Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning -- Engaging Volunteers in Fundraising

As we said before, there is much in fundraising that seems counter-intuitive. One of the first thoughts that may be on the minds of individual members of the Board of Directors is how the staff will raise the money necessary to keep the organization financially stable. In fact, this is not far off the mark, in that in many nonprofit organizations the fundraising activity is carried out largely, sometimes even solely, by the organization’s staff.

However, we must ask two questions:
1. What is the appropriate fundraising involvement for every member of the organization’s structure that will lead to the kind of optimized fundraising that will provide maximum revenue of the organization over time?

2. Who among the organization’s invested volunteers and staff are likely to be most effective in producing the revenue needed by the organization?

Our answer to the first question is that every member of our new charity family, whether staff or volunteer, has a role to play in fundraising. Not all can do the same kinds tasks or carry the same level of responsibility. But everyone associated with the our new charity organization will be involved in some aspect of fundraising in accordance with their capabilities, learning and motivation. The reason for this is that our existence, and therefore our ability to serve the community, is heavily dependent on our fundraising capability to keep our organization financially stable and allow us to serve the community. This is the expression by all of us that fundraising is critical to our success as a public trust.

Our answer to the second question is twofold:
The first answer is that volunteers who have already made their financial gifts tend to be much more effective than even a program person, an executive director or a director of development, especially with their peers. Generally, volunteers are seen by the public (and their peers) as having more motivation and less self-interest involved in their cultivation and solicitation efforts.

The second answer is that typically fundraising staff and the organization’s executive director have limited time that they can spend on their fundraising tasks; thus their ultimate effectiveness will be limited. Volunteers open up considerably the organization’s ability to reach out to larger pools of donors with increasing diversity over the years. Thus volunteers significantly enhance and magnify the organization’s ability to raise contributed funds from the public. Without volunteer involvement the organization’s fundraising capability can be severely truncated after a certain point, because staff can only do so much in a day’s time.

Therefore, our new charity will endeavor to involve volunteers at all levels of fundraising activity. To do this, we will commit ourselves to the following seven components in our management of all our volunteers

• Identifying likely volunteers from within the community
  
• Recruiting the most appropriate volunteers from those identified
  
• Bringing these volunteers continually closer to the organization’s work
  
• Training our volunteers in fundraising methods and techniques and in the work of cultivation and solicitation of contributions
  
• Deploying our volunteers with reference to our cultivation and solicitation strategies for individuals, corporations, sponsors and foundations, so that each volunteer has a continuing group of persons or institutions they are responsible for cultivating and asking for gifts.
  
• Evaluating the work all our volunteers do on an annual basis, and providing both evaluation mechanisms and further training to assist those who need these supports.
  
• Debriefing, thanks and recognition for all volunteers, both annually (for continuing volunteers) and at the end of their respective terms of service.
  

Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning -- Identifying Prospect Pools, Pt. 3

We're discussing the establishment of pools of donor prospects who might give to our new charity. Today we focus on some of the strategies of implementation that can be used.
Prospect Pools – Strategies for Implementation
During the next year, we will want to take the following steps

1. Individuals
We will gather together the names and contact information of individuals in the community who have been sympathetic to our cause and mission and who have been willing to give us contributions. We will send these individuals a direct mail appeal at the end of the year, as well as individual requests for contributions whenever special needs arise for which their gifts can be helpful.

We will keep this information in an appropriate donor database, which we will upgrade on a forecast schedule according to our strategic plan and our advance budget projections.

We will create a subset of the above individuals who we believe have major gift potential, and will devise cultivation and solicitation strategies for each of those individuals. These cultivation strategies will include the assignment of each donor prospect to either a staff member or a volunteer for continued relationship building and follow-up, and for eventual solicitation.

2. Corporations – Community Responsibility Grants
We will gather together the names and contact information of various businesses and corporations in our community, county and region who have been or whom we think might be willing to give us contributions. This information will be uploaded into our donor database for further use and reference.

We will establish strategies for approaching, cultivation and solicitation of these business owners on behalf of our new charity. In this process we will assign each corporate prospect to a staff person or a volunteer for continued relationship building and follow-up, and for eventual solicitation.

We will develop these prospects in three subsets among our corporate responsibility donors as follows:

1. Those who make and/or sell a product or service that has a direct affinity for our mission. These financial institutions, mortgage companies, other lenders, real estate agents and brokers, and the like, will constitute a “direct affinity” group that we will consider primary donor prospects.
   
   For this group, we will craft a special version of our Case for Support that is designed to help them see the logic and the good sense and stewardship involved in making contributions to our mission, so that all members of our community become more knowledgeable and more capable of dealing with and purchasing services from these businesses.



2. Those businesses or corporations that are close to us geographically and share our concern for the well-being of our neighborhood. These retailers, wholesale outlets, service businesses may not have a direct affinity for our mission, but they will undoubtedly greatly appreciate the fact that more stable, knowledgeable community citizens means a better business climate and greater chance of business success.
   
   For this group, also, we will craft a special version of our Case for Support designed to motivate and compel these business interests to make contributions to our work.



3. Those businesses and corporations who are not necessarily close to us geographically, nor have any affinity with us, but whom we believe may be motivated to help us make our community or our regional society a better place to live.
   
   For this group, we may not necessarily create a special version of the Case for Support, but we will attempt to approach these prospective donors in ways that motivate them to give.

3. Corporations – Gifts of Sponsorships
We will gather together the names and contact information of various businesses and corporations in our community, county and region who have been or whom we think might be willing to give us contributions.
We will establish strategies for approaching, cultivation and solicitation of these business owners on behalf of our new charity. In this process we will assign each corporate prospect to a staff person or a volunteer for continued relationship building and follow-up, and for eventual solicitation.

We will establish strategies for approaching, cultivation and solicitation of these business owners on behalf of our new charity. In this process we will assign each corporate prospect to a staff person or a volunteer for continued relationship building and follow-up, and for eventual solicitation.

Following the method above of dividing businesses or corporations into three sub-sets, we will work out different strategies of approach, and a variety of Case for Support nuances that are designed to help corporate marketers and advertisers see the value in giving to our cause and mission.

We will also create a menu of sponsorship benefits as follows (suggested):
Sponsorship Levels:

• Corporate Angel Sponsor $10,000 annually


• Platinum Sponsor $7,500


• Gold Sponsor $5,000


• Silver Sponsor $2,000


• Bronze Sponsor $1,000


• Benefactor Sponsor $500


• Attraction Sponsor $250


• In-Kind Sponsor In-kind

Sponsor Benefits
"Corporate Angel Sponsors" will have their logo imprinted on all educational materials developed for our service delivery clients. Their logo will be featured on our stationery and on our promotional materials for marketing and advertising purposes, as well as on our fundraising literature. Public mention will be made of these sponsors at every public presentation, press conference and public event that we create. Recognition of these sponsors will occur in all media coverage and promotional materials, and will be prominently displayed and features in all of our special events. Their names and logos will also appear on our website and on the donor wall in our new charity’s general offices

"Platinum Sponsors" will have their logo imprinted on all educational materials developed for our service delivery clients. Their logo will be featured on our stationery and on our promotional materials for marketing and advertising purposes, as well as on our fundraising literature. Public mention will be made of these sponsors at every public presentation, press conference and public event that we create. Their names and logos will also appear on our website and on the donor wall in our new charity’s general offices

"Gold Sponsors" will have their logo imprinted on all educational materials developed for our service delivery clients. Their logo will be featured on our stationery and on our promotional materials for marketing and advertising purposes, as well as on our fundraising literature. Their names and logos will also appear on our website and on the donor wall in our new charity’s general offices

"Silver Sponsors" will have their logo imprinted on all educational materials developed for our service delivery clients. Their names and logos will also appear on our website and on the donor wall in our new charity’s general offices

"Bronze Sponsors" will be listed on our website in a special category and their logos will appear in a special panel in close proximity to the listing on the site. Their names and logos will also appear on our website and on the donor wall in our new charity’s general offices

"Benefactor Sponsors" will be listed on our website in a special category and their logos will appear in a special panel in close proximity to the listing on the site, as well as on the donor wall in our new charity’s general offices..

"Attraction Sponsors" will be listed in a general donor listing in which their corporate names will be accompanied by a checkmark or other visible designation that tells viewers that these sponsors have given to our new charity.

"In-kind Sponsors" will be listed at the end of our donor listing on our website, in our annual report and on our donor all in our new charity’s general offices

We will create a small, inexpensive sponsorship brochure that tells about our work in the community and describes the menu of benefits that are available to our corporate donors. As time moves along, and as we have more money available for fundraising. Our new charity will involve our corporate sponsors in other media, such as display books, videos, public displays, kiosks and other marketing and advertising strategies. We will also add sponsorship benefits as we enhance and enlarge our organization and its work.

This rounds out the description of work that needs to be done with regard to creating or identifying pools of donor prospects. In our next post we'll discuss the use of volunteers in our Fund Development Plan.

Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning -- Identifying Prospect Pools, Pt. 2

We're in the midst of putting together a Fund Development Plan for our new charity; we've dealt with the strategic plan, the case for support and the identification of specific projects; now we're into identifying or creating prospect pools, where we will find our donors. Yesterday's post had to do with individual donors. Let's see who else is in our pool of prospects.

2. Prospective Corporations, Community Responsibility – are there businesses or larger corporations in our community who could be persuaded to share a bit of their corporate responsibility money with our new charity? This, typically, consists of the contributions decided upon by the corporate or business owners or officers. These gifts are a way the corporation or business has decided it can demonstrate that it is a good corporate citizen in the community, and is supportive of efforts to create a better society.

3. Prospective Corporations, Marketing – would some of the businesses or corporations in our community be willing to “invest” in our new charity’s mission in return for some promotion and advertising of their services and products through our organization’s reach into the community? Contributions here are made chiefly for marketing and advertising reasons, and corporations making such contributions want to know how positively making such contributions will add to their bottom line – the profit they can make through sales.

4. Prospective Foundations – are there a variety of foundations in our southeastern Michigan region that would be attracted to our mission, and which would help our new charity accomplish its mission by way of grants? We acknowledge that today most foundations have their own program objectives which they want to accomplish, but we are confident that some of these will have internal objectives that are compatible with our own cause and mission. These will be the ones with whom we can create partnerships to accomplish our mission in the community.

Tomorrow we will put together some specific strategies about each of our four types of prospects.

Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning -- Identifying Prospect Pools

Now that we have our project and our case for support, the next step in our Fund Development Plan is to identify prospects to cultivate and solicit for gifts.

There are typically several kinds of donors to which we may turn for financial support: individuals, businesses or corporations, foundations and government agencies.

We know from many years of observing the contributions given to nonprofit organizations that individuals tend to give the most to charity. Typically, about 75% of all the donations made to 501-c-3 nonprofits come from individuals. In 2007, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University reported in “Giving USA” that of the $306 billion given to charity, individuals gave $230 billion. The next largest type of donor, foundations, gave 12 %, while corporate donors gave about 5% and 8% came from bequests (which are also made by individuals).

Our Fund Development Plan for A new nonprofit will include a section that addresses each of these types of donors. As we delineate these constituents, we will focus our attention on the geographic area involved, with some reaching out to the larger region of southeastern Michigan.

1. Prospective Individual Donors – who are the people we can identify in our community that would have both the capacity and the motivation to give to a new nonprofit? We need to identify who these people are, how we reach them, and what we expect from such donor segments.
a. There may be individuals we reach through our direct mail
b. Sine undividuals we know from association with them, such as board member contacts in the community: relatives, friends, colleagues, acquaintances are all potential donor prospects. We also have staff contacts in the community that result from pursuing the organization’s program goals.
c. Then, too, there are individuals who hear of us through various marketing and public relations strategies we will employ

Even before we begin our cultivation and solicitation work, it is important to note that every gift has, essentially, three identifiable elements: capacity, motivation and relationship.

Without the capacity to make a gift, there can be no gift – a person, business or foundation cannot give what they do not have.

But even prospective donors who have capacity may not yet be motivated to think in terms of a new nonprofit. So motivation is a powerful mechanism for directing a donor’s largesse – he/she will give to the causes that motivate them, inspire them, or give them the inner rewards they seek.

What, then, is the way a nonprofit organization can affect motivation? The answer is that relationship is a key to motivation. Individuals (even at foundations and corporations) give to people, give to causes they love, give to get their own objectives accomplished in the world. Therefore, the way to positively affect their motivation is through the creation, building and maintenance of relationships with our donors.

This means that our fundraising plan for focusing on our donors – of whichever type – will be to create and maintain relationships with them over time. Relationships can be created in several ways.

For example, a donor may receive a letter from a new nonprofit that contains pictures of families being helped by our program staff. Let’s say that person is moved, for example, by seeing those pictures plus the text that explains our mission and our work, to write a check for $50. That is the beginning of a relationship to our organization. But it is only a beginning. Much more must be done to help that donor make repeated gifts and to give more, over time, to help our staff achieve service goals.

Another example involves a nonprofit Board member who has a relationship with a colleague in business, in a social situation or in a service club. Having heard the Board member relate all the good things our nonprofit accomplishes, this person has a growing respect for the organization. At a certain point in time that Board member offers to his/her friend the opportunity to make a significant (for that donor) gift to our new charity, and shows the prospect just what can be achieved through making that kind of gift.

One aspect of relationships we will keep in mind is that they tend to stagnate and must be kept fresh. So our Fund Development Plan will include providing our staff and volunteers with new and fresh ideas about cultivation that can keep these relationships we have with people, businesses and foundations fresh and motivating so that our donors will give more.

We'll move on to corporate prospects tomorrow.

Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning, cont'd

The fundraising process has seven distinct steps, as follows:
1. Define the project
2. Write the case for support
3. Develop or identify prospect poools
4. Deliver the case for support to prospects
5. Enlist and train volunteers for cultivation and solicitation
6. Deploy staff and volunteers in cultivation and solicitation
7. Recognize and thank your donors

So having begun our Fund Development Planning process with the organization's strategic plan and case for support, we now turn to the selection of a specific project (or projects) that can focus the donor’s attention and giving.

We know from a wide variety of research data available that donors give more consistently, more frequently and with greater internal satisfaction when they can focus on a specific project.

One of the reasons for this is that focusing the donor's attention on a specific project enables a donor to see and feel good about alleviating specific need in specific areas of the community’s life. Identifying the good that one does is more easily accomplished with specific focus on a project. In the end, that brings with it more personal satisfaction to the donors and often larger gifts to the charity.

A second reason for having a project on which to focus is that it is easier for donors to identify with the specific persons in the community whose need is being alleviated by the charitable organization. And when donors identify with visible program recipients they have the sense of more fulfilling personal relationships with those who are helped. All of this promotes better and more lucrative giving to the nonprofit organization.

For example, take the homeless. Many people in our communities don't know who the homeless really are. A charity dealing with the homeless can focus, for example, on the project of temporary shelter they provide homeless families; it can show a picture of a homeless family that looks just like the average commmunity dweller. In some areas the average age of homeless persons is 9 years old, because so many families are experiencing homelessness. Including such a project in an organization's annual fund drive gives the charity time to spotlight, lift up, give the important details of who the homeless are, and why they benefit from temporary shelter. This not only heightens the prospective donor's sense of community need, but informs the donor's understanding of exactly who the homeless are; it helps the prospective donor understand that homeless people are not very different at all from themselves.

Therefore, Our start-up charity will benefit from identifying certain specific aspects of their service programs or program locations as the basis for its fundraising, whether this be seeking grants from foundations and corporations, or asking individuals to contribute to what is essentially an “Annual Fund” campaign for operating funds. Those operating funds will be identified with, and represented and symbolized by the individual program initiative being lifted up.

Tomorrow, more on this theme: the part played by oxytocin in giving.

Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning, Case for Support, Pt 2

We're working on the Fund Development Plan of a start-up charity. And we're in the section having to do with the organization's "Case for Support;" this is the set of reasons why anyone would or should give us any money. We've discussed the reasons why people give, and the fact that these reasons will be the basis for writing our case for support.

It is vital to the success of our fundraising efforts to remember that we are seeking funding from our constituents not only for mission accomplishment, but for capacity-building, infrastructure acquisition and maintenance and fundraising. We need to be well aware that our revenue targets include money for administration and for the salaries and benefits we pay our staff as well. In fact, we will need to constantly and consistently interpret to our prospects and our donors and friends that the the nonprofit organization cannot do its work, and cannot achieve its mission or its aims in society, unless all aspects of the organization’s life are funded together.

It has become fashionable in recent years for some members of the public (particularly those with knowledge of business enterprise) to attempt to designate their giving and to hold nonprofit organizations hostage to their personal preferences. We read stories in the media and hear anecdotes about people who want to use “ratios” in judging nonprofits they help; we hear sometimes that people dislike giving to “administration” and “salaries” and want their money to “go directly to the poor and needy.” Many of the charity “watchdogs” whose websites attempt to help would-be donors get the biggest bang for their donated buck, encourage such comparisons and the use of ratios.

But we know that while such compartmentalization and use of ratios may be appropriate for certain business enterprises, these techniques do not work well at all in the voluntary sector. We know from experience that the rendering of services to those in the community who need what we provide involves time, careful management, increasing costs to deliver, as well as the required infrastructure and capacity building necessary to deliver services that truly make a different in the lives of those we serve.

As part of The nonprofit’s Fund Development Plan, therefore, we will resist these efforts by donors to separate out various components of our program so that they can fund just those pieces, and not all the rest of the organization’s work. We will make every effort, through all the media available to us, constantly to interpret to our friends, prospects and donors that the accomplishment of The nonprofit’s mission, and the nature and quality of service we provide to the community, depends on having a solid foundation of growing fundraising capability, expert management, qualified service providers and continual capacity-building and infrastructure enhancement; and that without these components the community’s needs cannot be well served. We will construct our financial reports with simplicity, candor and transparency, and will share this information broadly with our constituents and our public on a regular basis. In so doing, we will demonstrate the unity and integrity with which our nonprofit organization is managed. We will constantly ask donors to fund our total operation as a service in meeting the community’s need.

Tomorrow we'll work on selecting projects for donors to fund.

Starting a Charity? Fund Development Planning, Case for Support

The second main component of the Fund Development Plan is the organization's case for support. As we stated in the last post, the case for support is critical to fundraising success and derives its foundation directly from the strategic plan.

The case for support comprises the set of reasons why any donor (or all donors) should give the organization any financial support. In short, it makes the case for – or demonstrates why – contributions should be given.

As a result of extensive research by many fund development practitioners and reporters over the last 20 years, we know what donors describe as their top reasons for giving. Therefore, we will fashion our case for support in a way that allows us to speak directly to those reasons for giving money to charity.

1. People give to organizations that are well known in the community and have done extensive work that has been recognized over many years.

2. People give to organizations that produce clear, measurable results.

3. People give to organizations that help the community deal with certain kinds of crisis, such as earthquakes and tornadoes. They also give to organizations that assist members of the community to take advantage of certain kinds of opportunities, such as education and training, art and cultural events, or human services and public policy-related offerings.

4. People give to organizations that have laid careful, workable plans to either deal with a crisis or help a community take advantage of an opportunity.

5. People give to organizations that ask them for money.

6. People give to organizations that tell them how their money will be used, tell them what specifically their contributions will provide or “buy” that meets community needs, and tell them afterwards what their gifts have accomplished.

7. People give to organizations that carefully, thoughtfully and frequently thank them for their gifts and recognize that their contributions have helped alleviate crisis or offer increased opportunities to the community.

8. People give to organizations that are careful to include them in their communications networks, giving their donors the right information they need at appropriate times and in ways they can appreciate and use effectively.

Therefore, we will draft our case for support around these eight reasons why donors give, so that we are sure to meet the needs, wants and values of our donors. This will make our case for support stands out in the philanthropic marketplace and will help us attract more donors than otherwise would be the case.

More on the case for support in the next post.