Tag: fundraising

How to Raise $100K+ on North Texas Giving Day (Without Killing your Nonprofit): Case Studies

September 13, 2019 / jeremygregg

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! It’s that wonderful (and dreaded) time of year: North Texas Giving Day.

(In case you have missed the thousands of
emails, social media posts, texts, and carrier pigeons …
this year’s event will be on 9.19.19)

In 2009, I was privileged to serve as the Vice President of Development for the Center for Nonprofit Management when we supported The Communities Foundation of Texas in launching the first North Texas Giving Day (“NTGD”). Back then, the event was focused on DonorBridge … a site that aimed to educate donors on the impact of their gifts.

NTGD has since grown into one of the largest “single days of giving” in the country. Yet, while NTGD raises significant funds for nonprofits… I believe that it can do so at the cost of long-term financial sustainability for many participating organizations.

This does not have to be the case. It certainly was not the intent of the initiative. However, many of the 2,700+ nonprofits participating in North Texas Giving Day will unfortunately abandon the core principles of long-term donor development and focus on the absolute worst tactics of short-term fundraising:

Emphasizing gifts over impact;
Treating donors like ATMs, not people;
Focusing on one-time gifts over recurring donations (the single best way to raise more money over the long-term);
Cannibalizing larger, year-end gifts (particularly if those gifts shift from checks to credit card donations);
Blasting their mailing lists so many times that they hemorrhage donors via “unsubscribes,” resulting in a net loss of the long-term value of their donor base.

The latter is the most pernicious aspect of this day and is why I am writing this blog.

NTGD represents a tremendous opportunity for our sector. The energy and enthusiasm behind this campaign could enlarge the philanthropic pie for the 17,000+ nonprofits that call North Texas their home. However, to do so, nonprofits must integrate their NTGD efforts within their annual fundraising efforts … not rely on this single day as a lottery ticket.

To explore some real-world ways to do this, I interviewed two of the most successful fundraisers I know — Erin Hart, the Director of Development for the Cistercian Prep School; and Michael Thomas, the Executive Director for My Possibilities. Both of these amazing leaders have found a way to leverage NTGD to improve their overall sustainability.

Thanks to their leadership, these two organizations thrive throughout the year and crush it on North Texas Giving Day.

Cistercian Prep School’s Results

I am proud to share that my little alma mater (Go Hawks!) was the #1 NTGD recipient for three years in a row and #2 in 2018. While they benefit from being a “closed constituency” group (where their donors and their clients are the same population), they raise a shocking amount of money for a school with only ~350 current students.

Year	Online Gift Amount $	# of Online Gifts
2013	$267,475	327
2014	$358,154	402
2015	$486,356	583
2016	$628,141	687
2017	$654,781	762
2018	$760,122	800

My Possibilities’ Results

In addition to being one of my favorite places to volunteer, MP runs one of the best NTGD campaigns of any “open constituency” nonprofit (where their donor base is not necessarily the same as their client base). Their results speak for themselves:

Participating for 9 years
First Year = $16K
Last Year = $162K ….. a tenfold increase!
CFT awarded MP a marketing award a few years ago; check out their incredibly creative campaign this year!

Tips on Setting Goals

Both leaders emphasized that their success was connected to defined goals that were integrated within their annual development plan. In both cases, the organizations have strong cultures of philanthropy that focus on cultivating long-term relationships with their donors. While each has a strong focus on giving on NTGD, their campaigns are extensions of their ongoing relationships with donors.

Cistercian

Erin said, “As a school, one of our most important metrics is alumni participation. Our highest rate so far has been 42%. We also aim for 100% participation of our current parents. If you work on participation, the money is going to be there.”

(By comparison, many of the top universities in the country struggle to exceed 15% alumni giving.)

My Possibilities

Michael shared that MP has three very defined goals for NTGD. The first is a clear financial target, with the goal to leverage the “overwhelming amount of focus placed on donating in DFW” to raise as much money as possible. Driven by their creative marketing efforts, MP successfully engages its community in an exciting effort to contribute a meaningful portion of the organization’s annual budget.

The additional goals include:

Engage the HIPsters (the “Hugely Important People” whom MP serves) and the community to “show that we are a working examples of our vision to include people with disabilities.”
Increase followers through our social media channels, in an effort to build the foundation for even more donors in the future.

Key Strategies for Success

Both organizations focused on two central strategies:

Integrating NTGD within a culture of philanthropy.
Engaging key stakeholders in serving as ambassadors for the organization.

Cistercian

Erin shared that Cistercian’s team does “a lot of prep work before the event to ensure that people know about it. We get people involved the summer before and let them organize it. You have to get people connected to you and be passionate about what you are doing; if you don’t have that, NTGD will not solve that.”

Their key strategies include:

VOLUNTEER LEADERS: Each alumni class has 1-2 class agents who facilitate communication with their fellow alumni. These agents are supported by class captains who oversee ~ 5 years of classes underneath them. These volunteers lead the charge to secure participation in North Texas Giving Day.
CULTURE OF GIVING: “People feel so blessed to be a part of our community. This is not really about development; I don’t think of myself as going after money, I think of myself as allowing people to be a part of this community in a different way.”
OWNERSHIP MENTALITY: “We are not a school where five families make it happen. We are a community that everyone takes a part in building. The reason this works is that everyone has to work.”

My Possibilities

PRIORITIZE IT: “We treat the day/event with the respect and focus it deserves. If it raises $100k and only costs $5k, why would you give it less attention than a golf tournament that raises $100k and costs $50k?”
ASSIGN A LEADER: “Budget expenses specifically for this event and make sure that somebody on staff is ultimately responsible for the day’s performance. If ten people own the event, then nobody owns it.”

Potential Pitfalls

A caveat about the advice below: while these strategies did not work for these organizations, they might work for yours. However, given Cistercian and MP’s success, it is worth strongly considering their direct feedback.

If you already have a series of emails queued up, or a major on-site party planned, there is no need to cancel them… just consider how to adjust these efforts in a way that fosters long-term relationships with your donors.

Cistercian

“The worst strategy is to annoy donors with those ‘NTGD is coming‘ emails. If you want to give, you will give; I am not going to harass you.”
“Donor fatigue is the worst. You don’t want someone to give to you because they want you to shut up; you want them to give because they want to be involved.”

My Possibilities

Recruiting retail stores to donate a “percent of sales on NTGD is a huge miss. It’s trying to force a square peg (one that doesn’t yield any profit anyway) into a round hole.”
“Hosting on-site events on Giving Day. Nobody is coming. Don’t do it. “

Other Points to Consider

NTGD puts a bright spotlight on our sector. It gets the community excited. And it gets us excited too, which is a wonderful gift in the midst of a challenging fundraising year for many organizations.

However, to harness that enthusiasm effectively, we need to participate with the same care that we would use for any other fundraising event. Most importantly, we need to consider NTGD to be an amazing tool within an overall donor cultivation campaign.

If done well, NTGD can do far more than bring in gifts on one day; it can support:

Donor Retention Rate (“What percentage of last year’s donors supported you again this year?”)
Donor Return Rate (“What percentage of donor’s from prior years returned as donors this year?”)
New Donor Volume (“How many new donors joined us this year?”)
Average Gift Amount (ideally broken out by the retained, returned, and new donors)
Number of Gifts per Year (since a donor who gives you $50 per month is more valuable than a donor who gives you a single gift of $600)
Open/Click-through/Unsubscribe Rate (e.g. are people opening, reading, and clicking on your emails … or unsubscribing?)
Social metrics (e.g. are you building your social media following, increasing the number of likes/comments/shares, etc. … and is there crossover between your followers and your donors?)

Whether or not your organization is participating in North Texas Giving Day, focusing on these metrics is the key to successful fundraising every day.

The Outsourced Development Office (Guest blog by Andrew Kramer)

August 3, 2017 / jeremygregg

This post was written by our friend, Andrew Kramer.

Image by Andrew Kramer

For most nonprofits that have $500,000 or more in revenue, funding must come from a variety of sources – government, foundations, individuals, corporations, events, etc. – and has to be managed, almost full time, by a senior person in the organization.

The trouble with a broad, diversified funding base is that each stream can – and often should – be managed by a specialist. Most large organizations have dedicated employees who focus exclusively on a single area, such as grants, major donors, receipts, etc. Smaller organizations with limited staff and funding usually don’t have the ability to excel at fundraising for each of these streams. And the problem is that there is always, always, a new way to raise money that you should be pursuing.

Good nonprofit managers will follow the 80/20 rule closely with their time – 80% of their time from the 20% of their donors who provide the most money. Unfortunately, when Dr. Pareto invented his rule, he was looking at it the way that too many managers spend their time – 80% of their time on the 20% of donors who take the most time and energy.

Unfortunately, time spent does not equate with dollars raised.

So, instead of spending the majority of their time cultivating foundations – where a nonprofit might have seen a very good return in the past – they spend all of their time on an event that only bring a fraction of the revenue. And in the end, most activities that consume a poorly organized manager’s time will not lead to the two fundamental activities that every fundraiser should pursue:

Ask for money (see attached photo — I see this car a lot, and I love it every time); and
Send a handwritten thank you note.

There is a possibility today, however, for a small nonprofit to maximize its efficiency by outsourcing the development function. In fact, a secret that most managers might not know is that the larger organizations outsource a substantial amount of their fundraising rather than try and do it in house.

Here are just a few of the things that can be outsourced to free up a development manager’s time to focus on cultivating their most valuable donors:

Grant writing: most grants are fairly straight forward affairs that use some combination of the same text over and over for each foundation. Outsourcing the ROUTINE asks makes a lot of sense so that the manager can focus his or her time on the non-routine grants that can take up a lot of time (but which, when done correctly, can lead to outsized funding for new programs).
Direct mail: plenty of nonprofits outsource their direct mail operations – and there are even some organizations that specialize in direct mail for certain kinds of organizations (food banks, museums, etc.)
Online marketing: In the end, online marketing is no different than any other kind of sales/ask, but it is just special enough that it makes sense for people who are experts in online programming to do the work.
Events: Throw a contract and you can hit an event planner in Dallas.
Major Gifts: In the end, the nonprofit manager has to perform in-person asks for money and resources. But, the reality is that a lot of organizations may never even meet their largest donors – or certainly not each year when they ask for money. Which means, things like invitations to special events, handwritten thank you notes, even the (bi)annual proposal can all be handled by outside experts, freeing the manager up for the tasks where she is really needed (such as phone calls, in person meetings, etc.).
Receipts: This critical, but sometimes overlooked, function doesn’t need to be handled in-house. In fact, sending it out might be the best way to ensure accurate, timely acknowledgments of gifts. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to put off writing fresh stories, updating the content, and customizing the letters for larger or more frequent donors.

“But what about the cost?!?”
In reality, that depends on what the nonprofit executive wants done – and more importantly, what the manager isn’t getting done effectively because of his lack of time and expertise. Consultants and service providers can, and do carry some costs. But, because they are specialists, you are getting their experience and value immediately. A good consultant will have great references and can provide a clear action plan tailored to your needs from the beginning.

And, while it is unethical for a consultant or provider to take a percentage of any funds raised, they are just as interested in helping your cause to raise the money it needs to fulfill its mission because it’s how they stay in business.

An executive director or development manager considering hiring new development staff might give serious consideration to farming out their specialized work to multiple contractors instead of hiring a single employee who might only have expertise in one or two specific areas. Instead of spending $50,000 or more on salary, benefits, and payroll taxes, you can spend (perhaps even a small portion of) that to productively hire outsourced experts – giving you access to the highest level of talent without the risk and hassle of hiring an employee.

The 140-year Old Technology that Still Raises the Most Money

July 27, 2016 / jgregg

Licensed via Creative Commons at https://flic.kr/p/5yVJ2L

“Thank you for your generous donation to the World’s Cutest Baby Fund. I sincerely appreciate your investment in our mission to transform fundraising, one adorable stock photo at a time.” Licensed via Creative Commons.

Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876. And today, despite all of the bells and whistles of the Internet, it remains a fundraiser’s greatest tool.

Direct mail is very effective. Email can also be great, if used properly. Facebook and Twitter are right for some organizations, and huge wastes of time for others.

But after 140 years, the telephone remains an unrivalled tool in the hands of a talented fundraising team.

I was reminded of that truth by one of my fundraising heroes, Jerold Panas (of Jerold Panas, Linzy & Partners), who has raised more money than anyone I have ever met. The story below (from his blog here) is a perfect example of why little things matter.

Start Phoning: An Idea from Jerold Panas in 57 seconds

One of the wonderful things about being a consultant is that we give very wise advice . . . and we don’t have to implement it. We fly away and leave it to the client to put it all together.

There is one of my recommendations that fits this category. I’ll explain how it all came about.

I used to tell my clients that at $1,000 level, a gift should be acknowledged with a phone call. I talked about this at all my Seminars. I felt this was important counsel.

After one of my sessions, a person came up to speak to me. She said she didn’t want to interrupt while I was talking, but told me that at St. Jude’s (Memphis) they call everybody who makes a $100 gift.

“Good grief,” I said. “That must be a lot of phone calls.”

“23,000 a year.”

I asked, “Is it worth it?”

Then I didn’t even give her an opportunity to respond. I knew it was indeed worth it. St. Jude’s raises about $900 million a year.

Several weeks later, I was at my regular consulting visit with Scripps Health in La Jolla, California. I told the staff that they should begin calling people at $100 level. There was a great deal of resistance. But finally the Vice President, David Mitchell, said they would try it.

Here’s what happened. On an acquisition mailing, a fellow who had never given before sends in $130. Jerry Buckley calls him on the phone to thank him.

The guy was so impressed, the next day he sends $1,000. Jerry Buckley calls him again. The guy was immensely impressed with the attention.

Four months later, he sends $40,000. At the end of the year he sends $50,000.

Eighteen months after that, Scripps holds a press conference. They announce from this acquisition donor a cash gift of $100 million.

The phone call started it all. It really pays off.

Check out the original blog here.

How I Learned This Lesson

As my friend Andrew Kramer recently wrote as a guest-blog here, “increasingly, the best and only way to raise money from new prospects is to keep working to build a strong relationship with your donors.”

I learned that lesson very clearly early in my career.

An envelope had arrived from one of the wealthiest families in town. I was incredibly excited to open, and nearly fell out of my chair when I saw it included a folded check. They had never donated, so I was really excited to see what my latest letter had generated for the organization where I was working.

I unfolded the check to see it was for … $50.

That’s right. FIFTY. Boy, did I feel successful!

After a few deep breaths, I then began to think of our options. And I realized that their first official gift fundamentally changed their relationship with us. Sure, it was only fifty bucks, but they were now officially a donor.

We contacted them to thank them, even though it was a small gift. We then nurtured that relationship over the years with additional calls, notes, and communications. Eventually, we received an unsolicited $50,000 from them. And when we were launching a capital campaign a few years later, we successfully secured a $5 million gift from this family.

From two figures to seven figures in a few years. These things work.

3 Action Items for Fundraisers

Build a list of the top 10% of your donors. Rank them by order of importance (which is not entirely their total giving amount … rank them by how critical their support has been to your success. Someone who has given you $1,000 per year for ten years is more valuable than someone who gave you $10,000 once. Trust me on this … a long-term committed donor is the most likely prospect for major gifts and bequests, so you want to love people who have loved you.).
Set aside a specific time just ONCE per week to call these donors JUST to thank them (do not ask them for money, to volunteer, or anything). Just tell them how much their gift matter and that you wanted them to know that they are important to you. Even if it is just 30 minutes per week, commit to that time. And tell your team to guard it so you have no interruptions.
Try it for four weeks. Lock yourself in an office without the Internet and make your calls. Don’t give up for four weeks. You can give up in week five, but treat this like a 28-day rehab. You’ve got to kick the habit of under-appreciating your donors.

Questions to Ask Afterwards

After the 4-week trial, evaluate your success. How many of the Top 10% did you reach? What conversations did you have? Are there any who now deserve a hand-written note to follow-up to the conversation as a second thank you? And most importantly … can you keep doing this next month?

What would happen if everyone on your team did this? For example, each week, could you give a list of 3 donors to every member of your team and ask them to call them just to say “Thank you”? Could you include the program team in doing that, not just development officers?

And what about giving each of your board members 1 person to call each month? They might hate calling people to ask for money, but they might LOVE calling people to thank them for giving money. And that could then become the gateway to turning them into fundraisers for you.

Let Me Know How it Works

I would love to hear your stories of whether this works for you. I promise, it is one of the best things that you can do to build the key donor relationships that can make an impact on your organization. Contact me here, or tweet me @JeremyGregg.

In partnership,

Jeremy Gregg
Managing Director
www.GreggPartners.com

—————————

You can find more about Jerold Panas here and about his firm here.

The image above was created by mliu92 and is used via a Creative Commons license here.

Grantwriting: Volume vs Relationship? (Guest blog by Andrew Kramer)

July 26, 2016 / jgregg

This post was written by our friend, Andrew Kramer. Please check out his blog about mental health, Smiling Acrobat.

Andrew Kramer (a.k.a. Smiling Acrobat)

Many nonprofit leaders like to treat foundations as a type of high reward direct mail campaign. As a development leader, almost all of my Executive Directors told me that they wanted me to increase the number of grants I was sending out.

On some levels, it makes sense. The foundation usually indicates in its Form 990 whether it accepts unsolicited applications, provides an address, and instructions for how to contact them. At a minimum, a good grant writer will have done some basic research to determine even a minimal suitability for an application, what the typical range of gifts has been in the past, and some basic information on the board of directors.

My Experience as a Fundraiser

In my experience, I might start with a list of 200 prospects, and whittle that down to about 20 that might even be considered possibilities. Just 10%. Very few of my EDs or CEOs were happy with those numbers.

The issue for me was never going through the detailed and difficult process of putting together an application. Nor approaching a foundation “blind”. No, my problem was always that most people wanted to treat foundations as though they were a different type of donor than an individual or important volunteer.

I like to think of it this way:

Most executives and development professionals are used to attending events in a wide range of settings where they run into people who are prequalified to be potentially major donors (because of the type of event, usually). The executive gets to talking to some of these people and telling them about what the organization does, the great work and results, a great story, etc. A good director can easily see if the other person is interested, or just being polite.

(Ideally, the executive is asking as many questions as they are talking, but that’s another topic…)

No, most times, whether the other person is interested or not, the executive doesn’t insert in the beginning, middle or end of the conversation an ask for $20,000. At least, not without the potential donor telling the executive to make the ask then and there.

But, that is exactly what most EDs and CEOs want their development departments to do with foundations.

A Better Way to Raise Money

I won’t say that it doesn’t work in a very few cases, but generally, it’s not an effective way to raise money. Increasingly, the best and only way to raise money from new prospects is to keep working to build a strong relationship with your donors. It can take a couple of years to get a foundation to even pay attention to you, and another grant cycle after that before your grant request gets serious consideration from the board.

The gold standard of foundation fundraising,
just like with individual major donors,
is always relationships.

I had plenty of foundations where we never met in person, and it could have taken years to build the relationship to a point where we could get a gift.

The best advice I ever got from a CEO who deeply understood fundraising was to spend most of her energy on existing donors and prospects where she had an existing relationship, and only a small (5-7 at most) number of new prospects where she was trying to build a relationship.

My Recommendation

The high-touch services that Jeremy Gregg offers are a powerful way to help build those relationships more quickly and effectively than the typical “wait and see” methods most organizations use. Not only will they help your existing donors make a favorable decision on your request, they can help new prospect foundations learn about your organization very quickly without being pushy or seeming “high pressure.”

All major gift work takes a great deal of time for each donor. Most small organizations aren’t equipped to provide the same level of consistent, high-touch grant writing services as larger organizations with dedicated grant writers. Even then, many grant writers are young and less experienced, whereas Jeremy Gregg and his team are all highly experienced development professionals with millions of dollars raised from every single donor source. They are RELATIONSHIP EXPERTS that can help you supercharge your fundraising, build a great reputation for your organization, and help foundation’s and major donors make the best decisions possible when considering your proposal.

To learn more about Gregg Partners, click here.

Are nonprofits bloodsuckers who are raping the economy?

August 22, 2010 / old jg

That's the assertion that Rush Limbaugh is making here:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_051409/content/01125109.guest.html

One of my firm values is the concept that nonprofits are BUSINESSES. The term "non-profit" simply refers to an organization's tax exempt status and inability to provide financial benefits to shareholders.

One of Mr. Limbaugh's accusations is that nonprofits don't contribute anything to the economy, but only "siphon off" contributions by begging.

A few problems with this argument:

Many nonprofits operate earned income ventures such as thrift stores, manufacturing facilities, schools and other enterprises; these are no different than their for-profit peers except that the capital that they generate is used to sustain charitable activities, not provide dividends to shareholders.
Nonprofits pay payroll taxes; their staff pay income tax and social security; etc. These are all dollars that are flowing back into the economy.
Most importantly, what would the country look like without the work of nonprofits? Could the for-profit sector be as profitable without the vital contributions that nonprofits make to the lives of their employees and customers?

I realize that Mr. Limbaugh is in the business of generating controversy. I had honestly forgotten he was alive until I heard about his rantings about nonprofits: that means that he succeeded in getting the attention of the 10% of Americans who work for nonprofits (reference here). His advertisers are likely very happy about that.

In that scenario, who's the real blood-sucker? What is contributed to the world by Rush's rantings and ravings?

The nonprofit world needs to be scrutinized just as carefully as the government: after all, we accept public contributions and therefore need to operate transparently and with accountability to all members of the community.

But insinuating that we are "lazy idiots" is absurd. And implying that the work of fundraising is somehow "raping the economy" is ludicrous — how is this any different than providing salaries to a salesforce in the for-profit world?

I defer to Robert Egger, the leader of the DC Central Kitchen, who makes a nice retort in this video response: