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.