Non-Profit Chas

Hardiness is a term used to describe plants’ ability to survive adverse growing conditions. That is, a plant can exist with very little water, sunlight, soil, and so on. Imagine a flower in the desert—or as the photo shows, a tree growing up through solid rock.

A hardy non-profit organization is one that survives—even thrives—with few resources. With very little funding and declining numbers of volunteers, they find creative ways to keep going just a little longer.

For many organizations, this feels like a weakness. But for potential donors, this is a piece of the story. If you routinely have to stretch one dollar into fifty, that’s not a weakness: it’s a huge return on investment. Show how much you have done with what little you have, and donors will see an opportunity.

As baseball fans know, home runs are fun, but games are won through “small ball.” Singles, stolen bases, bunts, good defense, and solid pitching are what champions use to win championships. That is, success rarely comes from a single astonishing act—it comes from continued persistence through small efforts that combine to form greatness.

I make a big deal out of this. At work, we have a gong that we use to announce our site launches. Everyone knows we launched something, and that’s important. Even if it’s the smallest, lowest profile project, it’s worth a gonging because someone on our team worked hard on it. It represents their excellent work and a victory for our team.

That is, success rarely comes from a single astonishing act—it comes from continued persistence through small efforts that combine to form greatness.

And that’s the key: recognize your victories, no matter how small, and celebrate them with everyone. It congratulates your team, makes people optimistic, and builds momentum. And it’s contagious - the momentum and positive atmosphere will keep everyone going strong and working hard toward a bigger goal.

You don’t need to throw a party (though sometimes you should!), but a thank you note for your staff or an email to your board can do a lot to share in the success.

So as you head into your work week, look for the next thing you could celebrate. Set small, reasonable goals for the next couple of weeks (finish the newsletter, make a fundraising milestone, etc.) and then celebrate the heck out of them.

The number of new non-profits is growing at a phenomenal rate. From 1996 to 2006, the number of organizations went from 1 million to 1.4 million! “source”:http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/profile1.php?state=US

Meanwhile, older organizations are facing new challenges and often struggle to survive. Competition for funding is fierce - donors and customers have more options than ever before.

h3. Think small

As many consultants will tell a big company, a big organization needs to think more like a startup. Startups don’t have the baggage to overcome. Startups take risks. Startups can ask the hard questions because they don’t have any of the answers.

The challenge to you is to build a startup culture. Don’t act big, even if you are. Empower the individuals in your organization to make decisions. Inspire your staff to take ownership in their work by tying their successes to the success of the entire organization. Work hard and celebrate every victory.

h3. Think new

Chances are, your organization does a lot of things based on history, not on logical decisions. From your board structures to your approach to fundraising, you’re probably doing what you always did. And even though that might have worked well at one time, it may not be working well now.

To put it another way: if the world has changed and you haven’t, can you really be surprised that you are struggling?

It’s not easy, but it’s necessary–for every decision you make, ask yourself why you are doing it.

h3. Think about the hard stuff

Are your programs really that effective? Are your staff in the right places? Have you built your organization around your customers’ and donors’ needs, or have they changed without you?

As Jim Collins says, you must “confront the brutal facts”:http://www.jimcollins.com/lab/brutalFacts/index.html.

h3. But don’t forget the old

There’s a lot to learn from the startup approach, but that doesn’t mean you throw everything out the window. Your organization’s history is an asset. Remember the lessons learned. Use the equity you’ve built (your brand, your financial stability, your network) to get a big leg up on the small, new non-profits that don’t have any of those things.

One of our new board members has worked in several not-for-profits in a variety of fundraising-related roles. I’ve been looking to him for insight into this process. Recently, he told us, “Don’t ask for money. Tell a story and you won’t need to ask.”

The idea is that your donor has to believe in what you do and the story does this. It says, “look what we’ve been able to do with so little.” You leave it up to the donor to take the next step and wonder, “What could you do with more?”

Of course, I’m new to fundraising and can’t speak from experience on this. Still, it’s an interesting theory.

From nonprofiteer:

Many harried nonprofit executives also are so uncomfortable with “the M-word” that they recruit people to their Boards without telling them, in writing, that recruits are expected to write checks (and for how much?) and secure checks (and in what context?).

Read more

==I usually use the term non-profit. I frequently hear other variations, including not-for-profit. I don’t know if there’s an official term, other than having a 501(c)(3) status.==

Still, there’s a subtle distinction to me. The term not-for-profit, while it doesn’t exactly roll off my tongue, implies that the organization can still be wildly successful - it just doesn’t exist to create a profit. The term “non-profit” seems like a statement of ones financial situation. What do you call it?

Fundraising always sounded like a cushy job to me. I had this notion that it consists calling some wealthy donor up, wining and dining him, and collecting a huge check.

Of course, that’s not how it works. It’s not about doing business over drinks or dinner. It’s about building a relationship and telling a story. I am going to spend a lot of time over the next few months considering exactly what this means. I’ll be sure to write about it.

That’s right, we haven’t been fundraising. I cringe when I read articles about how to keep fundraising during a recession because we weren’t even doing this when the economy was strong! We used to get our funding from one major agency, but that has dried up and left us wondering how we’ll replace that source.

So my job is to take us from zero to… well, somewhere. And that’s where I’m starting.

Define the somewhere

Fundraising is goal-oriented. You determine your needs based on your goal. You create a strategy to reach your goal. You measure your success against your goal. If you don’t have a goal for your fundraising, you won’t be able to focus your efforts enough to stand out.

I haven’t been doing this long, but I’ve learned one thing - donors prefer to give for a cause. Heating your office and paying your staff isn’t a cause. Creating a new program, saving more people from starvation, or building a new hospital - these are causes. And people can get behind a cause. Your job, at the outset and on a continued basis, is to align your fundraising goal with the cause.

One of the first tasks for my committee is to identify our funding needs and priorities. These will come from the programs, the leadership, the board, etc. They should be guided by the strategic plan (which we also don’t have, but are working on). This is the basis for setting our goals.

Find a starting point

At the very least, we’ve done some small fundraising efforts. We’ve held fundraising events that raised anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. We’ve applied for a few grants. We have a database that hasn’t been seriously maintained and that nobody really knows how to use. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Point A to Point B

So we have the starting point and a goal (not that I’m not calling it the ending point). How you get from start to goal is the big discussion. That’s called your strategy. And without a strategy, you’re traveling without a map.

I believe that fundraising and marketing are really about the same things: telling a story and building a relationship.

Having worked in a marketing world for my relatively short career, I volunteered to chair our new marketing committee at our Camp Fire council. This makes sense, as I’m far more experienced in this arena than anyone else in our organization. I brought in some volunteers with a variety of experiences, including writers, advertising, PR, and small business owners. We’re starting at ground zero. It’s going to be fun. More on this in another article.

In a much less logical move, I have also been appointed/volunteered to serve as chair of our fundraising committee. I have absolutely no experience with fundraising. Other than a nascent interest in the subject and an overwhelming desire to dive into a new subject and overextend myself again, there’s no reason I should be the one to take this committee on. Oh, and the fact that there’s nobody else to do it.

So what makes me think I can do this? Because I believe that fundraising and marketing are really about the same things: telling a story and building a relationship. Donors and customers don’t care about you, they care about the product. As a non-profit, your product is the benefit you create for them.

Some (hopefully) familiar marketing concepts

1. Retention: It’s easier to keep a donor/customer than it is to gain a new one
2. Relation: Tell a story that relates to your donor/customer
3. Information: Keep your donor/customer informed about (and this is important!) what you are doing for them
4. Inspiration: Inspire your donor/customer to act - not by begging them, but by making it easier to say yes than it would be to say no

From this starting point, it starts to seem a bit more reasonable that a programmer/project manager/marketer/entrepreneur might try his hand at fundraising. Doesn’t it?