Proof: The Individual Donor Opportunity Door is Wide-open

Sally Part One

We were having drinks after the consulting conference. Sally asked what I did. (Not her real name, because even though this sounds like it is about Sally--it is not.)
“I help nonprofits earn sustainable income and with innovations.”
“You know,” Sally responded, “Teach for America does a really good job.” Sally went on to explain that before Teach for America, she and husband were forty-dollar givers.
“Forty dollar givers?” I asked, astounded and then quickly assuming that even though I understood what she met—I must not. Sally, as I had learned earlier in the day, is a successful consultant who worked for global name-brand clients. Earlier, she earned an MBA from Stanford and worked as a manager with for a large international consulting firm. Surely, Sally and her husband, who had to in my quick conservative estimate earned more than $100,000 per year, didn’t only give $40 a year at a time to a nonprofits?
Yes, she explained they did. In the past, when they were asked to write a check they wrote one for forty dollars. Now, with Teach for America, they were sponsoring a classroom for $5,000 a year. “It’s amazing, we get to touch all those lives and it only costs $5,000 and only about a 100 people a year do it.”
Sally represents one of thousands of people who are bright and earn a sizable income—and seek to make a difference. She represents someone who has never been asked and worse, never shown the path your nonprofit offers to making a difference.
Sally reminds us that the individual donor opportunity door is wide-open, as are the majority of the other six nonprofit income opportunity doors. This is why this story is not about Sally because it is about nonprofit leaders, like you, who are unsure about approaching the Sally’s you know. Are you neglecting to offer the Sally’s in your sphere of influence the opportunity to help you change lives? Are you assuming (like me) that educated people with means already understand philanthropy and are already doing their part? How might we reach, show and educate Sally about the opportunities she is missing?

Stay tuned for more about Sally. In my next piece, I will share how Teach For America helped Sally to become a $5,000 a year donor. -Karen Eber Davis

Karen’s Ultimate Test: Is this a Good Plan?

We like to hike, especially as summer heat gives way to cool fall mornings. Sometimes we come to bridges. Stone bridges are good. Solid wood bridges are good. But open slat or rope or wobbly logs over swiftly moving creeks—not my favorite. Nonetheless, I will step upon them to cross if I can see that they will bring me to where I want to go… in advance.

Your plans should also let you “see” that you can reach your destination from where you are. With firm plans you can feel that the next step you take and each one after that will let you place your foot on something solid that leads you to your destination.

Can you in your minds eye see in advance how your plan gets you from here to there? How many of your plans, big and small, get you from here to there—in your mind's eye?

Planning, The Final Step Bridge Building

By far, the most complicated and most important step of planning is bridge building. The purpose of the bridge you will build is to get you from here to there. The bridge represents the steps you will take to move between these two spaces. A good bridge closes the gap between the two locations and it carries solid traffic. This is complex thinking. It involves concepts, making connections, identifying steps, estimating timing, using resources, testing ideas, and research. It involves eliminating good choices that do not work, coping with unknowns and not meeting everyone’s expectations. Throughout the planning process, hope is critical. You must believe that solid plans are possible and that the results will be worthwhile. Finally, good bridges and good plans are not built in a day or afternoon. Invest time and energy to create your bridge or plan from where you are now to your vision.

When it actually comes down to making “the plan” how do you organize the process so that nothing is overlooked?

(For more on the first two steps of planning, see my recent entries in this blog.)

The Often Missed Step of Planning: Where You Are Now

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My office is near U.S. 41 in Sarasota—the main commercial artery of the city. Along this corridor I have standard errands, both north and south. To save time, I run different errands en route to meetings depending if the meeting is north or south respectively. This plan saves gas, energy and waiting at stoplights. At your nonprofit, your plans will work best if you also know your starting place. This Where You Are Now is the second essential stage of good planning.

What does it mean to know where you are now? Knowing includes obvious items; your physical location, financial status and pending staff changes. It also includes subtle issues, like market conditions, a planning group’s comfort level with each other, and if you have the information you need to plan, etc. As an example of the last, last week a group of consultants planned what with a series of recorded teleconferences. We failed to make much progress until we determined that we had recorded the previous sessions—a needed piece of information.

Another component of Where You Are Now that is especially fruitful for experienced groups is information about other planning experiences your group completed. What was successful about them? Lacking? Do people have positive expectations about up-coming planning sessions? Was the fiscal piece strong or does it need additional effort? Identifying these or related issues is “knowing where you are now” and the second step in good planning.

What kinds of questions do you ask and answer when you look at your current situation as part of the planning process?

(For the first step of good planning read this entry: The Critical First Step of Income and Other Planning: Destination.)

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Power to the People: One More Reason for Boards to Listen to Their Communities

Smile Train and Operation Smile both provide (literally) face-saving surgeries to indigent children outside the U.S. born with cleft palates. Smile Train is actually an offshoot of Operation Smile, rising out of a difference in philosophy. Whereas Operation Smile sends doctors overseas to perform the operations, Smile Train uses local doctors. The spinoff, which occurred in the late 1990’s, left the two organizations bitter rivals. However, with the changes in the world the two organizations contemplated a merger this past spring that would have brought them back together again. Merger talks were suddenly called off though when donors of Smile Train representing 82 million dollars in contributions expressed opposition to the proposition – some quite publicly.

This is but one example of what those of us who closely follow the many news briefs and RSS feeds from the sector (special thanks to Ruth McCambridge, editor of The Nonprofit Quarterly who along with her colleagues put out an excellent daily feed and recently raised this particular example at the Alliance Conference in Oakland, California) are increasingly seeing – community stakeholders who are mad as hell about some of the decisions being made in their name. And, they aren't just going to take it any more. (For those too young to get the cultural referent, rent the 1976 film Network. It’s probably more relevant now than when it was released.) The public brouhaha that embroiled Smile Train and Operation Smile is just the latest volley in a trend that began with donors wanting a say in how their money is spent. It is a trend that intensified with those donors demanding the return of their money if they feel that the intent behind their gift is not being honored. And, it is a trend that became a runaway train with the decision of an increasing number of stakeholders to pump their financial and human assets into new organizations when they sense the legacy organizations are failing to achieve sufficient or desired impact.

Boards today must recognize that the marketplace will drive which nonprofits shall live and which shall die. If boards aren't paying close attention to what their stakeholders deem important, they may find their organizations on the list of failed entities and their personal reputations sullied for betraying the community’s trust.

To me, the lesson is obvious. Someway, somehow, boards must listen – really listen – to their stakeholders. This might be done informally as long as there is some intentional way of capturing the data on an ongoing basis, such as including BTW Talk on every agenda. For those who have not heard me explain this before, the BTW Talk involves scheduling 20 minutes or so at each meeting to discover what board members have been hearing in conversations with friends, family and colleagues since the last time the board met that could potentially impact the organization and its mission in some way. These are conversations that often start with, “By the way….”

Or, it can involve instituting a means for gathering information on a more formal basis. For instance, the board might contract to survey the community on a regular basis. These surveys can be done online, through the mail, in person or over the phone. Interviews, insight or focus groups, and large-scale change methodologies such as World Café, Future Search or Appreciative Inquiry can also be employed to garner the community’s insights.

The focused and purposeful use of advisory councils is another means of tapping into what the community needs. So is bringing greater diversity into our boardrooms. One way to do this is to choose a model such as Community Engagement Governance (see Freiwirth, Judy. “Engagement Governance for System-Wide Decision Making.” Nonprofit Quarterly. Summer 2007. pgs. 38 – 39.), which actually shares the power of decision-making with different individuals in the community based on their interests and areas of expertise. The key in all of these cases is to truly give weight to what the community is saying and not just employ the techniques as window dressing.

Since this list is by no means inclusive, I am anxious to hear what others have used to stay in touch with what their stakeholders are thinking, feeling and desiring. Please share your success stories and your “learning experiences.”

The Critical First Step of Income and Other Planning: Destination

Our last entry talked about the definition of good planning. This one continues along similar lines and explores the first step of all good planning: Knowing Where You Want to Go.

Most nonprofits know where they want to go. Like New Englanders in January, everyone agrees, they want to go south for February vacation. Likewise, your nonprofit may agree that your “south” is to improve the quality of the bay water, the readiness of children for kindergarten or the lives of people with developmental disabilities. While you may know the direction, good planning demands that you stop and clarify what exactly constitutes your destination. After all, Miami, Tucson and the Caribbean are south as are Brasilia, South Africa and Newark.

What, for example, does it mean to help people with developmental disabilities to live better lives? To do good planning it matters if you’re talking about housing, employment, family relations or health matters. Each destination requires a different plan.

Knowing your destination allows you to draw a straight line to it from where you are. Good plans reduce expensive meandering. Clear destinations also create vision energy at the start of planning. (Won’t it be exciting to see this in action?”) This energy is needed as fuel for the deep-thinking work ahead.

How has clarifying your destination helped your planning process? How has lack of clarity created confusion?

What is Good Planning?

Planning is one of the many overused but little understood terms tossed around nonprofit organizations. Recently, several consultants from this blog were organizing an audio-conference for nonprofit board members on the topic. We started our planning by discussing the definition of planning. Fifteen-minutes later while we had made progress, we had also uncovered more questions than answers. If it took three experts fifteen minutes to begin to agree on what planning is—you will probably find some uncertainty at your organization. Yet, planning is something we do everyday. After all, you plan when you run out paper and make a note to pick it up after your meeting. You plan when you prepare for your special event. You plan when you determine how exactly you will improve transportation service for seniors.

For starters, here is a definition: planning consists of tasks, energy and resources applied to create a desired future. Good planning includes three components:

1. Where we want to go (the vision).

2. Where you are now.

3. The bridge you will build to get to the vision.

These three components are universal to all planning. This includes your smallest efforts (where should we hold our special event?) to big questions (what is the most effective way to cure cancer?)

How can you tell if your planning was good? If you can create, in your mind’s eye, the bridge you will build and imagine using it to travel from where you are to where you want to go.

When you plan, all three areas need your attention. Which area do you find that you neglect the most? Did you ever stop to define what planning was before you begin to do it?