“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

]]> http://www.ceffect.com/blog/great-quotes/being-the-beauty-we-love/feed/ 0 http://www.ceffect.com/blog/fundraising/true-joy-in-giving/ http://www.ceffect.com/blog/fundraising/true-joy-in-giving/#comments Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:27:20 +0000 Gayle Gifford http://www.ceffect.com/?p=2865 Below the fold in Monday morning’s Providence Journal was a lovely story about Ram and Nishi Nehra, a retired couple from Middletown, Rhode Island, who have been supporting an educational NGO in their native India since 2001.

I know that their story is not unique, that each day there are millions, probably billions, of philanthropic acts across the globe.

But what made me smile over my morning tea was the way that Ram described his philanthropy:

“I get so much satisfaction, so much pleasure out of this — I can’t tell you in words. You have to experience this. This is full of life.”

Demonstrating again the principle of “giving till you feel good” that my departed colleague, Herb Kaplan, always espoused.

“Dear Jonathan and Gayle,

“In 1997 a man named Roger Whiting came to you with a story about a Tanzanian woman named Alice Mnaku, who dreamed of going to college but could not afford it. Thanks to your sage advice, Roger went on to found Growth Through Learning. It is lessons he learned from Cause & Effect that has enabled us to become the successful non-profit we are today. This year alone, GTL granted 317 scholarships to bright girls from poor families in East Africa….”

Roger Whiting was a retired insurance man from Worcester, Massachusetts. With no background in international development or education, Roger devised a simple and direct response to Africa’s poverty that has, in the years since 1997, also proven to be profoundly life-changing for hundreds of young women. We were sad to learn that Roger passed away in May of this year. But we are pleased and proud to know that we played a part in setting Growth Through Learning on the path to success.

Just like business start-ups, new nonprofits face an uphill struggle for survival and growth — and with far less access to start-up investment capital. Only yesterday, Gayle and I met a whole roomful of passionate volunteers and staff at the New Roots Providence consultant fair, many of them seeking guidance in their start-up processes.

What might this new generation  learn from a file we closed in 1997? We dug deep into Gayle’s hard drive and had a long talk with Alex Marthews to find out. Here are a few lessons in growth from Growth Through Learning:

1. Keep it simple. Growth Through Learning does one thing well: it pays fees at a few carefully selected secondary schools for girls from poor families in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The organization has generally avoided expanding the scope of its program or geographic area . With tremendous population growth predicted for all three program countries, running out of work is the least of GTL’s problems.

2. Tell real stories. Two stories really matter here. One is the story of an African girl whose life is transformed by education. The other is the story of an American whose own life is changed by compassion. Alice and Roger were the first characters in this story, but there have been hundreds of girls and donors since then. GTL staff or volunteers personally collect the story of every single girl during annual visits. This story is both familiar and totally new each time it is told.

3. Keep it personal. Roger’s generosity of spirit  and his enthusiasm burned bright. By sharing his story face to face, starting from his personal network of friends, Roger patiently built a widening circle of loyal donors and board members that slowly but steadily enabled him to expand scholarships from just a handful of girls helped, to dozens, and now hundreds, every year.

4. Make your own luck. No one could have predicted two game-changing gifts that came to Growth Through Learning, including a $1 million bequest that has essentially solved the problem of paying GTL’s current very lean overhead. But we could easily predict that they would never have come about without Roger’s persistent effort at steps 1, 2 and 3 above.

Our thanks to Alex Marthews for taking the time to contact us and share those learnings and also for honoring Cause & Effect, with a link to the Growth Through Learning site.  I’ll revisit what Alex shared about the uses of stories in a later posting.

According to the IRS site:

“This one-time relief benefits Form 990-N (e-Postcard) and Form 990-EZ filers only. Organizations required to file Form 990 or Form 990-PF are not eligible and are automatically revoked if they fail to file for three consecutive years.” Any organization that loses its tax-exempt status will have to reapply.

In quickly looking through the over 1,100 nonprofits on the RI list, I noticed at least one of my former clients whom I had told years ago when I worked with them briefly that they needed to file a 990 (I’ve let them know they are on the list) and surprisingly many veterans organizations.

This is pretty serious stuff.  You can find the list on the IRS web site by clicking here. If you haven’t been sending any annual 990s to the IRS, especially if you are a very small nonprofit that was previously exempt from filing, you would be well-served to scroll through your state’s list.

After an hour and a half of debate, not one of the candidates left a ” sticky” idea behind. Sticky= Understood + Remembered

This morning, I went to the web site of that prime number loving candidate to look up his 17 point economic development plan. Interestingly enough, they were grouped into three key and much more sticky ideas: retain, recruit, reform.

(By the way, I had to count the bullets underneath these three headers and I swear, I’ve counted three times now, that there are 18 points, not 17. Maybe he’s giving us a baker’s 17 — one extra thrown in? )

The 17/18 points failed to meet the very first requirement in the book for making ideas stick: simplicity.

Maybe this candidate is thinking that voters will remember that he has a plan with 17/18 points.  Maybe 17 is supposed to sound very comprehensive. I do have to say, this morning I am definitely remembering he had a 17/18 point plan. But I can assure you I’m not going to base my vote on the number of bullet points in his plan.

In a debate, you’ve got very little time to get powerful points across. Remember the Clinton campaign and its relentless focus around one concept: “it’s the economy, stupid.”

How much more memorable would it have been if this candidate, when asked his strategy for economy development, answered this way:

“Our city needs more jobs. Period. I’ve got a pretty straightforward plan: 1.Retain the businesses that are already here. 2. Recruit new ones, and 3. Reform all those annoying procedures that make it hard to do business here. Here’s an example of what we’ll do…”

I was keeping to the alliterative R framework. I know with a little more time, I could make the whole concept even simpler. With a compelling story that makes the whole idea more concrete, he’d have hit elements #1, 3, 5 and 6 of stickiness. (Simple, concrete, emotional, story. The others are unexpected and credible, which, with the right story, he could nail as well.)

For those of you in public charities, even though you can’t go near candidates in the sense that you don’t want to do anything that remotely smacks of electioneering, you can certainly learn from their campaigns. Candidates especially have to make their ideas (or impression of themselves) stick as they’ve got very little time to reach us before it’s time to pull the lever.

Okay, no levers anymore. Before we have to ink in the missing part of the arrow.

The study was compiled by consultant, author and trainer extraordinaire Andy Robinson (if you haven’t, you should check out Andy’s wonderful books through our mutual publisher Emerson & Church ).

Andy’s title cues us up for what’s inside: “Reality Check: How Grassroots Environmental Organizations are (or are not) raising money online.”

Some of the lessons learned by small organizations:

• “Personal contact and relationship-building trumps everything – and will become more valuable because fewer  people will be doing it.”
• “Websites are still essential for effective fundraising.”
• “Social networks like Facebook remain a lower -tier for fundraising strategy – at least for now.”
• “Many online strategies won’t pay off for awhile, but try them anyway as time and money are available.”

One particularly interesting finding came from the Ohio Environmental Council. While most of their membership giving came offline, those donors who had email and received ongoing contact through a robust online program gave twice as much annually as their no-email counterparts.

You can download a free copy of the report here from ICL, though you will need to register.

Apparently the executive director took on a grant obligation which required a big match and the board took the exec’s word that the money was there to back up the obligation.

While it is the rare day that  I find myself quoting Ronald Reagan, here goes: “Trust but Verify.”

The relationship between a Board and its CEO would be pretty broken if there weren’t high degrees of trust both ways. Yet  for a Board to be truly exercising its fiduciary role, it can’t always rely on the word of its staff. It’s a sorry thing to have to say that, but even the most trustworthy person may find his or herself (or a family member) in a situation that they believe merits directly bending the truth or using silence to avoid disclosing a problem.

There was absolutely no personal gain in this case and nothing illegal. But how many times have you read a newspaper story about the loyal employee, the one that everyone trusts implicitly, who turned out to have been embezzling money all those years. (Often to support gambling addictions – we’ve had too many of those in our state). And think “that can’t happen to us.”

Instead, think about how that might happen to you and take some preventive action.

In their PolicyGovernance (R) model,  John & Miriam Carver suggest three ways that Boards can monitor the situation at their organization:

1. Ask for a report from staff

2. Engage someone from outside the organization to  conduct a review (e.g. your auditor), or

3. Inspect it yourself.

Every Board needs to make sure that they are judiciously using ways 2 & 3 in addition to relying on staff reports. It’s a heck of a lot wiser to trust, when you’ve got the independent verification that everything is hunky dory.

With our laptops at home, we didn’t check email, or Tweet, or blog. We barely used our mobile phones except to call home once or twice and to let our friends know we were coming.

Instead of being connected online, we spent the time reconnecting with the natural world in the warm embrace and good company of  dear friends, attending the wedding of our honorary niece Lilly and her new husband Jon, rocking out at their reception on beautiful Sylvan Lake and  bicycling the Mickelson Trail from Hill City to Custer and back again (where you get to ride by the Crazy Horse monument).

We beamed enjoying the talented Hannah’s performance as Laurey in Custer High School’s production of Oklahoma! (on video, we couldn’t be there in person), climbed to Little Devil’s Tower for the most glorious of views and played tourist in Deadwood at Mt. Moriah Cemetery and at Roughlock Falls.

We didn’t worry once about client projects (sorry! we do love you though) as we watched horses frolic (they did) in the meadow over breakfast, reveled over every newly discovered wildflower, and even spotted a bird for our life list (red naped sapsucker), though no golden eagle.

We shook our heads in dismay over the infestation of the forest by mountain pine beetles and learned all about forest and bug management from Lilly’s entomologist dad Bill and her park service step dad Duane.

While eating lunch admiring the view from Little Devil’s Tower, dear friend Marie taught us plant identification with this ditty: “Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have knobs from their knees to the ground.”  (I spared sharing identification techniques for finding excellent board members — anyone have a ditty for that?).

And we ate our first antelope burgers, from game killed and butchered by Duane. (Antelope is very lean… you need to add oil. I preferred the bison steaks we had at the wedding. No we are not vegetarians.  Our friends eat local, have game in their freezer, grow veggies in the summer in their small town plot, respect the life around them and can say they know where much of their food comes from. I think they’d make Michael Pollan proud.)

No amazing revelations about nonprofit capacity building or the future of the sector emerged on this trip. We were too busy helping decorate the reception hall, or reading a novel, or just watching that big beautiful sky unfold and dawn’s rays draw us out of bed.

What we did remember was the pleasure of great friends, extended families, remarkably unique places, and the good fortune to have such amazing bounty in our lives.

So take time this summer to unplug, take in a great view and some fresh air, relish good company, and follow a butterfly.

And have a lovely 4th of July weekend.

Gayle

P.S. Happy 21st birthday to our wonderful sons, Sam and Alex. Another gift we treasure.

But the PS grabbed me.  (And yes, I read the PS first. I quickly see that the main message holds bad news for me).

“P.S. Have you heard the Bates parking meter story? It’s two minutes and guaranteed to make you smile…this was sent to alumni (who hadn’t made a Bates Fund gift or pledge) two weeks ago.”

I can’t imagine a parking meter on the leafy Bates quad of my memory, nor even on the surrounding streets of sleepy Lewiston, Maine, so “the parking meter story” monicker raises a question I can’t answer without clicking on the link, a classic teaser trope. Christina promises to answer the question in two minutes or less and amuse me in the process.

I like the quick and indirect way Christina clues me in that this is not just a funny story. She tells me this story was sent to non-contributing alums a couple of weeks ago. That truth-in-advertising builds vital trust and gently reminds me that I’m a delinquent, too. I click on the link.The promised story is delivered without flash in a warm, male voice. The tale is simple.(Spoiler alert!) Because she had a Bates sticker in her car window, a Bates alum is saved from an expiring parking meter by another anonymous alum who leaves a  note about sticking together. That little story is set inside another even tinier story. The narration begins, “The day we dropped our son off at Bates, the Associate Dean of students told us this story…”

In the first nine words, I’m time-traveled back to that quad, then I’m whisked off to Boston where the actual incident takes place (photos of Bates and a parking meter support the scene-setting).

At 45 seconds, the parking meter story ends. The narrator names a few critical values of the Bates education his son is getting, but quickly gets to the core message: Bates is a community that lasts a lifetime. “Batesies take care of each other. And now we need you to take care of Bates.” Professional-quality still images of students in interesting settings back up each new idea.

After a final dollop of urgency (“The Bates Fund ends of June 30th. The meter is running down.”) the narrator directs us to the link where we can give and the video ends. It’s engaging, on-point and efficient with my time. It creates an experience that feels simple and brief, but which uses complex narrative to draw me through it and move me to give. I’ll be imitating this one as soon as I get the chance.

Well done, Christina! And I’ll make good on the pledge if you’ll tell me what it was.

Its”10 Questions” column featured the Dalai Lama, who apparently has a new book out called Toward a True Kinship of Faiths.

This quote really called to me:

In response to the question: “How can we teach our children not to be angry?” He replied:

“I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.”

As we go about doing our own work, how much of what we consider essential, what we truly value, do we take for granted?

The Dalai Lama reminds us that we need be intentional in our actions to create the word we’d like to see.

But I also found in his concern, another request. That as we focus on achievement and producing results, we need to also remind ourselves that our humanity, our societal connections formed from kindness and empathy, are achievements too. And ones we need to work at.