News

In the fundraising business, you need all the advice you can get...

That is why we are pleased to share with you some of the things we have learned along the way. We also want to share our client success stories with you.

Our clients are your colleagues. Their words speak louder than ours.

So, whether it is a client success story, a valuable fundraising tip, or an article written by one of our fundraising professionals, we strive continuously to bring to you information you can use.

How to Capitalize on the Weaknesses as Well as the Strengths of Trustees and Top Leadership
-Charles H. Bentz, Founder.

Given the urgency of a capital campaign, trustee/leadership weaknesses can be used as opportunities to create strengths.

Do not despair if your trustees and leadership score less than a perfect 10 when evaluating their fundraising clout and capital campaign effectiveness. Out of weaknesses, you can create strengths.

Example #1: If a board does not represent the community's power structure, the campaign can provide the impetus to add new, more influential members. Desirable board members can be enticed on to the board or involved in leadership roles in the campaign by the excitement or challenge of the institution's new vision, which will be funded with campaign dollars. "Movers and shakers" are not attracted by the status quo; they like to be a part of making things happen!

Example #2: Many organizations routinely look to the board for campaign top leadership, and they become immobilized when they do not find it. Consider creating co-chairs for your campaign and division leadership and using campaign leadership slots to team a board member with an influential community person. The positions then become ways to involve area leaders - thus broadening your base of support and grooming them for later board service.

Example #3: Most trustees and leadership suffer from myopia. They focus solely on the immediate and the short term. They worry about next month's expenses, and often lose sight of what is happening around them. What is really needed is 'double vision " - the ability to see both short-term and long-term priorities.

A capital campaign forces this. Trustees and leadership must look at the competition. They must develop long-term goals and visions that take them into the next decades and solutions that create relevancy and uniqueness. Quick fixes simply prove too short sighted.

By learning to focus on actions today that will ensure continuing benefits to and services for our children and grandchildren long into the future, trustees and leadership can ensure the ongoing worth of our not-for-profit institutions and organizations.

Example #4: Beware of an abundance of long-time, loyal trustees. Although many times a cause for applause, such a situation can lull you into a comfortable state of complacency. A major capital and/or endowment campaign affords the opportunity to begin a very necessary process: the identification and cultivation of "new" leadership support. The savvy institution must always be focused on these critical priorities. Because of the marketing and public relations efforts of a major campaign - as well as the volume of volunteer support needed - the campaign proves a fitting way to enhance a not-for-profit's image and broaden its base of support. When final counts are in, these are benefits that often are equal to or surpass the actual campaign dollars raised.

Major fundraising campaigns are complex undertakings. All present opportunities to capitalize on leadership and organizational strengths as well as weaknesses. Let en guarde (on guard) and carpe diem (seize the day or the opportunity) be your watchwords.

Cultivation and Continuity - The Importance of Call Reports
Laura Lee Martin, Vice President

How many times have you eagerly waited for your executive director to return from a cultivation visit with a potential donor only to find he or she is too busy to report back? It is a common problem. Everyone has too much to do. Sometimes days pass after a key appointment before you get to sit down and discuss the visit and the follow-up plan with the boss.

Volunteers can be even more difficult to pin down. For one thing, most are not accustomed to telling a third party what went on at their lunch with Cousin Sally. Some volunteers feel repeating conversations is indiscreet, even though Cousin Sally knew that the purpose of the lunch was to discuss institutional needs and opportunities for her participation.

Even the best development officers skip call reports. They feel they are too busy to add a note to the file. Some think as long as the results of the visit are safely locked in their brain, and therefore, are accessible, every thing is fine. But it is not fine. People go on vacation, get sick, and change jobs.

There are few things more discouraging to a new fundraiser than opening the file of a long-time donor and finding only copies of checks and old thank you notes. Where do you start with a donor when you do not have a clue about their motivations, personal attachments, background, or interests? You have to start at the beginning of course. This creates another problem.

Donors have every right to expect continuity from their favorite not-for-profit. Your top donor should not have to explain to every new fundraiser that her interest in your college began after her favorite sister, your alumna, passed away. Even before you introduce yourself, you should know that his grandfather was a founding board member who donated the museum's Asian collection. Before you mail that invitation, you should already know that Mr. and Mrs. Smith never attend the annual recognition event, but love to have personal visits - and do not forget to include a handwritten note suggesting one.

Call reports can help you avoid common dilemmas caused by ignorance. They assist with prospect research and make overall development efforts more efficient. The call report accompanying this article can be printed out or downloaded and personalized for your institution. Whatever format you decide to use, be sure to cover the basics. With whom was the visit? What was discussed? What were the results? What is the next step?

Call reports should be made after any significant contact (all staff should understand what makes a contact significant) and should be filled out immediately after the encounter - before any seemingly innocuous, but vitally important information is forgotten. If your executive director is less than reliable in filling out call reports, fill one out for him or her as you discuss the visit. Then, have your director look it over for holes or misinformation. Provide your volunteers with a stack of blank call reports, and be sure to give them plenty of telephone support after their visits. Lead by example. Fill out call reports yourself - every single time.

Building a Constituent Profile
Laura Lee Martin, Vice President

Prospect research is a task that should be done by all not-for-profit organizations on an ongoing basis. When a capital or endowment campaign is on the horizon, prospect research becomes absolutely essential.

The final product of prospect research is the constituent or donor profile. A good constituent profile helps fundraisers, both professional and volunteer, gauge both a donor's interest and his or her capacity to support the project. A poor constituent profile contains too little, too much, or erroneous information. Yes, there is such a thing as too much information! A good profile tells the reader about the donor's previous involvement, if any, with the organization. It give examples of other organizations that the donor supports and his or her giving levels. It also demonstrates the donor's ability to give by examining pertinent personal financial information.

Donor privacy has become a hot button issue as ease of access to information via the Internet literally put facts at our fingertips. The Internet is a wonderful tool, but its very ease of use should caution us. Not all information that you turn up about your constituent should necessarily go into his or her profile. Before adding that interesting tidbit, ask yourself: "Is this germane to the ultimate purpose of the profile - to secure a gift for my organization?" If not, discard it. Before calling a profile finished, ask yourself another question: "Would I be comfortable showing this profile to the donor?" If not, you should re-examine the profile, determine why you would hesitate to share it with your constituent, and make the appropriate changes.

Constituent profiles can be formatted in any number of ways to suit individual and institutional needs. Foremost, they should be laid out simply and be easy to read. Two donor profile templates are available here to print or download and tailor to your needs.

Printable Forms:
- Simple Profile
- Standard Profile

The Art of Asking:
Teaching Volunteers Not to Hate Asking for Money
Laura Lee Martin, Vice President

One of the greatest joys in fundraising is also its biggest challenge - volunteer training. All professional fundraisers understand that the most effective solicitations are done face-to-face and peer-to-peer. Volunteers, however, rarely begin a campaign with the necessary solicitation skills.

Bentz campaign clients, including volunteers, receive comprehensive training in the Art of Asking and are provided with a training manual produced specifically for their campaign. This short on-line guide to volunteer training is by no means comprehensive, but we hope it contributes to your success. It is serialized. So check back often for additional installments.

The Art of Asking - Chapter One
Do Your Homework

Every successful campaign, be it annual, capital, or endowment, depends on volunteer solicitors. A great group of volunteers can propel you over the campaign goal in record time. Nervous, unmotivated, or reluctant solicitors can push you further away from the campaign's goal with each unhappy visit.

So, who is at fault if Mrs. Smith goes to lunch after lunch without getting so much as a single signed pledge card? You are. It is your job to train your volunteer solicitors. You must make them comfortable, if not eager, to solicit their peers. Mom was right. Those who are well prepared will be more successful than those who are not. This is true for solicitation calls as well as final exams.

Matching the right donor with the right solicitor is absolutely crucial and is homework you cannot afford to skip. Match the donor with the solicitor carefully and be sure to express to the solicitor that he or she was chosen because of an existing relationship with the donor, commonalities, and leadership skills. Sometimes it is appropriate to share a constituent profile (see the Bentz Toolbox) or part of a profile with your solicitor before the visit.

Volunteers should be given the choice to accept or refuse any call. This is only fair. Think hard before you try to talk a volunteer into calling on a donor with whom he or she feels uncomfortable - even if your prospect research tells you the volunteer is the ideal solicitor for the job. If your solicitor is uneasy, the call will not be successful. Learn to distinguish between normal pre-solicitation jitters and a specific anxiety about the potential donor that your solicitor is approaching.

Give the solicitors plenty of reading material; and, before sending any solicitors out the door, be positive that they can express the needs of the project in reasonable detail. Make sure your solicitors do their homework. You should provide your volunteers with candid and accurate information about the state of the campaign before sending them out on a call. Potential donors want to know where their money is going. So, you must prepare the solicitors to answer questions. As much as you are able to, prevent any unexpected surprises through training. Role playing can be a very effective training method and gives you the opportunity to see if the solicitors need additional information. Be sure to tell the solicitors that it is OK not to have all the answers. The volunteer can always defer the answer until later and still get back to the donor in a reasonable amount of time.

If at all possible, send your fledgling solicitors out on one or two calls that should be "slam dunks." Nothing builds a volunteer's confidence faster than hearing "yes" from a prospect.

Grantsmanship Primer
by Thomas G. McCarty, Ph.D., CFRE

I. INTRODUCTION:
From many years as a writer, a successful recipient, an observer of not-for-profits, and a teacher of grants development, I have reached several conclusions:

Many who are affiliated with not-for-profit organizations, either as staff or volunteers, subscribe to the cherry tree theory. They feel that grants are like ripe fruit, hanging there ready to be plucked by anyone who wants.
Others believe in the cure-all effect of grants. There is no problem, no need, no financial condition that a grant or two will not fix.
Members of an organization's board of directors often feel that their agency is a cannot miss proposition, its cause so noble, its programs so appealing that a foundation would be doing itself a disservice by not giving a grant.
Still others consider grants the base on which to build a complete development program.

There is an element of truth in all of the above theories. None of them, however, should be the sole criterion for a grants or foundation relations program.

- Grants do not grow on trees.
- They are not a panacea for all an organization's ills.
- No organization is entitled to a grant per se.
- Grants are by no means the foundation of a fundraising program. (Rather they should form the top tier, the "icing" on a development cake, so to speak.)

This last statement is particularly important. Until a fundraising program is carefully planned and implemented, seeking grants more often than not is a waste of time. This adage applies both to annual fund efforts and capital campaigns.

What are the prerequisites for increasing the likelihood of receiving funding? This list is not exhaustive but includes:

- Track record of non-deficit years
- Solid, demonstrable support by the board and staff
- High level of support (percentage and gifts) from other components of the organization's "publics" (Note: we have met these 3 criteria.)
- Careful research and screening of potential funding sources, looking at matches in geography, type of funding, program interests, and such.
- A well-written, persuasive, appropriate proposal (no "boiler plate" documents).

Even if an organization receives a 100 "grade" in all these areas, it is not guaranteed a grant. However, the closer it comes to meeting all these requirements, the better its chances are. Conversely, except in some special cases, lack of success will occur if these are not met.

II. STAGES OF GRANTS DEVELOPMENT:
The process of grants development include the following.

A. -Research: This is needed to determine an organization's funding (and fundable) needs and potential funding sources' priorities, formats, submission guidelines, and such. This is usually done by a long-range or campaign plan (from the organization) and a review of standard foundation directories.

B. -Screening: Screening narrows the field to foundations from which the possibility of funding is good. This is often accomplished by (a) studying the standard reference sources and (b) writing a brief letter request for an annual report and funding guidelines.

C. -Proposal Development: A generic proposal must be created that will serve - with appropriate modifications for every foundation - as the basic request for funding. At the same time, for larger foundations, or ones with special application forms or processes, customized grants requests must be prepared.

D. -Final Submission: Once all the prerequisites noted above are met and the steps listed here are taken, proposals are written and sent.

III. IN CONCLUSION:
Grants development is on ongoing process. The cycle outlined above will be repeated as new sources are brought to the attention of those responsible for obtaining grants. At the same time, it is essential that the other areas of the Development Office and organization continue to perform at a high level. Without their success, seeking grants becomes much more difficult.

Thomas G. McCarty, Ph.D., CFRE