financing not fundraising
Why I Choose Google+
The constantly evolving world of social media can be absolutely exhausting. You want to keep up, but how can you when the number of sites grows every day? And each site competes with the others on look, functionality, audience size. I’ve finally decided to take the advice of many and focus my time on a select few sites. These are:
At first I was hesitant about Google+. Even though Google+ can’t boast anywhere close to the number of people that LinkedIn and Facebook do, it is still very much on my list. Google increasingly controls how people find content on the web, and it is more than likely that the search engine will increasingly reward those who use it (your content will rank higher in searches if you are using Google+).
But in addition to that, I’m pretty excited about Google Hangouts, Google’s answer to online meetings. I participated in my first Google Hangout in April with David Henderson (How to Use Real Performance Data to Raise More Money), and now I’m using Google Hangouts with small groups of nonprofit leaders in the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course. I also have client meetings via Google Hangout. But I think there is huge potential for even more with Google Hangouts.
To host all of this new activity I’ve launched a Social Velocity Google+ page. I plan to host some informal social innovation chats and perhaps move some of my monthly social innovator interviews from written exchanges to live or recorded Google Hangouts. So, on the Social Velocity Google+ page in addition to updates, articles and other happenings in the world of social innovation you can participate in upcoming Hangouts and interact with leaders in the social innovation space. I hope you will join me at Google+. You can follow the Social Velocity Google+ page here.
What are your thoughts on Google+? How effective a social media channel is it for you?
Webinar: Getting Your Board to Raise Money
Ah, the nonprofit board of directors. That much disparaged group of volunteers who must often be begged, cajoled, or guilted into raising money for the nonprofit they serve.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
If you can recruit the right people, get very specific about the skills they bring, and work with them to put their assets to use for your nonprofit, you can get even the most fundraising-shy board member to start bringing money in the door.
And this month’s Social Velocity webinar will show you how.
The Getting Your Board to Raise Money webinar will help you:
- Excite and engage the board in bringing money in the door
- Put every single board member to their highest and best use
- Set up a structure for effective board involvement in raising money
- Give you creative jobs for fundraising-shy board members
- Set up systems for tracking and rewarding board involvement
- Overcome board fear and inertia
This is one of our most popular webinars, and each time I’ve offered it, it sells out. Here’s what some past participants in this webinar had to say:
“This was one of the best and most helpful and informative webinars I’ve been on. It was exactly what I was looking for in terms of beginning to get our board energized and on track and I will use the slides
to help me prepare for our upcoming board retreat.”
“The webinar was very concrete and actionable – gave specific suggestions regarding
engaging board members. This was very useful. Well done.”
“This really opened my eyes to new possibilities – thank you so much!”
Financing Not Fundraising: Getting Your Board to Raise Money
Recorded
The registration fee will get you:
- A link to a recording of the webinar, which you can watch as many times as you like
- The PowerPoint slides from the webinar
- The ability to ask additional follow-up questions after the webinar
Download Now – $39
Photo Credit: buddawiggi
Financing Not Fundraising: Recruit a Money Raising Board
One of the biggest woes of a nonprofit leader, aside from the endless fundraising circuit, is an ineffective board, particularly when it comes to fundraising. But you cannot just recruit a bunch of warm bodies to your board and then assume that they will magically bring money in the door. If you want your board to effectively contribute to the financial engine, you have to start from the beginning. And that is to recruit a money raising board, which is the topic of today’s installment in the ongoing Financing Not Fundraising blog series.
In order to assemble an army of volunteer money raisers, advocates, ambassadors for your nonprofit you have to get strategic. You must move away from scarcity-based board recruitment where you beg people to fill vacant holes on your board, and instead create a recruitment strategy that identifies the right people with the right skills, experience and networks who will become your partners in bringing more money in the door.
And that strategy looks like this:
- Connect Your Strategic Plan to Your Board
Start by taking a look at your long-term strategic plan and ask the simple question, “What skills, experience or networks do we need on our board to make each goal of our strategic plan a reality?” And don’t think in broad terms like “fundraising,” or “marketing.” Rather think very specifically about target audiences you want to access, new networks of people you want to find, specific skills that your strategic plan requires. A childhood literacy nonprofit probably needs board members who have key connections to local school districts, possess education-related expertise, or can talk intelligently about smart program design. - Recruit for Specific Needs
Once you’ve identified what skills, experience, and networks your board must possess, test that list against what your current board has in order to find holes. Those holes become the very specific types of people you want to recruit. If a strategic goal is to expand your program beyond your current region, but no one on your board lives or has connections outside your region, that’s a hole. Start brainstorming who might fill that hole and how to gain access to them (for some help check out LinkedIn’s cool tool). - Find Each Member a Job
You don’t get people to help bring money in the door by asking them to just bring money in the door. You first must get them excited about what the organization is doing (the overall strategy) and then highlight their unique contribution to making that happen. Be very clear with each individual board member about what they bring to the table and how you would like to tap into those specific skills, experience, and networks to drive your strategy forward. People become invested in something when they believe they are making a real and specific difference. Help each board member figure out exactly how to do that. - Tie Everything to Your Financial Engine
Once you’ve figured out each individual board member’s job, brainstorm how that ties to money. To create a sustainable financial engine for your nonprofit, money has to be part of every conversation. If, for example, you’ve determined that a particular board member’s legal expertise is critical to your nonprofit’s ability to launch a new program in the coming year then also work with them to figure out how that new program will become financially sustainable. Perhaps there is an earned income component to the new program that they could help you to develop. There are many ways board members can contribute to the financial bottom line, so think outside the fundraising box and get strategic about how each individual board member can contribute, not only strategically, but financially (here are 9 ideas to get you started). - Inspire Momentum
If you assemble a group of people who contribute very specific skills, experience and networks to the organization’s overall strategy, and if you effectively work with them one-on-one to nurture the assets they bring, you will soon see momentum build. Each board member understands their unique role, is excited about how it fits into the bigger picture, and have connected that role to the financial engine of the organization. Once you start to see successes with individual board members, share that with the whole board. Let them see what individual members are doing and how it moves the organization forward. They will be inspired to embrace their own unique role.
Many nonprofit leaders start from the wrong place of cajoling, demanding, begging (or simply giving up on the idea of) board members and fundraising. If instead you start from the position of getting each individual board member to find their unique role to play, the money will follow.
If you want to learn more about getting your board to bring more money in the door, register for this month’s “Getting Your Board to Raise Money” webinar.
Photo Credit: State Library of Queensland
A Contest to Help Your Nonprofit Raise More Money
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am leading a Financing Not Fundraising E-Course for nonprofit leaders who are ready to create a more sustainable financial engine for their nonprofit. I would like to give one nonprofit that can’t afford the registration fee the opportunity to participate in the class for free.
But because this E-Course requires not only a financial investment, but more importantly an investment of time and mind-share, I want to select a nonprofit leader who has a compelling case for why they are ready to move their nonprofit from fundraising to financing. So I am introducing this contest.
To recap, the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course will take a small group of nonprofit leaders who are ready to chart a more sustainable financial future for their nonprofit from fundraising to financing.
Over the course of two months under my guidance you will:
• Undertake a comprehensive fundraising assessment of your nonprofit
• Gain new money-raising ideas
• Create a detailed financing plan
• Hear from other nonprofit leaders in your shoes, and
• Learn how to move your organization forward
To watch a video that describes the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course in more detail go here.
If you’d like to enter to win a free registration to the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course, fill out the form below. The nonprofit leader who makes the most compelling case for why they are ready to take their organization to the next level will be selected this Wednesday, May 1st. So submit your entry soon.
Update: A contest winner was selected so the contest is now closed. However, registration for the September-October 2013 E-Course is new open. You can register here.
Photo Credit: Library of Congress
Moving From Fundraising to Financing
I’ve had a lot of great questions about the upcoming Financing Not Fundraising E-Course for nonprofit leaders. So I created a video that breaks the e-course down and explains exactly how it will work.
The Financing Not Fundraising E-Course is an excellent opportunity for nonprofits stuck in the starvation cycle to figure out what they can do to more effectively raise money and then create a plan for a more sustainable financial engine. The registration fee is per organization, so if you would like your executive director, development director and a board member, for example, to participate, they all can for one fee. You will just simply appoint one person as representative of the organization to participate in the coaching calls, and the others are free to “listen in” and help you with each step along the way.
The total time commitment over the course of two months is approximately 10-15 hours, which includes the webinars, coaching calls, Google Hangouts and homework assignments.
This E-Course is truly an investment in the future of your organization. By making the investment of the time and cost you will transform the money engine of your organization and recoup that investment many, many times over.
Watch the video below (or click here) to learn more. And if you have additional questions about the E-course, don’t hesitate to send me an email at nell@socialvelocity.net.
Register for the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course here
I hope you can join us!
Announcing New Financing Not Fundraising E-Course for Nonprofit Leaders
I’ve been talking lately about nonprofits needing to make more investments in their organization, in their sustainability, and in their future. Well, I have the perfect opportunity for you to do just that. I’m excited to announce the newest Social Velocity tool — the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course. Over the course of two months I will be leading a group of 15 nonprofit Executive and Development Directors to determine what’s holding them back from raising more money and create a comprehensive financing plan for their organizations.
This e-course will take you from Fundraising to Financing. We’ll start with a fundraising assessment of where your organization currently is in your efforts to bring money in the door, and we’ll end with a comprehensive, actionable financing plan to move your organization forward.
Here’s how it will work:
- We’ll kick off with a webinar to help everyone understand what a fundraising assessment looks like and what it includes.
- Everyone will be sent away to complete the detailed fundraising assessment I will provide them.
- I will then analyze each individual fundraising assessment.
- The 15 participants will be split into two groups. I will lead a 90-minute coaching session with each group to go individual-by-individual to explain what their fundraising assessment revealed and where they should focus their change efforts.
- After the coaching sessions I’ll host an informal Google Hangout where participants can discuss questions, hurdles they are encountering, where they need help.
- Then I’ll lead a second webinar to explain how to create a financing plan.
- I’ll give everyone a Financing Plan template and detailed instructions on how to create their own financing plan.
- Then I’ll analyze everyone’s completed financing plan.
- We’ll do a second round of coaching sessions where I will go individual-by-individual to explain where their financing plans can be improved.
- We’ll end with a final Google Hangout where everyone can discuss, ask questions, get support and move forward.
- And throughout the process you can always reach out to me via phone and email with additional questions or for guidance.
The registration fee for the e-course is $499.
Of course I’m biased, but to me this investment just makes sense. With this e-course you can set your nonprofit on a path to a much larger, more sustainable financial engine. This is about making an investment now in order to enjoy a much larger payoff down the road.
If you want to learn more about the e-course and register click here. Or, if you have additional questions or wonder if the e-course is right for you, email me at nell@socialvelocity.net.
If you’d like to join us, register soon. The e-course is limited to 15 people, and it’s already filling fast.
I hope to see you there!
Register Now for the Financing Not Fundraising E-Course
Stop Rolling the Nonprofit Fundraising Dice
It happens all too often. A nonprofit executive director called me the other day because they have just completed a beautiful strategic plan with some exciting goals and a new direction for the organization, but they don’t know how to bring the money in the door to make the plan a reality. They don’t have a financing plan for their nonprofit, so they are just hoping for the best.
A financing plan galvanizes board and staff to bring enough of the right kinds of money in the door to make the organization’s goals a reality. It creates a sustainable financial model for the nonprofit so that it can survive and thrive. Instead of rolling the dice and hoping for the best, a financing plan puts your nonprofit’s financial destiny squarely in your control.
But very few nonprofits have a financing plan. Which is why I’m excited to be offering one of my most popular webinars again this month. In the April 24th Creating a Financing Plan webinar I will take you step-by-step through what a financing plan looks like and how to create one for your nonprofit. If you truly want to break free from the exhausting hamster wheel of fundraising and start bringing enough money in the door to achieve your goals, you need a financing plan.
The Creating a Financing webinar will help you create an overall financing plan for your nonprofit, which includes:
- All revenue streams flowing to the organization
- A strategy for funding programs and operations
- Opportunities to raise money for infrastructure
- Tactical steps with activities, deliverables, people responsible
- Ways to divide tasks by staff and board members
- A process for monitoring the plan going forward
Here’s what some past Creating a Financing Plan webinar participants have said:
“This session was one of the best on this topic I have seen…presented in an excellent and logical manner.”
“I loved the reframing of financing for desired results instead of funding for operations… your message to wed money to the mission was a big AHA moment and I am now figuring out how to bring this to life for staff and Board.”
Creating a Financing Plan Webinar
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
1:00-2:00pm Eastern
Register Now
And remember, as with all of our webinars, if you can’t make this day and time, don’t worry. When you register for the webinar you will gain access to the slides and recording of the webinar which you can watch whenever you want.
I hope to see you there!
Photo Credit: jDevaun
Financing Not Fundraising: Break Free From the Starvation Cycle
The other day I met with a nonprofit leader (let’s call her June) who has a great idea for an earned income venture that fits directly with her mission, but she doesn’t have the start-up capital to launch. When she explained this to me, she threw up her hands as if to say, “I’m powerless to move forward.”
But from my vantage point she has all the pieces necessary to raise the start-up capital and launch, she just isn’t putting them together. It’s a common refrain — nonprofit leaders complain about being in a catch-22 of not having enough money to raise enough money. But the answer is often right in front of you. To break free from the starvation cycle, assemble the assets you already have in order to raise capacity capital, which is the topic of today’s post in the ongoing Financing Not Fundraising blog series.
The nonprofit starvation cycle is one nonprofit leaders know only to well. Nonprofit organizations rarely have the technology, staff, and systems to function effectively. So they scrape by trying to wring one more drop out of a completely dry rock. But instead of waiting for funders to fix the situation, it is up to nonprofit leaders themselves to break free. And you break free by raising capacity capital.
Capacity capital is a one-time investment of significant money that can help build or strengthen a nonprofit organization so that it can create more social change. Capacity capital funds things like technology, systems, a program evaluation, revenue-generating staff, start-up costs for an earned income business. It is money that strengthens the organization so that it can do more.
But often nonprofit leaders, like June above, don’t recognize that everything they need to raise capacity capital and break free from the starvation cycle is in right in front of them. Here are the necessary pieces:
A Plan. You know what you need in order to do more, so put together a change plan and figure out what elements you need (technology, systems, staffing) and what they will cost. Do your homework so you can speak intelligently about what it will take to get you from point A to point B. June has a great business plan for her venture and knows exactly how much she needs in start-up costs.
Donors Who Love You. When raising capacity capital you want to go after donors who already love what you are doing and want to see more. You must convince them that a one-time investment of capacity capital will enable you to do even more of what they already love. June has a great network of long-time donors, which she could convince to become capacity capital donors.
A Connection Between Capital and More Impact. Make a convincing argument to those donors that capacity capital will create more of what they already love. For example, having a great Development Director in place can bring hundreds of thousands of new dollars each year which means many more people will be touched by your organization. Or explain how an evaluation of your program will allow you to focus your resources on highest impact activities. June could describe how a profitable earned income venture could increase financial sustainability while delivering more impact.
June has all of these pieces. She has a great plan for an earned income business that could significantly contribute to a more sustainable financial engine and thus allow her nonprofit to reach more people, a clear articulation of how much capital she needs and for what, and a committed group of donors who love the organization. For her, and for most nonprofits, it is simply a question of connecting the dots.
If you want to learn more about the power of capacity capital, download the Enormous Opportunity of Capacity Capital e-book, the Creating a Capacity Capital step-by-step guide or the Raising Capacity Capital webinar.
Photo Credit: PublicDomainPictures
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