Build Your Fundraising Capacity!
Working closely with staff and boards, Janet Levine Consulting will help you increase fundraising capacity and build sustainability. Our philosophy is one of collaboration, where together we develop and implement comprehensive programs that fit the needs and resources of your organization. Call or email today for your FREE 30-minute consultation
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GET GRANTS!
A comprehensive and easy-to-follow guide to writing winning proposals that will teach you to:
--Assess your organizational readiness for grant funding
--Develop programs that are fundable
--Turn those programs in successful grant proposals
--Find appropriate funders |
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Greetings!
October. The birthday month for two of my favorite people: my
 grandson and my sister. And the month of my least favorite holiday: Halloween. It's also the month when too many nonprofit organizations go into their bi-annual frenzy. In June, at the end of their fiscal year, and again in October-November, the calendar year end, there is that panic that the fundraising they expected, hoped, needed to materialize, did not.
Lately, there has been a flurry of articles and blogs focusing on donor retention. It's good to see that-finally-word is getting out that important as it is to bring in new donors, keeping your old ones is at least equally important. Something to think about as you plan your annual appeal.
It's simply not enough to send out a letter, then a thank you for the relatively few who make a gift. There are all kinds of things you should be doing to raise your effectiveness. Things like calling those who have yet to respond; sending another letter; something more personal. But more to the point, there are things you should have been doing during the year to ensure that when the appeal lands in their mailbox (actual or electronic), they are inclined to say yes.
Inclination, even more than capacity, is the key to getting gifts. How able I am to make a gift is less important than how much I desire to support your organization. And that desire must be stoked throughout the year.
It's more than thanking me-though that is important. It is connecting me and making me feel that I've done helps you do what it is that I wanted to support. Stewarding our donors should not be limited to those who make larger gifts. After all, those who are most likely to make larger gifts are your loyal donors. Someone who has-year after year after year-made regular small gifts in response to your direct mail just may be interested in making a larger contribution IF you connect with them in a more intimate way.
Which brings me to my favorite hobbyhorse: planning. Too often, fundraising is a random thing. More often, development directors tell me they have a plan-it's just in their head. Which is why the scramble and missed deadlines, not to mention missed opportunities that no one has the time to notice, are-too often-the norm.
In the major gift arena, Moves Management-like techniques are at least talked about, if not always used. As Wikipedia puts it, moves management, "refers to the process by which a prospective donor is moved from cultivation to solicitation. "Moves" are the actions an organization takes to bring in donors, establish relationships, and renew contributions."
Looked at this way, it becomes clear that this shouldn't just be a major gift thing. Long before you send out an appeal, have a gala, write a grant, you should be planning best strategies for engagement. If Janet made a $75 gift in response to a direct mail last year, what do you need to do in order to (a) ensure she makes at least a $75 gift this year and (b) is on the road to being cultivated for a larger contribution?
That that contribution may not get much larger than $100 is not the point. To point is to keep me feeling connected. Janet may never, ever make a large gift during her lifetime. But, if she feels close enough to what you do, believes that she is making a difference, and has a dream for what she wants to help ensure you can accomplish, who's to say that Janet won't leave you a legacy that just might knock your socks off.
Leaving a legacy is one of the things we'll be talking about in more detail in the article on planned giving. We'll also be looking at that important "move" - solicitation, and how inviting someone to invest in what you do might be much more compelling than simply soliciting them. And we'll look at how a culture of scarcity might be nonprofits own worst enemy.
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Need help in increasing your fundraising capacity or getting your Board to participate? Help is here. Email me or call 310-990-9151.
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Soliciting Versus Inviting to Invest
At a recent board retreat, we were going through the process of development-the steps that must be taken in order to move a person or organization from suspect to prospect to donor to committed donor. On the handouts, the visual showed the step where we actually get down to making an ask as "invite to invest."
On the flip chart, however, I wrote "solicitation."
"I don't like that," said one of the female board members. "Makes me feel like I am standing a street corner, showing my all and hoping someone will buy what I offer. But inviting someone to invest--that feels right."
Several other board members chimed in. They also felt that if they looked at it as showing someone the good work they did-the things they accomplished, the changes that were made-and encouraged that person to join with them in investing in this work, they would have much less problems with fundraising.
Even the definitions for solicitation make one want to cringe. The Free Dictionary lists these 4:
- To seek to obtain by persuasion, entreaty, or formal application: a candidate who solicited votes among the factory workers.
- To petition persistently; importune: solicited the neighbors for donations
- To entice or incite to evil or illegal action
- To approach or accost (a person) with an offer of sexual services.
It's more than just an attitude adjustment that has to happen, of course. It is considering the ends rather than the means.
(READ MORE)
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 The nonprofit sector is often accused of having a poverty mentality. We feel we can't do things because we don't have the resources; we think small instead of dreaming large and audacious dreams. We think we can't rather than we can. And it badly affects the things we do and the missions we serve.
In the book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, authors Sendhi Mullainathan, a behavioral economist,and Opsycologist Eldar Shafir, write about how the feeling of scarcity can make people more impulsive and act in ways that are definitely not in their best interests. Feelings of scarcity often create a situation where people are unable to learn. It also can drive people anger. Scarcity can also make us impatient, wanting what we can have right now, rather than waiting to for something much more-but later.
As with people, so with our nonprofit organizations.
We feel poor, and this puts us in what Mullainathan and Shafir call a cognitive tunnel. This tunnel limits what we are able to see. (READ MORE)
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Plan Your Giving For the Future
For many nonprofits, building an endowment seems like an impossible dream. Ask nonprofit leaders if they would like to be able to secure the future, smooth out those bumps in the road, make it possible to think beyond the next impending crisis, and their answer would be yes. At the same time, almost none of these organizations have even contemplated a planned giving program.
"We have too much to do already," I hear. "We are too busy bringing money for today to even consider money for tomorrow." But if they don't plan for tomorrow, they may find that for their organization, tomorrow never comes.
Strong endowments allow organizations to weather bad financial storms and build for their future. A planned giving program just might allow a nonprofit breathing space. More importantly, all studies-including my own anecdotal ones-point to the fact that planned givers to an organization become stronger, larger annual donors. That makes sense-if you have committed to the future, you want to do whatever it takes to ensure that future arrives. (READ MORE)
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- Are your fundraising results down?
 - Board members bored?
- Are you thinking about a campaign?
- Or perhaps you need individual fundraising coaching!
Whatever your capacity building needs, Janet Levine Consulting can help.
Send me an email or give me a call at 310-990-9151 to schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
I look forward to meeting with you.
Sincerely, 
Janet
Janet Levine
Janet Levine Consulting
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