Category: Finance

Responsible planning, in any economy, involves identifying sources of funding sufficient to ensure continuation/survival of the programs that satisfy the needs of the people and the communities you serve.

Ensuring the funding of your programs requires that you minimize the risk of (again?) losing a large percentage of your income.

According to “Giving USA 2010,” in 2009, over 88% of the non-governmental dollars that went to Non-Profit Organizations came from individual donors or their estates. And, common wisdom is that at least 80% of that amount — or 65% of all non-government dollars — came from major gifts from individuals.

And even though everybody, including the wealthy, has been impacted by the economy, major donors are still a reliable source of funding.

Their gifts may be smaller than before the “recession,” but if they still have the means, if you still have a relationship with them and if they have a need you can satisfy by getting them to give to you, then they are still major gift prospects.

For an NPO without a major gifts program, now is the time to look seriously at creating one. Indicators (including the increase in spending over the holidays) are that people’s attitudes/outlooks about the economy have turned positive, and the people that are spending are (or should be) your prospects.

A major gift program is no more than the step-by-step identification, cultivation, involvement and (timely) solicitation of a number of individuals … each in their own timeframe. (See: Who Is A Major Gift Prospect?)

The difference between successful and unsuccessful major gift programs is the effort placed on identifying and cultivating prospective major gift prospects. It is the determination of who has access to people with wealth, who is the best person to guide the cultivation process for each individual, and who is the best person to know when the time is right to ask … and then do the “asking.”

A Major Gifts Program is easier to design and implement, and more cost effective than direct mail and the vast majority of events. Major gifts are also a more reliable source of long-term funding than are corporate and foundation grants.

The big question is whether your organization is getting your share of the major gifts money that has been and is still supporting so many nonprofits !!

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Have a comment or a question about starting 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.

Over the years, the biggest mistake that many non-profits made was believing that Grants from Corporations, Foundations and Government would continue at former levels.

Giving by foundations and corporations is dependent upon their available resources, and during the recent “low period” in the stock market their assets shrank dramatically. And, obviously, with shrunken portfolios, they were less able to make grants at the same levels as in prior years – if at all.

•   In a period where the stock market lost almost one-third of its value,
    a non-profit that relied on foundation support went way beyond wishful
    thinking – it bordered on denial of reality !!

•   Where corporations laid off employees and looked for government bailouts,
    counting on corporate support was foolhardy.

•   In that economy, where there was a lot less government money going
    to non-profit organizations, relying on federal, state or local support
    was delusional.

•   It’s was also dangerous to rely on special events; as, during a recession,
    paying to attend an event is likely to drop very low on people’s lists
    of priorities.

While governments cut complete line items, and few foundations or corporations wanted-or-were-able to extend their commitments to non-profit organizations, NPOs still had their commitments to the people they served.

So, when the grant for a specific program ran out and didn’t get renewed, did you end that program and discontinue service to those who needed it, or did you have a backup source of ongoing funding ??

When the event you relied on to fund your programs/operations didn’t do as well as you’d hoped, did you tell the people you serve that you “can’t help them right now” ??

Were you able to continue your programs at prior levels ?? Did you maintain or reduce service to your constituency ?? What did you do ??

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Have a comment or a question about starting 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.

Never take anyone’s advice on how to run an email campaign (except this advice from me)!

Instead, take the good ideas you hear from others and test them within your campaign. Testing online is similar to testing in direct mail (or with your favorite recipe, for that matter).

Test one subject line against another, or one landing page against another. Start with your favorite (or the one the boss likes most) or the one that did the best last time. That’s your “control.” Then find one variable that might improve results, and that new message is your “test.”

Easier said than done, you say? True. Most basic email tools do not have sophisticated testing capabilities. However, you can get some pretty reliable results with a few tricks.

If your list is less than 10,000 email addresses, the best you can do is to split the list into two groups and send one of the halves the test email and the other the control.

If the list is larger, you can create two test groups of 5,000 email addresses each – one for the control, and the other for the test. Within 24 hours, you should know which list did best, and send that message to the rest of the list.

How do you create valid test segments? The only one sure data element you have for each address is the email address itself. Most email tools will let you create a segment of a list based on the content of the email address.

So, if you create a segment that includes every email address with an ‘s’ or ‘t’ or ‘k’ in it, you might end up with 5,000 names. Avoid using a, o, l, c, o, and m, or else you’ll get every AOL.Com address in one segment or the other. That’s never a good idea, since AOL subscribers might very well perform, as a group, differently than others. For the same reason, avoid ‘y’ (Yahoo!) and ‘g’ (Gmail) as well as any other letters that might skew your results.

Now you can test different subject lines, long copy against short copy, different designs, anything – and get pretty valid results.

How do you test landing pages? Send the exact same email message to both groups, but in one message, change the link so it goes to the test landing page.

As an added way of ensuring valid results, and to maximize your overall response, see if you can swap the segments: mail message B to those on list A who didn’t respond, and message A to those on list B who didn’t respond. If your lists are equal, whatever message did the best last time should do better this time. And, you’ll gain more responses from people who didn’t see or respond to the message the first time.

Do your test, tell us your results, and ask us your additional testing questions!

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We’re taking a break until after the New Year.
Be back on January 4, 2011

Best wishes to you and yours from Hank,
Natalie, Andrew & Rick. ☺

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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

(First in a series on Fundraising & Social Media)

There’s no such a thing as an “email fundraising campaign.”

“Wait,” you say. You’ve heard of lots of nonprofits that are raising money with email. “How can there be no such thing…?”

That’s because a typical email just doesn’t have the technical power to get the reader’s attention, generate continued interest, create the desire, and capture an action.

At the very least, you need a landing page to “close the deal,” an email message to send to those who’ve taken the action you requested, and a follow-up page to send them to. It’s usually a lot more complicated than that.

So, email is often the beginning of an online fundraising campaign. It’s the honey you cast upon a few thousand flowers (depending on how many email addresses you have) that entice them to come to your web site.

Here’s a checklist of some of the key elements in an online campaign:

•    The Subject Line – Goal: to get the email opened. Hint: think in terms of a
     good outer envelope teaser line. Don’t give away the contents of the message.
•    The “From” Name – Goal: to build recognition and help with email opening.
     Hint: Test the signer’s name against the organization or campaign name.
•    The Email Message – Goal: to generate a click to the website. Hint: email
     messages are scanned, not read. Use bullet points, relevant images (linked to
     the landing page) and make sure a text link or button is always visible
     no matter how the reader scrolls
•    The Landing Page – Goal: to “close the sale.” Hint: Give them enough additional
     information (or, better yet, emotion) to convince them to act, then take away all
     of the obstacles to successful action (e.g. unnecessary additional clicks,
     distracting links to other pages, irrelevant questions)
•    The Thank-You Page – Goal: to immediately broaden and/or deepen the
     relationship with this supporter. Hint: Here’s a good place for a survey, or a link
     to a longer video. They want to know they made a smart move on the
     previous page, so give them a chance to get to know you better.
•    The Thank-You Email – Goal: exactly the same as the thank-you page.
     Hint: If your automatic thank-you email is more like a receipt, send a second email
     a few days later, with warmer copy and more links.

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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

Publicity is an important part of any extended campaign … serving many purposes.
• Multiple opportunities to tell how the Project
  will benefit the community
• Public recognition to the Institutional and
  Campaign Leaders, and selected donors
• Creating and maintaining community
  enthusiasm

There must, however, be specific conditions and a strict timetable for the release of information.

If a goal is not reached, if the campaign fails, then the message everybody gets is that the NPO’s leadership does not have its act together and that people probably shouldn’t trust them with their money. The whole point, therefore, of not announcing or suggesting a campaign is to avoid a public failure.

If you have a significant percentage of the goal already committed and you KNOW (not hope) where the rest is coming from, then it’s safe to make “announcements,” but not before then.

Most publicity that a Campaign gets will be “old news,” but it will be the first time the public gets to hear it.

The official announcement (first press release) is about the person who has volunteered to Chair the Campaign and who has made a significant (pace-setting) commitment. That release, and most subsequent publicity, will also include some stock wording about the Project the Campaign will fund … why the community needs that Project, or how the community will benefit.

Keep in mind, this is the first “announcement” of any kind to be made regarding the Campaign. No mention is made at this point of how much has been raised. The impression to be created is that the process of assembling the leadership is only just beginning, and the only mention of dollars is about The Goal.

Statements of total dollars raised or the posting of a “campaign thermometer,” are not made until well into the Public Phase.

Publicity, for the most part, focuses on people … the leaders, the work they’re doing to ensure Campaign success, what they’ve accomplished so far, and (as appropriate – and with their permission) the actual commitment they’ve made toward the Campaign Goal.

The next series of announcements, one-at-a-time and at the appropriate time, are about the people who have volunteered to lead various Divisions, how all of the Board Members have made commitments … totaling $XXXXX, and how successful each of the Divisions has been, dollar-wise.

All of that publicity spread out over the Public Phase of the Campaign, maintains enthusiasm and begins to give recognition to the Campaign leadership and some of the major donors who got the Campaign off to a running start.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? 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.

The “Lowest-Rated” prospects are those who are left after the (“higher-rated”) prospects from all the other Divisions have been assigned; and, considering that condition, this segment of your constituency should not be solicited until all of the “higher-rated” prospects have been solicited. As noted, these are the prospects for whom you have no idea of the likely amount of their commitments.

In one small community, all of the newspapers serving that area carried stories about the need for the Campaign. Each story included a pledge form the reader could cut out, fill out and send to a specific Community Gifts Campaign address.

This is a don’t-hold-your-breath-waiting-for-the-commitments-to-roll-in situation, but it is good public relations, good marketing and it does give “everyone” a chance to be part of helping their community.

In another small community, the Chair of the Community Gifts Division, with others helping, recruited 50-60 volunteers (who first made their own gifts/pledges) to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods. We used the local high school auditorium and conducted a training session to educate them about all aspects of the Project the Campaign will fund. We suggested wording they might use to “Ask” for the gift, provided blank pledge cards for their use, described how the pledge cards should be filled out, and answered everybody’s questions.

The Division Chair worked with a large number of Co-Chairs and Captains to make sure that there was someone to knock on every door, and to be sure that there’d be no duplication of effort.

In one community, the banks comprised a separate Division that was solicited by a Chair and members of a committee representing each of the banks. When it was time to take the Campaign to the Community, all of the banks included a small Campaign brochure and a pledge card in the mailings of their monthly statements to their customers.

For a national/statewide organization, face-to-face solicitation is impractical/unlikely, and the constituents of this Membership Gifts Division can be solicited by mail and/or telephone – a combination of both would be best. (Watch for my posting on Mass-Solicitation.)

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? 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.

“Lower-Rated” refers to those prospects whose gifts/commitments will fall outside of the definition of a “major gift.” (See: What is A Major Gift?) That doesn’t mean that the total giving from those prospects would be an insignificant dollar figure … it just means that there’d be a relatively large number of prospects, requiring a large number of solicitors/volunteer workers … and that you may not be able to solicit all of these prospects on a face-to-face basis.

These are the prospects whose support you shouldn’t need to reach your Campaign Goal. But, as this is likely to be a large segment of your constituency — a large number of prospects, there are some strong reasons you’d want them to be part of the Campaign:
  (1) The more strongly your community is “bonded” to your organization,
  the more likely they’ll $upport you on an ongoing basis;
  (2) The greater the number of community members who support your
  organization, the more likely foundations will be willing to $upport you; and,
  (3) The more support you get from the broad community, the more likely
  Major Donors will want to be (visibly) associated with you … on an
  ongoing basis.

I referred earlier to Divisions tasked with obtaining gifts in various specific dollar ranges (i.e., $3,000-$5,999 and/or $6,000-$9.999). Prospects for these ranges of commitments are often assigned to the Special Gifts Division.

And, prospects for whom you have no idea of the likely amount of their commitments would be assigned to the General Gifts, Membership Gifts or Community Gifts Division (whatever name works best for your circumstances and that segment of your constituency).

Ideally the Special Gifts prospects will all be solicited on a face-to-face basis – the example (in my previous posting), showing the breakdown for 186 prospects, is typical for this particular Division.

Prospects in the General Gifts Division, the largest segment of your constituency, can be approached in many different ways, depending on the size of the group and their locations. (See my posting this Thursday, December 10, discussing some possible methods of soliciting these large constituencies.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? 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.

There are a number of rules for the solicitation of gifts/commitments to a campaign:

A solicitor…
(1) Must make his/her campaign commitment before s/he can solicit commitments from
others;
(2) With few exceptions, can only ask for commitments equal to or less than that which s/he has made; and,
(3) Should be the best person to be asking a particular prospect for his/her commitment.

Simply, a solicitor, to be credible, should be able to tell a prospect that s/he has already made his/her commitment, and s/he must be able to avoid having the prospect ask, “Why should I make a gift that of that amount when you didn’t?” And, the solicitation is more likely to go smoothly/successfully if the solicitor and prospect have a prior (positive) relationship.

(4) There is also a rule that limits to 5-6 the number of prospects assigned to any one solicitor at any one time. Volunteers should feel that it’s relatively easy to solicit the few prospects they’ve been assigned … and you want to avoid solicitor burnout.

The number of volunteer solicitors needed in any one Division depends on the number of prospects in that segment of the constituency. For example:

If a Division has 186 prospects, approximately 36 of those
individuals would need to be recruited to be solicitors.

That’s 1 Division Chair … who recruits/educates/solicits
6 Division Co-Chairs or Vice-Chairs … who recruit/educate/solicit
30 Division Captains … who solicit the remaining 150 prospects.

There are, of course, exceptions – any number of prospects can be assigned to a solicitor (a few at a time), depending on the willingness of the solicitor, his/her level of success in prior solicitations and the quality of his/her relationships with other likely prospects.

It’s also possible that you can have some solicitors with only 1 or 2 prospects to approach – simply because of the relationship (or lack of such) between the volunteer and prospective donors.

5) Each solicitor should have a pledge card/form for each assigned prospect … with the name of the prospect already on the card. During the solicitation, after the specific dollar “Ask” has been made and agreed to, the solicitor brings out the pledge card and asks for a signature.

(6) If, for whatever reason, a prospect is not ready/willing to sign the pledge form, it should never be left with the prospect. The solicitor must make another appointment to come back to get the card signed. Leaving the card risks never seeing it again.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? 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.

While most grant maker guidelines — foundation, corporate and certainly government — specifically exclude capital campaigns, there are some few that will consider a proposal requesting campaign support.

Applicants need to identify those in their funding source research. The proposal will be a restatement of the case statement and should be formatted according to the funder’s guidelines.

Before applying for grant funding, it is wise to have completed the silent phase and include fundraising progress in the proposal. Grant funders to campaigns generally don’t like to be first and they don’t like to be the largest contributor. Showing them that lead gifts are in hand and that the campaign has generated at least 50% of goal is an important strategy consideration when including grants in a campaign portfolio.

What about all those grantors that exclude campaign funding? Many campaigns today are not just for “bricks and mortar.” They are structured to include programmatic themes. These may include scholarships, endowment support, special projects of many types, as well as general support — and also buildings.

In applying for support to funders that exclude campaigns, the proposal writer should focus on the specific components contained in the overall campaign, and structure the request for the specific project or projects. As long as the proposal is consistent with the grant makers’ guidelines, it may be considered even though the program is part of a larger campaign.

As always, the applicant should try to make personal contact with the funder to discuss the project. It’s fine to mention the overall campaign in that conversation, and that reference can be echoed in the proposal.

Will grants “count” toward the campaign goal if the funder is not making a grant to the campaign itself, but is supporting a project within the campaign?
A review of the CASE* Standards will provide guidance. Most grants can be considered if the campaign is of the “count everything” variety. Even some government grants may qualify — especially if they are NEH type challenge grants. Gifts made in response to the challenge, and the NEH payments will count.

* (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education)

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your grants program? Email me at Andrew@GrantServices.com..

Leadership is the key factor in any capital campaign – leadership that energizes the process from its onset. So, to start a campaign, the first donors must be Board Members.

These individuals must set an example with their level of giving so they have the credibility/leverage to solicit the other Board Members and so they can legitimately recruit and solicit the Campaign Chair.

Ideally, the Campaign Chair makes the largest commitment … so s/he can legitimately solicit commitments from anyone else, but it doesn’t always work out that way.

The largest donor, in any case, should be one of the first few to make his/her commitment, and should be available to lend his/her “clout” to the recruitment and/or solicitation of the top campaign leaders and (possibly) to that of some highly visible community leaders.

(Recruiting leaders includes educating them as to their responsibilities in “setting an example,” recruiting other leaders to participate in the process, asking others to make commitments of specific dollar amounts, and adhering to the campaign timetable.)

Sticking with the hospital as the example, once the Campaign Chair has signed on and made his/her commitment, s/he and (possibly) one-or-two Board Members will recruit the Hospital Family Chair. They will then work with that Chair to identify and recruit the Chairs for the “campaigns” for the Board and the Administration.

Then, with the advice and counsel of the Administration, the Hospital Family Chair will recruit and solicit the Chairs for the Medical Staff, Nursing Staff and each of the other Sub-Divisions of the Family.

When the time is right, the Campaign Chair (often with “assistance” of one or more Board Members) will recruit and solicit those individuals who have been identified as the best candidates to be Division Chairs – keeping in mind that no Division Chair should be recruited until close to the time when their “services” will actually be needed.

The Campaign Chair, the various Division Chairs, a representative of the Board (to ensure compliance with Organizational Policies) and the NPO’s CEO (to advise on matters relating to the Hospital Family and the NPO’s mission) will comprise the Campaign Cabinet – which will have total responsibility for conducting the Campaign.

[In addition, one other member of the Cabinet should be a Campaign Treasurer – a non-Organizational-Family person whose stature in the community will lend credibility to his/her oversight of Campaign income.]

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Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving,
I’m taking a few days to do nothing more than enjoy my family.
See you next Tuesday.

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Have a comment or a question about starting or expanding your basic fundraising program, your major gifts fundraising program or a capital campaign? 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.