by Jason Dick on July 16, 2008
I want to start by saying I have this problem as well. It is easy to get comfortable with our processes and our email lists. But I’d like to advocate for the use of an old tool in fundraising, the telephone. How often do you email or send a letter instead of make a phone call? I find that email can be a great way to contact a large number of people at one time. There are some amazing things you can do to personalize email lists… I digress (I told you I’m part of the problem).
I’d like to offer that there are many things we miss by sending out an email. Talking with a donor on the phone allows us to learn a lot that we can’t learn over email. Email conversations are very scripted and short whereas on the phone you can ask questions and respond quicker. You can read verbal cues, things like hesitation or tone that we miss when we only use email. What are a few things you can learn from making a phone call:
- Donors will often volunteer personal information about themselves or their family.
- Many times in the small talk you will learn what is going on and important in their lives now (these are great things to follow up on later).
- Donors will often talk about their giving interests or why they give to your organization.
- You can learn more about the age and personality of your donor.
- Often you can tell by the tone of their voice and their response how you rank in their giving priorities.
Do you have any additions to this list? Leave a comment below.
by Jason Dick on July 14, 2008
I was sitting in a marketing committee meeting the other day and it started my mind thinking about how fundraising and marketing mix. I started to wonder what kind of connection there is between marketing and fundraising. I think there is an obvious connection between sales and fundraising and being able to confidently and concisely talk about your nonprofit. But does running radio spots or television spots make a difference?
Fundraising is more about word-of-mouth and keeping & upgrading existing relationships. From what I have seen providing your donors with a good experience and talking with them about how their gift makes a difference is better for your organization than always trying to find new donors. The idea that keeping them is easier than finding them.
What about using marketing with a new annual fundraising plan? If you are trying to build community support, maybe there is a place for marketing. I don’t think that a solid marketing program is going to get very far in finding new major donors or upgrading existing donors. But, I think marketing could be a huge help in getting your message out there into the community. Helping build your image to a community that does not know you exist or change your perceived image to a community that has hear about you but doesn’t know what you do.
Do you use marketing campaigns at your nonprofit? Have you found marketing to be an important piece of your annual plan?
by Jason Dick on July 9, 2008
About a month or so ago I started a new job. I didn’t realize how much time I had spent building relationships and figuring out processes and how to get things. It can be an amazing and frustrating thing to start something new. Here are a few things I learned and tried along the way.
One important thing that I learned is how important it is to have a good understanding of your “informal value.” Jim Collins in his Good to Great in the Social Sector pamphlet refers to this as legislative leadership.
Legislative leadership relies more upon persuasion, political currency, and shared interests to create the conditions for the right decisions to happen.
In the nonprofit world autocratic leadership doesn’t really work. I needed to get to know my fellow staff and understand and show respect to the processes that were in place before I came up with or tried to institute any new ideas. This can be incredible irritating and frustrating but I found it to be so important.
Read as much as you can about the organization. Figure out how they talk about themselves and how they present themselves to the community. I try and take what I’ve learned and make it my own so I can talk competently about the organization using a mix of their words and mine.
One of my biggest mistakes coming in was being too concerned about what my “new role” was going to be. I started to realize very early that the more time I spent in the organization the more I would start to see gaps and understand what I really needed to push to move along and what happened naturally already.
by Jason Dick on July 7, 2008
One of the most frustrating problems in the fundraising world is when you don’t have internal support. It is next to impossible to get anything done if the Executive Director or President does not support the work that you do. But it can be incredibly frustrating and difficult if the program staff or in some cases faculty or doctors don’t support the fundraising process.
Here are a few things that I have done to gain the support of organizations that I’ve worked for. Recognize the work of the program staff (this works well with faculty).
- Make sure to say good things about them out in the community, if people talk about how great they are because of you it can make a big difference.
- Show everyone that you are doing work. I’m not talking about charts and graphs I’m talking about bringing donors on tours, holding an event on-site, or involving them in a cultivation or solicitation meeting. If people see that you are good at what you do and that you are working hard for them it makes a big difference.
- On donor tours I like to have the donor meet program staff. This allows program staff to speak directly into their programs and experience (which donors really like). It also allows you to recognize the program staff by acknowledging they play a key part in the organization to the donor.
- In the nonprofit world more than the business world leadership must come from the bottom (I will talk about this more in my next post). This means that you need to spend time talking to people in the staff room, take your co-workers out to coffee, make sure you are there for and remember important events.
I’d love to hear from you any stories good or bad about staff supporting the fundraising function. What have you done to help people see how important fundraising is?
by Jason Dick on July 2, 2008
I’m sure many of you have said those very words in vain many times. I am relatively new to creating Crystal Reports but am amazed at their usefulness. For those of you that use Raiser’s Edge, Crystal Reports can work relatively seamlessly into your development plan.
I love Raiser’s Edge but the stock reports that come with it never suit my needs. Ever since I started using Crystal Reports it has changed my whole development planning process. I use to use spreadsheets religiously for everything. The major problem that I had when I did this is it can be hard to locate all your information, for longer is everything held in the same system. The brilliant thing about a well set-up Crystal Report is that you don’t have to do anything once the report is set-up. If you diligently input information and use actions to move your donor along the process (moves management) then you can have great reports without working at it.
One problem that I’ve found regarding Crystal Reports is that they can be incredible confusing to create. It is not always simple to set-up a report and the more you use them the more complicated they get. One place I go for help with Crystal Reports is Blackbaud Forums. This is a great place to get Raiser’s Edge help and Crystal Reports help.
I’d love to hear from you whether you use Crystal Reports, have had trouble setting reports up, and what kinds of reports and things you are tracking. I thought it might be useful if I posted a few sample Crystal Reports for us all to help answer questions and such. If you have a report you’d like to post please email it to me (at infosmallchange@gmail.com) and I’ve love to post it here.
