fundraising strategy
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
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 Beating Your Head Against the Nonprofit Fundraising Wall
I was in Atlanta last week speaking at NeighborWorks America’s National Fundraising Symposium. I really love speaking to nonprofit staff and board members who are in the trenches trying to raise money for their organizations. The same thing that happened in Atlanta always happens. The group started out tired, uninspired, worn out with fundraising. But then I started to describe Financing and the light bulb went on. And for the rest of the day when I talked with attendees, or heard them talking to each other, they would try out this new word, this new concept, “Financing.”
But it’s not just semantics. Financing is a fundamentally different approach to every aspect of a nonprofit organization. For the group in Atlanta, I laid out the five main elements of it:
- Create A Financing Plan
Nonprofits must create a comprehensive strategy for bringing enough, and the right kind of, money in the door to achieve their strategic goals. This includes revenue and capital, programs and infrastructure dollars, and all funding sources. Money must be understood and used as a tool, instead of feared and sequestered. - Connect Mission & Money
The financial woes of many nonprofit organizations often stem from a misalignment of mission and money. A nonprofit leader who creates a financial engine for her organization that is fully connected to and supportive of its mission (instead of detracting or isolated from it) will enjoy financial sustainability. - Diversify Funding
Relying on only one or two funding sources, particularly foundation grants which make up less than 2% of all the money flowing to the nonprofit sector, is a dangerous strategy in the nonprofit sector. It is far better to create a robust and diverse money mix that fits well with your nonprofit’s mission and competencies. - Invest Supporters
As mounting research demonstrates, donors are increasingly looking to become engaged in the nonprofits they support. And they are looking for impact, not just a place to write a check. In order to attract these donors, nonprofits must articulate their value and convince supporters to become a partner in creating social change. - Find Money to Build
The time for scraping by and never having enough money for the right technology, staff, and systems is over. Instead nonprofits must become savvy about capacity capital and start raising the money they need to build the organization their mission requires.
It is so inspiring to see people who are on the front lines of creating stronger schools, neighborhoods, communities in this country suddenly realize that it doesn’t have to be so hard. You can stop beating your head against the fundraising wall.
If you’d like to have me come speak to your event, group, board or staff about Financing not Fundraising, or any of the many topics I speak about, email info@socialvelocity.net.
Photo Credit: billaday
Financing Not Fundraising: Find and Keep a Great Fundraiser
The news is not good lately about how effective the head fundraiser is at nonprofit organizations. A new study by CompassPoint reveals some startling realities about the fundraiser role in the nonprofit sector:
- 25% of executive directors fired their last development director
- 33% of executive directors are lukewarm about their current development director
- More than 50% of executive directors say they can’t find well-qualified fundraisers
- 50% of development directors plan to leave within the next two years
- And 40% plan to leave fundraising altogether
That sounds like a fundraising crisis to me. And it’s just another example of why fundraising in the nonprofit sector is broken. So in today’s installment of my regular Financing Not Fundraising blog series, I’m talking about how to find and keep a great fundraiser.
If you’re new to this series, Financing Not Fundraising recognizes that fundraising in the nonprofit sector just doesn’t work anymore. Nonprofits have to break out of the narrow view that traditional FUNDRAISING (individual donor appeals, events, foundation grants) will completely fund all of their activities and instead work to create a broader approach to securing the overall FINANCING necessary to create social change. You can read the entire series here.
What I find most troubling about CompassPoint’s recent study is that it makes nonprofits sound so powerless to do anything about this deep dissatisfaction with fundraising performance. But I think it’s not staff, board or donors who are lacking, rather it’s the entire fundraising approach.
Here is how to go about finding and keeping a great fundraiser.
- Hire a Money Head. Don’t hire someone who can just write grants or someone who can just work with individual donors. Take a look at the entire financial engine of your organization and hire someone who can develop and execute a strategy for strengthening and growing ALL aspects of that financial engine. If you have significant government grants or earned income, make sure you have someone on board who understands and can work with those aspects as well as the private money that flows to the organization.
- Develop a Financing Plan. Don’t just expect to hire someone who will magically make money appear. Your head fundraiser has to be in charge of developing and executing an overall financing strategy for your organization. And that means that you need an overall financing strategy for your organization. Without a strategy, your chief fundraiser and your nonprofit are sunk.
- Pay a Real Salary. It amazes me how many nonprofits expect to entice a great fundraiser by offering a salary that is comparable to someone with only a few years of experience . If you don’t have the current budget to pay a market rate, raise capacity capital to fund the first 1-2 years of the position. Once you have a great fundraiser on board he will raise his own salary while growing your nonprofit’s overall revenue.
- Work WITH Them. It drives me crazy how many times a nonprofit’s lone fundraiser is trying to raise all the money by herself. If you are going to align mission and money, you have to make sure that EVERYONE in the organization (board and staff) understand their role in bringing money in the door. Create a culture of philanthropy among the staff so that even a staff member who doesn’t have dollar goals in her job description understands that talking to prospects and donors, giving tours, writing thank you notes are critical to keeping the organization going. And make sure the board is trained in fundraising, has a give/get requirement, and has specific individual and board money goals.
- Hire Enough Fundraisers. The rule of thumb is that it takes one full time person to raise $500K, including anyone who touches prospects and donors (database manager, prospect researcher, etc). If you are asking a single fundraiser to raise $1.5 million there is little wonder why she is (and you are) miserable.
- Give Them Tools. Don’t hire a great fundraiser and then fail to give him a donor database, an interactive website, marketing materials, prospect research, support. It does no good to hire someone with great ideas but no way to bring those ideas to fruition. If you don’t have the budget for additional support and tools, raise capacity capital to find it.
- Train Them. No one knows it all. In every other profession we expect to send employees to conferences, provide them classes, coach them along the way. Don’t expect that your fundraiser automatically knows all there is to know. Give him opportunities to gain new knowledge, meet others in the field, and continue to grow his skills.
If you want to attract and retain someone who will develop a sustainable financial engine for your nonprofit, don’t leave her out in the cold. Fully integrate your head fundraiser into your organization and give her the tools, support and resources necessary to succeed.
If you want to move your nonprofit from fundraising to financing, check out the Financing Not Fundraising page of our website with articles, e-books and webinars to get you started. Or if you’d like to find out more about how I could help your nonprofit develop a financing plan or coach your fundraising staff to greater success, send me an email at nell@socialvelocity.net.
Photo Credit: Sahaja
New Consulting Video
One of my resolutions this new year is to add more video to the Social Velocity site. I love watching video, and I’d love to see more nonprofits using the medium, so I thought I should probably follow suit. A few months ago I created a Social Velocity YouTube channel and will continue to add video to it over the course of the year. I also plan to do some video blogging this year, which I’m pretty excited about.
But today I want to introduce my new consulting video. Here I discuss how I consult with nonprofit clients. If you are reading this in an email, you can see the video by clicking here. Take a look!
A Case Study in Getting Nonprofit Fundraising Right
I’ve written before about when nonprofit fundraising goes really wrong. An organization that I donated to a few times refused to leave me alone after 11 years of ignored solicitations. Today I want to flip it and talk about a nonprofit that has done a great job at fundraising. (In some ways they mirror my earlier post about when fundraising goes really right.)
Foundation Communities is a nonprofit in Austin, Texas that provides affordable housing and support services to low income families and individuals. About 4 years ago a friend invited me to a lunch at a Foundation Communities housing complex. It was NOT the traditional nonprofit gala luncheon.
Instead, when we walked into the common area of the housing complex there were box lunches waiting for us. The executive director and a couple of board members gave us a 5-minute description of what Foundation Communities is and does and why they are passionate about it. Then we watched a 10-minute video of the program in action and interviews with their some of their clients.
Finally our group was split into smaller groups led by a board member to tour the complex. On the tour, the board member explained how Foundation Communities uses an innovative financing model to acquire ineffective housing, renovate it and make it livable and affordable, while providing much needed after-school care, financial services and other help to the residents there.
At the end of the presentations and the tour we were asked to fill out a brief card with our name, contact info, and if/how we’d like to get involved with Foundation Communities (volunteer, take another tour, meet with a staff member). We were also asked if we could recommend a friend who might like to come to a future lunch. Foundation Communities holds these informal lunches every month. With that, the hour was up and we were on our way.
After that interesting and compelling introduction to the organization I started giving an annual gift. They were always very prompt with both an email thank you (since I made my donation online) and a paper thank you explaining how my gift would be used and all of the great work Foundation Communities is doing. Every once in awhile I would get an email about another specific campaign for which they needed my help. For example, right before school started one year they asked me to contribute the cost of a back pack and supplies for one of the children in their program. I found the email timely and compelling, so I complied.
When I gave my annual contribution again this year at Christmastime, I received a very nice voice mail from their Development Director thanking me for the gift and inviting me to call her back if I wanted to learn more about the program or had questions. I also received my usual email and paper thank yous, but this time with a special handwritten note from the executive director on the paper thank you.
I continue to give year after year to Foundation Communities because I am impressed by the organization, the results they are achieving, and the organization’s leadership. But I also continue to give because I appreciate how they treat me as a donor. They are informative, gracious, timely, transparent, but not annoying or needy.
Obviously Foundation Communities is way ahead of the curve, but I think they could take it further and gain even more support in the process:
- Instead of assuming that I want their paper newsletter every month (which I do not), they could ask me via email, phone or letter how and when to best communicate their results with me (email, phone call, social media, etc).
- Because I have a giving history with the organization, they could attempt (via email, phone, social media) to get to know me and my interests in order to 1) understand how to find more donors like me and 2) to explore whether they can increase my giving level.
- Since I have given to them over time, and I am active with social media they might explore whether I would be willing to tap into my networks to find others interested in supporting their organization.
Foundation Communities is doing a lot of things right. Other nonprofits could learn from their example about how to consistently and effectively build a donor base. But I’d also love to see Foundation Communities build on their great work to secure even more support.
Photo Credit: Foundation Communities
New Financing Not Fundraising 2012 E-Book
I’m delighted to announce that I’ve just released the Financing Not Fundraising, 2012 E-book. This e-book is the second in the Financing Not Fundraising e-book series. While the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 E-book laid out the basic elements of the Financing Not Fundraising approach, this new e-book, a compilation and expansion of blog posts in the Financing Not Fundraising blog series from 2012, goes deeper into the concept.
We are living in a new reality. And the old rules of nonprofit funding simply no longer apply. Those nonprofits that take a big step back and create a smart strategy for bringing enough money in the door to achieve their mission are the ones that will survive and thrive in this new environment. In creating that strategy they are moving to finance, instead of fundraise for, their organizations. And the result is a stronger, more effective, more sustainable organization with excited, energized, empowered board, staff and donors.
The 25-page Financing Not Fundraising, 2012 E-book expands on the basic elements of the Financing Not Fundraising model and helps those nonprofits that are ready to start moving away from fundraising to really dive into this new approach.
Here are the elements in this second level of Financing Not Fundraising:
- Stop Fearing Money
- Connect Money to Your Strategic Plan
- Fix Your Fundraising Plan
- Jump Start Your Board
- Align Executive and Development Directors
- Get Real With Your Donors
- Abandon Ineffective Fundraisers
- Kiss That Endowment Dream Goodbye
- Reinvent the Capital Campaign
You can download Financing Not Fundraising, 2012 here and if you missed the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book you can download it here.
How to Create a Nonprofit Financing (Not Fundraising) Plan
In an earlier post I talked about the common mistakes many nonprofits make in their fundraising plans. The biggest mistake is that they create a fundraising plan, not a financing plan. If you are serious about raising enough money to accomplish your goals, you need to create an overall Financing Plan for your organization. To help you do just that, I’m delighted to offer a repeat of our popular “Creating a Financing Plan” webinar. This webinar sold out when I offered it earlier this year. And here’s what one of those participants had to say about it:
“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.”
A financing plan is different than a typical fundraising plan for many reasons. Here is how they differ:
- A fundraising plan asks “How much can we accomplish with the money we can raise?” but a financing plan asks “How much should we raise to accomplish our goals?”
- A fundraising plan sets goals only for private revenue streams (foundation grants, individual gifts), but a financing plan includes goals for ALL money flowing to the organization (government grants, earned income, etc).
- A fundraising plan is for one year, whereas a financing plan is a strategy for attracting money for multiple years into the future.
- A fundraising plan has little to do with a nonprofit’s strategic plan, but a financing plan is based on what the nonprofit needs in order to meet the goals of their strategic plan.
- A fundraising plan is created only by the fundraising staff with no input or knowledge from the rest of the organization, but a financing plan is created with the whole organization’s input (board and staff).
- A fundraising plan only includes activities that raise money for programs, but a financing plan includes strategies for raising infrastructure dollars as well.
The “Creating a Financing Plan” webinar will help nonprofit leaders understand the steps to creating a financing plan for their organization. Webinar participants will learn how to:
- Set goals for ALL revenue streams flowing to the organization
- Determine the infrastructure dollars they need to raise
- Tie their financing plan to their strategic plan
- Create tactical steps to make the plan a reality, with activities, deliverables, people responsible, timeline
- Divide tasks by staff and board members
- Develop ways to monitor and revise the plan going forward
And remember, all of our webinars are available as recordings right after the live webinar, so even if you can’t make the time of the live webinar, you can still register and have access to all of the content.
I hope to see you there!
Creating a Financing Plan Webinar
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
Cost: $39.00
Download Now
Photo Credit: theurchiness
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