Marc A. Pitman's Blog, page 39

Leadership Training

One of the joys of my work is getting to speak at conferences and inspire boards. Since, I'm often asked "When are you coming to my area?", I thought I'd share my upcoming speaking gigs.

March 9-11: Closing Plenary at the New England Association for Healthcare Philanthropy's Annual Conference, Portsmouth, NH

This just happened, but here I was privileged to do the closing keynote for the conference. They asked me to keep a pulse on the entire conference and then pull all the themes together at the end. Conference attendees responded well and conference organizers were elated. More than one told me, "This is the largest group we've had for a closing session!"

March 24: University of Southern Maine, Social Media and Fundraising, Portland, ME

Monday I'll be able to teach an all day class to USM students in the Certificate in Nonprofit Management. In a packed day, we'll look at a brief history of social media, how it fits in with the fundraising cycle, and specific strategies for tools like websites, blogging, email lists, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more. We'll also cover how to be involved with the 24/7 nature of social media and still keep your sanity!

March 31: American College of Surgeons 2014 Leadership and Advocacy Summit, Washington, DC

At the end of the month, the American College of Surgeons is having me help a couple hundred physicians learn some basic fundraising and grassroots advocacy skills. Since healthcare philanthropy is one of my specialties, this audience is particularly exciting to me!

April 2-4: NCDC Leadership Summit, Chicago, IL

In what is shaping up as a "leadership" week, I'll be doing 2-days with the members of the National Catholic Development Conference who are university presidents, diocesan leaders, and executive directors. We'll be unpacking the findings from CompassPoint's "UnderFunded" study and creating strategies to reduce the vicious cycle that creates underfunded nonprofits.

April 4-5: Israel Air Force Center Foundation Leadership Retreat, Las Vegas, NV

Wrapping up the "leadership" week, I'll be working with IAFCF's board and top donors. We'll look at volunteer leadership in nonprofits and specifically give tools for each of them to advocate for IAFCF without embarrassing themselves or annoying their friends.

April 9-10: FundRaising Success Magazine's ENGAGE Conference, Philadelphia, PA

This conference is unlike any I've been too so I'm thrilled to be going back again this year. I seem to be developing a reputation as a good "closer." At ENGAGE, I'll be working with fellow FundRaising Success Editorial Board Member Ellen Cobb Church to moderate the closing panel. We'll be helping tease out common themes from each of the case studies. And we'll have a focus on helping small nonprofits figure out how to put these lessons in practice in their own organizations.

April 28-30: Going Digital for His Kingdom, Dallas, TX

The month of April wraps up with me getting to be part of the first ever "Going Digital for His Kingdom" conference. Conference organizers have pulled together an amazing list of speakers including Hollywood influencers like Phil and Kathleen Cooke along with plenty of geeks like me. We'll be helping pastors and church leaders learn how to use the amazing social media tools at our disposal for good. This is the first stop of the conference that's scheduled in five more cities.

Do you want me to come to your area?

Speaking and training is the heartbeat of what I do. And the case studies show they have amazing results for organizations.

If you'd like my team to consider sending me to your area, or if you'd like to bring me there, please fill out this form: https://qc125.infusionsoft.com/app/form/training

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

Yet another unassuming donor gives multi-million dollar gift

Today The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported about Lotta Fields. According to the New York Times, Ms. Fields was an avid reader and a regular donor to the New York Public Library.

Her regular gifts were only described as "modest." But when she died, she left the library $6 million.

$6 million!

The NYT's quotes the library president of being "astounded" when he heard of the bequest. It turns out, reading was one of her fondest memories with her husband. And she felt it was important to support fellow book lovers.

Forced Integrity

We here a lot about donor retention. And it's easy to get drawn just to the big dollar donors. One of the reasons to treat all donors well is that according to planned giving expert Robert F. Sharpe, Jr., planned gifts tend to come from regular, modest givers.

How are you treating your regular, faithful donors? There might be a Lotta Fields in there.

More stories of unassuming millionaires

Lotta Fields joins the ranks of unassuming millionaires like Ron Newell, Helene Whitlock Alley, Robert and Adrienne Westerbeck, James Ebbert, Jean Preston, Albert Lexie, and Richard Walters who've all made substantial gifts to charity.

To read their stories,go to: http://fundraisingcoach.com/tag/forced-integrity/

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

Exclusive Code: Almost 20% to FundRaising Success' ENGAGE Conference

I'm thrilled to be speaking at FundRaising Success Magazine's ENGAGE Conference on April 10 in Philadelphia.

They've let me extend an exclusive offer of $75 off the registration to readers of my blog. Just use this code in the registration: MARCP75

Note: This MARCP75 code is only for people who work at nonprofits. One thing I love about ENGAGE is the high percentage of nonprofit staff that come. And usually the executive team.

To find out more, and to register, go to http://engage.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/.

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

Donor Research: 7 Tools for Creating a Prospect Profile

One of the most enjoyable aspects of major gift fundraising is getting to build relationships with donors. But often nonprofits squander the opportunities given to them by not doing any research.

A Word of Caution

Before we get started, a word of warning: the goal of research isn't to snoop. We're only going to look at publicly available information, but it can still feel intrusive. Your integrity is always worth more than the biggest donation a person might give. Always. (Click here to tweet that.)

A good practice is to run yourself through the prospecting tool first. That will help you see what comes up and how accurate or inaccurate it is. When I recently ran myself through the steps outlined below, I was shocked to see myself listed on boards of nonprofits I'd completely forgotten about. It'd been over a decade since they closed, but they still showed up on the list.

Creating a Donor Prospect Profile

Here are six of the tools I walk my private coaching clients through and include in Fundraising Coach University.

Your own donor database

The best place to start your research is in your own database. Look at:

Their basic address information

The "notes" on their files

The "actions" or "interactions" tab

The "relationships" or "associations" tab

This information is only as good as the ongoing record keeping of the major gift officers. In my experience, major gift officers and nonprofit leaders rely far too much on their memory when working with major donors. Most appointments and interactions need to be documented. One client called this the "hit by a moose" plan: what would happen if you were hit by a moose? Could your nonprofit pick up where you left off? (For those of you not in rural areas, if you're hit by a moose, the moose usually wins.)

Record all the pertinent information on the address, contact, spouse/partner, and background information fields of your prospect profile.


WhitePages.com

If you don’t have the prospect's address or phone number, WhitePages.com is a great place to look. It's a little creepy too. (Try searching on you first to see what addresses get pulled up.) This information helps fill out their profile and is required to do the more detailed wealth screening below.


Google the prospect’s name

One of the best donor research tools is Google. Searching on their name tends to pull up lots of information. Depending on the prospect, you will find corporate bios, alumni notes, even community volunteer lists. You can refine your search by doing things like: having their name in quotes, or adding a location, or searching their name and their business name. A complete list of Google's search operators are listed here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/136861?hl=en.

When you cut-and-paste any helpful tidbits onto the prospect profile, include the URL of the reference so people can quickly read more. I like to print helpful webpages to “PDF” and save them in the prospects file on my computer or my nonprofit's shared server so anyone can see the source material even if the webpage is removed in the future.

I also do an image search in this step. I save that image to the prospect’s folder in the shared drive and paste it into the top of their prospect profile. It's much easier to communicate with a donor when you have a face to put to their name.


WealthEngine.com or DonorSearch.net

I've been a fan of WealthEngine.com for years. It pulls together all sorts of publicly accessible wealth information and indicators: real estate holdings, stock holdings, directorships, plane or yacht licenses, etc. It also reports on charitable giving of the prospect and lists if people are on boards of foundations as listed by Guidestar.org. And it will give you a suggested range to ask for a donation in based on the prospect's capacity.

But WealthEngine only focuses on wealth. So you can draw some poor conclusions from the reports. And they don't let you customize the report, removing listings you know don't belong to the donor. Here's where DonorSearch shines! They allow for you to remove listings in a profile that you know to be inaccurate. They even score the reliability of the information based on their experience doing this sort of research.

More importantly, DonorSearch is weighted more toward demonstrated philanthropy then to wealth. They have all the wealth indicators and they will give you an estimated capacity based on wealth. But they have a much more complete list of gifts the prospect has made. So they also suggest a gift ask level based on the giving, not the wealth. A prospect may have the capability of making a $25 million to $50 million gift. But if the highest gift they've ever given is $100,000, it's better to consider asking at that level. At least at first!

Whichever tool you use, be sure to PDF the profile to the shared drive. And jot down any items of note onto the prospect profile sheet.


NOZA Search.com

NOZASearch.com is touted as the largest searchable database of charitable donations. If you have a subscription, NOZA can help you find donations made by your prospect. While the results are interesting, I find this information often compliments what's already shown in WealthEngine or DonorSearch. If you need to choose between a subscription to NOZA or one to WealthEngine or DonorSearch, I'd opt for the latter. (I'd really suggest DonorSearch.)


Zillow

Putting the prospect's address into Zillow.com can help you find an estimated worth of their house (or houses you may have discovered in the property listings in the WealthEngine or DonorSearch step). This can be useful to include on the prospect profile.


GuideStar.org

If you've discovered clues that lead you to believe the prospect has their own foundation, looking up their 990s on GuideStar.org can help you get a more complete sense of their giving. The 990's list both what organizations they've supported and how much they gave to each. Jot any worthwhile information onto the prospect profile.


Relationships are Worth the Effort

This takes time. Your nonprofit's relationship with donors is worth taking time to get right. Using these tools to set up a prospect profile can help you focus on what's important to them. And it can help your nonprofit leaders. One of the top nonprofit CEO fundraising frustrations is not being properly prepared for a visit with a major donor. A donor profile like this will help her be her best in the visit.

What tools would you add?

These are the tools I recommend to my private coaching clients and Fundraising Coach University members. What donor prospect research tools would you add?

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

[Guest Post] Correctly setting up your nonprofit's Google+ Community

A few months after I wrote the book Google+ for Nonprofits, Google+ released a new feature called "Communities." In the time since the introduction, have become a great tool for interacting on Google+, both in raising awareness and in interacting with supporters. As a Google+ user--whether personal profile or organization page--when you share with the people in your circles, it's a broadcast. One post sent to many. In communities, everyone sees each others posts and comments, giving much more opportunity for people to build stronger connections.

Today, I'm pleased to introduce you to Gabriel Reynoso. When I invited him to do a primer on Communities for Google+, he ended up writing a much longer post! You can read the full post at Google+ for Your Nonprofit Marketing Mix: Profile, Page, & Community. You can read the Google+ for Communities portion here. You can connect with Gabriel on Twitter @SM_4Good.


Google+ Communities for Nonprofits

by Gabriel Reynoso, Executive Director of SocialMedia4Good.org

Since its release on December 6, 2012, Google+ Communities has been available to the public. Enabling anyone to create a topic-specific destination on the Internet for any interest you can think of.

Building relationships in the social media sphere is important. Engage in discussions and offer your wisdom to help others. Google+ Communities allows visceral engagement with other plussers who share your particular interests. Creating and sharing quality content within Google+ Communities allows you to increase your visibility. Attracting supporters to your cause. Each time you do so is a branding opportunity for you and your nonprofit’s logo.

Anyone can create a Google+ Community. Nurturing its growth, productivity, and purpose is altogether a hefty task. I recommend participating in existing communities before starting your own. Because running one is no easy feat. Doing so allows you to get a feel for the marketplace to determine how you can add unique value on popular subjects shared by many.

Keep in mind that every community has a different code of conduct – or so they should. They tend to describe the rules for engagement and provide posting guidelines for members to follow. Spend some time discovering a community’s policies before engaging. This will ensure your posts are not removed or worse yet – get yourself banned.

Private or Public Google+ Community?

If you decide to create your own community, you have to determine whether it will be private or public. Only certain privacy configuration will provide any SEO value. Establish both your Profile and your Page as the ‘owners’. So that you can provide proper administration depending on which profile you’re toggled into. You’ll have to join the community as your Page and wait two weeks before being able to assign more owners, but that’s ok. You have plenty of other things to do in the meantime.

Hover your mouse over “Home” (top left) to expand the Google+ main navigation menu as we did earlier to create the nonprofit G+ Page. When you see a list of options, click on Communities then Create Community.

The purpose of your community is synonymous with your decision to make it public or private. Each with its own set of options and parameters. Here is a chart explaining the differences from Google.

Community
Who can join
See posts & members
Find community via search


Public - Anyone can join
Everyone
Everyone
Everyone


Public - Moderator approval
Request to join, approved membership
Everyone
Everyone


Private - Find via search
Request to join, approved membership
Members
Everyone


Private – Hide from searches
Only invited people
Members
Not search results

 

Select “no, anyone can join” OR “yes, anyone can ask to join” depending on what your particular needs are.

Whichever way you go, follow the same fundamentals from when you created a G+ Profile and nonprofit Page. Be sure to come up with a great name for your community. Use keywords related to your nonprofit niche since it’s indexed in search depending on your settings. Google+ support says,

“A community’s privacy settings currently can’t be changed once it’s been created. Please pick your desired setting from the start.”

Google+ Community Structure & Personality

Be prepared to start giving your new Google+ Community some structure and personality. With a great Community Name, you’ll need a brief Tagline and Avatar to associate with your community. Social Media 4 Good uses a free license image with the #SM4GOOD hashtag for universal branding. Create some Categories, provide a description for About this Community, and share some social media Links or internal pages.

Populate your Categories with content, especially within Community Guidelines. Each of the categories you’ve created should have some of your original content as well as relevant curated content. Your team should engage each others’ posts to kick things off.

Here are the essentials:

Community Name
Tagline
Community Avatar
Categories
About This Community
Community Links

Click Options (red circle) to edit these areas.

Nurturing Your Google+ Community for Growth

Assigning community moderators is crucial for the success of any community. After all, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” Google+ does a pretty good job of detecting spam, but moderation doesn’t end there. Your team will have to keep an eye out for repeat posts, conduct unbecoming, unscrupulous link dumping, and anything else that does not conform to your community policy.

Such incidents are dealt with swiftly within any properly moderated community. You and your team of moderators must set and maintain the standards of the community to make it a thriving environment for learning and discussion.

Keep Your Community Organized

Categories within your community are an extremely useful feature since it maintains your topics into neat segments of the primary interest. Google+ allows a total of twenty.

Let’s face it. People don’t always categorize their posts into the appropriate categories you’ve clearly created for your community. Luckily, Google+ allows moderators to fix that in a couple of seconds by hovering your mouse over the existing category (within the post) and simply selecting the correct one from the list. Voila!

Posting Style

Treat each of your posts as a mini-blog, taking the time to use Google+ formatting to create a bold post title, provide a description about what someone can expect to find when clicking the link and feel free to use a nice image to increase your click-through rate. Highly plussed, shared, and engaged content increases your social signals and gives your website great link juice. Lead by example!

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

Nonprofit executives: fundraising advice, tips, and exhortations

Since both Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day are observed in February here in the USA, we're taking a look at the "care and feeding of nonprofit CEOs." We know in CompassPoint's recent national survey of nonprofit fundraising, that CEO's are particularly feeling the pressures of tightening budgets and diminishing fundraising results. If our nonprofits are going to thrive, we need these men and women to have the support and staffing to carry out their missions with full funding.

So I dedicate this month's Nonprofit Blog Carnival to these leaders.

An open call to support nonprofit CEO's and Executive Directors

When I made the call to nonprofit bloggers a few weeks ago, I gave them pretty free reign in how they want to communicate with nonprofit executives.

The results are quite interesting!

Posts that got into the Presidents' Day theme

Mark Titi got right into the spirit with his post "Would George Washington Applaud Your Fundraising Grit?" He takes a look at Washington's experience and points out four areas that can specifically help nonprofit presidents. Check out his post at: Would George Washington Applaud your Fundraising Grit?.

Lori Halley of Wild Apricot also got into the Presidents' Day spirit with her post "Making Fundraising a Priority of Presidential Proportions." She writes about some of the challenges of leading an organization and gives four great tips for giving fundraising the presidential priority it needs. You can read her post at: Making Fundraising a Priority of Presidential Proportions.

Posts to people who work with CEOs

Often CEO's aren't positioned for succeed in fundraising. To help alleviate that, Tony Martignetti shared an interview with two chief executives--Mindy Duitz at Learning Leaders and Karen Pearl at God’s Love We Deliver. They reveal their insights on how to motivate, engage and position your CEO to be a fundraising MVP. You can listen to this edition of Nonprofit Radio at: The CEO as Fundraising MVP & The Fine Art of Conversion.

In a similar vein, Dani Robbins wrote a piece on the role of the nonprofit CEO. She says that leading an organization is a big job that looks much easier than it is. In fact, like all leadership done well, it looks like nothing. Her post sheds light on all the CEO's really do. You can read it at: The Role of a Nonprofit CEO.

Over on Network for for Good’s blog, Liz Ragland has compiled four talking points to help people build a case for online giving. These are to help start the conversation with you nonprofit CEO and board. You can read them at: How to Get Your Board on Board with Online Fundraising.

Posts to CEOs

In a post directed at nonprofit executives, Jason Dick offers a quick post on helping kick off your first 90-days in the position. You can read his post at: Building Allies.

Cindi Phallen also writes a post to new CEOs. As she states, it can be downright intimidating to be responsible for creating an effective fundraising strategy as a new CEO! Her tips will get you off to a great start! Read them at: Five Fundraising Facts for New CEOs.

Claire Axelrad writes an open letter to nonprofit leaders calling for them to embrace culture of philanthropy, one that gets everyone involved. As she says, "Unless you’ve created a culture of philanthropy in your organization – one where everyone who works there is fully informed and passionate about your work and the values you enact in the community – then you’re inevitably going to blow opportunities to garner vital support. Under-informed workers lead to disengaged workers. Disengaged workers lead to disengaged constituents. And here’s how it happens." You can read it all at: How the ‘It’s Not My Job’ Syndrome Pervades Nonprofits and Kills Fundraising.

Adam Weinger reminds CEOs of a easy source of funding that's often overlooked: matching gifts from donors' employers. His post highlights 7 strategies for promoting matching gifts to your community. Read his post at: Seven Ways Nonprofit CEOs Can Integrate Matching Gifts Into A Development Strategy.

In another open letter to nonprofit executives, Erik Anderson explains how hiring a fundraising professional does not allow CEOs to wash their hands of their resource development responsibilities. He also encourages CEOs to use well written annual performance plans as a way to communicate and effectively manage their fundraising professionals. His post is at: Dear Non-Profit President / CEO / Executive Director,

Jake Seliger takes a slightly different tack by offering a piece on raising money through grants that reminds presidents and EDs there's no free lunch in grant writing lunch. Many boards and executives think that getting money from grants "just happens." He reminds us that's simply not so. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for! You can read his post here: Tilting at Windmills and Fees: Why There is no Free Grant Writing Lunch and You Won’t Find Writers for Nothing.

In his post, Chris Davis encourages nonprofit presidents to consider the power of texting for their nonprofit. He discusses the potential for increasing engagement, donor acquisition, and donor retention through mobile giving. His post is at: Create a Movement with the Power of Mobile Engagement and Fundraising.

A few more posts

Kathie Kramer Ryan says your relationship with your CEO is an important professional relationship--and a key to fundraising success. She shares ways to overcome some of the more common CEO challenges, including the best ways to brief your CEO and how to manage her calendar in order to set meetings with donors. Read the post at: You and Your CEO - A Match Made in Heaven?

Dan Hanley took the opportunity to write to board members, exhorting them to hire executive directors who lead, not micro-manage. His post can be read here: Where is non-profit leadership?

I really like Joanne Fritz's exploration of how leaders are typically hired, and how that breaks down in the nonprofit sector. Check out her post at: Executive Directors and Fundraising: Not Always a Perfect Match.

Research project: The 5 Major Reasons CEO have a Hard Time Fundraising

CEO's and Executive Directors are definitely in a tough position. We at FundraisingCoach.com have personally reached out to over 100 CEO's, EDs, and presidents to help identify the top 5 things that get in the way of your fundraising.

Would you help our research? If your position is a CEO, Executive Director, or president, please take this brief 9 question survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HMTZ9C5.

Be sure to read the call for submissions for March's carnvival at How Can We Disrupt the Nonprofit Sector?

The Nonprofit Blog Carnival happens each month. Sign up for reminders at http://eepurl.com/tbGNb. To learn more, check out What Is the Nonprofit Blog Carnival? and Nonprofit Blog Carnival Archives.

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

The 5 Best Leadership Books for Nonprofit Leaders

An executive coaching client recently asked me about my favorite 2 or 3 leadership books. Here are the first five that came to mind. Not surprisingly, each one is within easy reach of my desk. And I find myself thinking about their concepts or quoting them practically every week.

Influence, Robert Cialdini

In most of my coaching sessions and media interviews, I find myself quoting Cialdini's work. His studies on influence are a must-read for nonprofit leaders and fundraisers. Whether it's about how we look for "social proof" (and how that impacts fundraising) or reciprocity, Cialdini will help you with your employees, your board, and your donors. These aren't anecdotal stories. These are academically tested results. And it's not about manipulation. As nonprofit leaders, we have to communicate our vision. It's our responsibility to learn how to do that most effectively. This book shows you the way.

Coaching for Performance, John Whitmore

Sir James Whitmore's book Coaching for Performance was part of the curriculum for my certification as a Franklin Covey Coach. He has a powerful ability to use athletic analogies and weave them into growing individuals. For example, he tells of a tennis player trying to change his technique. When the player focused on his arm movement, he never improved. But then the coach asked him, "What direction is the ball rotating when it comes over the net?" That took the player's focus off what wasn't working onto something else in the equation. And it worked. When the player focused on the ball's rotation, his arm "just moved" in the way it needed to. As leaders, rather than banging our heads against the wall because people aren't doing what we expect, sometimes we need to be simply change the question.

First, Break All the Rules, Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman went through reams of Gallup data to find out what set excellent managers about from all other managers. What they found surprised them. It turns out, excellent managers pretty much break all the excepted "rules" of management. One of the big ones is focusing on weaknesses. Most organizations that do performance reviews show employees what they're doing well at and where they're underperforming. The plan for the next year becomes to work on the underperforming areas. Buckingham & Coffman discovered that managers who brought organizations to great levels of achievement didn't have employees focus on their areas of weakness. Instead, they constantly put employees in areas where their strengths can shine. They forsook the pursuit of "well rounded" people, choosing to let their employees shine at different tasks. This book is filled with statistical evidence for tossing out "business as usual." It's also a great introduction to a strengths based form of leadership.

How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

I avoided reading this book for years. I assumed that it was about tricking and manipulating people. How wrong I was! Dale Carnegie's classic is an excellent handbook on how to be a good human being. Something we all to often forget. This is a treasure trove of wisdom that will help people in our nonprofits have an even greater impact on the world. If we took to heart that a person's name is the sweetest sounding word in any language, we'd cut the "Dear friend" letters and be much more effective at our fundraising. Or that arguments usually lead to both sides losing, we'd be much more effective working with people who disagree with us. This is a book I try to review every year or so. It's that good.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey

I first read this book when I was 17 years old. Covey's book embodies most of the books on this list and puts it into a complete package. He did an extensive review of "self-help" literature from the founding of the USA. Over the centuries, he discovered a shift toward the superficial. This book is a distillation of what he calls the "character ethic" lacking in modern works:

Be proactive

Begin with the end in mind

Put first things first

Think win-win

Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Synergize

Sharpen the saw

Remembering each of these seven habits will make you a better leader and have great fulfillment in both your professional and personal life.

Over the years, I've learned that Covey's academic style is a bit dry to some readers. If that's you, Sean Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens is for you. Don't let the title fool you, thousands of adults have read it and found it easier to understand than Sean's dad's book.

What would you add?

These are the books I recommended to my coaching client and find myself referring to over and over. What books would you add to this list? Tell us here in the comments!

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

3 myths of email fundraising

More and more of people coming to me for coaching seem to think that fundraising can be done 100% online. They want help setting up a website and getting on social media. It's as though there must be a great pool of donors just waiting to give and putting up a website will funnel all their money to them. It's a digital version of the Field of Dreams Fundraising Myth.

No one tool can do all the heavy lifting for your fundraising program. Here are some of the myths that I'm seeing:

Email is free

Email is not free. Crafting fundraising emails that build relationships and raise funds take time. Time to write. Time to edit. Time to test. This time costs the nonprofit money. Sure, you don't see a bill for printing or postage, but the expense is still there.

After it's sent, there's time to monitor too. To make sure unsubscribes are being honored. To make sure too many people aren't reporting your email as spam.

And beyond time, people responsible should be investing in books and webinars to keep up with what others are doing. Often for-profit companies are on the cutting edge, which is terrific! We can often learn from their mistakes without having to make them ourselves!

Everyone has email

They don't. Some of your supporters, or would-be supporters, don't have an email address.

Of those who do have email, not everyone is reading their email. I've anecdotally heard of people only having an email to sign up for social media sites. Their really communicating is through Facebook messages. So if you're sending them email, they're not seeing it.

In addition, email programs like Gmail automatically segment many nonprofit email appeals into a "promotions" tab, potentially making it less likely to be noticed. Add to that the fact that email delivery can be hampered by server issues and spam filters and you have an even bigger problem. Perhaps it's no surprise that while online giving continues to increase, email response rates are decreasing.

Email has replaced print

I think the most insidious myth is that email has replaced print. This is wreaking enormous damage on nonprofit fundraising. I was on the board of a nonprofit that believed this. We decided to communicate 100% digitally, even for membership renewals. We saved a bunch of money and congratulated ourselves for our fiscal wisdom.

Until the nonprofit closed its doors.

Once again, "penny wise" proved to be "pound foolish." Members simply stopped renewing. They'd gotten into the habit of using our renewal letters and conference letters as invoices and submitting it to their finance team. When the renewal reminders came as email, they responded differently. They didn't look like the letters they'd been trained to respond to so they simply deleted them. By the time we figured it out, it was too late to go back.


Mix it up for effective fundraising

I'm not down on email. I love it. You can send it at your convenience and people can read it at their convenience. You can be brief in an email but have links to places for more information. And I email can raise money. My team and I raised $100,000 in email almost 15 years ago! But we raised the other $6.9 million in major gift solicitations, direct mail appeals, and events.

Effective fundraising requires all the tools: email, direct mail, phone calls, face-to-face visits, events. In our sector we call that a "multichannel" approach. Did you know the best way to raise money online appears to be sending a letter?! Counterintuitive, isn't it? (See my post: Want to drive online giving? Send a fundraising letter.)

Donors aren't a distraction

I understand the lure of email. It's much easier to send an email than to develop relationships with people. If you treat fundraising as going to an ATM, then you see email as the card that releases the money. But even with ATMs, you can only withdraw money that you've deposited. For those of us in nonprofits, those deposits are relationships. Relationships take time.

Don't get sidetracked by think that relationship time with donors is robbing you from time that could be spent on "mission." If you've started a nonprofit, you need to come to grips with the fact that donors are part of your mission.

As such, they deserve a portion of your time and budget. So pursue digital communications like email, but don't make the mistake of focusing on them exclusively!

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

Nonprofit Blog Carnival call for submissions: Care and feeding of presidents

Mt. Rushmore close up courtesy of StuSeeger on Flickr. French fries & straw added by Marc A. Pitman

I'm honored to be hosting the February 2014 Nonprofit Blog Carnival!

In previous years, February has been dedicated to how to show yourself (the fundraiser) some love and how to show donors love so they'll want to keep coming back.

This year, we're going to take a different approach.

Send me your Presidents, your CEO's, your Executive Directors...

I've been thinking about President's Day happening in the same month as Valentine's Day. (Here in the USA anyway!)

As a fundraising coach, I hear from a lot of frustrated CEO's and Executive Directors. Some think that hiring a development person would allow them to not have to fundraise. Others aren't quite sure what the fundraising staff does. Still others love fundraising but don't have boards that support the staffing required to free them up to communicate with donors.

Let's help them!

If you write a blog in February about CEO's or Executive Directors in nonprofits, submit it to nonprofitcarnival@gmail.com by Friday, February 21st to be considered for the round-up at the end of the month!

What would you say to these leaders?

Your blog post could be anything. It could be:

an open letter to an Executive Director

10 things every CEO should know about fundraising

scheduling tips to allow presidents more time with donors

advice to a board on how to support an executive who is fundraising

staffing tips for CEOs that will free them up to fundraise

or just about anything else

As long as it involves the senior leaders in a nonprofit, submit it for consideration.

How to submit your post

Submitting your posts to the Nonprofit Blog Carnival couldn't be easier. Just send both:

the URL of your post and

a 2-3 summary of your post

to nonprofitcarnival@gmail.com by Friday, February 21st to be considered! I'll be reviewing all submissions and choosing ones for inclusion in a "blog round up" post at the end of February.

To get an idea of what posts were used in January, check out the January round up on Beth Kanter's blog.

The Nonprofit Blog Carnival happens each month. Sign up for reminders at http://eepurl.com/tbGNb. To learn more, check out What Is the Nonprofit Blog Carnival? and Nonprofit Blog Carnival Archives.

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!

Donor stewardship and Acres of Diamonds

Photo courtesy of readerwalker on Flickr

A couple weeks ago, I was working with my son on a school project. We are having him study 10 great speeches from USA history. In looking at top 10 and top 100 lists, I was thrilled to come across Russell Conwell's Acres of Diamonds .

I'd read this dozens of times growing up. The gist of the story is that a man dreamed of finding diamonds. So he sold all he had, including his property, and went off looking for them. But the person who purchased his land ended up finding an enormous wealth in diamonds in the land the first man sold. The moral of the story is that often the things we yearn for the most we'll find if we dig in our own backyard.

That got me thinking about a conversation I had with a development director. She was bemoaning the exclusive focus her board had on "getting new donors." Finding new donors consumed most of the committee and board meetings she participated in and was almost exclusively what her job effectiveness was based on. In exasperation, she blurted out:

"But at this point if we just got everyone who gave last year to give again this year, WE'D REACH GOAL!"

Diamonds in the database

Do you feel like this development director? She's definitely on to something. Granted, all of us need to be interesting new donors in our cause. But did you know that currently on average 73% of new donors never make a second gift?

No amount of new donors could fill this. Ever. If we are going to succeed in funding our mission, we're going to need to become donor retention experts.

Do you know what the good news is? Donors are people who've already done what you want them to do! Donors are people who've already made a gift! You're not asking them to do anything new. You're simply reminding them of how great their actions have been and asking them to repeat them again!

That's much easier than "finding new donors."

Unfortunately, it can seem boring too. Too many board members and CEO's have a "been-there-done-that" mentality when it comes to donors. As though "getting a new donor" is like buying a t-shirt rather than planting a seedling. T-shirts need to be replaced; seedlings need to be nurtured. (Click here to tweet that.)

The problem with seedlings is that they aren't predictable. And it can be tedious waiting for them to grow. But if they're tended well, there will be a harvest.

Finding your diamonds

Like seedlings, diamonds are made in a process. They start out as coal. And even after they become diamonds, most of us don't find them valuable until they've been cut and their new-found facets have been polished.

That's what fundraising is all about! As fundraisers, we find people with some interest in our organization. Then we grow that relationship in a cycle of:

expressing gratitude,

inviting for deeper commitment, and

discovering new levels of connection.

You can't afford to lose 73% of your donors

You can't afford to lose 73% of your donors anymore than you can afford to lose 73% of your stock portfolio or 73% of your paycheck. But just like diamonds, donor retention doesn't "just happen." It takes effort.

Here are three ways to stop losing donations:

Board members: ask for donor retention statistics

Some software like Bloomerang make these easy to report. But not all systems make it easy. So be kind to your staff if they're trying to figure this out. After all, this is probably the first time they've been asked by the board to report on retention. If it is, it may be appropriate to precede your request with an apology. Something like: "I'm sorry we've never asked for these statistics before..."


CEO's and Executive Directors: prioritize stewardship visits

Rather than getting frustrated at seeing "the same names on a list," choose to express your gratitude for those people. Get to know them more and discover ways you can help to get them more deeply invested in your nonprofit. Your asks may be of time, talent, or treasure. As long as they're made from a place of gratitude for all the donor has already done. And don't roll your eyes when your development director asks you to make thank you calls to donors.


Development Directors: transform communication to coming from a place of gratitude

Without the donor, your nonprofit couldn't exist. Let them know you know that. Rather than brag about your nonprofit, use a tool like the We We Calculator to make sure you're being donor-focused.

Donor retention is a team effort. But even if only one part of the team starts, you'll be amazed by your acres of diamonds.

Learn more about donor retention in a new book from myself and 13 nonprofit experts by going to: https://www.blackbaud.com/nonprofit-resources/npexperts

(c) The Fundraising Coach, LLC

Get 100 donors in the next 12 weeks? Learn how: 100 Donors in 90 Days!