A Small Change- Fundraising Blog

Read PART 1 about working with employee groups and setting up a gift acceptance policy.

When starting your program you can look to develop in a few different ways (cont’d):
Have businesses sponsor event or programs. Look at your organization and figure out what is that you have that you can “sell” to a local business. They want to lend their name to your organization it makes them look good and adds credibility to your organization. What annual events or campaigns do you have that you could ask businesses to sponsor? I’ll talk more about setting levels at a later time. Is there a place on your organization’s website that you could post a message that says, “this page (or website) is sponsored by” and post a business logo? This can be done for an e-newsletter, a monthly publication you send out, a brochure you create, etc. It is important that you are specific about what the business is getting so they know what exactly they are sponsoring and for how long. And don’t sell yourself short. One of the biggest problems non-profits have is that they will offer too much for too little.

General contributions and grants. Lots of businesses have money that they want to give to local and national community projects. My best advice here is that you just need to ask for it. A mid to large size organization might get some random gifts from local businesses but if you are a small non-profit they probably don’t know about you (same thing if you’re a mid-size non-profit). Put together a plan for how you will approach past business givers, and a plan for how you will look to involve new ones.

I could probably talk in a great deal of more depth about business and will continue to at a later time. Do you have any specific stories or questions related to business giving?

How do you start and cultivate relationships with local businesses?

This is a question that I ask myself every day. I work as the project lead for the business giving program at my work. As you look to start engaging with local businesses it is important to have a gift acceptance policy. Who will you accept gifts from and who will you choose not to? You might say that all money is good money. But what if the business is counter to your mission. For example an organization like Money Tree that provides short-term high interest loans is a bad organization for a non-profit that works to help financially struggling families build assets and move out of poverty. Why? Because high interest loans create more financial problems for a low-income family than they solve. It is also important to have a gift acceptance policy so that you know what kinds of gifts you will receive and what kinds of gifts you will not. For example many businesses want to give in-kind goods and in many cases that is wonderful for your organization. However, what if they want to donate used shoes to your organization and you exist to teach people to learn to read. What are you going to do with all those shoes? Your board should approve this policy so everyone is on the same page.

When starting your program you can look to develop in a few different ways:
Work with local businesses employees. Involve local offices to do an employee fund drive for your organization. This provides a great base level of support, can boast your number of annual fund donors, and is a great way to garner higher-level support within a business. I will often ask to meet with a member of upper level management to brag to them about how great their employees did in running the drive. I will then talk about all the great things that the employee’s did and ask the senior manager if the business would be interested in matching their wonderful employee’s gifts.

PART 2 will be about sponsorships and general contributions. Please post questions, stories or comments about how you have or have not worked with local businesses.

Do you ever wonder how to learn new information about your donors? Or even how to find new donors? Well here are a few tips and places that I go when I’m looking for information. It is important when doing prospect research that you have a policy on how you handle this information. A good standard is that you should only keep information that you would be willing to hand over if that donor asked for their own file. Prospect research information is a delicate subject all the methods that I am going to talk about are all publicly accessible using donor names and addresses. Be very careful how you use and keep information you find.

When first researching your donors the best place to go is to look within your existing database. How much do they give, what programs have they historically given too, where do they live? A great start is to use traditional search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN. Here is a great example of a Google name search:
(”Jason Dick”|”Jason Robert Dick”|”Jason R Dick”|”Jason R. Dick”|”Jay Dick”|”Jay Dick”)

One good thing to look for is what other organizations is the donor giving to or involved in. This can help you figure out what level or amount to make “the ask” for and what they might be interested in giving to. It can also help you know who the donor knows to help in talking with them or in getting a meeting with them. A fellow board member, church member, chamber or rotary member are great people to help in networking. Social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook are great to see who your current board members or donors know.

A lot of prospect research for individuals can be done just by using Google. Some organizations will use external businesses to help them comb their database for information examples include Blackbaud Analitics or PIN. There are also online prospecting tools such as ZoomInfo, Foundation Search, or ProPlatinum (a service that combines a number of other prospecting tools). Most counties have public records for homes purchased, this can be a good way to know the wealth demographic of a specific donor via the purchase price of their home (and a great place to learn donors middle names or initials).

Another great place to go for information is OpenSecrets.org a database searching political contributions of people. This site is a public disclosure of all campaign gifts given by individual donors. The use of library periodical searches can be a big help for some of your more well known donors. For your business donors or high-level donors you can do research into their foundations and look at their public 990 form. Website to do research on a 990 are Guidestar and Foundation Finder.

Please comment on other websites that you have used or ideas and strategies you have. I would also be interested in your feedback as to if this kind of information is surprising or offensive to those of you who are donors.

Below is a list of other handy prospecting website to visit:
http://www.zabasearch.com/
King County Parcel Viewer

READ PART 1

How do I involve my board? A great way to start a fundraising campaign is to talk with your board about what your non-profit’s specific need is and have them think through what businesses/groups/persons they have a personal connection with. Have those board members commit to making a personal gift themselves and commit to ask 3 to 5 additional people. Sit down with each individual board member and talk with them and help them prepare to talk with those 3 to 5 persons. Then go along with them and help them out.

A great way to help a board member think about talking with donors is to get them to find a story about your organization that means something to them personally. A story about a client you served, or a part of your history. Make that story the piece they share and have them talk about why it means something to them. And make sure that there is something you are asking about or asking for as part of the meeting (plan this ahead of time and know who is going to do it). I like to look at this as providing the donor the opportunity to do something or give something. Donors want the opportunity and they want to be asked. (Let me know if you have specific questions about the ask and I’d love to talk about or get a friend to talk about that topic.)

Well I won’t go on forever… some other topics to talk about at some point include: the importance that your board members are giving and frequently asked questions from donors. One final note I want to say a great big thank you to board members & community volunteers. We could not do it without you it is your countless hours of help and support that keep us going.

Am I talking about things that interest you? If not let me know what you want to here visit my Ideas, Questions & Answers page.