philanthropissed

Every so often I google “fundraising masters” to see what the state of grad programs in fundraising is. Don’t get me wrong, I love my current job, but I like to keep updated on what’s going on in that arena in case I do eventually want to go back to school.

Sometime in the last year or so, Columbia added a Master of Science in Fundraising. It’s a 4-year night program that allows you to work full-time. As a Stanford grad who was not happy with the other options were (University of Indiana, NYU) I was excited to see a great school like Columbia offer a master’s in fundraising. I was even more excited to see that one of the mandatory classes was BUSI  K4010. Managing Human Behavior in the Organization.

It’s no secret that nonprofit organizations have a dearth of great managers. Fundraising in particular has this structure where, once you’re really good at raising money, your next promotion tends to be one where you manage people. But nonprofits rarely have the money to train good fundraisers in how to be good managers. So people who really have no business managing people wind up doing it, all the time.

My current manager is a good manager, and I tell her that a lot because I’m so grateful that I can’t help but gush about it. I think it actually embarrasses her. But to me it’s worth recognizing, because I and many of my friends raising money for different types of nonprofits have all experienced the misery of working for a bad manager. Most of these people aren’t purposefully awful; but they don’t know how to identify with and motivate their employees, have no people skills, and are generally afraid of change and content with the status quo. It doesn’t matter that they don’t intend to suck, the net result is the same – bad management, unhappy and unfulfilled employees, high turnover. And turnover is so common (the average lifespan of a fundraiser is 18 months per nonprofit) and such a hindrance to fundraising programs, especially in small development departments, that this is something we should be worried about.

So I am very excited to see Columbia cognizant of this problem and making a management class mandatory. I hope it has a hands-on component so that each student gets a chance to see good management in action. Of course it’s not going to solve the current industry-wide problems in funding that make management training impossible, but at least the future fundraisers will be schooled in it a bit before they can make someone else’s job a crappy one. Every master’s program in fundraising should include a similar course.

Columbia is making me rethink my “never move to New York” outlook on life….

I have a lot of money to raise from individual donors before the end of the fiscal year on June 30. There’s too many prospects to really be able to focus intensely on all of them while juggling grantwriting and event planning. Ah, the perils of being a one-woman DIY development department.

So which group do I focus on?

• Subscribers?
• Individual ticket buyers?
• Prospects suggested by the board?
• The segment with the highest dollar value out in asks from the last appeal?
• The segment where we have the deepest relationships?
• How do we judge that last one anyway?

I think the answer is obvious: I shouldn’t guess.

For context, I began this job a couple months ago. I don’t have important institutional knowledge that longtime development directors do yet. But I still have to do the job and raise the money.

I should not guess at which segments to focus on.

If I had more time, I would interview my organization’s best, longtime donors – and my organization’s best new donors. I want to know how they became donors. Is there a common pattern or two that will emerge and help me figure out the most successful methods of identifying and developing donors for this theater – and in tough times, choose who to focus on and how to make the approaches?

I want to know:  Did they subscribe or buy tickets before donating? What was the vehicle for their first gift?  Their most recent gift?  How have they been involved since donating that first time?

I don’t have time to do interviews, analyze the results, and implement a course of action between now and June 30. But I can ask my other resource – my executive/managing director, who is a fount of institutional knowledge, to brief me on the answers to the questions above for 15-20 major or longtime donors, and make sure I’m not missing anything huge. I can’t get stuck in analysis paralysis right now. It’s too costly, especially for fundraisers, where time literally is money. I must do.

But interviewing my donors is now something I plan to embark on as a long-term project – and now that I have time to flesh out the concept of the donor interview, there’s so much more that I want to ask. Like:

What angles or marketing approaches that we use appeal to them? Is it the ones that staff and board think are appealing, or is it something else – something that we’re too close to the organization to see? Do they respond to our messaging about the art, or weathering the financial storm, or neither? Do they even care what we’re doing to fight the downturn? Are they annoyed when we ask for money by email if they usually write checks?

I think the answers to these questions could have implications for our fundraising far beyond the current economic crisis. I spend so much time trying to figure out how to motivate donors that sometimes I forget that some of them like us enough to let me flat out ask.

And you know that old fundraising adage…”If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.” So maybe my long-term strategy will pay off in the short-term after all?

Fundraisers: what would you ask your donors in an interview about their giving – and how would you choose which donors to ask?

I received a solicitation letter in the mail today that was pretty well done – well executed, easy to read direct mail format and great storytelling. Except, it way, way overused the italic and bold and underline. Sometimes even bold, italic  and underline at once.

I like what the organization does. I’ve given to them before (in fact I still have a balance on a pledge I’m supposed to be paying). But when I stepped back from my knowledge of direct mail tactics and shed the fundraiser identity, and just looked at it as a donor – I felt insulted. Yes, I have limited time, and you want to use bold and italics to call my attention to THE MOST IMPORTANT STUFF in case I decide to skim. I get it.

But the letter made me feel like they didn’t trust me to read it – or care. Now, trust is the single most important thing an organization can establish with its donors. But it has to start with the organization – showing that you’re trustworthy, but also that you can extend trust right back.

Donors are your investors, not playground kids who you can condescend and trick into giving you money with strategic bolding. We don’t blithely throw money at you, especially in this economy. So treat us with respect. If I have enough affinity towards your organization that I opened the letter, trust that I will read it and make an informed choice.