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Ask with authority

May 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When volunteers are prepared to ask for a gift, they will shed their natural fears of asking.

Here are three ways you can teach your volunteers to ask with authority.

One, teach your volunteers to give generously first.

As Reynold Levy, President of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, says in his book, Yours for the Asking, “When asking someone you know for a gift to charity, no argument is more convincing than citing your own donation, and no words more compelling than ‘please join me.’”

When you have given generously to a nonprofit, it gives you the authority and confidence to ask others to do the same.

Two, teach your volunteers to prepare to tell a story that portrays their passion for the work of your nonprofit.

There are three types of stories they can tell. First, they can tell a story about a person whose life has been transformed by the work of the nonprofit. Second, they can tell a story of someone who needs the services of your nonprofit. Third, if they don’t feel comfortable telling a success story or a story about someone who needs the services of your nonprofit, tell a story about their own connection to the nonprofit.

Stories are a powerful way to convey their passion for your cause. Their passion and enthusiasm give them authority to ask for a gift. Flowing from telling the story to asking for the gift will feel natural and give them authority to ask.

Three, teach your volunteers to take time to practice. Practice in front of a mirror. Practice telling their story to their spouse or a friend and practice the ask.

“Please join me in supporting this nonprofit. Would you consider making a gift of $_____?”

While they practice making the ask, practice being silent after asking, giving the potential donor a chance to consider how to respond.

Practice will give them confidence and confidence gives them authority to ask for the gift.
Wisdom for the week: Give generously yourself, prepare a story you can be passionate about, practice the story and the ask, and then you will ask with authority.
Filed Under: Asking for the gift Tagged With: , , , ,

Do your donors look forward to your thank you letters?

April 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Recently my youngest sister thanked me for a letter I sent her for her birthday and then she said to me, “Yours is the only letter I get.”

I have nine brothers and sisters and many years ago I began to write each a letter on their birthday.

My sister’s comment reminded me how few people write letters anymore and how few people receive personal letters through the mail any more.

This is a golden opportunity for fundraisers. If you make your thank you letters highly personal, they will likely be the only personal letters the person receives and they will be deeply meaningful.

I used to write thank you letters that were virtually form letters.

Not anymore. Now I write highly personal, emotional thank you letters.

Yesterday I wrote a thank you letter to a frequent and generous donor. The letter filled an entire page. This afternoon I decided to drop by and deliver the letter in person.

When I arrived I handed him the letter. He opened the envelope and read the entire letter. Then he looked up at me and said, “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Wisdom for the week: If you write personal and emotional thank you letters, your donors will look forward to them and they might even return thanks.

Filed Under: Growing Donor Relationships Tagged With: ,

What is the Gold Standard in Fundraising?

March 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In his book, First Things First: The Ultimate Guidebook for Early Stage Nonprofits, Tom Iselin draws on an article from the Harvard Business Review to develop a list of the most effective forms of communication nonprofits can use to raise funds.

He adds a couple of his own to the list but the list has a clear winner. Tom calls it the gold standard of fundraising–one on one meetings. Here’s his list:

Most Effective Methods of Communication that Lead to Giving

  1. One on One Meetings
  2. Small group meetings or parties
  3. Telephone conversations
  4. Personalized, hand-written letters
  5. Personalized word processed letters
  6. E-mail or text solicitation
  7. Web, blog and other online solicitations
  8. Annual fundraisers or large group events
  9. Mass mail/direct mail using videos
  10. Mass mail/direct mail
  11. Grants
  12. Brochure distribution
  13. Advertisements

I chuckle when I think of my career as a fundraiser. I started out with number 11, writing a grant application.

Then I moved up to number 10, mass mail/direct mail.

Next I moved up to #5 and #3, personalized, word processed letters and telephone conversations.

It took me many years to get to #1, one on one meetings. I remember one of the first times I, along with our campaign chairperson, met face to face with a donor. After I explained  the project and told a couple of stories about people being helped by the nonprofit we served, the campaign chairperson asked for a $5000 gift.

The person said she had looked at her finances before the meeting and decided she could give $5000. “Would you like me to write a check now or send you the check?” she asked.

We chose now. And I was hooked on face to face fundraising.

Wisdom for the week: Don’t wait as long as I did to move up to the gold standard in fundraising.

Filed Under: Face to Face Fundraising Tagged With: , ,

Breakthrough Outside the Majorities’ Approach to Fundraising

March 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago I watched an online video by a marketing guru, Dan Kennedy. He works with a wide variety of businesses in different industries. In the video he lists three mantras that he repeats every morning.

While I don’t think he’s ever worked with a nonprofit, his three points have something to teach us about fundraising. Here they are:

  • I will do the opposite of whatever the majority does. I will run towards the fire.
  • I will find breakthroughs outside the majorities’ approach to any given business, not inside it.
  • I will stay relentlessly focused on the obstacle to and source of all wealth: attraction of customers.

When I developed the Green Light Fundraising system I had never heard of Dan Kennedy but by serendipity, I applied his first point. I looked at how the majority of community nonprofits raise funds, and then set about to create a system that did the opposite.

How do the majority of nonprofits raise funds?

They hold dinners, galas, walks, runs, auctions and a myriad of special events. And they send appeal letters. And maybe, if they are cutting edge, they have a way for donors to give online.

In contrast to the majority, I developed a system that raises 80% of its funds through gathering a tribe of passionate volunteers who use the gold standard in fundraising: asking for gifts in face to face meetings with peers.

Now, about finding breakthroughs outside the majorities’ approach to any given business, not inside it. When I first began working in fundraising for Horizon House in 1983, I immediately applied Kennedy’s second principle without ever having heard it.

I looked around to see how other nonprofits were raising funds—mostly through special events—and no one had a big public push for funds in December. I also knew that in Chicago there was a Christmas fundraiser called the Wreath of Hope.

I said, “Let’s own December” and we created the Tree of Hope in 1983 centered around a direct mail appeal.

Twenty-nine years later it is the most visible fundraiser in the LaSalle-Peru area during December. HH has a huge Christmas tree on their property at a major intersection and for each $50 in gifts they add a light bulb starting December 1. As people give, the lights move up the tree.

Now, on to Kennedy’s third point. Nonprofits are not into building wealth but they are into transforming lives through fundraising. Donors are the obstacle to and source of all fundraising income for a nonprofit. Nonprofits need to be relentlessly focused on the attraction of donors.

Carol Fesco, the development director of an organization that is in the middle of its ninth sustainable fundraising campaign, understands the importance of being relentlessly focused on donors and potential donors.

She has a list on her desk of donors and prospects that volunteers will ask for gifts from in face to face meetings. “The list is never out of my reach,” she says. She knows that major donors and potential major donors are the heart and soul of fundraising.

Kennedy is right. Doing the opposite of what the majority does works, even in fundraising. You can find fundraising breakthroughs outside the majorities’ approach to raising funds in your community.

Wisdom for the week: Relentlessly focus on major donors who are the obstacle to and source of all fundraising income.

Filed Under: Discover paths & obstacles sustainable fundraising ideas Tagged With: , ,

The Hazards of Switching to Green Light Fundraising

March 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’m a deep believer in sustainable fundraising. I’ve written a book about it—soon to be out in paperback—and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to teach and coach community nonprofits to adopt this system because it is powerful, cost effective and helps nonprofits raise more every year.

But there’s a hazard to making the change.

Human beings are very poor predictors of how long a major project will take. The Empire State Building was finished early and under budget. It’s the exception.

We human beings have a hard time incorporating into our planning “the impact of the highly improbable” says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan.

Before I expand on the hazards of predicting how long it will take to adopt the Green Light Fundraising approach to sustainable fundraising, I want to mention a bigger hazard–leaving many of your biggest donations on the table because you never implemented sustainable fundraising.

Now back to the hazards of predicting the completion date of a major project.

I’m as guilty as the next person. Last September I told a supporter that Green Light Fundraising would be out in paperback in a couple of months. After all, I had asked the e-book designer to design it in such a way that it could be easily converted to the design for an e-book. He assured me he had.

Then the highly improbable happened. For two months I tried to contact the designer and failed every time. His website was still up but he is incommunicado. After two months I went with another designer. Two and a half months later the design is close but still needs a couple of tweaks. The latest hitch is that the printer’s mother-in-law died, a possibility that I never predicted when I planned how long the process was going to take.

The hazard of adopting sustainable fundraising is that you will underestimate the time it will take for your nonprofit to adopt the system. But don’t let that stop you. I am a trustee for a local library working on a building project. A wise man told me that you should double the time and cost on a building project.

When you predict the completion of your first campaign, double the time.

And don’t be discouraged that it is taking so long. I first proposed the Green Light Fundraising model to an organization in 1997. They implemented it in 2002. In their eighth campaign last year, they raised over $200,000 in a population area of 28,000 people and netted nearly four times more income than the year before they switched to the Green Light Fundraising model.

Wisdom for the week: The biggest hazard is not poorly predicting how long it will take to implement Green Light Fundraising. The biggest hazard is leaving all that money on the table because you never implemented it.

Drop me a quick e-mail at richfoss@greenlightfundraising.org and let me know what’s the next thing you are going to do to implement the Green Light Fundraising model.

I’d love to cheer you on.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Turning the good ship of fundraising

February 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

Changing a nonprofit’s approach to fundraising is like changing the direction of a huge ship. An ocean liner has powerful momentum and it refuses to change direction on a dime.

If your nonprofit depends on grants or special events or a highly successful holiday appeal, and leaves money on the table because you don’t have a committed group of volunteers asking for major gifts in face to face conversations, you face a challenge.

There is going to be resistance to change. Grants can be quick money and when a grant runs out, momentum demands that you get a replacement. Volunteers and donors love special events and they will resist dropping their favorite event.

Thankfully ocean liners can change direction and so can nonprofits

I’ve thought long and hard about how to help nonprofits change their approach to fundraising. That’s why I wrote Green Light Fundraising, a book that describes in detail how to recruit and empower a tribe of volunteers to raise major funds every year for your nonprofit.

Ocean liners change direction thanks to a tiny rudder.  A proposal is the rudder that can change your nonprofit’s approach to fundraising.

Through a proposal you can portray to your CEO and/or board precisely how your nonprofit can move from its current fundraising approach to a new plan that raises substantially more funds through volunteers asking for major gifts in face to face meetings.

E-mail me at richfoss (at) greenightfundraising.org and we’ll set up a time to talk about your nonprofit’s fundraising and how a proposal could set it on a more sustainable course.

In the proposal, you can incorporate the best of your current fundraising combined with a plan to recruit and teach a group of highly energized volunteers who, in four weeks, will raise an amazing amount of funds for your nonprofit through face to face conversations.

I would love to help you write the proposal that will turn your nonprofit’s fundraising to a more sustainable course. E-mail me at richfoss (at) greenightfundraising.org and we’ll set up a time to talk about your nonprofit’s fundraising.

Wisdom for the week: If a tiny rudder can change the direction of an ocean liner, then a humble proposal can change the direction of your nonprofit’s fundraising.

Filed Under: Sustainable fundraisng design phase Tagged With: , ,

And the winner is

January 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In our last post I promised a $100 gift to one nonprofit as a way to celebrate this season of giving and our gratitude for the good work of the nonprofits who are interested in Green Light Fundraising.

In this issue you’ll not only discover who the winner is but learn three valuable lessons in the art of thanking a donor.

As you can see in the top photo on the right my grandson did the honors of drawing a name out of his grandfather’s hat.

In the second photo he holds up the slip from Linda B. McNeill, CEO, Step It Up, Inc., 2203 Lloyd Center, Suite 2203, Portland, OR 97232-1315.  Step It Up, Inc. received a $100 donation from Evergreen Leaders.

As nonprofits we can learn four lessons in thanking our donors from Linda and Step It Up, Inc.

We received two thank yous from Linda, one in an e-mail and the second by regular mail. Notice how, in the e-mail, she has both a nice personal touch and lets us know how the Evergreen Leader gift will be used:

Your grandson rocks! Please give him a great big hug and thank you for his wonderful selection talents.

We truly appreciate the generosity of Evergreen Leaders on behalf of Step It Up, Inc. Your contribution will allow one middle school student and a significant adult in their lives to participate in five career exploration workshops this winter/spring. The workshop flyer is attached if you are interested. We will have this program online by Spring!

At the bottom of her e-mail was a quick summary of the results Step It Up, Inc. has achieved:

The success of our youth is amazing:
100% graduate from high school in four years
100% succeed in college
35% are hired by their internship host

I opened the attached flyer and was impressed with the description of the program that our gift will be supporting.

In the regular mail letter Linda included three quotes from students who had participated in their programs. As a donor, I appreciated hearing from the students whose lives were impacted by Step It Up, Inc.

The thanks yous were short and yet powerful because of four ingredients:

  • A personal touch to help me bond emotionally with the organization
  • Described how our donation will be used
  • Reassured us by sharing the results of their programs
  • Let us hear about the impact of their work from the participants

Wisdom for the week: Good thank yous reinforce the bond between donor and nonprofit.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

$100 gift for your nonprofit?

December 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

I’d love to have Evergreen Leaders give a $100 gift to every nonprofit that has downloaded the Green Light Fundraising e-book in 2011.

But that would be a little out of our range.

So instead we will give a $100 gift to one nonprofit as a way to celebrate this season of giving and our gratitude for the good work of the nonprofits who are interested in Green Light Fundraising.

There are three simple guidelines:

  1. You must have downloaded the e-book by December 27.
  2. You must reply to this e-mail by December 27 with your name, the name of your nonprofit, and the mailing address of the nonprofit.
  3. The nonprofit must be a 501c3. (Include evidence of 501c3 status).

On December 28th we’ll draw the name of one nonprofit and mail the gift of $100.

Evergreen Leaders gives 10% of its income to other nonprofits as a way to give thanks to our Creator who supplies all our income.

May you have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, and a blessed New Year.

Reply today with your name, the name of your nonprofit, mailing address of the nonprofit, and evidence of its 501c3 status, for an opportunity to receive a $100 gift for your nonprofit.

Wisdom for the week: Giving is part of the joy of living. Receiving is part of the honor of being.

Filed Under: Smaller donors Tagged With: , ,

Your volunteer leaders must see your nonprofit at work

December 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Volunteer leaders are critical to the success of your sustainable fundraising. They have connections that make it possible for them to recruit the tribe of volunteers who do the asking on behalf of your nonprofit.

Your task as a development director or executive director is to create in them enthusiasm for their work. To become enthusiastic about your cause they need to see lives transformed by your work.

There are two ways volunteer leaders can see your nonprofit at work. The best way is for them to meet the people you serve. As they see the people you serve and interact with them, they become witnesses. They develop their own stories that they can tell to the people they ask to raise funds.

As you well know, you need to be very sensitive about how you go about this. The people you serve do not want to be stared at like creatures in a zoo. If you give it careful thought you might be able to create a way for volunteer leaders to interact with the people you serve by volunteering, sharing a meal, or working together on a project.

You may decide that for confidentiality reasons it’s impossible for your volunteer leaders to interact with the people you serve.

You have an alternative. Tell stories of your work. You can leave out names and any identifying details and still tell the stories of the people you serve. If you tell these stories frequently enough, your volunteer leaders will feel like they know the work you do, the people you serve, and they will become enthusiastic in leading a tribe of volunteers to raise funds for your cause.

Your volunteer leaders must see your nonprofit at work. Preferably in person where they can meet and interact with the people you serve. If that’s not possible, let them meet the people you serve and see their transformed lives through stories of your nonprofit at work.

Wisdom for the week: Volunteer leaders must see your nonprofit at work in order to enthusiastically lead a tribe of volunteers to raise funds for you.

Filed Under: Volunteers

Why I focus on community nonprofits

November 10, 2011 By 1 Comment

Last Saturday night I discovered another reason I love to work with community nonprofits.

Sometimes people from issue-oriented nonprofits, national, or international organizations ask me if they can apply Green Light Fundraising to their nonprofits.

“Yes,” I say, “Green Light Fundraising is based on principles and you can use those principles to develop fundraising systems for any nonprofit.”

Then why did I focus on community nonprofits?

I often answer that question by saying that I prefer to work with nonprofits that serve people on the edges of our communities.

Last Saturday night I was talking with an executive director of a homeless shelter for families and we were exploring ways that Green Light Fundraising could be of help to them.

I don’t recall how the topic came up but I mentioned that the staff of community nonprofits who provide direct services are often low paid, sometimes being paid barely above minimum wage.

Then I choked up.

I was surprised. What was that all about? I wondered.

Then I said to the director, “I think I became emotional because one of the reasons I feel so strongly about helping community nonprofits raise funds is because I want to help nonprofits pay their frontline staff adequate wages.”

Wisdom for the week: Don’t be afraid to be emotional about what you do and why you do it. Fundraising is an emotional business, not only for the donor but also for the fundraiser.

 

Filed Under: Partly personal Tagged With:
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