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.

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.

I hadn’t thought about kaleidoscopes in years until I received one as a gift for presenting a workshop at a fundraising conference. Instead of creating designs from shapes embedded in the kaleidoscope itself, this one made fascinating patterns out of whatever you were looking at.

So what do kaleidoscopes and great fundraisers have in common?

Both are really good at creating many beautiful new designs from one starting point.

In this challenging economic climate, nonprofit fundraisers have to be as resourcesful as they possibly can be to make better and stronger connections with donors. As fundraisers, we are always on the lookout for donors whose dreams and desires are a perfect match with our organization.

Sometimes that match is pretty straightforward, as when a loved one is stricken by a disease and family members give to the organization that is working to find a cure. Or the guidelines of a foundation are a perfect fit with our programs.

Often, however, the match isn’t immediately obvious and requires us to do some mental stretching. A very philanthropic individual I knew gave money to a figure skating association, a community service organization, a library, and other seemingly unrelated institutions. Was there a common thread? Yes, he loved young people and gave to programs that helped them flourish.

Resourceful development professionals have the uncanny talent of making lots of successful matches – from the easy fits to the mental stretches. The ability to see the many facets of our organization and our donor’s interests – like looking through a kaleidoscope – can open many more donor checkbooks.

Here are a few tips for developing your own kaleidoscope vision.

1. Listen to see what your donors care about.

I can’t say enough about listening. When we get too wrapped up in pitching our organization, we can’t hear what a donor wants.

The executive director of a youth service organization wanted to upgrade a corporate donor from a modest in-kind gift to a major sponsorship. At an exploratory meeting with the CEO, the executive director spent the better part of five minutes pitching the organization and one particular sponsorship opportunity.

He wasn’t igniting any interest.

The development director then asked this corporate CEO a simple question: “What community projects are you working on?”

The CEO opened up. He explained how his company was exploring the idea of building playgrounds in inner city neighborhoods – something the youth service organization had a history of doing, but hadn’t mentioned. Suddenly, a match seemed inevitable. The company was excited to provide a corporate sponsorship that included building a city playground – and eventually went on to become one of the organization’s biggest supporters.

2. Look deep into your existing programs.

Just like a prospective donor, you’ll be more passionate about your organization if you see the work first hand. You’ll be better informed too. It’s hard to comprehend the complexity of your organization if you don’t get up close and personal with your program staff, your projects, and especially the people you serve.

A successful fundraiser I know recently took a position as the major gifts director for a hospital. In her first few weeks on the job, she arranged an intensive training program for herself:

“I wanted to meet everyone and see EVERYTHING: operations, autopsies, the emergency room, even the kitchen. I asked hundreds of questions so I could know how we made a difference and what our needs were. Not only did I feel more confident I could explain our work to a prospective donor, but I also knew I’d be better at finding giving matches. An added benefit — because I showed that I cared, I made lots of friends on our staff who are now willing to help in fundraising when I need them.”

3. Look beyond the usual funding suspects.

Arts groups look for arts funders. Senior groups for donors to the elderly. But sometimes it makes sense to look beyond the category in which your organization falls.

A small neighborhood organization heard that the Environmental Protection Agency had funding available for urban environmental projects. As they weren’t an environmental group, they easily might have dismissed this particular funder.

But with some research, the group discovered the EPA had funded vacant lot clean-ups similar to the programs they were already running. With a bit more detective work they discovered that garbage dumped in vacant lots frequently contained materials that the EPA would consider pollutants or even hazardous waste.

By understanding that vacant lot dumping was as much an environmental problem as it was a community development one, they were able to get funding from EPA to develop a more comprehensive program to prevent illegal dumping and clean up vacant lots.

4. Be creative about seeing the connections.

If your vision is too narrow, it’s easy to overlook opportunities.

A statewide organization located in the capital city ran a number of fee-based education programs for school kids. A prospective business donor only funded projects in the northern town in which it was located.

At first glance, there didn’t seem to be the opportunity for a match. But with a little more exploration, the business was pleased to donate the program fee and busing costs of a local school so that three fifth-grade classrooms were able to participate in this education program.

5. See where you fit in the big picture.

Locally-based organizations and nonprofits in small population states often have a hard time attracting regional or national funders. But if you can put your work into a much bigger framework, you may open doors that looked closed at first.

For example, an AIDS service organization from a small east coast city was alerted to a request for proposals from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Five grants would be awarded nationwide for prevention work with young people in minority communities.

At first this organization didn’t think they had a chance competing with major population centers like San Francisco or New York. But they knew they had one of the highest HIV infection rates in the U.S. and that many immigrants from countries with high incidences of AIDS settled there first before heading to big cities like NYC. By articulating their connection to the bigger picture, they were able to win one of the five grants.

6. Look at yourself through someone else’s eyes.

Have you seen the optical illusion of two faces and the vase? If you look at the image in black, it forms two profiles looking at one another. But if you look at the white space between the faces, you can see a vase. Some people see the faces right away but have a hard time seeing the vase. For others, it’s just the opposite.

A senior center had a small, drab thrift shop that didn’t raise much money. While it was located in a college town, the center never really considered it would be of interest to college students so it never bothered to connect.

When a new director was hired, she was able to see the possibilities in the thrift shop. She approached the fashion merchandising program at a local college and offered the thrift shop as a class project. The students were excited at the chance to gain some real merchandising experience and volunteered their time to design attractive new window and floor displays for the shop. (And of course, college students love second hand bargains.)

Not only did the thrift shop start raising a lot more money, but the students recruited their friends for other volunteer work at the senior center.

7. But don’t make it up.

While I urge you to be creative about finding new connections between potential donors and your organization, don’t try to turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear. It never benefits your organization, your donor or philanthropy to misrepresent the work you do. Don’t try to pass a program off as something it is not.

Your success in fundraising ultimately depends on your reputation as being worthy and trustworthy of support.

So get out those kaleidoscopes to start finding the possibility in your organization.

We invite you to share you stories of how you successfully reimagined your giving opportunities.

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

You can find an email or  printer ready version of this post in the Articles Section of our Tools for Change library. Just click here.

A version of this article first appeared in Contributions Magazine.

I spent this morning rehearsing interview questions with a few board members and staff of one of my clients. This small nonprofit came to me looking for help building its board. In that initial discussion, it became clear to me that the organization was running a few programs but was pretty unclear as to how relevant and valuable it was to the community it had traditionally served.

Board members agreed to get out and interview about 20 community members face to face over the next month or so. As we talked about who they might interview, I was impressed by their connections within their community … and curious as to when they had stopped having ongoing conversations with all of these people.  Unfortunately, I no longer find this unusual among groups that come seeking my help.

So we practiced interviewing each other to test our questions. This helped us structure a nice flow as well as highlighting missing questions or confusing ones.

AND, even though this was just practice with each other, I think we learned a lot about the two people who were interviewed this morning… and a lot about each other’s perceptions of the community and their own organization’s role in it. Just by role playing.

Writer? Catherine Orenstein, founder of the project, was one the panelists at the conference. She started The OpEd Project to reverse the shocking statistic that only 10-20% of newspaper opinion pieces are written by women. Why care? Because, in Catherine’s words, “the op-ed pages are enormously powerful ? they are the hub of thought leadership. The dearth of women in these spaces not only conveys the (wrong) idea that women are not leaders, it deprives us all of robust, democratic, meritocratic debate. Relying on a narrow pool of (mostly white, older, male) voices for our take on the world is both misguided and dangerous.”

At the conference, Catherine explained that most women don’t feel that they could be considered an expert, even those most accomplished in their field. Women’s humility, lack of confidence?, keeps us from stating our opinions in this most visible of public forums.

I, for one, am guilty. So, here’s my resolution for 2009 — get an OpEd piece published.

How about you? On The OpEd Project web site, you’ll find a few helpful resources for getting started.