Volunteers Are An Excellent Source Of Fundraising Ideas

This Tip of the Week is reprinted with permission from The Nonprofit Times Weekly. Go to http://nptimes.com for more information.

Do you have so much to do for your capital campaign, with so little time? Think about including your most zealous volunteers in your fundraising program, according to Michael J. David-Wilson, executive director for the Middlesex County College Foundation in Edison, N.J. Why not use your best supporters to cultivate other organization members?

David-Wilson presented his ideas in a session at the 46th annual Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) international fundraising conference in New Orleans. Here’s how to turn your volunteers into development participants:

• Volunteer participation. Volunteers can be a great addition to your fundraising team. Just make sure if they are asking others for gifts, they make one of their own.

• Major gift donations. Try to tackle big gifts early. Use your own board’s participation as examples of campaign giving.

• Volunteer training. Ensure that your volunteer solicitors are properly trained before they ask for gifts. Team your professional fundraisers with volunteers for some role-playing in donation asks.

• Give information. Compile important donor information for your fundraising team. Set up a gift amount to ask for and what that gift amount would do for the campaign.

• Set up success. Everyone needs a boost of confidence. Arrange some telephone solicitations for your volunteers with donors most likely to give. That will put your volunteers on the right foot for in-person asks.

• Provide backup. Volunteers don’t normally ask donors for gifts – so they may lose their confidence at the meeting. Couple volunteers with a professional development staff member who can move in if the volunteer gets too nervous.

• Celebrate successes. Make volunteer solicitors excited about their hard work. Think about building some friendly competition among volunteers by tracking donor visits or the amount raised.

Fundraising Planning – A Vital Key To Nonprofit Success

As a professional grant writer and consultant, I am often amazed at how few nonprofit organizations actually have a fund development plan beyond a vague idea of applying for a few grants and sending out an annual appeal letter. Recognizing that lack of planning, I am not amazed at how often these same organizations have rounds of emergency budget cuts when they realize that they have no assured streams of income.

Very typical is the agency that has received a large grant to run their programs for one year. Then, in the tenth month of the grant period, comes the realization that they have no idea how they will fund the next year’s programs. With less than two months of money left in the bank they go into emergency fundraising mode.

Their first impulse is to start applying for another large grant. But at most foundations, the process – from letter of inquiry to proposal to acceptance – typically takes at least three months, and often six to eight months.

Their next idea is to turn to their individual donors with a panicked letter that essentially says, “Send us money now or we might go out of business.” That, of course, is the least effective fundraising letter you can write. Donors want to invest in your successes, not bail out your failures.

So, how do they avoid these situations? The answer is to plan. Through the planning process, you will achieve the following:

• Limit crisis fundraising: This, as the example above illustrates, is our primary reason for creating a fund development plan, but there are others as well…

• Diversity builds in flexibility: Changes in other sectors of the economy can have a major impact on nonprofit funding. A cut in the state budget can be passed down as fewer contracts for local service organizations. The dot-com bust of a few years back cut foundation endowments, reducing the funds they had available to grant. Agencies that had become comfortable relying on one or two sources of funding found themselves struggling to survive these changes. Those with plans and diversified funding bases had the flexibility to adapt and survive.

• Planning for diversity brings in more opportunities: Through the planning process you come to identify funding opportunities you never knew existed. Further, when you stop having to scramble to pay next month’s bills, you will be able to devote more time to developing new sources of income for your agency.

• Setting priorities, strategies, and goals: New opportunities present themselves all the time, if you are open to receiving them. But which opportunities should you pursue? When you have a clear mission and a plan, the answer becomes clear. By following the plan, you know where your efforts are most needed at any given time, and you can turn down distractions that don’t further your defined goals.

• Increasing board involvement: I always hear nonprofit staff complaining about either their un-involved board members or board members who meddle too much without knowing what they’re doing, and yet they don’t create opportunities for the board to be constructively involved. Asking your board to be a part of the development planning process will both motivate them and educate them at the same time.

• Integrating fund development with other program activities & plans: If you’re lucky enough to have staff who work on fund development full-time, you’re also risking a disconnect between program people and fundraisers. The result is an annual event that’s held the same week as the busiest part of the program staff’s season. Written plans that are shared by all staff help to avoid such conflicts and encourage a working team environment.

• Most productive use of team’s time: The bottom line is that by being organized, and having clarity as to what is expected of every team member, all your activities will be more efficient.

So what’s holding you back? Put your team together and start planning for success today!

About the Author

Ken Goldstein is a grant writer and consultant working and living in Silicon Valley. Since 1989 he has been an executive director, a board member, volunteer, and consultant to nonprofits. His education includes a BA in Politics from UC Santa Cruz and a Master of Public Policy and Administration from CSU Sacramento. Goldstein Consulting can be found at goldsteinconsulting.com. Ken is also the author of “Introduction to Fund Development Planning” – Please see fundraisingplanbook.com for more information.

(c) 2006 by Ken Goldstein, all rights reserved.

Eight Reasons All Non-Profits Need a Website

A nonprofit organization can take advantage of the Internet for at least eight purposes:

• publicity
• public education
• fundraising
• volunteer recruitment
• service delivery
• advocacy
• research
• communication

Let us look at brief examples of each of these uses in turn.

Publicity

Good sites gain attention. Attention or awareness is exactly what all non-profits need… it accelerates fund-raising efforts, and enhances all the following essential needs:

Public Education

There’s a fine line between grabbing the public’s attention and educating the public about an important social problem or cause.Whatever the mission statement of your non-profit organization is, it needs to be presented with clarity to the various “publics” that all non-profits must influence if they are to be successful. All organizations have several different “publics” which they must influence in a positive way in order to achieve their organizational goals. Read more