Blueprint Fundraising

Tip of the Week: Explore AFP’s resources

If you are looking to develop your fundraising skills, the Association of Fundraising Professionals is a great resource. In Vancouver, where I’m on the local chapter board, we offer frequent professional development sessions on all sorts of fundraising topics. Many sessions are open to non-members. If you become a member, you have access to even more (including a mentorship program, job postings, audio and web conferences, an international resource library, and discounts on conferences). AFP’s international website has tons of fundraising news, research info and extensive information on how to practice ethical fundraising. AFP has members all over the world – check here to find a chapter near you.

Slippery Olympic funding for culture

The Georgia Straight has a little guide to Olympic arts funding that all arts groups should find interesting. “Olympic arts plan sketchy” describes the six pots of money dedicated to arts and culture programming leading up to and during 2010:

• Pot of money No. 1 is in the hands of VANOC, and is worth $96 million. That’s the money for the four-year Cultural Olympiad, the Torino Olympics closing ceremonies, education and youth programs, the torch relay, and the 2010 opening and closing ceremonies.
• Pot of money No. 2 is distributed through the new nonprofit ArtsNow. This organization, which is completely separate from VANOC, must distribute $12 million before July 2007. The mandate: to increase the capacity of B.C. arts organizations so they can participate fully in the Olympics.
• Pot of money No. 3 is the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, $20 million administered by the B.C. Arts Council. Its mandate also includes capacity-building and the commissioning of new works.
• Three other pots of money are not formally Olympics-related, but coincidentally arrived just in time for the event: the B.C. government’s $25-million gift to the Vancouver Foundation; the additional $3 million per year to the B.C. Arts Council; plus the $6 million in increases to Vancouver’s Office of Cultural Affairs.

As Heather Redfern of the Alliance for Arts and Culture goes on to say in the article, arts groups must keep a close eye on this money and aggressively advocate for it so that it isn’t diverted to sport-related uses. For a detailed analysis on the experience in other host communities, check out this PDF: “Potential Impact of the 2010 Olympics Games on Local Arts and Culture in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor”, a research piece by Anne Popma for the Whistler Arts Council.

Tip of the Week: Event accounting

I’m starting a new feature — the Tip of the Week. Every week I’ll share a tip big or small to help with your fundraising. This week it’s a little one, inspired by the $90 bottle of salad dressing posting below. If you have a tip to share, please email and I’ll post it.

When creating a fundraising event budget, include a realistic portion of staff salaries in the expenses. Unless your event is entirely run by a third party, staff are spending time on the management, administration or execution of the event. You should account for this to gain an accurate picture of the event’s real costs. Could you be raising more by devoting that staff time to another type of fundraising? Maybe not, but you should ask the question! And remember the measure of success is whether your event meets net revenue targets (not just gross revenues).

Beware the $90 bottle of salad dressing

Business in Vancouver is one of my favourite publications and the best part is always Peter Ladner’s column. I agree with just about everything he says and love that he comments on so many important community issues in a business forum. This week’s “Profitable ventures are rare in the non-profit world” presents an issue that many nonprofits toy with — running a for-profit business to provide perpetual funding for their work.

His column refers to a February 2005 Harvard Business Review article. The authors studied for-profit businesses run by nonprofits. Pressure to raise money and be entrepreneurial leads a (relatively small) number of charities into this arena. Once there, they underestimate the complexities and expenses of the businesses, fail to make a profit, and often undermine their charitable work.

For example, a youth services organization that had received funding
to launch a food products enterprise hired young people and began
making salad dressing. The nonprofit believed it spent $3.15 to produce
each bottle of dressing that was sold for $3.50. But when expenses such
as unused ingredients and managers’ salaries were factored in, the cost
per bottle reached a staggering $90.

The authors discovered a “pattern of unwarranted optimism.” Luckily I don’t suffer this terrible affliction myself, but I know many who do.

The most common manifestations that I see… believing that your Board of Directors will raise all the money and believing that your fundraising event is truly a net money-maker.