What Do Fund Raisers Really Need to Know?

Tuesday, February 27, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time

In addition to his new position at the Center on Philanthropy, Adrian Sargeant is a visiting professor at the Centre on Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at Queensland University, in Brisbane, Australia. He has authored or coauthored several books on nonprofit marketing and fund raising, including /Building Donor Loyalty: The Fundraiser's Guide to Increasing Lifetime Value.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Holly Hall (Moderator):
    Hello and welcome to our live chat with Adrian Sargeant, who holds the Robert F. Hartsook Chair in Fund Raising at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy. I'm Holly Hall, a features editor with The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and I'll be moderating this discussion over the next hour. Adrian is interested to hear your ideas about what type of fund-raising research would most help the profession and to discuss other aspects of fund raising and marketing. We have received many excellent questions in advance, but please keep them coming. Just click the "ask a question" link on this page. Adrian, welcome and thanks for being our guest today.

Adrian Sargeant:
    Hi. Thanks for the invitation to take part in this discussion. I'm looking forward to reading all the questions and will try and be as helpful as I can. Please do feel free to contribute questions and if you're aware of further sources of information I've not mentioned please send those through too and we'll endeavor to post them.

Question from Robert Thompson, non-profit consultant:
    Will your research also include how much and in what ways donor advisors influence implementation of larger planned gifts to nonprofits?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Yes, this certainly an issue that should be added to the research agenda. Most of the work on this has tended to focus on the lower end of the spectrum, on so-called 'member-get-member' activities. The Web, in particular, has facilitated viral marketing, where supporters can easily recommend others to whom a solicitation could be made. As these are all highly qualified prospects, nonprofits using these mechanisms have tended to do rather well. I was genuinely impressed by the Network for Good Web site, which enables nonprofits to leverage their donor networks. 'Tell A Friend' - great stuff! Of course, this isn't at all what you're asking. You're interested in completely the opposite end of the spectrum where individuals may influence others to offer large gifts to a nonprofit they care about. I'd be interested to learn more about all the contextual and inter-personal influences on the planned-gift decision-making process. Paul Schervish (Boston College) has probably contributed more to this field than any other academic, and it would be good to develop his contribution by taking theory from the disciplines of psychology and social psychology and use this material as a lense through which to look at decision making. Thank you for the suggestion.

Question from Mal Warwick, Mal Warwick Associates:
    Hi, Adrian! My question today may not fit the parameters of your research, but I'm hoping that someone at the Center on Philanthropy will look into it. Here goes: From my perspective, one of the biggest problems nonprofits face in building long-term relationships with their donors and thus raising more meaningful amounts of money is the rapid turnover in their fund-raising staff. What is the rate of turnover (broken down by subsector and level of responsibility)? What accounts for it? I've discovered that answers to these questions are very difficult to come by, and I've been led to believe that's because no one has studied them in a rigorous manner.

Adrian Sargeant:
    Hi Mal: I'm not aware that anyone has studied staff turnover in this specific context although there is work in the more general domain of nonprofit staff retention. There was a particularly interesting piece recently that looked at the impact of a rebranding exercise on staff retention Philippa Hankinson and Wendy Lomax illustrated the positive impact it had on retention. This was a ground-breaking study, but for me it raised all kinds of further questions such as Why might this be?' I suspect it has a lot to do with people investing in the values espoused by the nonprofit, but it would bear further research. Aspen has published a good series called 'Staff Leader' that pays frequent attention to staff-retention issues and draws on both research evidence and the practical experiences of senior nonprofit sector folks. They tend to highlight (as you'd expect) similar factors that would be at work in the for-profit sector. It is not focused specifically on fund raising, but there is insight there. There is also a wealth of data on volunteer retention which highlights factors such as unrealistic expectations in that the work an individual was asked to do was not what they'd imagined; lack of appreciative feedback from clients and co-workers; lack of appropriate training and supervision, always a key factor; excessive demands on their time; lack of personal accomplishment; fear of liability where volunteers are involved in delivering services; and burnout. I suspect many of these factors would have resonance with fund-raising staff. On the figures for retention - I have only anecdotal evidence that these are high. In the UK we believe it averages around 25 per cent annually. In my country, this is partly because fund raising tends to be a younger person's profession. Younger people tend to move around more. A final thought: Intuitively you'd expect that the impact of staff turnover would be much greater here in the U.S. where there is much more face-to-face peer fund raising. The loss of a key individual can often lead to the loss of a donor, and there is a mountain of evidence about the mechanics of how this works from the salesforce retention literature. Nothing to my knowledge on fund raising though. Thanks for the suggestion. I will certainly add this topic to the list of worthy research topics.

Question from Indiana State Museum Foundation:
    Could you discuss strategies for providing meaningful value to donors who give at the $1,000 level? How meaningful are personal calls, notecards, private tours, etc., for individual donors?

Adrian Sargeant:
    A lot of nonprofits draw a distinction between lower-value donors, higher-value donors, and major donors. Your question obviously relates to the middle of these three groups. These are folks who give well above average donations but who give sums that are insufficient to warrant the personal attention given to major donors. It's a tough question to answer in a few lines, but as you will undoubtedly be using direct-marketing media to develop this group, you can obviously test the incremental benefit of investing in this segment. Nonprofits typically send more detailed and perhaps personalized communications to such donors. They also make attempts to bring these donors a little 'closer' to the organization, as you would obviously be doing with activities such as private tours. As to how meaningful these are, I've tracked differences in satisfaction by value segment, and higher-value donors really do appreciate the extra effort. You would want to track changes in their satisfaction as you implement a program like this. If it goes up, so too will your retention rates. Remember that individuals who say they are very satisfied will typically exhibit twice the loyalty of individuals who say they are just satisfied. You want to maximize the number of those in the former group, and you can assess your strategy against this goal.

Question from Holly Hall:
    Adrian, you have said that the fund-raising profession lacks research-based knowledge on what works and what doesn't. And you've also said that fund raisers cannot agree on basic principles such as the best methods of retaining donors. Based on your own research so far, what are the key methods or practices that charities can use to keep their donors giving year after year?

Adrian Sargeant:
    1. We know that providing good feedback in respect of how previous donations have been used makes a real difference. This isn't rocket science and it is something development professionals have been aware of for many years, but opportunities are still missed and we can actualy quantify the impact of this. 2. Measure the quality of service that is delivered to donors. This should be tracked periodically and in response to fund-raising strategy. Pay particular attention to the proportion that is "very satisfied" as opposed to just "satisfied." You need to build that. 3. Foster commitment by engaging the donor in multiple ways and giving them multiple opportunities to interact with the organization. 4. Make sure you take supporters on a meaningful journey that builds their knowledge and understanding of what you do. Too many solicitations are annual and make the same old appeal for the same old reasons. Think long term about the journey you will take folks on. 5. Pay particular attention to sharing the values base of the organization and indicate why this is important. It isn't just about what the organiation does, its about how it does it. When donors begin to identify with the values they are a lot more likely to be loyal 6. Encourage dissent! In practical terms, give donors regular opportunities to express any problematic issues or concerns that they have with the organization. Even if you can't deal with these concerns, donors will be more loyal having expressed them. If you can deal with them, they will be more loyal than donors who never had a problem. 7. Think about developing a regular commitment. Regular giving will be a big growth area in the coming years, facilitated by the excellent facilities to adopt this now available on line. The retention rate of regular donors is very different to those who only send occasional checks.

Question from Astrid Guerra, Museum in Puerto Rico:
    Do you believe that research results can be used to standardize fund-raising practice? How is balance made between an emphasis on the fund-raising method and the relationship with donors?

Adrian Sargeant:
    What a great question. My sense of this is that there are very real dangers in standardizing fund-raising practice. Used improperly, this is exactly what research can do. I'm reminded of the ground-breaking work conducted years ago by the eminent Dr Vogele, who wired folks up to equipment that could track their eye movement and monitor the time they spent reading different components of marketing communications, notably direct mail. I'll spare you the details but he identified things like the fact that readers spend more time on the back of an envelope than on the front. How many nonprofits now use envelope messages? He also found that the average time spent reviewing a mailing is 11 seconds. Eyes focused on pictures and headlines interestingly, not on bold copy. Large pictures get more attention than small ones, color more than black and white. He is also responsible for the prolific use of the p.s.in fund-raising letters. His work led to a cloned approach to fund raising. Clearly, if these things work, we all need to be doing them. Well ... maybe. Or maybe not. We still need to think for ourselves and be creative in ways that Dr Vogele hadn't envisaged. To my mind, the greatest contribution that research can make lies in getting people to reflect on WHY they do what they do and thinking about WHETHER they can do things better. To give you an example, ask yourself what the three key theories of giving behavior are? The theories you'd expect every competent fund raiser to know. Ask yourself what the three key influences on donor retention are? The answers to these questions should be informing our professional practice. The second question is trickier. For me the methods we use are just a route to the latter. The more ways we can facilitate two-way interactions with donors, for example, research tells us the higher our level of retention would be. We should be looking at methods through a relationship lens.

Question from Fraser Alexander, University of Auckland:
    I suggest the most important aspect of attracting and retaining donors is the understanding of the determinants of giving. Nonprofits should research which determinants apply to their givers and non-givers and tailor their marketing programmes accordingly. Your thoughts?

Adrian Sargeant:
    I agree completely. This is just good marketing practice. Start from an understanding of why donors offer their support, what their interests and concerns are, and move from this to a communication strategy - segmented, if the size of the database and the pattern of response achieved - warrants it. I've sat through numerous focus groups where organizations have been genuinely surprised as some of the motives expressed and even more surprised when these have subsequently been shown to be commonly held views. It used to be that gathering this kind of data was time consuming and expensive, but we live in an increasingly digital age and there are a plethora of online tools now that allow us to gather and reflect on this data very easily. To name a few: http://www.pollit.com/survey; http://www.quask.com; http://www.votations.com; and http://www.zoomerang.com I would also encourage nonprofits to conduct similar research with their lapsed donors to identify why they are leaving. Research tracking donor perceptions of the quality of service they receive is also helpful, and it can have a MAJOR impact on retention. Interestingly, although a lot of nonprofits are fearful of conducting research because they believe they will irritate people, research actually tells us that the opposite is true. I'll guarantee that if you track the subsequent behavior of individuals that have participated in research, they will exhibit significantly more loyalty than those who have not.

Question from Roseann Fitzgerald, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA:
    Are there any available studies comparing stewardship practices in the UK with those at non-profits in the United States, particularly at institutions of higher education?

Adrian Sargeant:
    I'm not aware of anything, although it would be worth checking with the folks at CASE. They produce an excellent journal that may have published work on this: CASE International Journal of Educational Advancement. One of the studies I'd like to do in the future is comparative work in this field because intuitively I suspect that there would be much for us to learn in the U.K. (with the notable exception of the Top 5 or so institutions. Oxford and Cambridge are masters of stewardship). Stewardship is well integrated with your professional practice in the U.S. My impression is that it begins when students first show up at their university as undergrads. That just doesn't happen in the U.K but, with increasing pressure on government funding, it will need to. As an aside, the British government has just announced an additional tax break for donations to educational institutions. It has created something of a storm in the nonprofit sector; the fear is that the elite institutions will just bank the additional money (thank you very much) while other universities will get proportionately less of this new 'pie.' The government hopes the measure will inculcate a sense that giving to educational causes is worthwhile for everyone and encourage universities to invest in improving their fund-raising practices.

Question from Laura Ferretti, Impact Philanthropy LLC:
    It would be helpful to have data indicating the ideal role that executive directors and board members at community-based organizations play in working with development professionals to identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward donors, particularly individual donors.

Adrian Sargeant:
    I agree. There isn't a great deal of research on this. What material there is tends to be 'normative' in the sense that it prescribes what people should do. It is based on experience with successful campaigns, but research may well yield additional insights.

Question from Dennis Bidwell, Bidwell Advisors:
    About 30 percent of the nation's private wealth is in real estate, yet only 3 percent of charitable contributions, by most estimates, is in the form of real estate of one sort or another. This gap is narrowing, but for the potential of real-estate philanthropy to be more fully realized, more research on real-estate gift trends, giving motivations, profile of real-estate donors, etc., is needed. What attention will you give to the real-estate gift potential, and real-estate gifts in practice, in your research? Thank you.

Adrian Sargeant:
    By mapping out a fund-raising research agenda, I hope to encourage new and talented researchers into this domain. I intend to consult widely and then disseminate the results to the professional and research communities. This is one we should definitely add to the list. Emerging forms of giving with a strong potential for growth should certainly be one of the priorities. I'm not aware of any other work in this domain. If the research were properly constructed, it could certainly aid in the targeting and crafting of successful appeals. Thanks for the suggestion.

Question from Holly Madsen, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions:
    Mr. Sargeant, Thank you for entertaining questions. I work for the production organization that produces The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; we partner with WETA, a Washington, DC tv/radio station as our 501(c)(3) fiscal agent. My question is about identifying courses and seminars on identifying and making requests to major donors and small family foundations with significant assets. Do you have recommendations for educational opportunities in the mid-Atlantic region--or perhaps New York? Sincerely, Holly Madsen, Director of Development, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions

Adrian Sargeant:
    One of the attractions for me in joining the team in Indiana was their Fundraising School, http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/TheFundRaisingSchool/. What I always liked about this program was the intelligent mix of professional experience and academic research. They offer a good major gift course that does travel to different venues throughout the U.S.

Holly Hall (Moderator):
    In response to Ms. Madsen's question about good seminars and workshops, The Chronicle publishes a "Datebook" listing in every issue that lists international, national, and regional conferences, many of which are in the Northeast and are about fund raising and grant seeking.

Holly Hall (Moderator):
    Hello all: We are halfway through this live chat with another 30 minutes to go. Please continue submitting questions by clicking the "ask a question" link at the top of this page.

Question from Jaimie, small cultural arts group:
    I have a donor who made a $500 gift to our endowment campaign and has asked for it back. The donor is unhappy with the new leadership (executive director and volunteer board president) and the direction the organization is going in. The campaign is not making its goal and probably will not. The priorities have changed and regrettably, the new leadership is inexperienced and uneducated in the nonprofit world. The organization is no longer moving toward becoming more professional, which was a priority when the gift was made, and they are overspending. Does the donor have the right to ask for the gift back?

Adrian Sargeant:
    This is a question for your legal team, as I can claim no legal expertise. However, as a general rule, campaign gifts are non-revocable. The only grey area might be if the gift were given as a restricted gift, and your organization used the monies for an unrelated purpose. That doesn't appear to be the case here. It sounds as though you really have your hands full here and I don't envy you being caught in the middle. I wish you well.

Question from Jerri Wall, Perkins Restaurants/ Give Kids the World:
    How do you get celebrities interested in a particular charity?

Adrian Sargeant:
    I would treat this as an exercise in prospect research. I'd search to identify the causes/organizations the celebrity has a history of supporting, together with any relevant opinion in the popular press. Try and find the best matches between a particular celebrity and your specific organizations. Organizations also try to leverage personal contacts, of course. The only not immediately obvious advice I'd give here is to canvass all staff and volunteers for such links, not just your Board.

Adrian Sargeant:
    Just another thought: One of the best texts I've found on prospect research is by C. Hogan, Prospect Research: A Primer For Growing Nonprofits (Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury MA, 2004)

Question from Dave Foubert:
    As a followup to Mal's question. What influence do you think the economy has on retention or movement of staff?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Again, I think this would bear research. Intuitively, you'd expect that a good economy would impact on salaries, particularly in other sectors, and this might have the impact of attracting people away from nonprofits.

Question from Kevin Merrill, Eastern Michigan University:
    Please give advice to all the doctoral students out here: Which research questions would you propose if you were starting your dissertation work today?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Ah - I should probably charge for answering this one! Well, there are a great many challenges particularly in the realm of fund raising and unfortunately too few Ph.D. students looking to make a contribution in this domain. I'd like us to understand more about online giving, the triggers of making a gift in this environment, how people behave on nonprofit Web sites, what they look for in effective sites, and so on. Regular monthly giving is just starting to take off here in the U.S. There would be scope to look at that dynamic. New forms of giving such as giving circles, gifts of real estate, and some of the (relatively) new financial products are other topics ripe for exploration. How does the decision-making process work when donors give, what motivates people to consider giving in these ways, and what sources of information to they use? Legacy/bequest giving is another poorly understood area. Giving by different ethnic communities and religious faiths is also poorly understood. I'd also like to see more work on fund-raising products and vehicles. Lots of ideas!

Question from Smriti Belbase, RESCATE (Spain):
    As a fund raiser who has had to adapt her United States-based training to a southern European setting, I would be very interested in (1) studies on the differences between Anglo-Saxon and non-Anglo Saxon countries with respect to donor motivations and behaviour, cultural attitudes towards philanthropy, etc., and (2) analyses of how fund-raising techniques have had to be adapted when applied outside of the Anglo-Saxon settings in which - and for which - they were developed. Thank you!

Adrian Sargeant:
    There isn't exactly a wealth of material out there on this, but there are studies looking at giving in specific communities, e.g., Questions About Hispanics and Fundraising, by Mike Cortés (New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising, Fall 2002, Issue 37, pp. 45-54). There is also a nice book edited by Warren F. Ilchman, Stanley N. Katz and Edward L Queen on Philanthropy in the World's Traditions. This doesn't deal with fund raising per se, but it does stimulate thought as to how the approach would need to be different. I am also planning a special issue of the International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, which will look at fund-raising practice in developing countries. It is being edited by Simon Collings, who heads the Resource Alliance. You may want to touch base with them because their mission is to build the fund-raising and local resource mobilisation capacity of the voluntary sector worldwide. The Resource Alliance is a U.K. registered charity, and it has 501c3 status in the U.S. If you're interested in a specific culture or country, e-mail me after the chat and I can be more specific: asargean@iupui.edu

Question from Timothy G. Scott, CFRE (Tim):
    Since we can't keep slicing the same size pie, what makes non-donors into donors?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Gosh - where to start? I'm presently working on a paper that will address what governments can do to extend giving. It will be available in a month or two, so drop me a line then if you're still interested in this topic: asargean@iupui.edu. There are so many general factors it is difficult to know where to start. Trust is a key factor: Individuals who trust the nonprofit sector are much more likely to give. Trust in specific institutions will drive whether individuals include them in their 'consideration set.' Who gives is a complex function of the media used and the type of ask. New fund-raising media have often brought in whole new cohorts of donors. So too has regular giving. These folks tend to be younger, for example, than traditional donors. Thinking up new fund-raising products and media would tend to increase giving. As an aside too much of what we do in the sector is consultant or agency led. An agency gets a new idea and sells it to as many clients as possible. What we need to do is to map out the segments of society that don't give and work from that to rigorous new development of fund-raising media. Social norms are also an issue. Many people won't give because it isn't normative for their group. Instilling such norms would expand the pie. In the U.K., we introduced a savings scheme for every child that would mature at age 18 and allow them to spend the money on education or whatever. The government puts in a sum of money when the child is born and family may add to this thereafter if they wish. A lovely scheme, but what an impact it would have had if a small percentage could have been set aside for the purpose of a charitable gift. That way, at age 18, every single individual in the country would have had to make a planned gift to charity. What a powerful difference that would have made to U.K. society. Sadly in the U.K., we've spent a lot of time and effort on the issue of non-givers with most of it being wasted because the government didn't stop and think. Every good marketer knows that if you want to grow a pie, you start with the most promising segments first and work back from there. Unfortunately we seem to have prioritised the most difficult segments and wasted time and effort accordingly. Far better to have focused on those more likely to give 'if' .. and then concentrated on facilitating the 'if.'

Question from Elisa Lurkis:
    As a university fund raiser, I am concerned that foundation funding for university research is dropping. Foundations increasingly seem to want outcome-based projects at the grassroots level. What does this mean for the future of university research and how can universities and foundations rekindle the glorious partnership that they once had?

Adrian Sargeant:
    It isn't easy to answer this question, particularly as I'm not aware of any research on this specific point, but undoubtedly the starting point lies in understanding the range of issues that foundations presently face. I can recommend the excellent Creative Philanthropy by Helmut Anheier and Diana Leat that addresses exactly this. It was published just recently by Routledge. I know it doesn't answer your specific point, but the book may give you food for thought.

Question from Julius E. Rainey, Jr., Foundation for the Mid South:
    How do you engage younger donors (aged 23 to 40) in your organization's work? What are the best strategies?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Sadly, I'm outside this age bracket now, so the first thing I'd recommend is conducting research with the target audience. One of the reasons we sometimes fail in our fund raising is that folks in one generation design activities that they think will be of interest to another. Its one reason bequest fund raising was so poor in the U.K. for many years. The solicitations targeted at the over 60s were being written by 20 somethings. I'd look for ways to engage this age group that don't necessarily involve parting with cash. We all understand the financial pressures that the lower end of this age spectrum are usually under. This is a great time to enthuse them about the work going on with your volunteering/campaigning opportunities. Even just signing up for information or to participate in something online might be attractive. If you can retain their interest they'll give when they're able. Challenges, auctions and sponsored activities are popular, as are events. Finally, in the 30-40 range, think about regular giving. Make it easy for these folks to make an ongoing commitment, and don't be afraid to solicit this at events. This generation like things to be simple and convenient.

Question from Amy Saidman, SpeakeasyDC:
    I run a very small, local arts organization. I find that most of the advice out there is for big organizations that are national in scope. Some of the information is transferrable to a small organization, but much of it is not. We can do a whole lot with a little, but it's still challenging. Any thoughts?

Adrian Sargeant:
    The Internet will be a great leveller here. As long as you have good content and a good digital promotion strategy, you should be able to engage in much the same way as the biger players. There are many free tools available to help set up a really good way of asking online - and if you've not encountered them already it would be worth touching base with the e-philanthropy foundation. They are doing wonderful work helping even small nonprofits to make the most of their online opportunities. Yes, I concur that small organizations will find it impossible to use the full range of fund-raising media, but there is no reason they can't leverage personal contacts and develop a major-gifts program. Arts organizations have had much success with these over the years. On the research front, there has been too much focus on larger organizations. I'd be particularly interested in seeing detailed case studies of success in small organizations that could be used to inform teaching programs and seminars. That way, folks could learn from the experiences of others - and if the resources were well written - participants could actually take some of the same decisions in class and explore the implications.

Question from Mal Warwick, Mal Warwick Associates:
     Further on small nonprofits: two talented practitioners and writers, Joan Flanagan and Kim Klein, have written extensively on appropriate methods of fund raising for small organizations. Joan's book, Successful Fundraising, is the all-time best-selling book on fund raising. Kim has written many excellent books.

Adrian Sargeant:
    One more thing: It's a little old now, but the journal New Directions in Philanthropic Fundraising focused an issue on the dynamics of fund raising for smaller nonprofits a few years ago. It was called: "Small Nonprofits: Strategies for Fundraising Success." There are also numerous good books such as Ronald Jordan's Planned Giving for Small Nonprofits.

Question from Carol, higher ed:
    I'm looking for studies that can tell me what is most cost effective and works best with alumni in professions with low-to- moderate incomes, such as social work or the ministry, to increase both the number of alumni who donate and the amount they give. This is especially difficult in graduate-level institutions where alumni are on campus for a brief time and do not engage in the bonding activities of traditional undergraduate life. I never see this addressed, except with alumni in higher-paying professions such as business, law, and medicine. Thank you.

Adrian Sargeant:
    I'm not aware of any work that addresses this specific question, but you should contact the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and try their International Journal of Educational Advancement. The tables of contents can be found at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/jea. Beyond that, there would obviously be the wider individual giving literature. None of this work would be in the specific context you're looking for, but it would give you a sense of what other organizations do to grow lower-value giving of this type. Routledge is publishing a 'Nonprofit Companion' text later this year - and it will contain a lengthy review of the general giving literature. If you need something more immediate try "Literature Review: Philanthropic Fundraising," by Wesley F. Lindahl and Aron T. Conley, in Nonprofit Management & Leadership (Fall 2002, Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp. 90-111). Although this is a general 'review' piece, its lead author (Wes Lindahl) has a good deal of experience in the context you refer to and it therefore has a 'development' flavor. Good luck.

Question from Mal Warwick, Mal Warwick Associates:
    Academia has recognized the nonprofit sector in general and fund raising in particular for a number of years now. Graduate courses such as yours at Indiana University proliferate. You've even begun offering a Ph.D. The presumption is that this advanced training benefits the sector by raising the level of skill and providing a stream of nonprofit specialists with a solid grounding in the principles of our work. But what does the experience to date tell us? Has anyone yet studied the impact of all this academic attention on the nonprofit sector in the United States?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Nothing specific that I'm aware of. There was a study published last year by Ritchie and Eastwood in Nonprofit Management and Leadership, which established a relationship between a chief executive's functional business experience and multiple financial measures of nonprofit organizational performance. This suggests that knowledge leads to greater performance, but I'm making a leap here that the authors probably wouldn't do. It doesn't answer your specific point - does nonprofit education matter? It would be interesting to track the careers of some of our graduates and it would be equally interesting to track the pre/post training performance of a number of nonprofits. We haven't done this systematically. What is certain though, is that the more we understand the dynamics of donor behavior and fund raising, the more we can take informed decisions in our strategy and tactics. We've still a long way to go to build the body of knowledge - and an even longer way to go to disseminate it. Much fundraising training is still skill-based rather than knowledge based and we need a better mix of both.

Question from Sandy Spencer:
    In reference to online giving: Do you feel an organization’s Web site can significantly contribute to the soliciting of major donations? Are there specific attributes of Web sites recognized as likely to promote giving?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Oh yes - there is increasing evidence that donors are now undertaking research for themselves rather than relying solely on the professionals. Helpfully, there are organizations that will help even small nonprofits put up meaningful content on line: http://www.futurefocus.net, http://www.stelter.com, and http://www.virtualgiving.com. There are also some great tools that allow donors to run calculations themselves. A number of these may be installed on a nonprofit's site: http://www.pgcalc.com/giftcalcs and http://www.ptec.com, for example. On your last point - no. I think most organizations should be able to achieve this but if you need help visit http://www.nonprofitmatrix.com. You should find what you need there.

Question from Judith Levy, Judith Levy Consulting:
    I believe that fund raising is both an art and a science. Do you have comments on this and/or how this aspect can be part of your research?

Adrian Sargeant:
    I'd agree, at least in part. I think it depends really on the form of fund raising undertaken. Direct marketing is more the latter as you can test, test, and test again. That's not to say you can't still be creative, just that we understand so much now about what works and what doesn't. In the realm of personal solicitations, I think it's a mix. There are some skills (e.g., interpersonal skills) that would be difficult to teach and some folks will just find it easier to relate to people than others. On the specific point - there is actually a good body of academic literature now on the topic of creativity (in advertising and marketing), and it is absolutely fascinating. No one has really extended this into the fund-raising domain yet - so there's definitely another element to add to our wish list for future research. Thanks for the question.

Question from Maynard Moore, Partner, CommunityNexus Consulting LLC:
    Hello: One of the characteristics in the United States (and elsewhere) is the increasing numbers of VERY wealthy individuals, and we see an increasing number of multimillion-dollar gifts, with a corresponding diminishing number of moderate-size gifts. This would suggest that the traditional "donor pyramid" is becoming more like an "hourglass" with larger numbers at the top and a squeeze among middle class donors at the middle. Is this an accurate reading of the situation? And do you see this as an increasing trend?

Adrian Sargeant:
    There's definitely evidence of a growth in the number of high-wealth individuals, but I'm not aware of any evidence that this has been at the expense of the middle-value donor segment. Paul Schervish and John Havens at Boston College would have a better feel for this - as they have looked at the critical issue of wealth transfer. Check out their work at the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy online at http://www.bc.edu/research/swri/.

Question from Elizabeth A. Craigg, Art Center College of Design:
    In determining a donor's giving capacity, we are instructed to use real estate and possible stock holdings. However, what is the most comprehensive way to determining wealth, and that person's giving capacity?

Adrian Sargeant:
    You should find the resources at http://www.internet-prospector.org/ to be helpful.

Question from University of Virginia:
    Hi Adrian. An interesting area of research for me would be to discover/learn about international philanthropic trends around the world, including not only which countries tend to give the most but what cultural, religious, historical, political, and social factors are involved in each country's developing (and changing) philanthropic character and nature. By the way, I appreciate your time and thoughts today!

Adrian Sargeant:
    Check out the comparative nonprofit sector study at Johns Hopkins University. They have been doing great work on this topic for a number of years: http://www.jhu.edu/~cnp/.

Question from Jareb Price, IU Center on Philanthropy:
    In Veynes' work on euergetism and Senecas' on benefits, we can see a call for the active and deep involvement of donors in the creation and dissemination of gifts. In fund raising we talk oftentimes about educating the fund raiser to better understand the donor, but little has been said of the role of the fund raiser as an educator. Anecdotal stories are the backbone of interpersonal education. What do we risk losing by seeking to concretize the education of fund raisers?

Adrian Sargeant:
    Interesting question. Over a century ago, one of the great fund raisers Charles Sumner Ward famously remarked that if he thought he were merely raising money he would leave the work immediately. It was raising men that appealed to him. You're therefore in the best of company. I don't personally see a conflict between better education of fund raisers and them playing an educational role. One can be educated and still be an educator. My difficulty with anecdotal stories is that they can quickly take on a life of their own and, because they are based on one person's experience, they may simply be wrong.

Question from Jerry Clevenger, Hartsook Companies:
    Should database creation, repair, and maintenance be a general cost for the nonprofit or should it be charged to the fund-raising enterprise?

Adrian Sargeant:
    It depends on what it is used for. If it's just used for fund raising, then I'd allocate the function the full cost. If it's used for other purposes, I'd allocate the expenditure pro-rata. My concern is that we give donors a genuinely accurate picture of the real costs of fund raising.

Question from Elizabeth A. Craigg, Art Center College of Design:
    Are there other sources to tap into for foundation prospecting instead of just online sources, specifically for trends in foundation giving?

Adrian Sargeant:
    If you haven't already, I'd check out the Foundation Center. They have a great Web site and provide a good gateway to this kind of research. I believe they also provide off-line resources and suggestions for fund raisers.

Question from Marc A. Pitman, Fundraisingcoach.com:
    Adrian, lots of research has been done in the for-profit field of sales and marketing. In your experience, are there inherent problems with nonprofits unquestioningly adopting that research? If yes, what filters should nonprofits use in digesting that type of research?

Adrian Sargeant:
    There are real problems in doing this. I've had clients use portfolio models, for example, that are wholly inappropriate to the nonprofit context. As time here is limited, you may find my book Marketing Management for Nonprofit Organizations helpful in this regard. I deal with this specific issue.

Question from Laura Lopez, Synergos:
    Among nonprofits that are not service providers, what categories or types of nonprofits receive the most funding from the general public in terms of unrestricted funds?

Adrian Sargeant:
    I would take a look at the excellent 'Giving USA'. From memory I'm not sure that it makes the distinction between restricted and unrestricted funds - but you may be able to infer from their data an answer to this question.

Question from Cathy Folkes, Merkle:
    Adrian, wondering if you would consider research around the value and understanding of donor "Second Lifetime Value"

Adrian Sargeant:
    Wow - what an interesting question. I guess you're referring here to the phenomenon of Second Life online. Yes, companies have already discovered this domain and are using it to generate sales. I'm not aware that any nonprofit have as yet - but I'd agree - there must be real potential. Thanks for this!

Question from Ellen Fleming, Caritas Norwood Hospital:
    Working in a small shop, we have limited time and resources, but obviously, the ultimate goal of growing our revenues. In terms of setting priorities, it would be helpful to have some data on which donor cultivation and stewardship efforts will yield the greatest results. Is there research data that compares the kind of cultivation/recognition events/gifts/interactions that have made the greatest impact on strengthening donors' affiliation with a nonprofit?

Adrian Sargeant:
    No - I think we'd need to assemble some kind of panel study to get at data in that level of detail. It's an interesting idea and I'll certainly add it to the list.

Holly Hall (Moderator):
    Well, it's just past 1:00 and our discussion time has come to end, unfortunately. Many thanks to Adrian and to all of you who asked such good questions. If you have additional questions about The Chronicle or suggestions for the editor, please e-mail us at editor@philanthropy.com.