Archive for the ‘Fundraising in the Recession’ Category

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported this week that some international relief organizations said their average gift size to help the Haiti crisis is smaller than after the tsunamis in 2004.  The good news is that the number of gifts went up even if the size of the gift was down.

For example, (and I’m quoting from the Chronicle article here:)

In the first 10 weekdays after the earthquake in Haiti, Mercy Corps received 61,505 contributions, compared with 49,561 donations during the same period after the tsunamis. But the average size of the Haiti gifts was $109, compared with $208 for the tsunami gifts.

As of Wednesday, the American Red Cross had received approximately $231-million, a little more than a third of the more than $644-million raised by major U.S. relief groups. Online donations for Haiti have averaged $92 for the group, compared with $150 after the tsunamis.

World Vision U.S. has raised almost $30-million for its work in Haiti, roughly the same amount the organization had received during the same period after the tsunamis. But the charity’s average gift size is $130 this disaster, compared with $191 for the tsunamis.

Here’s my take on this: Clearly the disturbing trend to smaller gifts is because of the recession. How long will we be here? Gift size has dropped almost across the board.

I, for one, am anxiously waiting for signs of spring – looking for signs of a resurrection in the economy and in giving. These trends in gift size may be the first bellweather to let us know how things are going. And clearly, the tide hasn’t turned yet.  But these donors are more of the anonomyous type – the kind motivated by media to “help out” in times of crisis.

We CAN be successful when we make focus in on our CURRENT donors – those who are already on the bandwagon with us. All the more reason for us to be keeping our donors and friends of our cause excited about the impact we are making in the world.

I just read in the Benevon newsletter yesterday of some stunning results from first time “ask events’ – major funds that were raised from both new and old donors. When we pull in those personally devoted to our cause and tell our story with impact and passion, they WILL give.

Our inner circle donors are a better bet right now than new donors who come to us thru the media.

Hi, I’ve been on vacation last week on the lovely west coast.  My friend Jane Heimerdinger from the `Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii invited me to speak at the CASE VII Conference in San Francisco. And I stayed out on the west coast visiting the Napa Valley a few days. Life is good!

The Chronicle of Philanthropy columnist Holly Hall just posted an article on the Chronicle’s Prospecting blog:  “Most Americans Intend to Make Holiday Donations This Year.” You know I have been preaching optimism about year-end giving right now – from my perspective, things are looking up.

I am seeing a turning tide of not only hopefullness, but clear indications that donors are starting to loosen the strings on their wallets.

The Chronicle cited a study by the American Red Cross of over 1000 adults in November that showed the same results.

If you can imagine, almost 25% of those polled said that their income had decreased during the recession!  But even including those people, 80% of all those surveyed said that their year-end gifts would stay the same (62%) or increase (7%).

And only 20% said their giving would cut back.  I think it is so very encouraging that the people in this poll said they would economize in other areas in order to keep up their giving.  This agrees with other studies earlier in the year that cited the same opinions.

We need to remember  – Amerians are a generous people. And we are accustomed to giving in the fall and particularly during the holiday season.

May your end of year campaign be the best ever! Onward!

I missed yesterday’s blog post because I was heading to Harrisburg, PA to deliver the keynote speech for today’s Central Pennsylvania AFP Conference. (What a great crowd of fundraisers they are in south-central Pennsylvania!)  So now I’m going to catch up!

After my keynote and two workshop sessions, I got Kim Klein on the phone for the last interview in the 09 Year-End Strategies Telesummit. As usual, Kim was on target with some eye-opening comments that will help us all.

Who’s going to pull us out of the recession?

Kim wants to remind us that it is really going to be individuals (not corporations, foundations or the government) who will stick by us this fall.  She reminded us that the bulk of contributions comes from individual donors, anyway – somewhere over 80% of all contributions.

And most people give out of their current income. And most people are still employed.  So. . . .that means that there is still plenty of money “still in play” as Kim aptly puts it.

Who’s in trouble now?

The organizations who are in trouble now are those who did not build a diversified base of donors. They who relied too much on support from one sector. They either over-relied on foundation funding, or corporate support, or government grants.

Who’s OK now?

It’s the groups who have a broad base of individual donors who are doing just fine right now, thank you very much.  Kim said it was the individuals who are giving from $50 to $2500 annually who are keeping lots of nonprofit organizations in business.

So as you plan your year-end strategy, focus down on your wonderful donors who give as individuals.  They are the ones who still have the money to give. And they are the ones who will stick with you when the people you serve really need your help.

I am almost finished interviewing the fundraising gurus in my 2009 Year-End Strategy Telesummit.  And here’s my Year-End Strategy #2 showing you how they suggest putting together your year-end fundraising plan.  I’ll drill down on each one of these in the next few posts and discuss it in more detail.

1. What types of communications media will you use? Will you use mail, email, phone calls and in what order? Direct mail guru Mal Warwick recommended in the Telesummit that nonprofits send several appeals via letter, email and phone.

2. What’s the schedule of appeals? When will you send out mail, vs phone calls, vs. email?  What will follow what?   Schedule them out over the next two and a half months and make a real plan.

3. What will be the theme? You need a “dynamite marketing concept” for the appeals, says Mal Warwick.  The visual look of the email and letters needs to be the same. And the font/typeface/white space/logo of your annual appeal needs to be the same in email and direct mail. And the message is the SAME.

4. What’s your budget for the campaign? How far can you stretch your dollars?

5. What will be the purpose of your end of year appeal? Will it be for “general unrestricted?” (boring) Or will it be for something specific that donors can really latch on to? (interesting)  Kivi Leroux Miller recommended in the Telesummit that we focus on raising money for a specific project in our end of year appeals.

6. How will you segment your list? Will you pull off a certain group for face to face calls?  Will you send a special set of appeals to nondonors vs donors? How will you solicit lapsed donors?  Or last year’s gala attendees? Or mothers of school age children?  Consider all the ways you can segment your list and  make that plan.

7.  What role will your board members play? Will they make some face to face calls? Will they make thank you phone calls? Will they hold holiday parties asking for in-kind gifts? Will they send email appeals to their own networks?  Be sure you activate them!

8.  How will you promptly thank your donors? Will you find 7 ways to thank your donors so they’ll give again when asked? Will you organize a team of board members to make prompt thank you calls when gifts are received?

9. How will you evaluate your campaign? Will you compare to last year’s?  Will you evaluate the size of gift or the number of gifts or both?  How will you measure your success?

Today marks the first of a series of posts on end of the calendar year fundraising strategies. During the month of October, I will be posting a great strategy idea each day. 31 days – 31 strategies – all designed to help you achieve your end of the year fundraising goals.

First, I’ll be discussing what you should do BEFORE you send your end of year solicitations.  Then we’ll move on to messaging and solicitation strategies especially designed for the rather unusual environment that we find ourselves in for fall 2009.

End of year strategy #1:  Hold a thankathon before you solicit your donors. If you really want to prep your donors for their end of calendar year annual solicitations, then thank them for their past gifts, involvement, support, help first.

Try holding a mass thank-you session. Bring in your board members, or your volunteers, staff or other donors. Get on the phone and call your donors to thank them for everything they have done to help the (children, students, elderly, poor, hungry, prisoners, sick etc).

Don’t thank them for helping your organization be successful. Instead thank them for the impact they are making in the world.

Remember, donors love to be thanked. And now, more than ever, you want to keep close, open communication channels with your donors. Calling them to thank them is fundamental; but it is also necessary if you want to keep your donors on your bandwagon.

This year, donors are making fewer gifts than usual. If you take the time to phone call and appreciate them BEFORE you send another solicitation, they are much more likely to keep your organization on their short list of favored causes.  It makes them remember your cause when your appeal comes in the mail next month.  You will be higher on their radar screen.

And of course, donors always need to be treated like real people rather than wallets or ATM machines.  It certainly makes them feel special then they are thanked personally – especially without a solicitation coupled with the thank you letter.

This is a great place to use your board members.  Studies show that when board members thank donors, their future gifts are larger.  And if your board members are nervous about getting involved in fundraising, you can warm them up to fundraising by having them thank donors.

It’s a lonely time out there with lots of my fundraising colleagues.  Especially with this being just about the toughest fundraising environment any of us have ever seen.

Being a staff fundraiser has always been a lonely business.(And consulting can be pretty lonely too!)  This is the time we need to rally our colleagues, our board members our CEO and have give them all a dose of old-fashioned optimism.

Here you are, bravely working for your cause with passion in your heart, trying to create new friends and donors for your wonderful cause.

And you have to deal with recalcitrant board members who just can’t find the courage to do what you do everyday. And you may have a CEO who also is unsure about fundraising and who won’t “do right” as we say in the south.

You may have unsupportive colleagues who are jealous that you get to go to all the events and travel around to see donors.  If you’re part of a large development operation with lots of other fundraisers, they may be competitive and view you as a potential threat.

Mix all this in with a major recession, donor reluctance, and a sinking stock market, and it sure is hard to keep morale up sometimes!

My friends are sort of relieved when I say that fundraising is a lonely business.  It acknowledges something we all know.

And it takes courage in our heart, perseverance in the face of adversity, tremendous commitment and just plain dogged determination to keep on keeping on.

What cheers me so very much is that so many of my fundraising friends are upbeat, optimistic and full of energy. They are looking at declining revenues with a sense of “things will get better.“  I almost never see a friend moaning and groaning, or wallowing around in negativism.

Here’s a friend’s perspective:  “I have something so great and I believe in it so much and I want to make it  happen!  I’ll do whatever it takes! But I can’t do it by myself.  I really need some help.”

Maybe fundraising attracts a certain personality. Maybe we are inherently cheerful and hoping for the best. I really think that’s the case.

So let’s all head on out there, in the face of a tough environment, unsupportive board members and colleagues and let’s make it work ANYWAY! Gather your forces, cheer up your board members and CEO’s, rally your colleagues around you to make it happen!

Too much is at stake for us to sit around feeling negative or bad.

The world out there is waiting for us, and there are surely lots of donors and friends for our cause in the future!

Hot off the presses this afternoon is a most interesting new report from the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund Gender Differences in Charitable Giving 2009.

The study surveyed high-wealth men and women who had given at least $1k last year to charity.  It found significant differences:

Women are more likely than men to respond to the recession by giving more generously.  When asked if they would typically give more in challenging times “because the need is greater,”  35% of the women responded “yes” and only 25% of men agreed.

This means that we should focus specific appeals toward this group of donors: high wealth women who are already connected to our cause.

Here’s the pitch:

‘In these challenging times, we urgently need your help more than ever!  (you must create urgency in every appeal you do!) More and more people need our help and we are unable to reach them because our resources are strained right now.”

“We have stretched hard yet we are still having to turn needy people away.“  (or we are having to lay off our ballet dancers and cut back productions; or we are having to turn away accomplished students because our scholarship funds are low etc etc).

“We hope we can count on you – one of our most steadfast supporters – to help us help others.  Yours is the gift that can make a huge difference to people right here in our community.”  etc etc etc.

That’s how you do it right now.  You have to be frank, specific and urgent.  Donors want to help, they just need to be invited and asked in the right way.

Have a great weekend! I’m off to my garden before it gets too hot!

I was reading today’s Sunday New York Times and there in front of me was a killer quote – attributed to Standford economist Paul Romer when he said at a venture capitalist meeting in CA way back in 2004 – “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

Now how might we apply this in the nonprofit sector?  When a crisis is occurring, people find that their tried and true ways of doing things are clearly not working any more.  What people had counted on in the past is not pulling through for them today.

If you are a creative person offering new ideas, strategies, approaches – then NOW is the time that you’ll find people more open to you. In the past, it was easy for those in power to hold on to the status quo and withstand change.

But now, things are different. When there is a general “breakdown” of the established order, then guess what happens?

You have a “breakthrough” to a new level of being, of operating, of organizing your board, of raising money, or  applying social media concepts, of enlisting new supporters.

Now’s the time to act.  If you have been waiting in the wings, looking for that opportunity to try out your new ideas, apply new strategies – do it now.  You’ll find the status quo dissolving. You’ll find those in power loosening their grip on your organization.    You’ll find a new openness to your ideas.

Go for it!

Many donors speak of an “intense, palpable connection” to their cause. They are giving because of this deep emotional experience of connection and making a difference.

If you can help your donors connect deeply with your cause – which we hope is their own favorite cause, then they will give as best they can.

You have to help your donors have this meaningful experience. We all talk about it, but NOW MORE THAN EVER – you need to give your wonderful donors this experience – right in front of their faces.

Walk the talk and SHOW your donors how they are having a meaningful impact and achieving something of major importance.

If it is important enough to them, then your donors will give.

Also remember that people give out of emotion. They then justify it with their head. Touching donors’ hearts is the way to make them happy, satisfied with their giving, and willing to give even more

On the flip side,  we all know that many donors stop giving because they feel over-solicited. Do you blame them?  And they also stop giving because we are not communicating enough.  They lose their connection to the cause.

Clearly then, our failure with our donors is a failure to communicate. What are we telling them? Is the only time they hear from the board chair or the CEO when the annual appeal comes around?

We need to think of our donors as “customers” and give them the quality “customer service” that we expect from for-profit companies. It’s the great communication that they receive that will help connect your donors for the long haul.

If there is one strategy you take away from this blog – it is to over-communicate with your donors – now more than ever!