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.