Helen Brown Group

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4 Mid-COVID tasks that get you ahead

Hi there, and welcome back to the Intelligent Edge: mid-COVID edition.

While we’re hopeful that at least one of those 50-odd vaccines in development will work – and that it really will be ready early in 2021 – that’s still half a year away.

So, now’s a good time to take realistic stock of where we’re at, see what we can do to make the most of right now, and plan as best we can to make things easier for ourselves next spring and mitigate future disruption.

From prospect development and operations perspectives, what might that mean?

Top prospect checkup

Well, first, we’re all keenly aware that the pandemic has impacted businesses – so many businesses – in a negative way. Now is a really good time to do a quick scan of your top 25-50 prospects (for large organizations, that would mean the top 25-50 in each major gift officer’s portfolio).

  • How has their financial situation changed, if at all? Recalculate ratings accordingly.
  • Is your donor in a fairly stable (or growing) industry right now? Can you code that for pulling reports?
  • Have they made any recent large gifts, either to your nonprofit or to another?
  • Do they have a donor advised fund? If so, it is noted/coded in your database?
  • Check the obituaries to see if there has been a recent death in their family (which, I know. It’s just unbelievably sad that we need to do this, but it’s important).

End-user check-in

It’s not just our donors and their companies that have been impacted. We have been, too, of course. Everybody’s needs have changed. No matter what your position, now is a good time to check in with your supervisor and other end users to be sure that the reports and information and work you’ve been producing is still helping drive things forward for them.

  • Do they need less information because concentrating on large reports is tough right now?
  • Do they need the information bulleted, or in prose, or in an audio memo, because it’s easier for them to absorb?
  • Do they need different information? Is something else about their prospects more important than it used to be?

We’re not in the same-old same-old anymore. We’ve all changed, and our needs have all changed. Check in to see how you can meet the new needs that exist.

 Data hygiene checkup

If you’re having  trouble concentrating, now is a really good time to do mindless data hygiene tasks. You know, the ones you’ve been putting off. Crank up the music and get them done.

For example: Currently in your database in the company field for 38(0)(00) of your constituents, I can say with some certainty that there are a nearly-equal number of permutations of the same company name. Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs Group. THE Goldman Sachs Group. Goldman. GS. GSG. Goldman Sacks.

If you fix those now when a fairly auto-pilot task is just the ticket, in the future when you want to pull a report to answer the prospecting question “hey, just how many constituents do we have that work at Goldman Sachs?” you won’t get that sinking “UGH! I have to put in 38(0)(00) different queries!” feeling.

Also, if you haven’t looked at your data entry policies (or written them at all), now is a good time to do that, so that you avoid those messy name permutations (and any other data inconsistencies) in the future.

Ethics, Due Diligence, and The Law

Was your organization affected by the Blackbaud breach? Did it catch your team flat-footed when you tried to figure out how – or if – you needed to respond or send a notification to your constituency?

Did you write down the policies and procedures you learned through that process? Do you now have someone in your organization who is responsible for managing the process and/or response when something similar happens again? If not yet, do that now.

(If you’re not a Blackbaud client, have you gotten in touch with your database vendor to find out what precautions they’re taking to avoid placing you in the same situation?)

The first lawsuits that sprang up in the Blackbaud data hijacking situation were aimed solely at the company. However it was announced this week that a new lawsuit, Cohen v. Blackbaud Inc,. also names Harvard University, Bank Street College of Education, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum as defendants. (More information here$ and here).

There are probably more lawsuits to come. As prospect research professionals, we can help our fundraising teams stay on top of the news as it comes out.

We also tend to be the ones who are on the front lines of ethics, due diligence, and conforming with the laws that pertain to information-gathering and fundraising. These aren’t the most gripping topics, but they are important.

Can you discuss with leadership and opportunities for your team to gather for lunch-and-learns around ethics and data security? What does your team need to know to be prepared for a data breach, or to be sure you’re compliant with laws and ethics requirements?

What are you working on?

So those are just a few ideas for (actually really important) things you can do right now to stay ahead of the game and be prepared for the next few months. What are you doing right now to be prepared? Share it in the comments and bring your ideas to others!

If you want to hear more about ethics, due diligence, the law, prospect development, and how you can start those discussions in your nonprofit, join me at the APRA-MN virtual conference on October 20!

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Healing Bruises

I color-code the meetings on my calendar so that I can quickly see what’s coming up. Maybe you do, too?

It used to be mostly a combination of yellow (phone/Zoom meeting), blue (in person meeting), green (personal appointment) and purple (birthday/anniversary). Looking at my calendar today, it’s all yellow and purple, like my calendar is bruised.

It is, of course. We’re all bruised right now.

Except…

Yesterday was the sixth (and last) HBG Book Club meeting to discuss the very wonderful book by Hans Rosling called Factfulness. (Seriously, go read this book). My colleague Jayme is going to share her book review of it soon for Apra Connections and for this blog, but don’t wait for that. There are 25 of us in the book club, and every single one of us found this book had specific, useful ways to help us manage the information (and disinformation) that surrounds us.

Not only that, but Rosling, who died in 2017, was gob-smackingly prescient in predicting how this COVID pandemic would go down. That discussion was in the last chapter, so our conversation yesterday was a barn-burner on current events and how Rosling would have reacted to them.

As I watched 20 faces smiling and nodding and looking intense and debating and sharing, I thought about how much this pandemic has already changed things and is going to change them even more.

Take Zoom, for example. Five months ago, millions of people had never used it. Now almost everybody’s a Zoom user. We use it for work, and we use it in our personal lives now instead of static communication methods like email or Facebook so we can actually have the one-on-one conversations (or coffee! or friends “over” for cocktails!) that we’re all starved for now.

It’s amazing to think about how shockingly fast Zoom adoption went from zero to 100mph.

Those millions of new adopters include parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles – folks who are right in the middle of the (our) major-donor demographic. We in fundraising didn’t need to teach them a new technology to reach them; they’re already there, and they’re invested learners using it to talk with people they love.

Looking around the book club Zoom room, I realized that the virtual room wasn’t a substitute for an experience, it was a real thing on its own. People spoke in front of virtual backgrounds that meant something to them, and we were able to learn more about them and enjoy commonalities in discovering their chosen backgrounds. Kids and cats and significant others wandered in and out sometimes, and we took the opportunity to use those moments to actually get to know each other better.

We’ve lost a lot, but we’ve gained some things as well.

We’re going to emerge from this COVID-time very different people, working in very different work situations. What happens to all of those office spaces if we discover we no longer need them? Do they remain empty, or do we use them for something else entirely? What about all of the cars we don’t need if we’re no longer commuting? Do those driverless electric car ride-sharing services become a reality sooner? What will schools and colleges and universities look like?

The full impact on our personal lives and work environments and global climate have yet to be imagined. Six months ago was the era BC (Before COVID, of course). Right now we’re in a sort of no-man’s land. The post-pestilentia AD period may be in another 12-18 months, if all things go well.

We’re living through one of those historic periods like the major events we studied in school. It’s a time that historians a hundred years from now will study in detail and lecture on. It’s both terrifying and exciting. What’s next?

Inaction isn’t an option

How is your research department, your fundraising department, and your nonprofit getting prepared for the AD period?

These are things we’re thinking about here at the Helen Brown Group. Thinking about what the future might look like, and how we will help our clients meet those new challenges. Tools like Zoom and technology like fundraising analytics and machine learning and artificial intelligence will provide many of the exciting opportunities for us to navigate this new world…

…especially if we take advantage of the lessons we’re learning about how to use that technology to bring us closer to each other and help heal our world’s bruises.

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Planting a tree

Back in July of 1907, an American named Lawrence Johnston bought an English manor house for his mother, Gertrude. Built in the 1600s, the house and its surrounding 287 acres of mostly farmland were a suitable place for Johnston to try out an experiment.

Over the next seven years (before he went off to serve and return from the Great War), Johnson and a small team of staff created something new at Hidcote Manor: a master outline for a garden containing a variety of rooms and vistas that would showcase the flowers, bushes, trees, and shrubs there, as well as the topography of the land. [Read more…]

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Building Alliances for Nonprofit Success

Last month I had a great conversation with my friend Ellen Winiarczik about her strategic planning work with nonprofits.  Our two worlds run parallel to each other most of the time; while my team and I are usually helping an organization find funding sources, Ellen deals more with making sure that a nonprofit is structurally strong, that the organization is prepared to meet its mission and that its board has a firm grip on the rudder.  I asked Ellen to share a few words about her work and how our worlds collide (in a good way!) with each other.

Ellen and Helen

For 13 years I’ve run a firm that consults with nonprofits, foundations and government agencies, large and small, in strategic planning and implementation, resource investment, program evaluation, leadership and fund development as well as inclusive excellence.  I just returned from a 12 day exchange visit with leaders of US nonprofit organizations visiting their counterparts in charities of all flavors in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.  These visits that I lead every year are designed to create lasting relationships and learning opportunities amongst far-flung peers, and they’re always an enlightening and wonderful experience for all of us.

While our economy is showing small signs of recovery, it’s clear that an Irish banking collapse and an over-extended government calling for austerity measures means cut backs for everyone there, especially for nonprofits depending upon government programs and funding.

Every nonprofit organization no matter where you are needs to chart a steady course for their future.  Those that are the strongest, even in difficult times, find ways to strategically engage board members, staff, volunteers and stakeholders to guide the organization’s future by making concrete goal-driven plans to ensure success.

They do this in part by sharing mission and operational clarity that spans across the organization at all levels.  This phenomenon occurs when good communication exists, vertically and horizontally, and everyone is consulted about strategic plan creation and reasonable goal setting.

Strategic planning, according to BoardSource, the leading US information-sharing organization for nonprofit leadership, requires both thinkers and doers and must meet the needs of a wide variety of stakeholders.  If [any] are left out of the process, the final plan tends to serve the needs of a few who may not be fully aware of the actual impact of their decisions. The BoardSource website goes on to outline the different roles for each of the key players in this equation.

Board members govern the organization and set policy as well as outline strategic organizational direction.   Boards deal with multiple priorities including organizational governance, investment and spending policies, and programmatic direction.  Clearly board members need to have a keen eye on ensuring that financial resources are always available to support key programs that carry out the organization’s mission.

Executive leadership provides the data necessary to inform the board and works in tandem with the board to craft reasonable (or even lofty!) strategic plans.  Operational data includes specifics on all resources needed to run and sustain operations with enough in the bank for adverse situations (in a perfect world, 6-12 months).  This information is optimally sourced from all departments and outlines an organization’s current direction with solid operational data to inform and support key growth opportunities.

With data in hand executive leadership and board members feel confident that they have all the right information to make key strategic planning decisions that includes anticipating how much money, personnel, and facilities are needed to support existing operations, and grow, if desired.

But what if an organization has key roles such as development (fundraising) that are not invited to participate in the process?  In my experience, this happens all too often.  Here’s where effective communications including relationship building and strategic outreach as well as a healthy dose of data to support the development office’s real or potential impact on the bottom line come in handy.

Sometimes, though, it’s simply a case of the board and executive leadership not being aware of development’s expertise.  For example, I worked with a small organization on strategic planning a few years ago.  This organization was embedded in a larger, higher education institution, but hadn’t engaged in conversation with the fundraising staff of the parent institution during their 5 year existence.  While highly autonomous this small organization neglected to realize that they had larger institutional resources to leverage in securing future programmatic success.  Once they forged those relationships, key funders were quickly identified and became engaged as supporters.

Steering a clear course in these economic times can be unnerving. Boards, CEOs, and fundraising staff have the opportunity to create a strong team with which to weather the storm together.  As spring moves into summer it’s beginning to look like our economy may have some small squalls to navigate.  Nonprofits need to stay true to their course and communicate across the organization to accomplish their strategic outcomes for stability and growth.

Ellen Winiarczyk is President of Win-ar-zic & Associates in Denver, CO.  Her firm specializes in strategic planning, leadership development and evaluation for nonprofits and foundations.  She is on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/ellenw.

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