Archive for the ‘Management Advice Day tip’ Category
November 3, 2011
Thanks to Thomas Cott of You’ve Cott Mail for pointing the Nonprofiteer to this article in Crain’s New York Business about the value of collaboration among small arts organizations as typified by the Lower Manhattan Arts League.
The league — which includes small groups like Access Theater and larger organizations such as Dance New Amsterdam and the Children’s Museum of the Arts — has monthly meetings where constituents help each other with everything from fundraising to legal advice. The groups have created a downtown cultural festival, which they produce in the fall and spring. The members even apply for some grants as one entity and lobby the city government as a pack. Individually, some members with budgets as small as $100,000 are barely on funders’ radar, but as a group the members generate around $14 million in economic activity per year and employ roughly 1,200 people full- and part-time. After years when none of the groups were able to score a grant from American Express, for example, the consortium applied together in 2009 and was awarded $100,000. They divvied up the money according to the size of each budget.
While the cheery tone of the article elides some of the serious difficulties arts organizations face in aligning their missions and needs with one another, the point is nonetheless well-taken: organizations too small to get attention on their own may be big enough when combined with others to secure foundation funding and government cooperation.
Such collaborations also serve as living ripostes to the chronic funder complaint that the supply of arts organizations exceeds the demand for them: if these disparate groups can work together without cannibalizing their audiences or funding, they must not be duplicating each other’s work. Or, as it is written: the whole [collaborative network] is greater than the sum of its parts.
Tags:501c3, arts groups, charity, collaboration, donors, foundations, Fundraising, nonprofit, not for profit, philanthropy, public funding for the arts, Relations with funders, theater
Posted in Advocacy, Arts Organizations, Coverage of nonprofits, Government grants, Management Advice Day tip, Mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Relations with funders | 3 Comments »
October 31, 2011
Do you have any advice on getting phone numbers for donors not connected to board/staff/etc?
We’re finding it increasingly challenging, and people are understandably protective of personal info.
Signed, Waiting By The Phone
Dear Waiting:
I don’t, actually, though I’m a big user of WhitePages.com, where lots of people “protective of personal info” will find to their surprise that they’ve been listed. It’s worth checking, at least, because it’s much more comprehensive than the old phone book. You do risk having people say, “How did you get this number?” though relatively few will want to yell at you for saying thank you, and it doesn’t hurt to say, “Your number is published on WhitePages.com so we thought it was public information; if you’d rather it weren’t you might contact the site.”
Another thing: make sure your staff carefully examines the front of any check you receive (does anyone still send checks instead of credit card numbers?). It’s pretty standard to have phone numbers there, and that’s your first, last and only chance to copy down information you’ll need later.
Finally, modify your donor contribution card to ask for a phone number. Some people will refuse to complete the card, but many will fill it in just out of habit and then you’ve got them.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, Fundraising, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthropy, Relations with funders, volunteer
Posted in Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Technology | Leave a Comment »
October 28, 2011
So here’s something the Nonprofiteer heard yesterday: if an agency’s response to every initial donation is to have a Board member pick up the phone and call the donor to thank him/her, the likelihood of a second donation increases by something like 80%.
What’s terrific about that (other than the obvious, donor retention) is that picking up the phone is often the biggest hurdle Board members need to clear to become effective fundraisers. So if they get used to picking up the phone in a completely non-threatening situation–when their only task is to say, “Hi, I’m a volunteer Board member of agency X and I just wanted to thank you for your gift–we really appreciate your support”–you’re halfway (well, maybe one-third-way) to getting them to pick up the phone and ask their friends to come to a benefit event or a fundraising lunch.
Sounds like the ultimate low-cost high-yield endeavor. Has anyone tried it? Is it as good as it sounds?
Tags:501c3, Board of Directors, charity, charity promotion, donors, Fundraising, human resources, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, personnel, philanthropy, Relations with funders, volunteer
Posted in Benefit events, Boards of Directors, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 3 Comments »
June 2, 2011
This branch of Habitat for Humanity has chosen to charge volunteers for the privilege of helping out.
When the Nonprofiteer pointed out that volunteers give more readily to the agencies they serve than non-volunteers, she wasn’t advocating admission fees. Volunteers may have paid to paint Tom Sawyer’s fence, but Twain’s point was that they were stupid. Your volunteers aren’t.
Even if mandatory “contributions” (oxymoron watch!) weren’t offensive in suggesting that volunteers’ time has less than no value, they’re practically the definition of penny-wise and pound-foolish: people will pay what you require (or not) and then regard their giving to the agency as being done for the year.
Or forever. Please stop this idea before it kills again.
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, Habitat, Habitat for Humanity, human resources, Marketing, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, personnel, philanthropy, Relations with funders, volunteer, volunteering, volunteers
Posted in Benefit events, Charity scandals, Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Earned income, Finances, Fundraising, Housing, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 4 Comments »
April 22, 2011
Dear Nonprofiteer,
I recently saw an offer to serve on a non-profit board where there was a monetary donation requirement each year, but the amount could be substituted by service or other activities through the scale pasted below. Here’s the way they phrased it:
To ensure active participation, members earn points for financial contributions and volunteer service. We ask that a contribution of $250 be made in order to remain as an Associate Board member. You can, however, combine a cash donation of $100 with your fundraising and volunteer efforts by earning these points:
| Sample Opportunities to Earn Points |
| Opportunity |
Points |
| Additional cash contribution of $50 |
50 |
| Plan a Board Social or Fundraising Event |
50 |
| Serve in a leadership role |
50 |
| Secure $100 event sponsorship |
15* |
| Represent [agency] at a public fair or presentation |
15* |
| Sell a ticket to a fundraiser |
10* |
I was wondering, is this a common practice? I’m actually thinking about recommending it for another board where I’ve been asked to donate money.
Signed, Victor on Points or Technical Knock-Out?
Dear Knock-Out:
The Nonprofiteer knows that some larger organizations use this point system, but for smaller organizations she thinks the record-keeping and arguments about “what counts” are more trouble than they’re worth. Obviously it depends on the size of the required contribution, but in general everyone on a Board should be expected to give AND participate, and in roughly equal measure.
This is expressed in a number of different formulations: Board members offer the three Ws (Work, Wealth and Wisdom) or are expected to provide the three Gs (Give, Get and Govern). Whichever initials you use, the point is the same: Board membership is not an either-or proposition but a yes-and one. The best way to assure fulfillment of these expectations is to adopt a clear statement of them for Board members, and go over that statement with every Board recruit. “Every Board member is expected to make a $500 contribution, and buy a ticket to the annual gala, and attend monthly Board meetings, and serve on a committee . . .”. That way, no one agrees to join the Board who isn’t prepared to do all those things.
People are fond of making exceptions to this in two cases: for Board members perceived to be significantly poorer than the rest of the group, and for those perceived to be significantly wealthier or better-connected than the rest.
In the first case, the Nonprofiteer’s advice is: don’t count the money in other people’s pockets. Poor people are more generous than rich people generally, and thus are often less upset by minimum Board gifts than their wealthier counterparts. If a rich Board member can just write a $500 check while a poorer one has to ask 10 friends for $50, well, that’s just another example of ways in which poor people have to work harder than rich people. And, as $500 per year is less than $10 per week, most working people—regardless of their assets—can afford it.
In the second case: if someone tells you s/he’s too busy to actually do anything but s/he’ll be glad to be on your Board, remember this motto: if they can’t do the time, they can’t do the crime. Someone willing only to lend his/her name and write a check should be placed on an Advisory Board (create one if you have to, or dub the person a “Special Advisor” and put him/her on the stationery), not on the Board of Directors. If you do put such a person on the Board proper, s/he will have all the legal responsibilities of Board members without being there to discharge them—a recipe for disaster and hard feelings, should the agency be socked with a bill for unpaid withholding taxes or a lawsuit from an injured client.
In short: the Board is a governance institution, and governance includes assuring that the agency has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission You shouldn’t have to negotiate with your governors about their tasks, which is what a point system suggests. Rather, they should be the ones setting their own goals and meeting them, and attracting others who will do the same.
And that’s the final reason not to use this point system: no one wants to serve on a Board of lazy people. Your group is more attractive to prospects if everyone’s revved up and ready to go on every possible front. You can find such people, provided you don’t declare defeat and stop looking.
Tags:501c3, Board of Directors, charity, donors, Fundraising, governance, human resources, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthropy, volunteer, volunteering
Posted in Benefit events, Boards of Directors, Finances, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Volunteers/Volunteerism | Leave a Comment »
April 1, 2011
she suggests you take a look at her version of Nonprofit 101, a presentation she delivered in January to the fellows of the University of Chicago Public Interest Program. These are recent college graduates serving one-year fellowships in nonprofit agencies; if their work experience doesn’t daunt them, this presentation might!
Tags:501c3, Board of Directors, governance, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthropy, volunteer
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Management Advice Day tip, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General | 2 Comments »
January 27, 2011
If fundraising is concentric circles, as consultants often say (you ask your friends and then their friends and then their friends’ friends), then it seems to make the most sense to start asking right in the bosom of the family: from your staff and volunteers. Indeed, this is what most nonprofit executives think of when they hear the phrase “Charity begins at home”!
But staff and volunteers are in quite different positions with respect to your organization, and so they can’t be treated alike in terms of asking for money.
Often agencies are afraid to ask their volunteers for money on the grounds that they’re already getting the volunteers’ time, and it would be greedy to ask for more. But in fact no one is in a better position to appreciate the value of the work you do, or the scarcity of resources under which you labor, than a volunteer. Further, though not all volunteers are privileged, they are at least people who have leisure time to donate, which suggests they’re not grindingly poor. If your volunteers show up at the office with a cup of Starbuck’s in hand, consider what that represents: 1 Venti/day@$2.50 x 5 days/week x 52 weeks/year = $650. So they’re probably spending more on coffee than you’d think of mentioning in an initial ask.
Will any volunteers take umbrage at being asked to give money as well as time? Sure; a certain percentage of the population finds discussion of money distasteful and crude, and such people may well be represented in your volunteer corps. But you’re not any poorer for asking them, and there’s very little reason to think they’d stop volunteering at an activity they enjoy because you asked them a question to which the answer was “no.”
Don’t extend this blithe attitude, though, to asking your volunteers to ask for money. Direct-service volunteers are apt to be offended if they’re asked to do other kinds of volunteer work, such as fundraising, because the request suggests that they’re not already working hard enough. You understand the difference between time and money, and your need for both; your volunteers are equally sophisticated. So ask them for money, not for more time.
Staff members are a different issue. People who work in nonprofit agencies are already donating enormous sums to the agency, in the form of foregone income–-the money they could be making working in the for-profit sector. In this sense they are almost certainly the top donors to the agencies at which they work.
The Nonprofiteer took a nonprofit executive job for half the salary she had been earning as a practicing lawyer—a not inconsiderable sacrifice, though one she was glad to make. But when members of the Board suggested that she also write a check to the agency, her attitude was, “The very second the Board gives $25,000 a year to the agency–-collectively, let alone individually!—it will have the right to come back and ask for something more than the $25,000 worth of lost wages I’m already giving.”
To be fair, hers is a minority view. Many agencies regard staff donations as some sort of measure of staff commitment to the agency. But staff members indicate commitment every day through the work they do, the salaries they accept, the health insurance they lack. At some agencies they even demonstrate their commitment by working overtime for which they don’t get paid—and by not ratting out their employers to the U.S. Department of Labor or the state agency charged with regulating wages, hours and working conditions. The fact that our agencies do socially valuable work doesn’t entitle us to exploit our laborers, though of course for many years nonprofits have survived their lack of financial capital by consuming human capital instead.
So don’t ask your staff for money, and do ask your volunteers. Maybe they’ll donate enough to make it possible for you to offer the staff health insurance, or paid sick leave, or even a raise.
Well, one can dream, anyway.
Tags:501c3, Board of Directors, charity, donors, Executive Director, Fundraising, human resources, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, personnel, philanthropy, Relations with funders, social services, volunteer, volunteering, volunteers
Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Fundraising, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Private Philanthropy, Relations with funders, Social Service Agencies, Volunteers/Volunteerism | 7 Comments »
January 6, 2011
Dear Nonprofiteer,
I have been a long time reader, and appreciate your blog tremendously!
I have a question, and if you choose to publish it, I would prefer to remain anonymous.
My organization is the fundraising agent for a couple of state funded organizations (the state only funds salaries & utilities—and the foundation I work for was founded a long time ago to raise funds for educational programs, content, etc.). Recently, as a means to save ourselves ample amounts of time, energy, and overhead in administration, we began contracting with another local NPO that is first and foremost a performing arts space, but also the most comprehensive ticketing agent in our town. This has become vastly beneficial because our own staff is so limited that we just don’t have the time and support staff to administer ticketing for ALL of the events for ALL of the organizations we support. This saves us a great amount of time prior to these events, but we still have to process funds transferred to us from the ticketing agent post-event, and then send letters for any tax deductible value to the patrons.
So, here’s the question that has arisen in our office—can we just put something on the ticket itself that states the tax deductible value of the ticket to save ourselves from having to also send letters? Or, is it just best practice to send those letters post event to the event patrons?
Signed, Overwhelmed and Understaffed
Dear Overwhelmed:
Without being sure of the details, the Nonprofiteer recalls that actually tearing tickets is considered best practice in the management of for-profit events as a protection against employee theft of proceeds: the stubs are compared to the sales numbers and everything has to balance out at the event’s conclusion. So it seems like a mistake to put the tax receipt or other acknowledgment on the ticket itself, when you’re going to want to physically retrieve at least part of it.
Of course, it’s possible to print a detachable ticket stub and leave that in the hands of the donor, and that stub could contain the necessary language for tax purposes. (“Ticket price: X. Tax-deductible value: X minus value of event’s benefit to patron. Helping [nonprofit's] clients: Priceless.”) And if you’re using electronic tickets, which can be scanned and then returned in full to the patron, that same language can appear anywhere on the ticket’s face.
But the Nonprofiteer is a little puzzled about your role in the process. Given that you’ve transferred ticket-processing to another nonprofit, why not transfer the entire fiscal agency to that nonprofit? Does being the fiscal agent confer some other benefit on your foundation? If not, it may be that a relationship that once made sense no longer does, now that the agencies you’re shepherding have become so active in their event-based fundraising.
Even if your foundation needs to remain fiscal agent for the purposes of state contracts, it should be possible to transfer fiscal agency for events to the ticketing nonprofit. In that case, the task of sending tax-receipt acknowledgment to the patrons would fall to it.
In either case, of course, the task of actually thanking the patrons falls to the nonprofit whose event it is. If the Nonprofiteer understands the situation correctly, donors have no particular interest in you: by their attendance at events, they intend to benefit the nonprofits for which you’re the agent. Therefore, they don’t want to hear acknowledgment from you—they want to hear it from the benefited agency. That’s what’s priceless!
Tags:501c3, charity, donors, fiscal agency, fiscal agent, Fundraising, IRS, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, social services
Posted in Benefit events, Finances, Fundraising, Government grants, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Public private partnerships, Social Service Agencies | 3 Comments »
December 13, 2010
The Nonprofiteer first learned of the work of catchafire.org several months ago through our mutual colleagues at Mission Research. She’s been getting around to writing about Catchafire’s work placing high-skill volunteers at New York nonprofits. Now that founder Rachael Chong has been interviewed on NPR’s Marketplace, the Nonprofiteer realizes that time waits for no blogger.
Rachael describes her organization as “Match.com for volunteers and nonprofits.” A nonprofit pays a low fee to have Catchafire figure out its needs (“scope its projects,” in site jargon) and find a volunteer with the right skills to accomplish the task. (At the moment the group operates only in New York, which mysteriously has one of the lowest volunteering rates in the country, but it hopes to expand to other communities in fairly short order.) Volunteer in, do project, volunteer out, bada-bing, bada-boom—the whole thing happens in a New York minute.
The Nonprofiteer applauds Catchafire’s mission and part of its approach–the part about helping nonprofits figure out what they can actually do with high-skill volunteers other than asking them to stuff envelopes. But for every volunteer who wants to root, shoot and leave she knows two who are looking for a long-term volunteer home, and though obviously a Catchafire volunteer isn’t precluded from becoming a permanent volunteer, s/he comes in branded as a person who will, and therefore probably only can, do one thing.
The Nonprofiteer is also concerned about sending a single volunteer to do a project, even if it seems apparent that a single pair of hands is all that’s required. Many people volunteer to alleviate their loneliness (or, more positively, to connect with others) and a single-person project—even in the midst of an agency with lots of people—is likely to be isolated, and isolating.
The Taproot Foundation, which likewise uses a project-based model of providing assistance to nonprofits, addresses the isolation concern by assembling a team to complete each project. The good news is, each volunteer gets to know and work with other high-skill volunteers. The bad news is, teams of volunteers are to nonprofits as hairballs are to cats: tolerable on a temporary basis but unlikely to be integrated permanently into the system. High-skill volunteers searching for a cause about which to stay passionate and a home in which to express that passion instead find the opportunity to be coughed up.
The Nonprofiteer’s theory is that both groups are treating the symptom [failure to use high-skill volunteers] rather than the cause [staff hostility to the use of volunteers]. It may be that only the symptom can be treated; but in her own practice, the Nonprofiteer works to help organizations identify and overcome the sources of staff resistance, so they can make use of high-skill volunteers on an extensive and long-term basis rather than a restricted and short-term one. We all know that staff turnover is expensive because every new person has to be trained; the same must be true of volunteer turnover, and therefore solutions requiring constant orientation of new people create problems of their own.
But may the best model win! And if nonprofits use some high-skill volunteers better as a result of any of these approaches, we’ll all win.
Tags:501c3, charity, human resources, Marketing, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, personnel, social capital, volunteer, volunteering, volunteers
Posted in Coverage of nonprofits, Current Affairs, Management Advice Day tip, Mission, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Volunteers/Volunteerism, Women's Issues | 4 Comments »
November 4, 2010
Dear Nonprofiteer:
Recently I started serving on a board of a small social service organization. In the last six months our board president has slowly retreated from his leadership duties due to a variety of personal issues that he’s facing and I find that I’m essentially left driving the bus. What resources are there that you would recommend for those seemingly newly anointed to oversee a nonprofit?
Signed,Nickeynewguy and Lost
Dear Nickey,
Of course the best resource is the Nonprofiteer it/herself–the site has no search function, I’m sorry to say, but if you just keep trolling backwards you’ll find numerous bits of advice for Board presidents. But here’s the central thing to remember: even if you’re suddenly the Board PRESIDENT, you’re not suddenly the whole Board.
So the first thing to do is call a meeting of the Board (with the Executive Director in the room—s/he will be your most valuable partner) and say, “Well, I appear to have become president by default. This wasn’t your choice and it certainly wasn’t mine; so let’s figure out what has to be done and divide up the tasks.” In other words, make it clear from the word Go that you’re not going to be in this alone.
Second, if you’re the sort of person who ends up leading by default, that means you’re a natural leader in one way or another. I’m going to proceed on the assumption that your leadership flows from quiet competence rather than noisy charisma (otherwise you’d have been Board president to begin with). So use that quiet competence to help the Executive Director and your fellow Board members think through:
- What do we have to do that’s urgent?
- What do we have to do that’s important?
- Are we letting the urgent get in the way of the important?
- If so, is the urgent really so urgent?
- If so, do we need more people to address things, urgent and important alike?
- If so, who will lead a brainstorming session to identify and recruit prospective new Board members?
Note that I’m not suggesting you do the recruiting, though you may be the most motivated to do so, having suddenly awakened to a whole set of unasked-for responsibilities. Nor should the Executive Director do it—s/he’s got plenty to do already. But the only way you can do your job is to make sure other Board members do theirs, and the best way to get them activated is to give them the fun job, namely, thinking about who else would just love the work you’re doing if only they knew about it, and then talking to those people with great enthusiasm about what you do.
Any Board member who can’t run, or at least participate whole-heartedly in, a recruitment campaign should be given some essential but boring task like reviewing budget vs. actual expenses or assuring compliance with the Federal and state filing requirements. That person should have to report at the next Board meeting, as will the recruiters. As soon as you’re having Board meetings where Board members talk to each other (instead of sulking, or reporting to the Executive Director or to you as though you were the only responsible parties in the room), you’ve got this presidency stuff down pat.
For more detailed guidance, the Nonprofiteer strongly suggests checking out any of the sites on the blogroll (in the right margin), as well as going to boardsource.org, which as its name suggests specializes in making Board service as straightforward and resource-rich as possible. The Boardsource “Knowledge Center” is chock-a-block with guidelines, forms and checklists to help you make sure the essential bases are being covered—even in the center fielder’s absence.
And as further questions arise, please feel free to write again!
Tags:501c3, Board of Directors, Executive Director, governance, human resources, nonprofit, nonprofits, not for profit, personnel, strategic planning, volunteer, volunteering, volunteers
Posted in Boards of Directors, Executive Directors, Management Advice Day tip, Nonprofit management, Nonprofits--General, Personnel Issues, Social Service Agencies, Strategic Planning (and the tactical kind, too), Volunteers/Volunteerism | 2 Comments »
