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Greetings!
I wanted to feel, well, enchanted by Guy Kawasaki's new book Enchantment. He seems such a lovely man, full of genuine enthusiasm and caring. And he is working so hard to publicize this book.
But I wasn't, enchanted that is. It's not a bad book, but it's not a fascinating one. What it is is a compendium of so much you've recently read before. Indeed, almost everything that is interesting is a quote or citation from some other author, some other book.
Originality, of course, isn't always necessary. It is good--wise, often--to recycle, reuse, not to always reinvent the wheel. Successful fundraisers know that. The tried and true are tried and true because, duh, they work. And to that degree, Kawasaki's book is a great resource.
One of the things Kawasaki talks about in his book is a "premortem." The originator of the idea is Gary Klein who wrote about it in the Harvard Business Journal. This is where, before you launch a project, you gather your team together and talk about why it failed.
It hasn't, of course. But the purpose of this exercise is to ensure it doesn't. The premortem lets you identify problems before they occur, rather than after they sink your ship. I couldn't help but think about a particular direct mail campaign I heard about which failed miserably because the wrong lists were pulled. A premortem may have identified this sort of problem and figured out ways to ensure that the right people were getting the right mail.
Good writing technique would have me circle back at this point to Enchantment. To enchant, according to the Free Dictionary is:
"1. to cast a spell on; bewitch; 2. to delight or captivate utterly; fascinate; charm" so I'll circle back in this way:
Think about all the people you know who aren't involved in your organization or your cause. What might you do that would enchant them enough that they would take a tour, listen to a speech, take an action, or even make a gift?
And then email me with your story about how you enchanted someone into becoming a friend of your cause or organization.
Fundraising capacity not where you want it to be?
Need help in making Board members comfortable with fundraising?
Contact Janet Levine Consulting for a free 30-minute meeting
to see how you can broaden your base, increase your capacity and raise more money.
Email janet@janetlevineconsulting.com to schedule an appointment
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Harnessing the Power of Persuasion to Achieve Your Mission
Larry Kaplan, is a management consultant with a specialty in public affairs for non-profits and public agencies---helping organizations use governmental and community relations to advocate for their causes to advance their missions and reach their goals and objectives. Find him at http://www.larry-kaplan.com/
Nonprofit leaders, both professionals and Board  members, often underestimate the importance and power of issue-advocacy in advancing their mission. There are important constituencies to tend to, in addition to your clients and donors, who can help you do a better job delivering your projects and programs.
Almost every nonprofit should consider dedicating a portion of its overall work to impacting public policy and community attitudes to enhance and enrich the nonprofit's direct services and activities. More so than for-profit companies, nonprofits rely on public policy, government actions, and community support for their success - though it's not always obvious.
Advocacy and a proactive public affairs stance can help you advance your mission, as long as you keep those activities in perspective. They are there to support your mission, not supplant it. Naturally some nonprofits are primarily formed for the purposes of advocacy and changing public policy, but most are dedicated to providing direct service. Even for the latter, without effective advocacy for public policies that best serve their clients, providers cannot deliver their missions to their greatest potential.
Contrary to popular belief, it is completely legal for nonprofits to take public positions on issues relevant to their missions. If a child welfare agency wants to encourage legislators to vote for additional funding for children's services, that's OK. Or if an environmental nonprofit supports new clean air regulations, it is fine to inform the public how they might benefit. There are many excellent resources to provide you guidance in this area, but here are three rules of thumb to start with:
1. A nonprofit may not spend a substantial amount of its budget or staff time on lobbying, but a small effort is allowable (and many advocacy activities are not considered lobbying). If you find your organization conducting more than perhaps 5-10% of its activities in this area, it may be time to set up a separate organization that is affiliated with your 501c3, as contributions to such an organization are not tax-exempt.
2. A nonprofit may under no circumstances endorse a candidate for political office.
3.Consult a legal advisor before you launch a major public affairs campaign or effort - the law, while giving you lots of flexibility and latitude, can be complicated and confusing.
Many nonprofits engage in two basic types of "public affairs" activity:
Government Relations: activities centered around elected and appointed officials for the purpose of aligning government policies, regulations, and funding with the organization's programs and clients' needs. This can be either in indirect ways, such as with legislation that could affect your mission or jurisdiction's budget, or in direct ways, such as seeking a specific appropriation or earmark. It could also include specific interactions with government agencies, such as securing building permits for a new or expanded facility or changing regulations regarding hours of operation.
Community Relations: activities focused on the general public and specific stakeholders. Again, this could be something more general, such as promoting public awareness of, and support for, the issues you are addressing with your mission, or more specific concerns, such as securing neighborhood support for that new facility or extended hours of service. Not only may these activities help with your government relations agenda, these audiences are always potential clients or donors for your organization as well. (READ MORE )
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The Wrong Job
A friend just accepted yet another job that--on the surface at least--does not look like a good career move. When I asked her why, she told me how much she "liked" the people; how "nice" everyone was.
I didn't remind her that is exactly what she says after every job interview. And besides, liking and niceness are not good indicators of job satisfaction or success.
On the same day, a consultant colleague told me that she just accepted a job she didn't she should have. "I have a bad feeling," she told me, "that all I'm doing is helping them continue on with their bad behavior."
When you are out of work, or needing more of it, or just plain really unhappy where you are, it is so tempting to take the first other thing that comes along. Especially when job growth as been at best stagnant. You can feel that you will be in this bad place forever. And so we convince ourselves that the job is better than we know it is; or we hope that it won't be as bad as it appears to be.
The first step, of course, is making sure you and your future employer are on the same page. Many years ago, I accepted a position as Development Director for a small organization that had never had a development person on staff before. The interview process lasted for several weeks, but truth to tell, I was more concerned with convincing them that they wanted to hire me than I was in finding out if I actually wanted to work there.
I was unhappy where I was. This would be elsewhere. And both the title and the salary were far better than what I had. Alas, the actual job turned out to be far worse.
The first day on the job my new boss said, "I envision this as an inside job...." and it went downhill from there.
Now, an inside job may not be a bad thing for most professions, but development as I knew it meant that I had to be out, meeting people and creating relationships. My boss, however, did not see it that way, and for the next two and half years, he gave me grief every time I wasn't at my desk. It was not a marriage made in heaven. (READ MORE)
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Objectives Versus Activities
One of the hardest concepts in grant writing is  figuring out when is something is an objective and when it is actually the activity that helps the organization reach the objective. Too often, grant writers confuse the two.
Another name for objectives is outcomes. If you look at a grant as a bridge that helps the organization to get from where it currently is to where it wants to be, the objective is where you will end up when you get off the bridge. How you will get across that bridge-that's the activity or method.
Outcomes or objectives are measurable. Typically for a grant, you use two measures: time, quantity and/or quality. Activities may be measurable-you might want to know how many people attend the classes you are providing to reach your objective of increasing knowledge of something by 75% in 18 months-but they don't have to be.
If objectives are what you are measuring, activities are how you get there.
It all sounds so easy-until you try to develop your outcomes and activities. For almost a decade, Bo Morton and I have been teaching an online grant writing class. Defining the need-the why you are writing this grant proposal in the first place-is both the first thing you must clarify and arguably the hardest part of writing that proposal. But figuring out your objectives is second. We often use a somewhat silly example to help our students. Because they tell us how helpful this example is, we decided to share it here.
Pretend that you are a parent of a teenager. Your objective is that June (TIME), your teen will be home by curfew at least 50% of the time (QUANTITY). In order to help ensure that this objective is achieved, you are going to set an alarm clock for his or her curfew time. The clock will sit on a hall table, and your teen will turn off the alarm clock when he or she gets home. You can measure the success of your objective (the evaluation plan for your proposal) by how many nights your sleep is unbroken by the alarm ringing. Silence means, of course, that curfew has been met.
Now you could, of course, turn the activity into an objective: By June, an alarm clock set to curfew will not go off at least 50% of the time because it will be turned off by the teenager before his or her curfew.
You can see how this is (a) less elegant that the first example and (b) doesn't really hit a bull's-eye as to what you are trying to accomplish.
After all, is turning off the alarm clock what you want to accomplish or is getting the rotten kid in by curfew the objective?
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Have Your Say
 Inquiring minds do want to know--what is on your mind?
Send me your article (200-800 words) on any topic of interest to those who work for or with nonprofit organizations.
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Are your fundraising results down? Janet Levine Consulting can help. Email or give me a call at 310-990-9151 to schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
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