Blueprint Fundraising

It’s time start working on the annual Christmas appeal. You’re pulling the lists together and writing the fundraising letter. Five different people need to review the letter and each sends it back to you with their comments and changes. You send a new version back to them. They send more comments. Everyone gets frustrated with the process, losing track of which version of the document is the latest.

Google Docs to the rescue!

The video below explains how it works. With Google Docs, your document, spreadsheet or presentation lives online. You invite people to access it (with different levels from read-only to full editing abilities). They make changes (which you can see). They make comments. They see what other people have revised and said. There is only ever one version of the letter. You can even get an RSS feed of the changes people are making.

I’m going to start using this with clients. I’ll need to convince them to get Google accounts but I don’t think that will be difficult. Proposals, letters, reports… It’s going to make life easier any time collaboration is required.

There are some limitations to be aware of, particularly when it comes to formatting. Google Docs doesn’t have the sophisticated formatting abilities of Word and doesn’t have a “Page Layout” view option (where you can see how the document looks on the page). To make the final document pretty you will need to bring back into Word. That’s a pain, but the real value of Google Docs is in the collaboration and sharing possibilities.

It’s important for nonprofit organizations to be aware of their online identity — and not just the stuff that you create yourself.

Google Alerts provide a simple way to be notified by email whenever your organization, its staff or programs are mentioned online. I’ve been using it to track online mentions of my clients and it works so well!

You design the alert to search blogs, groups, news and the web (or all of them) and you set the frequency — as-it-happens, once a day or once a week. Searching for your organization name, campaign names, staff and board members would all be worthwhile. To set up an alert, you have to have a Gmail account (by invitation — if you don’t have an account, email me and I’ll invite you).

When I started Blueprint in 2000 it was a challenge to determine my hourly rate. I was torn between what I thought the work was worth, and what I thought the kind of clients I like to work for can afford, what others are charging and what I knew I would need in order to make a living. It’s a balance that every freelancer struggles with.

This hourly rate calculator can help. It’s from one of my favourite blogs: Freelance Switch. An excellent place to poke around if you are thinking about becoming a freelancer in fundraising or any field.

Check out their list of 13 Types of Freelancers and 12 Types of Clients. Which are you?

How do you communicate with your supporters? One of the very best ways is by adding RSS to your website.

If you’re reading this, you know at least a little something about blogs. You might even be viewing this through an RSS reader such as Google Reader (which is what I use). I follow hundreds of blogs and websites through the magic of RSS feeds.

Here’s an explanation of RSS.With RSS, a visitor can “subscribe” to your website or blog. They will then be automatically alerted to new content on your site. Their RSS reader shows them your new information, so that they don’t have to visit your website to see what’s new.

I see RSS as very useful in fundraising. It is so important to engage and involve supporters — and it isn’t easy. By offering an RSS feed, you can stay in touch with supporters by sharing frequent and interesting news about your organization’s work.

Have you noticed that many nonprofits use very poor quality imagery for their fundraising materials? Anything you’re designing, from a case for support to a brochure or website, needs fantastic photography. Giving is an emotional choice — words have to work awfully hard to match the impact of a well-chosen image. So what to do if all your photos suck or you’ve been using your only good shot in every brochure and proposal since 1994?

My favourite way to find photos is to search Flickr for photos that are Creative Commons-licensed, meaning that the photographer permits free usage within certain terms. With proper credit most shots will be appropriate for use by a nonprofit organization. The quality is amazing and you can search on any terms you like. Need to show sadness, happiness, kids, nature, a situation, place or even abstract idea? Flickr has it all.

Here’s a Flickr shot I found with the search term “happy.” It’s by “shoothead” and is called “like a record…”

Another option is to use stock photography — some is free and works really well (but don’t overdo it or your piece will look like a mutual fund ad). A good source for free stock photos is stock.xchng. You’ll find a huge library of good quality shots to choose from.

Here’s one more resource that is especially good for graphic designers: Flickr Color Selectr allows you to search Flickr’s Creative Commons-licensed shots within a specific colour range. If you want free photos that will compliment a particular colour this will give you all sorts of random and interesting options.

If you think that your nonprofit is immune to embezzlement, don’t be naive!

A new study by researchers at Villanova University explores the extent of embezzlement within the Catholic Church. They surveyed chief financial officers of 78 Catholic dioceses in the US (that’s half of the dioceses in the country). They found that 85% reported embezzlements from 2000 to 2005. Seven reported losing $500,000 or more!! A copy of the full report is available online.

That is a shocking amount of theft. The researchers point out that churches offer an ideal setting for internal theft because in a small operation one employee may be responsible for everything — giving them access to both assets (often cash) and the financial records. Sound familiar? This is a problem for any small nonprofit.

I’ve worked with some very reputable organizations that have been the victims of embezzlement, primarily because of poor internal controls. Here are a few ways you can improve controls (from Wayne Amundson at The Canadian Association).

Internal Control Measures

The internal control measures that should exist in associations and non-profits include:

• Whenever possible, segregate duties. If one person has access to, or processes an entire transaction (e.g. payment and processing), the risk of fraud is high.
• If possible, rotate work duties. Often, the embezzlement scheme requires constant cover-up activity, and rotation of duties will make that difficult.
• Obtain insurance, and when necessary, bond employees.
• Control the addition of new vendors.
• Control changes to the payroll.
• Watch for signs of addiction and/or increased affluence in employees/volunteers.
• Have your bank account statements delivered directly to the executive director.
• Ensure that effective policies are in place to manage refunds.
• Keep blank cheques secure, and maintain number sequence.
• Control access to the credit card processing.
• Have all invoices approved prior to payment.
• Have policies in place for expense reimbursement, and ensure all claims are approved.
• Get the auditor to provide a management letter with particular attention to internal control measures.
• Ensure that reconciliations are prepared and reviewed.
• Ensure that policies are in place to address gifts, freebies, trips, etc.

Some common fraudulent activities include:

• Theft of cash receipts
• Under-the-table payments, bribes or kickbacks.
• Recording false discounts
• Theft of incoming cheques
• Tampering with cheques issued (forged signatures, altered dates, adjusted amounts)
• Stealing blank cheques or counterfeiting duplicate cheques with altered payees
• Creating and paying fictitious vendors
• Creating inflated or phony expense vouchers
• Altering billing records
• Theft of inventory
• Altering purchasing, receiving or shipment records
• Paying non-existent employees
• Skimming payments on account. Typically, an employee records a contract at a lower amount than actually owed then steals or “skims” the excess.
• Falsifying receivables, and stealing the payments.
• Altering accounting records to hide the theft of funds
• Cash disbursement scams
• Credit card refund schemes

Charity Village also has a great article on this with tips to improve your procedures: Nonprofit fraud: Focus on segregation of duties and good reporting procedures.

Photo via Flickr: “Money offers” in Thailand by zzen.

If you can’t attend the annual Fundraising Congress in Toronto in the fall, you can still access many of the presentations online. AFP Toronto has a great website, with lots of handouts and session notes from the annual conference and Fundraising Day.

Making intelligent decisions about software for your nonprofit is 1000% times easier with the help of IdealWare. This is a Consumer Reports-style website with software reviews, comparisons and information.

I especially like their series of reports on A Few Good… Accounting Packages, Online Petition Tools, Online Donation Tools, Email Newsletter Tools, Databases for Membership Organizations.

Sorry my posting has been rather infrequent over the last two weeks. I’ve been preoccupied with a family visit and then the flu… but I’m back now.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s latest feature on how US public television stations have built successful major gifts programs has been fantastic. So many great ideas. I thought would share how they formally evaluate their major gifts fundraising staff.

Many organizations seem to shy away from evaluation — after all fundraising is about relationship-building right? And that can be hard to quantify. Gifts can take years to come to fruition. Nonetheless, I think it is good for organizations and fundraisers to have very specific targets.

Here’s a summary of the system developed by Richard K. Dupree , Executive Director of Development at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and being used by public TV. Fundraisers are given a rating out of 25 on how well they perform in each of these four equally important areas:

1. Meeting a specific dollar goal of funds raised/pledged
2. Making a minimum number of formal proposals to major gift prospects at minimum gift levels
3. Making a minimum number of contacts and recording the details (the prospects for future fundraising)
4. Overall quality of work — this is a flexible criteria but could include things like how well the person engages volunteers in their work, their success rate with proposals, their ability to cultivate relationships, and their management of their budget

According to Dupree, the fundraiser should achieve at least 75 points to be considered “satisfactory.” Those who achieve 80+ points are eligible for a bonus. You can download a detailed PDF explanation of the system here.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania recently published a paper called “Field Experiments in Charitable Contributions: The Impact of Social Influence on the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods.” It is great to have this kind of research in the public domain — so much direct mail and fundraising research is proprietary.

The question: will people give more if they are given a suggested donation amount and if they are told how much others have donated? The answer: yes. And there is an especially clear application for this in soliciting renewing donors.

The researchers looked at giving scenarios where the ask is ambiguous (they studied a public radio on-air drive). I’m simplifying the experiment but when donors called to make a pledge, the volunteer either asked if they were a new member or renewing. Then they either 1. Told them that another member had pledged $300 and then asked how much the caller would like to pledge or 2. Simply asked them how much they would like to pledge (without indicating any other gift amounts). They found a 12% larger gift size for those who had the social information (about the $300 gift).

The research included other experiments (email me if you would like more information). The researchers conclude that:

• Providing social information significantly increases contributions.
• It works best when you provide information that is seen as “relevant” to the donor and encourages “social conformity.” Callers who were told that another donor was the same sex (as they) gave significantly more than callers who were told that another donor was the opposite sex (i.e. women give more if they know that other women are giving more).
• There is a “boundary effect.” Use social information drawn from the 90th to 95th percentile of your organization’s contributions. Lower social information has little or no influence, while that over the 99th percentile actually has a negative effect. For example, donors were motivated to give more when they were told about a $600 gift (a number around the 90th percentile of that donor base) than a $1,000 gift (representing the 99th percentile).

You can try this experiment yourself — identify the size of gifts at your 90-95th percentile and use those as anchors in your gift arrays and in your fundraising requests. Tell donors about gifts made by people like them (same sex, family situation, donor level) to inspire larger gifts.

My last Tip of the Week pointed you to the United Way of the Lower Mainland’s website and we’re going there again… You can use their tax credit calculator to quickly determine the real cost of a charitable donation. It works for donations made by BC residents to registered charities (tax credits vary slightly in each province). Research always shows that tax credits/tax receipts are not top motivators for giving, but nonetheless it is important for fundraisers to understand the tax implications of gifts.

At this time of year, you can’t help but notice and admire the fundraising techniques of the United Way. While the campaign is on I encourage you to check out the United Way of the Lower Mainland’s Campaign 2005 Toolkit. Wander around at the planning tools, forms, talking points and watch the campaign video to see some really great fundraising.

TechSoup offers amazing deals on software, hardware and everything technology-related, just for Canadian registered charities and US 501(c)3 groups. Need a router? Need new anti-virus software? Need a fundraising database? They have it all. Quantities are sometimes limited and deals come a go, so visit often or sign up for their new product notification email. TechSoup also hosts very informative discussions of technology issues and provides other educational resources and tools for nonprofits.

Today is Car Free Day and if think you can’t possibly live without your own personal vehicle, think again. With gas prices on warp speed (not to mention climate change, traffic, smog, obesity, and many stinky results of too many cars on the road), this is a good time to consider whether car sharing could work for you.

I’ve been a member of Vancouver’s Co-operative Auto Network (CAN) since 2001. When Andrew and I moved here we discovered that car insurance was outrageous, the parking expensive, and the alternatives (such as public transit, walking, and CAN) pretty good. Andrew takes the bus and a skateboard to work at the University of British Columbia. I walk, take the bus, and use a CAN car whenever I need to (several times a week for work and errands).

How does it work? It’s a co-op, so members jointly own all the cars. There are vehicles parked all over the Lower Mainland — more than 100 cars in the fleet with new ones being added all the time. Scroll down this page to find cars near you and read the FAQs for details on how it works. Once you join, you pay a monthly fee to cover some of the fixed costs of the car and when you use a car, you pay low fees by the hour and by the kilometre. The fees include gas, insurance, maintenance, and BCAA. You have access to a car (or truck, van, stationwagon, Mini, VW Bug, Prius… yes there are some cool cars available!) when you want it. You don’t pay for more car than you need.

Email CAN if you want to know more. It’s not 100% car free — but it’s a step in the right direction!

How many times have I said this to a client: “Your donor newsletter is so long, boring, and poorly written that I can’t stand to read it! Even though I love your work! And you’re paying me!”

You probably put great effort into donor communications and your newsletter might be a cornerstone of that program. Creating something that truly adds value to your fundraising and builds a meaningful connection with your donors requires more than just dryly reporting on your work. No one wants to feel that pang of guilt as they toss your unread newsletter into the bin.

Communications expert Tom Ahern has a new book coming out at the end of this month called The Mercifully Brief, Real World Guide To Raising More Money With Newsletters Than You Ever Thought Possible. I’m sure it will be excellent. Here’s one of the chapters (they really are brief!):

These Seven Flaws Are Killing You

• Flaw #1: Your newsletter fails the “you test.” I’ll explain that simple (but critical) test later. For now just keep in mind that a good donor newsletter is friendly, even intimate, in tone. If you insist instead on an institutional voice, you distance yourself from your readers.
• Flaw #2: Your newsletter skimps on emotional triggers. You already know that charity starts when you move a heart. In a donor newsletter, tugging the heartstrings is a full-time job.
• Flaw #3: You claim it’s a newsletter (i.e., a bearer of news), but it’s really just an excuse to say hi. Here’s a clue: You devote your front page to a ponderous letter “from the desk ofâ€? an ED or board chair. Beware: a newsletter with no news value is a waste of time and money. And donors are quite demanding: they want very specific kinds of news. Their interest in your organization can quickly wane if you fail to deliver.
• Flaw #4: Your newsletter is not “donor-centered.” It does not make the donor feel needed or wanted. Remember: donors don’t give to your organization. They give through your organization, in an effort to change the world. You have to give the donor credit as well as thanks.
• Flaw #5: The newsletter is not set up for rapid skimming and browsing. On the contrary, you assume people will read long articles. Here’s the harsh truth: most of your audience won’t have time to give your newsletter more than a glance. If you bury important information in long articles, most people will miss it.
• Flaw #6: Your newsletter has weak or dysfunctional headlines. If any of the fatal flaws deserves the title of “Most Deadly,” this is it. Headlines have a function: to summarize the key points of the story. Most donor newsletters I’ve seen fail at that simple task.
• Flaw #7: It depends far too much on statistics (and far too little on anecdotes) to make your case.

The Association of Fundraising Professionals has entered the world of blogging by starting no less than seven new blogs! It’s a little cumbersome to visit them all (don’t ask me why they didn’t just make one blog with multiple categories) but go check them out anyhow. Even as I write this, they’ve announced one more: a blog dedicated to Hurricane Katrina-related fundraising issues.

Direct mail guru Mal Warwick asks a question on many an executive director’s and board member’s mind: Are we getting our money’s worth from our development director or fundraising consultant? Salaries and fees are high, so are expectations for results. Mal shares his evaluation criteria and suggests how to measure performance in a meaningful way.

If you are new to nonprofits, you might not know the wide range of ways that organizations fund themselves. It’s not all about fundraising. In fact, only 13% of it is about fundraising! Statistics Canada identifies these sources of revenue for the average Canadian nonprofit (in 2003, the most recent year available):

Government payments for goods and services - 18%
Federal - 1%
Provincial - 15%
Municipal - 1%

Government grants and contributions - 31%
Federal - 5%
Provincial - 24%
Municipal - 1%

All government sources combined - 49% of revenue

Earned income from non-governmental sources - 35% of revenue
Charitable gaming - 1%
Membership fees - 11%
Fees for goods or services - 20%
Investment income (including interest) - 4%

Gifts and donations - 13% of revenue
Individual donations - 8%
Fundraising organizations and family community foundations - 1%
Disbursements from other nonprofit organizations - 2%
Corporate sponsorships, donations or grants - 3%

Other - 3% of revenue

For each sector (i.e. arts, social services, environment, health, education, etc.) this breakdown of sources is different. For example, arts organizations receive more from corporations — 8%. International causes receive more from individuals — 30%. Email me or post a comment if you would like to know the details for your sector.

Kim Klein and Stephanie Roth are wonderful people and fundraising gurus to boot! Their magazine, the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, and their website are full of excellent resources to help small organizations creatively, ambitiously and successfully raise more money. The “Dear Kim” Q & A section is especially helpful. Whatever question you have, someone has probably asked Kim and received a wise answer that can help you too.

You invite your supporters to a special event. It’s a part of your stewardship plan — to spend some time with your donors and get to know them on a personal level. As you look around the room, you have no idea who is there. People come and go. You don’t know if your top donor even showed — you’ve never met them. Ack! This wasted opportunity could have been avoided by adding a few elements to the event:

An RSVP process. Ask people to let you know if they plan to come to the event. You can better plan the event and if you notice that some people are not coming, you can phone to invite them personally or say you hope to see them next time.

A registration table. Even for informal events, having people register lets you know who came. It also allows you to personally welcome everyone.

Name tags with stickers. Name tags help everyone network and they help you identify your supporters if you have never met them. (Be mindful of what style will work best for the type of dress at the event. No pins or stickers on fancy dresses — use lanyards instead.) If you want to make further use of the tags, use stickers to identify types of people. For example, a red dot indicates a donor, green dot for a sponsor, blue dot for someone who is not a member or donor.

Assignments. Ensure that staff and board members know that their job is to network and be ambassadors for the organization You could even assign them to specific people or types of people. For example — you welcome all the red dots and encourage them to join our group, I’ll talk to all the green dots and ask them if they have been happy with their sponsorships.

Follow up calls. If you didn’t get a chance to speak with everyone who came to your event, use the registration list to make a few calls the next day. Ask people what they thought of the event and thank them for coming.