Archive for the ‘Good reads’ Category
Posted by Gayle Gifford on May 5, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Communicating, Fundraising, Good reads
When did you last receive a sincere expression of gratitude for a gift?
My friend and colleague Janet Hedrick, CFRE, writes about gratitude in her book, Effective Donor Relations.
Gratitude is sincere. It is being truly thankful. It embodies a deep human connection.
Last night, my bedtime reading was the May edition of Inc. Magazine. The magazine isn’t typically a place where I expect to be inspired by articles about gratitude.
But the article Everybody Loves Zappos in the May 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine had an amazing story about gratitude and deep human connection.
In the article, CEO Tony Hsieh tells one of those legend-making tales about extraordinary customer connections.
In the story, a customer service rep was handling a return of boots from a woman who had ordered them for her husband. She was returning the boots as her husband died in a car accident before he received them. Without asking permission, the call center rep ordered flowers charged to Zappos and had them sent to the woman for her loss. Hsieh says “not only was she a customer for life, but so were those 30 or 40 people at the funeral.”
I think the story struck me so strongly because just hours before I was having a discussion with the students in my class at Simmons College that seemed so contrary to the Zappos example.
All semester, my students have been working on graduate service learning projects. Their teams have developed communications plans to support organizational changes for seven nonprofit partners.
One group has been working on a project for an arts nonprofit. The organization had recently made a number of changes to its volunteer programs. In particular, volunteers were now required to pay membership dues before they could participate in various tasks. Most of those volunteers were over 60, most fairly well-off, and a number had been volunteering for the organization for many years.
A lively discussion centered around the reason for this change. Even though the organization had seen shrinking revenues, was it a good strategic decision to reward years of volunteer service this way? How did the short term need balance against long term good will and volunteer loyalty?
Fortunately, my students designed a communications plan that really emphasized ways the organization could express sincere gratitude to their volunteers.
How would you rate yourself on the gratitude scale? What could your organization do today to increase its donor gratitude quotient? What have you done? I’d love to hear your stories.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on April 20, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Fundraising, Good reads
How do you get donors to give unrestricted gifts? This is a huge challenge for most nonprofits.
Unrestricted gifts are those given by donors with no strings attached. Nonprofits love them because they can use the funds anywhere in their organization. Unrestricted gifts are critical for funding ongoing operations — the stuff you do day in and day out that institutional funders are loathe to give to.
Unrestricted gifts are used to fund back office operations like administration, fund development and finance. While not particularly sexy, these core functions are extremely important to ensuring good management and future sustainability for your organization.
Donors are more likely to give directly to programs, or to anything that feels concrete. That’s why the local land trust can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase a critical piece of land, but barely can scrape together enough funding to get its newsletter sent on time. Or why many an organization has completed a successful capital campaign to purchase and renovate a new building, only to find it can’t meet the annual costs of operating its shiny new space.
So how do you get donors to give unrestricted gifts? To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let’s count three ways:
- Membership. Though not my favorite, I’ve placed membership at the top of the list because it is the tactic most frequently used. Membership programs imply ongoing affinity for your organization. They suggest giving year after year and donor usually know that the giving supports the basic functions of your organization. The downside of membership is its ability to get in the way of fundraising (Yes. It’s true. More about that in a future post).
- Build donor loyalty. In her book, Donor Centered Fundraising, author researcher Penelope Burk argues that you’d be more successful in pitching designated gifts to your new or more recent donors who haven’t yet learned that your organization delivers on its promises. As you build your relationship and your reputation for results, your donors will be more comfortable investing directly in your organization, without feeling the need to control their gifts.
- Help your donors visualize their investment. While nothing is more important than building donor loyalty, I strongly suggest this approach for both new and long-standing donors. Here is how it works.
Make your case for support just as solid as a bricks and mortar campaign. Look forward three or five years (this is where having a long-term vision really makes a difference). Once you’ve quantified what societal outcomes you are trying to achieve, then add up all the costs of getting there. Add together your direct program costs, your program-related overhead costs, and the cost of the new capacity you need to build to reach your goal. What’s the total? Build your fundraising case around that amount.
You can find an example of this concept in our free Toolbox. Check out “Major Gifts are not Just for Bricks and Mortar.”
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on February 26, 2009 in Communicating, Fundraising, Good reads
I’m already a fan of For Impact/The Suddes Group but they just stole my heart with their wonderful little post today “9 TIps to Help you get to the ask.”
Over and over again I hear from staff and volunteers of nonprofits “I could never ask someone for money.”
Nick Fellers at The Suddes Group has just given anyone involved in raising money an amazing present with his simple and “be authentic” (tip 3) approach.
Tip 9 – “Don’t make decisions for your prospects” is a conversation I have over and over again with nonprofit staff or voluneers who spend way too much time thinking up all the reasons that someone can’t give to them and then use it as the reason to never ask.
I think you’ll really appreciate this tip sheet. Bottom line, or Tip 1, says Fellers, “Always ask.”
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on February 11, 2009 in Big ideas, Good reads, Public engagement
The William and Fora Hewlett Foundation has teamed up with McKinsey and Company to start a conversation about building a “stronger nonprofit marketplace.” The proposal is outlined in their report “The Nonprofit Marketplace: Bridging the Information Gap.” They would like to get your feedback.
The problem that many funders and donor advisors want to solve is how to steer philanthropic dollars to the “strongest and most effective nonprofits.” They’d like to see some intermediary that could measure nonprofits based on their social impact. They are concerned, and rightly so, that the reduction of nonprofit effectiveness to percent of revenues spent on programming used by sites like Charity Navigator do a disservice to both nonprofits and to donors.
In principal, I’d welcome attempts to shift philanthropic dollars out of the ivory towers and into the streets. We need to expose more individuals of wealth to the full range of nonprofits that need their help but will never afford giant development departments (or even medium sized ones, for that matter). I’m also pretty sure than many more organizations would get “stronger” pretty quickly if funders invested in building a serious fund development capacity in those organizations.
As you know, I am absolutely dedicated to steering nonprofits to a razor sharp focus on intensifying their societal impact. But I also know that on virtually any big issue, it is pretty unrealistic to expect that a single nonprofit will change the world by itself. Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on February 2, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Big ideas, Good reads, Great quotes
If you didn’t have a sense of urgency about building a resilient and adaptive organization before, hopefully our economic meltdown has convinced you that times change.
In case you are still resisting, try reading Tom Peters “Re-imagine Manifesto!” “Tomato TomAh to.” It’s assigned reading – along with Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind and a Peter Block’s The Answer to How is Yes – for the students in my Strategic Communications and Organizational Change class at Simmons College.
The world is different. Times have changed. Have you?
Or are you still doing everything the same way and expecting different results?
A taste of Tom:
“They say ‘We need an Initiative.”
“I say ‘We need a Dream. And Dreamers.’
“They say they need a “vision” born of McKinsey.
“I say we need a “Grandiose Dream” born of a Passionate & Intemperate Belief that the world can be a different, better place.”
Amen.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 20, 2008 in Good reads, Great quotes
“A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.” Earl Wilson (1935-2005) Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 6, 2008 in Good reads, Great quotes, Tidbits
I happen to believe that one of the best things that you can do to strengthen your organization and do better work is to get beyond your four walls and talk to people in your community. Friends, foes, leaders and ordinary folks .Be curious. Commit to seeking new perspectives. You’ll learn a lot.
Today’s quote is from author Ann Patchett, from What Now? her commencement address to graduating class of Sarah Lawrence College.
“So if you were sure that you didn’t have all the answers and were spending long afternoons asking yourself What now? wouldn’t it be even crazier not to listen to people …. For the most part, wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable.”
(I predict this tiny book will become a favorite present from parents to their children graduating from college. It has wonderful nuggets for all of us.)
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on September 22, 2008 in Better Boards, Big ideas, Communicating, Fundraising, Good reads, Great quotes, Public engagement, Strategic Thinking
Last week I facilitated a planning meeting for organizations and individuals working on issues of economic independence for individuals with disabilities. Across the US, programs like theirs are facing enormous funding cuts as state governments face extreme budget shortfalls. These service providers, like those in education, health care, and throughout our system, were extremely concerned about how they would continue to support the people they serve.
Then the conversation shifted. A feeling of hopelessness gave way to a realization that everyone in the room had to come together to completely reinvent the system. They could do this by looking at the resources they did have and finding better, more effective, and interdependent ways of working.
Given hard times, this excerpt from Peter Block’s new book, Community, The structure of belonging, seemed particularly timely.
“Community transformation calls for citizenship that shifts the context from a place of fear and fault, law and oversight, corporation and system, and preoccupation with leadership to one of gifts, generosity, and abundance; social fabric and chosen accountability; and associational life and the engagement of citizens. These shifts occur as citizens face each other in conversations of ownership and accountability.”
What is it that we wish to hold ourselves, not just our leaders accountable for? What is the world we want to live in? What responsibility do we have for creating that world?
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on September 16, 2008 in Fundraising, Good reads
The new edition of Contributions Magazine is out. In it you’ll find my latest article, “Getting your Start in Fundraising.” For the article, I asked a few fundraisers I know how they got started and what advice they would give to those entering the field. Unfortunately, Contributions doesn’t put all of the articles online so you’ll have to wait a few weeks to read it if you aren’t a subscriber. I’ll post the article to the TOOLBOX section of our website.
How did I get started in fundraising? I was an activist volunteer with the RI office of the American Friends Service Committee back in the mid 70s. Most of the local offices received a very small budget (about $3,000 per office) to run their programs. The RI office had an agreement that they would raise their own funding. Through a combination of program events, spaghetti dinners, some literature sales and a bit of direct mail, the office raised about $20,000 a year and I got to help. Through that organizing, I cofounded Women for a Non-Nuclear Future and continued to assist in grassroots fundraising activities as a volunteer.
Around 1983, I saw a newspaper ad and applied for a job with Foster Parents Plan (now PLAN USA) . I was hired in part largely gbecause of the fundraising skills I had acquired as a volunteer that fit with the PLAN fundraising approach …? I could write compelling copy — which, as a national organization with over 70,000 donors, was a big part of the fundraising job. PLAN invested in my professional development and there I learned heavy duty marketing, advertising and organization development … including direct response fundraising through mail, print, TV, planned giving, donor stewardship, communications, branding, corporate identity, fundraising analytics, strategic and business planning, research, budgeting, etc, etc. I was responsible for raising about $3 million in additional [child] sponsorships and special contributions annually from our current donors.
It wasn’t until I joined Save The Bay that I really learned and refined face-to-face cultivation and solicitation (individuals, businesses and private foundations) and special event organizing. While I wrote my first successful government grants at PLAN (3 for 3 
, totaling about $750,000), I really honed that skill, including program development, at Save The Bay.
Along the way, I had great teachers — from the activists at AFSC to the professionals we were surrounded with at PLAN (staff, board, colleagues and some pretty amazing consultants and vendors), to the really fabulous volunteers and philanthropists at STB. I also benefited greatly from my colleagues at the Association of Fundraising Professionals, in which I’ve been a member since 1988.
How did you start? Who helped you along the way?
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on August 21, 2008 in Big ideas, Good reads, Strategic Thinking
Writing about Peter Block yesterday makes me think about his book, The Answer to How is Yes. I’ve been using this title as a guiding agreement for strategic planning that I facilitate with clients.
Block argues, and I agree, that “How?” isn’t the most important question. “How?” is a distraction from the important question “What resistance am I postponing?” or, in other words, “What am I really willing to commit to and act upon?”
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