Preventing Social Change Burnout

Perhaps it is the nature of trying to solve the intractable, but social change leaders are heading for burnout. I see it more often lately. A nonprofit leader  gives me a dazed look, rubs her temples with exhaustion, throws her hands up in the air, seriously considers just giving up.

The exhausting, endless hamster wheel nonprofit leaders live on is just not sustainable. At some point they will give out.

But the leaders who are driving social change are the very people we need to persevere. Because if they give up, where does that leave those who so desperately need the solutions they are providing?

Here are some things social change leaders can do to overcome burnout:

• Get Brutally Honest. With your donors, with your board members. Stop telling people what they want to hear and start being honest about the limits of your time, your staff’s capacity, your program’s scope. And stop chasing rabbit holes for your board or donors. You know what the reality is, so stop hiding it.




• Stop Fundraising. The thing that burns executive directors out more than anything is the endless, dysfunctional fundraising cycle. But if you could switch to a more effective strategy for bringing money in the door, and start to engage others (board members, donors, volunteers) to help, you would have a much smaller burden on your shoulders.




• Raise Capacity Capital. Executive directors are tasked with way too much. Most nonprofit staffers are doing the jobs of 2 or 3 people. That’s fine for awhile, but not long term. The only way out of that vicious cycle is to raise some money to hire key staff, or buy effective technology. That’s capacity capital.




• Get Inspired. Social change can be very inspiring. When you hit a wall, read about other leaders and the hurdles they faced, visit your own program and see the change that is happening every day, ask your staff and board why they are involved, ask donors why they give.




• Forgive Yourself. One thing I absolutely love about social change leaders is their undying commitment to the cause. So many of them have a deep calling for the work they do. But that can also have a dark side. They can become so passionate that they think taking a day off would be to let down the cause. They sometimes picture themselves as Superman and deny their human need for rest and regeneration. But the only way to create lasting change is to make it sustainable. You need to know when to say when.




• Get Some Help. You may be born to lead change, but a true leader knows how to engage others. You cannot do it all. Recruit and retain a staff to whom you can confidently delegate. Recruit a board that steps up to take key pieces off your plate. Ask your donors to tap into their networks to do some fundraising for you. This is not a one person show, rather you need to view yourself as a cheerleader, organizer, and leader of a vast army of people who are making social change happen.

When you feel your eyes glaze over, your head start to spin, a yearning for the family you haven’t seen in weeks, it’s time to take a step back. You are engaged in a marathon, not a sprint, and you can’t burnout after the first 5 miles. Long-term change takes time. Pace yourself.

Photo Credit: gb_packards

Tags: Executive Directors, Fundraising, nonprofit board of directors, nonprofit burnout, nonprofit capacity capital, nonprofit leaders, nonprofit starvation cycle

10 Great Social Innovation Reads: October

I think it gets harder and harder every month to narrow down to a list of only 10 great reads in social innovation. October was no exception. Here are my top 10 of the last month (but actually more like 13 if you’re counting). As always, please add what I missed to the comments. And if you want to see the expanded list of what catches my eye, follow me on Twitter @nedgington.

You can also read the lists of Great Reads from previous months here.

1. Marketing is a brave new world these days, and so is fundraising. Replace “customer” with “donor” and “We’re All Marketers Now” from McKinsey Quarterly applies to nonprofits as well.




2. A new Chronicle of Philanthropy blog launched recently that focuses on innovation in the nonprofit world. One of the first posts is about how the U.S. Army’s practice of using a “devil’s advocate” in their decision-making processes is something that some philanthropists are copying in order to come up with better solutions.




3. Occupy Wall Street and the other protests in cities around the country was a big topic this month. Some of the most interesting were Who are the 99 percent?  from Ezra Klein in The Washington Post  and The Demographics of Occupy Wall Street from Fast Company.




4. From the Harvard Business Review blog comes an argument that I completely agree with. Nonprofits that are struggling lack a “strategy for connecting their mission with their ability to deliver.”




5. I know infographics are becoming overused, but this one is pretty cool: How the Top 50 Nonprofits Do Social Media.




6. And speaking of the top nonprofits, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400 is out, all about what the 400 wealthiest nonprofits are up to.




7. The Alliance for Children and Families, a membership group for human-service charities, released a new report identifying the emerging trends social service organizations must embrace in order to succeed.




8. If you missed the live-streaming from the White House last week on social impact bonds, Pay for Success: Investing in What Works, you can still watch archived recordings, or check out the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s great resources on the topic here.




9. As usual, Lucy Bernholz tells it like it is, in her argument that the current debate in American politics about shifting more of the burden of funding for core public services to private philanthropy is undemocratic.




10. Jennifer Landres from the Center for High Impact Philanthropy finds some lessons for philanthropy in the movie “Moneyball.”

Photo Credit: JeffersonDavis

Tags: Fundraising, nonprofit innovation, nonprofit social media, Occupy Wall Street, Philanthropy, social impact bonds, social service charities

The Simplicity of Telling the Truth

There was an overwhelming reaction to my post last week, 5 Lies to Stop Telling Donors. I received more comments on that post than any other blog post in the 3 year history of the Social Velocity blog.

It seems there was a sort of collective sigh of relief in being told that it’s ok to be honest with donors. There were some amazing comments from readers, you can read all of the comments here. But I wanted to highlight a few in particular.

Some readers have been telling their donors the truth for awhile, like Sharon:

I have been honest with my donors for years, but I know I am in the minority, because some of my donors appear shocked when I explain the truth. I hope many more non profits accept this truth, because it’s only when the majority of us pull together that we will see real change.

And this from Linda,

Thank you so very much. This is a conversation that we often have in our world. Amen to transparency and truth. Well done!

And others recounted their own experiences of working with donors who don’t get it, like Curtis:

We recently had someone offer us $1,400 and they had this huge laundry list of expectations. At our new location $1,400 barely covers the electric bill for a single month.

And Kelly:

I am so on board with being real with funders and board members about what it takes to run our program! I had to inform my board that my staff can not be paid with in-kind donations!

I get the sense that there are many nonprofit leaders out there who want to be up front and honest with donors. Maybe they just need permission to do so.

Perhaps Marjorie says it best. The nonprofit sector needs to stand up for what they really need in order to be successful at solving social problems:

In an era of shrinking federal & state funding for human services, it’s tempting to feel relieved at “flat funding”. Trying to make that work just leads to substandard services delivered (in the case of nursing homes, day care, etc) by front-line staff without a living wage or health insurance. Rather than enable the illusion that the nonprofit sector can miraculously make it work, there are times we need to say that WE CAN’T DO IT without appropriate funding … and let public funders and policy-makers deal with the consequences of their budget decisions.

Thanks so much for the comments, everyone, and keep them coming! You are an inspiration to me. Stand up for your work, for your organizations, for your staff, and tell donors what they really need to hear.

Tags: Fundraising, nonprofit board of directors, nonprofit donors, Philanthropy

Breaking Free of the Fundraising Handcuffs

If you’ve been a fan of our popular, ongoing blog series, Financing Not Fundraising, you’ll want to participate in our upcoming Financing Not Fundraising webinar. The webinar will give you the tactical steps for breaking free of the unrelenting fundraisng handcuffs and bringing more money in the door.

Fundraising in the nonprofit sector doesn’t work anymore. In fact, traditional fundraising is holding the sector back by keeping nonprofits in the starvation cycle of trying to do more and more with less and less. What nonprofits need is a financing strategy, not a fundraising strategy. That means that 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. Instead, nonprofits must work to create a broader approach to securing the overall FINANCING necessary to create social change.

This webinar will show nonprofits what this financing approach looks like, including:

• How to align your nonprofit’s mission with the money needed to deliver on it
• Why a message of impact results in more money
• How to understand the critical difference between revenue and capital
• Why overhead isn’t a dirty word anymore
• How and why to calculate the net revenue of money raising activities
• When to explore new revenue streams

If your staff, your board, and your donors are worn out, if you’ve been following the Social Velocity Financing Not Fundraising blog series and you want to learn more, or if you want to put this new approach in motion, join us for this interactive webinar.

I hope to see you there!

Financing Not Fundraising Live Webinar

Tags: calculating costs of fundraising, earned income, financing not fundraising, Fundraising, fundraising plan, individual donors, nonprofit fundraising strategy, nonprofit overhead

10 Great Social Innovation Reads: July

I’ve been out exploring the Western states of the country (which I HIGHLY recommend) for the last few weeks, so my blog posts have been sparse, and my 10 Great Reads for July a bit delinquent, so please forgive me.

Below are the 10 things that got me thinking last month. You can also read past months’ 10 Great Reads here. As always, please let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.

1. In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Paul Connolly argues that foundation support of fundraising capacity has limited returns. Although I completely agree that you cannot build fundraising capacity without building the capacity of other aspects of the organization, I think he takes this a bit too far. It is critical that more donors, not less, support the organizational capacity, as opposed to just the programs, of nonprofits.




2. Talk about innovative, arts groups try the airline company pricing approach to ticket sales.




3. From the Harvard Business Review blog comes a great idea: A Gap Year for Grown-ups. Far beyond the author’s argument about the benefits to the individual, something like this could dramatically increase the ranks of national service programs.




4. An MBA myself, I love the fact that more MBA students are turning to social enterprise.




5. The Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog gives us 11 examples of innovative nonprofit websites that are designed for the social web.




6. Khan Academy, an education website, is being used to teach kids in new, interesting, and controversial ways.




7. From one of my favorite blogs, Full Contact Philanthropy, comes an argument about how even simple evaluation can help create more effective programs.




8. Extending Mario Marino’s argument in Leap of Reason, Phil Buchanan from the Center for Effective Philanthropy argues that foundations need to provide support to nonprofits working on performance measurement.




9. And echoing Leap of Reason’s core argument, Paul Light argues in a Washington Post OpEd that “nonprofit leaders have to get better at measuring the value they produce.”




10. Guest blogging on the Tactical Philanthropy blog, Tony Wang argues that philanthropy needs to be more critical of itself.

Photo Credit: Infrogmation

Tags: 10 Great Reads, Center for Effective Philanthropy, Fundraising, Leap of Reason, national service, nonprofit capacity, program evaluation, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship, social innovation, Stanford Social Innovation Review

When Fundraising Goes Wrong, Really Wrong

When I went to get my mail today, I was reminded how some nonprofit organizations simply refuse to change, despite how ineffective their status quo is. In today’s mail was one of four fundraising appeals per year that I receive from a national nonprofit. A nonprofit, I might add, that I haven’t given to in 11 years. I won’t mention the nonprofit’s name because they are a great organization doing important work. I don’t fault their mission or their execution, but I do take issue with their inability to effectively analyze their fundraising activities.

Nonprofits no longer have the luxury of doing what they have always done, simply because they have always done it. Now more than ever, nonprofits need to take a step back and determine when they should invest limited resources in an activity and when they should not.

I made a $50 donation to the local chapter of a national nonprofit when I lived in Washington DC in 1998. A few weeks after my initial donation I started receiving a new appeal from them every two weeks. I found it a bit annoying, but still believed in the organization. So the next  year I made another donation. When the appeals continued to come several times a month, month after month, I became increasingly frustrated. I decided the following year that my money was better spent on an organization that used their resources more effectively. However, this nonprofit wasn’t willing to let me go.

For the next two years I continued to receive the same number of appeals, but they stepped up the barrage by including small gifts as an incentive for me to donate. They would sometimes include 4-color brochures about additional gifts I would receive if I gave at certain levels. Aside from the fact that “buying” my donation was completely distasteful to me, I was appalled that they were spending so much money trying to get a small donation from me.

Three years after my last donation to this nonprofit they slowed their appeals, but I was still receiving at least 4 letters per year. To this day, and after 3 moves and 2 new cities, that rate of appeals continues, often with expensive brochures and token gifts included. Today I received the second quarter appeal for 2011 from them. It is appalling to me that they have wasted so much time, energy and resources on me when I clearly demonstrated, 11 years ago, that I was no longer interested.

The sad part is not that they spent all of my donation and more on trying to get more money out of me, as opposed to working toward their mission or building their organization. The truly sad part is that I could have easily become a lifelong donor, perhaps even a major one. To this day I still believe in and admire the work they do. But the fact that they can’t figure out how to raise money effectively completely turns me off. And I don’t think they even realize what they are doing to their donor base. They have demonstrated no interest in getting to know me as a donor or recognizing when I clearly tell them how to treat me.

The nonprofits that are going to attract and retain donors who provide the long-term financial sustainability necessary for achieving real social impact are those that are:

• Constantly evaluating the ROI on their revenue-generating activities and abandoning low return activities
• Getting to know their donors and communicating and interacting with them in a way that meets the donors needs and interests
• Connecting their revenue-generating activities to their mission, not to gimmicks and gifts
• Expanding into new distribution channels (social media, e-marketing, friend-raisers) instead of relying on what they have always done to acquire donors
• Continually improving, constantly pushing themselves to get better, more effective and more efficient

I doubt that my nonprofit stalker has found long-term financial sustainability and really, it’s little wonder why.

Photo Credit: BJ Carter

Tags: calculating the cost of fundraising, direct mail appeals, financial sustainability, Fundraising, major donors

10 Great Social Innovation Reads: April

In our ongoing blog series, 10 Great Social Innovation Reads, below are my top 10 picks (ok, if you really count it’s 11, but consider it added value) for what really stood out in the world of social innovation in April. But I’d love to hear what you think the best reads last month were. Please add your favorites from the past month in the comments.

1. Are Better Days Ahead for Fundraising? It could be, according to a new fundraising survey and this infographic.
2. But maybe not, since according to new IRS data (that disputes the annual GivingUSA survey) Americans gave about 20% less during the recession than before it.
3. What Can Junk Food Teach Philanthropy?: Sean Stannard-Stockton from Tactical Philanthropy takes a look at how junk food is marketed and wonders if we could apply the same principles to get more people to become philanthropists.
4. An interesting controversy has been brewing around the social enterprise darling, TOMS Shoes, which gives a pair of shoes away for every pair purchased. But some have begun to argue that this type of cause-related marketing is actually quite harmful. The Triple Pundit blog summarizes the debate: B1G1 Virus and the Cause Marketing Paradox.
5. There are two new generations of donors on the horizon, Millennials and Generation Z. Do you know what you need to about Millennials?: What do – and don’t – we know about Millennial donors?
6. And Is Your Nonprofit Connecting with Generation Z?
7. The Nonprofit Finance Fund has been building a treasure trove of information, discussion, tools etc on social impact bonds, a revolutionary way to fund nonprofit impact through government, all in an effort to make them a reality in America.
8. The Path to Sustainability: Bob Ottenhoff from GuideStar gives a great argument about the lifecycles of nonprofits and how revenue must move from foundation support to some sort of market support over time.
9. From the Philanthropy411 blog comes a great list of resources for nonprofits entering, or looking to enhance their presence in, the world of social media: 20 Social Media Resources for Nonprofits
10. Impact Market Failure: Kevin Starr from the Mulago Foundation challenges funders to start funding organizations that can achieve impact and address the failure of the impact funding market.

Photo Credit: susivinh

Tags: Bob Ottenhoff, cause marketing, Fundraising, Generation Z, GivingUSA, GuideStar, Kevin Starr, Millennial donors, Millennials, nonprofit earned income, nonprofit sustainability, Philanthropy, Sean Stannard-Stockton, social impact bonds, social impact finance, TOMS Shoes

What’s the Cost of Bad Decisions?

Note: This post originally appeared on the Change.org Social Entrepreneurship blog last year.

There is an economic concept that is beautifully profound in its simplicity, but often overlooked in the nonprofit sector. Opportunity costs are the cost (financial, time, resource, other) of what you have given up in making a choice between two or more options. Understanding the opportunity costs of decisions is particularly important when resources are scarce, as is the case in the nonprofit sector.

Key to the concept of opportunity costs is that you are consciously analyzing two or more options and what you must give up in choosing one over the others.  So, for example, a child who has to decide if they want a candy bar or an ice cream cone recognizes that in choosing the candy bar they are giving up the enjoyment of the ice cream cone. It seems so simple, yet in the nonprofit world it becomes much more complex.

Because the nonprofit sector is undercapitalized, money is king. A driving motivation in many nonprofit organizations is to preserve money, or go after money, at all costs.  So the idea of opportunity costs is often thrown out the window.

Say, for example, that a nonprofit leader is deciding whether to spend $45,000 to hire a grant writer or $75,000 to hire a Development Director.  The tendency would be to hire the grantwriter because they are cheaper, because in the world of nonprofits, cheaper is always better.

But let’s look at the opportunity costs.  In hiring a grantwriter, the nonprofit would save $30,000, but lose many times that amount in opportunity costs. If they had hired a skilled Development Director with experience raising money from sources beyond foundations (individuals, corporations, earned income), the difference in revenue brought in under the grantwriter versus under the Development Director could be in the hundreds of thousands.  In choosing the “cheaper” grantwriter, the nonprofit is actually costing the organization a huge amount–the opportunity cost.

Nonprofits are sometimes so strapped for money that they head out the door with a fundraising ask trying to get the quickest money, instead of the most money. Take Idealist’s campaign earlier this year to raise emergency funds for the nonprofit job board. They raised some good money, but what if they had waited to launch a fundraising campaign until after they put a new business plan together? With a solid, innovative plan in hand for completely revamping a struggling organization, they probably could have raised 10 times the amount they did raise. So for them the opportunity costs of not waiting to go public with an ask was potentially huge.

But the calculation of opportunity costs goes well beyond money. The value of a board member’s time in a nonprofit is huge. A good board member has the potential to forge relationships with funders, partners, governing entities and others that could grow or strengthen the work of the nonprofit. But often a board member’s time is instead used to organize fundraising events, sit in endless meetings, review mindless policies. If a nonprofit were to calculate the opportunity cost of choosing to have a board member pick out tablecloth colors for the next event (trust me, it happens) versus having them use that time to introduce the Executive Director to a new potential donor, the costs would be eye-opening.  A board member’s time, just like the money flowing to the organization, is not limitless.

Nonprofits cannot ignore opportunity costs, as if they don’t apply in their resource-strapped world.  Indeed, because nonprofits are so constrained for resources (money, time, staff, volunteers) they should be even more cognizant of opportunity costs and ensure that every last resource is put to its highest and best use.

Photo Credit: Freddy The Boy

Tags: Board of Directors, calculating the cost of fundraising, Fundraising, Idealist, nonprofit decision making, nonprofit financing, nonprofit use of resources, opportunity costs