It’s been a month since the IFC 2018 has ended. The danger is always to return to ‘business as usual’. However, more than ever this year indicated the start of a new era. Fundraising will Read more…
Managing one culture is tricky enough but what about when two or more organisations want to work together to achieve a shared outcome? How can they ensure their cultures work together for the benefit of Read more…
As a fundraiser, who do you consider to be your most important stakeholder? Think about it for a while. Actually, you probably didn’t need to think about for very long at all. You said donors, Read more…
There was once a piano in the centre of the bar in the hotel where we gathered to share fundraising stories. As the night wore on, the crowd sang with gusto as the lone player Read more…
I’d be shocked if there were any, or many, Trump supporters among this community of fundraising hipsters. But how many otherwise great people inadvertently emulate him as fundraising practitioners? What do I mean? Well, if Read more…
In ons vakgebied zijn we allemaal handig in het gebruik van -vaak Engelstalig- marketingjargon. Elke dag zijn we als fondsenwervers bezig met high value donors, life time value of upgrading. Onze collega’s houden zich bezig met campaigning en event planning. Eigenlijk alles wat geld oplevert. Loyalty is ook zo’n woord dat rond zingt in onze branche: iedereen weet wat er mee bedoeld wordt en iedere fondsenwerver is er op zijn of haar manier mee bezig. We meten resultaten om dan te concluderen dat dit ene welkomstpakket perfect gewerkt heeft of die bedankbrief misschien bijgeslepen moet worden. Ons uiteindelijke doel is om de kaalslag van donoruitval tegen te gaan en je donors te binden. Ze mogen niet weglopen! Onder geen beding! (more…)
In part 1 of this blog post I referred to a presentation by Karen Osborne ….in which she addressed the (lack of) WOW-factor in fundraising. In the mean time I did have a WOW-moment of my own that I would like to share with you.
The other day I was surfing the web and stranded on a crowd funding website called Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter, unknown to me at that time, is a platform for artists to publish their projects in order to raise a specified amount of money, necessary to realize their goals. (more…)
Three months ago I was part of an audience listening to Karen Osborne giving a presentation on ‘Stewardship’. Great presentation, as usual, most of which I had heard before. But at the same time we can’t hear enough about the importance of being donor centric, delivering on the promise, showing the impact. It makes me realize we can still do much better.
But there was something else in Karen’s presentation that triggered me. That I kept thinking about. She was talking about the WOW-moment (not meaning the ‘normal’ things like delivering on the promise). And when asking the audience: when was the last time we were ‘WOW-ed’ by an organization and when was the last time we were really pleasantly surprised, I realized I couldn’t think of any example. (more…)
It’s not an easy job for us fundraisers to realize increasing incomes year after year. It becomes increasingly difficult to grow in a competitive market that even is consolidating (for private donations http://www.geveninnederland.nl/). A strong fundraising plan in itself is not sufficient anymore. We need to develop a more integrated approach. Strategic marketing planning should be added to your fundraising efforts and thereby considering the following questions:
In order to address these issues we need focus and make clear strategic choices before we start making our yearly fundraising plans (the numbers in € ‘s). In other words, what will be your marketing strategy to win the ‘battle’ for the donor?
Marketing in the nonprofit, there are supporters and opponents of introducing marketing in charities, some see opportunities, others threats. I strongly believe that marketing orientation is crucial in achieving your mission, in other words “no marketing, no mission”!
Autonoom stijgende inkomsten uit fondsenwerving realiseren is er niet meer bij anno 2011. Het wordt steeds moeilijker om te blijven groeien in een markt die al maar concurrerender wordt en bovendien consolideert (voor particuliere giften http://www.geveninnederland.nl/).
Een ijzersterk fondsenwervend plan op zichzelf is niet meer voldoende. We moeten integraler kijken, strategische marketingplanning eraan vooraf laten gaan en nadenken over vragen als:
Dit dwingt onze sector om focus aan te brengen en duidelijke strategische keuzes te maken voordat we aan onze fondsenwervende jaarplannen (de cijfertjes in €’s) beginnen. Met andere woorden: wat wordt jouw marketingstrategie in de ‘slag’ om de donateur?
Marketing in de non-profit; een vak apart! Of toch niet? Er zijn voor- en tegenstanders van marketing in de goede doelen; sommigen zien kansen, anderen bedreigingen. Mijn overtuiging is dat marketingoriëntatie van levensbelang is in het realiseren van je Missie, “zonder Marketing geen Missie”.
OK, so you’ve done your strategic speed-dating (also known as ‘a pitch’), and it’s time to get on with some proper work.
All being well, you’ve genuinely will fallen in love with an agency. Your agency. All being well they will be making you feel that they only have eyes for you. Even so, before getting into bed you may want some form of pre-nuptial agreement. It’s not vital. It’s not always necessary. But it’s generally a good thing to know what you both expect from the relationship. So whether it is a formal contract or a simple exchange of do’s and don’ts, you may want to specify:
They may sound like passion-killers, but, hell, let’s hope this isn’t a one-night stand.
Relationships, eh, who’d have ‘em!? We talk about them a lot in fundraising don’t we?
So today I want to give a tender caress to those relationships we probably don’t focus on enough, namely those between clients and their agencies (and vice versa).
Some of the highly embarrassing clipart I used many years ago when addressing this topic
In doing so I’d like to tip my hat to the tweets and blogs of Gill McLellan (@gillmcl) and Alison McCants (@alisonmccants). Apart from giving wise words, they prompted me to dust down a training course I used to run on this topic. Apart from some embarrassing clipart, I found some advice that I think still holds true today despite a much-changed agency world from when I devised the training more than 15 years ago.
By changed agency world, I mean massively fragmented. It used to be that fundraising clients made do with one agency. This tended to be a direct marketing agency, most of which eventually described themselves as ‘integrated’ (meaning: ‘Please let us do everything for you! We don’t know how to do everything but I’m sure we can rope in someone who does!’).
Menigeen zal zich afvragen, fondsenwerven een hype? Dat kan toch helemaal niet? Nee natuurlijk niet. Maar toch gedragen veel fondsenwervers zich wel zo en niet alleen de juniors.
Fondsenwerving is een vak, laat ik daar geen misverstand over laten bestaan. Een vak waarbij je veel technieken moet kunnen toepassen. Zonder goede samenhang tussen die technieken en zonder aandacht voor de mens achter de donateur gaan we het echter niet redden.
Haaks hierop staat een fenomeen dat ik spreadsheet marketing zou willen noemen. Een spreadsheet met daarop alle kengetallen van de actie, als rechtsonder geen positief bedrag verschijnt dan werkt het dus niet. Dat past misschien wel bij marketing, maar daarmee doen we onze doelen en onszelf tekort.
This month exactly 10 years ago, I started my first job as a fundraiser! And from the beginning I was hooked. I love fundraising, because it enables change. Vision and passion combined with great fundraising enables important change. And as a fundraiser you play an important part in that change.
So, looking back over those 10 years, what did I learn? I’ve listed the most important strategic ingredients for a successful fundraising program. Ten years of fundraising experience summarized in one blog post. You only need 3:49 minutes of reading to catch up with 10 years. Now that seems like the bargain of the decade!
(A big thank you to all my fundraising colleagues from Médecins du Monde, Médecins Sans Frontières and Greenpeace who made me the fundraiser I currently am. And a special thanks to Roger and John for the teachings in the early days!)
101fundraising…OK, so back to the basics of fundraising, hey?! Let me think, should I speak about ROI, LTV, DRTV, hum… yeah, why not! But something more “CORE”?
Found it! Let’s talk about PEOPLE.
I can see your face, but don’t worry, I won’t tell you for the 102nd time that “People give to people”. You know all about it yet. So, let’s have a look at us fundraisers, after all, we are people … and perhaps the best assets of a fundraising program (OK … just after donors).
So, my first post is dealing with what I spent more time on since I became a Fundraising Director some years ago: human resources! How to recruit, retain and develop the good fundraisers for your program. Because, let’s face it, you can be a real genius, but you need people for implementing the strategy you’ve designed for your organization. The good news is that dealing with human resources can be compared with dealing with a direct marketing program: you need to recruit staff, engage them, develop their contribution, and get the best of them as long as you can retain them.
Fondsenwervers: altijd drukdrukdruk op zoek naar nieuwe markten, nieuwe middelen, nieuwe slimmigheden, the next big thing. Van de bobbel in de envelop naar scherpe listbrokers naar het perfecte callcenter. Fondsenwerver: take a break! Adem in… adem uit… Wat gebeurt er om je heen?
Er komt een e-mail binnen, een vraag over je de campagne. En hee, een telefoontje. Een donateur wil een verhuizing doorgeven. En kijk eens: weer een deelnemer erbij op je actiesite. Wat blijkt: tijdens je zoektocht naar de best-werkende-en-toch-voordelige prospectlijst en het ultieme belscript blijken er gewoon mensen vanuit zichzelf (!) naar jouw organisatie toe te komen. Zomaar, vanuit het niets! Hoe is het mogelijk…. Zeg eens fondsenwerver, hoe ga je hier eigenlijk mee om?
Best interessant om eens naar te kijken, deze ‘inbound leads’. Warmer dan dit zal je ze niet krijgen. Donateurs en niet-donateurs die jou weten te vinden. Die actief contact zoeken met vragen, meedoen aan je campagne, administratieve wijzigingen doorgeven en (ja, die ook) opzeggen. Allemaal personen die wachten op jouw reactie.
Maar hoe ga je hier mee om? Het is een heel diverse groep mensen met heel diverse vragen. Het lijkt bijna onmogelijk om hier één, of enkele, programma’s op in te richten. En om hoeveel mensen gaat het eigenlijk? En om wie?
As a relationship professional, I’m a big fan of Alexander Graham Bell’s electronic speech machine(*), the latter-day telephone.
My mantra when communicating with major donors: phone first. Phone first. Ph f. (Soothing, isn’t it?)
Email and letters don’t allow for the bilateral conversations our donors and prospects deserve for their generosity. The best “touches” by phone aren’t end-games of trivial information or data collection, either. The goal of every call you make should be to begin, advance or deepen a new or long-term relationship between your prospect/donor, you the fundraiser, and your organization.
The secondary goal of every phone call is to move beyond the business at hand – the hook – to get your donor/prospect to articulate what they need from you to further engage with your organization. The language and approach can be the same for loyal donors and discovery prospects: “I welcome the opportunity to update you on where we stand today, and our goals for the year.”
Hey, did you hear the one about the donor who wanted his money back? In January Robert Burton, a longtime supporter of the University of Connecticut’s athletics program asked the school to return his $3 million gift. From all appearances, Burton’s disagreement with the school is profound, personal and insurmountable.
He plans to cease all support to the University. Burton wants the family’s name removed from the “Burton Family Football Complex”, he won’t renew his luxury suite at the football field ($50,000/year), he won’t purchase an advertisement in the football program ($8,000/year), and he will cease funding a summer coaching clinic to the tune of $20K per year. Finally, he requested the funds from his two endowed scholarships transferred from athletics to the business school.
Certainly this is a problem that brewed for some time. Can any amount of customer service on the part of UCONN fix the relationship between it and the Burton family? It seems unlikely. It’s not unheard of that donor relationships sour to the point that a donor requests the return of his gift, but this level of acrimony is uncommon. Occasionally someone other than the donor requests a return of funds.
“Originally, a one-night stand was a single theatre performance, usually by a guest performer(s) on tour, as opposed to an ongoing engagement. Today, however, the term is more commonly applied to a single sexual encounter, an example of casual sex, in which neither participant has any intention or expectation of a long-term sexual or romantic relationship.” (source: Wikipedia)
Hope I caught your attention. Sex usually does, so I guess you’re still reading. Being new to blogging I recently found out that metaphors usually do the trick. In this blog post a one-night stand opposes the long term focus in fundraising, which is trying to engage in meaningful and lasting supporter relationships.
