[Review] Nonprofit Fundraising 101: A Practical Guide With Easy to Implement Ideas and Tips From Industry Experts

Fundraising expert and social entrepreneur Darian Rodriguez Heyman describes his latest book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101: A Practical Guide with Easy to Implement Ideas and Tips From Industry Experts, as "the first comprehensive, practical guide to all aspects of nonprofit fundraising" and a "yellow pages for social change." Perhaps, though the former seems a little more to the point.

As such, the book covers everything from the hiring and training of development staff and how to engage board members and volunteers (Part 1); to choosing the right databases to track donors and gauge your fundraising progress (Part 2); to maximizing gifts and grants from individual donors (Part 3), online platforms (Part 4), foundations (Part 5), and corporations (Part 6); to increasing earned income through social enterprise (Part 7). Short and full of practical advice, each chapter follows a consistent framework that includes the critical skills and competencies needed to succeed in that particular fundraising area, case studies and sidebar material, a list of dos and don'ts, and a resource list.

Although he has held leadership positions in both the private and public sectors, co-founded a number of companies that support nonprofits, and edited Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals (2011), Heyman understands that he's not the only fundraising expert with something to offer. Indeed, every chapter of the book includes advice from experts with hands-on experience in a particular area of fundraising — whether individual giving, special events, corporate sponsorships, mobile giving, or government grants. And one of his main points is that nonprofits serve a vital function as a conduit between donors and social impact, with board members and volunteers playing a critical supporting role. Quoting Kay Sprinkel Grace, author of Beyond Fund Raising, he reminds his readers that "[p]eople don't give to you because you have needs. They give to you because you meet needs."

So, how should nonprofit fundraisers approach potential donors? According to Mal Warwick, direct mail is still a viable option for organizations with large donor lists and budgets of at least $1 million, while smaller grassroots organizations are better off focusing on online fundraising and building relationships with individual donors. For those organizations that use direct mail, the key to success is getting to know the top 5 percent of your donors. At the same time, Heyman cautions against focusing solely on large donations; the key to successful fundraising and securing major gifts is stewardship — regardless of gift amount. And one element of good stewardship is knowing what donors care about and what drives their giving, making a connection with those you are appealing to, and remembering "what matters to them — not just what feels critical to you or your organization." 

Time to Honor the Fearless Donor

Too often – I've been guilty of this, too – fundraisers focus excessively on the acquisition of the new donor. We spend a lot of time and resources crafting the right message, testing potential activation strategies, and building engagement programs in hopes of growing our base of supporters.

The problem is that we get so busy trying to build our supporter base with new donors that we tend to overlook the individuals who are already invested in our cause.

I recently had lunch with a friend who shared an anecdote about the time he stood up in front of a roomful of people to promote a cause in which he believed passionately. It was clear as he was telling me that it was a memory he would not soon forget. This is what he said:

"I remember the first time I shared in public that this was a cause I supported. You know, it's not easy to stand up in front of other people and tell them you believe in something. It shouldn't be a big deal, but it isn't something I do. I had to conquer my fear of telling others I care about something, knowing they might not feel the same way. I had to get over the fact that others might not care as much as I did. It's not part of my personality to wear my emotions on my sleeve, and standing up in front of that roomful of people was a pretty big deal for me...."

As nonprofit leaders and fundraisers, we tend to move on after a donor has given time, money, or skills in support of our cause. And we tend to overlook the many reasons the donor may have had not to support our cause. We similarly forget that although it may come naturally to some people to stand up and articulate their support for an issue or cause, not everyone is wired that way.

So, if you're engaged in nonprofit fundraising and marketing, here are a few things to "remember" as you go about your work:

Memorializing Veterans by Helping Those Who Are Here

As America draws down its forces after fifteen years of military conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, Memorial Day seems like a particularly good occasion to share lessons and stories from a coalition of foundations and corporate funders that is working to help veterans and their families.

A projected one million soldiers will return to civilian life between now and 2020. While many service members make that transition without event, others struggle to overcome the lack of dedicated pathways to affordable education, for themselves and their children, or to prepare themselves for a job in the civilian sector.

What's more, many veterans do not receive adequate support as they wrestle with these challenges. That is why the Philanthropy Joining Forces Impact Pledge has secured commitments from more than thirty-five foundations and corporations to invest nearly $285 million to support those who have served our country as they transition back to civilian life.

The PwC Charitable Foundation joined this group eight months after making a five-year, $5 million-plus commitment to support some of the best veterans service organizations in the country. Our work with veterans and the organizations that support them has been a learning experience. The challenges veterans face are complex and different for each individual. However, if we really want to make a lasting, sustainable impact, we have learned that we need to:

5 Questions for...Harvey V. Fineberg, President, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Established in 2000 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation holds assets of $6.56 billion and in 2013 was the ninth largest U.S. foundation by asset size and tenth in total giving. With a focus on "[tackling] large, important issues at a scale where it can achieve significant and measurable impacts," the foundation's main program areas include science, environmental conservation, patient care, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D., joined the foundation as president in January 2015. Prior to that, he served as president of the Institute of Medicine (2002-14) and as provost of Harvard University (1997-2001), following thirteen years as dean of the university's School of Public Health. A co-founder and former president of the Society for Medical Decision Making, Fineberg has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and serves on the boards of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (which he chairs), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the China Medical Board.

PND spoke with Fineberg via email about the foundation's approach to grantmaking in the areas of environmental conservation, scientific research, and patient care.

Philanthropy News Digest: As Gordon and Betty Moore, you, and foundation staff have made clear over the years, the Moore Foundation supports fundamental scientific research and embraces experimentation in its grantmaking. Are those two things ever in conflict? And how do you and your colleagues find the proper balance between them?

Harvey Fineberg: Our support for fundamental research enables scientific breakthroughs. We embrace a systematic or "scientific" approach in all of our grantmaking, whether in basic research, environmental conservation, patient care, or at home in the Bay Area.

The systematic approach in grantmaking means that we rely on evidence and investigation, focus on long-term goals, and place a premium on defining measurable outcomes. We develop clear hypotheses that guide our investments. Along the way we continually test our assumptions, challenge our thinking, and, as necessary, adjust our course in pursuit of those outcomes.

In our grantmaking, we are prepared to aim high; we like to identify a path to success, and we are willing to fail in pursuit of a worthy goal. We know that accomplishing big things can take time, and we are investing for the long term.

PND: From your vantage point, does the foundation's focus on evidence make it an outlier in the philanthropic world?

HF: Gordon Moore has encouraged us to "swing for the fences." As we aim to tackle complex, important problems, we understand the world may change in profoundly important ways that we cannot predict. We work diligently to drive change to a certain scale or scope and understand there are times we may fall short. When things don't go according to plan — for better or worse — the most important thing we can do is learn from that experience and try to improve the next time.

Foundations Will Contribute $364 Billion to SDGs

And that's a conservative number. Though they may not have internalized all seventeen Sustainable Development Goals yet, foundations will contribute more than $360 billion toward their realization between now and the year 2030. Estimates as to the total volume of resources required to succeed on the ambitious global agenda run as high as $3.5 trillion, a sum far too large for bilateral and multilateral aid to cover alone. The remainder will have to come from private investment and philanthropy — and according to initial Foundation Center projections, foundations will do their part.

What are the Sustainable Development Goals?

Commonly known as "the SDGs," they are a set of seventeen universal goals for global dignity, prosperity, cooperation, and justice covering the period 2016-30. Different than their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs address additional challenges such as climate change, growing inequality, and sustainable use of the oceans and are goals to which all nations, rich and poor, should aspire.

Why are there seventeen SDGs?

The goals are the product of a United Nations-led negotiation process culminating in approval by 193 member nations last September. The goal process was further informed by the direct participation of over eight million people around the world through an online campaign. Beyond the seventeen goals, there are 169 targets and more than 200 indicators (i.e., "proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services") by which to measure progress. Skeptics often complain that seventeen goals is way too many, but think about it for a moment. If you put 193 foundations in a room, could they agree on as few as seventeen goals? Any way you look at it, the SDGs are remarkable: as a global consensus-building process, as one of the most participatory processes in human history, and as an integrated, future-oriented roadmap leading to a better world.

Native Voices Rising: Critical Leadership in Institutional Philanthropy

Earlier this year, I received news that Valorie Johnson, a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, was planning to retire. As one of the few Native Americans working at a foundation, I celebrated her many accomplishments in the philanthropic sector. But I also grieved the impending loss of one the few Native influencers in philanthropy.

Why are there so few of us working in philanthropy? Who's addressing the issue? And, most importantly, why is the inclusion of Native voices so critical to effective philanthropic leadership?

A recent article in the Nonprofit Quarterly described philanthropy's disappointing attempts at diversity: "[N]either the numbers in terms of diversity of staffing and governance nor the dynamics of this landscape has changed much since 2008. The pipeline is still not working to move people of color into philanthropy, or to move women and people of color up in hierarchies, as quickly as white men…."

Philanthropy has invested millions of dollars in various initiatives to increase diversity in the field, including the D5 Coalition, a five-year effort to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the philanthropic sector. Eighteen affinity groups and organizations, including Native Americans in Philanthropy (NAP), founded the coalition in 2010, and while there has been progress in tracking much-needed data and advocating for increased Native representation in philanthropy, a significant amount of work remains to be done.

It's true that the small number of Native Americans working at foundations is related to the broader barriers to diversity in the field. But I would like to offer a few additional insights for your consideration:

Weekend Link Roundup (May 21-22, 2016)

Our weekly round up of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog....

Climate Change

Just as we often hear that it's easier to make money than to give it away, it seems as if donors and foundation leaders are learning that it's easier to divest from fossil fuel companies than it is to invest in clean energy. Fortune's Jennifer Reingold reports.

Economy

America's middle class is shrinking. The Pew Research Center lays it out in depressing detail.

Giving Pledge

So you've amassed a few hundred million or even a billion dollars and now want to help those who are less fortunate. A good place to start, writes Manoj Bhargava, founder of Billions in Change and Stage 2 Innovations, in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, is to understand the problem before funneling money into a solution, stop relying on traditions and assumptions, and make your philanthropy about serving, not helping.

Health

In a post on RWJF's Culture of Health blog, the foundation's Kristin Schubert says it's time for public health officials, school administrators, and parents to reframe the way we think about the links between health, learning, and success in life.

International Affairs/Development

Why should U.S. foundations take the global Sustainable Development Goals seriously? Because, writes NCRP's Ed Cain, they "constitute the broadest, most ambitious development agenda ever agreed to at the global level for getting the world off of its self-destructive, unsustainable path. [They] reflect the interconnectedness of social, economic and environmental challenges and solutions. [And they]...tackle inequality, governance and corruption."

Africa’s Hunger Challenge

Africa is the most undernourished region in the world. Even in the best of years, the continent is unable to feed itself. Despite decades of massive development aid aimed at making African countries food self-sufficient, more Africans go hungry today than did thirty years ago. And while the main culprit is a fast-growing population that has outstripped the continent's ability to produce more food, a number of other factors also contribute to growing hunger there.

The current population of Africa is 1.2 billion, twice what it was in 1985 — and it is projected to double again by 2050, surpassing the populations of both China and India by 2023. At the current rate of growth, Africans will comprise half the world's population by 2035.

Higher population densities increase pressure on the land, reducing farm sizes, soil fertility, and the quality of pastures. Today, one in four Africans, or nearly three hundred million people, are hungry, their lives impaired by poor diets. A fast-growing population combined with stagnant food production only means more hungry people in the future unable to enjoy healthy and productive lives.

Another contributing factor to hunger on the continent is rapid urbanization. While most Africans still live in rural areas and depend on subsistence agriculture, urbanization on the continent is occurring at an unprecedented rate — indeed, half of Africa's population will be living in towns or cities by 2030. Unfortunately, these new urban dwellers will only exacerbate the rapid expansion of impoverished slums on the continent.

A New Power Grid: Reflections on 'Building Healthy Communities' at Year 5

Systems change, policy change, narrative change, and people power are terms we use often at the California Endowment.

Together, they represent what's happening in fourteen geographically diverse communities across the state thanks to our Building Healthy Communities (BHC) initiative. Just as important is the state-level systems and policy change work we've supported to help strengthen local efforts. Taken together, they represent the comprehensive vision behind BHC, a ten-year, $1 billion initiative launched in 2010 to advance statewide policy, change the narrative, and transform communities in California that have been devastated by health inequities into places where all people have an opportunity to thrive.

As 2015 came to a close and we reached the halfway point of BHC, we thought it important to look back at the first five years of the initiative and document what we've learned to date. And because transparency in philanthropy is critical to the growth and effectiveness of the field, we want to share those insights with others.

A significant portion of the BHC plan involves a "place-based" focus on fourteen communities. Of equal importance is how the collective learning and energy generated by those communities help promote health, health equity, and health justice for all Californians. In other words, BHC is a place-based strategy with a broader goal of effecting statewide change.

So, what we have learned? It starts with this: BHC will be successful when three things happen to benefit the health of young people in lower-income communities:

Investing in Infrastructure for Impact

The U.S. nonprofit sector is in many respects the envy of the world for its strength and diversity. And it continues to grow in scale and complexity. But investments in our shared infrastructure are not yet sufficient to meet the challenges ahead

"Like a body without a backbone, a sector without a strong infrastructure will crumble," wrote Cynthia Gibson, then of the Carnegie Corporation, and Nonprofit Quarterly Editor-in-Chief Ruth McCambridge in a 2008 special issue of that magazine dedicated to infrastructure. Eight years later, with the level of investment essentially flat, we are echoing that sentiment with a renewed call for foundations to invest in strengthening the sector.

Nonprofits and foundations have, among many achievements, helped citizens secure their human rights, responded to domestic and international crises, fed the hungry, cured diseases, offered a rich array of arts and cultural programming, and protected our environment.

Yet we all aspire to see the sector be much more effective tomorrow than it is today. That can only happen if we invest in strengthening it, and that's not happening to the degree that it could or should.

We need the data systems and technology platforms that fuel communication and learning. We need training programs that support the growth of staff and volunteers. We need the research to understand what works and what doesn't. And we need advocacy for new levels of excellence and for policies that support our work.

This work is being done, but not with the level of support it should have. The organizations we lead, GuideStar and the Center for Effective Philanthropy, are among more than twenty "infrastructure organizations" that are formally calling on foundations to step up their level of support for infrastructure. We ask them to consider dedicating at least 1 percent of their grantmaking budgets to strengthening the sector.

[Review] American Generosity: Who Gives and Why

Imagine a snapshot of American giving. What would it look like? Would it portray an abundantly generous America, or show a dismal lack of involvement in charitable causes and civic society? In American Generosity: Who Gives and Why, sociologists Patricia Snell Herzog and Heather E. Price address this question using a variety of methods with the goal of both broadening and deepening our understanding of how generosity is expressed, what fuels it, and what can be done to encourage more of it.

To write their book, Herzog and Price drew on the results of Notre Dame's Science of Generosity Initiative, a Templeton Foundation-supported effort to promote interdisciplinary approaches to the study of generosity in all its forms. The initiative's findings, and Herzog and Price's presentation of those findings, offer valuable insights for the individual giver as well as scholars, religious leaders, and nonprofit practitioners and fundraisers.

The book, which draws much of its data from a nationally representative survey of more than a thousand people, is organized into a "who, what, where, why, and how much" structure. Herzog and Price begin by defining generosity as "giving good things freely to enhance the well-being of others." Although they identify nine such forms of giving, the "Big 3" are: donations of cash, time spent volunteering, and political or civic activity. (The other six encompass a wide range of actions, including the donation of one's blood or organs, estate giving, environmentally sustainable consumption, the lending of one's possessions, and "relational" giving to friends and family.)

Having defined generosity and identified its constituent forms, Herzog and Price then look at how generous Americans are, and how social and demographic factors — age, race, gender, education, income level — and regional characteristics influence generosity — "zoom[ing] out," as they put it, "from the frame-by-frame snapshots [in the earlier chapter] and survey[ing] the overall landscape of American generosity with a wide-angle lens." It's a view, they add, that lends itself to a "glass half-full perspective," in that it allows us to "see that Americans are generally quite active in working to help others."

One of the ways Herzog and Price add nuance to their portrayal and "breathe life into" the "static quantitative snapshots" is by including in-depth interviews from twelve survey participants. And one of the most interesting aspects of their analysis is the finding that while resources such as time, money, and connections do influence whether and how much someone gives, they are hardly the only factors that shape individual generosity — and don't explain why individuals with few resources often give more generously than those who have more to give. Why that might be the case is the subject of the second half of the book.

Philanthropy's Role in Creating Tomorrow

Change in the world and our communities is happening at breathtaking speed. This accelerating rate of change makes the challenging work of doing good even more difficult. Foundations are trying to make the world a better place, but we are often using yesterday's information to do so.

When deciding what we will fund next year, we look at six-month-old grant applications, year-old grant reports, and six-year-old census data. But these methods are no longer up to the task. The Institute for the Future held a wonderful training last fall on the future of philanthropy in which the guiding question was: "Foundations will exist in ten years, but will they be relevant?"

Relevancy is not a question that foundations are used to asking themselves. But as we watch Mark Zuckerberg avoid the traditional structure of a foundation and, instead, opt to set up an LLC for his community impact work, it makes many of us pause and ask, "How do our institutions, which look almost the same as they did in Andrew Carnegie's time, need to adapt to meet the challenges of tomorrow?" That question has led me to an interest in futurism and interviewing leaders who are thinking differently about making the world a better place — individuals like Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Unite, Dr. Eric Jolly from Minnesota Philanthropy Partners, StartUp Box founder Majora Carter, and Obi Felten of Google X.

Based on these conversations, I believe it is our responsibility, as philanthropic leaders, to learn the skills needed to understand and create the future we want for our communities. And to that end, I’ve developed a three-step process to help philanthropic leaders escape from the busy-ness of today to create the better world of tomorrow.

Weekend Link Roundup (May 14-15, 2016)

Our weekly round up of noteworthy items from and about the social sector. For more links to great content, follow us on Twitter at @pndblog....

Children and Youth

Brain development in young children is critical to their readiness for school and success later in life. "But preventable poverty and toxic stress can impede and derail a child's early brain development," write Marian Wright Edelman and Jackie Bezos on the Huffington Post's Politics blog. Which is why, "[i]n addition to quality interactions with parents, grandparents and other caregivers, young children need access to a full continuum of high quality early learning opportunities...."

Climate Change

Where's the beef? More to the point, asks Marc Gunther on his Nonprofit Chronicles blog, why aren't environmental groups working actively to reduce meat consumption and the number of factory farms, two of the biggest contributors to global warming?

Corporate Philanthropy

In Fortune, American Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern shares what she has learned over eight years in that position about what business and nonprofits can teach each other.

Data

On the Hewlett Foundation's Work in Progress blog, Sarah Jane Staats has five questions for Ruth Levine, director of the foundation's Global Development and Population Program, about the existing gender gap in data.

Education

How can we fix public education in America? The answer, says the Grable Foundation's Gregg Behr in a Q&A with Forbes contributor Jordan Shapiro, starts with the way kids learn.

On her Answer Sheet blog, the Washington Post's Valerie Strauss has the second part of an email conversation between noted education reform critic Diane Ravitch and hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, a supporter of such efforts. And if you missed the first part of the conversation, you can catch up here.

Have school-choice policies solved the problem they were meant to address -- namely, the strong link between a child's educational outcomes and the neighborhood conditions in which he or she has grown up? The Washington Post's Emma Brown reports.

Blind Spots No More: Introducing Transparency Trends

There are some lessons you learn that you never forget. "Mirror, signal, blind spot" is one of those lessons for me, dating all the way back to driver's ed when I was equal parts excited and horrified that someone was handing me the keys to a moving vehicle. I still recall the teacher emphasizing how important it is when changing lanes to first check the mirror for what is behind you; signal to let others know you are entering/exiting a lane; and then to check your blind spot, assuming there is someone invisible to you that only looking over your shoulder and out the window will reveal.

So, is our new Glasspockets' Transparency Trends a mirror, a signal, or a viewer for revealing the blind spots a foundation may be creating? It actually serves all these purposes. Transparency Trends, created with support from the Barr Foundation, aggregates the data we have collected from all foundations that have taken and publicly shared their "Who Has Glass Pockets?" self-assessment transparency profiles and allows the user to interact and display the data in a variety of ways.

The default view displays data about all 77 participating foundations, and users can perform a number of helpful transparency benchmarking activities with the tool, including:

• Learn which transparency elements are most and least commonly shared online;
• Access lists of which participating foundations share each transparency indicator;
• Access statistics about the sharing frequency of each transparency element;
• Compare a specific foundation to a select peer group by region/asset/foundation type; and
• Download a customized report detailing suggested improvements for a particular foundation.

5 Questions for...José García, Program Officer, Strong Local Economies, Surdna Foundation

You don't need a political scientist to tell you something is amiss in America. It's there, lurking, in the presidential primary campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, in our social media feeds, in between the lines of recent reports detailing falling mortality rates and rising rates of opioid addiction among working-class Americans. It's part frustration, part anger, but mostly anxiety about the economy and our economic future. Where have good jobs for average Americans gone? Are technology and globalization benefiting or hurting the economy? And where will new good jobs — the kind that make it possible for young Americans to pay off their student loans, buy a home, raise a family — come from?

Through its Strong Local Economies program, the New York City-based Surdna Foundation supports the development of a robust and sustainable economy in three ways: encouraging business development and acceleration, fostering equitable economic development, and working to improve job quality and career pathways. Recently, PND spoke with Surdna's José García about Ours to Share: How Worker Ownership Can Change the American Economy (50 pages, PDF), a new report published by the foundation that examines the potential of worker-owned firms and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) to create a more productive, stable, and equitable economy.

Philanthropy News Digest: What big macro trends is the Ours to Share report responding to? And how does it fit into the broader Strong Local Economies portfolio at Surdna?

José García: Our interest in fostering a strong local economy is one of the reasons we released the report. It responds in part to the growing number of low-quality jobs generated by the U.S. economy. We recognize that it's important for the economy, for workers, and for our shared prosperity to increase the number of well-paying jobs. These are good jobs, jobs that give people a chance to move into the middle class and a chance at a better future. We're in a period in which wages have stagnated while at the same time debt levels, for most Americans, have increased. Meanwhile, the top fraction of a percent has seen its wealth soar, resulting in a significant increase in inequality. Of course, growing inequality has an impact on economic growth, in that it leads to a decline in the number of people with discretionary income to spend. Here at Surdna, we believe the creation of good jobs is a critical factor in wealth creation and a key component of any agenda aimed at strengthening local economies. It's not a panacea, but we do see it as essential.

PND: It's a coincidence that the report is being released in the middle of a presidential primary season that has seen a self-proclaimed democratic socialist on the Democratic side make a serious run at his party's nomination. But the timing is kind of perfect, isn't it?

JG: I would love to say we planned to release the report during primary season, because you're right, the timing couldn't be better. And one of the reasons is because worker co-ops are a bipartisan idea. From the bipartisan passage of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), legislation that created employee stock ownership options for workers, to the more recent creation of a bipartisan Congressional Cooperative Business Caucus, both sides of the aisle have favored and continue to support actions to increase the levels of ownership in society. And that is what worker co-ops and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) do — they create good jobs for workers and, at the same time, they give workers a piece of the ownership pie.