The Annual Giving Exchange

It’s Halloween, but here’s what really frightens me.

1. Declining donor participation rates.
2. Development officers who are in the office more than three days a week.
3. Direct mail appeals that don’t encourage online gifts.
4. Trustees who don’t give to the Annual Fund.
5. Managers who don’t measure ROI.
6. VPs who don’t meet with their Annual Fund Director (at least) monthly.
7. Fundraisers who doubt the power of social media.
8. People who get offended when you ask them to support a worthy cause.
9. Phonathon callers who don’t ask for e-mail addresses.
10. Annual Funds where 90% of the money comes from less than 10% of the donors.

Last week, I spent a long afternoon listening to a discussion about gift clubs.  At the beginning of the meeting, everyone was asked how gift clubs could be better leveraged to increase giving.  The consensus was that members needed to be offered better benefits.

Next came hours of brainstorming, scribbling on post-it notes, and summarizing concepts on a white board.  The list of ideas was long and not terribly original.  The first suggestion was recognition in an annual donor publication.  “Or do we already do that?” asked one senior manager.  Then came countless other ideas (most of which had already been implemented) including invitations to special events, names on a plaque, a subscription to a newsletter, and breakfast with the President.

Things did get a little more creative when someone suggested offering members a dedicated development officer.  We’ll call it our “concierge service.”  The name was a nice touch, but most agreed it was really just a marketing tactic.  And so went the rest of the meeting, one attempt after another to come up with something new and exciting to offer donors in return for their generosity.

I came away thinking that an important point had been missed.  It’s not what donors get from us, but when we expect from them, that needs to be clarified.  Good philanthropy isn’t the result of an outstanding donor benefits program, just as good corporate leadership isn’t simply the result of good CEO pay. You only have to look to Wall Street over the past several years to see that.

In your next meeting, see if the group can list five things you expect from donors.  Make it something you wouldn’t be afraid to post on your organization’s Website.  Yes, one of them should be financial support, but don’t be afraid to explain the obligations that come with leadership including time, creativity, and shared relationships.

I’m sure your donors are smart enough to figure out the benefits of philanthropy on their own.

This month’s issue of Tech News features a great article by Adam Louie entitled Making Sense of Social Media.  Take 15 minutes out of your day to read this article and familiarize yourself with these important tools:

• Firstgiving.com: users can create fundraising projects for you and send e-mails to friends and family to get them to donate.
• Change.org: Organizations can make profiles, blogs, post videos, and take donations.
• Razoo.com: Online Donation site. No processing fees.
• Amazee.com: Online donation site. Users create projects to collaborate and donate money towards.
  Ning.com and Wikia.com Make your own social network site.
• Facebook.com: The most popular Social Network site today.
• LinkedIn.com: A great tool for finding companies and other professionals.
• Twitter.com: Broadcasts updates frequently and quickly – all in 140 characters.
• Mozes.com: Pushes your Twitter updates to cell phones as SMS text messages. Great for coordinating one-off events and volunteers.
• Wordpress and Typepad: Easy to use blogging platforms. Wordpress is free and open source, Typepad is free with the option to pay for upgrading. Both publish to RSS.
• Mailchimp and iContact: Both are mass mail programs you can use for free with the option to pay for more features.

With flu season near, concern over a possible H1N1 (or Swine Flu) outbreak prompted Harvard’s School of Public Health to conduct a study to determine how prepared businesses would be in the case of a pandemic.  They found that two-thirds of businesses would not be able to maintain normal operations if half their workers were out sick.

So what would you do if half of your donors didn’t show up?

The current recession has reminded us that nonprofits, like other businesses, are not immune to economic downturns.  And while many organizations struggle to raise money, their challenge has in many cases been compounded by a drop in donor head counts.

Annual Funds often highlight the importance of a broad base of support.  Yes, this means securing support at all levels of the gift pyramid.  But it also means engaging a donor population that is diverse in other ways including age, gender, interests, and geography. 

While diversity provides an organization with a dynamic and flexible source of donors, it also reduces the risk that comes with depending on one kind of patron.  Take time to know what your community looks like.  Create lists and run counts, and do so frequently.  Consider what percentage each characteristic represents in your entire donor universe. 

Understanding the characteristics of your current supporters will always help you identify new ones, but understanding where you are under-represented will help you build the broadest base of support.