The Courage to Ask

Many nonprofits I know are sending out e-appeals this year along with their postal missives.

The question is – how much is too much, and how much is not enough?

There’s a fine line between making giving opportunities accessible; and being “in your face” in an aggressive way.

Many groups I know are erring on the cautious side. “We don’t want to annoy people,” they reason. But then they’re missing out on the implications of this remarkable phenomenon:

“22% of giving happens on the last two days of the year between the hours of 10am and 6pm.”

That startling fact comes from Allyson Kaplan’s December 14 compendium of year-end hints titled Best Practices for Year-End Fundraising.

There’s a stereotype of the overbearing huckster that often horrifies the kind of person who enters the nonprofit sector. “We’re here to change lives, not to be salesmen,” goes the thinking.

And, somehow, even for people who can get past that in 1-1 asks, appearing in someone’s in-box feels like having one’s hat out right on the steps to the subway – like you’re in their face…in the way of someone’s real business.

This is no time to be shy.

The world is a mess. Let’s not pussyfoot around that.

Unless we, as nonprofits, have as much impact as we can, it’s only going to continue to get worse.

And money is one part – an important part – of what enables us to get our work done.

So I say – within the bounds of taste (it doesn’t help if your donors-to-be turn away from your return address line, saying “Oh man, not again!”) – we need to be out there making our constituencies’ needs known.

It’s our moral imperative to get our job(s) done. And year-end fundraising is too important a component of that to let false decorum stand in our way.

Remembering Beth Straus

In my first nonprofit capacity-building job in New York, Beth Straus was our “angel.”

It was for the Cultural Council Foundation, in the late eighties. CCF was an arts incubator – we acted as a bank and fiscal sponsor for arts start-ups, and provided advice in all areas of arts management (that was my department).

Beth was the honorary board chair, but I remember our CEO explaining that she was really his hands-on boss. She opened doors for him, constantly making introductions for CCF and explaining to her peers that New York City was the arts capital of the world and if we didn’t support our young artists, where would we be?

And if we had a cash flow crunch and had trouble making payroll, Beth would fill the gap, with loans that turned into gifts at year’s end.

Those days are long gone.

There’s a certain public citizen/philanthropist model of commitment to New York City’s diversity, coupled with a hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves approach – someone with time and financial wherewithal – that today’s board members are hard-pressed to meet.

People today are working, are pressed for time, and don’t have the sense that their financial assets are secure (here today, gone tomorrow?). Their hearts are in the right place but their capacity to help a nonprofit as Beth Straus did, just isn’t there.

CCF ultimately shut down, the victim of changing economic conditions for the arts – and the loss of patrons like Beth and her peers. But I learned a lot from her – from afar – about the sense of responsibility, and partnership with the CEO, that a stellar board leader has.

Beth Straus died last week, at the age of 94. She made a difference.

Taking Baby Steps

I was sitting with an organization last week that was attempting to look systematically – for the first time – at what constituencies they needed on their board.

They got a little overwhelmed – there were so many important groups and so few of them were already represented in their board make-up! Neighborhood merchants, local manufacturers, real estate developers, academics – the list went on and on.

I could see people’s faces dropping as they weighed the difference between who was currently at their table, and the vibrant body that their board could become.

Time to prioritize.

Change happens one step at a time. Board growth often happens organically, as like recruits like. Once an organization takes a long hard look at a functions-oriented board profile (as in: who can do what and who can access whom), it often seems like a steep mountain to climb to get from here to there.

And the answer is: take baby steps.

Pick two constituencies or bodies of expertise (i.e. finance, or marketing/communications), and create profiles. Like a Chief Operating Officer of a small manufacturing company (giving you budgeting, HR and general management expertise along with local business contacts). Or a Director of New Media for a chain store (giving you social media, communications, and probably a few corporate connections). You get the drift – pick some high-priority logical combinations, then start going out to lunch with people who can lead you to people who can lead you to the right prospects.

One step at a time.

Year-End: Intention Into Action

It’s year-end time, for all good nonprofits…

Just about every group I know (including Cause Effective) is readying its year-end appeal. Many letters are already in the mail, sent off on a wing and a prayer…

But is that the end?

Better not be.

Last year at this time, it felt like the economy was still sinking (and indeed it still was). But this year the struggle is time. Attention. Intention vs. action.

How can we get people to pay attention long enough to write that check or click that link?

One way is to be in their face (nicely, of course). Groups that never emailed are emailing. Groups that never phoned are phoning. Or both.

What’s the key to fundraising success?

Follow-Up, Follow-Up, Follow-Up.

The idea is that letters hit. They get saved. They get lost. They get covered in a pile of good intentions, climbing out in February when it seems too late to act.

So we want to provide a nudge, a push over the cliff to commitment, to folks who were thinking about it anyways. That’s what follow-up phone calls are all about, and those ubiquitous e-appeals. It’s not that that many people are convinced to give by an email alone; they’re reminded of their intention to give (arrived at previously), at a moment when they’re a mouse click away from action.

People are busy. There’s a lot going on in the world at large that bares watching, let alone what’s happening with their families, their friends and their jobs.

People want to change the world, feed children, save neighborhoods, prevent elder abuse. But there’s a lot of dreck, a lot of forest, in the way.

We have to help make it easy for them to be the best person they can be.

Follow-Up, Follow-Up, Follow-Up.

The Balanced Perspective

When I took my son to the eye doctor last week, he came home with an assignment. Too much close work, too many screens…he’s supposed to balance that with a view out to the horizon every 20 minutes or so, to reset his perspective.

Well that’s certainly a life lesson.

For those of us involved in fundraising, the pressure to produce, especially at year-end appeal time, is sometimes so unrelenting that the only possible response appears to be putting our heads down and soldiering grimly on – no looking up till New Year’s is over.

Last year at this time the modus operandi was simply duck and cover. Who knew how donors would respond, so just get the letter out there and hope for the best.

This year, it’s not so scattershot. But, in a way, it’s more pressured, since if people are indeed giving again (though some times in smaller amounts), then we’d better find the right pitch, the right vehicle, the right asker…it’s possible, and we’d better get it right – our organizations’ futures depend on it.

Talk about pressure!

So, back to the idea of picking our heads up for perspective…at the time of year it seems most out of reach.

One of the most important functions of a board of directors, I believe, is to provide space (and a nudge) for the organization to focus on the big picture. This is as true in fundraising as in program development or marketing/visibility. But board members can get just as stuck as staff in the day-to-day fundraising pressures, especially since fundraising is one of the areas in which board members are expected to be actual implementers, as well as overseers.

For example, how many times have you seen board members completely woven in to the details of event planning – what the menu is, what the invitations look like – to the point that they can’t step back and make sure that the event is on target to meet powerful institutional goals, like cultivating new askers or reconnecting with alumni?

Or, especially relevant for this time of year, how often do board fundraising cheerleaders get caught up in nagging board members to submit a specified number of names (“Everyone needs to give in 20 names for the annual appeal”), without strategizing about whose connections would be more effectively served by setting up in-person meetings, or in some other way channeling board affiliations towards the agency?

It’s so important for a nonprofit to balance long-term and short-term concerns, to be able to respond to its environment and also to be focused on shaping a pathway out from its current conditions. And above all – in resource development as well as program direction – it is the board’s charge to make sure this is so.

The Networked Fundraiser

Just finished The Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine – started reading it a couple of months ago, put it down but kept thinking about it, then picked it up to finish it this weekend.

The book’s subtitle is: “Connecting with social media to drive change.” But I’ve spent the past months thinking about how Kanter and Fine’s premise – the transparency and engagement of a networked nonprofit vs. a stand-alone organization – is related to Cause Effective’s entire approach to fundraising, not just with social media.

Here’s The Networked Nonprofit:

Networked Nonprofits are simple and transparent organizations. They are easy for outsiders to get in and insiders to get out.

Networked Nonprofits…engage in conversations with people beyond their walls — lots of conversations — to build relationships that spread their work through the network. [They] incorporate relationship building as a core responsibility of all staffers….

Sound like Cause Effective’s fundraising methodology?

A fundamental principle of our work is to open the organization up – to broaden the core of people who are invested in its survival. It’s that pyramid – the more people you have raising money for you at the bottom, the higher the total dollars raised. That old core question: it’s not “Who can I ask for money?” but “Who can I get to ask for me?”

Now I understand that the premise of The Networked Nonprofit is not just “getting people to ask for us” – that the very dialectic of “them” and “us” is in play.

But the subversive fact is, it’s at play as soon as you open up responsibility for the organization’s fundraising outreach – the more diversified the asker base, the more dependent on a multitude of actors an organization is.

In fact, one of the characteristics we look for when we’re assessing an organization’s ability to build fundraising-savvy is how porous it is – how much it interacts with different vested bodies like volunteers, constituents, donors, board. The more porous, the more successful it will be at building a diversified funding portfolio.

So – we’ve been working on building networked nonprofits after all. Who knew? But there’s one premise of Kanter and Fine’s that I take issue with:

“Working this way is only possible because of the advent of social media.”

I believe that working this way is an essential component of any and all community organizing – building social movements committed to broad-based social justice, equity, and compassion.

But, granted, working this way is EASIER since and with the advent of social media.

When Volunteers Roll Up Their Sleeves…

And are also board members – trouble lurks.

That seems counter-intuitive, right?

After all, what we want most of all is board members who deliver, who get really involved, who put their money where their mouth is (at least in terms of bringing home the bacon…)

What could be wrong with that?

Nothing – as long as a far-reaching, strategically-based vision is still driving the whole.

And that’s hard to maintain.

Theoretically, board members are supposed to hold the long-term vision, and help the day-to-day management drive towards this overarching goal(s). That’s one of the primary points of a board – to provide a perspective that’s not locked in the day to day interactions of the agency.

But when board members get involved at that level, it’s very hard, almost impossible, to maintain this “lofty” perspective. They get committed to making sure the event comes off, the meeting gets set up, the mailing gets out.

And the board’s key role of questioning – Is this the most effective strategy? Is this the right event? Should we be headed in this direction? – fades into the background. If it’s still around at all.

I’m not saying that we should turn away our board members offering to help – far from it.

I am saying that we need to make sure that board meetings don’t devolve into task lists and tactics – that they still have high-level discussions making sure that we’re in the right business and we’re getting results. Because if these conversations don’t happen at a board level, with folks who care deeply and are committed to making it happen – where will they happen?

It’s a good kind of trouble … a trouble worth negotiating.

What Does It Take To Be A Team?

A fundraising team, that is.

How do you move from a board made up of disparate individuals – different social circles, different capacity, different reach – to a group that can work together towards a common goal?

And to wit: a common fundraising goal?

I was ruminating on this the other day when I went to another of this season’s fundraising events, and I was comped. Well, that often happens, because some of the nonprofits we work with like to have us around, and their events aren’t priced for those of us working in the nonprofit sector. So at the last minute, as is often the case, I get asked to come sit at a sponsor’s table who has extra seats. The nonprofit knows I will be a good representative, and I want to be supportive, and there you have it.

But I knew that some of the group’s board members were also comped – or given a separate, off-line, price of admission. And that got me thinking about team-work.

Is a fundraising team primarily composed of individuals who can give and ask at a “stretch” ticket level? Or is the aspiration to have every board member pitching in on fundraising – as each as they can?

And if it’s the later, how do you get around disparities – the $250 ticket-price event that 5 out of 12 board members can sell tickets to; 5 others can scrape up the cash to buy one ticket themselves; and 2 can’t even hope to come close? How do you get that group to function as a team, with such different relationships to that event?

I think – no I know – you can, and the answer lies in creating a structure, and an ethos, where each board member knows their job, does their job, and feels responsible for their job on the board. And where all members are on a train moving in the same direction, even if some are in the lead, some in the caboose, and some standing to the side watching the oncoming traffic so they can direct the train to switch tracks without crashing off the rails.

An example: that $250-a-head cocktail party. One board member created the e-vite and other promotional materials. Another obtained an in kind wine donation, and a third made follow-up calls to Advisory Council members to remind them to come (and to pay). Two other board members hit the streets to sell tickets to their friends, and the board member that was hosting the event cleared out her space, got her husband on board, and reserved a babysitter so her kids would be out-of-sight, out-of-mind on the night of.

Not all board members had a cadre of potential $250 donors to whom they could pitch the event, but all understood that that was the right direction for the organization to be heading in, and all pitched in to make this initial foray a success.

On the night of, since the event wasn’t sold out and the per-person additional cost was negligible, all board members were asked to come, and those who couldn’t afford full-price admission were asked to make a gift at a level they could manage. Then, all board members were given a “cheat sheet” annotating expected attendees so that the most important future major donor prospects were approached by several people over the course of the evening.

Team work. Not all are alike, but all put in equally to stoke the engine forward.

Nonprofit Boardinghouse Reach

I ran into a nonprofit CEO today who told me something I don’t hear often: “We have as much money as it takes to do our program. We don’t have to fundraise.”

Why did that surprise me?

It wasn’t the economy, or the difficulty of going back to the well yet another time.

In fact, it wasn’t anything she was expressing about the hard slog of fundraising that startled me.

It was the fact that, for most nonprofit visionaries I know, their reach always exceeds their grasp.

Way back when, there was something called “Boardinghouse Reach.” As my uncle, who grew up in a large family that took in boarders during the Depression, explains it, it describes the way that boarders could reach all the way across the table, over other people and their plates, to get to the salt or the bowl of potatoes or the extra piece of pie. It means taking care of one’s own needs, reaching beyond right what is right in front of you, to grab what you want from afar.

It’s a funny term – it’s pejorative, implying a lack of manners; yet it’s also admiring, as in someone who knows what they want and goes for it.

There’s something of that in every nonprofit visionary.

They imagine what’s not there…they see a need to be filled…and their reach always exceeds their grasp.

Their vision precedes their funding and – almost always – exceeds it.

Which is what makes nonprofit visionaries so exciting to follow and so easy to fundraise for – and so important to fundraise around. Because there’s always a new need to fill or a new program to launch…and those take money. More than is easily at hand.

In essence, it takes that kind of audacious nonprofit vision to move people to engage in fundraising – an activity that’s often uncomfortable and awkward, at least at the beginning.

What gets people over the hump?

It’s boardinghouse reach – and the scramble to raise the resources to keep up with it.

You Get What You Measure

How often have we heard that?

So often, unfortunately, that something that profound has become, in fact, a bit trite.

But this maxim actually takes us to a deeper place in fundraising.

Because in this day and age, if we only measure dollar results – and only measure those after a fundraising campaign is over – we’re missing the boat…and the chance to have a deeper, richer, and (yes I’m going to say it) more robust funding base.

I was thinking about this lately at the Alliance for Nonprofit Management conference I just attended. On the one hand, Peter York of TCC was talking about after-the-fact evaluation for philanthropic purposes (did we achieve what we thought we were going to achieve, what we promised the funder we’d achieve?) – versus evaluation for strategic learning purposes (how deeply can we understand cause-and-effect, and thereby understand and shape the meaning of our work?). Okay, got that.

But then the next day there was a panel in which the importance of fundraising as capacity-building was roundly dissed. Was I steaming? Of course. But the deeper issue is, Cause Effective’s understanding of fundraising as fundamental community-building is not the universal paradigm, and it’s because of what is measured, reported on as gains, and generally defined as fundraising success.

The real institutional gains of building a robust funding base, to my mind, are an organization with a wide-ranging community of stake-holders who not only have advisorial programmatic input but are profoundly committed to its survival. Who are constantly out there bringing in resources – people – who will bring in ideas, connections, in-kind support, and, of course, dollars.

And access to more of the same through their networks.

You can see how once a nonprofit learns how to encourage (and support) such group resource-sharing, that it becomes a process which feeds on itself to become exponentially more rewarding over time. Dollars…follow commitment…follows antennae tuned towards opportunity.

This kind of a paradigm shift – from thinking of fundraising as dollars-focused vs. as an integral indicator and product of community commitment – is what all Cause Effective training drives toward. But we – the nonprofit community at large, and Cause Effective in particular – don’t do a good job of measuring and publicizing the full spectrum of results.

Sure, internally at Cause Effective we have a complex measurement tool that looks at factors such as diversity of askers, range of gifts, engagement in donor cultivation, etc. (as well as, of course, how much money was raised); and I like to think that once we’ve finished a consultancy, our clients understand these multiple facets of fundraising as well.

But to the nonprofit world at large, and the part of the world that is concerned with capacity-building, fundraising is still about the numbers on the check.

How can we change this paradigm?

Should we even bother? Our clients know what it’s about, and in fact, any nonprofit with a robust and multiplying fundraising program knows it as well.

Does it matter that the dominant view of fundraising as capacity-building is overly-simplistic, focused on the superficial byproduct (dollars – absolutely important but only obtained as the result of relationship-building, which is the real skill)…versus the deeper gain?

And if it does, what can we do about it?

What Makes Change Stick?

What’s the one most powerful indicator of an agency’s ability to make lasting change in its development returns?

I have a surprising answer to that.

You’d think it was the board, or a wealthy founder, or a super-rich patron who takes the agency under his/her wing – but I don’t think those are the factors that lead to real, sustained, institutional fundraising change.

It’s the support and attention of the executive director.

Why do I say that?

Because board members are volunteers.

And at the end of the day, they go home, and they leave it behind. I say that as a board member myself – I have to triage my life, and some times I just don’t have the room to take my work, my kids, and my board responsibilities home and into the shower (our metaphorical board member “ownership” test – are you thinking about it in the shower?). Just not enough mental space…or capacity for stress from so many directions.

Which means… that as the nonprofit executive, the buck stops here. It’s up to me as an executive director to keep the balls in the air, the board members motivated and appreciated, the volunteers excited, etc. Doesn’t mean I have to do everything, but yes, I am responsible for making sure that everything of that nature does get done.

In fundraising, this doesn’t mean that the executive director brings all the assets to the table – but that his/her support, interest, and attention is what gets board members (and staff) to perform. And what gets fundraising prioritized, again and again, when program and financial imperatives threaten to take all the air out of the room.

But how do I say that?

As an executive director myself – ruefully.

I wish it was true that my board would take off by itself – that all the boards we work with would “see the light” that fundraising = friendraising and just start to fly all on their own – but the fact is, it all comes down to us.

There is, after all, the aura of leadership. The fact that people prioritize what I prioritize. That people do, actually, want to please the executive director (though I know some times it doesn’t feel that way!)

What can you pay attention to? And how far do new initiatives travel without the sustained drive of the chief daily leader…?

Before the Ball Begins: Asking the Big Questions Before the Contract is Signed

We’ve been doing a lot of special events “pre-counseling” these days – helping groups figure out if they should do their annual event, what they could get out of it, and what, exactly, would make the effort worth it in these times.

In fact, we’ve been having these conversations so often, we created a list of 10 questions every group should ask as part of this assessment process.

What I want to talk about here is getting to that dialogue – having the guts to back away from the “peach vs. plum-colored tablecloths” discussions, or even from the fascination of “let’s-have–chicken-this-year-because-it’s-cheaper-than-salmon.”

Events bring out the detail-oriented dog-with-a-bone in each of us.  In fact, often the most valuable board or committee member on event duty is someone who relishes wrestling with the details, creating the total picture, tracking all the micro-decisions that add up to a really fabulous event.

And although that kind of person will sigh at the inception of yet another event, they truly love getting down in the muck and making it happen.  So even in these times, they’re ready to work twice as hard to pull your event off.

But sometimes, and especially in these times, that kind of “put-your-head-down-and-get-to-work” stance isn’t what’s called for.

With events, it’s all too easy to lose your shirt if you don’t get it right.  And that “it” is not just the hula hoop versus karaoke machine details of event production – it’s the match of audience, activity, and goals. 

That’s the conversation that has to happen this year.

Every year – good to have.

This year – essential.

What We’ve Got Here…

I was reminded of one of the most famous cinematic lines the other day (voted #11 of the top 100 of all time):

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate…”

Both times it appears in the movie Cool Hand Luke, it’s spoken in irony, reflecting on one-way communication that’s brutally unresponsive. The line is steeped in loss of dignity…in demotion of social status…in failure.

It mocks the niceties of polite discourse, presuming that some human beings aren’t worth the time of day.

So what brought on this reflection?

I was thinking about how we communicate with donors – both how important that is, and how it can settle into a routine that’s ultimately only one-way.

We tell them what we’ve done, in nice, graphically-appealing mocked-up newsletters.

We communicate our impact.

And then we check that off the fundraising calendar and move on.

But what about listening?

What about communication as understanding what your donors have to bring to the table – their insights, their passions, their points of view?

It’s tricky – it can get into some of the same territorial issues as board-staff communication (I’m the program expert and here they are giving me advice on my field) – but if we don’t approach donors from the standpoint of “We’re in this together to make a better world,” they certainly won’t take the lead in putting us on the same side of the table.

.

What is...Rich?

I was playing Apples to Apples at an end-of-summer family barbecue last night. That’s the party-game-in-a-box that involves matching descriptive words such as “cuddly” with a random choice of nouns such as “frogs” or “a dark alley” or “my bathroom.”

One person serves as the judge of what is the most appropriate – or the worst but most humorous – match. (The judge position rotates with each turn.)

Well about an hour and a couple of glasses of wine into the game, on my turn as a judge I drew the word “rich.” Hmm – not something, with a lifelong career in the nonprofit sector, that I have a lot of familiarity with.

But lo and behold, there was a life-lesson there.

Along with cards for “Cleopatra” and “Las Vegas” – there was a dead ringer.

My 16-year-old son, who knows me best, thought to himself: “This is the worst card, but I know my mom is going to pick it.”

And sure enough, as soon as it went down, the woman next to me, who works in the nonprofit sector, winced.

So what was the horrific card he threw down?

“Fundraising.”
….

Well did I pick it?

With gusto (although I have to admit that “Las Vegas” did give me pause)…and with affection.

For the way that fundraising makes the world a richer, brighter, better place.

The Missing $1,000

We came across two separate cases of missing money last week.

Actually, it wasn’t really missing money – it was a $1,000 donor that’d been overlooked.

Even worse.

In both cases, a harried end-of-year campaign with too few resources allocated to it (and who didn’t have too-few-resources allocated to development in the past year?)…a charismatic executive director who inspired confidence in potential contributors…and a turnover in development staff – all combined to create a scenario in which money came in but records were not kept as carefully as they ought to have been.

Ergo, a $1,000 donation that went unheralded.

And not just a donation that remained unseen, but a donor – who could potentially repeat their gift in years to come, possibly increase the amount, and maybe even bring in others at that level.

Oops.

In both cases, a new development director was meeting with Cause Effective to look over the organization’s individual donor base and cull out who might be asked to upgrade or to become an asker (a conversation we’ve been having often these days, with nonprofits re-assessing their private donor base with an eye toward growth).

But while we can usually find a number of leads through these brainstorming sessions, especially when board members are included in the conversation – we don’t usually find as dramatic a case of missing money as we did in these two cases.

The answer, in both instances, was to have the executive director and/or a board member give the forgotten donor a call, and, with a rueful tone, apologize and give a heartfelt thanks along with an update of what their contribution had made possible.

WITHOUT another ask – yet.

There’s some fence-mending to be done before they’ll be properly ready for the next ask...but better a fence to be mended than none at all!

Thinking Long Term

It’s August. Time slows down, people go out of town, and those of us left around may actually have time on our hands.

So that’s the time to think big picture, figure out what’s in the way, and develop a skeleton plan to move forward through those shoals.

In that vein, we’ve been talking about succession with a couple of groups these days – board chairs planning a year or two ahead, executive directors looking at retirement (or second careers), development directors thinking about how to leave the nest in good shape to take on the next challenge. All of these require lifting your head up beyond the day-to-day to think about how to arrange the bricks you’re going to leave behind, so that the next generation can proceed from a strong foundation to build the next castle.

Or something to that effect.

Sometimes board-building is best done by starting in the present and building out. But when you’re looking at leadership succession, sometimes you have to look outside, at the likely institutional challenges 5+ years down the road, and relationship-build your way to the board leadership that will best get you there. We see a lot of groups that lament that they just don’t see the next generation of board leaders on the current board. There are two possibilities when that’s the refrain:

1. It’s actually there, but the current leadership is so charismatic that potential new leaders don’t quite sense the space to assert themselves in. In that case the answer is to give a potential leader a stand-alone assignment, get out of the way, and see how they do.
2. It’s not there, in which case new board members may have to be recruited who are potential board leaders – and several of them – so if one or two turn out to be not suited for the job you’re not back at level zero again in another year.

Likewise, if the top staff leadership is thinking about leaving at some point in the next couple of years, the board’s job is to make sure it’s a strong enough body – with the right skills, talents, energy and equanimity – to take on the challenge of searching for, replacing, and breaking in a new person in that all-important position.
In any case, to come back to the theme we started with – August is a time to think, big-picture, about where the leadership of your organization is at, is going, and is positioned. And to make a plan to move all of those to the next level.

Board Service – The Importance of Humor

In these stressful days for nonprofits, it may seem odd to have the words board service and humor in close proximity.  But I was reminded of the importance of levity in board bonding at a retreat I facilitated last weekend.

The group worked hard all day, then went out for an early meal together.  I could see there was a method to how the board chair indicated seating around the table.  And then I watched a long-standing board member unwind and work his wit on one of the newest board members.

As I saw the newer board member throw back his head and laugh, I realized I’d been worried about the ability of the board culture, in a time when the board was facing tough decisions about cutting programs, to absorb this new recruit.  I was concerned that he wouldn’t stick it out – that times were too tough, it wasn’t fun.

Fun – now there’s a novel concept for nonprofit board service….

Humor is a great way for people to bridge the gap between their personal and professional selves; between the matters at hand and their life-experiences perspective; and to simply swallow the bitter medicine that is part of board service nowadays.

"If you’re going to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you."

- (variously attributed to George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and others)

We may not be able to change the grim environment we’re forced to spend board meetings responding to – but the quality of the company we keep can make all the difference in how grim the process is of meeting today’s board challenges.

Navigating New Terrain

New York City is gradually recovering from a deep but surprisingly short recession that ended in November, said the Federal Reserve Bank last week.

Hmmm…

So what does this mean for nonprofits?

We’ve said before that we’re seeing money start to move – and that fundraising is psychological. That feeling that you have the capacity to give…that you can take care of more than your family’s basic needs…is based on a gestalt, a shared communal mood, more than on a simple number in a bank statement.

OK, so we’re seeing money start to move – but where is it going?

The answer, in one sentence:

To nonprofits which have strengthened their ties to their communities so that they’re ready to ask those overlapping circles of (potential) supporters to step up to the plate.

Well that sounds simple (nay, simplistic), but how does that apply to your organization?

To help nonprofits answer that very question, we’ve developed Cause Effective’s new Fundraising Tune-Up Consultation. Thanks to a generous grant from the New York Community Trust, we are able to offer low-cost fundraising consultations to a limited number of nonprofits facing out-of-the-ordinary fundraising challenges due to the economic downturn.

In a single, practical session at Cause Effective’s offices, Cause Effective will serve as your personal thought partner to assess your organization’s funding environment during a time of rapid economic change, review planned fundraising activities, and brainstorm new ways to get back in the action after two years of unpredictable results. Eligible organizations will receive this consultation, normally valued at $600, for the nominal fee of $50; and longer term support at discounted rates may also be available.

If this sounds like it might be helpful to you, take a look at this flyer and email Susan@CauseEffective.org to discuss your organization’s circumstances, or apply directly at http://www.causeeffective.org/consultingapp.htm.

Come on in – the water’s getting warmer…

The Choices You Make

We were sitting with a board chair yesterday who was telling us about a summer fundraising picnic his group was sponsoring – everything was donated except for a few incidental costs, resulting in a $50 admission price which would net out at $45 per person to help the organization’s bottom line.

At a 200-person projected capacity, that was starting to add up to some real dough.

The choice?

The organization was planning to serve beer and burgers, but part of its constituency (including a few of its board members) consists of Muslims who don’t drink – or eat non-Halal meat.

The crux of the choice? The beer (and the burgers) had been offered as a donation, thereby increasing the net…and wasn’t that the board’s primary job? To raise money?

But what about the message that gave – that the Muslim community wasn’t welcome?

(Because while there would be some Halal-meat off to the side, the message surely was that the Muslim families were a secondary component, not the main audience, for this event.)

What was most important in the long run?

And – could the organization afford to make a long-term choice with less short-term monetary return? In this day and age?

Or turning that question around – could the organization afford to make a short-term decision that would work against its long term future?

Online Fundraising: The Hype And The Results

A report titled Reality Check: How Grassroots Environmental Organizations Are (or Are Not) Raising Money Online just came across my desk.

Fundraising trainer Andy Robinson, working for the Institute for Conservation Leadership, interviewed grassroots environmental leaders about how they were using online fundraising – separating out the hype from the results. The lessons are good to note for all of us without the reach of the large national nonprofits.

A clear winner: Time-bound email campaigns built around a specific theme or program goal, with a challenge to be met by the campaign deadline and lots of emails reminding recipients to come on board – as many as one message per day. Special note: make sure the campaign theme has maximal relevance to your recipients.

Team-based fundraising with a personal fundraising page: very effective way for individuals to support a project and reach out virally to their networks and beyond. There are various software programs that support this specifically although some fundraising database programs can also provide this aspect.

Competing in online contests: can be successful but (as many of us found in the Chase Online Challenge) focusing on recruiting FaceBook “friends” to vote for our organization often takes away time from building off-line, more personal relationships.

Which brings us to Integrated Campaigns (using email and social networking tools to increase offline (and online) giving) – the real value of this material. Using e-communication as a touch along with snail mail, phone, and in-person contact: fundraising = relationship-building, and on-line is yet another piece in the arsenal.

The report is free to download on the Institute for Conservation Leadership’s website once you register on the site. Go take a look (and then reach out to touch a supporter – personally – today)!

What Summer’s Good For

Summer’s a terrible time for fundraising.

Heard that one before?

I hear it every year, from clients, board members, donors…it’s as if everyone gives up and heads for the beach – or wishes they had.

But unfortunately, the need to pay the rent, electricity, salaries, benefits – doesn’t slow down.

So what’s myth and what’s reality about summer fundraising?

Myth: In the summer, everyone is focused on family, friends and fun, so no one has time to pay attention to the fundraising drive of their local nonprofit.

Reality: You just have to go where the people are. Try a family picnic, or a pool party, or some other activity that acknowledges that summer’s here and the kids are hanging around. Alternatively, you may have a donor base whose children are away at summer camp – leaving them footloose and fancy free in the evening. What about a mint julep party on a sultry summer evening? How to find out? Decide who you most want to reach…and ask them.

Myth: Donors are away during the summer. All summer. It’s impossible to engage them between June and September.

Reality: They may be away, but that doesn’t mean they’re not capable of wanting to make a difference in the world. Try an email or web-based campaign – many people use their summer vacations to catch up on non-work-related interests. At the very least, you’ll remind them of all the good work still going on that they helped make possible.

Myth: You can’t get volunteers to put in time over the summer – if you haven’t organized your team by mid-June, you can just forget about it till September.

Reality: It is just about impossible to get a group of volunteers (or board members) together for an in-person meeting in the heart of summer. I just tried to schedule an in-person meeting of my board’s fundraising committee, and once we finished hop-scotching through everyone’s summer vacation, we landed on September 1st! But it’s not impossible to schedule conference calls to keep an early-fall campaign on track.

And it is possible to meet with people one-on-one – to update them on your agency’s work, to ask for a leadership commitment for a fall campaign, to help them (and you) figure out how they’re going to help you over the next year.

So use the summer to think, to plan, and to line up the dominoes one by one.

And to relax – it’s gonna be a busy fall, so catch up on your R & R, now.

End Game Thinking

The task of a new board chair is to think about their legacy – and then to work backwards...

We’ve been doing a lot of board-chair-coaching recently. My personal opinion is that there’s been a lot of board leadership transitions going on nowadays – most groups have had a really tough year, and most board members have hung in there, but now it’s time for new blood.

We see that happening all over New York City, and maybe it’s even happening all over the country. But in any case, we’re watching a lot of younger board members step up, knowing that this is their time to take the reins.

So what’s the first item on their agenda? Not cleaning house, because a lot of the boards we’ve been counseling, while not decimated, are definitely down to a “last man standing” kind of composition.

To wit: Organizations have had to make hard, hard decisions this past year, and board members who were used to simply going along applauding a dynamic executive director, had to stand up and wrestle their way through some pretty difficult decisions. They used some muscles they hadn’t used before, and the dead wood has definitely left the house as a result. (Not to mention the strain on people’s personal and professional lives that’s contributed to board member exodus).

SO – our conversations with new chairs tend to focus more on “who can we get on” than “who can we get off.”

But I’m going to suggest another place to start.

And that’s in 2013.

Where do you want your board to be, in 2013?

Take a moment, to play out that vision. What kind of communities are represented?... What kind of discussions are taking place?...What kind of actions are happening before, during and after board meetings? …What kind of structures are in place to enhance board member motivation and accountability?

If you can picture your legacy, you can develop a route to get there.

The final moment is often a start.

Who’s Really Leading?

I’m on a board, and I staff a board, in two organizations that really need a powerful board-staff bond to surge forward in fundraising (and who doesn’t?). And of course Cause Effective counsels many a board with those needs.

But I want to talk from a personal perspective here, as a board member and as a staff partner to the board, about the struggle to get the right balance to move the fundraising portfolio aggressively forward.

Both of these positions, interestingly enough, leave me wishing the staff could be more active. As a board member, I keep asking staff to tell me what to do. If they give me a specific fundraising task, I can respond – or I can beg off if I don’t feel capable that particular week – but I’ve got something to add to my to-do list and I know exactly what it is. And I’ll get to it (eventually).

If staff is looking to me to lead (and they frequently are, since fundraising’s my profession) – I often let the “loudest whelp of pain” guide my action choices. It’s not quite as innocuous as a squeaky wheel – it’s more like waves of: Am I prepared for my meeting tomorrow?...Did I remember to call the landlord back?...What should I write my next blog about?...Does my kid need a math tutor?... that pass through my brain daily – and they’re all important, and all need tending. (BTW, on Father’s Day the New York Times had an article on how now fathers had the privilege of being as stressed as we working moms have been all along.)

But I digress in order to get into something real – that in board-staff partnerships, board members have a job (usually), family (often), and sometimes even other volunteer obligations, that compete for mental space. As a board member, I really appreciate it when a staff member leads me down the garden path of what I need to do, in fundraising as well as in other areas. And I’m a heck of a lot more likely to actually do it.

Now as a staff member, it might seem surprising that I’m yearning to put more staff time into steering the board-staff relationship. Why not do just that, in that case?

Well, for some of the same reasons – I’m wearing a million hats, and this month we need to prepare for the auditor…and the staff reviews are pending…and I promised a particular funder I’d get back to him by mid-June…and whoops! it’s almost late-June!

And so it goes, and so I don’t get to pull out of my board members all they have to give because they’re human too, just like me.

But the first step is to acknowledge, and to own, the fact that as the executive director, it does all rest with me.

Sure it’s a partnership – they can reach so much farther than I can go – but realistically, I’m the one living and breathing it 24-hours a day. So I’ve just reorganized my staff to better reflect that reality, giving me more development backup so that I can more proactively support the board, and others who’ve told me “Let me know how I can help.”

While we’re a nonprofit with a strong board-staff partnership, if the driver doesn’t drive – well we all know what happens to a car that isn’t steered well on a six-lane winding highway…

It goes off the cliff.

Let this not happen to you!

The Research Swamp

I was at a meeting yesterday with some board members who’d committed to getting started in fundraising. They wanted to hire Cause Effective to help them develop a fundraising plan and coach them through their first steps. And then the big “R” question came up – will you do research for us?

Well sure we’ll do research – but that’s so far down the line at this point, that the question itself is a red herring…an avoidance mechanism. It’s like in baseball when someone breaks out to steal second in order to hide the fact that someone’s about to try to steal home. (You can tell it’s far along in the Little League season). It takes your eyes off the prize.

The major problem in community-based fundraising is not lack of prospects, or lack of knowledge about a prospect’s financial resources – it’s making the wrong choices about how to spend one’s time (staff time, board time, volunteer/advocate time) given the potential wealth of assets just one or two steps away.

In other words, you know what you need to know to start cultivating someone – and you’ll figure out what the right-sized gift is to ask for – when you feel out their enthusiasm for your cause and the extent to which you can raise up their sense of “ownership” over a particular project.

It’s not about the cash – it’s about the love. And ya can’t look up love.

But you can build it – with the prospect’s willing cooperation.

So better to spend time developing a relationship, then finding out the 411 on every last one of their assets.

Now of course I’m oversimplifying here and we should use everything at our disposal to understand where a prospect’s coming from, so we can appropriately match what our agency has to offer with what best meets their “leap-over-tall-buildings-for” test…

But, really, sitting behind a computer and doing research is a cipher. It’s the hand-to-hand combat that matters.

She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain…

We were facilitating an anniversary planning meeting the other day for an organization that was trying to think about what its 25th anniversary meant to them.

One of their oldest board members wistfully recollected the early days when the board was intimately concerned with producing the organization’s programming. “We were really involved then – now it’s all money and budgets and planning. But back then, we met everyone who came in here…we had our fingers on the pulse.”

What do you do when you have a venerable and valued board member who’s attached to the old days? To the old ways of being a hands-on board member? Someone who’s historically important and a moral bellweather – and who still brings in resources even though they’re getting more and more disenchanted with the new meaning of being a board member?

How do you move them along, and keep them with you at the same time?

The answer is exactly what we were doing – having a group conversation about what matters most to the organization – to reassure them that board service is not just budgets and numbers crunching, but is in fact determining the future of the institution.

By involving them in thinking and in re-attaching to why they’re really here.

By the end of our meeting, this board member was fully engaged in the weighty question of who the organization’s changing constituency was, how the old and new were mixing together, and how the notion of “engagement” could be used as an institution-wide theme to open up conversations with the organization’s audiences, staff, donors, and even board.

Just as we were doing in this planning meeting.

Sometimes, to get a board member away from the day-to-day, or from the rose-colored glasses view of when day-to-day programming was the board’s primary concern, what’s really needed is to open up the conversation. To make it meaty, and to make it matter.

Not that there’s no numbers crunching at the board level – but that that alone is not enough.

The Paralyzed By Materials Paradox

How beautiful are my materials…!

I’ve seen a couple of boards lately that are paralyzed by the materials paradox – they can’t get started going out and asking for money because their materials aren’t ready, and they’re running out of money and volunteer enthusiasm because they’re not going out and asking for money.

It happens – you get to a stage in fundraising planning where you’re bursting to get the rubber hitting the road.

And then someone says: “We’ve got to have the right materials to leave with our prospects – we don’t have the right message, we don’t have the right information, we don’t have the right framing.”

And 3 months go by while a fundraising/marketing task force develops collateral material by committee.

Ouch.

Sure the eventual product is great, and sure it represents the organization well, even redefines the group’s case and profile. Perhaps even revolutionizes how people conceptualize and articulate the agency’s appeal.

But the prospects have grown cold and the askers have slinked away and you’re left all dressed up for the party with nowhere to go.

So the answer is: it just needs to be good enough. Not perfect.

For many years I had a list above my desk of ways to avoid procrastination (I think one of my employees finally stole the list from me!). Number one was:

“Don’t giftwrap the garbage.”

Not that fundraising collateral materials are garbage – but spending time on them is sometimes (not all the time) yet another way of avoiding the eyeball-to-eyeball moment of making the ask.

So take the plunge, set up the meeting, and then figure out what you need to bring along once the date is looming large.

And good luck!

Know (And Improve) Thyself

In a workshop we led today, we asked participants what their fundraising capacity-building goals were for the coming year.

I was a little worried that groups might not be able to articulate a strategy for strengthening their ability to raise money (as opposed to simply naming a figure they hoped to raise).  But never fear, their self-revelations, and self-prescribed remedies, were right on target:

“Strengthen the connection between our vision, our board, and our donors.”

“Become intentional about showcasing our work to cultivate our volunteers.”

“Create a development advisory committee to complement our community-based board.”

“Build up our roster of supporters so we’re not as dependent on a few generous donors.”

“Directly connect our board with our fundraising plan so they understand what their part in it is.”

“Build a friendraising system for board/staff/supporters so folks don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to help us fundraise.”

It was inspiring to sit in the room and listen to these folks think deeply about their fundraising – and name a focus that was way beyond the direct dollars raised.

Later on, I realized it was like being privy to people’s New Year’s resolutions. Lose weight, learn guitar, master an unassisted headstand.

Self-improvement, a great and uniquely human trait.

Let’s put it to work for our organizations.

What are your capacity-building goals for fundraising for this year?

Ownership Begets Responsibility, Yet Again…

We hosted a roundtable here last week called: “Creating An Inspired Board-Staff Fundraising Partnership.” A mixture of staff and board members discussed their frustrations and victories in moving board members along the continuum from avoiding staff phone calls to carrying out assigned tasks to taking responsibility for soliciting new askers.

One recurring premise was getting true board buy-in on fundraising strategies – if the staff thinks it’s a great idea to do a dinner-dance at the Pierre but none of the board members feel they’ll be able to get their friends to attend, guess what? They won’t be able to get their friends to attend.

Likewise, one staffer lamented that his board members didn’t give him many names for his annual appeal – but the fact is, they were handed that task and told to obey, not brought through a soul-searching discussion in which the board itself concluded this was a good idea and they were going to try their darndest to bring in contributions from everyone they knew. Undertaking a Valentine’s Day fund drive needs to be a conscious board decision to produce full-hearted board involvement.

Creating internal fiefdoms is one way to encourage board members’ ownership of turf – carving out pieces of the fundraising puzzle that different members can take charge of. For example, one person takes on responsibility for the annual appeal, one for the house party, one for the Fall Fiesta – with board and staff fundraising leadership overseeing a whole composed of each mini-leader’s bite-sized domain.

Related to that, Board leadership development was another persistent theme. Looking ahead 3 years (at a minimum) so that you’re recruiting for the leadership you’ll need in the future, rather than for the board you needed yesterday, means that the nominating committee needs some pretty strategic players at its helm. The nominating committee doesn’t actually have to possess access to all the organization’s potential contacts in its back pocket – but it does need to know how to ask for help and to draw connections from and between people.

Staff’s role in supporting board member initiative was the final revelation to many around the table. Yes, we all want board members who email us at 6:30 am with a fundraising idea they’ve had in the shower – but even board members that motivated still need us to send them the follow-up email, the materials, the nudge, and the thinking-power that a 50+-hour-a-week (and who’s counting) full-time job allows nonprofit staff to track.

In the final analysis, board members are volunteers. The dog gets sick, the kid flunks a Spanish test, someone’s workload gets doubled – in other words, life intervenes. A true board-staff partnership builds a structure that respects those impediments to board fundraising performance – and then vaults above them.

Is the Energy Getting Better (and what does that mean, anyway)?

Last Friday, the Commerce Department announced the third quarter in a row of economic growth and increased consumer spending. However, according to a New York Times article last week, “While the expansion in output was welcome, it still has not brought the level of hiring growth needed to recover ground lost during the recession.”

What does this mean for non-profits?

Ah, isn’t that the $64,000 question…

To try and suss it out, let’s go back to one of the fundamental tenets of fundraising – the psychological underpinnings of capacity.

Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs is directly applicable here. Maslow believed that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that needs lower on the pyramid have to be satisfied before higher needs can be addressed. In other words, if you’re hungry (physiological needs), or you don’t know where your kids are going to sleep (safety needs), you can’t concentrate on pursing friendship (social needs), social status (esteem needs), or strive for justice (self-actualization).

So how does that apply to fundraising?

The fact is, that a huge part of the capacity to give is psychological. It’s based on feeling that you have disposable income – extra to your life needs – and not on actual dollars in the bank.

If you feel poor, no matter how much you have parked in CDs, you’re not going to be a major giver – you’re not going to feel like you have the space in your life to direct some of your assets to a nonprofit.

(Which is one of the reasons for the truism in fundraising that you never ask someone for a major gift who’s going through a divorce; the ground – financial and otherwise – is shifting beneath them and they don’t feel able to be generous.)

Likewise, in Fall 2008 at the beginning of the recession when it looked like people’s investment portfolios were going through some sort of extra-gravitational free-fall, the fear factor – of not being able to meet the physiological and safety needs that are way down towards the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid – was keeping just about every potential donor from making a major gift commitment.

I think that fear factor is starting to lift.

Back to that NY Times article: 

“Nate Evans, who owns a pottery-making business…said sales in 2009 were the worst ever but that they were just starting to see things pick up. ‘I felt like the energy of the crowd was better,’ Mr. Evans said of their first fair this year…‘Most of the people we talked to said it was better than last year. Hey, it’s not great, but it’s better than last year.’”

I guess that’s the watch-phrase of the day…

“Hey, it’s not great, but it’s better than last year.”

Stories From The Front Lines

Is it possible to raise money in this economy?

Yes, yes, and yes.

We heard that over and over again at a roundtable last week that was sponsored by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) NYC and Capital One Bank and hosted by Con Edison – and that featured several Cause Effective clients telling stories of how they’d turned around their fundraising in the dead center of the recession:

• Like Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, which raised $157,000 from its Spring 2009 anniversary gala and accrued all sorts of other benefits as well – like a new friend who led them to a $10,000 grant from a private foundation.
• Like Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), which almost tripled its special events income in Summer 2009 by taking to heart the maxim that “fundraising is everyone’s job” – program as well as development staff, board members, friends, and even members.
• And like the Pratt Area Community Council, which saw its Fall 2009 45th anniversary celebration come in 50% over goal, through a closely-honed partnership of staff, board and volunteers working together to follow-up their connections and leave no stone unturned.

It was inspiring to sit in the audience and hear these groups think out loud about the hard-won lessons they’d incorporated into their fundraising practice going forward. Even though Cause Effective was the architect – the catalyst – of many of these changes, once we’ve counseled our clients on how to reconceptualize their approach to fundraising, it’s our turn to sit back and watch them take off…and fly.

And then…we marvel.

In the coming months we’ll be releasing more video clips of these remarkable stories, but for now, here’s three to start.

In Appreciation…

FaceBook sure has changed birthdays.

It was my birthday last week, and I heard from my oldest, closest friends (they called).

I heard from my employees (they got me a set of espresso cups for the office).

I heard from my nearest and dearest…my family (they got me books, natch).

And I heard from about 30 other friends/colleagues/acquaintances – my FaceBook friends who took the time out to wish me a happy day. And in so doing, to show me how they valued me.

I have to admit, it felt kind of good. Especially because it wasn’t a big birthday that I was particularly focused on, it felt like an “Appreciation Day.” For Me.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we did that for our nonprofit organizations too?

I’m imagining a day in which we’d celebrate the accomplishments, the impact, the quirky individualism and fiercely-held values, all the why an organization really matters.

Sure, the video at the event that pulls at the heartstrings is supposed to do that – but that’s more akin to a big blow-out party that provides just as much stress as gain.

I’m talking about a day in which we stop and think of something particularly special/unique/valuable about a nonprofit organization (that’s not your own) – and let the people involved with the group know that you notice.

A Day of Thanks For…

Because we all go above and beyond in the nonprofit sector. And we’re certainly not in it for the money.

A Day of Thanks For…

Living a life of service. And successfully making a difference.

A Day of Thanks For…

Celebrating. The Glue that Holds Us Together.

Making the Hard Hard Choices

I’ve been – we’ve all been – watching the Harlem School of the Arts saga unfolding publically over the past few weeks, with sadness and regret. A long time coming, the situation’s genesis predates the economic crisis but the organization clearly needed some breathing room to turn things around, that just wasn’t there.

What do I see as the relevance for other nonprofits, even those not in a dramatic decline? This is the phrase in the New York Times article that leapt out at me: “The fund-raising wasn’t there, but their expenses continued to be the same while there were revenue shortfalls,” said Kenneth J. Knuckles, president of The Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone.

Let me repeat that: The fund-raising wasn’t there, but their expenses continued to be the same while there were revenue shortfalls.

How many of us have had to make hard, hard choices in the past couple of years: cutting programs, laying off or furloughing staff, closing sites…? From our catbird’s seat assisting nonprofits we’ve seen a number of creative – and heartbreaking – decisions that groups have made, as income (especially from government and corporate sources) has inexorably declined.

Perhaps Cause Effective sees more of these situations because we’re the “fundraising option of last resort” – i.e. nonprofits come to us to diversify their funding when it’s clear that the budget gap is increasing between their expenses and their income; and that what they can raise from their traditional fundraising methodology is woefully inadequate for today’s economy.

And it takes time for that to turn around, so we’re often sitting with chief executives in the space of radical choices…the scalpel, the cleaver, the space of sawing off a limb to save the tree.

For Cause Effective personally, that meant subletting a good portion of our office space – more than half our site – to two other small firms (one nonprofit, one not). The income we gained from that, quite literally, took the place of one large grant that we’ve lost over the past couple of years. This wasn’t easy – one of our staff members ultimately created a work station at a desk in the conference room shared by 12 of us – when he gets displaced for a meeting, he finds somewhere else to hang his hat, or else he works from home.

But we did what we needed to do to hang on financially and commit to continuing the impact of our mission. Our client base – you, the nonprofits that need our expertise and assistance – deserved no less from us.

I’m a great believer in the “until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” school of withholding judgment, but I do believe there’s a time to come down from the angel theory of nonprofit fundraising – to wit, the school’s board chair, Christopher Paci, has been quoted recently as saying: “If an angel or group of angels come to the doorstep immediately we’ll be able to save the school.”

Well sometimes angels do come through in extraordinary situations – but you can’t run a nonprofit in the everyday by relying on the descent of angels.

Mr. Paci continued by saying: “Reality is bleak, and that’s what we’re up against.”

Yep.

Now – and always.

We’ve tried that before…

I was at a board meeting tonight when, once again, I heard that old chestnut: “We tried that a few years back, but it didn’t work.”

It was a board with old and new – well, not exactly factions, more like wings. The newer board members were eager to explore how they could become more active in fundraising, and how they could hold each other accountable for delivering on what they agreed to take on, instead of just talking about what they thought they could do.

As I started to go into detail about the concept of a Board Member Fundraising Agreement, the board member with the longest tenure (he’d been on for almost 20 years) nodded his head glumly and said, “We did that awhile back, and it didn’t work.”

Talk about doing one’s best to ensure that a new idea doesn’t get any room to breathe…

Yet I knew, from prior conversations with that board member, that he’d been an enthusiastic participant in the decision to bring Cause Effective into that room, especially because he saw that the newer board members had a lot to contribute and didn’t know how. So if he thought there wasn’t any hope, why had he bothered?

The answer is complex, and has to do with human resistance to change as much as the actual activity in question. It’s easier to think of failures as due to immutable environmental factors. In other words, to blame the world and say, “That’s the way things are.” It’s a shortcut that avoids reproach – and that short circuits new effort.

My answer to that board member was: “I understand it may not have worked in the past, but I think it’s worth a try…why not?” I didn’t directly contradict his negative assessment – but I didn’t let the conversation stop there.

We don’t have to be trained facilitators to take on this attitude wherever we see it. Gently, with respect for the speaker’s years in the trenches, but firmly. “Let’s give it a shot…” can go a long way towards getting the ship moving forward.