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| | A Message from Atul Tandon |
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Bread and butter are great, but you're still hungry
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For over 100 years, United Way has been providing vital services to the most vulnerable in our communities. In order to sustain that, we became the master at offering quality campaigns to large, medium, and small companies, giving their employees a way to offer assistance via payroll deduction and other forms of giving. It's been our bread and butter. Yet the old saying is true...you cannot live by bread alone.
We require more than what our campaigns can provide for us. Fortunately, resources exist outside the campaign, like Tocqueville gifts, planned gifts, and monies from foundations and elsewhere. The willingness to give is there. Our job is to actively pursue new ways of creating relationships that allow us to ask.
At this peak of the campaign season, take in all the bread and butter you can. Then, use that energy to partner with the individuals and organizations that will fund our services to the vulnerable for the next 100 years.
-Atul
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Turning Young Leaders into Company Champions | |
One of the fastest growing markets in United Ways is United Way Young Leaders. It's a great way to cultivate new and existing donors. Being in the heart of campaign season, a popular question is, "how can we use the workforce campaign to engage our United Way Young Leaders?"
 Several United Ways have tapped into a strategy that has become known as the United Way Young Leaders Company Champions. The concept is simple...to recruit a current United Way Young Leader at a company that runs a United Way campaign to be the liaison between that company and the United Way Young Leader program.
United Way of Greater Kansas City learned of this approach and decided to implement it this year. Here is the exact process they followed:
* Campaign Chair sent letters to 25 committed CEOs, asking them to recruit two United Way Young Leader Company Champions for their company
* 20 of 25 agreed to participate
* Company Champions met in April to discuss the roles and to meet the Champions from other communities.
* A United Way Young Leaders Steering Committee was assigned to follow up with one to two Company Champions.
* A community wide United Way Young Leaders campaign kickoff event was held in August (creating a 25% increase in attendance).
* United Way of Greater Kansas City is hosting free industry networking events for its United Way Young Leaders.
* Appreciation events and letters are planned for later in the year.
We will report back on the results of this new strategy in a future RD Connections newsletter.
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Who are REALLY the best prospects for estate gifts?
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For decades, planned giving practitioners and other development officers have focused on wealthy donors in the  65 and over age bracket as the best prospects for estate gifts. We could not have been more wrong. It turns out that long-term loyalty, not age or wealth, is the most predictive factor in identifying planned giving prospects. In fact, it is over 91% predictive. Here are some facts you need to know*: 1) 91.3% of actual planned giving donors exhibit loyal patterns of giving to the organization they eventually benefit; 2) 41% of planned giving donors give 10 or more consecutive years; 3) another 50% of planned giving donors give in loyal but non-consecutive patterns; 4) 77% of planned giving donors give 15 or more gifts to the organization they eventually benefit; 5) only 6% of planned giving donors are wealthy; 6) 65% of planned giving donors are under the age of 65 when they make their decision to include a charity in their will; and 7) there is no correlation between the amount donors give and the propensity to make a planned gift.
So, what does that mean for United Way? When you are pursuing planned gifts, take off your age and capacity glasses and put on your loyalty glasses. The "loyals" (Loyal Contributors) are your planned giving prospects, regardless of age or capacity. In most cases, they make up about 20% of your total database. Although very few "loyals" can afford to give you an outright gift of any substantial size, a surprising number of them (typically about 6%) will include you in their estate plans if you ask them to.
*Source: The Planned Giving Company's national database, which contains millions of donor records and tens of thousands of actual planned giving donors and their giving histories.
Sam Caldwell is the President & CEO of The Planned Giving Company, selected by United Way Worldwide as the service provider for the Central Services Planned Giving Program. To learn more about this program, contact Ed John. | |
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GCL Tools for Campaign Success
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To be successful as a system, United Ways must be well informed so that you can best collaborate locally with your companies. To do this, the Global Corporate Leadership (GCL) team works to communicate company giving information and campaign details regularly through webinars, conference calls, and postings on United Way Online.
GCL serves two primary groups - corporations and YOU. Keeping you informed and engaged is critical in enabling you to best collaborate with our top corporate partners. As we approach peak campaign season, I want to encourage you to use these resources. Our goals are to Recruit, Retain and Grow our donors, so look to hear more as together we develop additional tools and strategies to make this happen.
For over 34 years, United Way has been managing relationships with our nationally recognized corporate partners. What was once National Corporate Leadership (NCL) has now transformed into Global Corporate Leadership (GCL).The focus is delivering value not only nationally, but now also globally to our corporate partners and local United Ways.
With nearly 120 companies in the GCL program, and approximately 12,300 locations across the country, our reach is significant. It is the work that local United Ways do on the ground with the companies that enables the relationships that we have as a system. Thanks for all you do.
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Database 2: What's Up With That?
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Database 2 or DB2. It's everyone's favorite survey. And now that your results are submitted, UWW just needs to add them all up and send out the results. Simple, right?
Well, not quite.
The Database 2 journey is a long one. It begins in January of each year when Karen Brunn (Director of Performance Research) and Lisa Wilder (Manager of Performance Research), along with key representatives from UWW begin the process of assembling the new Database 2 survey. Many factors are taken into account, such as past resource development trends, new resource development activities, and changes in the philanthropic landscape. We also consider input from United Ways on the prior years' surveys.
All of this goes into the hands of our programmer to build the online survey. The online survey has been a tremendous tool in helping both local United Ways and United Way Worldwide. We work closely with our programmers, Michael Pinck and OJ Johnson, to edit, evaluate, test and tweak the survey over a perilously brief period of time.
Then, the survey is launched to the field by March 15th each year. Every year, we are absolutely certain we won't make it in time but thanks to the skill and patience of OJ (not THAT OJ), we always do (albeit with a few more lines added to our faces and several more pesky gray hairs).
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How to Help More People Trust United Way
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 Research shows us that the more people see United Way engaged in the areas of education, income and health, the more they trust us and the likelier they are to invest in us. The Campaign for the Common Good is a new kind of engagement that's designed to help raise these trust numbers. It focuses on individuals, and coordinates all of our efforts, from volunteerism and affinity groups, to workplace campaigns and employees. The tools and resources developed through the Campaign for the Common Good will accelerate the work that you're already doing at your United Way. Joining the Campaign will give you access to brand-new online engagement tools developed by Blue State Digital; new tools for engaging with employees in the workplace; and coaching and support from the Harwood Institute on how to conduct effective community conversations. Want to learn more? Visit the Campaign page on United Way Online! | |
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Celebrating the Mary M. Gates Learning Center | |
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 Honoring the legacy of philanthropic leadership of Mary M. Gates, the Mary M. Gates Learning Center will be an innovative, educational conferencing and networking facility with a state-of-the-art technological infrastructure, including broadcast capabilities. It will foster creative organizational learning at every level for United Ways and the broader nonprofit sector. The Center will serve its worldwide stakeholders by building understanding among diverse groups; enabling people to make a difference through talent sharing and accelerated learning opportunities; providing the infrastructure to guarantee instantaneous information exchange.
So, what does this mean for you? It means...when visiting United Way Worldwide in Alexandria, VA, where the Mary M. Gates Learning Center is housed, you have access to this wonderful facility. It means...better equipment for broadcasting webinars and facilitating web-based meetings both nationally and internationally. It means... this facility allows United Way to truly be global in our reach.
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The More They Play, The More We Earn
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From Sudoku to Solitaire and other free games, GamesThatGive is donating 70% of its ad-generated revenue to United Way and other charities. In order to direct funds to United Way, players select United Way as the charity of choice. The longer they play, the more donations generated for United Way.
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Upcoming Events/Trainings |
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SAVE THE DATE |
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2011 Major & Planned Giving Institute
January 18th-20th
Mary M. Gates Learning Center (Alexandria, VA)
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We should never forget that no fundraising effort ever succeeds unless one person asks another person for money.
- Andrew D. Parker Jr. | | |
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41% of planned giving donors give 10 or more consecutive years. | | |
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