Stanford Social Innovation Review

Nonprofit Silos Choke Off Conversations

Smart fundraising is no longer a one-way stream of information, where organizations tell would-be donors whatever will motivate them to give.

Fundraising has become a conversation. 

There’s just one problem: In many nonprofits, especially the larger and more professional ones, the people actually charged with conversing with donors have little incentive to do so.

They’re typically found in the Donor Relations department, and they report to managers outside of Fundraising. So while fundraisers may want to nurture rich two-way conversations with donors, the people who answer the phones, emails, and complaint letters would rather eat cockroaches drowned in mop water than engage in conversations. And because they’re in a different department, they’re being measured for efficiency and other very non-conversational skills.

So you have a Talking Department (Fundraising) and a Listening Department (Donor Relations) working in different silos and holding different goals and conflicting philosophies. Sounds like a mental illness, doesn’t it?

Add to that an independently operating Marketing Department (which, for the sake of the metaphor, we’ll call the Yelling at Random Strangers Department) and the Online Department (or the Navel-Gazing Department). If this nonprofit were a person, he’d be locked up!

Nonprofits that allow bureaucratic turf to get in the way of listening to and serving donors won’t survive the change in how donors interact with their charities. When donors get a taste of the rich, respectful relationship they can have with a nonprofit that has its organizational act together, they’re going to drop those who can’t make the change.

The time to explode your silos is now.

Jeff Brooks is creative director at Merkle, a direct-response agency serving the nonprofit world.  He blogs at the Donor Power Blog.

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Sarcasm and sex in fundraising

JEFF BROOKS on how not to motivate donors.

Some nonprofits want attention so badly, they’re willing to give up nearly everything else in order to get it.  Here are two recent examples.

Can you belittle people into giving?
ENABLE Scotland, an organization that works with the disabled, has put out this much-noted ad that directly pits animal charities against disability charity.  (More in this BBC news story: Animals get greater charity share.)

The model, who seems to be the person asking the question, stares back with a scowling, unfriendly expression.  It all comes across as disdainful and sarcastic, a challenge to the reader’s intelligence and morality.

Is this a good way to motivate any kind of positive behavior?

Think about it from your own relationships.  Does a sneering challenge ever bring someone else around to your point of view?  Of course not.  In fact, it puts them on the defensive and effectively ends the discussion.

Motivating someone to do a good deed is best done by coming alongside them and appealing to their values—not by attacking their priorities. 

People choose the charities they support for their own reasons.  It’s puzzling to me too that U.K. donors on the whole seem to favor animals over disabled humans.  (One reason might be that animal charities don’t use sarcasm to get support!) To get a better balance in charitable giving, organizations like ENABLE Scotland should try better marketing and fundraising, not slapping the good folks who are touched by the plight of animals.

Sex sells—but what does it sell?
Maybe the Enable ad should have asked “If I ate out of a dog bowl and took off my clothes would you like me?” Nudity is a powerful attention-grabber.  But beyond merely getting attention, you have to wonder what PETA thinks their “State of the Union Undress” is going to accomplish.  (Careful:  This video is not work-safe.)

I’ll save you the agony of watching:  She takes it all off.  And while doing so, she brags about PETA’s activities, in an unpleasant, knife-like voice.  But what for?  Substituting flesh for charisma, she gets eyeballs directed her way, but they’re not there for the cause.

I suppose PETA’s going on the theory that the more people who come to ogle the naked woman, the more among them will persuaded by the message behind the . . . picture.

Fat chance.  The state of mind that nudity encourages is rather unlike the compassionate mindset that leads to charity.

You might say these messages are successful in a sense:  They got attention.  I’m writing about them, and you’re reading about them.  But do they motivate positive action?  Will they get people to step forward with their checkbook to help make the world a better place?  That’s a whole different question.  I doubt it.

Posted by SSIR Editor

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Charity Fundraiser-in-Chief

MARK ROSENMAN on the government’s competition with nonprofits.

We’re used to hearing about politicians trolling for campaign contributions. This has posed a particular problem for public interest nonprofits--it’s hard for them to compete with large corporations that use strategic gifts to help sway legislation, regulation, and policy decisions. Campaign donations haven’t been such a problem for other charities, which don’t view politicians as competition for dollars because campaign contributions aren’t tax deductible.  But, surprise, the President has just made some of his fundraising a problem for all nonprofits. 

President Bush is asking for a billion dollars in foundation grants and other tax deductible charitable contributions to replace the much-needed funding he has egregiously failed to give our national parks for years and years.

Leaders have long called upon institutional and individual donors–-you and me–-to cover dwindling government funding for nonprofits that provide basic human services and attend to other public needs. But in February, the President led the federal government into direct competition with those very nonprofits for the very grants and individual donations they depend on to pick up some of the slack.

And he’s done this while giving the wealthiest one percent of households over a trillion dollars in tax cuts, and denying those missing funds for use on the nation’s most critical problems!

Our national parks and many, many Americans are in trouble today because of the fiscal policies of the Bush administration (see this illuminating Center for Budget and Policy Priorities slideshow), and the nonprofit and philanthropic community would be foolish to think that increased altruism could be an adequate substitute for responsible government.

Public policies and public institutions do much to create and exacerbate problems, and private action for the public good must take that into account when it seeks remediation or remedy. We can do a great deal through voluntary initiative, but we cannot replace public agency. And it’ll take more than new park benches with shiny plaques to save government!

Please share your thoughts below.

Posted by Mark Rosenman

9 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

The Consultant You Should Never Hire

JEFF BROOKS on consultants with ready-made answers.

Consultants are good for nonprofits.

A good consultant brings you breadth and depth of experience that you’d never be able to muster within the organization.  But more important, consultants aren’t wearing your organizational blinders.  They can see things you can’t.  (My opinion on consultants may be less than unbiased; I am one.)

But the quality of consultants varies.  And there’s one type you should never hire:  The consultant who knows the answers before you ask the questions.

Maybe you’ve met this guy.  He starts every conversation with his sure-fire winning tactic.  Sometimes it’s a data trick that will squeeze new revenue from your donor file.  Sometimes it’s a creative execution or spiffy format that cuts through the clutter.  Or some hot new media opportunity.

Any of these things might be just the ticket for your organization.  But until a consultant knows your situation well, nobody knows. 

A consultant has no business telling you what the answers are until he knows the questions. 

• Do you need a large influx of low-end donors? 
  
• Do you need to trade average gift for response rate (or vice versa)?
  
• Do you need a large-scale awareness campaign?
  
• Do you need to cut your marketing costs?
  

When a consultant has ready-made answers, there are three likely reasons:

1. He knows only one thing. To the man with a hammer, every problem is a nail.  He’s going to be hammering your dirty windows and your weedy garden.
   
2. It worked somewhere else. It may or may not work for you.  Not all organizations are the same.  Anyone who doesn’t admit that is a charlatan.
   
3. There’s a hidden agenda. He may need volume for his tactic to pan out.  Maybe he has an agreement with a certain printing press that he needs to keep running.  In other words, he needs you to use his tactic for his sake, not yours.
   

So next time a consultant comes to you with ready-made answers, don’t return the call.  Delete the email.  Politely look the other way.  Then look for a consultant that’s willing to learn about you and be your partner on the journey.

Posted by SSIR Editor

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Passive-Agressive Fundraising: Just Stop It!

JEFF BROOKS on why you should get honest with your donors.

Do you need your donors?

Yes

No

There’s no maybe, no degrees of agreement.  You need them, or you don’t.

If you answered no, never mind what I’m saying; it doesn’t apply to you.

If you said yes, here’s a second question:  Do your donors know you need them?

Yes

No

If you answered yes to the first question and no to the second, you have a problem.

Too many nonprofits live in a shadowy land where they need their donors to fund vital programs—but they don’t want to admit it.  So their fundraising offers go something like this:

Maybe you’d be interested in giving.  But don’t worry if you don’t give.  We’re a very well-run organization, and if you can’t give, we have many other sources of funding.  You’re a small fish anyway, to be honest.

I’m exaggerating, but only a bit.  These organizations are practicing passive-aggressive fundraising.  It tiptoes around the issue of need.  It hints at asking.  It expects donors to read between the lines and understand what they’re unwilling to come out and say.  In my experience, this comes from the fear that if we admit need often, we’ll be the boy who cried “wolf,” and people won’t take our need seriously.

You can overdo “emergency mode” and lose credibility, like that car alarm in the neighborhood that’s constantly going off.  But if you’re truly in need, tell the truth, Your sense of what’s “too often” is certainly more sensitive than a donor’s.  I’ve seen emergency funding shortfall appeals do well more times than I can count.  And I’ve never seen repercussions to such appeals.

Because donors want to be wanted and need to be needed.  So if you need your donors, go ahead and tell them.  Let them know the urgency and the stakes.  Be direct, strong, and clear.  Don’t hide behind a passive-aggressive smokescreen.

It works; it’s respectful of donors; and (assuming you’re telling the truth) it’s the right thing to do.

Posted by SSIR Editor

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Common App, Please

PERLA NI on why it’s about time foundations found some common ground.

Raise your hands, my fellow EDs and development directors, if you are tired of writing 15 different grant applications to 15 different foundations.

What ever happened to the common grant application form?  Some grantmaking associations now have their own common grant applications. That is, they have a common application for dues-paying member foundations in their geographic area.  But the majority of associations, including the larger two - Northern California Grantmakers and New York Regional Association of Grantmakers - are yet to adopt one.

C’mon guys.  Universities are using the common application for undergraduate admission.  Check out the list of universities - public and private, large and small - across the country that have already done so. If Reed College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute can agree on the same form, I’ll bet the Ford foundation and the Flora Family Foundation can find some common ground.  Last year, over 700,000 applications were submitted online through the common university application. 

Imagine how many hours of re-writing, re-formatting, cutting and pasting, and re-copyediting nonprofits would save if there was a common form? And after that common grant application, how about a common Letter of Inquiry template?

Perla Ni, founder and former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, is the founder and CEO of GreatNonprofits. She is also a co-founder of Grassroots.com.

Posted by SSIR Editor

12 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Lobbying Done Right

PETER MANZO on the tactics nonprofits need to make themselves heard.

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.  When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” - Helder Camara, Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil (1909-1999)

When training nonprofit leaders how to lobby legally, I always begin with this quote to remind them that if they are going to get involved in policy debates, some board members and donors will think they should shut up; and they will attract opposition, perhaps even enemies.  But lately I’ve wondered whether I should warn them instead that the worst thing they might face is being ignored. 

Many advocates in the nonprofit world believe deeply in the power of facts and analysis.  Most trained community organizers would dismiss this as hopelessly naive. 

To start, as one of my colleagues has observed many times, most public officials, and even their staffs, don’t read. They don’t have time (and some don’t have the inclination).  Add to that the kind of resources business lobbies can invoke to make legislators’ jobs easier, plus the power of “night time” lobbying through campaign contributions, and it’s clear what an uphill battle it is for advocates for the poor. 

Another colleague recently recounted a conversation that she had had a few years prior with a good progressive state legislator.  He had described to her his experience with a bill sponsored by the health insurance industry, which came to him wrapped as a package – draft bill written, a list of committed and likely votes from other committees and other legislators lined up, media strategy ready to go. Virtually all he had to do was show up and claim credit. (Thankfully, in this instance, the bill’s purpose was a good one.) He contrasted that package with another bill that dominated his staff’s time for nearly a year. 

The challenge for advocates for the poor is to build the kind of tactical capabilities that the health insurance lobby showed in that example.  To be sure, advocates for the poor absolutely must have the ability to do strong data analysis and make forceful policy and legal arguments.  But this persuasive power needs to be combined with the kind of community mobilization that organizers can help bring. And ideally, it also needs to have the kind of logistical support that the business lobbies, with their armies of consultants, enjoy.  This last factor – the one that actually may enable a legislator to sponsor a change – is the one that is most difficult for advocates for the poor to pull off. 

Foundation grants fund lots of analysis, and a good deal of “public education,” but most funders shrink from funding those kinds of tactical expenses, which also bear the added stigma of looking like “overhead.” How might things be different if grantmakers seeking to support social change more frankly embraced what their grantees need to do to exercise power? What else might we do to help nonprofit advocates build these capabilities?

Posted by SSIR Editor

3 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

The True Test of Leadership

BY PETER MANZO

In the now classic film Apocalypse Now, the scene that has always struck me as perhaps the most frightening is the one in which Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen), on his quest upriver to find Colonel Kurtz, comes to a camp where American soldiers rebuild a bridge each day, and the Viet Cong blow it up each night.  When Willard asks a soldier, “Who’s in charge here?” the soldier replies, “Ain’t you?”

Discussions of leadership and accountability in the nonprofit sector are everywhere, and perennial—they repeat themselves. But sadly, they are usually overly narrow. For example, most discussions of accountability focus on transparency and governance mechanisms meant to ensure truth telling. As important as these aspects are, they approach only one level of accountability.  Properly understood, accountability has at least three key levels (as I’ve written elsewhere):
• “Don’t rip us off”: the level of not cooking the books or otherwise hiding the ball;
• “Be effective”: the level at which being accountable means not simply being honest, but also being competent, using the best available practices.  (To draw an example from the legal field, a lawyer can be honest [insert lawyer joke here] but still commit malpractice by failing to provide competent representation); and
• “Promise keeping”: to my mind, this is the highest level. It demands that you do everything in your power to accomplish your mission, to keep your promise to the community. 
Many honest and competent organizations (and people—myself included) don’t meet this higher test of accountability.

Leadership is too often taken up separately from accountability.  In many views, accountability is on a separate track altogether—a matter of merely complying with regulations, and implementing administrative practices to support that compliance.  And when leadership and accountability are discussed together, accountability is often viewed as simply a function of a leader’s character (honesty, candor, and the like).

But the true test of leadership should be the same as the highest concept of accountability: Does the leader do everything in her power to accomplish the mission, to keep her promise to those served?

Too often we only talk about all the reasons something cannot be done, or why it is not our job to do it.  In bureaucracies (be they government, nonprofit, or private sector), the incentives are often only negative. Taking risks never results in rewards, only punishment. There is safety in the narrow view, and so it prevails.

That narrower approach can keep us on the right side of the “Don’t rip us off” level of accountability, but it can also undercut the “Be effective” and “Promise keeping” levels.  That narrow view won’t cure cancer, or stop global warming, or cut poverty by half, or inspire people to be their best selves; it won’t do any of the things nonprofits exist to do, or that we should demand that government accomplish.

In a recent discussion with some friends, they observed that how we frame our questions makes a huge difference in what we can accomplish. Asking “How can we do it?” is worlds apart from “Can it be done?” Which question seems more likely to lead to social innovation? Which is better suited to meeting our highest duties?  Devoting so much attention and energy to the “Don’t rip us off” level of accountability—particularly in the nonprofit sector—has been a huge missed opportunity.

The scene from Apocalypse Now is frightening on multiple levels, but two among them are (1) no one seems to be responsible for the fate of the soldiers and their mission, and (2) the soldiers themselves feel constrained to play the role that so clearly isn’t working for them. (“Stay the course,” anyone?)

If you don’t stretch to meet your promise-keeping duty—the greater vision—even the most honest and capable people can find themselves in a similar box.  The job of leadership, or promise keeping, is to reveal the possibilities. 

Posted by SSIR Editor

3 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Getting Everyone on the Bus

What do green ports, family interventions, and professional sports have to do with each other—and the future of the nonprofit sector? 

In an influential Foreign Affairs article last year, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Blinder argued that the impending offshoring of tens of millions of jobs is a “Third Industrial Revolution.” It will spread beyond manufacturing jobs to high-skill professional services that were previously insulated, such as accounting, law, and virtually any kind of data analysis. (X-rays, for example, can now be read by specialists in India.) Although this disruption will be massive, it can be managed, according to Blinder, so long as we recognize that the critical divide is no longer between “skilled” and “unskilled” labor, but between work that can be done at a distance (“impersonal services”) and work that must be done interpersonally (“personal services”).

Here in Los Angeles, we haven’t adapted quickly enough to globalization, but there are signs that our leaders are increasingly acting as Blinder’s theory would predict. Labor unions are prioritizing industries that are not subject to offshoring, such as home health care, hotel, and restaurant workers.  Similarly, government and civic leaders are placing great stock in the economic potential of ports, airports, and the entire logistics industry, as well as green technology.

Blinder thinks the key may be thinking differently about education. Our current system is geared to push the lucky and talented into college—which may no longer result in a stable professional career—and provide a basic education that was adequate for the manufacturing jobs of the past but is woefully short on the verbal and tech skills required for blue collar jobs of the present. (Have you seen the electronic gear your UPS delivery person lugs around?)

In the nonprofit sector, thoughtful leaders are acting in accord with Blinder’s theory.  For example, the Kellogg Foundation’s New Options Initiative aims to create a credential alternative to high school diplomas and associate degrees that will land youth in good careers. The James Irvine Foundation’s emphasis on technical education and academies in which young people can learn real world skills is helping young people better prepare for the global job market.

Against this backdrop, the social sector’s developing emphasis on family interventions—a recurrent theme in the interviews my colleagues and I have been conducting with civic leaders and public officials this summer—may foretell a trend. We aren’t doing nearly enough to help parents ready their kids for these new realities. We have all known this for decades, of course. The preschool and child care movements are longstanding, and fairly successful—but not enough.  To hear leaders from business, government, labor, academia, and politics all hit the same note on this subject is striking.

The impacts of globalization may make nonprofit work even more central to our society. Alhough nonprofits are not immune to offshoring, most of the services they provide, such as teaching, health services, counseling, and advocacy, cannot be delivered over a wire. Furthermore, these services are precisely the areas that will require greater investment to make American workers competitive, meaning that the sector is likely to grow.

Now, what could professional sports possibly have to do with all this? We’re all familiar with the extraordinary measures college and professional teams will take to find top talent. Scouts begin tracking basketball players when they are in the third grade. What if we took a similar approach to finding other talents in young people? We should be looking in those same neighborhoods for kids who might grow into good programmers, mathematicians, analysts, social workers, and peacemakers.

Google is one company that goes hunting for talent (a friend once told me about a co-worker who had been invited to work for them four separate times), but if Google and its competitors could just start earlier, and if we could just provide better early childhood environments, we’d really be on to something.

The irony of global competition is that the pressures for quarterly profits push us to recruit from overseas.  For the same amount of effort and expense it takes to get highly educated workers H-1B visas, couldn’t we develop two or three times as many capable young people in this country? The problem is that no company wants to wait 12 to15 years when they need someone today.  That leaves us with a workforce that is somewhat like major league baseball before Jackie Robinson: There’s a world of talent out there that’s not being realized.

Posted by SSIR Editor

5 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Lose the Marketing Department

The marketing department is destroying your organization. Not on purpose, but the very fact that marketing is segregated into a department is what’s doing the damage.

It doesn’t matter how smart (or lacking in smarts) your marketing department is.  If marketing isn’t built into your entire organization from top to bottom and side to side, you’re lost. 

It’s everyone’s job to tell your story in a way that donors, prospective donors, and third parties (like the press) can understand.

It’s everyone’s job to create memorable, exciting programs that donors can love and support.

It’s everyone’s job to take part in the conversation that’s forming around the things you impact.

It’s everyone’s job to know, understand, and respect donors.

When these things are only the marketing department’s job, they’ll only get half-way done.

Sadly, many nonprofit marketing departments think it’s their job to be gatekeepers for “marketing” functions, keeping everyone else out of it. That leads, usually, to an irrelevant marketing department that spends its time and energy controlling the message and keeping others quiet, while they themselves neglect the real things: buidling a truly remarkable organization, and the genuine conversation that forms around such organizations. That’s what marketing is becoming.

Unless you have a marketing department.

Posted by SSIR Editor

28 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments

Sixty Ways to Leave Your Merger Partner or When a Board Just Can’t Say “I do”

I collect lots of stories from the web about nonprofits that have successfully completed mergers, but only rarely do I find stories about two nonprofits that fail so miserably at a merger attempt that it makes the news.  One such case came to my attention this week and makes for a great opportunity to talk about all the reasons people leave their merger partner.

The story is this: Two California coastal public radio stations, KUSP and KAZU, made a decision to enter into a merger process. Their reasons for seeking a merger were much like those of other nonprofits. The two stations were providing many of the same services in the same community and they wanted to eliminate duplicate programming and overhead expenses “to free up resources for other projects, such as more local news reports on the stations,” according to KUSP station manager Terry Green.

For a year, the two nonprofits worked on the merger details. They hired a public radio consultant to work with them to create a new nonprofit entity to house the single radio station post-merger, and last September, they completed a six-month study on the future of public radio in the Monterey Bay area, where the two stations are based.

All their work was done, and now it was time for the boards to vote for the merger; and then it happened. In a closed-door session, the board of KAZU, the CSU Monterey Bay Foundation, unanimously voted against merging with KUSP. The board members did not explain how they arrived at their decision, but many possible reasons come to mind.

Many nonprofit mergers go down due to staff and board leadership decisions that have to do with the following issues:

• Mission impact: worries over how the mission may change and the loss of focus to the mission, particularly when a small nonprofit is merging with a larger institution
• Loss of Identity: an inability to let go of the nonprofit brand and its organizational history, including stories people cherish and don’t want to lose
• Program Cuts: fears that specific services which the nonprofit has created for its clients will be changed or lost if the nonprofit is no longer there

In his excellent book The Nonprofit Mergers Workbook, Part I, David LaPiana discusses other barriers including the loss of autonomy and self-interest:

Merger threatens autonomy, which is the lifeblood of most nonprofit organizations. In a sector offering low compensation, long hours, and the stress and uncertainty of continual fundraising, independence is one of the very few rewards available to nonprofit leaders…Whether it is board members fearing loss of attachment to a beloved organization or cause, or staff fearing loss of status or even loss of employment, self-interest is a legitimate and major issue that can lead to many breakdowns in merger negotiations.

In all of these cases, a good facilitator can help the merger boards and staff work through the roadblocks, both emotional and otherwise, as they go through the merger process. A good merger facilitator will flush out all the issues early in the process and work with both parties to determine if the problems can be overcome or not.

Better to know the merger partner has no intention of merging sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately for KUSP and KAZU, they went all the way to the altar before discovering that they probably never really had a commitment to begin with.

Jean Butzen, a consultant with Mission Plus Strategy, specializes in mergers and alliances in the Chicago area.

Posted by Katie Harrington

0 Comment(s) - View/Post Comments