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Association of Fundraising Professionals
April 01, 2009
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Advancing Fund Raising Globally
As the Association of Fundraising Professionals annual meeting wraps up today in New Orleans, the conference has made clear that the organization’s work is now spreading around the world.
The association has been increasing educational offerings outside the United States and Canada and extending membership opportunities to fund raisers overseas. In addition, the association has advised charity regulators in countries including Brazil, China, New Zealand, and Poland. It is planning a symposium on developing new charity regulations to be held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in November.
The association now has chapters in several locations in Mexico, as well as chapters in Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Singapore. And working with 23 other fund-raising associations or related organizations from other countries, the association has produced the International Statement of Ethical Principles in Fundraising.
Among other overseas expansion activities:
- The association held its first joint fund-raising conference with the Institute of Fundraising in London last year, drawing participants from eight countries. A second conference is planned for January 2010.
- A new online-only membership has been created for overseas fund raisers who pay $50 annually to join. The association plans to market the membership more actively, although more than 100 fund raisers have joined with little promotional effort.
- The association has worked with a Mexican university to create a new Professional Online Diploma training program and a certificate in Spanish. The first students will begin taking courses this spring.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
How Charities Can Find Donations Even in Tough Times
Despite the soft economy, nonprofit groups can do many things to put themselves in the “ready position” to take advantage of some of the fund-raising opportunities still out there, Dee Vandeventer, president of ME&V, a marketing and fund-raising company, told participants at a session of the Association of Fundraising Professionals conference.
One is to focus on the organizations’ image. Think of Morton Salt, she told the group. Though other brands might be cheaper Ms. Vandeventer says, she always buys Morton’s because it’s a familiar and trusted brand.
“It’s the same salt my mother cooked with and the same salt my grandmother cooked with,” she said. “If you can get your organization to that level of emotional branding, you’ll be head and shoulders above everyone else.”
A strong brand, she said, is one that communicates a clear consistent message to all kinds of people. To assess the strength of a nonprofit group’s image, she suggested that participants consider: “If you put all your marketing materials out on a table, would you be able to know that that’s your organization?”
Nonprofit groups should also be using this time to strengthen board members’ connection and commitment to the organization, said Ms. Vandeventer.
While serving as a volunteer on a symphony board, she asked board members to identify three key phrases to describe the mission of the organization and an explanation of why they sit on its board which they then wrote on index cards to use in a six-second “elevator speech” whenever they met likely new donors.
To remind them of the importance of acting as ambassadors for the organization, board members were asked at every board meeting whether they had yet used their elevator pitch.
She also suggested fund raisers look for niche groups that might still be able to give. Because data show that women receive 70 percent of all bequests, and are expected to hold half the wealth in the United States by 2010, she urged fund raisers to think carefully about whether they are doing anything specific to appeal to female donors. She pointed to the example of one local United Way chapter that had recently started a women’s philanthropy group.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
What Fund Raisers Need to Know About Bequests
Three new studies shed light on what fund raisers should know about seeking bequests.
Scholars who presented results at the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals noted that people who are single and childless are far more likely than any other types of people to make bequests — no matter how wealthy or dedicated to a charity people with families may be.
And they found that donors of bequests have somewhat different motivations than those who give yearly — so fund raisers need to appeal to them in specially tailored ways. You can read all the details about the findings in a Chronicle of Philanthropy article.
March 31, 2009
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Half of Charity Campaigns Plan to Extend the Length of the Drive, Survey Finds
With the recession making it harder to raise money, 51 percent of nonprofit organizations now in capital or endowment campaigns have extended the length of their drives, and another 11 percent have reduced the amount they are trying to raise.
That is the conclusion of a survey conducted in January and February by two Chicago companies, Campbell & Company, a fund-raising consulting firm, and Slover Linett Strategies, a research company.
The goal of the survey of more than 300 nonprofit organizations — which either were in a current campaign or had completed one in the past decade — was to assess how charities handle budgeting for large fund-raising drives.
Campaign goals of the respondents ranged from less than $1-million to $1-billion or more, with a median goal of $13-million. Colleges and universities had the highest goals, a median of $40-million, followed by arts groups, with $20.3-million. Those organizations also had the highest campaign budgets, with a median of $1-million for both arts and higher-education drives.
Among other findings of the survey:
- Thirty-seven percent of the institutions surveyed reported paying for the campaign through their operating budget. Another 17 percent said that they folded the campaign budget into the overall campaign goal.
- Less common methods of paying for campaigns included tapping reserve funds, obtaining a gift from one or more trustees or donors to cover the campaign budget, and tapping endowments.
- When asked whether and how they would do things differently in budgeting for a big campaign, 31 percent of respondents said they would engage in more formal campaign planning. Twenty-three percent said they would monitor campaign costs more closely, and 13 percent said they would fold the campaign budget into the overall financial goal of the drive.
- The average campaign budget included 39 percent for staff members, 22 percent for consultants, 19 percent for marketing, and 20 percent for other costs such as events, travel, and office expenses.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
American Fund Raisers Urged to Look Overseas for Ideas
American fund raisers have much to learn from overseas charities, say Andrew Watt and Jon Duschinsky, who travel extensively to advise charities outside the United States.
In an audio interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Watt, chief programs officer at the Association of Fundraising Professionals, described his activities over the past three years to organize chapters overseas and to provide resources to fund raisers in many countries.
Both Mr. Watt and Mr. Duschinsky, a consultant, said donors are increasingly interested in solving problems rather than donating money to causes. Fund raisers, the two men said, must seek ways to help donors do that rather than just ask for money. Fund raisers, they said, too often think only about the amount of money raised, not about creating movements for change that inspire donors to join in hands-on involvement.
“We need to move away from talking about our organizations’ being the best and give people the tools to self-organize,” said Mr. Duschinsky. He added that he no longer looks to the United States or Britain for the best, most inspiring examples of fund raising.
Fund raisers in the United States need to adopt new approaches when starting fund-raising efforts, he said. “The donor pyramid is dead.”
Instead he urged fund raisers to think about a “change cylinder,” in which donors come together as equal participants who give money, time, and other resources to a project, then move on to other accomplishments, perhaps to come together again later.
“The donor pyramid is measuring money,” Mr. Duschinsky said. “If we now agree that effecting change is about so much else, to say that the only thing that will change the world is money misses the point.”
You can listen here to Mr. Duschinsky’s example of what he means when he says that charities need to learn to think differently:”
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Where Do Donors Turn for Advice on Giving?
Many fund raisers seek relationships with estate planners and lawyers on the theory that those experts will influence wealthy clients to make charitable gifts.
However, research by Indiana University and Bank of America has found that, in recent years, wealthy donors have shifted preferences in terms of the experts they rely on for guidance in making gifts, said Tricia Ambler, a manager at WealthEngine, at a session today at the Association of Fundraising Professionals meeting. The Bethesda, Md., company provides online research tools to help charities identify potential donors.
While wealthy donors said that they relied on estate planners and lawyers for charitable advice in a 2006 study, she noted, a later study, in 2008, found them more likely to seek charitable advice from investment bankers, wealth managers, and other experts who help them build assets.
“If you have wealth managers among your donor base, you should cultivate them for their contacts” to wealthy potential donors, said Ms. Ambler. Those are the experts who’ve helped them create private foundations and donor-advised funds, she said.
But Russell N. James, a researcher at the University of Georgia’s Institute for Nonprofit Organizations, questioned whether donors will continue to rely on wealth managers for charitable advice as the economic crisis wears on.
Given how much wealth has been lost by investment managers, and the public outcry over irresponsible decisions by many investment firms, he said, donors will probably turn back to estate planners and lawyers, many of whom take a more conservative approach to money management.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Attracting Young Donors
Nonprofit groups should be aggressively working to involve people in their 20s and 30s.
But Derrick Feldmann, president of Achieve, a consulting company in Indianapolis, said they shouldn’t expect young donors to open up their checkbooks quickly.
Nor should they expect to raise significant money, Mr. Feldmann told an audience at the Association of Fundraising Professionals annual conference in New Orleans.
But nonprofit groups shouldn’t abandon efforts to seek out young donors, even if the initial return is low.
“This is a long-term philanthropic strategy to engage young people,” he said. “They are not going to be young for long. The organizations that take this approach are the ones that are going to be very successful with reaching these individuals over the long term.”
In an interview with The Chronicle, Mr. Feldmann discussed four key steps nonprofit groups can take to attract young donors. You can listen to the interview:
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Scenes From New Orleans: Networking, Twitter-Style
The social-networking Web site Twitter is getting a lot of discussion among fund raisers gathered in New Orleans this week for the Association of Fundraising Professionals annual conference.
Many businesses in the exhibit area are inviting participants to join their Twitter groups — and the site has generated more than passing mention at several conference sessions.
Twitter is being discussed as a way to connect with younger donors, meet other fund raisers, and get ideas for improving their fund-raising efforts.
To help demystify the Twitter world, The Chronicle hosted its first “Tweetup” — a cocktail reception for fund raisers who follow its Twitter feed.
The event attracted local fund raisers as well as people from California, Indiana, Nebraska, New York, and elsewhere— and it brought together colleagues who had previously met only online.
To learn more about Twitter, read The Chronicle’s recent article with tips on how to use it for fund raising.
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Advice for Grant Seekers
Opportunities for new grants lurk in some unexpected places, said Gail Vertz, executive director of the American Association of Grant Professionals, at a session today at the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals conference in New Orleans.
For example, she says, one place for grant seekers to check out is their local bank. Often family foundations that don’t want to oversee the foundation will appoint a bank vice president to manage it. When visiting a bank, she suggests, charity officials should check to see if anyone there is a contact person for a foundation, and should always be prepared to give a quick, concise speech about their organization’s mission and needs.
Similarly, she says, it pays to stay in touch with foundation program officers, who can sometimes tell you if new money becomes available because another grantee is unable to use it.
As a grant reviewer, Ms. Vertz says one of the weaknesses she sees most often on grant applications is a budget that doesn’t match up with program descriptions.
“If you’re putting in staff time and you say you’re getting half of your case manager’s or social worker’s time, make sure it’s easy to see that someone is spending 20 hours on a project,” she says.
Otherwise, grant makers are likely to give an application a low score and may not award it any money.
Ms. Vertz said she is also irked by line items marked “miscellaneous” on grant-application budgets. “If somebody can’t tell me how they’re going to spend that money, that’s inappropriate,” she said. “You should be able to explain everything you plan on doing.”
She recommends including an evaluation component that describes how a program’s results will be measured and how that will be reported to the grant maker – even if the foundation doesn’t seek such details. That will demonstrate the charity’s seriousness about making a difference.
Most federal grants require an evaluation as a stipulation of the grant. For small organizations that may not be able to hire an evaluation specialist, Ms. Vertz suggests looking to a local college or university where a graduate student may be interested in following a grant as part of a thesis.
March 30, 2009
Association of Fundraising Professionals
The Fund-Raising Picture: Gloomy Results
Forty-six percent of nonprofit organizations raised more money last year compared with 2007, according to preliminary findings of an annual survey, released today by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
Reflecting the toll exacted by the economic downturn, the percentage of fund raisers whose institutions raised more money last year was a new low in the eight years the survey has been conducted. In a typical year, 60 percent of fund raisers in the survey report being able to raise more money.
Copyright © 2009 The Chronicle of Philanthropy