All Things Annual Giving

News and Trends in Annual Giving

Check out the latest news and trends worthy of your attention as picked up in top rankings on Google searches relevant to annual giving over the last month:

Time and Technology Continue to March Ahead
Perhaps a tough economy will be just what it takes for the efficiencies of newer technology to truly move into the lead in fundraising methods.  As the NonProfit Times reports, mobile calling and email are beginning to supplant direct mail and traditional, land-based calling to reach out to donors.

The NonProfit Times

Cell Telefundraising
The NonProfit Times - Morris Plains,NJ,USA
... USNA's director of annual giving programs. Federal law prohibits telemarketers from calling cell phones without a prior relationship. ...
See all stories on this topic

What Makes a Strategic Partnership Work?
The Foundation Center contributes a good summary of a publication describing the benefits and pitfalls of strategic partnerships.  As nonprofit organizations learn they are highly dependent on their myriad partnerships with other organizations, it is vitally important to evaluate which partnerships truly benefit the mission of your organization.

Nonprofit Literature Blog: Risks and Rewards of Strategic Partnerships
By Jimmy Tom
Risks and Rewards of Strategic Partnerships · Case Studies in Annual Giving · The Nonprofit Paradigm Shift: Are You Ready to Think Differently? Foundation Center Research · Psychology and Fundraising · Nonprofit Collaboration ...
Nonprofit Literature Blog - http://literature.foundationcenter.org/

The Big Green Grab
While other nonprofits struggle, environmental groups have locked into a system that has quickly helped fund their work - the commitment of businesses to donate 1% of their revenues to their cause(s). 

The trend raises some interesting questions:

(1) can other nonprofits replicate these efforts;
(2) how successful are they - really; and
(3) what about prioritizing direct, individual giving in a similar way - is this more efficient?

Wall Street Journal Blogs

Coughing Up an ‘Earth Tax’
Wall Street Journal Blogs - New York,NY,USA
... income to charity than the uber-rich. What’s your income-percentage rule of thumb for annual giving, especially when money is tight and needs are greater?
See all stories on this topic


Another Perspective on Giving
While many businesses make gifts directly from sales, the Traget Company goes big in committing 5% of its profits to charity.  By giving from income, the company is able to use its discretion and think about where the money is going first.  In the end, this may produce greater giving overall and make for a better giving partner, but regardless, it's good to consider all of the options that are possible.

The Foundation Center contributes a good summary of a publication describing the benefits and pitfalls of strategic partnerships.  As nonprofit organizations learn they are highly dependent on their myriad partnerships with other organizations, it is vitally important to evaluate which partnerships truly benefit the mission of your organization.

Target to continue giving 5% of profits to charity
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Minneapolis,MN,USA
Between 2004 and 2008, Target's annual giving rose steadily, from $96.3 million to $169 million, while the McKnight Foundation's went from $75.4 million to ...
See all stories on this topic

As always if we can be of assistance with any of your fundraising needs, please contact either Brian Lacy or Andrew Thompson and let us know how we can help.

Major Gifts Programs Prosper with Solid Annual Giving Campaigns

What are the primary benefits of an annual giving campaign?

1. It helps you maintain contact with your donors on a regular, well timed basis.

2. It enables you to expand and update your database of current contacts for giving.

3. It helps you identify and cultivate major gift donors to provide the higher levels of support you need for your work.

The third of these is vitally important and yet easily neglected.   Of course, it requires staff devoted to the exercise of making the specialized contact with major gift donors that's necessary for the program to succeed.  This means personal contact with a solid base of information about the donor, his or her interests, personal concerns, personality, giving to other organizations, relationship to your own board, etc.  

Gathering this kind of information is, in part, an extension of annual giving.  Through productive phonathons, email responses and other communications that come from donors, you can construct a portion of the donor's "DNA" - donor needs assessment - in other words, what it is that makes specific donors want to support your mission. 

Beyond that, by overlaying wealth screening and donor segmentation through an effective donor research program, you can fill in the gaps that help pinpoint your best prospects.  With this information, your major gifts staff can then develop cultivation and solicitation strategies to get to prioritize the timing of engaging prospects and donors further, and moving ahead with your plans and programming.

In order to coordinate all of the pieces and bring it all together, you are likely to need assistance beyond the resources on your staff.  Brian Lacyhas many year of experience and works with nationally known institutions and providers of the tools you need.  Contact Brian Lacy today for more information and to get started.  

If you need assistance in developing your major gifts strategies for cultivation and solicitation, contact Andrew Thompson at Elusen for help with major gifts, planned giving and capital campaign strategies as your needs arise.

 

Data Cleansing

The Basics

Data management is primarily about three things: collecting it, maintaining it and protecting it.  Under these three categories all of the use of data available to you for raising money exist. 

Underlying all three areas and all of your success in fundraising is the matter of using the data effectively. But you must have effective organization in order for this to be possible.  This hub provides an overview of the organizational aspects of data management. Collecting Data

Think about this: there are more than 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of new data created on the internet in a year.  How much of this do you have in your database?  More importantly, how much of it can you use? 

Collecting Data

Frankly, what matters to you is the data that comes into your circle of influence.  You received a business card, met someone at a networking event, another made an internet inquiry, yet another called with a question about services.  Your board has friends, so do you.  There are political, cultural, marketing and other business people who have an interest in your mission. 

Have you captured the data from all of these sources.  This is a very important point.  No mailing list, distribution list, or other contact list that you can buy is at all important to you until you have touched and marketed your business to everyone you can touch personally. 

Purchasing mailing lists is a short cut to good data capture.  Many organizations that could be very successful are struggling dreadfully because of poor data capture.  I know about this first hand.  

Data capture can be challenging and intricate.

One problem is that there are so many places to capture data.  Another is the time it takes to enter everything you have.  One of the most important  decisions you can make is with respect to where your data will be stored.  Smaller businesses often rely on Outlook because it is so pervasive and readily available. 

It's limits become obvious, however, as soon as you start trying to add large quantities of data.  But what is the next, better alternative?  This is the question of all questions.  ACT!, Gold MIne, and similar programs are very widely used sales tools for organizations that have many people selling, asking for support.  But they are limited in terms of their ability to meet the needs of large organizations and nonprofit organizations in general.

As a consultant, I have regularly advised organizations on database packages of many different companies.  The size, purpose, and needs for use of the information are all factors in deciding on the right platform to meet your needs. 

In the need, you will need to choose the right platform and execute its implementation wisely.  This is a challenging operation that requires careful attention to detail.  Likewise, it is vitally important to have a reliable staff person accountable for the accuracy of the information and overseeing its implementation.

Maintaining Data

Once you properly capture the data, you need to maintain it.  This is where the notion of "data cleansing" comes to life.  What is data cleansing?

It is the process of scrubbing data to eliminate errors, update for new and better information, and append existing data with new pieces of information.  In essence, this is what data maintenance is all about. 

Here are some basic examples of what you should think about in regard to data cleansing:

(1) Correcting Errors:  Let's say you hold a phonathon and call 5,000 donors.  You find that over 1,000 of those records are out of date or just, incorrect.  In calling the other 4,000 donors, you raised over $35,000.  By having invalid information, you may have lost another $10,000 or more by being unable to reach the other donors.  Is this acceptable?

(2) New and Better Information: During the course of that same phonathon, you learned that another 1,500 donors, who gave nearly $20,000 themselves, has new, better or different contact information - nearly all of whom prefer that you use the new rather than the old.  You spent an extra 25% time with each of these donors listening and collecting new information and explaining the "glitches" in your system. If your data had been up-to-date, you could spend this time calling at least 500 additional donors with the same resources involved.

(3) Data Appending: Let's say your overall database consists of 100,000 records.  You have 90,000 good mailing addresses, 75,000 phone numbers and 15,000 email addresses.  If these numbers were 95,000, over 100,000 (including alternate phone numbers), and 30,000, how much more money could you raise from the same database?  Past assessments suggest you can gain 20-25% within one year by properly upgrading your database with "data appends" for mailing addresses, phone numbers and email. 

Brian Lacy & Associates is a full service provider of data management services and specializes in cost effective data appending, updating and related services.

Protecting Data

Protecting your data can be every bit as important as collecting and maintaining data.  Because it so uniquely calls for its own solutions relative to the other issues, we will address this in separate, upcoming posts in our blog. 

Matching Gift Survey

The time has come for us to invite your participation in what is now the 4th annual survey on matching gifts hosted at SupportingAdvancement.com. The bulk of the survey is as it was last year and we'll be comparing and contrasting to prior surveys with the continued intent of providing ideas on how we can all make our matching gifts practices more effective. However, the survey is revised and upgraded to incorporate questions about any new ideas and strategies institutions might be exploring given recent economic challenges. Some new additions also are questions related to matching challenge grants - both from private and government sources - to assess what impact those programs have as additions or tandems to corporate matching fund revenue.

Many of you have previously participated in the matching gift surveys and we are hopeful that participation will expand once more this year.  

of As with past surveys, results will be shared first with participants, then posted on SupportingAdvancement.com and FundSvcs. Results have been presented at various conferences over the past 3 years and will also be presented at future conferences - as opportunities arise - including the 2009 CASE Summer Institute for Advancement Services (assembling again in this July at the University of Vermont in Burlington).

Everyone's budgets are tightening and matching gift revenue isn't something we can take for granted or just hope will come to us through ad hoc measures; even organizations with the most historically successful matching gift programs are undoubtedly taking steps to minimize economic impact on that revenue stream. Nor can we afford shots in the dark at what might bring in more matching gifts - we need to focus on the tactics that have proven most successful throughout the nonprofit world. Please do take part in the survey; it's a very good investment of 20-30 minutes of your time.    

Thanks in advance for your participation.
    
Take the survey now:  ONLINE VERSION

 If you want to complete the print version of the survey and send a PDF, click this link:  PRINT VERSION

 

Brian Lacy

Matching Gift Services

Exciting New Service

Another Exciting New Service

Getting the Most from Matching Gifts in Your Annual Giving Program

In matching gifts programs, companies match employees' gifts to nonprofit organizations like yours.

For example, the GE Foundation, founded the first matching gifts program in 1954 to encourage GE employees to support the needs of its employees former colleges and universities. Since then, companies and their foundations—including the GE Foundation—have broadened their guidelines to include many other types of community-serving nonprofit organizations, social services, the arts, or environmental organizations.

Matching gifts from corporations represented approximately 10 percent of the overall money companies donate to nonprofit organizations.

Statistics compiled by CASE indicate that the average higher educational institution receives $30,000 more in matching gifts today than it did in the mid-1990s.  Additionally, companies that at one time provided matching gifts solely to colleges and universities are now supporting a variety of causes. In 2003, 38 percent of the 965 companies surveyed by CASE matched gifts to "cultural organizations" as well as educational institutions. By comparison, in 1993, 23 percent of the companies in CASE's survey matched gifts to cultural organizations.

In order to establish or improve the fundraising potential of your annual fund and braoder development efforts, you should enhance your matching gifts program by:

• Make matching gifts a priority;
• Include matching gifts as a consideration in all development areas;
• Know match eligibility before making appeals;
• Use matching gift incentives;
• Invest in your database;
• Get started now!

For more information on matching gift programming, please visit BrianLacy.com Matching Gift Services and contact Brian Lacy with your needs today.

Evaluating Annual Fund Results (Part 2): The Established Institution

This article is generally targeted to organizations with a mailing list of over 25,000 individuals and businesses, in existence for more than 15 years, and with a development team large enough to divide the work of annual giving apart from other key areas of raising funds. 

Apart from major universities, there are many other nonprofits that find themselves in a position of past success and a strong base to call upon for future support.  This can be less than comforting in the context of our current economic situation, as it may be difficult to replicate what's been accomplished in recent years given the worries your donors may have about their own finances. Challenging times call for creative ideas. 

More generally, however, we want to distinguish different types of annual fund programs based on the kinds of issues they face, year after year, rather than merely when the economy is struggling.  With respect to major universities, we discussed how the diversity of the institutional structure itself causes the organization to look for common threads to pull together a consistent message, and how support for athletic programs are one key example of how this is done very effectively in the university setting.

Outside that realm, however, the message must focus more clearly on the stated mission.  This is true whether you are a large, stable institution or a fledgling, community organization that is barely surviving.  Mission drives message.  When mission is forgotten, so is the reason for giving, and the trend will soon be negative in your annual giving program. 

No one wants this and thus, it is wise to spend a fair amount of planning time making sure that the messages you will send throughout the year, are not distracted from your primary theme by events, collateral developments, indirect connections to your institution, etc.  You should consistently remind your donors of why you exist, how you serve needs they care about, and what you are achieving toward reaching those goals. 

The above point is true regardless of size and stability.  But there are other issues that clearly impact different organizations differently.  if you're a national membership organization with thousands of members and a 50-100 year history, one of your greatest challenges is keeping your database up-to-date with good information.  You already have loyalty from your membership, what you lack is thorough knowledge about who are the best donors to pursue for larger gifts, what means of growing your organization your members will respond best to, and how to be sure you maintain contact with them before they are ready to pay another set of dues.

Smaller nonprofits can sometimes glean this information through their inside networks.  But if you have a base of 3,000,000, perhaps 300,000 or even 30,000 constituents, you are too big to be able to have few enough degrees of separation from your membership to know someone who knows each of them.

You must have a person on staff who is able to lead the team in overseeing your annual giving program successfully.  This person's role covers database management, including scheduling mailings, emails and other communications, donor research, messaging, and other communication inputs, connections with events, major gift development and foundation grant making - and more.  It is one of the most challenging jobs in any nonprofit, and your organization is well served to have an experienced, committed and talented person in charge of the process, including hiring staff to support the work. 

Smaller nonprofits cannot always afford this luxury.  But for the organizations this article is intended, your annual giving program is as important as anything you do all year.  Having the right person in place, and being sure they are well motivated to stay is very important - even in tough times, but especially in tough times. 

For services relating to database management, appending, cleansing, matching gifts and more - please visit BrianLacy.com, and contact Brian to assess your needs.  For help in recruiting the ideal person to fill your annual giving needs, go to Elusen.com and contact Andrew Thompson to initiate the process of finding that person for you.