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.