Protest Puppet from Paris: Image copyright 0olong from Flickr

What Barbara Erhenreich AND the Occupy Movement are teaching me is that we need to take the collective expression of protest around the world and have a dance-off.

Really?

YEAH.

What does your cause need next?

Art!

Music!

Face-painting!

Big puppets!

Why?

Why would you want to make people dance and sing around your very serious cause?

Because there is power in collective joy. There is power in celebration. Resistance is not about drudgery and speeches. It’s about a spiral dance, a circle dance, facepainting, big puppets, and changing the world one square at a time. Getting everyone to dance together.

Here’s a video from OccupyLove.org

Barbara Erhenreich wrote a book called “Dancing in the Streets: The Power of Collective Joy”

Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich

In it, she goes into detail about the collective joy, feast days, festivities from prehistoric times to the Greeks, the Romans, the 14th Century Europeans to modern-day sports fans.

From Laura Barcella’s interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on Alternet

“We are a very social species. I was reading about it for months and months, but came across this universal pattern of ecstatic rituals — it’s hard to think of any society that doesn’t have them. They all seem to feature these ingredients of costuming, dancing, masking, face/body painting, feasting … techniques that people in widely different cultures have used to generate joy. Why have we got so few [ecstatic rituals] today?

Class and issues of power are a huge part of this. In the Caribbean in the 19th century, carnival would be a huge part of slaves’ revolts.”

Ms. Erhenreich says of her research:

“I concluded that ecstatic rituals were a cure for depression — you can see that in many cultures. An example of a culture that uses it as a cure is some North Africans — if a woman were to take to her bed and become depressed, family would call in a zar healer who would bring in musicians and healers to engage in days and nights of ecstatic dancing, and soon the woman would get up and join. Some cultures would see this as a cure for melancholy. We do drugs instead, both antidepressants and illegal drugs.

This [lack of festivities] represents a triumph of the powerful, and their idea that you have to work all the time. This is a recent [development]. Historically, peasants worked when they had to, when they had to plant or harvest. When they didn’t have to work, they worked on having a good time — planning festivities, costumes, dance steps; great expressions of human creativity.”

When I worked at a women’s shelter, one other staff member and I put together a festival. I was in charge of facepainting, as well as bilingual English/Spanish postcards about the event, put in bodegas around the rural county where we worked.

She got people to translate and sing in Spanish and Russian, there was a farmer’s market, and booths from other nonprofits providing services in the area. We even had music and dancing!

Since we worked at a shelter for survivors of domestic violence, we were used to working hard and being serious. It was such a joy to put together a festival and get people dancing together and draw the community together around this change.

Maybe you’ve experienced this too, when you organized a gala for your nonprofit?

Do you feel like organizing a festival now?

US Scamalot Puppet From Clay and Paper Theater on Flickr

How can progressives use collective joy to help motivate people and promote our causes?

People who are working for change need to think about how to make their events draw on the solidarity and creativity of lots of people together. That’s been happening … but it’s something we need to address. Bringing art and culture into politics is a way to express what we are seeking, what our vision of the world is.

So go dance with your local occupy protest tonight.

Think of some protest songs for your cause.

Make a big puppet and get the word out to your nonprofit supporters.

Let’s shut down a square! Let’s shut down a street! Write with chalk on the sidewalk! Facepainting and balloons for kids! Live music from your local musicians! Let’s make changing the world part of our cultural tradition of Dancing In The Streets, from prehistory to now!

Want to do this NOW?

How to make a really big puppet head
How to make stilt pants
Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont does this all the time!

Collective Joy = How to Harness the Power of #Occupy for Your Nonprofit Cause originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 8, 2012.

Fundraising Predictions 2012

The Atlas of Giving is different than Giving USA in that it gives you PREDICTIONS when your fundraising is most likely to do well. It tells you when you can expect the best results, and when you should hold back.

Really. Isn’t this exciting?

Check out the whole report on Scribd.

Here are some highlights of the Atlas of Giving report for December 2011.

1. Giving was up in 2011, and you can expect it to be up again in 2012 because

• The DOW is up
• Consumer confidence is up
• Unemployment is trending downward
• Consumer borrowing increased
• CEO confidence is up
• Winter weather was nonexistent in much of the US, so people didn’t have huge heating bills. (I swear I am not making this up)

2. The Good and the Bad: Fundraising results will go up in Alaska, but down in Illnois, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and California.

3. April is the cruelest month:
Apparently April is going to be a slump month this 2012, so don’t try to do your appeal or an event in April. Do it in March or May instead. (Unless you’re fundraising for the arts or the environment. Then go nuts!)

4. Religious giving is now lagging behind other sectors, which is shocking, usually they do the best! So, if you’re fundraising for a religious or spiritual institution, try doing direct mail, e-appeals, etc and bust out of your business as usual thing.

5. September should be an exceptional month for fundraising, so try to plan your events and appeals for then.

Those are the main things I got from the report.

What did YOU get out of it?

Are you as excited as I am about the possibility of being able to do a broad sweep and make predictions based on what’s come before?
 

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What are you planning for? Fundraising Predictions for 2012 originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 19, 2012.

Here’s my present to you.

6 questions you need to ask to help get that corporate sponsorship.

Why should you care?

Because most people don’t ask these questions. Most people have NO IDEA what’s happening when they ask for sponsorship. You just ask, and the money just magically appears in your hand, right?

Wrong.

If you’ve ever done a nonprofit fundraising event (and I’ve done… a few) then you know this equation:

Sponsorships = How you will make most of your money at your events.

Have you ever wondered what’s going on behind your CSR rep’s eyes?

Have you ever wondered what pressures they’re under, and how you could ever hope to pierce the veil of “company priorities for sponsorship”?

In order to get sponsorships, you’ve gotta think like a global business.

HOW do these corporations justify giving your nonprofit money, from a bottom line perspective?

Well, did you know that your mini-media juggernaut is NOT the main reason that companies give you sponsorship? No, they do it for SO MUCH MORE, including:

• Sales goals,
• Highlighting their products in connection with your cause,
• Keeping their employees motivated,
• Getting into new consumer markets,
• and MORE!

So now that you know this, here’s a little bit of what you need to ask:

1. Are there any aspects of your reputation that you would be interested in enhancing? Perhaps they are a very profitable company, but they want to highlight how GREEN they are. Maybe you can help them do that. But you should not assume anything. Ask this first. This will help you get a sense of what their PR priorities are. You might think, if they just had a major oil spill, like BP or Shell, that they would want to highlight how GREEN they are, but instead, they might want to highlight being “a great place to work.”
2. Are there any key messages about your company that you want to urgently communicate? Maybe they want to urgently communicate about their new products, their mission, or initiatives into new markets. Perhaps they seek to penetrate some segment of the Hispanic market in your region, so they might want to urgently communicate how connected they are to this market, and how many Hispanic customers they already have.
   
3. Are you having operational issues? Perhaps they are having issues with distributors, suppliers, franchisees, or retailers. How can you help their employees feel better about coming to work each day? You can help them feel as if they’re making a difference by paying them to volunteer with you, or get people to give to you at the cash register. 
4. Are you facing challenges in attracting and retaining a motivated workforce? Again, if a company shows it is committed to employee volunteerism, it’s found to make it one of the 100 best places to work, like Timberland shoes did a few years ago. 
   
5. Are there any consumer or business markets that you are pursuing where involvement in a social cause might give you a competitive edge? If this is a food company that manufactures something healthy, like Danon yogurt, and they are pursuing a consumer market such as affluent women who care about cancer, they might want to get involved with the Komen foundation, for example.
   
6. In terms of brand images, are there any specific product that you are trying to position? Are there aggressive sales goals related to any of these projects? So this is kind of self-explanatory. If you know what they’re thinking about, you can also look at their other goals, think about how they can tie their product to your event.
   

If you can show the corporation that you can help them with two or more of the above, you’ve probably made a better case than half of your competitors who are out for those same sponsorship dollars.

After you’ve got these questions answered, build your letter, phonecall and presentation around these issues, and then make sure your sponsorship contract reflects what you will provide to address them.

If you want to learn more about sponsorships, take my Wildly Successful Events webinar this January 17th!

If you want to learn more about Corporate Social Responsibility, check out the guy who wrote the book on Cause Marketing, Joe Waters. He’s got a webinar that explains it all!

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NEW: These 6 Questions Will Help You Get That Corporate Sponsorship originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 23, 2011.

Have you ever had a funder pull out of a sponsorship or grantmaking deal because of your association with a revolutionary movement or because of something a person at your nonprofit said about them?

Do YOU find it horrifying that an AmeriCorps VISTA might make $16,000 per year, or just minimum wage, while the CEO of Goldman Sachs makes $16,000 per HOUR?

Did you hear Goldman pulled out of a fundraiser after learning it honored Occupy Wall Street?

Apparently, the revolution will NOT be funded.

If you read Phil Cubeta’s short posts over the last week or so, you’ll see that he is picking the scab on the thing fundraisers don’t like to talk about, namely, you have to keep your head down and not seem TOO revolutionary, or you won’t get funded.

According to Phil, if you look too closely at the cause of income inequality, you find the very people who are funding you to study it. And they don’t want to hear that.

Here’s some good news. Occupy Wall Street now has almost half a million dollars in donations. They are putting it in a credit union. The credit union decided to throw a fundraising dinner, and Goldman Sachs withdrew their $5,000 sponsorship. Capital One, however, is still in. Wonder why?

Maybe Goldman Sachs thinks that Occupy Wall Street can actually WIN.

If you even mildly criticize your funders, you get denuded of funding as well, as Pamela Grow reported on the Reel Girls/Comcast debacle. She called it, “The Story of a Small Nonprofit and the Power of Social Media.” Then Reel Girls decided to show what Comcast was doing, and make up the comcast grant (which was only about $15,000) and ask their supporters to side with them. And they did, overwhelmingly. Because Reel Girls are about free speech, and they think that Comcast should recognize it. Comcast later said okay, you can have the money (probably because it turned into such a PR headache for them) but Reel Girls said no, thanks, we’re good. and this is why your gift policy and grant agreements should clearly state that funding will not stop just because your nonprofit exercises free speech.

What do you think?

How do YOU feel about having to rub shoulders with people high up in finance and industry, in the name of your cause, all the while knowing that the people you’re talking with make more in a few months than anyone at your nonprofit makes in a year?

Have you ever had an issue with wanting to criticize a funder, but being afraid to lose your funding?

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Have you ever had Grantus Interruptus? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on October 24, 2011.

Fundraising Rockstars can help you. Here’s a little peek about what’s inside.

Fundraising Rockstars will help you get sponsors.

Think about these five words: Research, Reflection, Collaboration, Presentation and Networking.

Research: Have you done your research? Where can you go? The Business Journal’s Book of Lists? Your database? Staff and volunteers? Board members? Who do you know who knows someone?

Reflection: Think about what part of this event would be most attractive to sponsors. Is it the fact that you are going to get the word out in multiple ways? How can you get more attention for their brand through your event?

Collaboration: Can you collaborate with a sister nonprofit in your county or state to do an event together? Can you tap into THEIR sponsorship base?

Presentation When you make a presentation to these sponsors, or even just write a letter or an email, get their attention instantly with a picture of your programs, and a bottom line total reach your event will have. Show them how your branding will influence consumer behavior to get them more customers and more cash.

and

Networking: Network your way to better sponsorship relationships. Go to chamber of commerce events. Go to other events, like meetups, membership association meetings, and more.

Want more details?

Inside Fundraising Rockstars, we show you, step by step, how to create partnerships and sponsorships, with in depth interviews, worksheets, and more.

Are you in? Last 48 hours of the Fundraising Rockstars sale!

PS. Once it ends, in 48 short hours, we are never again going to offer this information for such a low price.

Are you trying to get sponsorships? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 29, 2011.

I’m liveblogging the DonorPerfect conference and it is so neat! One of the things I’ve been learning about is the risks you run when you have sponsorships from corporations. I attended Laura Solomon and Valerie Jones‘ session and it was chock full of information.

Here is the thing you’ve probably already done to jeopardize your sponsorship

When you thanked your sponsor from the stage, did you say “Thank you to X corporation for sponsoring us” or did you say, “Thank you to X corporation who is the BEST accounting firm in the world!”

If you said the former, you have no problems.

If you said the latter, you have a problem. You’ve just endorsed them, which means that their sponsorship is no longer 100% tax deductible, and it’s going to be a big headache for them.

Don’t give benefits until you have the contract!

If you need more information about what is allowed and not allowed in your state, check out http://NASCOnet.org.

Also check out IRS Publications 1771 “Charitable Contributions”  and 526 “Charitable Contributions”.

For more resources, check out
The IGE Sponsorship directory

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One thing you’ve probably done to jeopardize your sponsorship originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 20, 2011.

Huh? What’s the deal?

Well, let me back up. When I was just starting out fundraising, I thought that fundraising was grantwriting. I was afraid to appear stupid, so I did not ask basic questions of people around me or teachers at the Foundation Center. I just walked around thinking this for a good three months as I got into the fundraising field. When I started working for small nonprofits I realized that they were asking me to do events, marketing, branding, and more, and then I thought, huh, maybe this fundraising thing is a lot more complex than I thought it was going to be!

So through the years, I’ve been learning more and more about fundraising, learning about marketing with this organization, learning about appeals and online fundraising with that. All the while, in the back of my mind was a thought, “What can I do to take this knowledge and help other people who are just starting out or who have some gaps in their knowledge like I did?”

So, I wrote this book. You probably know about it.

And it was pretty successful, so I started teaching webinars and workshops for nonprofit professionals with the Center for Nonprofit Organizations, the Texas Assocation of Nonprofit Organizations, CharityHowTo, and others. Then I thought, “But how can I scale my impact more?”

A few months ago, Desiree Adaway interviewed me for her coaching program and afterwards I asked her, or maybe she asked me, I wonder if we could do something together!

And then I talked with Pam Grow, who had just done a virtual workshop with Sandy Rees, and they all said, YES! Let’s do something together to help more nonprofits raise money! a lot of nonprofits can’t afford a full fundraising department, or even to hire consultants like us. But perhaps there’s a third solution.

We thought,

What if we could teach people via continuing education what we would recommend that they do anyway? What if we could combine our brainpower and help people use all of our experience, skills, and knowledge to become the rockstar fundraising dream team that they needed to help get their cause the most money possible for their cause, and build relationships with donors that would sustain them for years?

We wanted to make a place where people could come and figure out how to do fundraising better, with forums and a teleseminar with all of us. It should be called:

Fundraising Rockstars: 50K in 30 Days!

So, we got to work.

Desiree Adaway contributed some interviews, worksheets and more from the Partnership Playbook with Pam Slim.

Sandy Rees contributed some expertise in the area of online fundraising, grants, appeals and stewardship.

Pam Grow contributed her grants knowledge and stewardship knowledge, and got us all together to help us brainstorm on phonecalls, and

I contributed my knowledge about sponsorships, appeals, my hands-on how-to worksheets from my book, and more.

After months and months of work, it’s finally done!

You can click here, because today, we open the doors to help more people raise more money for their causes, and become fundraising rockstars!

We’ll help people one-on-one in the forums, as well as do a tele-conference call in November to check in and answer questions too.

We are not going to make this available forever however. We are all doing multiple things, with multiple clients and speaking engagements and projects, and we need to stay focused on these things as well, so on Friday, September 30th, at midnight, our sale will end.

Fundraising Rockstars is here!! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 15, 2011.

Cause Marketing for Dummies by Joe Waters and Joanna MacDonald

I’ll be honest, before I picked up this book my interest in Cause marketing was pretty much zero. But this book got me excited, thinking about possibilities for some organizations I’m currently doing work for.

I just received this book in the mail last week, and so far, I love it! I have gotten so much out of this book. You can see me here with the cat, who promptly started licking the book when i put it down. I guess that makes two of us who like it!

But good things need to be shared.

If you leave a comment below, I will enter your name in the drawing to win this book.

Here’s why I love this book.

Clear Definitions
Joe puts the difference between Sponsorship, Cause Marketing and Philanthropy as a difference of involvement.
At one end of the spectrum, Sponsorship, nonprofits do all the work and the corporation just shows up.
With Cause marketing, nonprofits and corporations do roughly equal amounts of work.
And with Philanthropy, the corporation does all of the work, and the nonprofit shows up to collect the check.

Three kinds of decision makers
One of my favorite parts is on page 100-102, where Joe shows you the kinds of people you are going to need to deal with as you convince corporations that it’s a good idea to enter a cause marketing partnership with you. The three kinds of people he has dealt with are Thinkers, Feelers, and Deferrers.

Thinkers want a low or no risk model, something where they don’t have to put in a lot of up-front cash.

Feelers will respond to a heartfelt story, but don’t over-do it. They also want to get hope, joy and compassion by being involved with you. They don’t want fear in the story.

Deferrers will wait and see if they want to get involved with you if you have a string of successes before this one. So if you have a celebrity on board, that will be an instant green light for deferrers. Or if you’re vetted by a local elected official, that will lend your proposal some clout as well.

Joe put in this equation that I loved, for Thinkers: Value + Free – Risk = Great Opportunity

You could apply this to sales in general, not just fundraising and not just cause marketing.

A focus on implementation
When you’re implementing your first cause marketing campaign, it can be daunting, and you might think, “How are we going to succeed with this?”

Well, you can start with Pinups. These are not barely dressed ladies from the 1940s, no, these are things that you can ask a local store to hand out and hang up for you. Around Valentine’s day, St. Patrick’s Day, or another holiday, you might see these all around your local starbucks or grocery store. If you’ve ever just seen a wall plastered with these, it can be impressive, and you might look closer to see what they are benefiting.

It doesn’t cost much to print these, and you can start with your local grocery store, asking if you could do a campaign for a couple of weeks to a month to get people engaged with your cause and make them look more like heroes too.

Joe says that people will give at the cash register if the cashier doesn’t just say, “Would you like to make a donation to MDA today?” no, the cashier needs to say something like, “Would you like to make a donation so a hungry family can eat tonight?”

But what if you’re an arts nonprofit? How can you make it compelling? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments.

In short, Cause Marketing for Dummies is a really smart book, and I hope whoever gets it really enjoys it and puts these theories into practice right away for their organization.

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Book Giveaway: Cause Marketing for Dummies originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on August 15, 2011.

So I recently got an email from someone who thinks that their book is god’s gift to everyone, and they said, “You interviewed someone I know, so you should interview MEEEEEE!!!” And I checked out their website, and it has nothing to do with what I talk about. At all. It’s like they didn’t even read my website. And their website also was not finished. And there was really old content on there. So even if their book DID fit with my blog, I wouldn’t want to promote them, because they are messing up their image and would mess up mine.

And so, I told them politely, “Hey, not a match for my blog.”

And the dude wrote back, and said, “Well, that was fast you *insert bad word here*! Now I’ve got an idea for a blog post!”

And all I can think of is, “Really? Should I be shaking in my boots now? Will you call my blog out as the most horrible blog in the world? Will you use my name? Will you take me to the cleaners for not having the exact right kind of blog for your book?” I mean, seriously?

It’s actually pretty hilarious when I think about it. I mean, I pitch people and get shot down too, but not because I didn’t do my research. Oftentimes it’s just because I didn’t build up a relationship first. Or the timing was wrong. Or the person was no longer having a radio show. Lots of reasons.

Anyway, can we take a lesson from this?

If you’re pitching to someone, please, please, look at their blog or website first. See if there is, in fact, a reason that they would like to feature you. Maybe even comment, or follow them on twitter. At least. Show that you care about their community. Try to make your pitch relevant to their audience, even if there’s not a direct correlation to what you do and what they do.

You will see your pitches succeed far faster by building a relationship before you ask someone for something.

This actually happens to nonprofit staff a lot, when they ask for first-time grants that are WAY above what first time grant asks should be. I learned recently that this is actually insulting to them, and it makes sense to me from this perspective. Why should they give you money when they have no idea who you are? If you looked at their funding record, please call them and ask them, “Hey, what are your first time funding amounts usually like?” They want to help you. So don’t insult them. Show them you care by asking their opinion and advice first.

This also happens to people who are asking for sponsorships. You HAVE to find a point of connection between you and the person, maybe from a board member, a staff member, a volunteer, or even if you do a little research on them and find out you’re from the same state, or both have a similar hobby. Something.

Finally, IF you get rejected, PLEASE don’t take it personally. It often has nothing to do with you. I’d say, most of the time! Please don’t try to “get back” at a blogger, funder, or corporate sponsor who rejects you. You are only hurting yourself.

Do not do the eye for a tooth and tooth for an eye thing. Because you can’t chew with your eye. Or see with your tooth.
Capeesh?

An Eye for a Tooth and a Tooth for an Eye originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 27, 2011.

From the PND Blog: Did you major in the liberal arts? Here’s why PND thinks the liberal arts matter.

From Allison Fine’s blog: Is cause fatigue even real?

From Pamela Grow’s Grantwriting Blog: Why fundraising events may not be the best idea for you

From the Question and Answer of the Nonprofiteer’s blog: Are we eliminating the charitable deduction? Should we be nervous?

From Sandy Rees Get Fully Funded blog: Do you know your donor vocabulary?

From the Mission Paradox Blog: Have you ever been nickeled and dimed by a small nonprofit? This is going to resonate with you.

From the Future Fundraising Now blog: How can you create good experiences for your donors

Little present for you!
Want some acknowledgement letters? Here!

What are some good things that YOU’VE been reading?

Do tell! Please leave a comment with some of your favorite posts!

Want some good reads? Here’s what I’ve been reading this week. originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 26, 2011.