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E-mail DanSustainability is the New Growth
January 11th, 2010 - by Dan AllenbyGrowth used to be the annual giving mantra.
How can we increase donations next year? What are we doing to improve participation? Why has gift club membership been flat?
The benefit of a growth strategy is that it raises your sights and pushes you to be better. The problem, however, is that it often causes you to neglect what you already have. By worrying about the donors you want, the volunteers you need, or the resources you lack, you end up ignoring those things that are right in front of you. Then (like anything that gets ignored) they get rusty, stop working, or simply go away.
We’ve learned some important economic lessons in the past year. Bigger isn’t always better. What goes up must come down. Something is only worth what someone will pay for it. But the most important lesson of all is that sustainability is undervalued.
Thomas Friedman says that sustainability will be to the next American generation what freedom has been to past generations. Going forward, value will not be determined by how much something offers now, but rather by how long you can depend on it.
The same will be true in annual giving. The most valuable donor won’t be the one who can give you $1,000 today, but the one who you trust (and who trusts you) to donate $100 each year for the next 20 years.
There’s a new mantra in annual giving. It won’t be bigger, but it will be better.
Dan, Another great article but it doesn’t help educational annual funds that are forced to supply the difference between tuition revenue and cost. Private High School education needs the annual fund to grow unless you can find a way to stop the rise in health cost for faculty, increased gas cost for bus’s, technology cost, etc.etc. If you can stop inflation then sustainability is a great idea and one everyone in educational fund raising would welcome. Tuition alone can never cover cost especially in an inter-city private high school dedicated to serving the neighborhood. Gerry Grim
After working in Development 25 years ago, when the field first started to move organization from fundraising to development, then discovering 10 years ago that development was moving toward advancement, it’s interesting to hear your comments about “growth” moving toward “sustainability.” Not only the annual fund, but “advancement” is now shifting (or, at least needs to shift” toward “growth.” Advancement means moving in a particular direction, but there are other elements that must “grow” in order “advance the mission” (a phrase which I hate, by the way). Advancement is actually only a directional movement toward a particular goal. It’s focused – like a ray that moves outward from a particular point. However, if you think of the point as the center of a sphere, the only way to move toward the vision is for the entire sphere to grow, creating exponential opportunities, but risking difficulties due to unintended consequences and unforeseen obstacles.
Sustainability puts a cap on growth – which needs to happen at particular points along the journey so the organization can “check and adjust.”
Z