relationship-based fundraising

Strategic Stewardship to Engage Hearts, Heads, and Hands

January 2, 2020 By Benjamin Mohler

*Engage hearts, heads, and hands with strategic stewardship.*

You’ve heard the common saying “If you want to understand somebody’s values, look at how they spend their time and money.” It’s a simple measure of resources to identify what is truly treasured.

Fundraisers are philanthropic facilitators. We build relationships to identify donor passion and align that passion with investment opportunities in our organizational mission. Relationship-building is fundamental to effective fundraising. Because of the role relationship-building plays in fundraising, our allocation of people may be the most telling measure of our current values and the future of fundraising.

Look at the division of labor within the philanthropic arm of your own organization. How are staff responsibilities allocated? To help illustrate the alignment of staffing, try another quick exercise.

Write down these common stages of the fundraising process:

Identify/Qualify ___________
Cultivate/Solicit ___________
Steward ___________

Now, assess the primary responsibility of each member of your development team and assign them to just one of the three areas listed above. If your experience is anything like mine, the results are disheartening.

It is little wonder why our profession struggles with issues of donor attrition and staff retention. It is easy to see why the philanthropic sector continues to battle the court of public opinion regarding fundraising overhead, fundraising effectiveness, and the use of unrestricted support. [Read more…] about Strategic Stewardship to Engage Hearts, Heads, and Hands

Fundraisers’ Toast: Raise Your Glass

November 18, 2015 By Benjamin Mohler

toast In 2008, at an event honoring a colleague, I was asked to say a few words to mark the occasion. On a whim I raised my glass and offered up what I referred to as the “Fundraisers’ Toast.”

The goal of the Fundraisers’ Toast is simple… be deliberate about celebrating the achievements of professional peers. In essence, build relationships internally, not just externally. What better excuse to do so but to raise a glass and recognize others working hard to facilitate philanthropy.

Building Relationships

When asked what I do for a living, I simply reply “I’m a fundraiser.” I’ve found it prompts their further inquiry… to which I say, fundraising is not about asking for money. It is about building relationships with people who have a passion for helping others and engaging them to invest in changing lives through their own gifts of time, talent, and treasure.

Fundraisers spend a lot of time out of the office to build these relationships. This is good.

However, for long-term success, it is also important to spend time within the organization. As you build relationships with donors, remember to do the same with volunteers, interns, program managers, leadership, and your peers. This simple act will help you learn the mission of your organization and make living it effortless. [Read more…] about Fundraisers’ Toast: Raise Your Glass

Titles for Fundraisers Revisited

April 16, 2013 By Benjamin Mohler

businessman sitting sofa question mark over head Not long ago I bookmarked a blog posting by David Lawson asking the question, “philanthropy, when did it become about fundraising?” In his post on Working Philanthropy, Lawson correlates the role of fundraising and a healthy nonprofit organization to the legacy of Steve Jobs. “Fundraising is a necessary part of philanthropy, but it in no way should define philanthropy any more than the marketing and sales department at Apple defines their products.”

This brings to mind my ongoing conflict regarding the use of professional titles for fundraisers. In a past post titled reconsidering the titles we give professional fundraisers, I explored the titles fundraisers use and the occurrence of personal pronouns for professional areas versus the ways donors and organizations refer to their fundraising practitioners.

“Professional titles (doctor, accountant, lawyer) brings with it connotations of trust, confidentiality, expertise, and ethics. I proudly wear the banner of ‘fundraiser,’ but know that this title is not fully descriptive of my profession and of my responsibilities.”

Nearly two years later and this issue is still front of mind. I find it reassuring to know I’m not alone. Since posting that original article, the search term “titles for fundraisers” has directly resulted in over 350 visits to this site. With all this latent curiosity, I wanted to give a little more attention to exploring available options.

Titles for fundraisers usually contain two or more elements from the following categories. Mix and match

Positional descriptions: Chief, Director, Manager, Associate, Assistant, Coordinator, Officer
Functional titles: Development, Advancement, Fundraising, Philanthropy, Strategic Partnerships, External Relations
Discipline details: Major Gifts, Principle Gifts, Annual Gifts, Leadership Gifts, Planned Giving, Campaign

Using these elements, the pieces for fundraiser titles that give me pause are the functional titles and the discipline details. The functional titles lack specificity. They are also not broadly recognized by people outside the main of professional fundraising. The discipline details, on the other hand, are overly descriptive and focus on the transactional nature of the position.

My ideal professional fundraiser title would include a positional description and some functional title that communicates an emphasis on encouraging philanthropy that is mutually beneficial to both the giver and the recipient. It would be nice if this title also reflected the importance of social investment, positive change, and ongoing stewardship. I still don’t know what that title would be.

Any suggestions?

Pull Up a Chair – Seating Strategies

April 9, 2013 By Carol Lee

Musical Chairs “All around the mulberry bush the monkey chased the weasel…”

Cue second grade: You marched to the music, round and round the circle, strategically eyeing your classmates and waiting for your teacher to raise the record player’s needle (those born after 1985).

The music stopped. You scrambled for a chair — any chair — to stay in the game.

That was then, but I bet you didn’t realize that childhood game was teaching you a valuable skill. When you think about it, we spend a considerable portion of our adult lives seated in circles:

Enjoying a family meal around the dinner table
Closing a business deal in a board room
Networking at a conference “round table”
Going out after work with colleagues and friends
Listening and learning together in church small groups
Feigning interest in weekly staff meetings
Engaging donor prospects at fundraising banquets

In his March 2013 Life Hacker article, Adam Dachis has tapped into our primal, musical chair instincts. He has cleverly illustrated how to choose an optimal seating strategy, in any configuration, that will allow you to fully participate in conversation, thus keeping you in the game.

4 Problems With Giving Tuesday & How to Address Them

November 27, 2012 By Benjamin Mohler

Today #GivingTuesday will be trending on Twitter and filling Facebook news feeds. It will also be prominently featured on both new and traditional media outlets. In general terms, this is a good thing. It puts the ideas of charity and philanthropy into the main of public discourse. However, unlike Black Friday or Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday has a few challenges that, left un-addressed, will doom its long-term success.

Cyber Monday and Black Friday are attractive to consumers because retailers give added incentives to purchase goods on those days. Even though many of the deals and discounts offered can be had for less other times during the year, the abundance of deals makes shopping on this day ideal for those that have been on the fence in making a large purchase and need an extra push to open up their pocketbooks.

The four problems with Giving Tuesday are that:

Many non-profits don’t offer any extra incentive for donors to act compared to any other day
Outside of the actual donation, non-profit requests don’t make meaningful linkages back to the season of giving
Aside from leveraging the increased media attention with increased requests, organizations don’t make it any easier for donors to take action compared to other days
Unlike Black Friday “doorbusters” and Cyber Monday “coupon codes,” #GivingTuesday gifts will not have any more impact than normal

Here are ways to address these issues for your organization so you can rise above the fray on #GivingTuesday, and make the donor experience necessary, memorable, sustainable, and impactful.

1) Many non-profits don’t offer any extra incentive for donors to act compared to any other day

If your goal is simply to get more of your existing supporters to give on a certain day, then don’t change anything. However, if you want to use #GivingTuesday as a way to increase the size of gifts from current donors and the total of new donors, then you need to give a compelling reason why giving on this particular day is critical.

This “urgency of need” should exist in your case statement. When appealing based on immediacy, your #GivingTuesday appeal is more likely to give donors an incentive to give out of necessity. Make sure to communicate why a gift today is more critical than the same gift tomorrow. If this element does not exist in your case for support, go back and revise it. If you use #GivingTuesday to communicate the necessity for a immediate gift, then you will see larger gifts from current supporters and a larger occurrence of new donors.

2) Outside of the actual donation, non-profit requests don’t make meaningful linkages back to the season of giving

The holiday season gives us an excuse to do something nice for others. Often this takes the form of giving gifts to those closest to us. The motives for charitable giving are similar to these interpersonal exchanges, however most non-profit models put a wall between the donor and the impact of their gift. Non-profits can address this on #GivingTuesday in two ways.

First consider your program and infrastructure for honorary and memorial gifts and make improvements to make these types of gifts more robust and meaningful for the donor as well as the honoree. Doing so will help your donors use #GivingTuesday to share what you are doing with others in a personally meaningful way.

Second, strengthen the connection between donor and impact. This approach will appeal to Generation X and Millennials, who exhibit a desire to have a more direct connection between gift and impact. Both exercises will use #GivingTuesday as a way to increase the audience of potential donors and make the value of your mission more memorable for your supporters.

3) Aside from leveraging the increased attention with increased requests, organizations don’t make it any easier for donors to take action compared to other days

Since #GivingTuesday is largely a Internet-based giving movement, your online giving infrastructure will see increased traffic and the potential to lose well-intentioned donors increases. Before launching your #GivingTuesday appeals, make sure visitors to your giving portal will not be burdened with complicated forms, processes, or options.

Donors should be able to quickly visit your site, make a donation, be given a choice for follow-up communication preferences, and the opportunity to designate the gift in honor of a loved one. That’s it. Consider building a specialized page just for #GivingTuesday gifts so other page elements don’t distract donors from the main reason they visited your site in the first place… to make a gift. You can always offer opportunities for deeper engagement through the stewardship process as you build a sustainable relationship with new supporters.

4) Unlike Black Friday “doorbusters” and Cyber Monday “coupon codes,” #GivingTuesday gifts will not have any more impact than normal

This is perhaps the biggest difference between the days designated for for-profit and non-profit sectors. Since giving is on the mind, a day designated for giving may make others more likely to take action on this particular day. #GivingTuesday can be used as an opportunity to do two things that will have a long-term impact.

Use #GivingTuesday not as an excuse to find new donors, but as a reason for existing supporters to share with others the importance of your organization and why they give in support of it. Make available collections of media that your supporters can easily share such as info-graphics, video shorts, donor stories, stories from those touched by gifts. Basically, use #GivingTuesday as an opportunity to let your supporters tell the story of the organization. You provide the tools, they provide the time and audience.

Take a page out of the book of retailers. Embrace the consumer mindset of increased “bang for the buck.” Use today to issue a challenge to recent donors to make another gift with increased impact. Leverage #GivingTuesday as an opportunity to promote your existing or new matching gift programs. This could also be a prime opportunity for you to encourage donors to take advantage of corporate gift matching programs.