The Extreme Fundraising Blog

Here’s another question I received in my inbox from Emile Dillis:

How to propose a fund raising project to organisations, fundraisers or individuals?

The Lord has led us to a place in the mountains of Northern Italy. Here our ministry shall be hospitality. Holiday home, meeting place, courses, seminars, Bible school, evangelisation and so much more.

We are looking for support from organisations and individuals, donations to realise this project. How do we propose this project to organisations? Do we make a formal business plan? What do we include/exclude? What do we need to do and what not?

Any advice or help is gratefully welcome !

We are prepared to take steps in Faith.

And here’s my answer:

Wonderful!! Good for you!

I’d start dreaming and visioning–on paper. What is God calling you to? What is your intent?

And the hardest part: what niche is God calling you too?

Yeah, everyone. But really, who? 20 year old backpackers? 65+ elderhostel folks? Churched? Unchurched?

This is SO hard but SO important. You’ll need to market your place. And it’s FAR easier to market to a specific group.

Don’t worry, you’ll get all sorts of people. But get really clear on a people group or type that God is calling you to. A group that’s easy to find.

I’d highly recommend using a goals program like my MagnetGoals program. There’s a free version and a print out version. (Website below.)

Get books like

• Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
• Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Jim Collin’s & Jerry Poras’ Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
• Jim Collin’s Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
• Seth Godin’s Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable and Free Prize Inside!

That should get you started!

One last encouragement, work through the MagnetGoals system and the E-Myth work of business planning and Covey’s 7 Habits. It’s tedious but the clarity it’ll bring is priceless.

While you’re at it, get to know yourself too. DiSC or Myers Briggs or Highlands Abilities Battery or StrenthsFinder. Find out what God made you good at and what you’ll need to outsource when you can.

You are going to hit a wall at some point. Anything God calls us to requires we come to the end of ourselves. That way we rely on him! But when you’re at the end of yourself, you’ll want to quit. Don’t. The clarity this early work brings will help reignite your fire and renew your faith.

And please keep in touch. I’ve only been to Northern Italy once, just long enough to whet my appetite!

Links:

• http://fundraisingcoach.com/magnetgoals.htm
• http://fundraisingcoach.com/diy.htm
• http://fundraisingcoach.com/store.htm

To ask me your question, go to Question Marc on my site or simply log on to LinkedIn.com and use the Charity & Nonprofit Answers section.

Here’s a question that appeared on LinkedIn.com:

Question:
If donors that have the option to give online would it be a good idea to give them the ability make online pledges?

Here’s My Answer:
If you’re asking as a nonprofit looking at implementing a system, my answer in a word is NO!

I’ve worked with nonprofits across the country for over 10 years. Clients never cite “online pledging” as a source of funding.

The web is an instant gratification medium. Donors wanting to make a gift will want to do it now.

As the previous folks have said, people will give bigger gifts if they can split it up over time. But that usually takes a one on one conversation.

I’d recommend having an online giving set-up that allows donors to “make this a monthly gift.” For years, I’ve offered “monthly, quarterly, and annual” options on the Inland Foundation website but that seems to REALLY confuse people.

Plus, you have to have really good systems in place to “collect” on the pledges. That’s usually a burden for the smaller shops (unless it’s for a capital campaign where the gifts are larger.)

But if you’re asking as a business owner looking to market to nonprofits, online pledging could be a useful option to help make sales. And you can use the other answers to come up with a sales presentation selling them on the value of pledging.

If you haven’t read it yet, go get a copy of Seth Godin’s “The Big Red Fez.” It’s a short book on web design. His premise is that when we sit in front of a web page we’re all like organ grinder monkeys, we just want to know “where’s the banana.”

Effective websites make the banana really obvious, like Google.com. It’s clear what you’re supposed to do: search.

Yahoo.com is so confusing it can hinder people’s response.

And too often, we do that in the non-profit world. We want to be sure all the options are out there, that we confuse the donor.

Oy, this has gotten long! To sum up, if you want to raise money online, I’d recommend NOT making pledging an option.

[You can see all the answers by going to: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/government-non-profit/charity-non-profit/GOV_CNP/198274-7495757]

The November question for the Giving Carnival is: “What business practices should nonprofits adopt to maximize their resources?”

My first answer dealt with having our financial house in order. But there’s another wonderful business practice I think nonprofits could adopt to their benefit: investing in training.

I’d recommend nonprofit professionals and their employers to invest in:

• reading books, including those by authors like Seth Godin or me or
• attending online seminars like those offered by CharityUniversity or
• keeping up with blogs like mine or the many other wonderful nonprofit and marketing blogs out there or (GoogleReader and Bloglines are two helpful tools for this)
• going to live events like regional or national conferences.

We have to be life-long learners. Even if you pick up only one thing each time you invest in learning, the investment pays off. And reading on a wide variety of topics will help us relate to people that may become donors to our cause.

Each of these activities will certainly help your organization maximize your resources!

The November question for the Giving Carnival is: “What business practices should nonprofits adopt to maximize their resources?”

Great question! I think a very helpful business practice would be having open books.

Donors are used to living in a world of increasing transparency. And with sites like GuideStar publishing our 990’s, our financial information is more readily accessible than ever.

I think we should embrace this. The hospital I work for is publishing its quality indicators on the web. If you want to see if we follow best practices with heart attacks, you can find out right on our own website. Even if the stats aren’t what we’d like them to be.

It goes beyond working with the 990’s on GuideStar though. It means having tight financial controls so that it’s easy to see that the money people give goes directly to the right place. [Don’t ask me for advice in setting these controls up. There are generally accepted accounting procedures already out there. Ask a CPA that’s conversant in nonprofit accounting.]

Another great practice is subjecting your books to an annual audit by an outside firm.

We don’t necessarily need to shout-it-from-the-rooftops that we have tranparent finances or really tight financial controls. People already expect us to so trumpeting it would probably raise red flags rather than reassure donors.

But the wonderful thing about the world we now live in is that if we don’t have these controls, we will be found out. I really think that is a huge benefit of living in our world!

I hope you can see that using good accounting practices will definitely help maximize your nonprofit’s resources!

I’ve long been an advocate of PYITS: put yourself in their shoes. (I’ve blogged about it here, here, here, and here.) But during the Q & A portion of my “Taking the Fear Out of Face to Face Solicitation” seminar last week at Blackbaud’s Conference for Nonprofits, a participant asknig me how I reacted to being asked for money caught me off guard.

I’m not sure I’ve ever thought of the question that way before. And the answer wasn’t pretty. What came to mind was when a nonprofit left me a message asking why I didn’t give money to them. The voice mail was something like, “We’re both Christian groups and you’re supporting another group like ours so why in the world aren’t you supporting us?”

My blood started to boil. I called him back and told him exactly what I thought of his group and his target audience. That my giving to this other group was exactly because I didn’t want to give to his. I told him I was sure they were doing good work and it was probably work that others were interested in but not me. I ended letting him know how appalled I was with the brazen familiarity of his voice mail (we’d never met yet he acted like we were buddies) and its unabashed entitlement (that they somehow deserved my money and I was apparently too dumb to see it).

It wasn’t a pretty phone call. And I’m in the process of trying to apologize for my attitude. They are doing great work. It’s still not targeted where I want my giving to go, but I believe life for thousands of people is better because this group exists.

Reliving that experience helps me to re-examine my own fundraising:

• Do I seem overly familiar with people I haven’t met?
• Is entitlement, that awful “we deserve your money” attitude, sneaking into my solicitations?
• Have I done enough homework to see if the prospect really is interested in us?

How about you? How did you respond the last time you were asked for money?

Did you get asked after you’ve made all your charitable decisions for the year? Did you get asked for more than you were expecting? Or were you simply thrilled you could invest in such a cool organization and grateful that someone brought it to your attention?

Take some time today to review your responses. Then ask yourself how your answers will change your own approach to asking.

[A copy of the powerpoint slides for the Taking Fear Out of Face to Face Solicitation seminar are here. An audio recording of the Creating Donor Evangelists seminar is here. If you want the direct link to the mp3 file, click here.]

Thank you to all who’ve emailed me with questions for the new “Question Marc” section I’d like to start here on the blog.

Please keep asking them (and give me permission to post them). Ask exactly the question you have, and I’ll obscure the details so none of your board members or donors can tie it to you. *grin*

Email your questions to marc@fundraisingcoach.com

I’ve received some terrific questions from EFE subscribers over the years. Most of these questions are ones that would help all of us improve our fundraising and our ability to relate to donors.

So I’d like to explore a new feature on my blog called “Question Marc.” (Get it?)

All I need is your questions and permission to post them. Ask exactly the question you have, and I’ll obscure the details so none of your board members or donors can tie it to you. *grin*

Email your questions to marc@fundraisingcoach.com or post them below as a comment.

I received a terrific comment in response to an email I sent asking for help on a book I’m writing. After I answered it, I asked Lynn if I could reprint it here. I think we all face this scenario at one time or another!

Marc -

I’m currently working on a fundraiser and I still have trouble getting past the imposition of asking, feeling like it is a favor even when they have a budget for donations.

–Lynn

Dear Lynn,

Protecting the environment is one of the most important things a person could invest in!

I’ll get into this in the book but here’s a couple thoughts:

1. Are you sold on the cause? Really sold? Do you really believe this is an incredible investment for the donors? 

   If not, do whatever it takes to get there. Take another tour of the habitat. Talk to environmentalists. Talk to anyone that will convince you.

2. Get to know all you can about the prospects both online (Google, etc.) and in person. Go to the clubs they go to (Rotary, etc.). Find out what aspect of conservation is important to them. Is it protecting the natural habitat of a specific species of birds? Is it climate stabilization? Something else?

When you ask a person to invest in your project in a way that shows you know what’s important to them, you increase your odds of a positive response AND you let the person know you think of them more as a person than as an ATM.

Thanks for your courage in pressing beyond your comfort to protect our natural resources!

Marc

I think we all could benefit from falling in love with our cause from time-to-time!

If you want a refresher on my GET R.E.A.L. approach to soliciting major gifts, check out my article here.

To you fundraising success!

Marc