Category: Finance

… So We’d better Find A Consultant in Our Area.

There is a myth about hiring campaign counsel that, in essence, says that you should hire someone from your area because they will know the area and all the people, and will be better able to point you at the right prospective leaders and donors. That’s very wrong, for two reasons:

1.  Any consultant who has worked with other organizations in your area
    is ethically bound to keep confidential any information s/he may have
    gathered (in the course of working with those organizations) about the
    leaders of and donors to their campaigns.

    That information belongs to the organization that hired the consultant.
    It’s not his/hers to share. After all, you wouldn’t want that consultant
    to go on to his/her next gig and tell them all about your donors!!

2.  You hire a consultant for his/her expertise, knowledge and experience –
    someone who can guide you through a process, not give you all the
    answers. Besides, there are no consultants who can give you all the
    answers … every campaign is different.

    It’s because of those differences that you need a consultant whose
    expertise and experience can guide you through the process. It’s not
    whom s/he knows in your community or what s/he knows about your
    community … it’s his/her expertise, flexibility, creativity and ability
    to work with you and your constituents that will make the difference.

Of course, if your organization is located in a major city there will be many consultants and consulting firms, and many (prospective) major donors. That will make it more likely that you can find counsel that would not find him-/herself in a position of conflict of interest.

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@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, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

Once you have identified a promising federal grant opportunity, and before you invest the “usual” time and energy, you should first determine if this federal opportunity is for you…or not !!

The Five Basic Questions
Once you have carefully studied the grant guidelines, you should be able to address the following:

1. Are you eligible? In the section on “Eligible Applicants” are the parameters
    for who can apply. Some federal grant programs are restricted to specific
    states or certain kinds of organizations.

2. What is the deadline? The section labelled “Deadline for Transmittal of
    Applications” will make it pretty clear if you have enough time to develop a
    great application. You will need at least a month to develop a highly
    competitive application.

3. What is the award size? Look in the section on “Estimated Average Award
    Size.” You should know your total project cost and compare that number to
    the size of the grant award. There is an economy of scale in developing
    federal proposals. Requesting a small amount of grant funds may be almost
    as time-consuming as requesting 10 times that amount.

4. What are your chances of receiving an award? This info is in the
    “Estimated Number of Awards” section. If the federal program is
    only going to award a few grants, you should consider not applying …
    because the competition is going to be very fierce. Better to focus
    on federal grant programs where the mathematical odds are more in
    your favor.

5. Is my project directly related to the grant guidelines? Look at the
    description of the grant program. Does your organization have the same
    mission as the grant program? Will your grant application directly address
    the goals and objectives of the grant program? If the answer to both
    questions is yes, than this grant program may be for you.

Just Say No
If you do your homework, you will uncover many potential federal grant opportunities. You should not, however, even think about applying to all of them. After a while, when you’ve developed a good process for reviewing
those federal grant opportunities, you will find yourself deciding not to
bid on most of them.

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Dr. Jayme Sokolow, founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop proposals to government agencies, foundations, and corporations. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

Email is a very measurable tool, and it’s important that you measure your results so you can report on the effectiveness of your email program. In this post, I’ll suggest the most meaningful metrics for you to examine an individual message’s results against previous emails. In the next post, I’ll show you how to view your email program’s success as a whole.

Any decent email tool will provide you with more measurements than you have time to evaluate. The measurements are not consistently named or even measured across different tools, so I’m going to give you what I have found the most useful over the past 11 years.

Open Rate: The open rate of an email measures the effectiveness of the time of day and day of week that your email was sent, as well as the “From” name and email address, the subject line and sometimes the first lines of your copy. That’s all someone can see without opening your email. The open rate is calculated by the number of emails opened, divided by the number of emails that were successfully delivered (don’t count emails that bounced). Good email open rates run about 20%

Click-Through Rate: The layout and content of the email determine whether or not people will click the links in the email. Divide the number of email messages that are clicked into the number of emails that were opened to get this ratio (a good email click-through rate is 30% but varies widely depending on what you’re asking the reader to do). Don’t measure click-through based on the number of emails that are delivered. If you do, you’re taking into account all of those factors that go into determining open rate. An email with a terrible subject line but great content will look like a bad email if you base your click-through rate on the number of emails delivered. People can’t click if they don’t open the email, so only count the email messages delivered. Count only unique clicks per recipient; if someone clicks every link in your email, or clicks the same link several times, only count them once.

Completion Rate: Once people click a link in your email, presumably you want them to do something on the web page (sign a petition, make a donation, etc.). So count the number of completed donations or petition signatures as a percentage of the emails that were clicked. To do this, you probably need to create a unique landing page just for this email, so that other web traffic doesn’t distort your results. 20% completion on a donation page is about average; I’ve seen completion rates of 100% or more on a petition (respondents complete it, then get their spouses or friends to complete it too).

Example: You sent 10,000 email messages, and 9,000 were delivered, 2000 opened, and 500 of them resulted in a click to a donation page, and you got 100 donations. Your open rate is 2000/9000 or 22.2%. Your click-through rate is 500/2000 or 25%. And your completion rate is 100/500 or 20%.

Questions about how to measure using your email tool? Or, how to improve your results? Ask Me.

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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

An email I received not long ago asked: “What can a small non-profit, looking to raise about $5 million for a Capital Campaign, expect to pay for a consultant to conduct a study and then (guide) the Capital Campaign?”

The size of your non-profit relates to the question only in the context of whether you have the constituency that can support your campaign.

The actual cost of a Campaign Planning Study would be based on:
(1) The amount of time needed to conduct the preliminary discussions … the getting to know you meetings between the consultant and your Study Committee;
(2) The time needed to construct the questionnaire for the interviews;
(3) The number of interviews that would have to be done and the time required to generate the Study Reports; and,
(4) The expenses the consultant would incur (travel, lodging, etc.) during the process.

Pre-Campaign Planning Studies run anywhere from $12,000 to $20,000, depending on the combination of the above factors, the number of individuals conducting the interviews, and the extent to which a consulting firm feels its reputation entitles it to charge more.

You can get a good idea (not a firm figure) by calling and talking with a number of fundraising consultants. You can also get a good idea of whether the folks you talk to are the kind of people with whom you (and your constituents) would be comfortable working.

As to the cost of counsel to work with you through a campaign, since the Study will suggest how long it will take to conduct a campaign, that figure can only be determined after the Study is completed.

BTW, the preparation for a capital campaign can take a year or more. In essence, the Planning Study begins the preparation process. Then, if that preparation is done properly, the actual campaign should only take a few months.

And, you should not feel that you have to hire the same consultant/firm for the Study and for the campaign. If your planning process is adequate, you’ll need minimal help from counsel for the actual campaign.

Talk with a number of consultants, check their references, have them meet your leadership, select the one who is the most comfortable to work with.

Related Reading/Blog Postings:

• The Feasibility Study is Obsolete
• Another Reason I Object To Feasibility Studies – Part 1
• Another Reason I Object To Feasibility Studies – Part 2
• The Planning Study – Part 1
• The Planning Study – Part 2
• The Planning Study – Part 3
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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@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, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

Recently, someone asked a question about Celebrity Auctions, and what immediately came to mind was how much money could I get for auctioning off a celebrity?

If it is the right celebrity, probably a lot !!

But seriously folks….

Celebrities are a great way to bring out the crowd. Having a celebrity at your event pumps up the audience and the bottom line.

Celebrities come with and from a variety of interests. Depending on your organization, a sports figure might be a better ask than a Hollywood movie star or a television actor. And don’t leave out the producers and the writers. They, too, are “celebrities” who can draw a crowd.

Your favorite politician, television news anchor and the CEO of a local or major corporation all go on the “celebrity” list. Each brings something special to the table.

Any of them might become your emcee or auctioneer for the evening. And being able to feature an item belonging to or brought by the celebrity to be auctioned is also a draw. Sometimes, celebrities can obtain (signed) items from their favorite artist or their favorite novelist. They could bring a favorite children’s book, and if they have a favorite designer, you might be able to land a one-of-a-kind garment.

Frequently you can auction lunch with the celebrity and/or a tour of his/her movie or television show and meet the rest of the cast. We have done this and the winner has ended up having lunch with the celebrity and the show’s cast and crew. Some celebrities have also provided signed scripts for auction.

Another area to look into is art, whether it is a signed limited edition poster or an original oil painting by a prominent artist in your community (or a famous person who is not known as an artist), art does well at auctions.

You might consider a book nook for autographed volumes; an art corner; a wine bar stocked from a local vineyard; a jewelry display, etc. You can go broad or narrow depending on how good your contacts are in the different areas of interest.

Think creatively. Hold nothing back and you may find the right combination of celebrity and event.

The bottom line, however, to ensuring a successful event, is to have an audience that will spend the money. And, if/when the price starts to zoom up for an item, you need an audience that, in the spirit of the evening, will keep the bidding going.

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Have a comment or a question about creating or expanding your special event? Email me at Info@NatalieShear.com. With over 30 years in conference and event planning, we can help you turn your vision into reality.
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Have you seen Natalie’s ebook on Special Events ??

Last Thursday’s post addressed the participation of NPO staff in the fundraising process – staff other than those directly involved in development. A response to that posting suggested that there were other issues to be addressed.

Staff members as donors:

It would be a major plus for a nonprofit organization to be able to tell its constituents that all members of the staff feel strongly about the mission and are also donors. That the NPO is able to publicize that every staffer has (voluntarily) given to the best of his/her ability can only strengthen the org’s image.

It would also be a major blow to that image if the public were to learn that staff members were coerced into giving.

Many overly enthusiastic EDs/CEOs require staff to be donors. That “requirement” can and should be perceived as coercion; and, coercing people to give is highly unethical … and bad for the NPOs public image.

Ethically, it is a “given” that ALL giving is voluntary … including from the NPO staff.

Staff members as event designers/participants:

If an NPO is lucky enough to have staffers who are skilled at designing and implementing events, and those folks are willing to be involved with events … without their participation having been coerced, then that speaks well and loudly to the community of staff’s commitment to the mission.

If, however, the public was to hear that such participation was not wholly voluntary, it’s likely that the image of the NPO would suffer … as would its fundraising efforts.

Staff members as solicitors:

With the exception of those individuals who are hired as part of the fundraising staff, other staff members (ideally) should be involved in telling the NPO’s story, but should not be “required” to act as solicitors. The key word, again, is “required.”

In addition to the resentment that staff members would feel, it would be impossible to discount the impact that resentment would have on a fundraising solicitation … and on job performance. One must also consider that untrained and unwilling solicitors will never be able to solicit the “maximum gift” from a donor.

Bottom Line:
It’s not unusual for all staff members of an NPO to have some input in the design/implementation of an event – offering advice/direction based on their particular area of function/expertise.

But, an organization that “requires” staff to perform in areas for which they were not specifically hired is an organization that doesn’t mind putting its public image at risk.

And a good test of whether this kind of employee policy might or might not be ethical is to ask yourself whether you’d want to see a newspaper headline announcing that your organization coerces its employees….!!

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@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, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

Tracking

Once you begin tracking federal grant opportunities through the Federal Register (www.gpoaccess.gov/fr)) and Grants.Gov (www.grants.gov), you will begin finding grant announcements. To take advantage of these opportunities, you first must understand what you are reading.

Doing a Basic Search

Doing a basic search for grant announcements is straightforward. At both sites, you can use the “Basic Search” option to search by keyword, funding opportunity number, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) number, agency, or grant category. Browsing by category may result in hundreds of listings, which will help you understand the kinds of programs and agencies involved in a particular category of grants, such as energy or elementary education.

Deciphering Information about Federal Grants

Familiarize yourself with the language and format of federal grant listings. Here are the key components of a typical grant listing:
•  Posted date.
•  Closing date for applications. This tells you when the application is due.
•  Expected number of awards. This tells you how many awards will be
made through this grant program.
•  Estimated total program funding. This tells you how much money
is available through this grant competition.
•  Award ceiling and floor. This tells you the lowest and highest grant
budgets you can submit.
•  Cost sharing or matching. This tells you whether or not you must
contribute a certain percentage of cash or in-kind resources to your
federally funded project.
•  Description. This is a short summary of the grant program.
•  Link to the full announcement. The URL will link you to the entire
grant application package.

Taking Your Grant Pulse

Now that you have this information, you can match up your nonprofit’s program needs to a specific federal grant competition. But before you apply, you must candidly assess your nonprofit’s readiness to apply and your chances of winning a grant.

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Dr. Jayme Sokolow, the founder and president of The Development Source, Inc. helps nonprofit organizations develop proposals to government agencies, foundations, and corporations. He can be contacted at Jayme Sokolow.

A Reader Wrote: “I have been looking around your web site/blog trying to find information about the role of employees in fundraising for an NPO. I see some information about the role of board members and volunteers, but I seem unable to find anything specific about employees….”

It’s a “given” in the fundraising world that: “Everyone at a nonprofit has an impact on the organization’s ability to raise money” … even though not everyone is involved in “Asking.”

Although someone else might have the title, the CEO is also the chief development officer. S/he is the chief advocate for the organization and its mission, and should be the most knowledgeable person about how the NPO is pursuing that mission. S/he is the public face of the NPO, with the most credibility.

The CEO is (and should often be) involved in many of the major solicitations, either alone or with someone who is better suited to do the “Ask.”

Board Members, ideally, should all give to the best of their ability and should be involved in the process of identifying, cultivating and soliciting (other) major donors — but, they aren’t always wealthy, and they don’t always have wealthy friends.

I refer to “Volunteer Leaders” as the people most involved with the identification, cultivation, evaluation and solicitation of major donors. They don’t have to be board members, but they must be committed to raising (or helping raise) the needed funds.

Staff members fall into three categories: (1) Those who actually work at advancing and supporting the NPO’s development/fundraising efforts; (2) Administrative and support staff; and, (3) The program staffers who design and deliver the NPO’s services.

In the context of this posting, nothing needs be said about group #1.

The group #2 people have occasional contact with (prospective) donors, and how they treat those folks creates an impression that can/will impact the likelihood of giving.

The folks in group #3 have the most experience with advancing the mission. They design and implement the NPO’s programs, and they know the people being served. They are the best people to be describing how the donor’s money has or will impact people’s lives.

These folks don’t have to be involved in “Asking,” but they should be involved in the process of cultivating/educating prospective and current donors … ‘cause nobody can tell the story the way they can.

One more thought: Everybody should pass on to the development staff any (non-confidential) information they have that might help identify, cultivate, evaluate or solicit (potential) donors.

I hope I answered the reader’s question. If not, let me know.

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@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, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.

Live auctions can have large payouts, and can be a lot of fun for the audience – especially when a bidding war on an item becomes major entertainment.

I speak from experience. Many years ago, at a VIP reception prior to an event with both a silent and a live auction, the emcee for the evening decided to offer up a special item as a preview of what was to come. The reception room was packed and once the item was announced, the bidding quickly got competitive.

It was an item I really wanted, so I was vigorously waving my bid number. Soon it came down to a tug-o’-war between me and someone elsewhere in the crowd.

The audience got into it, and started cheering, urging us on. In the end, the item was mine and I was thrilled.

Years later, I would meet people who talked about that night and what fun it was to watch the two of us in action.

Auction Basics

It takes months and months of legwork getting the items — with enough variety in both type and price to involve all the attendees. It takes a fabulous auctioneer to make the sale … at the highest prices possible. And, it takes an audience with the funds to bid up the items and stimulate the essential “war.”

It also takes a good deal of time to write the catalogue and put together the displays with proper signage and bid sheets. It’s also essential to have enough staff so that, at the end, people who have made their purchases are not kept on long lines waiting to pay and receive their items.

Successful bidders must pay and take the item at the event. Otherwise, you will find yourself taking many weeks to track people down to get their payments, and spending lots of dollars to ship the items.

Partnerships

A great way to do an auction event is to find a partner and set a theme. For one auction, we partnered with Nickelodeon and focused on children’s items at the auction. There is an endless array of possibilities. All it takes is creativity !!

So, if you ask me, when it comes to whether or not “to auction,” my answer is, “Go for it,” but be sure you have all the pieces in place.

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Have a comment or a question about creating or expanding your special event? Email me at Info@NatalieShear.com. With over 30 years in conference and event planning, we can help you turn your vision into reality.
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Have you seen Natalie’s ebook on Special Events ??

In the group of attendees for a recent class in Major Gifts Fundraising was a person identifying herself as a consultant, a member of a fundraising-consulting firm, who was shortly to be working with a client organization in the creation of a major gifts program.

This started me thinking. Who/what is a fundraising/development consultant??

My old dictionary defines a consultant as an expert who is called on for professional or technical advice or opinions.

In this context, I should think there’d be heavy emphasis on the “expert” part of the definition. The problem is that I “hear” many people describing themselves as development consultants that clearly don’t have the education/training and experience it takes to be an expert.

Folks that come from various areas “somewhat related” to development —
i.e., marketing, public relations, special events, etc, even those from totally unrelated fields, feel comfortable hanging out their (fundraising) consultant shingle.

At various luncheons, workshops and seminars, I’ve met people who have worked as volunteers and think they now know enough that non-profits should risk their financial futures on them. And I’ve met folks from other fields, and those out of work, who think that “fundraising might be good to try,” and they want to start as consultants.

So, considering the above, I get the feeling that, to protect the non-profit sector from a “bad rap” and consultants (in general) from having a negative label hung on them/us, there needs to be established some set of criteria for who can/should be a fundraising consultant.

It has been suggested that one must have some sort of “credential” to be a fundraising consultant – that the CFRE (as an example) should be required and should be proof enough that the holder is qualified to be a consultant.

Realistically, however, having the CFRE attests only to the fact that the individual has demonstrated knowledge of the basics of fundraising. That’s not the equivalent of “expert“ !!

Like trusting the health of your loved ones to a physician with an on-line degree; there are many practitioners out there in fundraising-consulting-land to whom you’d not want to trust the financial health of your nonprofit organization.

So, before I get too carried away, I’ll step back and ask, “What do you think?”

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Have a comment or a question about starting, evaluating or expanding your fundraising program? Email me at AskHank@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, we’ll likely be able to answer your questions.