Blueprint Fundraising

Tip of the Week: Gift charts provide a reality check

Last night I taught a class on capital campaigns in the BCIT Fundraising Management program. We talked about many things including “gift charts.” What is a gift chart? Basically, a planning tool to tell you how many gifts and prospects you will need to raise a specific amount of money. By creating a chart, you can see if you have enough prospects at each donation level to meet your goal.

Charts are not built on this math: to raise $100,000 we need to ask 100 people for $1,000. Instead they are built like a pyramid — we need one top gift, several major gifts, and many smaller gifts.

Here are a few guidelines for building a gift chart:

• The lead gift is at least 10% and maybe up to 25% or more of the goal.
• Build the chart downwards by cutting the gift size in half and doubling or tripling the number of donors at each level.
• Roughly 80% of your goal will come from 20% of your donors.
• For each gift you need 3 or 4 qualified prospects (not everyone will say yes to the amount you are seeking). Qualified means that you have some reason to believe the person would consider a gift at that level.
• As you go down the list, you need fewer prospects because people who said no at higher levels may give at lower levels
• Round numbers up or down to avoid bizarre gift amounts.

Sample Gift Chart for a $1,000,000 Goal

This chart does have some bizarre gift levels, so you would want to round those up or down. But I think you get the point — the chart allows you to see that you need a certain number of prospects at each level to meet the goal. If you have an established donor base, your chart may be heavier at the top. If you are just building your donor base your chart would probably be heavier at the bottom, with fewer major gifts. My next step would be to start putting prospect names at each level.

Next big thing: “American Idol for Nonprofits”

Ok, let’s hope not. But Craigslist Foundation in the US ran a very interesting program recently. It was a “pitchathon�? where a variety of nonprofits received coaching – and ultimately judging – on their ability to sell their organizations to potential funders and donors.

Most of the organizations I’ve worked with struggle at some point to express why donors should support them. In fundraising-land, we call this making a “case for support.�? It’s a compelling explanation of why you need money and why someone should donate to your group. It can take many forms (documents, brochures, proposals, advertising, presentations).

Richard Male, a nonprofit management consultant, once introduced me to an exercise that I always start with to get some of the very basic information that should go into your pitch or your case for support. It’s called your “Organizational 10 in 60.” Answer these questions and present them as a pitch in under a minute:

1. Your name and position with organization
2. Name and age of the organization
3. Mission of organization
4. Primary activities of the organization
5. Geographic focus of your work
6. Priority issues for the organization
7. The budget of the organization
8. The name of one or two of the organization’s funders
9. One of the organization’s greatest challenges
10. An example of the organization at its best

For a few samples of excellent case for support documents, email me!

Happy Earth Day!

Yes, April 22 is Earth Day. News to you? You can be forgiven for not noticing — the Earth is taking a back seat to elections and sponsorship scandals this year.

Don’t know what to get the Earth on her special day? How about joining the Cooperative Auto Network? I’ve been a happy car-sharer for years. It will save you money, it is better for the environment, and you’ll have fun driving the new Mini!

The BC election is making me depressed and grumpy — I can hardly focus on the TV news my eyes are rolling so much.

But now is a good time to get environmental issues in front of BC politicians and the media. Here are a few useful sites with sample candidate questions and suggestions to help you make an intelligent arguments for protecting the environment.

BCFacts.org
Vote Wild
Grist Magazine

If you get tired of advocating for the environment, why not spend some time on arts and culture… Campaign for Culture.

Capital campaign trends, from the AFP international conference

The Association of Fundraising Professionals‘ 42nd annual International Conference on Fundraising was held in Baltimore last week. I thought I would share an interesting summary of one of the presentations. The Chronicle of Philanthropy (great newspaper!!) reported on how Sonya Campion, a Seattle fundraising consultant, sees capital campaigns changing. This definitely reflects what I see in the field.

• With the expansion of capital campaign goals has come the need for charities to increase the number of new donors they tap for campaign gifts, said Ms. Campion. In several campaigns she has worked on, she said, new donors have accounted for 50 to 60 percent of all contributors. In one nearly completed drive for a social-service group, she added, 80 percent of the donors had never previously given to the charity.
• As efforts to attract new donors succeed, Ms. Campion said, fund raisers do not necessarily focus as much on attracting six- or seven-figure gifts — which many groups have long done. Now campaigns are winning many more gifts in the $10,000 to $25,000 range.
• Although many groups try to persuade donors to put their names on buildings and other facilities in exchange for big campaign gifts, Ms. Campion said, donors are less and less interested in that type of public recognition. But, she said, they still want a lot of attention from the charities they support. In one campaign for a hospital, she said, a wealthy donor declined to have a cancer ward named for himself or his loved ones. What he wanted, Ms. Campion said, was “a lifelong relation with the cancer ward, he wanted to be informed of new research and advances in oncology.”
• Ms. Campion also says some charities are too careful and avoid contacting people who have already made a pledge to a campaign, when in many cases such donors would like to hear from the organization again. She says she was annoyed when one charity never got in touch with her after she made a three-year pledge to its campaign. “Finally I called them, and they told me that I was on a do-not-disturb list,” she recalled. “They thought they were doing me a favor by not contacting me until my pledge was paid.”
• Another change in capital campaigns: Few drives now rely on a single campaign chairman, a volunteer who makes a big gift to start the campaign and then solicits others. Such volunteer leaders have been replaced by multiple leaders or committees, each with specific goals. In an extreme example, a campaign by an art museum that raised $23-million five years ago had 13 committees, Ms. Campion said. She said one reason for the success of the campaign was that fund raisers encouraged the committees to compete to see which one could raise the most.
• People who make campaign contributions, said Ms. Campion, have become more skeptical in recent years. Increasingly, she said, donors are making “tester gifts,” a relatively small initial contribution that is sometimes followed by additional campaign gifts. “Fewer people want to sign five-year pledges,” she said.

EnviroPOD deadline: May 13, 2005

I mentioned a new capacity building funding program for environmental groups in a recent posting. The deadline has been announced: May 13. You can find details and an application form on their website.

EnviroPOD’s goal is to help build the organizational capacity of environmental not-for-profit organizations so that they are better able to sustain themselves and meet their missions over the long term. The program assists qualified organizations with grants to enable them to work with an experienced consultant or resource person on processes that build organizational capacity and enhance organizational effectiveness.

EnviroPOD funding is available to not-for-profit organizations in British Columbia whose core activities fall into one or both of the following areas:

• Helping to protect, preserve and restore B.C.’s environment;
• Providing information and education that advances public understanding and action on environmental issues.

Trust me, I’m a NGO worker

NGO representatives are among the most trustworthy sources of information, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2005. Edelman is a public relations firm that conducts this annual research by interviewing 1,500 opinion leaders in eight global markets. A few highlights:

• Experts who are seen as having no vested interest in the welfare of a company — doctors or health care specialists (>56%), academics (>49%), a person like yourself (>49%), and representatives of NGOs (>47%) are the most trusted spokespersons.

• The trust void in institutions business, government, media is being filled by NGOs, whose trust ratings have trended up in the U.S., from 36% in 2001 to 55% in 2005. NGOs are now the most trusted institutions in every market except China.
• Corporate philanthropy, which ranked #1 in the U.S. and Brazil as the corporate behaviour that earned opinion leaders trust, was ranked last in Europe and second to last in China. In Europe and Canada, listening to stakeholders ranks #1; in China, highly visible senior management heads the list; and in Japan, positive coverage in the local media ranks first.

I contacted Edelman to find out how corporate philanthropy ranked in Canada — and they wouldn’t provide any further detail. Oh well. What does this mean for NGOs? Your trustworthiness is a valuable asset that you shouldn’t undervalue. Keep this in mind when approaching companies for sponsorships or marketing partnerships.

ArtsNow announces first grants

ArtsNow announced their first round of successful applicants today. Check out the press release (a PDF) for a complete list of the projects funded. They granted $770,000 of the $4.25 million to be awarded leading up to the 2010. The next application deadline will be in June. Watch the site for the exact date and revised application forms.