Persuading Nonprofit Leaders

I haven’t read the full report yet, but the October 2007 issue of Advancing Philanthropy, AFP’s magazine, had a quick overview of Discovering the Activation Point from the Communications Leadership Institute and Spitfire Strategies. Review, author Jacklyn Boice notes: “Real change requires action, and persuasion is the key to moving people from knowing something to doing something.”

Click here to see the full report. This is an important issue for major gift fundraisers. We are selling the future vision of our nonprofit organizations and how philanthropic investments will change people, our community, and the world.

As you know, I’ve been intrigued for years with Robert Cialdini’s Psychology of Persuasion research (see Tom’s Top 10 Book list on the left hand side of the website for a link to Cialdini’s book). Major gift fundraising is all about persuasion. And, for many fundraisers we have occasions where we need to take a donor friendly idea that we have or a donor idea given to us and persuade our nonprofit leaders to accept these new ways of thinking.

Let me know what you think of this resource. Click on the title above to link to it.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Persuading Nonprofit Leaders

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/persuading-nonprofit-leaders.html

Award Winning Fundraising DVD

To bring life to your case statement for major gift support make a movie. Here is a DVD my production team and I made with CDA Foundation. We won three Telly Awards in 2007.

Permanent Link: Award Winning Fundraising DVD

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/award-winning-fundraising-dvd.html

Google Earth Helps Nonprofits

A recent AFP Advancing Philanthropy magazine noted:

Google Earth is offering nonprofits the resources and tools to import data into Google Earth to inspire people to action. This is a great way to make your case tangible to major gift donors. Click on Good Earth Outreach to learn more.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Google Earth Helps Nonprofits

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/google-earth-helps-nonprofits.html

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate contributions aren't really philanthropic. They're reinvestments in the community; enlightening self interest.

I've really been enjoying listening to podcasts on my iPod. NPR best stories, NY Times book reviews, and Harvard Business Review IdeaCasts.

Mark Kramer, SSG Social Impact Advisors, co-author of Strategy & Society. Mr. Kramer was interviewed on the December 11, 2006 HBR IdeaCast. Click here and select episode #22 to download this interesting interview to hear how corporations view corporate social responsibility. Mark Kramer discusses the importance of being proactive with corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the suggestion that CSR coordinate with a company's philanthropic program.

The second half of this brief podcast covers strategic planning issues from a corporate perspective.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Corporate Social Responsibility

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/corporate-social-responsibility.html

Social Network Fundraising?

I am chairing a panel at this next summer's Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Nonprofits Symposium on the Internet and Web 2.0 fundraising. I'm trying to learn what this means for major gifts fundraising and for capital campaign fundraising for nonprofit organizations. Let me know what you think.

I'll try to find articles that help all of us "oldtimers" understand this new world of social networking better.

One news article caught my attention. Parade Magazine and Case Foundation's "America's Giving Challenge" conducted a six-week contest to encourage use of social networking and Web 2.0 tools for nonprofit fundraising. Eight people won $50,000 prizes each for driving the greatest number of donors to contribute to their cause. Portland, Oregon resident Peggy Padden won one of the prizes for raising$65,522 from 2,732 donors for the Franconi Anemia Research Fund reported The Oregonian. For more information click here.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Social Network Fundraising?

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/social-network-fundraising.html

What Makes Great Nonprofits Great?

In a post on January 17th I mentioned a new book that researched key success factors for nonprofits. Here is a YouTube podcast of a presentation at Vanderbilt University by one of the authors.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: What Makes Great Nonprofits Great?

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/what-makes-great-nonprofits-great.html

Be A Philanthropic Fundraiser

What do you tell people you do for a living?

Development? Advancement? Fund development? Resource development? Friendraising?

I'm proud to tell people that I raise money for nonprofit organizations. Research has shown that the more people make their job title hazy, the more they are rejecting the image of their work.

Being a fundraising is one of the great careers of the world. You meet wonderful people who like to help others. You associate with nonprofit organizations that really make a difference to society.

If you take a winning gifts attitude that great fundraising takes place when the donor thanks you for asking for the gift, then you will always be comfortable telling people what you do for a living.

Be a philanthropic fundraiser.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Be A Philanthropic Fundraiser

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/be-philanthropic-fundraiser.html

How to Reach a Fundraising Deadline

What do you do when your annual fund deadline is 4 months away and you still have 50%of the goal to go?

What do you do when your special project funding deadline ends 12/3/08 and you still have $400,000 left to raise?

Get focused. Be patient and follow people-centered fundraising techniques, but start measuring yourself, your staff, and your volunteers for weekly productivity.

Start asking yourself the question, how much money did I raise this week? This month? What did I do today that will help me get closer to our goal?

Think through when you are most productive and use that time as “prime time” for fundraising.

Instead of the “one a day” calling plan on prospective donors, go to two a days (just like athletic teams do to get ready for their season).

A case history — one of my clients is raising special project funds. There was a two-year timeline to raise $1.5 million. The building opens this summer with a special party in September. We’d love to have the project pledged out before either of these events. What to do? First we set up a chart to show how much has been raised and how much is needed. We’re going to have weekly staff meetings to ask how much each person has raised toward the $400,000 left. We’re stressing that written pledges signed as soon as possible and payable by year end count. We want pledges completed by July 1 with pledge payments done by December 31 of this year. The volunteer chair, who is extremely busy, agreed to 10-minute phone calls each week so we can keep him motivated and focused on the goal. We are using naming opportunities for the new building new to raise the sights of major gift donors. If we can close 5 to 10 significant gifts we can conquer this challenge.

To summarize our strategies: 1) Be clear on the goal — make it visual, measure progress toward it weekly, 2) Make reaching the objective everyone’s job — instead of one person being responsible everyone in the office needs to rally to meet the objective, 3) Gear up your volunteer force — be nice, but be clear that volunteers need to help now, and 4) Be flexible — take pledges now with cash payable by year end.

We’ll keep you posted.




Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: How to Reach a Fundraising Deadline

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/how-to-reach-fundraising-deadline.html

How Should Nonprofit Building Planning Committees Work?

In working with donors’ money, you want to measure twice and cut once in your building planning efforts.

In selecting an architect for your building, you should check with your peers in the region and nationally. Whom have they used successfully that knows your type of building? However, be careful, you want to use as many local people in your building process as possible (architects, contractor, subcontractors) so you can tell the story of how donors’ money has helped the local economy. A local architect can always hire a national science lab firm as a design partner to bring you the best of local and national resources to your building planning efforts.

Invite 3 to 5 people to join your building committee. Ideally, a board member who has built things before should chair it. If your board doesn’t have this expertise, a board member can still chair the committee but seek community members who have built company headquarters, run construction companies (either building or road work, ideally both). You need someone from the financial and facilities side of your nonprofit organization as well as you the major gifts fundraiser.

If you have a lead donor who has invested in the building and is interested in the process, invite them to the table as well.

If you will be needed city or county zoning permits or other political insights to make your project move forward, make sure to include people who know how the city planning system works and is used to interacting with it. Many times your architect brings these skills to the table, but it’s also helpful to have a board member or volunteer with political leverage on your side.

The committee should consider the criteria for issuing an RFP to find an architect. Your experienced committee members will have samples of an RFP or you can call a locally prominent architect that you would like to invite into the process to help you develop one. Determine if all committee members or only one person (usually better for consistently of answers) should be the contact person for inquiries. You should also consider whether to ask candidate firms to issue their questions in writing so that you can respond to everybody at once with all of the answers. Also, decide on whether you will allow them to make site visits prior to their presentations.

After issuing the RFP and allowing 4 to 6 weeks for firms to respond, the committee should meet to narrow the list of finalists to no more than 3. You should schedule full committee meetings to hear the final presentations.

Please check references. How good was the architectural budget forecasting? How well did their conceptual design work translate into construction drawings and then successful building programs? Check with other nonprofits the architect helped and with the contractors who implemented their plans.

Good luck. This is a fun process. Time consuming, but exciting.

Architectural image courtesy of WRNS Studios

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: How Should Nonprofit Building Planning Committees Work?

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/how-should-nonprofit-building-planning.html

Match People's Interests with Institutional Needs for Win Win Fundraising

Too often nonprofit organizations are so focused on their needs for contributed funds -- for operations, for buildings, for special projects -- that they forget their donors have interests and needs too.

The most effective fundraising is done on a win-win basis. Slow down to listen to people's interests to see where they match up with your list of institutional needs. Once you find a match, you're off to a great gift.

A good example was a dinner we held at our university cultivating people to consider making a gift to us. The messaging involved student scholarships. On one side of me I had a gentleman who thought this was a terrific idea and that every student willing and able should get a scholarship. On the other side was an arch conservative who had struggled his whole life to be a success. He made it without a scholarship and felt that anybody with enough gumption could do things on their own. Selling a scholarship to the first person was relatively easy. We found a different project for the second man.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Match People's Interests with Institutional Needs for Win Win Fundraising

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/match-peoples-interests-with.html

Hedge Fund Foundations

One of the top hedge fund foundations is the Open Society Institute by George Soros. Click that name for more information. This fund is #57 on the Foundation Center list of the top 100 foundation donors in total giving as of 1/31/08. Connect here for a list of other prominent hedge fund foundations.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Hedge Fund Foundations

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/hedge-fund-foundations.html

Corporate Fundraising — Corporate Giving Is Enlightened Self Interest

Many corporations give donations from a contributions budget or a corporate foundation. While allowed 10% of their profits to go to charity, why does corporate giving only average 1%. Why out of 2006 total philanthropy of nearly $300 billion (Giving U.S.A.) does corporate giving only account for 4% (6% after you take out nearly $100 billion of individual giving to religious causes)?

First of all it’s a very noisy 6%. Corporations want a lot of visibility for their giving while individuals who give 64% of funds (after religious giving is taken out) usually are quiet, anonymous givers.

Also, realize that corporate giving isn’t really philanthropic, but rather investments toward enlightened self interest. They want visibility in return for their donations.

If you look at many nonprofit revenue statements, you will find corporate giving much higher than this 6% Giving U.S.A. statistic. The reason? Many corporations supplement their giving budgets through marketing sponsorships, human resources budget allocations (for student internships and scholarships), and from R&D budget allocations (research and development funds for university sponsored research or affiliations).

While this is good news for nonprofits, it is important to remember these aren’t “gifts” but rather contractual obligations with expectations from corporations. In fact, some organizations are finding the contracts more detailed, more lawyer driven, and more like a business deal than a generous philanthropic gesture.

Photo courtesy of Gerson, Preston, Robinson & Company

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Corporate Fundraising — Corporate Giving Is Enlightened Self Interest

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/corporate-fundraising-corporate-giving.html

Red Cross Should Be Increasing Major Gifts Fundraising Staff Not Making Job Cuts

The American Red Cross, faced with a $200 million deficit on its 2007 operating budget of $3.45 billion, is cutting up to 1,000 employees including 60 members of the national fundraising staff. This report in the New York Times indicates possible tough times for this American institution.

The Red Cross does such a wonderful job it should be adding major gifts fundraising staff. If it has been doing too much direct mail, the fundraiser cuts might make sense. The Red Cross should get personal and start visiting their major donors face to face to help meet the needs of this great organization.

Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Red Cross Should Be Increasing Major Gifts Fundraising Staff Not Making Job Cuts

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/red-cross-should-be-increasing-major.html

Art Museum Endowment Gift a Winner For Kids

A million dollar endowment gift will enable free admission for all children 17 and younger at Portland Art Museum (Oregon). As reported in the February 2, 2008 issue of The Oregonian, Museum Director Ferrison notes: "It encourages this idea that we are an institution about education and art . . . part of the fabric of the community."

What a great gift to art and to the children of the community. Thanks to donors Gordon Sondland and Katherine Durant.

Tom Wilson, Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Art Museum Endowment Gift a Winner For Kids

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/art-museum-endowment-gift-winner-for.html

Listening to Donors AFP Webconference

Please join me, my live studio audience in Portland, Oregon for AFP Oregon & SW Washington, on February 19th at 10 am Pacific Time for an AFP International Webconference.

The topic is Listening to Donors, chapter 3 of my new book Winning Gifts: Make Your Donors Feels Like Winners.

For information on how to register contact AFP by clicking on their logo above.

Hear you soon.

Tom Wilson, Author, Winning Gifts

Permanent Link: Listening to Donors AFP Webconference

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2008/02/listening-to-donors-afp-webconference.html