The Cure for the Not-for-Profit Crisis
by Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi via Harvard Business Review
There is a crisis in the not-for-profit sector. Since the great recession began, donations to the largest charities in the U.S. have dropped by billions — down 11% in 2010 alone, according to a recent report from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. This was the worst decline since the Chroniclebegan ranking its “Philanthropy 400″ list of America’s largest fund-raising charities in 1990. Leaders of philanthropic and other non-profit organizations naturally blame the economy for this problem; and many expect things to get worse as the economic malaise drags on.
But the financial meltdown has not affected all charities and not-for-profits equally. It is the more versatile, general-purpose charities — including such well-known, diverse institutions as The United Way Worldwide and the Salvation Army — that are faring the worst. For more tightly focused not-for-profits, such as the Cleveland Clinic and the network of Food Banks around the country, the decline is not nearly as sharp.
Why the disparity? Our own research on organizational strategy and leadership more broadly suggests a reason. Since 2010, we’ve been conducting an ongoing survey of managers’ attitudes about the strategies of their organizations (click here to take the not-for-profit version of the profiler). More than 65% of the respondents from the non-profit sector said it was a significant challenge to bring day-to-day decisions in line with their organization’s overall strategy. When asked about their frustration factors, 76% (the largest group by far, and a larger percentage than their for-profit counterparts) named “too many conflicting priorities.” When asked about their organization’s core capabilities — distinctive things their association could do better than anyone else — only 29% said these supported their organization’s strategy, and almost 80% said that their association’s efforts to grow had led to waste.
All of these results suggest that, while the hit to fundraising has hurt many not-for-profits, the more fundamental core problem is strategic. These institutions lack a strategy for connecting their mission with their ability to deliver. In short, this is a crisis of coherence.
Read the rest of the article: The Cure for the Not-for-Profit Crisis – Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi – Harvard Business Review.
Tell Better People Stories: Use a Post Hole Digger
This article first appeared in Kivi’s Nonprofit Marketing Tips, a free weekly e-newsletter.
What ruins many a good story about a nonprofit client, volunteer, or donor is the broad brush. It produces profiles that are way too shallow and wide. You try to cover too much about the person in too little space, and we end up with an “overview” of this amazing individual, instead of a compelling story we can’t forget.
Here’s my best tip for telling a story about a single person: put down your broad brush and pick up your post hole digger.
For those of you unfamiliar with this tool, post hole diggers dig a deep, but narrow hole that a fence post can sink down into. You want to do the same thing with your profile. Pick a fairly narrow aspect of this person’s personality or experience, and go deep into that one aspect of the person’s story.
Here are some examples, taking some typical broad brushes we see in nonprofit profiles and turning them into post holes.
Broad Brush: Talking about a volunteer’s family tree, e.g., Mary has been married for 36 years to Phil, and they have four children, and 15 grandchildren.
Post Hole: Ask Mary which one member of her family most shares her passion for your cause. Explore that single relationship in your article.
Read more here.
How a Double-Dip Recession Could Affect Giving
By Lisa Chiu
As economic experts begin to raise the possibility that America will face a double-dip recession, fund-raisers are looking to the past to learn what might be ahead.
No recession in recent history has been as bad as the one that just wrapped up. Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy, which produces “Giving USA,” noted in June that giving dropped by 7 percent in 2008 and 6.2 percent in 2009, declines that were larger than anything since the study was first conducted in 1956.
Patrick Rooney, the center’s director, says that “if we had a double-dip recession, it would be disastrous for philanthropy and charities.” But he encourages charities to resist the urge to let the worries about the downturn get in the way of fund-raising. “If I were running a charity, ” he says, “I would continue to invest in fund-raising and steward gifts well. Giving may go down overall, but if you keep fund-raising, it is more likely to stay the same or go up if you stay in the game.”
Ten Signs Your Nonprofit Writing Might Stink | Nonprofit Marketing Guide
By Kivi Leroux Miller, NonProfit Marketing Guide.Com
Your nonprofit does amazing work everyday. Unfortunately, you sometimes get so wrapped up in your work that you forget how to talk about it in ways that everyone else can understand! Sound familiar?
Here are 10 signs that your writing may have tipped over to the dark side. During Nonprofit Writing Stinks! Bring Your Writing Back to Life on August 9, I’ll show you how to bring it back into the warm, happy light.
1. You are cutting and pasting grant application text into your newsletters. This means you are probably using lots of lingo and jargon that people who work in your field get, but the rest of us won’t.
2. You can play Nonprofit Buzzword Bingo with yourself. If you can score a Bingo (or close) by using the words in your newsletter article or on one page of your website, editing that text should shoot to the top of your to-do list.
3. You find yourself skimming your own writing. If you don’t have the patience to actually read what you wrote, what makes you think the rest of us will?
Ten Signs Your Nonprofit Writing Might Stink | Nonprofit Marketing Guide
Read full article:
Food and Beverage Advertising to Kids: Comment by July 14 Deadline
From CCPHA
The food and beverage industry spends close to $2 billion annually to advertise to children.
Most of what they advertise is food of poor nutritional quality, including sugary beverages.
But recently, a coalition of federal agencies led by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took a stand against aggressive marketing tactics by issuing guidelines to limit the products companies can hawk to our kids. The voluntary principles are a good first step in preventing companies from marketing unhealthy foods to children.
The food industry is fighting these voluntary standards. Their vigorous opposition to
the proposed guidelines – guidelines that are voluntary not mandatory – sends a
signal that food companies are unlikely to adhere to the guidelines. We need to
tell the FTC we support their strong guidelines to ensure industry opposition
does not weaken what the FTC proposed. Click here to learn more and to submit comments to the FTC via PreventObesity.net by the July 14 deadline.
How do you thank your donors?
This article appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. Simone P. Joyaux, ACFRE is recognized internationally as an expert in fund development, board and organizational development, strategic planning, and management. She is the founder and director of Joyaux Associates. Visit her website here.
You know how important “thank you” is.
First there’s the official letter from the office. On letterhead. Specifying the donor name(s) and indicating the gift amount. Including the requisite IRS language. Typically signed by the CEO or the board chair.
This official gift acknowledgement letter goes out within 48 hours of gift receipt. Why 48 hours? Because by the time the gift got to you and your acknowledgement letter got back to the donor… at least five days have passed, more likely seven days. Now five to seven days is beginning to be a rather long time before the donor receives that thank-you.
Sure, the official gift acknowledgement is standardized in your computer. But you can personalize it a bit. And your signer can write a personal P.S.
But mostly, make sure it’s a really great thank-you letter. Make me, the donor, feel special. Tell me why my gift matters. Explain how my investment makes a difference. With all that, I’ll understand that I matter…me the donor. Then I’ll suspect that my future investments will matter, too. And I’ll keep on giving.
Read more at How do you thank your donors?
Using Social Media Increases Fundraising by 40% [Study]
Adapted from an article by Anthony Sicola
More than 40% of Americans use Facebook. Twitter has over 16 million users. YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world. It’s therefore likely that many of your non-profit’s supporters use at least one social network.
A study of whether the use of social networks had any impact on personal or peer-to-peer fundraising found significantly positive results. Here are recommendations based on those results.
- They found that participants who use social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube communicate with their networks more regularly and send more messages. This resulted in increased fundraising results by up to 40%. They recommend that organizations take advantage of the use of these networks.
- Twitter as a multiplier: Twitter users set higher fundraising goals and raised more money.
In fact, Twitter users increased their personal fundraising goals by at least
three times more and raised nearly 10 times more online than their peers who
did not use Twitter. - Supporters who achieve the strongest fundraising success combine multiple social media
tools (along with email and in person connections) in their communication
efforts. Overall, participants that adopted integrated social media tools increased their fundraising by as much as 40 percent compared to their peers who weren’t using the available online tools. - Use tools to allow supporters to synch their Facebook account directly from their personal fundraising headquarters,and allow participants to link their Twitter account to their personal fundraising page.
- A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video even more: A personal message directly from your participant about why your cause is so important to supporters will help
them achieve their goals. - ShareThis – While the three social tools mentioned above are the baseline, what happens when you want to give your participants access to other social networks like StumbleUpon®, Digg®, and Yahoo!®? The easiest way is to add the ShareThis button to your participant’s personal fundraising page, that way they can share their passion for your organization with anyone, anywhere they have an account.
What is your experience using online tools to increase support for your organization?
