election. Similarly, he says, “Obesity is contagious.” If you eat with people who take a third slice of pizza, chances are you’ll have that extra slice, too.

In an article from American Scientist, To Signal Is Human, Pentland explains that what we call “common sense,” are really beliefs we base on “social signals,” the attitudes and actions of our peers and models, rather than logic and argument. Pentland says that this kind of social-intuitive decision-making really can be an effective and efficient way to make better decisions and adopt more productive or healthier habits, particularly for large groups.

“The most important thing is that people be exposed to lots of different ideas,” Pentland said. Unfortunately, many people inhabit “information ghettos,” at their workplaces and in their communities. These people don’t talk to many other people and have weak ties to the wider community.

A Bank of America call center deliberately created an information ghetto by scheduling worker breaks to prevent socializing among the staff. Pentland was able to show managers that their most productive employees were also their most sociable workers: the “chatterboxes.” When the call center reschedule breaks for informal group socialization, productivity shot up, employee turnover went down and Bankamerica made an estimated $15 million.

We always urge our strategic planning clients to schedule more open-ended, face-to-face conversations – with donors, with peers, with their beneficiaries and with staff. Pentland’s work suggests two major reasons to follow our advice.

First, by joining another person’s social circle, you influence them to believe and act like you. Second, by expanding your own circle, you expose yourself to more information and options to guide your own actions.

Fundraisers know that the big gifts come from personal, in-person requests from peers. Pentland’s work confirms that common sense and encourages strategies that create even more social contacts among your prospective and current givers.

For advocacy organizations, the findings point toward fewer formal briefings and rallies and more spontaneous gatherings of like-minded people. That’s the idea behind Drinking Liberally, a movement to bring people with shared political values together over beers instead of manifestos, that now has 228 chapters meeting every month.

Self-referential tweets aren’t just boring – they drive people away. Zarella calls his blog The Social Media Scientist and he has the data to prove that too many tweets about yourself can lead to fewer followers. He’ll even sell you the T-shirt.

So, what’s left to tweet about? Tweet about me. (That’s “you” to you). Zarella’s research shows that the word “you” is the most common word used in retweets. That’s a reassuring link to our ancestors. “You” has been the number one most motivating word for direct response messages since they were being carved in stone.

For that matter, messages solely about our institutional selves in any medium have always been boring, and worse, unproductive.

Other quick takeaways? Be positive – tweets knocking others don’t get lots of retweets. Fill “information voids” with news people don’t have. And don’t be too smart – tweets with short words get shared far more often than tweets showing off your Ph.D.

You’ll find tons of other insights, surprising findings and useful advice in Zarella’s video as well as on his blog. The video alone is worth any two webinars I’ve taken in the last year. Set aside 60 minutes and check it out.

Young Haitians displaced by the 2010 earthquake. Courtesy of Grassroots International.

Still, I did say “good photo.” One hundred and fifty well-chosen words make a better use of page space than the giant check handoff photo, the shot of bored-looking people  around a conference table, or the glassy smiles of people holding plaques over their bellies. These visual clichés may be easy to shoot, but they lack emotion or meaning for anyone not in them.

So how can you get great images?

Well, the best photographers take the best photos. A well-organized day of professional shooting can result in 100 to 200 good-to-great photos of your key programs and people in action, enough to ensure that you have at least a few good images for anything you print in a year. The Genesis Center invested in a day of work from Ilene Perlman and loved the results, showcased in their 2009 Annual Report.

If you can’t hire a pro, your best alternative is brute force: take a lot of photos all the time. Enlist your staff, your volunteers, even your program participants as photographers. Remember that every photo should be a story and that stories are about people. Are you proud of your new building? Show us the pride, not the bricks, by putting beaming people out front. Make the photo about their feelings.

Grassroots International makes grants to organizations in rural areas from the Middle East to Mexico. They rely on their traveling staff to diligently take photos and upload them to the Grassroots International Flickr account. They get enough good-to-great photos that we have trouble choosing which ones to leave out of the Grassroots International Annual Report.

Even total amateurs will get a great shot now and then, but you can get luckier by copying the professionals: get up close, shoot from a variety of angles, and avoid harsh flash lighting. Mix posed photos with action shots. Be sure to get releases from your subjects. And, did I say take lots of shots? You can find motivation and more tips in this recent article from Michelle Gienow in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Need inspiration? Check out 120 of 2010’s best news photos at Boston.com.

There are many reasons fundraisers should pay close attention to what is being reported on their 990. But in this post, I wanted to point out a frequently overlooked opportunity for you to use the 990 to promote your work to your donors, potential donors and other important constituents.

On the very first page of the 990 you are asked to describe your organization’s mission:

Experienced fundraisers don’t leave it up to their auditors, CFOs or bookkeepers to decide what description should go on line 1.  If left in your 990 preparer’s hands, you are likely to end up with an abbreviated mission statement like “homeless support” or “social services”  instead of that beautiful mission statement you spent so many hours carefully crafting.

On the very next page, you get another chance to promote your work when the 990 asks you to describe your program activities for the last year.

Again, don’t let your auditor complete this for you without your input. Take the time to prepare a succinct but engaging description of what you did with your money and how that made a difference.

You can even attach a schedule that, along with the space provided on the form, enables you to provide a pretty complete description of your program accomplishments.

Never forget that numerous online websites like Guidestar.org or The Foundation Center’s 990 Finder maintain public databases of the 990s of all nonprofits. These sites have become widely popular as a place where donors, prospective donors, researchers, colleagues and the media can head to learn more about your nonprofit.

And of course, you are required to disclose your 990 upon request. And you are probably sending it out with grant proposals.

So make sure that your 990 tells a compelling story about your work. Don’t leave that story solely in the hands of your 990 preparer.

Walter had many practical and strategic suggestions for the small to medium size nonprofit leaders attending the learning group.

I asked Walter if I could share some of that sage advice with you. So here it is, Letterman style:

Walter Callender’s Top Ten List of Communications Strategies

10. Do not overcomplicate.

9. Let your constituents tell you what they want, and don’t want.

8. Optimize your use of each communication channel (i.e. web, email, in person, cell, snail mail, etc).

7. Turn supporters into enthusiasts.

6. Being cool is no substitute for a clear mission-based strategy. (I particularly like this one)

5. Align yourselves with key influencers for channel usage.

4. All innovators are not alike — your attitude towards innovation should drive your online approach.

3. Focus on what you do best – differentiation is key.

2. Measure, analyze, adjust and repeat — treat channel analysis as a discipline and find ways to have the channels work together.

1. Plan, but don’t be afraid to make changes, the online channel in particular is forgiving.