Do you take risks?

How?

Last week in the Harvard Business Review, Dan Pallotta talks about how taking risks is important. if we didn’t take risks, we wouldn’t have cures for diseases. We wouldn’t have so much of what we have now. But in the nonprofit world, risktaking is discouraged. Funders would rather see that you have a tried and true model before they invest. They want to see that you have a lot of money and that you are a “safe bet.” This seems backwards to me. Like foundations want to be investment bankers and get the greatest yield for their dollar amounts.

Well, guess what, strategic philanthropists. The greatest yield for your dollar amounts is in a developing nation, where people live on pennies a day. Phil Cubeta, over at GiftHub, writes:

“Albert, a community foundation leader orginally trained in philosophy asks such questions (on his blog under his own name, even). For most, though, the answer about goals is, effective and efficient strategies with measurable outcomes is the operative goal. Giving Smart gets results. Let’s get results. We will then be smart.” As the best salesperson I ever knew once said to me, “Phil, don’t ask why there is air, just breathe.” Maybe Albert should stop asking why the poor suffer so, and just get on with the grantmaking. The more we explore root causes the more complicit we realize we are, and the more demoralized and the less our smart grants seem sufficient expiation for our moral blindness. Better to choose goals by passion, prejudice or whimsy, and concentrate on the effectiveness of the means.”

So, if wages of most people had moved up with the rest of the moneyed classes, we wouldn’t need to court the favor of the big foundations, because our communities would have the money to take our nonprofits higher. The trouble is, they have most of the money now. Don’t believe me? It’s true. The top 10% of America’s wealthy hold over 75% of the wealth in the USA. I have statistics. I can back this up.

Top 10% have 75% of the wealth

We can try grassroots fundraising, but the reason its’ not working so well anymore is because people have less and less money to give you.

So what is a nonprofit professional to do? The way I see it, we could do several things.

1. One of the things we could do is raise wages for everyone who works at nonprofits. Since this probably won’t happen voluntarily, we should consider getting unions for nonprofit workers, so that people will have cost of living raises, healthcare paid for, and be insulated from wrongful termination. When we start to address income inequality within our own organizations, we are truly making a difference at the grassroots level.

2. Second verse, same as the first!

3. We can start agitating on a local government level, or if you prefer, advocating, for a better working climate and more unions for people in our local economies. Whether that’s day laborers or other people who work at nonprofits, this is something that we can all agree that we want. If it’s too big of a problem to look at how politicians are bought and sold on the national level, then look at the local level. Should commissioners of your city or your mayor be bought out? Perhaps not. Perhaps these elected officials are still small enough to listen to you, if you get enough people around you. If you shout loud enough. So start there.

4. Run for office yourself. Get a sense of the political process. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the problems, start to be part of the solution. Abolish At-Will Employment.

5. Or you could just sit there and whine and complain and talk about moving to another country. Someplace “safer.” But where is going to be safe if the US crumbles? We’ve got all of the world’s currencies tied up with our own. I’ve done the whine and complain thing, and all I’ve felt at the end of it was just hopelessness and despair. Because there really is no place like home, and we can fight to take it back.

6. Civil disobedience. What does this mean? Go to protests. Be visible. Make graffiti stencils and put these around different neighborhoods in your town. Why not? There’s nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

7. Start to build a social media following, of people who want the same things you want. Clean air. Clean water. Higher wages, better local economies, better food for everyone, less dependence on oil, equality, true equality.

Maybe I’ve been reading too much Terry Pratchett lately, I’m talking like a revolutionary. But what’s so revolutionary about wanting better treatment for all nonprofit workers?

Do you have any ideas? How can we get out of this mess? The roof is on fire! What’s your solution?

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Is your nonprofit a “safe bet”? Let’s Get Dangerous! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on August 24, 2011.

Planned giving is when a donor decides to give you money over time, either as a monthly or yearly donor, or in a will or estate plan. Most small nonprofits do not have planned giving in their fundraising plans. But you should! Small amounts every month or year will add up to large amounts over time! And people do want their names to last, long after they are gone. Planned giving is a way to ensure this.

If you are a more seasoned fundraising professional, you may have noticed that I have a lot of blog posts about more short-term fundraising methods, like direct mail or events, but less on planned giving and major gifts. So I went to Christina Attard, who has a lot of experience in these areas, and asked her to write a post about planned giving. I love this post! And I hope you will too.

Christina Attard

Here are the secrets about your planned giving program that only donors know…

There is no denying that promoting planned gifts is good practice for many charities. Many of us fundraisers truly view charitable bequests as a powerful tool and as a type of gift that almost anyone can consider.

However, I ask all you fundraisers and non-profit professionals, “Have you put your name on a legacy donor wall somewhere yet?”

As I like to joke, my current net worth at present is about equal to my zero-dollar cell phone! The beauty of it is that as a couple in our early 30s with a young child and a big mortgage, we were able to create three, six-figure legacy gifts for our favorite charities! (Long time frame? Yes. But there is value here for the long-term.) So really, if you’re still waiting, your excuse had better be a good one!

My story:
I am the first to admit that it took me five years from when I became a gift planning officer to finally complete my first estate plan. The good news is that making your own charitable bequest will make you a better fundraiser. I promise.

What happened is that once I finally had a house and a family set up, the time felt right to make a will and purchase some life insurance. Yes, my mind knew that I was about ten years late on making my first will, but like most of us, I had to “feel” that I was ready. For me, the opportunity to finally become a legacy donor was also very exciting.

What I learned:
It’s true that major life events are good times to talk to supporters about bequests. It’s also true that giving can feel very exciting for your donors! I also really did want to be “asked” by my favorite charities.

Then, we began to seek professional advice. In the marketing material I used to produce, we often spoke of how bequests and insurance gifts were easy and straightforward to establish.

What that messaging didn’t take into account were all the other factors that individuals have to balance in addition to the gift plan. All told, the process took just over a year and picking out and qualifying for the right insurance policy was not easy at all! Some tenacity was needed from our family to stick out the process and our advisors did a good job of letting things settle for a while and then following up to move the steps along.

What I learned:
Fundraisers have to respect the estate planning process. Often, campaign timelines demand that a donor be qualified, solicited and stewarded in a certain time period. This doesn’t work in a donor-centered fundraising model and I understand better now why planned gifts can take years to secure.

Finally, it came time to start contacting the charities we were considering as beneficiaries. As a professional fundraiser myself, the words “Senior Development Officer” did not have the usual effect of striking fear into my heart! I knew to look for some one with a scary-sounding title deep in the hidden web-spaces reserved for planned giving. It was still a lot of work to find the right people to talk to and to get the information that I needed to make a gift – imagine how our first-time donors feel! With several potential beneficiaries on our list, information gathering was a big job.

To make things worse, after negotiating with one charity for a number of weeks, when the development officer realized that we’d prefer to give to an associated sub-branch rather than the main charity, she left me to start again with another development person in the organization rather than bridge the relationship!

What I learned:
Make it easy. Sometimes, we forget as fundraisers that most of our donors, including our planned giving prospects, support multiple charities at once. I knew who I needed to speak to and the information that I’d need to collect and it was still a complicated exercise – how difficult is it for your supporters to reach the key people?

I used to wonder why most donors who had made legacy gifts were neglecting to share the gift information with their charitable beneficiaries within moments of signing a new will? What I understand now is that for me, the relationships with the charities’ representatives were not strong enough. In my own story, only one of the three has ever called to follow up and ask me what happened after our initial conversation.

The development officer that did check in while we were still in-process started the conversation off apologetically:

“I know this isn’t important and I don’t mean to bother you, but…”

This was a sad moment for me as our discussion was in fact very important to me and the truth is that I was waiting for that call! Sadly, we haven’t been added to any lists for planned giving solicitations. I’m still receiving digitally signed thank you notes for my annual gifts despite my expressions of interest in planned giving. It’s been over two years since my phone last rang. It’s time to call!

What I learned:
It’s no surprise to hear that relationship building is the essential key to building engagement in your mission. However, it’s important to remember to be genuine and enthusiastic and to actually pick up the phone! As a fundraiser, I used to ask at the end of each call when I would be welcome to phone or visit again and then put that date into my calendar and act on it. I realize now how essential that is.

Finally, it all comes back to passion.
I spent years asking others to take a leap of passion and make a personal, meaningful and long-term commitment to my charity via a planned gift. However, I hadn’t made that leap myself before. I would have a hard time, now, feeling that I could relate to a fundraiser who had not personally supported a charity of their choosing in this way before asking me to join their charities’ legacy circle. Your donors might agree.

About the author: Christina Attard has spent over a decade helping charities ask better and donors give smarter. For her, the best part is enabling people who want to help realize their vision for doing good. Connect with Christina Attard on Linkedin, or visit her well-written blog here.

Thank you so much for writing this post Christina! Your experience echoes my own. I’ve seen this time and again. Have you ever tried to make a donation to your nonprofit? How easy is it? Can you do it in 5 steps online? 3 steps? 1 step? How convoluted are you making it? Doing your own planned gift is going to teach you so much! Even going through your own steps for online fundraising can make it so much simpler to see how to improve the process!

Do you have any planned giving tips to share? Please leave a comment!

Guest Post: Christina Attard reveals the secrets about your planned giving program that only donors know… originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 24, 2011.

What have you done about that?

I’m reading a book right now that I think would help you find new donors and help them want to give to your organization.

It’s called “Make your Contacts Count” by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon.

It’s all about how people start to know, like, and trust you. This can go for a business as well as a nonprofit, but let’s start here. This is the anatomy of a donor relationship. Please try to keep up.

How to get more donors

It takes 5-7 touches to make people move through these stages into allies for your nonprofit.

Little Accidents
Start seeing these little accidents as opportunities to get more people involved with your nonprofit.

Start with Speaking engagements
This might be when you’re giving a speaking engagement somewhere. The people there made the choice to be there, and they are curious about what you have to say. What an opportunity! Start to tell them about who you are, but first, get to know who they are, what they are looking for, tap into what their hopes and fears are.

Enewsletter signup
Perhaps they sign up for your e-newsletter that day, and you have permission to email them. Thank them for this opportunity, and give them a free gift for signing up for your e-newsletter. Maybe it’s a free pdf about your cause, or maybe a sticker, or another piece of swag.

Thank them right away!
Maybe they sign up and you give them a shout out on Twitter or Linkedin or both.

Personal email or phone-call
Maybe you send them a personal message or call them, and ask them about their lives, ask them what they are looking for in their lives, or ask them about their family or other causes they give to, and why they give to them.

Follow up
If you’ve called or emailed them, and then they’ve picked up or emailed back, thank them right away, with a personal note.

Acquaintance
How do you move from Accident to Acquaintance?

Open House
Maybe this is the first time they walk into your open house. They’re curious about you. They left their comfortable house to come and meet you and learn who you are. Take this for the compliment that it is. Maybe they also give you $1.00 or even $10.00 at this time.

Give them something right away
What can you give them? How can you connect with them at that time?
1. Have a program delivery person be held up as a hero, and share a story about your nonprofit
2. Share a personal story about why you’re involved, if you want.
3. Invite them to share their stories about their past, in any way.
4. Also, give them food.
5. Maybe ask them to sign a petition about a particular issue, pass that around, and then give them something, like a pen or a pin, to say thank you.
6. If they’re interested, invite them to another event, perhaps a protest, or a movie night

Follow up and ask for their opinion
After the open house, email or call personally and follow up with each person. How did they enjoy the night? Would they have liked anything to be different? Send them a thank you note if you can’t follow up personally.

Say thank you publicly, again
If they are on Twitter or Linkedin, mention them on there and thank them for coming to your nonprofit open house.

Can you connect them with something they need?
Ask them if they are looking for recommendations for things, such as people that you might have connections to. Perhaps they’re looking for a new yoga studio, and you have a new age nonprofit, and you happen to know tons of yoga teachers. Take pride in connecting them personally. Help them see you as a resources as well as a nonprofit.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2!

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How do you turn an accidental donor into an ally? Part 1 originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 2, 2011.

So tell me, as a fundraiser, would you like a higher salary? Would you like grants to fund your salary so that you can keep this nonprofit afloat, instead of your org looking at you as a necessary evil?

Would you like a larger marketing budget? Would you like a marketing budget, period?

When I read this on the RE:Philanthropy blog, I was floored.

Dan Pallotta, bestselling author of “Uncharitable” and founder of the AIDSRide and 3-Day breast-cancer walk, tells 1,000 foundation representatives that nonprofits should “step boldly” into radically new ways to scale their impact.

His first time to address a large group of philanthropists, Dan Pallotta challenges 1,000 members of the Council on Foundations to shake up the system. How?

“Stop asking about overhead and start asking about impact,” -Dan Pallotta

(what a radical concept!) -Peanut gallery

His own launch of the AIDSRide brought in returns of $108,000,000 in 9 years–that’s 1,982x the original seed grant of $50,000; and that’s the secret to scale. Pallotta tasks philanthropy leaders with finding “the next AIDSRide, the next Newman’s Own, or Product Red. They are out there, right now.”

“Fund fundraising,” he says; invest strategically; use your corpus to try loan guarantees; and and start acting like for-profits in 5 key ways:

• Offering competitive compensation
• Spending on advertising & marketing
• Taking risks to pursue new donors
• Allowing longer time horizons for outcomes
• Investing in risk capital for social causes

“We need a venture fundraising movement,” declares Pallotta. With a combined asset base of $1 trillion, U.S. foundations have more power than we realize. “A unified theory of charity is beginning to evolve, and that gives me hope,” he says. It has three components:

• Funding fundraising
• Hyper-vetting for effective nonprofits
• Working together for collective impact

 

Here’s what I think about funding risktaking. “OF COURSE!” What a good idea!

How about you? What do you think? Are you not allowed to make mistakes in your job? Does it make you feel unable to really make free movements and big changes at your nonprofit?

 

 

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Can I get a hell yes? Thank you RE:Philanthropy & Dan Pallotta! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 26, 2011.

“Why are you pooh-poohing their idea? Maybe it’s a good idea! Maybe we DO need another nonprofit to deal with this issue!”

There are a lot of nonprofits that do similar things, it’s true.

There are also a lot of nonprofits that seem to be unusually resistant to change, that do not like to collaborate, and that are remarkably isolated for the national movements they’re part of.

And for this, we need to not try to change them from within, for too often nonprofits would rather fire change-makers rather than actually listen to them.

So for this we need to create our own nonprofits.

If you still believe that we have too many nonprofits, then do a little survey.

Research idealist.org or do a quick google search and tell me how many nonprofits there are in your town that do the exact same thing, and how many ways they overlap services.

Frankly, I think that there will never stop being a need for nonprofits to do the things that government is increasingly backing away from doing.

As schools are teaching to the test instead of encouraging children to broaden their love of learning, we find after-school programs funded by nonprofits doing just that.

As federal programs for job training are being phased out, we find nonprofits stepping up to the plate, creating career fairs and computer labs to retrain people out of work.

As governments defund programs for the homeless, we find a surge in need, and homeless services nonprofits banding together, sharing resources, and helping people more than ever before.

Starting a nonprofit is like starting a small business, but instead of saying, “Here’s a way I can make money and help my family”, more likely the person starting the nonprofit is saying,

“Here’s a way I can make money AND solve this societal problem.”

If 90% of new businesses fail, then should we be surprised that many new nonprofits fail too? Should we be worried if they do? Maybe not!

I mean, come on! We have tech for-profits starting up every day, and no one says to them, “There are too many tech startups! Cut it out already, there’s not enough need!” because frankly, we are all on the internet, and we read things CONSTANTLY. We’re always looking for information or for ways to make our lives easier.

We are all out in the world, and we see the need for nonprofits constantly, whether we go to the hospital because we have no health insurance, or whether we see a homeless man asking us for change.

We see the need when we go to the grocery store and have the option to donate to charity at the register, or when we see trash in our favorite green places and know that our local nonprofit needs to help clean up.

And that reminds me. This week, for Earth Day, when you’re out walking, why not pick up some trash that you see by the side of the road, and take it to a trash can?

Leave it better than you found it.

Do we really have too many nonprofits? Citation needed! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 19, 2011.

Free webinar tomorrow! that’s Thursday, April 14th, 1:00-1:30pm CST. Signup here

Or, if you would rather PAY for a webinar, I have that option available also.

See below.

So, do you need help getting your board to fundraise?

If so, we are going to learn some tactics to getting the team together that you need.

Often boards complain about too much information, not enough information, or that it’s unclear what they are expected to do. In this webinar we’ll have a dynamic question and answer session where I can help you go over what your board’s objections are, and what you can say in return.

Getting your board to fundraise
A step-by-step guide to getting the attention you deserve for your accomplishments and expertise.

Wednesday April 27th
Start Time: 1:00 PM  End Time: 2:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time)

Only $49.99

Webinar Description
Getting your board to fundraise. This is one of the hardest things to do. But here’s how you can do it. This webinar will help you give the board goals, deadlines, and timely followup and help them take this quiz that will help you know which board members are able to help you in the areas that you need help with.

Get Your Questions Answered:
In order to effectively answer the questions of the participants, this interactive webinar is limited to 35 people. There is also a question-and-answer session at the end of the webinar.

Webinar Outline:
During this 90 minute webinar, in an easy-to-follow process, we’ll cover how to go from being seen as a nag to being the hero team leader of a fabulous development committee. We’ll answer all of these questions and more:

Learn:
1. What’s the one thing you can do right now to start getting potential board members to fundraise?
2. How do you re-engage board members who are absent or burnt out?
3. How do you deal with hyper-critical board members?
4. What can you say when board members say, “I don’t want to fundraise?”
5. How can you create a fundraising update that they will actually read?
6. What stories reach board members the best?
7. How can you recruit new board members?
8. How much should board members be required to raise?
9. What are the three things you should be ready to give your board member to get them working for you right away?
10. BONUS! What to do if you and a board member are not getting along.

NEW! The following bonus materials are included with this webinar:
1. A quiz to help board members find their areas of strength and weakness in fundraising
2. A followup plan for board members so you always know who you need to connect with next.
3. Clear task descriptions and process trees to help board members take over the fundraising tasks you need.

Click the link below to sign up.

April 27th Webinar: How do you get your board to fundraise? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 13, 2011.

America Is NOT Broke

by Michael Moore
MichaelMoore.com
March 5, 2011

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we’d have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic — and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here’s what I learned: Money doesn’t grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don’t pay their fair share of taxes, the state can’t function. The schools can’t produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.

The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It’s part of the Big Lie. It’s one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can’t win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.

The truth is, there’s lots of money to go around. LOTS. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn’t work, they’ve got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart — because you — yes, you, too! — might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don’t rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it’s Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin’ awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. “Here! Take our money! We don’t care. We’ll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!”

The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).

Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It’s just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!

So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.

Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois — whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn’t have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn’t be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job — their $19,000 a year job. That’s how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he’s stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn’t have to sleep in his car between shifts at O’Hare airport. That’s how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn’t be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he’s just another slob.

And that, my friends, is Corporate America’s fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement — a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don’t understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. “Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!

“There’s something happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you …?”

America ain’t broke! The only thing that’s broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it’s one person, one vote, and it’s the thing the rich hate most about America — because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!

Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.

———————————————————————————

So what does this mean for fundraising?

Focus on Grassroots donations
It means that our fundraising should not focus on corporate money, or foundation money, but grassroots donations. Which is where 75% of our donations come from, anyway.

What else does it mean?
It means that we, as fundraisers, can help people in our own nonprofits by unionizing, and helping ensure better conditions for every one of us. One in ten workers in America works at a nonprofit. Over 50,000 people in Ohio right now work in nonprofit elder care centers, and they are not unionized, and they are not treated well, and thus, our elders are not treated well. How can we organize and demand our dignity, our cost-of-living wage increases, and better conditions for our nonprofits? Unions. To learn how to start a union, go here. If you are afraid that by starting a union, you will be fired, it’s actually illegal to fire you once you start the process, and the union will get lawyers to protect you.

What else does this mean for fundraising?

We need to educate
We need to go out and canvass more, table at festivals more, and help educate our donors, constituents, clients, volunteers, and potential donors about what they stand to gain by agitating for better working conditions.

When you stop isolating yourself, as a fundraiser and start working with people in your office more, you can become an activist and persuader, helping use your fundraising skills to persuade people to educate themselves, take notice and take action.

What else do you take from Michael Moore’s speech? Please leave a comment below!

400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on March 11, 2011.

Here’s what she said.

> Currently, I am volunteering with various nonprofits that focus more on
> sustainability and repurposing as I am very interested in these topics. I am
> writing a blog and also helping fundraise for the Resource Center in Chicago, a nonprofit that
> repurposes a variety of materials, from composting of food scraps to
> donating leftovers to homeless shelters to recycling to repurposing of
> corporate waste into teaching materials.
> I love volunteering for them! Another nonprofit that I am currently
> active in is FabMo, which takes tons of discarded fabrics and
> other materials from designers and donates it to teachers, artisans, and the
> general public for free. I currently help them staff their distribution days.
>
> As I am brand new to the nonprofit and the fundraising community, I would
> love to soak up any and all advice you may have. Most important to me right
> now are suggestions for books or other blogs I should follow and also how to find grants
> or other fundraising opportunities. In the future, I think I would love to
> get advice on how to write grants, perhaps some grant samples, and just
> general advice on development.

So, first things first.

This is the book you should buy!

You need to buy my book. Really. All of your questions will be answered in this book. Your own copy is essential, if you want a primer on how to fundraise, general advice on development, how to get sponsorships, grant samples, and how to write grants and it has a CD with over 80 pages of editable templates for nearly any fundraising task you’ll be doing for these nonprofits you’re interested in, including grants, development plans, appeals, marketing, sponsorship letters, and MORE.

Other books I would recommend are:

Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta, which will give you a sense of one fundraiser’s journey in the nonprofit world, and some things that need to change in the nonprofit world, as well. It is SO well written and SO true, that you need to get it.

Raise More Money: The Best of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal By Kim Klein and Stephanie Roth. This is full of articles about fundraising, gleaned from The Grassroots Fundraising Journal over a period of several years. This journal was founded and was edited by one of my heroines, Kim Klein, and it is an EXCELLENT book to give you brief overviews of many different areas of fundraising.

Now. BEST FUNDRAISING BLOGS!
Before you go out and FIND all of these blogs, you need to have a place to keep track of them.

Netvibes is a FREE service which helps you aggregate results from many different sources, from blogs, from search terms, from podcasts, videos, websites, ANYWHERE. It’s so useful. So, go and make an account there.

Now that you’re in, since you’re interested in Fundraising, I would make a FUNDRAISING tab in Netvibes.

Blogs I would immediately follow would be:
Pamela Grow focuses on grants, so check her out!
GiftHub is philanthropy, not fundraising, but useful all the same
Rosetta Thurman talks about fundraising, nonprofit management, and Gen Y
Amy Sample Ward’s Nonprofit Technology and Fundraising
Beth Kanter’s take on Nonprofit Technology and Fundraising
Dan Pallotta’s column on the Harvard Business Review

Other blogs which aren’t specifically about fundraising but which you could benefit from ANYWAY

Seth Godin’s blog, which has truisms and marketing advice, also useful for fundraising
CopyBlogger helps you become a more effective writer.
ProBlogger helps you engage readers, and writing is a LOT of what fundraising is about
Yaro Starak’s blog gives advice about online marketing which can ALSO be applied to fundraising

Next, since you’re interested in nonprofits that recycle and reuse waste materials, I would make another tab that says “Recycle” and put in RSS feeds for

Treehugger.org,
RSS your Google search for recycling technology
RSS your Google search for upcycle, repurposing, refab, and similar terms.

Since you’re most passionate about these things, I would suggest, to start your nonprofit, first looking at what is known as “Earned Income Streams”, which means get money for what you’re doing by offering a service people need.

So, since you’re wild about upcycling and repurposing, ever thought about starting a service kind of like 1-800-Got-JUNK, Junk-Busters, etc? As far as I know, no nonprofit offers a comprehensive junk-pick-up service. You could create a business plan, get the necessary loans to get your first truck, and to pay your first movers, and then you’d be off and running!

You could get into this lucrative industry, and the upside would be, you would be paid for taking the junk away, and then you could get paid for giving it to these places like Resource Center Chicago and FabMo. (Or you could donate it, of course.) (In Portland Oregon, it’s called “The Rebuild Center” and in Austin it’s “Habitat ReStore” (short for Habitat for Humanity.) There are places like this all around the country. You could go national.

There is NO end to what you could do with taking away people’s junk. You could even advertise with flyers in storage facilities, or target storage facility managers (people abandon stuff in their units all the time, and then the managers have to get rid of them anyway.)

Hope this was a helpful answer!

If anyone else wants to weigh in with the best fundraising blogs and books, please leave a comment!

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Reader Questions: What are the best fundraising blogs & books? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 17, 2011.

This last week, Katya Anderson wrote about the numbing of our compassion when we have heard lots of statistics and lots of stories.

I was just reading about this trend in “Half the Sky” and it frankly shocked me, that people could care less and less about greater quantities of people, the more stories that they read in an appeal letter.

Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn write: “Frankly, we hesitate to pile on the data, since even when numbers are persuasive, they are not galvanizing. A growing collection of psychological studies show that statistics have a dulling effect, while it is individual stories that move people to act. In one experiment, research subjects were divided into several groups, and each person was asked to donate $5 to alleviate hunger abroad. One group was told the money would go to Rokia, a seven-year-old girl in Mali. Another group was told that the money would go to address malnutrition among 21 million Africans. The third group was told that the donations would go to Rokia, as in the first group, but this time her own hunger was presented as part of a background tapestry of global hunger, with some statistics thrown in. People were much more willing to donate to Rokia than 21 million hungry people, and even a mention of the larger problem made people less inclined to help her.” -Half the Sky, page 99

However, we are still bound by our biology, and it seems that people can easier wrap their heads around one person who needs help, rather than countless faceless thousands.

How incredible.

All of this time you’ve been trying to put giving to your nonprofit in a bigger social context, show the scope of the problem, you’ve been leaving money on the table.

I do hope every nonprofit fundraiser reading this blog will consider putting just ONE story in their next newsletter or appeal, sans statistics, and track those results as compared to previous appeals where several stories and statistics were mentioned.

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How many stories should you put in your newsletter or appeal? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 10, 2011.

Did you feel burned out on that lifestyle?

What were some contributing factors, if so?

Want me to take a guess?

I just read a blog post by Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation, “An open letter to CXOs all over the world”.

Here are the salient points from her (extremely well written) blog post.

1. Don’t spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture. Corporate culture is a natural thing that cannot be manufactured.

2. Stop running your company like the mafia. “If you help your employees grow and develop in their career even if they plan to leave the company, you will create an extremely loyal workforce.”

3. Spend a moment walking around the halls of your company and look at your employees.

4. Teach people how to get rich like you.

5. Don’t ask for your employees’ input if you are not going to listen to it.

6. Don’t train people until you know what problem you are solving.

7. Ditch the PowerPoint when you have town hall meetings.

8. Focus on the work people do, not how or when they do it.

9. Watch the burnout.

10. Forbid people to work while they are on vacation.

She says in the article, in so many words, “Fire the assholes, and company culture will change.”

I have known bosses like the ones she described, people who did not know or care how the company was really doing. Jobs where how late you stayed meant you were working hard, not the amount you actually got accomplished before 12pm. Jobs where all employees had salary freezes for 9 years, and the cost of living increase in pay was eaten by the CEO. Jobs where we all got together and to make a strategic plan, and over and over again, the plan would be completely ignored.

And best of all? These jobs were at small nonprofits. Yep. Nonprofits are no safer than big corporations for the little guy.

So, if you’re considering a career change, and think that nonprofits will bring you that warm fuzzy feeling instead of a big corporation’s cold efficiency, don’t assume anything.

What would you like to do to change the nonprofit system?

If I were you, I would start to bring back some accountability among our leaders by becoming one of them.

Start by going to sit on a board of a small nonprofit. Look at the system that is in place. Are there checks and balances? Start digging. Start noticing the signs of nonprofit mismanagement. They are remarkably similar to business mis-management.

How much turnover has there been in the last year? The last five years? If there has been a lot of turnover, who is responsible for it?

Start asking questions. Innocent questions. “Why are we doing it this way?”

“What’s another way we could do this?” “Why can’t this person make a mistake?”

“Why am I getting paid a salary when salaries are supposed to be reserved for managers, and I’m not managing anyone, and I’m expected to work all of this overtime for free?”

“How do we celebrate what’s working?”

“How do we celebrate mistakes and encourage people to make more of them?”

“How do we deal with conflict here?”

“Is the employee handbook followed, or is it really more of a guideline?”

“Are our policies and procedures protecting or harming our workers?”

“If we have at-will employment, and are not protecting our workers, why do we expect them to do a good job for us?”

If it’s not safe for you to ask these questions where you currently work, have you ever thought about forming a union?

A union could protect you from being discriminated against, help you get cost-of-living pay increases, and more. And if you are fired for trying to form a union, the union will fight for you, and win, because that is actually illegal.

What do you think? Do you recognize some of this typical corporate mis-management within your own nonprofit?

Sound off, I’m listening!

If you’re feeling fed up and ready to do something, check out these posts:
How do I start a union?
Bullying Bosses can cause Employee Suicide
Is your nonprofit promoting a culture of destitution?

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Fire the assholes, and company culture will change originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on February 1, 2011.