Category: Financing & Loans

When Does A Foundation Really Mean “No”?

Unfortunately, the answer is most of the time. Let’s go through a couple of scenarios from my recent real-world encounters to see how this can play out.

Scenario A: You’ve done your prospecting homework and have identified a foundation that’s a good fit with your organization. Unfortunately, you don’t have a connection between one of your board members and one of their trustees, but the foundation does accept unsolicited proposals.

So you go ahead and submit a well-written proposal, following all of their guidelines. Several months go by and you’re wondering when you will receive notification. Probably still too soon. So you wait until six months go by and still nothing. You call the contact number listed in the foundation’s 990 (or in the Foundation Directory) and leave a message, asking about the proposal that you submitted six months ago. They don’t call back. This is a, “No.”

If you’re absolutely, 100% sure that this foundation is a perfect fit for your organization, then go ahead and submit another proposal. If you get the same result this time, then cross them off your list!

Variation on Scenario A: You do get in touch with the foundation manager after submittal and they indicate that your proposal was not accepted. Although this news is disappointing, feedback from the foundation manager is valuable for your grant program.

Ask them if they can share any reasons why your proposal was denied: were there too many other submission this grant cycle and you just didn’t make the cut; did you leave something critical out of your submission; or, is your organization just not a good fit with their foundation? And, thank them for taking the time to discuss your proposal!

Scenario B: Again, you’ve done your homework. This time you’ve identified a foundation that doesn’t accept unsolicited proposals. So you submit a letter describing a little about your organization and asking about the possibility of applying for grant funding. You indicate that you will follow up by phone. You do, and you leave a message. They don’t call back.

A couple of weeks go by and you leave another message. They still don’t call back.

This is a, “No,” and until you can make a connection through a board member, staff member, involved donor or volunteer, then better to delete this foundation from your list.

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Lynn deLearie, owner of Lynn deLearie Consulting, LLC, helps nonprofit organizations develop, enhance and expand grant programs, and helps them secure funding from foundations and corporations. She can be contacted at lynn.delearie@gmail.com..

Online fundraising happens

…when people come to your website and make a gift. While you can reach previous donors and prospects with email, the vast majority of online donors are not on your email list – yet.

While you can pay for ads to bring traffic to your website, Google and other search engines will bring the best possible traffic to your site — people who care about your issues.

That’s why up about 50% of new visitors to a non-profit website come via a search engine, and the granddaddy of all search engines is Google … with more than 60% of the traffic.

The best way to draw quality traffic to a web page has always been the “simple” way – have great content. With Google Panda, their new search engine, it’s even more true.

Google used to place more emphasis on links from other sites, especially those that get a lot of traffic. That created the “link swapping” industry, which encouraged links to lots of pages in a reciprocal strategy, designed to create links, even those that didn’t result in clicks.

Google has changed the way it measures “good content,” from one that placed more emphasis on what other sites thought about your page, to one that places more emphasis on what users think about your page.

Google’s new “Panda” search engine places value on what people do at your site, as well as how they get there. It measures:
•  Time on Site: how long visitors spend on pages they get to from Google
•  Bounce Rate: the percentage of users that leave your site without doing anything
•  Page views per visit: How much they poke around your site

It also measures how many times a page is “shared” via FaceBook and other social networks. So make sure that you make it easy for people to share your key pages with tools like “ShareThis” or “AddThis.”

Finally, it also measures what it calls “Branded Search Traffic” – the visits that result when people enter your site name or organization name in Google to get a link to your site. That implies that people are being directed to your site from offline conversations, and come to Google to find your page.

Remember that Google ranks web pages, not web sites. So find the pages that get the most “entry traffic” from search engines and review them using questions found on Google’s own blog: Google’s Guidance On Building High Quality.

What is still important?
•  Original, useful content – tell your organization’s stories
•  A meaningful page title (the headline that shows up in search results)
•  A helpful page description (the first dozen or so words that show up in a Google search)
•  Good calls to action within your popular pages. Getting people to subscribe to your
email list, donate, sign a petition, or share your content on FaceBook all reduce your
“bounce rate” and increase your Panda score. They also produce meaningful results to you.

Do your own mini search optimization audit to see how your audience will or won’t find you in search.
1.  Create a list of keyword phrases that describe your issues, e.g. “hunger Cincinnati”
or “helping left-handed Lithuanians”
2.  Enter them in Google and see where your top page on that issue scores. See who
else is ahead of you and look at their pages to find out why.
3.  Look at your web site traffic reports to see which phrases are bringing people to
your site, and what pages they’re landing on. Those are the best places to start.

More questions about search engine marketing? 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

A reader wrote:
Our non-profit, faith based social service agency is going to split from the identity/brand of the church, but continue under a new name and separate 501(c)(3) to offer the same programs and services. The only difference is that it would no longer be associated with the church or considered part of the church’s social ministry.

The way I see it, there are two major obstacles a development team would face. My questions to you are: (1.) how would you communicate this change to your current constituents? And, (2.) how would you go about revising your approaches to fundraising …?
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For the purpose of responding to your question as completely as I can, I’ll assume that your questions relate to foster care services and that the new 501(c)(3) will comply with State laws regarding non-discrimination of prospective foster parents.

First, who, now, are your constituents/donors?

The people who gave to support the church and its good works, within the church’s beliefs/restrictions, will be unlikely to support a nonprofit that does not apply the same “restrictions.”

People who are interested in supporting foster care services for children, no matter the (prospective/qualified) foster parents, are likely to continue to support you and the children you serve.

For those folks, and for lots of people who have not yet been donors, a simple explanation that you’ve created the new nonprofit organization to make sure that there is as broad a base of quality/caring prospective foster parents as possible … to be able to provide homes for the greatest number of children.

And, to be sure that your (potential) donors are reassured and fully informed, let them know that the board of the new (c)(3) is a “diverse” group with the needs of the children uppermost in their minds and with the intention of complying with all applicable laws.

I have no doubt that the majority of your current donors (and a great many prospective donors) have read the papers, heard the reports, and are aware of the “controversy” about same-sex foster parents. Don’t beat the “issue” to death, just be open with them.

For your second question, since I’m not familiar with your prior fundraising methodology, my immediate response is to suggest that you stay with what has worked in the past. And, if you don’t already have a major gifts program, now would be a great time to create one.

I would also suggest the necessity of a regional marketing effort to get your new brand/identity known/accepted.

And, as a result of the changes/turmoil, it would also be a good time to ask donors to increase their giving … to account for any drop in income that the program has experienced … and to help you provide foster care services to as many children as possible.
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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.

An Executive Summary must be compelling and persuasive, as it introduces your narrative and provides a roadmap for reviewers. If it isn’t, reviewers will likely not pay much attention to the rest of your proposal.

Writers of good Executive Summaries avoid four common mistakes:

#1: Poorly written Executive Summaries very often begin with some flowery language about how pleased you are to submit this terrific proposal, and how you look forward to its review. These summaries tend to be very general, contain far too much marketing hype about the wonderfulness of your organization, and usually don’t focus on the needs of the government agency.

#2: Hastily written Executive Summaries, especially those written at the last minute, do not allow for proper review and rewriting. You need time to think, polish, and refine. This cannot be done at 2 A.M. the morning of the proposal deadline.

#3: Not addressing how you plan to carry out the contract is THE major mistake. Your Executive Summary must answer two important questions: Why am I bidding? What am I offering the government agency? It is, of course, important to discuss the positive qualities and services of your organization, but not to the extent of glossing over what the gov’t agency really wants to know.

#4: Bad Executive Summaries are dry and boring, and suggest to the reviewer that there is more of the same in the rest of the proposal. Your Executive Summary is a short sales pitch. Your challenge is to hook your reviewers and engage them in the rest of your narrative. You do that by demonstrating, in a relatively few paragraphs, that you have something special to offer the government agency.

This “introduction” to your proposal is too important to treat lightly. A well written Executive Summary should get the proposal reviewer to want to read your entire proposal.
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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.

Previously, we looked at some of the important considerations for a nonprofit in deciding if it wants to enroll in the CFC for the 2012 solicitation season.

For local charities, however, the application deadlines vary among the more than 200 regional CFCs, with charities in the Washington, DC metro area having the earliest deadline of January 31, and the deadlines for many of the other regional CFCs coming in February or March.

The CFC is a Government Program … That’s Big On Acronyms (surprise!)

As mentioned previously, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is the agency responsible for regulating the CFC, and administering the application process for national and international charities.

For local charities, it’s important to be aware of two other entities:.

The OPM Office of CFC Operations has a small staff and the actual responsibility for the management and conduct of the CFC campaigns is designated to the Local Federal Coordinating Committees (LFCCs) and to community agencies called Principal Combined Fund Organizations (PCFOs), the latter being contracted to provide year-to-year management/administration and financial services for the local CFC campaigns.

In many regions of the country, the PCFOs are often the local United Ways.

The regional LFCCs have the responsibility to evaluate the local CFC charities each year for determination about being included in the CFC catalog of charities. The LFCCs function as the “Boards of Directors” for the local CFCs and have oversight and governance responsibilities over the Principal Combined Fund Organization (PCFO).

Many local CFCs conduct workshops on how to apply to the CFC in their region. On the OPM.gov/CFC website, the tab labeled “Campaign Locator” will help you identify your local CFC.

One nonprofit in the DC area that does an excellent job is “Martha’s Table” — www.marthastable.org. I have no affiliation with them, but if you take a look at their website you will see an example of a nonprofit that has a real handle on workplace giving, including how they thank their donors and volunteers.

This is their 25 word description from the CFC Catalog of Caring:

Martha’s Table works with low-income children, families

and individuals to meet their basic needs through food,

clothing, daycare, and after-school learning activities.

Remember, while it must be accurate, your 25 word description is the marketing message that you write.

Having addressed the various aspects of the application process, there are two points I feel must be emphasized: With the CFC you are developing multi-year donors; and, there’s much less red tape on the backend than with grants.

CFC Donors are Multi-Year Donors

The reality is that most CFC donors are multiple year donors. Once they start giving to the CFC charities they check off, they tend to become loyal supporters who, for the most part, check off the same charities every year, even if/when they remain anonymous to the nonprofit to which they are giving.

I have seen thousands of CFC pledge cards during my Federal career, and the reality is that most of the donors made minimal changes from year to year, once they became donors.

Less Red Tape Than Most Grants

A nonprofit must apply each year, but there are no required “quarterly progress reports” or other funder required documentation. Not bad for a government program!

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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

Consider a DBA
This is especially important for national and international charities, where if you are a small national or international non-profit, everyone may not recognize your name.

The national and international lists are rigidly alphabetical; if your official name is “The Best Charity” you will be listed in the “T”s for “The” not in the “B”s for “Best.”

There are many charities whose names begin with “American” or “International.” And, the information for all of those organizations will be listed among the other nonprofits whose names begin with those words.

One technique that charities may choose to deal with this situation is to file a “Doing Business As” (DBA) change of name with their state and/or with the IRS for their workplace giving campaigns.

One example of a foundation that does this is the American Hospice Foundation, which is a member of the America’s Charities Federation, and in their workplace giving campaigns they are listed as “Hospice America.” By doing this, their information is listed near other hospice related charities, making it easier to find them than if they were listed among the charities whose names begin with “American.”

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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

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We’re taking a break. Be back on January 3rd.
Enjoy your holidays.
Hank, Natalie, Rick, Jayme, Lynn, Bill

Some time ago, I spoke to a community service club and gave my fifteen-minute “This-Is-What-Fundraising-Is-Really-All-About” speech, and a majority of the subsequent questions revolved around the concept/complaint of having to go to the same people for contributions every time the club wanted/needed to raise money.

The “fear” I most often hear expressed by members of community service clubs is that those “same people” will start to avoid them.

There’s no question that these service club members believe in and feel strongly about the causes for which they raise money. It’s just that, after a while, because they’re doing the same thing — going to the same people to buy the same tickets, it’s hard (for the club members and the prospective ticket buyers) to maintain enthusiasm for the process.

As one of the attendees put it, “There’s lots of burnout out there.” And, what is left unsaid is that many of the club members are burnt out … tired of asking the same people to support another worthy program !!

What was obvious was the need to expand their pool of prospective donors/ticket buyers to avoid having to back to the same people every time. It was also obvious that the people buying the tickets (to the dinner, the golf tournament, the carnival or any other “fundraiser”) were too often doing so to please the club member selling the tickets and/or saw the event as entertainment.

Now, I’m not big on “fundraisers,” to say the least, but most community service clubs are not likely to change their cultures, their methods of fundraising. So, there needs to be a way for these clubs to raise money for all the causes they support, without burning out the members who do the fundraising or the people to whom they sell their tickets.

It crossed my mind that the service clubs could create a separate nonprofit with 501(c)(3) status, and recruit all the folks to whom they sell tickets to be “members” of that organization. That organization, then, instead of having a number of “small” events/fundraisers during the year, could have one major event (at an overall lower cost) to raise more money than the “ticket buyers” would “contribute” during the year.

The event would be a combination of education (about the causes they are supporting), recognition (of the people who are giving their dollars “to make it happen”) and cultivation of prospective donors.

So, before I go banging my head against the wall trying to get these community service clubs to restructure their fundraising … What do you think ??

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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.

The Combined Federal Campaign for the 2012 solicitation season begins on September 1, 2012 and runs through December 15, 2012.

For national and international charities, regardless of whether they are members of a federation or an independent charity, the deadline for all application materials is Tuesday, January 17, 2012 by 5pm (EST) and applications later than that will not be accepted.

The complete application is available on the opm.gov/cfc website, but in general this is some of the information that is required:
 •  IRS 501(c)(3) Determination Letter
 •  IRS Form 990 (accrual method of accounting only)
 •  Financial Audit prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
    (GAAP) and Generally Accepted Auditing Standards (GAAS) (must be for same fiscal
    period as IRS Form 990).
 •  Detailed Description of Services for 15 or more states or 1 foreign country for national
    and international charities.
 •  Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation
 •  Listing of Board of Directors
 •  25 word description of services

It’s important to recognize that there are two very distinct and different processes with the CFC: the application process and the actual CFC campaign process. And different people may be needed for each process. For example, since your non-profit financials and IRS 990 form are required for the application process, you will need the person who handles your finances as part of the application procedure, while they are not critical to the process during the solicitation period.

Benefits for National and International Charities
Workplace giving is the only type of non-profit fundraising that is subsidized, low-risk and high leverage. It is not “no-cost” fundraising. There are costs associated with developing the workplace-giving materials, and costs for staff time to develop and manage the process.

CFC workplace giving subsidizes your development effort in many ways, including:
 •  CFC volunteers solicit their colleagues for charitable donations to your nonprofit
    and your community.
 •  If you participate in charity fairs, locations where you get to tell your nonprofit’s story
    are provided free of charge. How many hotels will do that for free!

CFC workplace giving is low-risk fundraising:
No one can mess up a “$10,000 ask” in a workplace giving setting, where the average gift is about $175. FYI, the single largest gift that I personally saw in my federal CFC career was $6,000 to one charity. The single largest recipient of CFC funds is the American Red Cross … about $7 million annually.

CFC workplace giving is high leverage fundraising:
A 25-word description of your non-profit (that you write) will be provided to every Federal employee in the United States and at US overseas locations. What would be the cost to mail several million postcards to all Federal employees and uniformed service members?

With one application you are automatically in the more than 200 regional CFCs. If you are a small, national or international non-profit, this amount of leverage for your efforts is huge. Compare the effort required to apply to the CFC to applying for 200 grants with different application procedures, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

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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

A reader wrote: “I know of an organization where the donor gave restricted funds, i.e., funds specified for a certain program, that the nonprofit agreed to.

“The nonprofit has been giving regular reports to the donor, along with achieved outcomes, but the donor suddenly insists that she wants all of her money back.

“I’ve never encountered this before. Have you? Might you venture a suggestion?”
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The first question I’d ask would be about why … why she wants her money back, what happened … what provoked her demand.

Not knowing the answer to those questions, I’d have to respond generically:

A restricted gift must be used (only) for the purpose(s) stated-and-agreed to by the donor and the NPO prior to the gift being made; and, if the money was used for the agreed upon purposes, and the NPO provided regular reports to the donor confirming that the money was so used, I can’t imagine a “legitimate” basis for the donor demanding to have her money back.

It may not sit right for the NPO to be in this position, but my experience working with nonprofits makes me sensitive to the negative publicity an NPO could engender … that could hurt their future fundraising efforts. So, in response to your request for a suggestion, I offer the following thoughts:

  •  If the donor is a major donor, it raises the question of the potential for future donations –
     but if she’s demanding her money back now, future potential seems unlikely.
  •  If the donor has major influence in the community, it might be best (good will-wise) for the
     NPO to return the donation, if they can !!

Of course, if the above considerations don’t apply, then there’d be little motivation for the nonprofit to even consider returning the contribution.

  •  Giving in to someone who is generally perceived as an “eccentric” might set a bad
     precedent and create the image that the NPO is poorly managed.
  •  If the NPO doesn’t feel that a court case will engender the kind of negative publicity
     that will hurt them, then they should fight the case if the donor takes it to court.

If the question becomes about legal issues — i.e., if the donor wants to sue to get her money back, the court will decide if she has a case … or not.

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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.

How You Mail Your Proposals Can Make a Big Difference

The United States Postal Service is reliable, usually, almost all the time… But what about when they do lose a letter, or more important, your grant proposal?

It can happen, and it just did for one of my clients. I was expecting grant notification about a month earlier so called the foundation manager. They said they had never received the proposal, and had already made all their grant awards for the year. I had mailed the proposal regular mail without delivery confirmation.

I thanked the foundation manager, and e-mailed the proposal for their records – I had included a lot of good program results along with the proposal and wanted them to have that information.

I also leaned a big lesson, and I will NEVER mail a grant proposal or report again by regular mail. So, what are the options? FedEx is discouraged by many foundations because it is expensive, unnecessary (you didn’t need to wait until the last minute to submit the proposal), and doesn’t show that you are a good steward of your donors’ investments. Express Mail Service through the post office is also frowned upon for the same reasons.

That leaves Priority Mail Service with delivery confirmation. And, if you’re like me and don’t like waiting in line at the post office, you don’t have to! You can print labels with postage from home, and mail from your very own mailbox. All you need to do is set up an account at USPS.com, pick up a stack of Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelopes from your post office (no waiting in line for that), and you’re ready to go.

You don’t even need a postal scale because virtually all of your mailings will be less than 13 oz. and can be delivered for $4.75 with delivery confirmation. The best part is that you’ll even save money by mailing from home – the post office charges $4.95 for the same service. I guess they don’t like the long lines either!

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Lynn deLearie, owner of Lynn deLearie Consulting, LLC, helps nonprofit organizations develop, enhance and expand grant programs, and helps them secure funding from foundations and corporations. She can be contacted at lynn.delearie@gmail.com..