Category: Finance

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]..

Want to increase the impact of your fundraising emails?

Don’t leave online social media out of the picture.

Consider this interesting fact: Americans spend 3 times as much time on social media as they do on email.

Improve your email performance by combining your email messaging with your social media presence. With a modest investment of time and effort, you can adapt your email content to create Facebook posts and Twitter tweets.

Since most email results are captured with a few hours of an email’s launch, it makes sense to put more online effort into those hours by being very present on your social media.

Here are a few quick and easy ways to boost your email fundraising power:

•   Build excitement with posts and tweets a couple of hours before the email release and
    follow with updates a few hours after the launch. Link one of
    your posts or tweets to an online version of your latest email.

•   Provide sample “share” copy with colleagues, volunteers and friends, so they can
    help spread the word via their own social network sites.

•   Use compelling graphics for goal-oriented campaigns such as a thermometer
    on your Facebook page to display the latest results.

•   Include a “last minute reminder” tweet and post for appeals with a deadline.

•   Be active on FaceBook, responding to messages from your fans and mention that
    they should check their email.

Social media expands your reach because it meets your supporters where they “live.” With consistent messaging across channels, it can help increase open rates and boost overall conversion.

Want to know how to earn your donors’ loyalty and keep them engaged all year long through integrated fundraising campaigns? 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: [email protected] or at his LinkedIn Page

A Simple Grant Proposal is Better….

When your grant proposal is being evaluated by a government agency, reviewers rely on a mental toolbox of rapid and simple techniques to score your application. How you write/design the proposal must be as persuasive as possible, and must help reviewers gather information quickly and effortlessly.

Use the principles of Good Information Design to help reviewers quickly find the information that interests them:

• Instead of the boxy, justified look, make your proposal attractive-to-the-eye
by using a left-justification with “ragged-right.” Add lists, graphics, tables and other visuals.
Use headers and footers, and headings that stand out.

• Organize your proposal to reflect the grant guidelines or the evaluation criteria and,
especially, by using the vocabulary of the grant guidelines to label proposal
sections and headings.

• Show how your proposal will be structured … by including an Executive Summary, a Table of
Contents, frequent headings, and topic sentences at the beginning of paragraphs.

• Make it easy for the reviewer to navigate the proposal by using page and section numbers
and letters, headers, footers, and chapter and section titles.

• Create a proposal that reads easily, by breaking your narrative into manageable chunks of
information and by having related chunks of information grouped together.

• Show the importance of blocks of information by using different font sizes, font weights,
indentations, and numbering/lettering systems.

• Differentiate information types with themes, section summaries, lists, captions, sidebars,
and visuals.

Reviewers of your grant proposal are evaluating many grant applications besides yours. Make it as easy and effortless as possible for them.
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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 CFC Deadlines Are Not That Far Away
If you believe that the CFC would be a good fit for your charity, both in terms of your mission and your non-profit’s capacity to handle an additional method of fundraising, this posting and the postings on Nov xx and Dec xx will outline the process for applying for the 2012 CFC season.

For national and international charities, the application deadline is January 17, 2012, and for the more than 220 regional CFCs, the specific deadlines vary, but in general they are from late January (in the Washington DC metro region) to March/April in other parts of the country. (Dates for applying for CFC federation memberships often precede the CFC official dates by 30-60 days.)

The first step, before applying to be part of the CFC, is a management analysis – a process for determining whether or not to invest your resources in applying for the CFC. This decision-making process is an approach I’ve used in workshops for state non-profit associations. I call it “The Three C’s.“

Capabilities:
 •  Who will be responsible for the day-to-day accomplishment of the tasks?
 •  What skill sets are needed? (Public speaking, communication skills, writing skills, etc.)
 •  Does current staff (paid or volunteer) have the needed capabilities?

Capacity:
 •  Even if your staff has the capabilities needed, do they have the capacity at present to
    handle a new project/program?
 •  Or, in other words are their plates already too full?

Commitment:
 •  Is the Board supportive of the new planned program/fundraising method?
 •  How much money have they committed to it? (If the answer to this is zero, or unrealistic,
    the answer to #1 is no!)
 •  Does Executive Director or Development Director have the time?

Your CFC Action Team
In addition to answering “Three C’s” questions, a major issue that must be resolved is, “Who will be the lead on your non-profit’s CFC Action Team (or whatever you choose to call it)?

The person in this position will have a lot of responsibility; and, this position can be a great professional development opportunity for a young non-profit professional. [If you’re interested in my in-depth article on this subject, please send me an e-mail with “NP leadership” in the subject line.]

Once you’ve made the decision that you do want to pursue workplace giving as one of the tools in your development toolbox, the next decision is to decide if you want to go it alone, or to join a federation.

CFC Federations
More than 60% of the funds generated through the CFC are raised by non-profits that are federation members. These umbrella organizations, as noted in our post of June 16, put together charities with a common theme, each of which has its own application procedure, membership structure and fees.

Of course, all federations require that their members meet the OPM requirements for charities in the CFC, said requirements to be found at opm.gov/cfc.

In addition to researching and calling any given federation, ask the other CFC charities in your nonprofit community if they are a members of a federation, and what their experience has been with it.

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In the next two CFC postings, we will look at the application process more closely, starting with what’s required for national and international charities to apply to the CFC, as well as some tips that can help you be successful.

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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

Hopefully, over the last two weeks, you haven’t been cold calling, cold writing, sending “surprise” invitations or making “cold” visits to people who may or may not have been major gifts prospects. With that in mind, we’ll finish making the distinction between a “large” gift and a “major gift.”

If the person who suggested the “prospect” was close to him/her, just knew him/her in passing, knew him/her as someone who made large gifts to (local/similar) “charities,” or saw his/her name in some organization’s annual report, you must take that into consideration and make judgments as to whether this person is a “real prospect” — or just someone you wish was a prospect, and if it is worth making an investment — using resources that might be used more productively elsewhere.

Look at the time/energy/anticipation that you’ve put into this “drop-everything” effort — the time you took writing, calling, putting together those “nobody-reads-them-anyway” packets of materials, then writing and calling some more. Ask yourself if you could have made better use of your time/effort.

Does all this sounds familiar? Have you found yourself “dropping everything” because someone dropped a name? Have you experienced the frustration of getting “little” or nothing for all the efforts spent on that dropped name?

Would you like to be able to stay focused on “developing” those major gift prospects who give those major gifts?

If so, take some time to review our definitions: “What is a Major Gift,” and “Who Is A Major Gift Prospect.”

Then, next time someone says you have to drop everything to go after some of that “guaranteed” money, ask yourself (and the name-dropper) if that individual meets the criteria, and if s/he then merits a change in your priorities.

A single major gift does not a Major Gifts Program make!! And, you can’t have a “program” if you don’t have a series of activities, a process, that defines the program.

Development is about building/enhancing/maintaining relationships in order to be able to attain fundraising goals. Make the investment in cultivating and involving prospects. Get them to a point where, when you ask for the gift, it won’t be “go away money.”

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? 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. Contact me at [email protected]
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Have you seen The Fundraising Series of ebooks ??
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If you would like to comment/expand on the above, or would just like to offer your thoughts on the subject of this posting, we encourage you to “Leave a Reply” at the bottom of this page, click on the feedback link at the top of the page, or send an email to the author of this posting.

“Cool” isn’t a fundraising strategy

A client asked me last week if their organization should start putting QR codes on their direct mail envelopes.

“Yes,” I answered, “…when you’re ready for that.”

For the vast majority of nonprofits dabbling in online fundraising, there are at least ten other things you should be working on ahead of QR codes. This article will just let you be more conversant on them, and help you deter the efforts of people who think that employing the latest cool piece of technology IS a strategy.

What’s a QR code?

It’s an ink-blot that serves as a hot-link to a web page from the offline world. Smart-phone apps use the phone’s camera to scan the code, which contains a link to a web page. “QR” stands for “Quick Response.” You can get a QR code for any web page. Here’s one:

What does it take to make it work?
1. An audience that appreciates them: Smart phone sales have recently exceed sales of all previous types of sales, but clearly not everyone has them, or knows how to use them. If your audience is tech-savvy, you can explore this further. Note: “tech-savvy” does NOT mean the same thing as “young.” What percentage of your web audience now accesses your site via mobile devices?

2. Mobile-optimized web pages: People are going to scan QR codes from the cell phones, and that will bring them to a page on your site. If that page doesn’t render well in the Android and iPhone operating systems, you’ll just frustrate those most tech-savvy donors.

3. A great conversion strategy: A QR code only brings you a tech-savvy web visitor. How are you going to get them to give you a mobile #, email address, or donation?

4. Somewhere to put them: Three ideas come to mind.
a. On the outer envelope and letter sent to prospects. NonProfit Times research shows that almost half of prospects check out a new nonprofit before they decide to give, and the greatest number of them go to the nonprofit’s website. Make it easy for the prospect and you’ll get more of them to donate.
b. A high-tech scavenger hunt. If you have a museum or other physical location (or multiple locations around a city where you have a strong presence) then a QR code at each site can link to a ‘more info’ page about that site, or a trivia question that furthers your mission. This is great for a conference exhibit hall too.
c. Print or outdoor ads and brochures. Nonprofits are sometimes gifted with print or subway ads. There are few ways to measure the impact of those ads, or to generate additional action from them. This is one way.

Now you know enough to be dangerous. For most of you, go back to making your email messages work better. For the more daring, who meet the criteria above, have some fun!

For more information, scan the QR code above to download a recent whitepaper on mobile technology for nonprofits.

Can’t figure out the QR code? No Smart Phone? Ask Me the old fashioned way – 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: [email protected] or at his LinkedIn Page