Archive for the ‘Sustainability’ Category

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Going Sideways

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

The economic crisis is over and the economy is growing again according to the experts. Most of us are waiting for the growth to come to our neighborhood. The economists are telling us it will take a while to reach the average person. Depending on whom you listen to that might be six months or five years. If it takes more than a year, it will feel like the economy will be going sideways rather than up. It sounds like today is the new normal and will be with us for a while.

A prediction of six months to five years is an uncertain predication. How do you run a development program at a parochial school with that level of uncertainty?

Our recommendation is to assume it will be five years. That is the same as assuming it will be never. Accept what we have as what will be and stop waiting for a change. If the five-year assumption is pessimistic, no harm will be done. If it is right, you are a hero.

The five-year assumption implies that today’s situation is the new normal and normal will change very slowly. What does this normal look like?

Donors are giving less. Donors are being selective. Donors want proof that charities are using their gift efficiently. Donors want proof that their gifts are effective.

Next Step:

If donors are giving less, one must find more donors to keep income constant

If donors are being more selective, one must expect to loose donors, work harder to find donors, and discover what is important to the donor as well as customize communication to keep the donor connected to their passion even as that passion changes

If donors want efficiency, one must lower their cost of fundraising (we recommend keeping fundraising costs below 18%) as well as eliminating operational waste

If donors want effectiveness, one must develop quantitative measures (evidence based) for every aspect of the Christian school and show and promote the year-to-year improvement

The preceding is neither simple nor quick. In addition, because of the decline in donations there are fewer resources available to make the changes. It is hard work. What is the alternative?

Is assuming the optimists are right an option? Can you risk waiting six months for donations to increase when expert agreement is hard to find?

Is waiting for clearer direction really an option? Do the needs of the students, mission, and staff argue for quick action? Which will be more beneficial for the school to be at the leading edge or more toward the middle or back of the pack?

The practical decision is treat today as the new normal. It is better to be in the lead than trailing.

As always, contact us if you want help. We use a special process that offers a guarantee. For more information about our process and guarantee, you can click here.

Mission Enablers

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Donors want to hear

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Donors want praise for the accomplishments of the mission. You enjoy having your boss praise you for a job well done. The donors want the same thing.

Contrary to popular belief, they did not give you money. They think they are giving you a way to change lives. If you work for a parochial school, the donors want a student’s life. How did they do that?

Some will say that the teachers or a volunteer changed the student’s life. However, if you take the donor’s gift out of the process, the student leaves the school because the tuition is too high. Without the student, who will the teacher or volunteer serve? Without the student, do you need the teacher or volunteer?

Donors are a critical part of the process. The volunteers and teachers are equally important and deserve equal credit. Developing a student is a team sport. Honor all of the team members.

The teachers and volunteers receive credit. Students tell their parents about what happened at school. Peers tell other peers about the good job that someone did. Peers tell the board and administration about successes. Everyday everyone except the donors receives feedback.

What should we tell the donors? Remembering that they want students’ lives to change, we should tell them about the changes. The changes are different from a story about a child who loves to get up and go to school. That is good and important. It says the child is probably engaged in the learning process.

The donors want to know about the life changing (not better grades and happy students). How has the student changed? Is he better behaved? Is she more emotionally stable? Is he more confident? Is she more optimistic? Does he have hope for the future? Is she now a person of impeccable character? Those are life changes. That is what the donor is paying for.

Next Step:

Weekly, collect the small changes that the teachers, volunteers, and parents notice in the students.

Monthly, send a newsletter to the donors and volunteers that highlight two life-changing observations (one short paragraph each).

Remind them that they make those stories possible through their help and prayers.

Remember it is a newsletter so leave out the giving envelope and an “Ask”. If it opens their heart to give, they know where to mail the check or can find the PayPal button on your website.

They will be happy to hear another story every month. Good news is always a welcomed message. After a few months, the donors will look forward to your newsletter. They will develop a habit of reading your mailings. When you make an “Ask”, they will read and respond to it differently.

Do it and the donors will feel better and be more generous. Do it and the donors will be more loyal. Do it and fundraising will be easier. Do it and the school will be more sustainable. Do it and enrollment will increase (your donors will have life changing stories to tell their friends). Do it and everyone will be happier.

Remember to do it every month. In July when school is out, the newsletter can talk about how you are looking forward to the next school year and how all of the lives they support will change. Inspire them with what they can do and spend the rest of the year congratulating them on what they accomplished.

As always, contact us if you want help. We use a special process that offers a guarantee. For more information about our process and guarantee, you can click here.

Mission Enablers

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Managing the Fundraising Portfolio

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Fundraising is the life-blood of a parochial school. It is also one of the most time consuming activities at any school. It is important for it to be as efficient as possible.

How efficient is your fundraising? How can we make it more efficient?

Make a list of all of the fundraising activities at your Christian school. Please include the newsletter to donors, the annual appeal letters, and the calls to high value donors as well as the bake sales, magic shows, and other activities.

How many hours (staff and volunteer) are consumed by each activity? Please remember to include the hours spent contacting merchants soliciting, collecting, and labeling items sold at the silent auction.

What are the expenses associated with each activity (printing, materials, postage, cost of baked goods, etc.)? Please remember that staff time is an expense associated with the various activities.

What is the total income for each activity?

What is the net income (after all expenses) for each activity?

Divide the net income by the hours for that activity.

List the activities with the most income per hour first.

The list now ranks your fundraising activity in order of efficiency. What are the bottom two activities? Those are the least efficient fundraisers in your portfolio.

Next Step:

Analyze the last two activities and determine if there is a way to increase the efficiency (reduce the hours and increase or hold the income constant)

Institute the efficiency ideas or eliminate the activities

Either replace eliminated activities with something new or redirect the energy to other activities

This should be an annual event performed about 4 months before creating the annual budget. The expected increase in income from the efficiencies is important information when creating the budget.

Replacing the inefficient will ensure that your fundraising is consistently becoming more efficient. It will also help ensure that your fundraising income grows faster than inflation.

In short, each year you will have more money with less or the same work. That process creates sustainability and helps ensure the school has sufficient resources to serve the students.

As always, contact us if you want help. We use a special process that offers a guarantee. For more information about our process and guarantee, you can click here.

Mission Enablers

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Innovative Fundraising

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

We believe that the majority of the parochial schools across the country are struggling. By our definition, a school is struggling if enrollment has declined for the past three or more years. Fundraising is declining. It has had an operating loss for two or more years. In short, the longevity of the school is in doubt.

Unfortunately, most schools do what most schools do. As a result, most schools are in the same condition. Unfortunately, that is a weakened condition.

If fundraising at your school is similar to the fundraising of the other schools in the area, your results will be the same. Do you want the same or better results?

If you are going to produce better results than the other schools, you need to innovate. Innovation means doing something unique.

Next Step

What is the mission of your school?

What is the personality of your school?

What are the strengths of your school?

What can you do that will use the strengths, display the personality, and highlight your mission?

Now you have something unique. Building it around your school means no one can successfully copy it. It becomes your signature event.

Think about the other nonprofits in town. Now think about the signature events. Those events produce the best results. Those nonprofits are the strongest. Your school can be among the elite without being elitist.

Create a signature event and your school will take a big step toward sustainability. With a signature event, your school can join the minority of the Christian schools that are thriving rather than struggling.

As always, contact us if you want help. We use a special process that offers a guarantee. For more information about our process and guarantee, you can click here.

Mission Enablers

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Is your school out of money?

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Sad but true, once in awhile a parochial school runs desperately short on funds. It may even find its self with too little to pay the teachers.

What should it do?

The obvious answer is to reach out to the donors. Turning around a financial problem is a team sport. It usually takes a big team of donors.

The temptation is to tell the donors that times are tough, money is gone, and donations are critical to survival. Will it work? The short answer is maybe. The first time it happens it usually works but it is like asking people to buy a boat with a hole in it. The second time it works but it is less effective than the first. After that, donors begin to think about the boy who cried wolf or that the boat has a whole in it and needs to sink. In short, more and more donors are lost and many of them are going to be hard or impossible to reengage.

If donors are lost in the process, it becomes harder to achieve sustainability. It is rare that this type of appeal will attract new donors. However, the problem often occurs because there are too few donors for sustainability. Even if it works, without adding new donors the problem is likely to reoccur in the near future.

What is a better solution?

Make the appeal based upon the needs of the students and the community rather than what the school needs. Make the appeal emotional. Make the appeal small conceptually so that the donor feels they will make a difference. A single $100,000 donor is rare. However, it is possible to find 1,000 donors who will give $100. They must believe their small gift will change a student’s life.

Donations come from the heart. The most effective appeals are ones that engage people’s emotions.

The donors typically live in the community, care about the community, and have an emotional attachment to the community. They became donors because they care about the needs of children.

Since the appeal is about solving community and student needs, it has the potential to draw in new donors. Increasing the donor base is an important step toward sustainability.

Next Step:

What important community needs does the school meet?

What student needs are being met that are important to non-parents?

Scale the needs down to something the average donor can afford.

Make the appeal in a short, specific, and emotionally compelling way.

Keep it small, immediate, and emotional and you will find the money you need to continue. Do it now before the hole deepens.

As always, contact us if you want help.

Mission Enablers

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Meaningful Goals

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Springtime, Cultivating, and Fundraising

As we look at a foot of snow on the ground, we wistfully look forward to spring and all of the new growth in the garden. The donor base is a garden of riches. What is the best way to tend it?

A well-tended garden has dying blooms next to new sprouts. Even in the best of economies, the donor base has a few dying or dead blooms. Should we weed them out? Perhaps keeping them is a good idea. Blooms are the source of new seeds and new sprouts.

Do you have enough new sprouts? Do you have a specific goal for how many new donors you want to add each year? Inflation increases at about 3% in a typical year. The population of the U.S. increases at about 2% each year, which implies the demand for services will increase about 2% most years. A growing nonprofit or a poor economy increases the services demand. In short, there needs to be donor growth of 5% or more each year (inflation plus anticipated service growth).

In the garden, we assess the individual needs of each plant. The starting point is to assess the class (evergreen, flowering bush, fruit bearing, etc.). The next step is to asses the health of the individual. The donor base will benefit from the same treatment.

Similar to the garden, the more we know the easier it is to strengthen the individual and help them realize their full potential to enhance the mission.

One of our clients had several non-responding donors. They reviewed there appeal letter. The result was an increase in the generosity of regular donors, reengaging of lapsed donors, and several new donors engaging. About 53% of the responding donors were new or lapsed donors.

Those are excellent results when most nonprofits are unable to achieve goal. Every farmer will tell you that cultivating the fields helps the farm thrive.

Next step:

How well do you know your donor base?

How many love capital projects?

How many are unrestricted givers?

How many have a passion for a specific program or demographic group?

How many give to a specific request but have a heart for something else?

Do you know the answer to those questions or are you guessing?

What are the areas that will benefit the clients the most?

What is the best way to cultivate donor interest in those areas?

How will you change your appeal process?

How will you change your “thank you” process to enhance the next appeal?

As always, if you want help contact us.

Mission Enablers

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Growth is a Fundraising Tool

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

As we approach the start of a new year, it is time to set goals for 2010. Does the board understand how important their goal setting is to the success of next year’s fundraising? Is the board setting goals that will energize the donor base, referral sources, and staff and volunteers?

Is the board giving you all of the tools you need to raise funds? Is the board’s emphasis on growth just numbers or are the numbers meaningful to non-board members? Are the numbers and goals meaningful to the donors?

Think about an addiction treatment center. If their client success rate grows from 50% to 60% over the next 5 years, their reputation for success will grow. Client referrals will grow. The proven success will improve their grant competitiveness and funding will grow. For them client success is the critical growth factor. Growth in the other areas is a collateral benefit.

Client success is growth with a purpose. Increasing the number of clients served is just numbers. Client success inspires the staff and volunteers, provides donors with gratification, and meets a critical need in the community.

As you know, providing donors with a sense of gratification is important. The more good a donor does the more they want to do.

Each donor has a finite capacity to give. If they feel sufficient gratification from their gifts, they become passionate fundraisers. However, most donors are well below their capacity to give. Their have reached the willingness to give threshold and are below their capacity threshold. Raising their sense of gratification moves them beyond willingness toward capacity. When they start recruiting other donors you know they are at capacity. The gratification they experience gives them the passion to recruit others.

If the emphasis is on numbers of clients, the fundraising emphasis focuses on the number of people served by a gift. If the emphasis focuses on the success of a client, the fundraising emphasis focuses on the change in people’s lives. Knowing that a gift made a permanent change in someone’s life is gratifying.

As we approach the start of a new year, it is time to set goals for 2010. Is the board setting goals that will energize the donor base, referral sources, and staff and volunteers?

Does the board understand how important their goal setting is to the success of next year’s fundraising?

As always, if you want help contact us.

Mission Enablers

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Prove it

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

An emotionally gripping story like the one in this article plus compelling, quantified evidence will increase client participation and commitment, donations, and referrals as well as staff commitment, board engagement, and long-term sustainability.

Do you have the evidence to support your favorite agency’s claims of success?

One parochial school is proud of its discipleship development. When asked they will tell you about a young man who stepped between a gun and a friend who was being threatened. The friend lived because the young man gave his life. It is a great example of being a good disciple and taking our love for others to the highest level.

After applauding that example of discipleship, ask for a second example. Ask how many examples there are from each graduating class. Ask how they measure the increase in discipleship of each student at graduation. Ask what the curriculum is that creates the discipleship.

Without evidence how do we know whether the discipleship was develop by the school, a pastor, a parent, a mentor, a neighbor, being inspired by the Bible, or all of those and more? While we hope the school played a part, it is impossible to know. Remember there are stories of soldiers making the same sacrifice who never attended that school or any Christian or parochial school.

At a practical level without evidence, should anyone believe that success is happening because of the programming? The anecdotal evidence may indicate that success is happening. Is the relationship coincidental? As an example, a youth center might promote abstinence. It might be proud of a young person who gives up a promiscuous life style. If the center used a targeted program to attract at risk youth, had a strong life style curriculum, and tracked pre-marriage pregnancy rate of its alumni it would be easy to compare their statistics with a similar non-alumni population.

With demonstrated success, it is easy to gather passionate donors, volunteers, and referral sources around the mission. It is also easier to engage and motivate clients. Everyone has evidence that participation will produce results.

The follow-on question is, “Do evidence-based programs enjoy a sufficient increase in support to justify the cost of gathering, analyzing, and reporting success?”

Look around your community. Who are the agencies that are strong despite the economic downturn? Ask them for evidence of their programmatic success. How compelling is their evidence? Is it more or less compelling than the evidence from your favorite nonprofit? How does their change in donor support over the past year (expressed as a percentage) compare with your agency’s donor support? If your agency enjoyed a comparable level of support, would it justify the cost of being more evidence-based? In short, prove it to yourself that evidence-based claims receive more support and are more sustainable.

It is possible to measure anything. How do you envision quantifying the success of your favorite program?

If after your agency becomes more evidence-based donations fail to increase, ask one more question. Are we measuring what matters to the community, donors, and referral sources as well as the mission and the clients?  Align the stars and the sky becomes brighter.

An emotionally gripping story like the one at the start of this article plus compelling, quantified evidence will increase client participation and commitment, donations, and referrals as well as staff commitment, board engagement, and long-term sustainability.

As always, if you want help contact us.

Mission Enablers

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Increasing Donations

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Donations are down and the economy is being blamed. While it is easy to agree that the economy is having an impact, it is doubtful that the economy is having the impact people project.

Mission Enablers works with nonprofits of all types. We help them build their capacity to serve, increase their sustainability, and if necessary help return them to vitality. Part of that process is reviewing their funding strategy and fundraising process.

Employment is down about 10%. How many of your donors are now unemployed? What percentage of the donor base is that? How much is the economy down from 2007? How much are donations down so far this year? How do you explain the difference between those  percentages?

Perhaps this will help you explain it. People give because they are optimistic about the future. They are willing to give because they believe additional money will flow to them to replace the money they donate. When they loose their faith in the replenishment, they reduce their donations.

The down economy has caused widespread concerns. However, you can see this same decline when a family member becomes ill, one of the spouses is facing retirement, or his or her employer is experiencing problems.

What are you doing to restore their faith in the future?

Does every donor need help developing faith in the future? Of course not. Anyone who has increased his or her donations over last year has faith in the future. Those who are giving less or holding constant may need some help. The other possibilities are that they have found another cause or they are dissatisfied with your results. Let us assume they need more faith in the future.

There is every possibility that they boarded the gravy train and fell asleep. When the train slowed down, they woke up in a strange place and are now worried. They need reassurance about their future. They need to know they are safe. What can you tell them? Why should they trust in the future?

Sometimes the fundraising process has already told them the wrong story about the future. With donations down there is an understandable uneasiness within the nonprofit about the future. Some of the employees may feel that budget cuts will result in job losses.

Communicating the uneasiness to the donors increases their discomfort. For instance, if the last appeal letter said, “Donations are down and we need your help.” The letter has just added to the reader’s discomfort.

Remember the donors may understand the message differently. The intention may have been help us help others. However, if layoffs are pending where the reader works the understanding may be that layoffs are pending at the nonprofit. One of the pillars in the community is on soft ground.

With that as the reader’s assumption why should they give? Why give to a sinking ship?

Changing the way you communicate during the difficult times will increase donations. Our clients have the results to provide it.

What changes will you make to the next appeal letter?

As always, if you want help contact us.

Mission Enablers

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Vulnerable Income

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Does your income stream add strength to your nonprofit or is it a source of risk and vulnerability?

There are four basic sources of income for a nonprofit.

Donations – what people give you to strengthen the community, country, or planet

Fee for services – what your customers pay for what you do

Sponsorships – what the corporations give you for access to consumers

Grants – what the government and foundations give you to do what you do

Mission Enablers works with nonprofits of all types to help them build their capacity to serve. We frequently help agencies restore their vitality. The economy has been weak lately and we have seen a number of nonprofit suffer because they have lost sight of the vulnerability of their sources of income.

Vulnerability determined the order of the preceding list. The least vulnerable and most dependable is first.

The donors will be loyal in the worst of time if they understand how you strengthen the community. If donations are down it means the donors are dissatisfied with your attempt to strengthen the community or they think that the need is greater in another area. They may tell you that money is tight. However, the harsh truth is that if you had done more in the past they would be more loyal today.  They only reduced or eliminated some of their giving.

A simple example is a cancer support group that offered massages to its clients. Donations fell through the floor when the economy turned down because donors thought the massages were a luxury rather than a necessity. How does a massage strengthen the community? If I have a choice between giving someone a bag of food or a massage what should I invest in?

The loyalty of customers is a problem for every business. When income declines, it indicates that relevance is in decline. The choices are to reduce the fee to match the lower relevance or increase the value to justify the fee. When the economy declines value must increase to justify the cost. In addition, the customers are usually the least well to do and the most vulnerable to layoffs and pay cuts.  They have the least ability to afford a loss in value.

As an example, consider flat panel TVs. The technology is relatively stable. Increasing quality is difficult or impossible. The economy is down. Without an increase in quality, the only way to sell a new TV is to reduce the price. The price has dropped significantly in the past few months.

Corporate sponsorship is value based. We would like to think it is because they believe in the cause. The cause is certainly a factor but a well run corporation must generate a profit. Therefore, the corporation must eventually decide whether their name on your project will influence people who are likely to support the corporation. If two choices are equal then the cause is the tiebreaker.

Retention of corporate support depends on who you serve and the service recipients likelihood of being a supporter of the corporation. Support for the corporation might be buying its products, providing favorable support when a tax, legislative, labor, relocation, or other issue arise.

Retention of a corporate sponsorship is highly competitive and based primarily on return on the investment. It is also very fragile. A new leadership (retirement, merger, scandal, decline in business, etc.) usually means a reassessment of sponsorships. An economic downturn, product failure, and a new intense competitor can also cause the reallocation of funds.

Grants are an easy way to secure a large sum of money with minimal work. They are fickle. Changing priorities, budget constraints, and public opinion causes the redirecting of funds. They have time limits. Winning one is highly competitive and the competition is increasing. The loss of a grant is problematic during the best of times.

It is impossible to say what percentage of income is appropriate from each area. However, it is possible to say that a healthy nonprofit will have more than 80% of its income from the first two sources.

Perhaps you wish you had read this article three years ago. The fact that you are reading it today says that there is still hope. No one thinks that 2010 is going to be the best year in the history of the U.S. economy. In fact, many think it will take a long time for the economy to recover. In short, you still have time to shift to a more stable, stronger, and less vulnerable income base.

What is your plan for shifting to a strong income base?

How soon can you shift your income base so that it becomes a source of strength rather than a source of vulnerability?

As always, if you want help contact us.

Mission Enablers

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