Exciting news (at least for me)

Dear readers, I'm going to take a hiatus for a couple of weeks - like every good shrink, I'll be taking August off, summering in Lake Winnipesaukee.  I hereby recommend you take a vacation from your problems too. Just until I get back.

Just kidding.  I've been hard at work with my friends at Gilday Creative to create a more functional, more professional site, and one that better expresses my personality.  We've finally reached the stage where it's time to put the final touches together, migrate all the posts to date, and test the heck out of things.  Unfortunately, that's also coinciding with a long-planned end of summer vacation for me.

After today, I'll be on hiatus until August 26, at minimum.  I may decide, for strategic and sanity-preserving reasons to postpone my return and Big Launch for the pretty new site until September 3, the day after Labor Day.  But when I return, things will look different.  Better.  Dare I even use the word "snazzy?"

Please keep emailing your questions and situations and article recommendations!  I love hearing from you, and hope the new look will help us bridge the digital divide in even better ways, all the better to develop you with, my dears.

I hate to go off and not give you a little something to tide you over.  So.

1. If you haven't already gotten this link from everyone you know, 25 Situations Only Nonprofit People Can Understand on Buzzfeed
2. An article that MentalFloss titled "9 Fundraising Lessons from the World's Weirdest Charity Stunts", but I recommend reading it as 9 Reminders that my Day Could Be A Lot Worse.  Bookmark this puppy.  Use as needed.
3. I'm a sucker for Old Jews Telling Jokes.  Start here, with Len Portnoy's fundraising joke...and then watch the rest.  That should last you through labor day.

Mailbag: How do I write my case statement?

Q: I work for a pretty small organization.  We've been able to get started on government and foundation grants, and after two years working hard to build an Annual Fund, my board thinks we're ready to add a major giving program.  I have never done this before.  I'm willing to try it, and I'm reading everything I can on how to do major gift fundraising, but I'm scared and I'm stuck.  I know I need a case statement, but I don't know how to write one, and I have no idea what to say.  Do you have a template you recommend?

A: I don't recommend a lot of templates.  They can be very very useful, don't get me wrong, but templates too often give people implicit permission to literally think inside the box.  You're so focused on properly filling in the blanks in your form (sorry - template) that you're no longer thinking about what you actually need: what makes your story unique, what makes the way you tell your story unique, and what makes your audience unique.

So I'm going to do two things: first, congratulate you on asking for help, and two, encourage you to keep doing it.

Oh, and since I'm not totally heartless, I'm going to explain that, and give you a worksheet for how to create a case statement.  It's not a template - it's a series of steps you can take (promise me that you'll take them as guidelines not gospel) that should yield a pretty decent version of a case statement.  But unlike a template, everyone will execute each of the steps differently - meaning that you'll wind up with a document that couldn't be written by an organization with a similar mission and thesaurus, you'll wind up with a case statement that couldn't be written by anyone but you.

1. ASKING FOR HELP is one of the most useful things you can do when you're looking at a major gift project.  But don't ask me.  Ask your supporters.  Ask why they give.  Ask what they want to know when making a gift.  Ask if there's something you could do that would make them want to give even more.  Ask what they tell their friends when they talk about being a proud supporter of your organization.
2. When you've collected a bunch of statements and thoughts from your supporters, add your own.  Why are you proud to be associated with your organization?  What's so special that makes you spend so many hours and so much effort on your work?  What makes your organization stand out from all others?
3. Grab a copy of your mission and vision statements.  If you don't have enough material specifically addressing this from the previous two steps, think of a couple of ways to express why your mission is so important and why your approach is the best way to do achieve your mission.  
4. Collect all these materials, read them over, chew on them.  This step is actually important.  You can't achieve brilliance or innovation without a little bit of space to breathe.  Could be you take a long lunch, go home early and work in your garden while thinking about what you're going to write, could be you just put everything aside for the morning and watch your programs happening.  Remind yourself in very real terms what you're doing here.  Figure out what you need.
5. Pick out a few different messages that you think make your case well.  They should compliment each other, they should speak to different audiences.  Figure out the FORMAT that works best to express those.  There's no particular or proper form for a case statement, it's a term that encompasses a variety of written documents that quickly make a case for support.
6. After you've got your first draft that is your best effort at weaving all your favorite tidbits together, check for:
• Logic (whatever you've said, does it make sense?  Does A -> B?  Did you accidentally skip relevant pieces such that you've said A -> Z, but some of your readers don't know how you got there?)
• Inclusion of narrative (you need some good stories for people who like to read - well crafted, compelling language that is free from jargon and pretension)
• Inclusion of data (you need some straightforward numbers for people who just want bottomline numbers/are data driven)
• Inclusion of graphics (you need something for folks who are visual learners - could be data in infographics, could be photos speaking a thousand words, could be your emotional appeal in one perfect photo or cartoon)
• Inclusion of some emotional appeal (you need something for folks who give from the gut)
• Soul (does this feel authentic to who you are as an organization?)
• Brevity (This needs to be short.  As short as possible given all you need to communicate.  People just won't read endlessly.  Be honest and brutal in your assessment of how short you can make this document vs. how short you should make this document.  When in doubt, ask someone else, someone less invested.)
7. Now that you've checked for the details, check for the big picture.  Does this document say Who you are, What you need, Why you need it, and When you need it?  (I put the two checks in this order because if you do step #6 thoroughly, you're most likely ready for step #7...but might need to carve away some of the excess that's hiding those Big Picture answers.)
8. Go through a few drafts until you feel ready to get feedback.  Ask for it from a variety of stakeholders.  Use this as another reason to get in touch and get advice from some of your existing supporters, big and small.
9. Go through more drafts if you need to.
10. When you go to press, love the document, but do your best to not be burdened by how much work went into it.  There are stories and statements that didn't make it in there.  When you go public, you will hear more about what it's missing than about how much is amazingly right about it.  It's just another tool.
11. I didn't mention anything about campaigns or other specific projects/programs.  Case statements are often written for specific funding needs.  All of the above applies whether you're working on communicating why people should support your organization or why people should support Funding Need X.  But if you're looking for a particular funding need, make sure not to dilute that message with too much about general support or organizational details.

Quick Tips: Wordle

In my consulting work, I spend a lot of time on storytelling.  If you want to figure out a strategy forward, it helps to agree on who you are and what you do now...and getting stakeholders to tell their personal and institutional narrative is a great start towards that agreement.

One of the things I frequently do after getting a bunch of people to write down answers to a few questions (nothing particularly complex - things like "how would you describe your organization to a friend?" and "what are the values of your organization in 140 characters or less") is run those answers through Wordle.

People think it's magic.

I feel conflicted about damaging my mystique here, but I'm sharing this little tip because it turns out that a lot of my former clients are taking this brilliant (FREE) web tool and using it to make graphics for various communications, from printed material to social media.

Check it out.  www.wordle.net

Simply enter a bunch of text (survey answers are super handy if you've recently asked relevant questions, or you can feed in your last couple of development pieces - case statements are great for this), tweak your colors, and voila - a free graphic that reflects language you use when talking about yourself or your mission.

Also...what if you don't identify with what comes out when you pop in your development narratives?  You might want to use that as the starter for a serious conversation about a disconnect between your organizational identity and your fundraising strategy!

Mailbag: How to get past fear

Q: I don't think I'm cut out for fundraising.  I love my organization and I want to help get the funds we need to survive and do our work...and I even know what I *should* be doing, I think.  But when it comes to picking up the phone and calling donors, I can't.  I am stupidly panicked and get anxious and just can't pick up the phone.  How do I get past my fear?  I don't want to keep letting people down.

A: I have a friend who posted a quote on her facebook wall recently, and I've been chewing on it such that it made me fish your email out of the ol' mailbag.  Here it is:

"Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates the strength of Resistance. Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.” --Steven Pressfield

I want to like this quote.  I really do.  But the more I think about it, it's hooey.  The only thing I actually agree with is that fear is good.

Fear is an alarm system for when you've got some instinct and insight cooking in your brain, but it hasn't figured out how to form comprehensible thoughts yet.  That means you should always pay attention to fear - it's an alert that you need to figure something out, that you need to examine why your emotions are aflame.  WHY are you afraid?

Mr. Pressfield would have you run full speed towards whatever makes you afraid.  And I think that popular sentiment, that fear is something you must conquer by force, is coloring your question.

Why are you afraid of calling your donors?

You must figure that out before truly addressing how to move forward, past your problem.  But maybe you're new to fundraising, and that makes it a little tricky to self-analyze...so here are some possible reasons that might be underneath your fear.  It's obviously far from a complete list of the possibilities!

1) You're afraid of rejection, in all its glorious forms.  The person on the other end of the line might yell at you for being a glorified telemarketer.  The person on the other end of the line might unload all their grievances about the organization in general, by the screaming bucketload.  The person on the other end might tell you they're offended that lowly you would dare to call high and mighty them.  The person on the other end might tell you that they're not interested in supporting your organization any more.  The person on the other end might tell you they know why you're calling, but they'll call you if they want to make a gift.  The person on the other end might rudely but simply say "oh, Susie from Org. X?  Not interested, thanks," and hang up.

Rejection isn't any fun.  But it's something you can and must live through as a fundraiser, without taking it personally.  Figure out how YOU can get your mojo back after a nasty rejection (I tend to use it as an excuse for a latte instead of the cheapest coffee I can find; remind me and I'll do a whole post on other ideas some day), and then force yourself to call.

2) You can't envision the conversation.  Do you know why you're calling this person, or did you read a bit of fundraising advice that says "call your biggest donors at least once every two months" or some such nonsense?  I say nonsense because it's not bad advice, it's just utterly useless without understanding WHY it's something you should be doing.  No one picks up the phone just to say hi anymore, not even with their closest friends.  Figure out why you're calling.  If you're still nervous after you decide that you're calling to update them on the success of your summer programs, or want to set up a time for them to come see the gardens their donations supported, or want to take them to lunch to talk about planned giving, or want to know if they would give some feedback on a mailing you're planning for next month, go ahead and script a few lines.  Really.  Write them down like you're writing a play.  The only caveat there is that you're not allowed to keep reading what you've written word for word if the conversation goes somewhere else.  You have to listen to the conversation that's actually happening once you get there...but scripting can tamp down some fear when you're afraid of not being prepared.

3) If planning out the conversation and accepting that rejection is not failure still leave you panicked, perhaps you don't know your donor well enough.  Some people deeply fear the unknown, and unknown donors are just so unpredictable that it's hard to use the above crutches to get through an encounter.  Plan a get to know you meeting.  Tell your donor that you want to make sure you really understand them, so that you can better serve both them and your organization.  Have a lunch or coffee date where you truly get to know them (as donors, please...keep it professional!)  Plan to ask them about their connection to your organization.  Their childhood.  Their philosophy about life.  THEN their philosophy about giving away money.  Their own fears (you can share yours - the fear of letting down your organization).  Their own dreams.  See if that level of humanizing and understanding puts your fears to rest (and greatly strengthens the donor's institutional connections, to boot.)

4) Is phone the right way to connect with this donor?  Maybe you're getting the wiggins from the telephone because this donor has never ever had a phone conversation with you.  You've put in your development plan that you're going to call 3 donors a week, but you didn't really think about the fact that the next 5 donors on your list are all senior executives in the prime of their career who have no interest in getting on the phone with you in the middle of their day.  But they'd love an email.  Or a random handwritten note with whatever you were planning on saying to them.  Here's a perfect example of why you don't simply run roughshod over your fears as if they were beacons shining on the best path forward.  Your instincts here are giving you valuable information about a better way forward.

For every set of fears, there's a different set of questions to ask yourself as you figure out what's sending up the bubbles of anxiety and apprehension.  When it's something that is internal - you are afraid of rejection or failure, and there's great risk of feeling those things if you press forward - sometimes you have to figure out how to simply get past that fear, conquer it and keep conquering it until exposure therapy tames that particular fear.  But when it's born of something that you should be fixing before moving forward, listen to that, too.  

Our own fear can give great advice.

 

Mailbag: Tired of pretending

Q: I've been cultivating this one prospect for a few months, and I can't figure out where we are.   I thought I was clear about my interest in getting her to support my organization, but I think she thinks we're friends.  We're about the same age, and I really do like spending time with her...but I can't afford to spend all this time on a prospect who's not going to pan out, you know?  I feel like I'm wasting company time on a personal relationship.  But I'm afraid that she'll hate me if I tell her that the only reason I've been having lunch with her is that I want her money.

A: In amicitia nihil fictum est, nihil simulatum, et quidquid est, in est verum et voluntarium.  In friendship, nothing is fiction, nothing is fake, and whatever it is, is true and voluntary. (Cicero)

I ran across that quote a week ago and knew there was a reason I wrote it down.  These are good words to live by for cultivating friendships, and good words to live by for cultivating donors.  Sometimes those sets overlap, sometimes they don't - but until you let go of the fiction you're allowing to seep into this relationship, you can't have a relationship that is true and voluntary.

Do you want a real friendship with this person?  Hold onto that answer a minute.

One of the biggest perks of frontline fundraising is getting to meet some truly amazing people.  Sometimes you're going to hit it off, you'll have a good rapport and a lot in common, and you will wind up with a personal friendship (whether or not you wind up with a major donor).  But, and I can't stress this enough, you're not there to be someone's friend.  That's not the job.

If you're working with a prospect, you need to be true.  That's a rather poetic way of phrasing it, so it's open to some interpretation - honest? direct? open? gentle? authentically concerned about their feelings?     unafraid to expose your genuine self?  Any and all of those are fairly good advice.  And they are essential for maintaining the voluntary nature of your relationship.

A donor has to support you because they want to.  There can be complicated reasons that folks "want" to support you - they might want to support the mission; they might want to support your organization's leadership; they might want to impress someone on your board; they might want to feel good about honoring a deceased loved one; they might want to get their name on something; they might want to do something nice for you, their friend.  You can think of more reasons - but they boil down to wanting to give, based on true and voluntary reasons.

If you feel you compelled to hide your own feelings, you're undermining this whole system.

Now, I'm not talking about neglecting to discuss politics with a donor you know is on the other side of the political spectrum.  Unless you're a political fundraiser, that's irrelevant.  Treat donor relationships like your distant relatives at Thanksgiving dinner - you know you don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but you go out of your way to not pick fights and to talk about things you know you can both discuss pleasantly.  You're representing your organization.

What I'm talking about is remembering that YOU are representing your organization.

Now let's get down to brass tacks.  You feel like you're spinning your wheels with a prospect because you don't know if she's going to ever become a donor.  I'm *not* going to criticize or analyze your methods that lead you to say that you thought you'd been clear that you're looking to turn her into a donor.  I don't need to.  Donor communication is very simple - if they understand what you're saying, you've communicated.  If they don't, it doesn't matter how reasonable your attempt was, you need to try again, differently.

Tell your prospect that you always like seeing her, but that you're concerned about doing so on company time without a clear agenda, and then set one.  Tell your prospect that you enjoy spending time with her, but want to make sure that she's getting everything she needs to make a decision about supporting your organization or project X this fiscal year.  Tell your prospect that you are very concerned about meeting your fundraising goals for the year, and why that's so important to all the work your organization does, and that you'd love to meet her if you can help her come to a decision, but otherwise, you'll have to catch up after the fiscal year ends.  Keep trying to communicate until you succeed.  Make sure you don't try avoidance as a tactic, either as a way to not take too many meetings or to avoid awkwardness after you've communicated that you don't have time for endless personal lunches on company time.

You'll notice that I didn't suggest that you offer to move your socializing to after-hours.

IF you want to actually be friends with this person, you can put that into your true and voluntary communications.  Go for it.  Your prospect can say no (in which case you respect that utterly); it's their choice once you ask.  But we all go through times in our lives where we don't have enough time to spend with friends we've known for years, and we've all met folks that we like well enough when we see them for work but don't want to spend extensive time with.  If you don't actually want this prospect as a personal friend, don't make the offer.

Socializing with prospects and donors is a fine line.  You must always walk a tightrope between professionalism and authenticity.  You are not there to make personal relationships, you are there to connect people to your organization...but someone who suppresses all personality or manufactures one just for the occasion is going to do a poor job at building those institutional ties.  You are always obligated to build relationships on behalf of your organization.  Sometimes you will incidentally form personal friendships in the process.

Allow me to offer one final thought: when you conduct yourself as I'm suggesting, you'll be left with true and voluntary relationships.  But that also means that you cannot be all things to all people, and that truthfully, some people want something else.  Your honesty and clarity will help them see that they don't feel compelled to support your organization.  Get used to letting them go and being grateful for the separation.  If you trick them into thinking you/your organization are something you're not, you might get a gift, but ultimately you'll wind up unhappy.  If you twist your mission or programs or organizational focus to please a donor, you'll regret it.  If you bring in a donor who will not actually value what you're doing, they will regret it...which means you will too.  Unhappy donors are far far worse than amicably parted prospects.

Things I wish Boards knew #1

A "prospect" is not "someone we've heard has money."

Here are some things I've been told as a consultant:

• We have a portfolio of prospects, we just need someone to manage the relationships.
• We have more than 100 local prospects who are waiting to be contacted.
• Each of our board members has provided a list of 10 prospects, but our development staff hasn't been able to close a single gift.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a variation on this theme...and not once has it been what I would call "true."

The board members telling me about their large numbers of prospects aren't (for the most part) trying to confuse or mislead me.  They're misleading themselves with an earnest belief in these "prospects."  But having a list of people (even a well researched list, where you have a specific and accurate estimate of capacity - the reliable measure of wealth) that is essentially plucked out of a phone book is just that - a list of names that no more belongs to you than any other list of names of people in your community.

A prospect is something much much more.

A prospect is someone that you have reason to believe would be interested in supporting your organization if you got the chance to talk to them.  Perhaps they are a friend of someone already connected to your organization, and that person tells you they're interested in some aspect of what you're doing.  (Preferably, that person will also make an introduction!)  Perhaps they have a history of supporting many organizations that share your general mission or vision (e.g., if you do anti-poverty work, they support three organizations that come at it from a different angle or work in a different region).  Perhaps they have a family connection to your mission.  (e.g., if you are a disease research foundation, they have a sibling who has fought the disease you're trying to cure)  Perhaps they have made public statements about supporting social enterprise in their hometown, and you just happen to fit that bill.  There are nearly infinite ways that someone might pop onto your radar - but "having money" isn't enough.

Let me say that again: Being rich does not obligate someone to give you money.  I don't care who you are, or how deserving you feel your organization is.

Here's the hard hard work that has to go into successful fundraising: you have to take people with known capacity and research them to figure out whether your organization has a chance at being a good fit for them.  You have to find a way to reach them so that you can make your pitch.  You have to make a good pitch...and that pitch is rarely "give us money," it's "here's why you should get to know us."  THEN you work your way towards "What would make you want to support us financially" and close with "Can you give us some money?", which will only work some of the time.

If you are a board member, there's no quicker way to convince a great development officer that they're going to be persecuted at your organization than to keep conflating "people who sound rich" with "prospects."  That's so far from the truth that there's no way to succeed if you think everyone with a house in a really nice zip code is just waiting to give you money if you just send a professional to ask them.

I am willing to sympathize though: over 90% of board members (from some study cited at a conference I went to - forgive me, but that's a "truthy" number nonetheless) have never had formal development training as part of their board orientation.   If you are on a board, take the time to learn how development works, and what role you can and should play for your specific organization.  I'll offer some additional tips on fundraising from a board perspective in this column, and please send me questions for the mailbag!

But in the meantime, this is Board Sin #1.  Cut it out.  Not only are you setting your expectations stupidly high on a foundation of sand, but you'll damage the morale of your professional team. And shame your fellow board members who haven't gotten the memo.  (Gently or publicly, whatever gets the message across best.)

Don't forget to laugh

Someone forwarded me an article yesterday on sleep deprivation and mothers of young children.  A sweet and hilarious personal essay recounting great stories like "I walked into a wall and sent my kid to school with an onion instead of an apple" and "that time when I almost fell asleep while walking a couple of blocks with my kid in a baby carrier."  When you truly love the best parts of your job (yes, being a mom is a job - though it won't pay the bills and it's *really* hard to quit), you can laugh at the ridiculous bits.  You know, the ridiculous bits that test your every limit and make you want to cry or hit something; the ridiculous bits that might make someone who's never experienced such a thing smile, but makes instant compatriots out of those who share the experience and gives members of the sister/brotherhood a chance to laugh loudly and deeply, with real guffaws.  I personally laugh in the face of utter exhaustion.

Which is all to say: Fundraisers have a lot to laugh about.  This gig (paid or volunteer) is crazy.  It's hard.  And people are crazy, which makes asking them for money even crazier, and harder.

You need a good laugh.

I can't recommend fundraisergrrl strongly enough for a quick pick-me-up.  I have smiled, I have laughed out loud.  Yes, I say, yes!

Go check her out at fundraisergrrl.tumblr.com

For You: Tricks for improving your creativity

Ever feel burned out at work?  Perhaps it isn't bad enough that you'd call it burn out - you're on autopilot, or just simply uninspired.

Learning ways to hit the "reset" button on your creativity is a phenomenally useful trick.

Here are two exercises you can try immediately.

1. Take a walk.

It's not quite as simple as taking a walk.  You need to take a walk somewhere that isn't thoroughly familiar to you, so turn left where you usually turn right to get your coffee at that cute little shop and keep wandering.

When you're walking in unfamiliar terrain, your brain is forced out of autopilot into a state of higher vigilance.  You'll be less able to focus on doing other tasks while you're walking (I wasn't going to recommend you take work with you, beyond maybe a phone for conversational work calls - nothing that would require you take notes), but when you get back to your desk you will remain more alert for a while.  That means you'll be noticing more, and be primed to react more strongly.  It'll feel like instinct.

Bonus: recent studies suggest that walking 40 minutes, 3 times a week helps you retain connectivity as you age - which means better performance on cognitive tasks.

2. Spend 15 minutes each morning making a list.

Nope.  Not a To Do list.  Those are also great, but a subject for a different day.  You're going to set a timer and write a list that engages your creative self.  The time factor is important - it's really hard to remain at this task for 15 minutes, but the push past difficulty is part of what we're doing.  It's also very hard to make a list for that long without starting to think differently...we get the obvious out of the way, and we start to take joy in what we're noticing next, in our unique perspective and observations, perhaps in our clever vocabulary.

So what kind of lists are we talking about?  There aren't that many wrong answers, we're looking for categories that you can either observe or imagine in detail.  Lists like:

• Things I can see out my window
• Things that are in my refrigerator
• Accessories and what I wear them with
• How I describe my colleagues' haircuts
• What I remember about being 12
• Superpowers that I would give people I know
• What I smelled on my walk to work

It can be straightforward (looking out the window) or whimsical (superpowers) - don't spend too much time thinking about the category, work to make your list.  Make a list every day as part of your daily routine.  15 minutes, no cheating.

The lists will be useless after they're made.  Go ahead and throw them out.  You're not writing poetry.  But you are training yourself to be creative on demand, and like a muscle sculpted by lots of hard work, you'll get to flex and show off the next time you need to brainstorm or otherwise figure your way around an obstacle at work.

Oh, this?  These are my CREATIVITY guns.  I made them with my mind.

Housekeeping and apologies

Fridays for You - this week on Monday.  Alas, I am having trouble with the auto-publish feature on this blog.

It's probably me.  Safe money is that I'm doing something wrong.  But still, for the next week, bear with me as I publish irregularly.  I have a consulting practice that will take most of my time for a few days.

I'll do my best!!!

And hey - this is a great opportunity to rename my personal development/leadership posts.  Any ideas?

Article Review: For Academics

There is a strange thing that happens in Academia.  Scholars who get promoted into high enough administrative positions suddenly find themselves with fundraising duties.

Here's a great essay from one such gentleman, David D. Perlmutter, who found himself the Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Iowa, and reflects on how he learned to fundraise.

The title says it all: Don't Fear Fundraising.  

First of all, that's good advice.

But second of all, it speaks to how common a problem that is...fear of fundraising.  That's why this whole blog exists, after all.  There's plenty of technique and skill in development work, but psychological blocks are the biggest roadblock to successful fundraising for so many folks.

Check it out.  Some good first-hand advice.

Quick Tips: Shake up your mailing calendar

A lot of folks use the summer to plan their full calendar of mailings.  Are you still sending two big mailings a year, once in December, to capitalize on the tax year ending, and once in the late Spring, before the summer but a reasonable distance from that holiday mailing?

You've got plenty of company, which may offer some comfort...but a lot of folks in nonprofit management positions (including development) tend to be very risk averse, so "best practices" and "wisdom of the masses" tend to get conflated.

You don't NEED to shake things up.  But you do need to think about whether you're sticking to a particular mailing schedule for the right reasons, rather than comfort with routine.

Here are some ideas that are perfect to toss to your development team for a conversation right about now, mailings that separate themselves from the herd and have worked exceptionally well for others.

• Everyone and their mother will make an ask near the end of the calendar year, to capitalize on the end of the tax year, when a lot of folks make all their philanthropic decisions.  It's very hard to stand out, and the likelihood of your bringing in a lot of new donors is low - you're expecting annual gifts from your known supporters (be they consistent or every other year or two donors).  So...if you can find another way to give those folks a reminder that they need to make their regular gift (could be switching to a cheaper mailing, could be switching to email, could be switching to a phone-a-thon by board members...how many folks are we talking about for you?), you can shift those resources elsewhere.
• October 31.  Halloween.  Trick or Treat.  Unless you count UNICEF, no one is known for their Halloween solicitations.  If you've got a constituency that is likely to have fond memories of trick-or-treating, or is currently enjoying this American pastime with their kids...try designing a mailing around this holiday instead!  Bonus points for creatively utilizing a "free-mium" (like the labels so many folks include in their mailings) - they're reported to be annoying, but they do work, particularly if your base is over 50, and the cute aspect of tying this to Halloween may warm the hearts of your youngest donors too.
• February 14.  Valentine's Day.  A genuinely fun and warm valentine arriving as a surprise is going to stand out in most people's mail, in the very best way.  Connect it to your identity and mission and you're golden.
• Are you a religiously affiliated organization?  Use that to your advantage.  Rosh Hashana has long been used by Jewish organizations for their fall appeal; Christian organizations might think about Easter instead of Christmas; etc.  Guru Purnima works well for academic organizations (though you have to have a way to connect with the cultural/religious implications respectfully).
• Summer.  Most folks avoid summer mailings for very good reasons.  People are on vacation.  Productivity (which impacts things like "remembering to put a check in the mail") goes way down.  Peoples' minds tend to be elsewhere.  But those are general assumptions...are they true for you?  If you have a donor base (or a segment you can reach separately) that is aching for a summer distraction because they're not on vacation or working less even though it's light until 8:30pm, summer is a great time to reach out.  
• Maybe even get away from mailings...hopefully you're doing some regular analysis on how effective your direct mail program is.  There are lots of other ways to reach supporters, there are lots of ways to solicit them.  If you're not satisfied that direct mail is getting the financial return you want, if you aren't retaining donors at great rates, if you aren't acquiring enough new donors to sustain your strategies...don't hold anything sacred, including the notion that you need direct mail.  You might.  But if it's worth re-examining your assumption that the summer is a bad time for a mailing, you should be asking if mailings themselves are still working for you.

Article Review: Millenials matter - here's why

Alana Ramo wrote a nice piece over at Policymic about the philanthropic power of today's young adults: Millenials Aren't Millionaires, But We're Great Philanthropists.

She's right.  There's a lot of giving power in today's 20-30 year olds, and they're breaking a lot of "rules" when it comes to supporting causes and missions.  That scares a lot of people, who are uncomfortable having to learn new ways of doing business.  You don't have that luxury.  Not only are you missing out on a huge resource if you decide that you can survive without figuring out how to attract Millenial supporters, you're condemning your future.

It's always been the case that donors (as a demographic) gain capacity as they get older, and the first few organizations who treated today's Big Money Donors as VIPs are statistically likely to remain among their top causes.  There's no reason to think either of those trends will be changing.  Millennials will be richer in 10 years, richer still in 20...and because they're gaining a philanthropic philosophy and practice NOW, getting their attention for significant support years down the road will be even harder.  You'll be competing with institutions who've been working with them for decades by the time they're in their 40s.

Alana's article draws a lot from the Chase Foundation's Millenial Impact Report, which you can check out in full here.

Here are the biggest points in support of my dire warning:

-83% of the Millenials surveyed made a financial gift to at least one cause last year.
-73% volunteer for a cause, and a full 70% have raised money online or offline on behalf of a cause.

If you've ever tried to get your older supporters (or even your Board, who should be your most vocal set of supporters, ambassadors to the community at large) to each ask 5 friends to make a gift to one of your campaigns, you will be blown away at the notion of 70% of ANY demographic group seeking out opportunities to put their own name on the line with their own personal networks to raise money.

But these are also folks who aren't going to respond to direct mail or most email campaigns, they don't go to galas in the same pattern, and they aren't content to simply provide financial support and then be updated with newsletters and annual reports.  These are folks who want to be intimately involved, they want to be active participants in a cause.  You've got to provide that in a way that's authentic, but sustainable for your organization.

What's your strategy for engaging the Millennial generation?

Fridays For You: SMART Goals

One thing that turns into great unhappiness is the sense that you are not achieving your goals, that you are not making headway, that you are not getting things done and you will never be a success.

Note that I said the sense that all this failure is happening...because we humans are very prone to a thing called confirmation bias.  We don't really see things so objectively; we give great weight to evidence that supports our theory and beliefs, and discount anything that might suggest we're wrong.  That means that when we're in a nice deep blue funk (for whatever reason, legitimate or not), we're going to see all the things that support our belief that we're a failure and gloss over our successes.

At the same time, if you're a woman (and actually, plenty of men fall into this category too - it's just statistically more likely to be a gender thing, thanks to a heap of social pressures and reinforcements), you are going to look at your professional accomplishments and misattribute them - to anything other than your work.  You will find reasons to not take credit for things that you have accomplished, even if they are things you actively worked to make happen.  

There's a powerful tool to combat both of these things.  SMART goals.

Goal setting is a great way to organize your daily work, manage your professional growth in monthly and quarterly and yearly chunks, and think about the longer horizon in a productive way.  But most people set goals like "get promoted by next year" or "get boss to like me" or "become a successful novelist"...even something as compelling but utterly unmeasurable like "be happy."

If you are setting unmeasurable, unrealistic goals, you will never achieve them (because they're unrealistic) and even if you did, by some miracle, get there, you'd never know (because they're unmeasurable!)

SMART goals are:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timely

An example of a specific goal - let's say you're hoping to go to law school - don't say "I want to improve my LSAT scores"...your specific goal will be "I want to increase my logic score to the 97th percentile."

The above is a good example of a measurable goal, too...but much of life doesn't result in concrete test scores.  Let's say that you've read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and are convinced that you don't speak up enough in department meetings.  Rather than "speak up more in meetings," your goal will be "speak up at least 2 times in every meeting."  It's more than your base level, and you can keep track in a very concrete way: simply count.

Achievable goals, well, you have to keep yourself honest on this one.  "Get promoted to Vice President" is achievable (even if it's not easy - that's why it's a goal, not a forgone conclusion) for some people, but let's assume you shouldn't put it on your list of goals for next year if this is your first year out of college, working for a Fortune 500 company.  Again - achievable is not meant to keep your goals from being ambitious, just realistic.  

I like checking things off my to-do list as much as the next person.  But "take shower" is not something that's super relevant to my larger goals - specific, achievable, measurable, yes, but completely tangential at best to my three year plan for world domination.

Timely is one of the things that I find oddly hard for my more ambitious clients.  They want to beat the curve, they want to do the superhuman.  I force them to adhere to the achievable guidelines - ambitious is OK; virtually impossible is not productive.  For example, a junior professor I worked with insisted that 3 publications and 2 new grants was a good goal for the fall semester.  Nope.  We sat down and looked at a timeline to tenure and came up with a much more plausible set of goals...timing is often the key on making a goal achievable or not, and don't forget that all your goals add up, so accomplishing one or two may be possible, but not if you have six labor intensive goals that you expect to accomplish all at once.

There are plenty of resources on the web when it comes to SMART goals.  They're used in both teaching and business management a lot.  Give them a whirl.

I want to be explicit about what they'll do for you though:

• If you're prone to confirmation bias, SMART goals, thanks to their measurability and relevance will keep you from giving too much weight to your negative thoughts.  It's hard to wallow in an I'm-Such-A-Failure Funk when you have some very concrete evidence that you're making small gains on a consistent path to a bigger goal.
• If you're prone to impostor syndrome, it's hard to change your perspective, but SMART goals are again, concrete evidence that you are setting goals and realizing them.  Luck and the efforts of other people are part of the mix, but you deserve credit for these specific, measured achievements that you conceived, committed to, and made happen.
• Also, duh - they're a good tool for thinking about where you're going and how you're going to get there.  Goals are also good for keeping you focused and moving forward towards whatever those goals might be.

Want help figuring out how SMART goals apply to your life?  I'm willing to workshop with you in the comments section.  

Back to Basics: How do you Cultivate?

If you read yesterday's post, you know where you're trying to go with all of this cultivation stuff, at least in the abstract.  (For extra credit, check out my Friday For You post this week, where I talk about SMART goals...you should be using them for your own development, but they apply beautifully to this specific work as well.)  So HOW do you do it?

For the life of me, I can't find a set of benchmarks from a reliable source, but you're looking for a number of "touches," over a 6 - 24 month period, to go from "prospect" to "major donor."  (Of course, this is the dream.  The harsh reality is that you should focus your expectations differently...as a fundraiser, you can't eliminate the need for actual dollars to come in as a result of your work, but when it comes to major giving, success is not fully about converting a prospect to a donor - it's about getting to a good solicitation, even if the answer is no.)

Here's an incomplete list of techniques you can use on that journey:

1. Face to Face Meetings

This is the obvious one.  There's nothing quite like being in the same room with someone.  You can connect better, your conversation will flow more naturally, the person on the other side of the table can see your charming, genuine smile.  But you have to be careful not to overuse these...and if your prospect feels like you're a nuisance or wasting his/her time, you've dug yourself a nasty hole.

Have an agenda.  Think about what you want from a meeting.  Granted, this can be two parallel answers: what you really want is to get in front of that prospect so they remember how much they love you...but that's not something that's likely to be valuable to the prospect.  Make sure you have a *real* reason to visit with them.  Getting feedback on something?  Works if you actually want their feedback on your newsletter/program/new strategy/website design/etc.  Will backfire if you don't really care what they have to say.  Update them on something a little too sensitive to put in writing?  Again - this is delicious if it's true (finalist for X grant; about to start a search for a new Executive Director and hoping they might be able to recommend some candidates confidentially, etc.), but likely to annoy if you're overreaching.  How about an introduction to another key player in your organization?  Senior staff, maybe direct program staff or students/clients/participants, if that's a draw, board members, your founder, etc.

Another tip for face-to-face meetings: it's OK to be direct when you're asking for one.  "I want to update you on X" is different than "I'm looking to find enough funding to do X before the end of next month.  Could I sit down with you to talk about that effort?"  One tees up a solicitation in a very different way...but if you're hoping to actually make an ask, it might make the actual meeting much much easier if you are upfront about your agenda.

2. Phone Calls

In between meetings, it's nice to stay in touch.  The phone is one way to do that.  

Be mindful of how your prospect likes to stay in touch, and always be respectful of their time ("It's so nice to hear your voice - is this a good time to talk?")  Same rules about agenda apply, but have a little slack in them.  There's less commitment to a 10 minute phone conversation, and they have a chance to get off the phone much sooner, so your reasons for calling can be less direct.  Wanting to tell them a particular anecdote from the field, wanting to tell them that you read that book/article they recommended, congratulating them on their child's graduation/black belt/recital

3. Email
I'm told that only old people are into email these days.  Luckily, almost everyone you'll be asking for money is "old" - or at least old enough to use email for both business and personal communications...and you're hoping to be at the edge of overlap with yours.  (I fear I'm dipping a toe into the gentle bubbles of the La Brea Tar Pits as I say that - you're not looking to be personal friends with your donors.  This is a professional relationship.  Period.  But you're looking to become the equivalent of a "work friend" - that person that you wouldn't hang out with if you ever left this job, but you're genuinely glad to run into them and chat while making copies, and you grab lunch occasionally.)

Email doesn't catch someone at a bad time, like a phone call, but we do generally feel pressure to respond quickly (24-48 hours), which makes it a fairly conversational medium.  It adapts well to expectations - you can be formal or informal as needed.  You get answers to your questions quickly, you can reference the weather or news without worrying that no one will remember what you're talking about by the time your parchment is delivered by pony express...

"Just thinking of you" emails are great.  Low investment, no need for the other person to respond, but decent impact, if you do it well.  Send links to articles, send videos, recommend a podcast that touches on something you talked about at your last meeting.  Make it personal - it needs to be clear that you wrote this email exclusively to the donor, and didn't cut and paste an email with a link to the society pages featuring your gala to all 15,000 donors in your database.   Want a response?  Ask an interesting question - one that begs an answer (nothing rhetorical or too open ended..."check this out; any thoughts?" isn't getting any replies.)

4. Handwritten notes and other postal mail
I get ~200 emails a day, all told.  More when things are busy.  But I can tell you exactly who sent me the last handwritten note I got in the mail.  It was a job applicant, thanking me for my time interviewing her (on behalf of a client.)  She went from being one of three equal candidates in my mind to being someone I felt very warmly about, all things considered - though it can't be overstated, *what* she wrote certainly helped, by proving she had actively listened to some of my questions and comments during our meeting.  Content counts, obviously.  But a beautiful card and a few short handwritten sentences stand out, inherently.

And think creatively - try to remember the joy of getting unexpected notions in the mail.  One of my early fundraising mentors, a 25 year volunteer solicitor, sent Halloween sized candies, randomly, to his annual list of prospects.  Things I learned by experience so you don't have to: M&Ms don't make it to Texas in the summer.  The candy gets shattered and the chocolate forms one big lump with colorful shards.  Also, don't send Smarties when the post office is on high alert for anthrax.  But in general, this works *very* well to make people think of you fondly...and you can be creative with the principle - any small, delightful little gift.  Nothing expensive, but something charmingly valued as a surprise in the mail.

Check out some of the research done on gifts sent with solicitation...people feel obligated when you send gifts.  Even those stupid labels from the ASPCA and March of Dimes.  There's a reason direct mail packages are designed like that - the response is worth the extra expense.  The difference here is that you're not pairing your gift with a solicitation on the spot - you're simply building good will, towards a future very large ask. 

5. Invitations to events
It's like a face to face meeting, but better.  Invite your donors to non-solicitation events.  Asking for scholarships for tuba players?  How about a seat at your next orchestra or brass band concert?  Looking for capital gifts?  How about a ground-breaking ceremony, or a tour of the construction site?  Be creative - you might even consider events that have nothing to do with you.  Is your prospect a huge baseball fan?  How about an afternoon game with the local farm team?  Great place to talk.

6. Whatever materials small donors are getting, personalized
Don't take your donors out of the pool for all the direct mail/email/whatever you're sending to your full base of supporters.  First of all, if you're trying to make people feel like part of an inner circle at your organization, having them out of the loop on any piece of mail is a great way to kill that.  I remember one case where the development team held back on sending a (pretty cute, musical) video to their major donor prospects because it contained an ask for $45 at the end.  Except it went viral (ish...a bunch of the older donors who were targeted sent it around to each other), and there wound up being a handful of major donors who were seriously hurt and annoyed that they were left out.  Secondly, if you're cultivating a savvy philanthropist, they want to get a very good sense of your organization and its operations.  They want to know what you're doing to raise money other than ask them to hand over some serious cash.  Seeing your newsletters and general solicitations adds a lot to their understanding of how you work.  (If you're afraid of that, the answer is in figuring out why - are you presenting yourself in conflicting ways to different audiences? Are you frustrated by the quality of your communications?  Fix the problem instead of trying to hide it!)

BUT...please don't just send generic solicitations or any communications without comment.  A note on the year-end mailing saying "I wanted you to see what we sent our whole list of supporters; don't you love the picture on page two?  You were at that event, weren't you?"  Or simply "You're obviously not the target demographic for this solicitation, but I wanted you to know what we sent to last year's donors, asking them to renew their support."

Personalizing mailings with post-scripts can get tricky, of course, and there's no good way to handwrite an extra couple of lines on an email or self-mailer...that doesn't let you off the hook though.  Send a note in advance of the form letter/email they're about to get, handwritten or via email.  It goes a very long way towards making people feel like you're paying close attention to them as individuals...because you ARE.

7. Introductions
I bet you have some folks among your supporters - maybe big donors, maybe passionate small donors or volunteers - who are great ambassadors for your organization AND a joy to know.  Maybe you have some supporters who have specific skills or interests that might be unique and very valuable to your prospect.  As you get to know your prospects, think about connecting them to others within your organizational sphere.  Perhaps the college counselor on your board would be a great connection for the woman whose granddaughter has her heart set on college in California.  Perhaps you know a great bridge partner for the gentleman whose usual partner is in Florida for the winter.  Perhaps you just think donor X would have a blast chatting with prospect Y.  When it's right (this isn't a technique you can force, only one you can keep on your radar so you see the opportunities), it's a great way to increase the human connections surrounding your organization.

8. Social Media!
The goal of using mail and email (and phone) in your cultivation strategy is simple: increase the points of contact between you and your prospect so that you strengthen the lines of communication between you.  Social media - everything that exists now, everything that will exist in the future - provides new tools for doing the same thing.  Start a back and forth on twitter with a prospect who loves tweeting.  Make sure your Pinterest or instagram fan sees your latest photos.  Like and comment on some of your Facebook fanatic's daily status updates.

One caution here, though...your institution shouldn't leap into all of these new channels without understanding how to authentically AND SUSTAINABLY transfer your brand to this new communication tool.  It always makes me tremendously sad when I see organizations who have a Facebook account that last summer's intern started for them that has been thoroughly dormant since they left.  If you don't have the manpower (paid or volunteer) to *really* use, say, Twitter in a meaningful way, in a way that shows you "get" the medium...don't do it poorly.

What are your favorite tips and tricks for connecting with people and strengthening their relationship to your mission and organization?

Back to Basics: What is Cultivation?

What IS cultivation?

When I was thinking of starting this blog, I asked friends and clients for questions that they'd like me to answer - anonymously (for them) so no one would think they were stupid.  This is the second most frequent question I got.  And since I put up some posts describing the very basics of major gift fundraising, I've been getting variations on this theme - now that I've met with a prospective donor, I know that I'm supposed to "cultivate" them and then "solicit" them...but what does cultivation really mean?  What am I supposed to be doing???  How will I know when I'm done cultivating and it's time to solicit?

So let's pick up where we left off: You get a meeting, you psych yourself up, you go, and you rock it out with confidence and good listening skills.  Congrats!  You are now in the cultivation phase.

Before I give tips from my experience on techniques you can try to cultivate folks, let's think about what cultivation needs to do for you.  There are people who don't know your organization, and there are people who give meaningful gifts to your organization.  What lies between those two points is cultivation.

Cultivation is HARD work, and you've got to plant many seeds
if you want to gather enough fruit to feed your family.

Cultivation does the following:

• Turns your prospect into someone who knows enough about your organization.
• Turns your prospect into someone who cares enough about your organization.
• Connects your prospect to your mission and its larger context in new ways.
• Teaches you enough about your prospect.

That word "enough" is a killer though, right?  I'm so sorry - I can give you a framework for thinking about these things, but there's still an element of art to fundraising, a gut sense that you have to develop for yourself.  

Every prospective donor has their own set of criteria for making a donation to an organization.  This is true from your $20 donors on up to your $20 million donors...and it often varies by the size of the gift they're contemplating, and how emotional their tie is to your mission/cause.  Your job is to figure out what they need to know before they're comfortable donating to your organization.  Might be financial assurances, might be strategic planning, might be proof that your programs are having impact...might just be an understanding of what you do and why.  The important thing to remember is that your job is NOT to get them to some basic level of knowledge about your organization.  You don't get points for their being able to pass a pop quiz if you've failed to pay attention to what's relevant to them - and then get them that information, without overkill.

When it comes to what you do and why, that's the key to "caring enough."  When your prospective donor sees beyond the technicalities of your needs (you need money to do X) and starts being truly interested in WHY your organization has made its choices, you're on your way.  Most donors will need to get to the point where they feel that you stand out from the crowd, that your programs are different, in a good way, from what other organizations are doing with similar missions.  You're looking to take up residence in your donors' brains, so that they forward you newspaper articles and funny tweets related to your mission, and so that they talk about you when they're out with friends.

Which brings us to connecting these folks in new ways.  It's not just that they appreciate your programs in a sea of like-minded institutions, it's that they become more connected to the larger mission.  For instance - if you are an organization that provides mentoring for young girls, you want these donors to think of you when related topics come up over drinks with friends - bullying and what to do about it; feminism and equality; lack of women in politics; the impact of intergenerational relationships in society...cultivation is bringing that potential donor to the point where they think of themselves as being involved in good works, being part of the solution to society's Big Problems (even if you're only tackling a small piece of things) because they're connected to you.

And last but not least, cultivation is not purely a process that your donor goes through.  You are cultivating a relationship, and that takes two people.  When you can answer confidently "yes, this person is ready for a solicitation" - which, by the way, also requires you to know what the right solicitation might be - then you know your donor well enough to move to the next level.

Tomorrow: practical tips for doing this kind of work

Accounting vs. Plain English - the problem with "unearned" revenue

I went to business school.  I learned a lot of very useful things there, but when I give people the 30 second version of why it was so important to me and my career, it all boils down to this: college taught me how to speak French and Latin and a little Old English...but in business school, I learned how to speak Accountant and Consultant and a little Finance.  And a good part of what I do professionally is translating from one of these business languages into plain english.

Many folks get frustrated that such translation is necessary.  Can't we all just use a common language for all this?  But that's like getting frustrated that they speak French in France.  And French has some beautiful words and phrases that you just can't say perfectly in any other language.  Same thing with the business languages.  If you're reading this blog, the odds are that you're not one of the folks who grump around with tea-bags stapled to nasty placards, complaining that everyone should have to speak English here in 'murica.  (If you are, you may continue to complain about not feeling you should have to learn how to speak accounting...you're still utterly WRONG, but you're internally consistent, so go ahead with your wrongheaded old self.  I can't help you in a single blog post.)

So what brings all this up?  I was just doing a tutorial with a client on her balance sheet.  We got into a very emotional discussion when it came to one particular line: unearned income.

Unearned income.  That's accounting speak for "contributions."  In fact, many folks have decided to go with new terminology - they call it "contributed income," which lets you bypass this whole conflict, but that's not nearly as educational...so indulge me for a moment.

When you work yourself to the point of exhaustion trying to bring in enough contributions to support your organization, it might seem like a very low blow to call all of that "unearned" income.

From an accounting perspective, of course, it's pretty cut and dried, without any moral implication of "earned" vs. "unearned."  Earned revenue is anything you sell - from services to tuition to theater tickets to goods created by women working to feed their families in a developing nation.  Unearned revenue is just given to you.  People get tax credits.  It's not about how much work you have to do to get that gift.

But I get why it seems like a brutal designation.  Unearned has so many negative connotations - that we are unworthy of these dollars, that we have not worked hard to get them, that we have perhaps swindled and bamboozled our way into them through overly trusting patrons.  I can tell you - most donors who bother to look at financial statements for your organization won't bat an eye if you name that category of income as "unearned."  If they care to examine them, these donors speak business well enough that it won't occur to them that "unearned" is not such a nice thing to say in plain english.  Corporations have unearned income, people have unearned income...things like investment income, annuities, various benefits...prepayments for goods/services yet to be delivered...

It's that last category that makes me think that instead of playing linguistic games and just renaming the category "contributed income," truly embracing an understanding of unearned income might be a great idea for an organization and its leaders.

When a company receives money for goods or services that have yet to be delivered, that gets put on their books as unearned income.  That's a great way to see the donations that people make to your organization.  They're willing to support you, to pay you in advance for all the things you will do to meet your mission...but it's a prepayment.  They expect something in return.

When we think about "gifts," we think about something that is freely given.  The transaction here is that you make a solicitation, and if that person says yes, you get a gift.  That's it.

With an advance payment, the transaction shifts: I make a solicitation, my donor agrees and gives me money, and I now own an obligation to deliver what I've promised, whether that's specific programming or the continued existence of my organization to press on towards my mission.

That's a much better way of understanding your donations.  A healthier understanding, a more elegant understanding, a more robust understanding.  When you internalize that understanding so that it permeates all of your communications with donors, it will make you more attractive to donors.   And when your board appreciates this new understanding, they'll understand development that much better (stewardship isn't optional; development and good governance are locked together; etc.).

Just another lesson in cross-cultural linguistics.  More or less, with tongue in cheek.  This has been a friendly reminder from your development shrink that anything that causes an emotional knee-jerk reaction is worth examining closely.

Mailbag: Forget the Overhead Myth

Q: I know that donors are looking at my administrative costs, and that I'm supposed to keep my overhead low if I want to get good evaluations from watchdog groups...but what does that actually mean?  I can't cut anything else without cutting staff, so...are other people just way better at creative accounting?

A: Yes, there are some donors who are looking at your administrative expenses, popping it over your whole budget and rejecting folks whose ratio doesn't match their ideals.  YOU DON'T NEED THEM. Also, they're really really few and far between.  Asking you about your overhead is a good thing - it keeps us honest, it keeps us mindful of a need to answer to our supporters, to be efficient.  But that's the start of a conversation for most donors, as it should be.  That's not a bad thing at all.

There is, certainly, a big drive in the sector, for accountability and efficiency.  And overhead seems like a good way to measure that.  So let's be kind and say that this is a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing - there are donors who've read this far in their official donor orientation handbook and ran out of time, and are now just winging it.  You run into them in the field, and you hear about them in the nonprofit press...and they make a good scary story to tell around the nonprofit campfire, because like all good scary stories, there's enough truth there to make the story seem very very real.

First, head here, to one of my favorite web comics, Savage Chicken.  Have a chuckle, then come right back.

Now, let's talk.

1) How's your overhead?  Are you doing things that make sense?  When you spend money, do you do so intentionally, with reasons you can articulate and stand behind?  How does your board feel about your expenses (overhead and beyond)?

That's right - I'm not asking you about your overhead in comparison to anything - not in ratio with your overall budget, not in comparison to an average for your type of organization, and certainly not by asking how close you can get to zero.  I'm asking why you spend what you do, and why you think that's the right move for your organization and the people you serve.

If you can tell that story, most donors will listen.  ASKING QUESTIONS IS NOT A BAD THING.  Donors should be asking questions, and this is a question that you can expect, so swing for the fences.  You're going to be asked to talk about why you need money, and how much you can do with it!  That's a great place to go in a conversation, and these questions means that the donor is driving you there.  Again - this is fantastic.  A gift, really.

2) Now that I've asked you to tell me a story about what you spend and why, without feeling persecuted by expectations of your overhead, please remember to tell that story to anyone who will listen.  But, of course, it would be stupid not to be prepared to discuss how that number, whatever it is, compares to other numbers in the mind of your prospective donor.

• What's typical overhead for an organization in your field?  How do you compare?  Explain any big differences...could be that you're operating in Nebraska and most are in New York City.  Could be that you're running these two pilot programs that require extra oversight and evaluation.  Could be that you have a commitment to covering full health benefits for all your employees.  
• What's your overhead to program ratio? The question at hand, however you want to break it down: what's the "running the organization" vs. "performing our mission" set of numbers?  And when you think of it like that, you may start to see that a simple ratio from your budget or balance sheet doesn't really describe that accurately.  Say, for example, that you put all your staff in the administrative line...but there are only two of you, and in addition to running the organization, you and your second in command also provide direct services to clients.  So...are you "overhead" or are you "program?"  You don't even need to decide how to categorize yourself - you just need to be able to explain why the numbers themselves need context.
• What other numbers (straight from your financial statements or in comparison to any benchmarks) will draw questions?  Be prepared for questions you can reasonably expect.
• There's no end to the list - but the same rules apply: As long as you can explain your reasons for the way you stack up in various comparisons, being clear and open about your institutional choices is GREAT.  It may help you and some donors see, early on, that you're just not a good fit for each other.  You want - NEED - to let them go.  They'll be dissatisfied with their donations, and you'll drive yourself crazy trying to please them.  

3) Your comment about creative accounting scares the bejesus out of me.  Creative accounting shouldn't be a euphemism, it should be a term of praise for the folks who have figured out how to use the very clear and straightforward rules of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practice) to sing nuanced and complex melodies.  Don't ever attempt any kind of deception through your financial statements!  (First of all, it's one of the stupidest things you can do; it's bad form and bad faith, and you can't make up for that by pretending it's justified to help you achieve your mission.  You have to live with your realities, and they are reflected in your numbers.  Second, you'll get caught.  You will.  And that could, perhaps should, destroy your organization, in a shuttering/closing to business/not-existing-anymore sort of way. Don't do it.)

• You should be discussing options with your accountant so that your numbers are "singing" your song.  
• You should be running your basic financial statements by trusted business savvy advisors, for the express purpose of having them tell you what they see in them, what questions they have after reviewing them, etc. (Then you prepare to answer those questions straightforward and with confidence; see above.)
• You should prepare development versions of all your financial statements that attractively lay out all the context and assumptions that folks should find relevant in looking over those numbers.
• IF YOU ARE HOPING TO HIDE anything that you find embarrassing in those numbers, the problem isn't the numbers.  The problem is the embarrassing reality.  So you either need to find a way to confess a one time lapse (you screwed up cash flow your first year on the job and needed to make a withdrawal from savings to make payroll for a couple of months) or change the way you do business so that your practices reflect what you want to tell people you do.  See how that works?

Announcing a New Feature: Fridays For You!

I thought about calling this Fundraising Free Fridays, because that's what this is...but one of the things I'm always saying is that everything relates to fundraising, one way or another...so, dear reader, I didn't want you to think you were completely off the hook.

But here's the thing - The Development Shrink as a blog is becoming my professional soapbox, and it needs to expand, since I have not one but two areas of passion in my coaching practice.  The first, which you've clearly seen in this blog thus far, is development as a synonym (euphemism?) for the full work of fundraising.  But the other is for personal development, helping individuals advance their own leadership skills - something that runs the gamut from working with college students and millennials just starting to manage their own careers to working with senior executives on refining management techniques and working around/through their weaknesses in the workplace.  I particularly love working with women and minorities, since I have found that many of the most popular trade books on leadership do not address the particular challenges and penalties faced by everyone who is not an older white man, and I most often work with folks who are working somewhere in the nonprofit sector (including folks in higher education - that counts as mission-driven!).  

So...

Starting today, I'm going to start injecting a little personal development into this development blog.  Fridays from now on will feature a leadership tip or exercise.  I hope you like it - and please, please, share with your friends and colleagues.

Fridays For You: a trick for stressful situations

About to go into a stressful or high pressure situation?  (A negotiation, a public speaking engagement, a job interview?)

Squeeze your LEFT fist as hard as you can for 30 seconds, then let go.  (Make sure you're getting to a full 30 seconds - that's a longer time than you think it is, when you're focused on something like this.  If you can't see a clock with a second hand from wherever you are, count Mississippi.  Remember to breathe.)

Unlikely though it may be, this trick dramatically improves the performance of athletes performing tasks for which they have trained...and you've trained for your job, too!  Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology as a study on preventing people from "choking under pressure," this technique is called "hemisphere-specific priming," and there's a growing body of research that shows that enhanced right-hemisphere activity (what you're forcing when you squeeze your left fist) facilitates skilled performance.

This is no substitute for preparing properly for one of those high stress situations...do your due diligence!  But this tiny trick won't hurt, and could give you that slight edge that you need in a high stress situation.

Try it - let me know if it works for you!

Social Entrepreneurship: Why you can't ignore this buzzword

Echoing Green, along with the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, put out an interesting report (preliminary, they note) in June of this year titled Early Stage Impact Investing: A Blueprint for Screening Social Impact Potential.

Why you should care:

1. Maybe some of you consider yourselves social entrepreneurs.  You're seeking funding, but whether or not you're building up a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, you identify primarily as an entrepreneur and you're thinking in terms of investors instead of donors.
2. If you don't identify that way, you still don't have the luxury of ignoring that perspective.  Venture Philanthropy as a concept is not going anywhere in the near future, and in my experience it's not only growing as a philanthropist mindset, it's a good thing for the sector as a whole.  You need to be able to make a case for your organization and projects in terms of social investment, with calculable returns and impact.

This report, among other things, does an excellent job of highlighting seven elements that "investors should probe in order to mitigate impact risk and increase the potential for an investment to achieve its social targets."  When you cut through the jargon, you've got yourself a nice list of seven items you want to address (or be able to address in further conversation) any time you are putting together a grant or proposal for someone who identifies as a venture philanthropist or has been indoctrinated into the sector fad of "accountability."

• Social mission: how do you demonstrate your commitment to your mission? This all boils down to that thing your grade school (high school?) writing teachers kept telling you: show, don't tell.  "We're committed to fighting illiteracy" is not as expressive as "we have tutored 10,000 students this year, and all of them now test at grade level in reading comprehension."  (Wouldn't that be amazing?)
• Evidence: Can you prove causality?  How does a donor know that your program directly caused the changes (outcomes) and that those changes have an impact for society?  (Maybe all those thousands of kids were going to test at grade level, or their teachers are really good and it's not the tutoring that helped them.)
• Social entrepreneur: Just like investing in businesses, the leadership matters.  A great idea won't make it if the organization's director is bad at their job...so inspiring confidence in the leadership team is essential.
• Impact measurement: How are you evaluating your work? (There's no one right answer, as long as you're doing it in a sustainable and sensible way, and can communicate to the donor what kind of reports and measurements they should expect to see in the future.)
• Potential for disruptive innovation: What makes you unique?  Why should a donor give to you, instead of one of the gazillion other organizations trying to solve the same problem/provide the same services?  
• Potential for scale: This is mostly applicable to smaller organizations, but the general question is "if you succeed, can you change the world?"  When you're looking at investments, you want to know if you're investing in a very nice little coffee shop that will serve its neighborhood well, or if you're investing in Starbucks.  Most investors salivate over the latter more than the former, but you have to be honest about what you are and hope to be.
• Governance: This is a different aspect of leadership, and importantly distinct.  But making it clear that this yours is a well governed (and not just well helmed) organization is good for addressing everything from paranoia (how do I know you won't misuse my funds) to agility (if "market conditions" change dramatically tomorrow, will you have the adaptability to change with them?  Think about March of Dimes, which started to combat polio in children...but still exists, despite the near eradication of that disease, thanks to good governance.)

Mailbag: Recipe for Alienating Your Donors

Q: I just got a "thank you" note from my kid's school that is such a ridiculous form letter that I don't think I'll ever donate to them again.

Dear <Mr. and Mrs. Names Redacted to protect the annoyed>: Thank you so much for supporting <Could be any school, really> with your generous gift to the Annual Giving Campaign. Your tax-deductible gift of $20 will have a tremendous impact on <let's call her Jane> and her classmates.

In fact, when my 10 year old saw it, she asked "Is that sarcastic?  It's kind of mean."

I get that there's an absurdity to fundraising etiquette, but...are they being sarcastic?  It's a school of less than 100 families.  I know I can't give anything close to what some families give, but it would be really nice to feel like someone actually cared that I gave what I could.  How do I get over this and not let it affect my relationship with the staff at the school and the fellow parent who solicited me?

A: When I taught SAT Prep, one of my favorite little reminders to my students was to remember that writing SAT questions is someone's job.  They're not brilliant, they're not out to get you - on the other end of that test question is a pencil pusher who's an average Joe, clocking in and out and just looking to pay the bills.  The lesson there was to demystify that which held emotional power over you.

Same thing applies here.  They really didn't mean anything by it.  It's a form letter, and a fairly benign one at that, truth be told.  They're not out to get you, and I'm pretty sure that even the petty folks (and there are some) who might be tempted to shame or embarrass folks who didn't meet their standards for How Much To Give would be more flamboyant about their attempt to make you feel bad.  On the other end of that letter is someone who is just doing their job, probably underpaid and overworked and just trying to get out a few hundred thank you notes at once.

On the other hand - this is a great lesson for those of you WRITING form letter thank you notes.   Take note of these tips, and don't put yourself in this situation:

1. Segment your list.  You should really be sending different language to donors of small gifts (whatever that is for you) and donors of large gifts.  You might also segment by lifetime giving history, so that someone who's given millions gets a letter than acknowledges how much they've done for the organization over time, even if this gift is just $50.  This story shows how much it can matter.  
2. Don't be afraid of telling it like it is in your thank you notes - sincerity goes a long way.  Once you've segmented, for your small donors, try something like "...it may not seem like much, but your gift of $x will be put to good use, and knowing that 90% of our parents give what they can is extremely gratifying for our entire community." If you think anyone would describe your purple and flowery prose as "absurdist fundraising etiquette,"try simplifying - using plain language to say that you're grateful, and what you're grateful for is the best way to communicate authentic gratitude.  Use hyperbole, and your sincerity may get lost (to the point of suspected sarcasm, in really bad cases).
3. Personalize the note, when you can...and in a school setting, you really should be able to.  A handwritten postscript would have made all the difference here.  It would have instantly made the recipient feel like part of a community again instead of a faceless stranger being pumped for money by people who see her every day.

note: I cheated a lot in putting together this post - the real story (and of course there is one) happened on facebook.  It wasn't so much a question, sent to my email mailbag - a friend posted her complaint to everyone on her friend list (and she's charming and amazing, so there are a lot of us)...the second lesson, as important as the one above, is that it only takes one person to have a terrible experience to tarnish your reputation with a thousand people immediately. EVERY donor should be treated with grace and sincere gratitude.  This is one anecdote, but I have several others...how you treat your $25 donors reflects on your organization as much as how you treat your (may you have some) $25,000 donors.

Article Review: Guidestar's Interview with Jerold Panas

Last month, Guidestar published a nice, short and sweet interview with Jerold Panas.  I haven't read his book, but I agreed with much of what he said in this interview.  I'm recommending it (the one page article - make your own choice about the book!) as good advice for new fundraisers and good reminders for those who've been in the trenches a while.

Things I want to highlight and restate:

1. He's got a great formulation for three factors that need to be present for a successful ask: relevancy (the mission, organization and/or project needs to be important to the donor), emotional appeal, and urgency (why give NOW?).  One of the questions I get asked a lot is how you know when to make a solicitation instead of continuing to cultivate...so here's one answer: when you know you can make a relevant, emotional, urgent ask, you're there!  
2. He doesn't use the word explicitly, but much of his advice boils down to empathy.  Can you put yourself in your donors shoes?  This is not a generalized phenomenon - we're not talking about you being able to think of several perspectives that groups of potential supporters might have...that's good too, and an extension of honing your empathic skills, but in this case we're talking about specific people.  Do you know your donor well enough to structure a great solicitation - who should make the ask, what questions will the donor ask (or not ask), how should you actually phrase "will you give me money?" Can you project yourself into this person's mind?  (Check back for future posts on building up your empathy levels - it's an incredibly useful tool, for every aspect of your life!)
3. Again, this is my word, not his, but authenticity is an incredibly important part of successful fundraising.  Jerold talks about making sure to "sing your own song."  It's true.  You need to figure out your own, authentic style - for making solicitations, but also for stewardship, cultivation, communications...and it has to be real, passionate, full of integrity and enthusiasm - authentically you.  That's not easy - for many of us, we're trying hard to be "us" in general, to find ourselves, to find balance, etc.  Adding in a quest to then translate that moving target into a professional version of ourselves is a challenge, to say the least - but it's part of life, and it's part of fundraising.