Category: Financing & Loans

If you have a donor’s email address, use it several times without asking for money.

The best way to use a donor’s email address is to thank them for a recent gift, and tell them how their money is being used.

If you have a donor’s email address on file, then send them an email message every time you get a gift via mail or phone. The benefits include:

• You get to thank them twice: once in the email, and again with the letter they’ll receive in the mail.
• You can thank them much faster than the standards letter. There’s no reason you can’t hack your system to send an email message of thanks within 24 hours of when their gift is updated to your database. That’s two or more weeks faster than a letter is likely to get to them.
• They’re more likely to open future email messages from you when they get email messages that are not just appeals.
• You build the habit of engaging them online.
• You can invite them do something else online, like become a FaceBook fan, or watch a YouTube video
• You can show them in sound and motion how their gift is making a difference.
• Gathering their feedback via a short survey or open-ended question.

To really make the email thank-you message work best, it should be:

• Personalized: include the gift amount, the project they are helping to support, and the date of their gift.
• Simple: it doesn’t need fancy graphics, just a logo at the top and a few short paragraphs of copy.
• Signed by the person who signed the original appeal that triggered the gift.
• Inviting: give them a few ways to further your mission, via links to FaceBook, YouTube, your website, or a short survey.
• Far-reaching: If this is a milestone gift (10^th, 25^th, etc.) or if they’ve given for many years, say so in the email. It will brighten their day to be recognized.

More questions about email fundraising? Send me an email!

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Rick Christ has been helping nonprofit organizations use the internet for fundraising, communications and advocacy since 2009, and has been a frequent writer on the subject. He delights in your questions and arguments. Please contact him at: RChrist@Amergent.com or at his LinkedIn Page

Strategic Planning

Every nonprofit must periodically assess its success in pursuing its mission, and must evaluate its progress toward achieving its long-term goals and objectives.

Those assessments and evaluations can only proceed if an organization has clearly established (and periodically) confirms its reason for being, and has established benchmarks by which it can judge its success and achievements.

On an annual basis, part of the strategic planning process is the analysis of income and expenses for the year ending, and the creation of a budget for the coming year. Budget creation must be based on “real” numbers, numbers that are based on need and the likelihood of income being at levels that will satisfy the need.

It directly follows that a budget cannot (should not) be adopted unless there will be sufficient income to fund all planned/desired activities.

Strategic Planning, therefore, cannot proceed without a parallel process of Development Planning that indicates/reveals what an organization’s (realistic) fundraising potential is for the coming year.

Development Planning

So many (immature) nonprofits set their fundraising goals based on what they’d like to raise, as opposed to what they can raise.

Goal setting is not the arbitrary choice of a dollar target. Goal Setting must be based on an organization’s knowledge of their past fundraising achievements and what they know, from that experience and their fundraising expertise, that they will be able to raise for the coming year.

An NPO cannot risk setting a fundraising goal that they don’t reach. Failure to reach a fundraising goal sends the wrong messages to the community, to the constituency and to (potential) donors. It says that the NPO doesn’t plan well, isn’t broadly supported by the community, and doesn’t have the dollar support they need for the activities in their budget.
 
 
So, when an organization is doing its Strategic Planning, it must take the results of the Development Planning process into consideration when setting short- and long-term goals and objectives. You can’t include activities/expenses in the Strategic Plan that projected income won’t support, and income projections must be based on reality, not wishful thinking.

The Development Plan is the large dose of reality that places limits on the Strategic Plan, and the Strategic Plan is the “justification” for setting fundraising goals. It’s like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other !!

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Contact me at Hank@Major-Capital-Giving.com With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, I’ll be pleased to answer your questions.

In this and the next several CFC posts, we’ll examine some of the steps that you and your organization can take to benefit from participation in the CFC, in addition to those activities that generate revenue.

One challenge that many non-profits face is how to provide real opportunities for their staff members to develop their professional skills in a meaningful manner. And one of the huge benefits of participating in workplace giving campaigns is that they can be an integral part of your non-profit’s leadership development program.

These are just some of the skills that can be developed by participating in CFC campaigns:

• Oral Communication/public speaking skills – you can practice your “elevator speech” dozens of times in the course of a campaign.

• Team Building – the non-profit program officer can get practical experience in creating and leading a team, whether they are paid staff or volunteers.

• Listening Skills – your team will have the opportunity to listen to hundreds of people in your community – what are they saying, what’s most important to them, etc. These are your potential donors and supporters – does your mission resonate with them, are they aware of your organization?

• Written Communication – there are many opportunities to develop one’s writing ability, from simple memos to analyses (of the comments from community members) prepared for the nonprofit’s leadership.

Where sports teams have team meetings, playbooks, exercise regimens, etc, they also have a place where they practice what they’ve learned. For CFC charities that use workplace giving as a means of leadership development, a particular type of CFC special event, the Charity Fair, is that “practice field or rehearsal hall.”

Charity Fairs are held by a sponsoring Federal agency, and most will have between ten and twenty charities set up in a large room (like a cafeteria or auditorium), and will last from two to four hours (similar to a Job Fair, but without resumes).

By having your staff members and/or volunteers participate in charity fairs at the different Federal agencies, you give them the opportunity to do three things:

• Tell your story.

• Meet and listen to potential donors.

• Distribute literature and other promotional items with your message/URL on them.

Early each year, you can assign a staff person to determine which promotional items would make the most sense for your organization, and what the costs would be for each item.

Here are a few key points, regarding promotional items, from a presentation by Jeff Brown, of America’s Charities, given at a workshop he and I presented at the Foundation Center last September:

• Size Matters: They don’t need to be gigantic. Some of the more effective items are as small as pens or tubes of lip balm.

• Be Visible: Put your organization’s logo/name on the item, and include a website URL to make it easy for potential donors to further research your organization.

• Quality is Important: Don’t use items that appear to be cheaply made. They will not only reflect on your name and reputation, but they tend to break easily and reduce the time span of your brand promotion. And, handing out pens that work once before running out of ink doesn’t say good things about your organization.

It can be important that your promotional items, in some way, tie to your non-profit’s mission. For example, for years the Community Health Charities handed out a small band-aid box, designed to be kept at one’s desk. It had their name, the CFC code number, their URL and phone number, and people never threw it away! Compare that to your typical paper brochure!

Assign/tackle this project now, so you will have enough time to select and obtain the items well before you need them for a charity fair.

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During his 25-year career in the Federal sector, Bill Huddleston, The CFC Coach, served in many CFC roles. If you want to participate in the Combined Federal Campaign, maximize your nonprofit’s CFC revenues, or just ask a few questions, contact … Bill Huddleston

We should (and usually do) work hard to make our best possible case for support to corporations … wanting them to know as much as possible about us. But an equally important issue is, “What do we know about them?”

I was recently thinking about the extent, the depth, to which we have to know our corporate prospects in order to make the assessments, ratings and evaluations that must precede our (best) requests for their money.

One thing that came to mind was the annual fund-raising conference held in our area, and the notes I made each year, over several years, from attending the corporate-giving panel sessions. The conferences usually included three or four corporate contributions managers — representing large corporations and banks.

Each time, the different corporate contribution managers cited their “Top Ten” requirements/preferences for any non-profit institution to be able to attract their corporation’s attention for funding. My notes, even though they were different people, representing different corporations, indicated basically the same “Top” three things those stewards of corporate funding wanted from contribution seekers.

They said:
(1) Know Who We Are:
• Read our corporation’s Annual Report.
• Have you looked at our website?
• Do you know what we make and sell?
• Who are our customers?
• How many employees do we have?
• Where are our locations?
• Who are our Officers, and are any of them involved in your organization?

(2) Understand Our Concerns:
• What are our policies regarding endowments, capital campaigns, annual operating support,
giving to projects and services, and United Way supporting agencies?
• And if you wish to “double dip,” when it comes to obtaining our support for a specific campaign,
you should know whether we will also support a special fund-raising event or project you are
producing.
• Keeping your organizations’ solicitations organized/coordinated is supremely important to us.
Make certain that if more than one individual from your organization contacts us, that they
know what the “left and right hands are doing.”

(3) Understand Our Interests:
• Do we employ a strategic philanthropic practice, i.e., be it focus on education (what type),
health care, social services, arts & culture, etc.?
• Are any of our employees donors to your organization?
• Do we match their donations with our corporation’s funds? If so, how much?
• What is our corporate citizenship mission in your community?
• Do we want/need to be recognized publicly with our corporate sponsorships, be they local,
statewide, national, or global?

From the mouths of those stewards of their corporations’ money — while it’s obvious they want to know about our organizations — they certainly made it clear that we had better know more about them than the easily available surface information.

All of that, then, becomes the basis of the profile we develop for our best chance to be on the receiving end of the corporate money flow.

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If you have a question or comment for Tony, he can be reached at Tony@raise-funds.com. There is also a lot of good fundraising information on his website: Raise-Funds.com

Too often we wind up letting the tail wag the dog. I know, I’ve been there.

Not long ago, I came across an RFP (Request for Proposal) that was outside the scope of what our organization was planning to do during the current fiscal year. I talked to our program staff, and they came up with a good idea that would fit the RFP … an idea, however, that was not in our operating budget.

So, with the enthusiasm of the staff, I wrote and submitted the proposal. And we won the grant.

Great news, right ?? Not exactly !!

Now we have to implement this new project that doesn’t underwrite any costs in our current operating budget. So, in reality, we will have to ask our already stretched program staff to implement this project in their “spare time”….

The better way to manage your grant program is to collaborate with your program staff during the budgeting process to agree on what your organization is planning for the next fiscal year.

Projects, programs, and overhead costs that end up in your operating budget can then be included in your grant-seeking calendar. Those that end up getting cut during budgeting can also be included, but at a lower priority.

This allows you, as the grant manager, to focus your efforts on funding your organization’s operating budget, instead of chasing after money for projects or programs that your organization may not need or can’t afford to implement.

There is, then, a simple question that should, with rare exception, define your decision-making process: Is the project or program in the current operating budget? If YES, pursue for grant funding; if NO, don’t….

This might come in handy when you have to explain to your program staff/executive director/board member why you didn’t pursue a “great grant opportunity” that they handed to you.

And, please keep in mind that this is best managed with some flexibility. Perhaps an RFP comes your way that is too good to pass up. As long as your NPO’s leadership and program staff give it the green light … and understand the consequences of implementing the new venture, then go for it.

Another green light for an off-budget project or program is one in which you can include a portion of your current operating budget – perhaps staff time to implement the new project/program.

Just remember, don’t let off-budget new-ideas control your grant-seeking process. Be the dog wagging the tail, not the other way around; you will better serve your organization with a more thoughtful approach.
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Lynn deLearie Consulting, LLC, helps nonprofit organizations develop, enhance and expand grant programs, and helps them secure funding from foundations and corporations. Contact Lynn deLearie..

The Senior Development Person functions in four broad areas:
•  Long- and Short-Term Planning
       Working with Leadership
•  Operational Planning and Analysis
       Working with Leadership, Administration and Staff to identify
       and select the (marketing, public relations and development)
       programs that will best address established goals and
       objectives.
•  Coordinating Development Activities with those of the other depts.
•  Program Supervision
       Working with Staff and/or vendors to plan and oversee Events and Mass Mailings —
       Solicitations and other Communications, and Coordinate the activities of the
       Volunteer Leadership.

The Operational Development Person functions in four specific areas:
•  Long- and Short-Term Planning
       Working with the senior development person
•  Operational Planning and Analysis
       Working with Leadership, Administration and senior development person to identify and
       select the (marketing, public relations and development) programs that will best address
       goals and objectives.
•  Program Planning
       Working with Volunteers and vendors to plan Events and Mass Mailings
•  Program Implementation
       Working with Volunteers and vendors to implement specific relationship-building and
       fundraising activities, and Coordinate the Activities of the Volunteer Leadership

The Development Support Person functions in two general areas:
•  Data Entry
       Information on gifts, donors and prospects
•  Communications
       Contact with donors, prospects, volunteers and vendors to obtain/confirm information,
       and facilitating the communications of the operational development person with donors,
       prospects, volunteers and vendors.

(This piece has been on my hard drive for so long, I don’t remember if I wrote it or if someone else did, but it’s information worth having, and I’ll be happy to give recognition to its author if I’m informed it wasn’t me !!)

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Contact me at Hank@Major-Capital-Giving.com With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, I’ll be pleased to answer your questions.

Developing a grant proposal to a government agency is a risky undertaking. However, there are predictable risks that you should anticipate and address. If you do not address them at the beginning of your effort, your may have trouble submitting a competitive grant proposal by the deadline.

Risks and How to Address Them
Below are the four most common risks and strategies for addressing them.

1. Insufficient Information about the Government Agency
•  Conduct electronic research about the government agency
•  Engage the government agency outside the office at professional meetings, conferences,
and other venues
•  Use ethical and reliable people and legitimate sources to provide more information and
insight about the government agency

2. Tight Schedule
•  Create a schedule that works backward from the deadline to the kick-off meeting
•  Build time into the schedule for delays and other problems
•  Get the resources you need to meet the deadline

3. Scarce Resources
•  Establish a realistic proposal development budget
•  Identify and secure needed resources to do the proposal well, from equipment to people
•  Use consultants when necessary to bolster your proposal team

4. Incompetent and/or Delusional Senior Management and Colleagues
•  Use a solid bid/no bid process to reject grant opportunities that you have little or no
chance of winning
•  Create a plan to address major risks
•  Provide sufficient time within your schedule to resolve difficulties and bottlenecks
•  Maintain a good sense of humor and a stoical attitude about the proposal effort

Risks are common and predictable when you develop government grant proposals. Anticipate them and you will be more successful.

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Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc.,
helps nonprofit organizations develop successful proposals to government agencies. Contact Jayme Sokolow.

The Development Office and its staff functions with-and-through a volunteer cadre, and:

•  Participates in the strategic planning process to address the
    feasibility of attaining specific long-range and short-term
    funding goals.
•  Is responsible for working with Leadership and Administration
    in planning and implementing the activities needed to generate
    the funding required to meet the goal established by the
    strategic planning process.
•  Participates in the process that links the setting of cash flow goals to the fund raising process.
•  Works with Leadership in the creation/adoption of Short- and Long-Term Development Plans
    designed to identify, educate, cultivate and involve major gift prospects in the activities of the
    organization, so that short- and long-term funding goals can be met.
•  Works independently and with Leadership in researching prospective major donors.
•  Coordinates and tracks activities of Leadership in that process, and in the evaluation of
    solicitation of those prospects.
•  Maintains and coordinates the use of the organization’s database.
•  Works independently and with Leadership in designing and implementing broad-based
    marketing, public relations and fund raising programs.
•  Coordinates, via the research process, the identification of which individuals, foundations
    and corporations should be donor prospects for which programs and activities.

(This piece has been on my hard drive for so long, I don’t remember if I wrote it or if someone else did, but it’s information worth having, and I’ll be happy to give recognition to its author if I’m informed it wasn’t me !!)

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Contact me at Hank@Major-Capital-Giving.com With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, I’ll be pleased to answer your questions.

Recently, a disgruntled grant seeker I know told me that he was so upset with what he said was a “blatant” turndown from a foundation Program Officer that he was going to go over that official’s head to appeal to a board member of the foundation — someone whom he knows.

My immediate reaction was that he needs to know how to take “No” for an answer. By not doing so, he increases the likelihood that he will poison that foundation’s “philanthropic well.”

The rejection should be followed by a gracious acceptance of that program officer’s decision.

It’s best to leave the grantor better conditioned for the next time the organization wants to go back to that “well” for funding — which will probably be sooner than later. To do otherwise risks burning that “funding bridge” beyond repair.

Going over the head of a program officer promises nothing but trouble. My rule of thumb is never leapfrog over anybody. In general, woe befalls the fund-raiser who goes around the program officers.

There could be double trouble, should the higher-level contact be displeased to be put in the middle of such a thorny issue – that of needing to rule on what a subordinate has already decided.

Consider that some program officers may zealously guard their positions of authority – even to ensure they are the last resort in the granting process.

For us not to accept that stance can imply that we question their expertise and judgment – even their integrity. Any instance of real or perceived criticism, or the suggestion that a program officer can do a better job or that they did not do the job at all, may well evoke the real risk of a seriously negative reaction to the next proposal we submit.

We should have it fixed in our minds that program officers always do a great job, even when they deny our requests for funding and we think they erred in their judgment.

Even if we think they made a major error, we should not be foolish enough to suggest that by going over their heads. We have got to be smart, and not to risk making an enemy of a person who could very well have a commanding position to decline our future grant requests.

A highly regarded foundation authority once said: “The grant seeker always comes to grantors, psychologically, on their knees. Most grantors work with care and diligence to find a way to lift them to their feet.”

To that I say, “While on our knees before grantors, even if we don’t like being in that position, we don’t bite them on their ankles.”

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If you have a question for Tony, he can be reached at Tony@raise-funds.com. There is also a lot of good fundraising information on his website: Raise-Funds.com

A reader asked:
If my 501 (c) 3 organization receives a check/donation in January 2012 (postmark is also for January 2012), but the check has a December 2011 date, is it correct that we are to record that donation as 2012 income … even though the intent of the donor may be for the gift to be considered a 2011 donation?

Christine responds:
Here is what the IRS has to say about the timing of contributions, in Publication 526 Charitable Contributions (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p526.pdf):

If the envelope is postmarked 2012, the contribution is for 2012. If the envelope is postmarked 2011, the contribution is for 2011. This is called “constructive receipt.”

The organization is deemed to have constructively received a gift the moment the promise is made or when the money leaves the control of the donor, i.e. placed in the mail. Back-dating a check does not prove that the gift was made in the prior year.

It is possible, however, that an envelope placed in a post office box may not be picked up for a day or two during the holidays!!

Even if you do not normally make copies of donation checks during the year, be sure to do so when you are depositing December donation checks in January.

Many organizations try to stretch the year when individual donors fail to mail their gifts before the actual end of the year. Many others play it safe by adhering to a strict policy of dating a gift by the date of receipt. Some judgment on the part of the organization may well be needed in a few cases. The safe and conservative approach is to attribute the gift to the later date when there is confusion.

The reader also asked:
If a check used to make a donation has two names on it, do we write the tax receipt only to the person who signed the check or to both people whose names are on the check?

Hank responded:
Assuming you didn’t get a note with the check indicating that it came from one (not both) of the people named on the check, and assuming that you have no record of prior giving from one-or-both of those named, the acknowledgment/receipt/thank you should be addressed to both.

How they use that receipt is up to them. If you’ve gotten prior gifts from one of the people named on the check, but not the other, then you can use your judgment as to whether to thank just the prior donor. It never hurts to thank someone !!

BTW, you are not sending them a “tax receipt,” you are sending them a receipt they can use for tax purposes … an important distinction !! For the purposes of donor relations, it would also be best for the receipt to be in letter format, with some warm words of thanks.

See IRS Publication 1771 (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf) for guidance on providing acknowledgement of a donation.

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Christine L. Manor, CPA, wrote QuickBooks for Not-for-Profit Organizations, available from The Sleeter Group … at www.sleeterstore.com. Christine can be reached at clm@clmanor.com

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Contact Hank at Hank@Major-Capital-Giving.com With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, he’ll be pleased to answer your questions.