As Americans, we’re acculturated to believe – deep down in our cell structure – that no matter how dire the situation, the cavalry will always come at the last minute to save the day.
The cavalry can be a heroine, a hero, a bunch of dusty dudes on horses, or a squad of geeky introverts, but you only have to look at every movie ever made in Hollywood to know that when help is needed, it will come. [Read more…]
As hard as it is to believe, 2017 will be here in two weeks and three days, folks. There will be much you won’t have any control over in the year ahead, but there are lots of things you can do to help yourself, and your organization, be prepared for the challenges of 2017.
Protect Yourself Online
If you haven’t already, let this be the year that you finally subscribe to a password-generating software program. PC Magazine has compiled their list and side-by-side comparison of the Best Password Managers of 2017. They’re not expensive. Just do it. Also, check that your virus protection and anti-spyware software are auto-running. If you don’t have those two things, buy them. [Read more…]
“Be More Productive,” “100 Time Management Tips” and “Increase Your Productivity” are some likely headlines you’ve seen in your LinkedIn or Twitter feeds. It seems there are an unending number of tips and tricks for improving your efficiency at work. However, for many of us, the idea of embracing even a few new ideas – never mind 20, 50 or 100 ideas – can seem like a daunting task. Some of these recommendations have been passed along so many times it’s hard to know where they came from or if they even make sense in the modern workplace. Do the authors of these articles even use these tips themselves? Reading all these lists can seem antithetical to being productive. [Read more…]
I’m going to let you in on a sweet little secret that only insiders at HBG know. (wait for it)
You probably already know that everyone who works at HBG is a full-time employee, but except for a core group of us who come into HQ every day, most of us work virtually. We have satellite offices in Montana, Louisiana, Iowa, New York, Maryland, Tennessee, South Carolina and Massachusetts.
Unless we’re flat-out-crazy-busy or traveling, every other week we have a staff meeting, even though we’re far apart. It used to be a boring conference call, but now we use a service that allows us to see each others’ faces as we chat, à la Brady Bunch. [Read more…]
Is there a link between income inequality and philanthropic giving stagnation?
Chris Carnie, chair of the UK prospect research firm, Factary, thinks there might be. In his recent blog post, Chris writes about middle donors, the lifeblood of every nonprofit:
It’s an interesting point.
Over here in the United States, the middle class is shrinking to its smallest cohort since 1971. According to the Pew Research Center, that statistic actually carries a small amount of good news in that there has been a greater shift of families moving up economically than down. The down side is that there is less wealth to go around for the 80% left in the middle, lower-middle, and lowest income tiers.
And just like the UK, charitable giving in the United States is also static; here it’s been around 2% of gross domestic product since record-counting began in the 1970s. Is that stagnation related solely to economic factors? Or is there more?
In an opinion piece on the Chronicle of Philanthropy (CoP) website this week, Kevin Murphy, immediate past chair of the board of directors of the Council on Foundations suggests that the problem with stagnation of giving in our sector is simply not reaching high enough. He argues that the philanthropic sector needs to band together in support of a common goal:
“Instead of focusing on narrow tax incentives, it’s time for charities and foundations to set national goals for increasing the amount that Americans give to nonprofit organizations.
For as long as records have been kept, charitable giving has remained stuck at about 2 percent of the gross domestic product. There may be a lot of reasons that we’ve never grown that number, but one surely is that we’ve never set a bigger national goal.
As we open a year of presidential elections — and much deliberation about the state of the country — it’s the right time for nonprofits to decide we will work together to increase charitable giving to at least 3 percent of our gross domestic product in the next three years.”
But who would fund and organize (and run?) that amorphous campaign? And would it work?
History shows that the answer is no.
Suzanne Perry in the CoP article “The Stubborn 2% Giving Rate” writes:
“[E]ven in the best of times, organized efforts to get people to give more have sputtered.
Independent Sector, a coalition of charities and foundations, led a sustained campaign in the late 1980s and early 1990s to get everyone to increase their donations. Known as Give Five, it placed magazine, radio, and television ads urging Americans to donate 5 percent of their gross incomes to charity—up from the average of about 2 percent that its surveys showed individuals were giving then.
The effort attracted millions of dollars in foundation money and spawned dozens of local efforts around the country. The Advertising Council adopted the campaign, soliciting free services from ad agencies. It had a logo (a circle with a small 5-percent wedge highlighted) and slogans like “Give Five: What You Get Back Is Immeasurable.”
But it didn’t work.
“There were a few blips where it went up a little bit, but there was never any real measurable, strong increase,” says John Thomas, who was vice president for communications at Independent Sector at the time. One problem, he suspects: Giving is a “very personal thing,” and some people didn’t like being told how much they should give.”
So what’s the answer?
Jay Love, CEO of Bloomerang and chair of the AFP Ethics Committee argues that there are five pragmatic, fixable factors blocking the growth of charitable giving.
On that last point, Love says:
“[A]s long as the average nonprofit organization has an overall donor retention rate below 50%, the 2% of GDP barrier will not budge.
Just think what an overall rise in the donor retention rate of merely 10-15% would do for overall dollars raised, if all other factors remained constant. We could see the dollars raised percentage of the GDP growing to 3 or 4% over time!”
Naturally, I think prospect development has a large part to play.
There are more than 1.6 million nonprofit organizations in the US and the sector has been growing exponentially (according to the Urban Institute, the number of nonprofits in the United States grew 25 percent between 2001 and 2011).
With all of that growth, there are fewer than 5,000 prospect development professionals in our industry. (I’m counting APRA, AASP and RiF’s membership numbers and guesstimating the number of professionals who aren’t current members). Even if you take away half of the 1.6m number to accommodate for associations and grant-giving organizations, that’s one prospect development professional for every 160 nonprofits.
No wonder we can’t get any traction!
When you consider the huge impact that prospect development has brought to organizations that have invested in it, Jay Love’s arguments 1 through 4 clearly apply. Prospect development is only one piece of the professional fundraising toolkit, but it’s as important as every other necessary cog in the machine.
In fact, I believe that it’s one of the critical pieces that will help the nonprofit industry move forward, because we can help answer those pragmatic needs.
Reading these articles and opinions, it’s clear there are multiple reasons why we’re losing ground on middle donors. But to paraphrase Chris Carnie, there is an increasing number of wealthy people out there, and a lot more people in the world who need their help.
We need to borrow fundraising tactics, like prospect development, from others that are working, be courageous, and forge new paths for others to follow. Maybe if we do, 2016 will be the year we crack the 2% nut.
If you haven’t heard the phrase “the Internet of Things,” you’re not alone: according to a study by Accenture, most Americans (87%) are unfamiliar with it. But most of us use IoT-enabled devices every day. It’s an increasingly hot topic, and its implications already have major impact on all of our lives, even in nonprofits, even in fundraising and research. [Read more…]
On vacation this summer a friend asked me this 
question: What would you do if money were no object?
Take a second and think about that for yourself.
What was your first instinct? To travel the world? Buy several new somethings? Become a philanthropist? Solve a world problem?
What if we could change up the question, and apply it to our profession?
What tool or app or resource would you map out or build for a better future for our industry if money were no object? Big or small, incremental or game-changing; how would this investment take our profession to the next level? [Read more…]
Ping! Another email. Pong! An instant message from a coworker asking for advice on evaluating hedge fund compensation. Bzzz. The sound of a new text message. Your 2:00 meeting is running behind and you’ll be late for your 3:30 meeting. [Read more…]
At the APRA Prospect Development Conference in New Orleans last month, the three TEDx-style APRA Talks concentrated on change. Two things struck me as common themes:
As a consultant, I work with clients every day who are dealing with change. Some of the change is welcome, like when we’re hired to do a training. Or when we provide an extra pair of hands to help with a big screening project, or to just be there for the duration of a campaign.
Sometimes, though, it becomes evident that the change I’m bringing was imposed on the people I’ve been called in to work with. Maybe that’s happened to you? You were stuck working with a consultant or vendor you hadn’t asked for. [Read more…]
If you’re a fundraiser with a brand-new prospect research position to fill, where do you go to find the best candidates? Perhaps you are someone who was recently hired as a researcher, prospect manager, or who will be doing fundraising analytics or overseeing research – where are your peeps? [Read more…]