Tag Archive for ‘Fundraising’ at Creating the Future!

Last week I received a note that became the post Joan is Going Nowhere. In that post, Joan described her frustration with her ED’s mandate that fundraising focus on the donor vs. the needs of the population her organization serves.

I am grateful for the great wisdom you all shared with Joan – being gone for much of the week, it felt great to have such good minds to counsel Joan in her work. Thank you all for making this a great community of support!

As I thought about the root of Joan’s concerns and considered the thoughtful responses you all provided to her, it became clear that what Joan was seeing as an “either/or” did not have to be so. I hope the following 6 Steps begin to show that there are ways to accomplish both – aligning the donor’s desires with more Community-Driven end results.

1) Get Beyond Needs
That means getting beyond the needs of your organization, the needs of the population you serve AND the needs of your donors. Instead, focus on what your organization aspires to accomplish on behalf of the community – the vision for what success would look like.

For example, if you work with a homeless population, what might community-wide success look like? If your organization were 100% successful, what would the community look like?

2) Be Positive
Make sure you are expressing that vision in a positive way, not a negative way. Rather than “ending homelessness” (to continue the example), perhaps your vision is a community where everyone has a home. Or perhaps it is bigger than that – a community where everyone’s basic needs are met. Whatever it is, make it positive.

3) Communicate with Donors about that Vision for Success
Ask THEM what they think is possible. Ask them about their own dreams for what your organization’s “community potential” might be. Take the blinders off, asking, “If money were no object, what might be possible?” See if you can engage them in what is possible for your community.

4) Understand Each Individual Donor
Every individual has a different sense of what is really possible, and you will therefore want to be sensitive to meet folks where they are. There are some who have been frustrated by the incremental approaches many organizations have taken to date, wishing they would work on more visionary systems-changing approaches. Others, however, shun talking about such things, believing it is not possible to create a future that is much different from our past – but still believing that more could be done. Regardless of the visionary extent of their answer, engage them in their own sense of what they DO think is possible.

5) Show Them the Dots – Then Connect Those Dots
Now you can begin to work with the donor to both create the dots and connect the dots. Work with them to envision what the path might be to creating the future that both they AND your organization want. Help them connect those dots, and help them find their place in supporting that work.

6) Make Friends, Not Just Money
The biggest mistake we make with donors is to fail to invite their full friendship. Once they have donated money, that is where the relationship typically stays. We don’t ask them for their connections, their ideas, their experience, their wisdom. We certainly don’t ask them to volunteer, as if asking them to volunteer might somehow offend them. And that is the worst mistake we can make – failing to turn donors into true friends.

I hope this helps bring those two issues together for you, Joan. Being “donor-centric” doesn’t have to mean pandering or saying whatever will get the gift. It can mean just the opposite – elevating the discussion to both the donor’s AND the organization’s highest dreams for what you can accomplish together – for the people you serve, and for your community.

And when that happens, the fun has just begun!

For +100 strategies for turning donors into friends, check out FriendRaising: Community Engagement Strategies for Boards Who Hate Fundraising but Love Making Friends.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to sustain an organization’s efforts?* Is it just money? Or is it something more fundamental?

I’m thinking about this because we spent time at the Diaper Bank last week – our “grandchild.” There is such an extraordinary energy surrounding the work they are doing, and that feels so good to see. Is that from some super fundraising effort? No – it is because they are engaging folks in what the Diaper Bank is at its core, and that is building all sorts of momentum. That engagement is sustaining them in every way imaginable!

Perhaps I’m also thinking about “sustainability” because my birthday is rolling around again later this summer. And that brings up all the images of last year’s birthday, when my friends swept through my house and did all the fix-up work I had neither time nor inclination to do.

It felt amazing – WAY more amazing than if I had found the time and dollars to pay professionals to just do the work.

And I’m realizing that when we were talking with the Diaper Bank’s ED and board, it was clear that was what THEY were feeling. They were so obviously energized, excited, joyful.

So what does it really take to sustain an organization’s efforts? And how can that work be energizing and joyful?

When I teach sustainability in workshops, I always ask the group, “What is Sustainability?” Here’s what they tell me, every time:

Ongoing cash flow
Not being dependent upon grants or any other single source of funds
An endowment
A large pool of donors
Diverse funding sources
etc.

Then I ask what makes us sustainable in our real lives. And suddenly the room comes alive.

Health
Family
Love
Faith
Beauty
Fun
Food
Friends
Chocolate

People are smiling, joking.

Now imagine those same feelings of energy and joy when you talk about sustainability. Is that how it feels in your board meetings, in your fund development meetings? If not, is that perhaps due to the reactions we feel when we look at the two lists above? While one of those lists makes us smile, the other brings up thoughts of ‘just more work to do.’

For me, then, the frustrating part about the standard approaches to sustainability is this: Not only are those standard approaches not joyful – they also have not worked.

How can I say they have not worked? Well, how many organizations do you know that are truly financially stable? With all the books and workshops out there on building sustainability, wouldn’t you suppose there would be a LOT more sustainable organizations by now?

Looking at the Diaper Bank, though, and the extent to which their work is so deeply engaged in the community – well it reminds me of why my friend Dan Duncan from Tucson’s United Way told me years ago, “You couldn’t kill the Diaper Bank now if you wanted to. The community wouldn’t let you.” **

And so this week, it is exciting to see that even as we founders are now almost 3 years retired from running our “baby,” that the Diaper Bank’s approach is still about Community Engagement. They have seen firsthand that when we engage the world in the mission – at whatever level the world wants to engage – the money (and everything else) just takes care of itself.

I am always proud to crow about our “grandchildren” – both the Tucson and Phoenix Diaper Banks. But in this particular case, in these tough economic times when everyone is worried about money, it was especially heartening last week to spend time with them, to see that their main desire is to just engage the community in everything they are doing.

So perhaps that should be this week’s assignment.
Look at your to-do list today, choose one item, and for that item, ask, “How could engaging the community in this item make the results more effective?”

I can’t wait to hear what you come up with!

* I have written pretty extensively about Sustainability at our website, including “Sustaining Your Mission for the Long Haul” and “Asset-Based Resource Development: How to Build and Sustain Strong, Resilient Programs.” Let me know what you think!

** Dan’s quote is from FriendRaising – you can read the whole Introduction to that book here.

And one last thing. While the title of this post is “Nonprofit Sustainability,” we cannot sustain our efforts if we continue to consider ourselves “nonprofits.” Sustaining “Community Benefit Organizations” just makes more sense, doesn’t it?