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August 8, 2008, 08:50 AM ET
Fund-Raising Lessons: Conducting Research on Donors and the Global Changes in Philanthropy
Following is the second installment from a notebook kept by Holly Hall, a features editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, who has been studying at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.
Day Seven: How to Conduct Research on Donors
Most nonprofit organizations don’t conduct research on their donors very often, but there’s an easy and cost-effective way for charities to gather useful data on them every year, Simone Joyaux, a fund-raising consultant, explains to our class.
Ms. Joyaux suggests that fund raisers gather donors regularly to learn more about their preferences and what they like and dislike about the organization.
Such informal focus groups, she says, not only provide fund raisers with valuable information to guide future solicitation efforts. They also build a closer relationship between the donor and the organization.
For example, a college could invite parents to informal focus groups to share their thoughts about the institution’s influence on their children, says Ms. Joyaux.
“Don’t let research slip away from you,” she adds. “Do focus groups for cultivation and to stop wondering what to do in your fund-raising program.”
Day Nine: Fund Raising Goes Global
Fund raising is becoming a global profession, but it is held to widely varying standards throughout the world, Andrew Watt, chief program officer of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, tells us in a lecture today.
Mr. Watt says he has “two, three contacts per week” from fund raisers interested in working overseas.
At the same time, he adds, there are a growing number of advertisements in the United States for fund-raising positions at foreign museums, performing-arts organizations, colleges, and universities in countries as diverse as Singapore and Scotland.
The overseas openings are mostly for fund raisers who will seek large gifts from wealthy people or corporations or manage an annual-giving fund, Mr. Watt says.
But fund raisers who work overseas may encounter a bit of culture shock, says Mr. Watt. For example, at a Toronto meeting a few years ago for associations of fund raisers from about 25 countries, participants found that trying to come up with shared fund-raising principles was “extraordinarily difficult,” he says.
The fund raisers, Mr. Watt says, could not agree on the practice of paying fund raisers a certain percentage of what they raise. Latin American fund raisers, he says, believe that offering commissions is the best way to compensate fund raisers, while in the United States and elsewhere fund raisers frown on the idea, out of concern that donors will be put off if they think a fund raiser will gain personally from a big gift.
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