So a couple of weeks ago the Nonprofiteer received a press release announcing “Redefining [of] the Nonprofit Model.” Doubtless you’re all familiar with the genre: a group of business people get together and decide that the nonprofit sector hasn’t cured cancer or ended poverty because people in the nonprofit sector are stupid and lazy, and that an infusion of good old hard-headed American for-profit business practices will compensate for that. Voila: instant Great Society!
One hundred advisors, including many of Silicon Valley’s elite, are coming together to disrupt the nonprofit space. . . . [They] have committed to one full year of serving on the board of a nonprofit. . . . [and] attending monthly salons where they will discuss the specific pain points of their assigned nonprofits and attempt to find solutions as a team. . . . [This] is part of a larger movement . . . to make the non-profit world more efficient. . . . “This is just the start of how [we] will disrupt the nonprofit sector and create new, innovative ways for business leaders to contribute . . . . Before [this], there was no easy path for nonprofits to find experienced leaders to help them at a board management level. A board role is not just about fundraising, but includes developing growth plans, operational efficiency, cause marketing, customer relationship management, event planning, and much more.”. . . . In order to maximize results, [the group] carefully matches advisors to nonprofits based on their skills, interests and a nonprofit’s needs.
Chase: What matters?
July 23, 2010[An excerpt of this posting appears on the Huffington Post, in the Impact section.]
The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Jones notwithstanding, the problem with the Chase Community Giving program isn’t that it lets “civilians”–non-expert non-critics–decide which theater companies deserve a $20,000 one-time no-strings grant. The problem is that it pretends to do that–Let the People Decide!–while actually turning theater companies into marketing satellites of Chase Bank. Institutions poor and weak enough to be moved by a $20,000 carrot–to which the competition was explicitly restricted–recite the bank’s name relentlessly to their audiences. That’s a lot of advertising for very little money. Of course, all corporate giving is advertising–but this is of a special, insidious kind.
The Nonprofiteer doesn’t believe in “crowd-source philanthropy,” because it’s not philanthropy at all: it’s “crowd-manipulation marketing.” Chase has gotten hundreds if not thousands of little charities to demand that their audiences provide contact information to the bank and subject themselves to commercial targeting for the good of the cause.
These crowd-manipulation marketing programs (pioneered by Pepsi and American Express, doubtless with many more corporate behemoths yet to come) also set up a system which rewards the nonprofits with the greatest Internet presence or savvy, which is not the same as giving the money to the neediest, or best, or most diverse, group of people doing important work in society. Again, the issue isn’t who gets to define “best;” it’s whether the agencies competing for that designation have a fair and equal opportunity to receive it. Upper-middle-class people may imagine that “everyone” has access to the Internet, but in fact if you reward clicks and responses to e-mail and Facebook postings, you reward organizations with wealthy white audiences and disadvantage those whose audiences are nonwhite and/or poor. Way to magnify the digital divide. Way to make sure that the rich get richer and the poor have babies.
This lazy and manipulative approach to corporate giving diverts nonprofit attention from real fundraising–which involves relationships over the long term–to point-and-click fundraising, which costs “donors” nothing and therefore gives them no stake in the institution.
The argument about who’s entitled to judge art is a side-show, doubtless one Chase would be happy to have theaters and critics debating from here to eternity. Meanwhile, the bank laughs all the way to–the bank.
[Unable to resist, the Nonprofiteer dons her critic's hat and argues that, though she believes her opinions about theater are better-informed and therefore more useful than those of the guy standing next to you on the train, she's also open to the possibility that her prejudices and blind spots make this false in a significant number of cases. In any case, if she didn't believe theater was the essential human art form--because it involves words, the very thing that separates us from all other species--and therefore belonged to everyone human, she wouldn't spend so much of her life seeing and reviewing plays. So she refuses to concede that others' engagement with theater--in whatever form, and without any credentials whatsoever--is unwelcome or inappropriate.]
“Crowd-source philanthropy” doesn’t mean the people get to decide; it means they get the illusion of deciding while actually being used to serve someone else’s commercial purposes. We know that’s a bad thing when the issue is what corporations give to, and get from, politicians. Let’s not fail to notice when the issue is what they give to, and exact from, us.
See also Barbara Talisman’s posting on the subject, which links to an entire discussion of the pros and cons.
Dear Nonprofiteer, How can I pick the audience’s pockets while pretending to be indifferent to money?
June 14, 2010Dear Nonprofiteer,
I work for a storefront theater company (though this could apply to any arts organization), and we want to encourage people to donate while they are waiting for the show to start, or as they are walking out of the theater. However, we do not want to “ruin” the art by including a verbal appeal in the pre- or post-show announcements; though we have information on how to donate in our program and on our website, we feel that we can raise some income from our immediate audience after every show. I’m sure this goes for museums, galleries, and dance companies as well—how can we influence our audience to donate at the door without being too pushy or discounting the art?
Signed,
The Tactful Fundraiser
Dear Tactful,
The Nonprofiteer had a law professor whose motto was, “Passive lawyers don’t eat!” Well, the Nonprofiteer’s motto is, “Tactful fundraisers don’t eat!” It’s true that most people would rather talk about their sex lives than talk about money, but the only way to raise it is to make clear that you not only deserve it, but need it.
So the Nonprofiteer disputes your entire premise that a request for funds can “ruin” an art form. Obviously you wouldn’t insert it in mid-play (though product placement in the movies and on tv makes that less obvious than it once was); but a pre- or post-show pitch is completely appropriate. People who want to ignore it will, but no one will be able to say that s/he didn’t know you needed money.
Now, how to actually get that money? There’s the Southwest Airlines approach: make the expected pitch in an unexpected manner, e.g. “Please take all your personal problems with you when you deplane.” There’s the National Lampoon guilt-trip approach: its cover showing a terrified canine at gunpoint with the caption “If you don’t buy this magazine we’ll shoot this dog” was at the very least unforgettable. A Chicago theater company does its own equivalent of this by announcing at curtain that the actors don’t get paid so unless you stuff money in the cashbox you’re just exploiting them by attending (not the precise words); it seems to work quite well.
In other words, there’s nothing dainty or secretive about a nonprofit arts organization’s need for money, so the more directly and entertainingly and memorably you state it, the better your chance of actually receiving the money.
Or you can ignore everything I’ve said, offer a door-prize of a bottle of wine to whoever wins your nightly raffle, and have people enter the raffle by dropping their business cards in a bowl. Then send follow-up appeals (by e-mail, as it’s cheapest) to everyone whose card you got, thanking them for attending and asking them to donate. This is good list-development strategy; whether it’s good money-development strategy remains to be seen. It’s far too easy to ignore an appeal once you’ve had the entertainment and have gone home.
Finally, you can try a bit of reverse psychology. Admit everyone for free and then ask them to pay what they think it was worth on the way out the door. (Post a “suggested donation,” of course.) You’ll get some free riders, but you’ll also get some people who are so impressed with what they’ve just seen that they give you something more than the suggested donation. Those are people you can expect to see again–whereupon you offer them a door-prize if they win the business-card raffle, and you have their names so you can dun them long into the future.
About nonprofits only insofar as they’re disproportionately run by women 50 and over
June 1, 2010In Our Prime, the essay anthology by and about women 50 and over to which the Nonprofiteer contributed, now has its own Website and therefore has achieved Internet validity. Copies of the book would have made a great gift for Mother’s Day but unfortunately the timing didn’t work out–so maybe you know a nice father who would want one?
The Nonprofiteer still has copies for sale, and the book is also available at Women & Children First bookstore in Chicago and on Amazon.
A retrospective on information technology from someone who should know
April 14, 2009How refreshing to hear an IT geek point out the importance of not getting carried away by the latest toy!
Where’s the beef?: Big projects swallow up all the money
April 6, 2009Hey, Nonprofiteer, here’s my beef:
I read (Crain’s Chicago Business, March 16, registration required) that the Chicago Olympics 2016 committee has a corporate sponsorship goal of $1.8 billion. Isn’t that going to cut into corporate responses to nonprofit funding requests? Is that going to make things worse for nonprofits than they already are? I remember hearing a nonprofit Executive Director grousing about how much money was diverted from regular charitable donations to go to [naming opportunities in the city's new downtown] Millennium Park, and the Tribune recently mentioned the same possibility in connection with the Olympics.
Should I worry about who will pay if the Olympics go over budget?
(This guy sounds a little worried:
http://behindthebid.blogspot.com/2007/03/crains-olympic-challenge.html)
Signed, Bean Counter
Hey, Bean–
You’re asking two separate questions. Second one first: you shouldn’t worry about who will pay for inevitable Olympic cost overruns, because it’s all settled: you’ll pay, if you’re a Chicago taxpayer.
I think the Olympics are a bad idea on about six different dimensions, but the first one you raise is discussed least often: the tendency of big projects like the Olympics (or, before it, Millennium Park) to sop up huge volumes of corporate and foundation funding, leaving less for ordinary operating nonprofits. But of course it’s impossible to determine what those funders would have spent on education or health care or social services had a sexier alternative not been available.
Fundraisers for high-profile projects always advance the argument that, as George W. Bush would have it, we “make the pie higher”–that donations to the Olympics constitute additional private money being put at the service of public purposes. The notion is that glamor projects magically produce the fresh generosity necessary to sustain them.
But if Great Depression II teaches us anything, it’s that private firms actually don’t have limitless sums of money, and that if they put it in one pot (say, credit-default swaps) it’s not available for inclusion in another (say, mortgages). By the same token, if they put the money into naming the Ronald McDonald Memorial Olympic Village it’s going to be mysteriously missing when the local food pantry comes to call. And it stands to reason that given the option corporations (and even foundations) will choose to invest in shiny things on which they can engrave their names.
At least in Chicago, the ordinary lack of transparency in philanthropies (“It’s our money; why should we tell you what we’re doing with it?”) is complemented by an equal lack of transparency in government (“It’s your money; why should we tell you what we’re doing with it?”). So we can only speculate that money spent on circuses will not then be forthcoming for bread.
*******************
Readers: What’s your beef? What drives you craziest about trying to manage your agency or serve on its Board? Is it the bully who won’t let anyone else speak? The budgeting that features revenue everyone knows you won’t get? E-mail your problems to the Nonprofiteer, subject line “Where’s the beef?” and she’ll solve them for all the world to see.
Dear Nonprofiteer, Study this!
April 2, 2009Dear Nonprofiteer:
On the Board of my nonprofit (“Kumbaya”), I am the only member who works as a teacher. I’m not sure whether my occupation had anything to do with the following e-mailed offer from the chair:
“Hi Schoolmarm!
I have an idea and wondered what you think. It would be great if we could widen awareness of Kumbaya’s work. I wonder whether you’d like to chair our new Study Group, in formation. It would meet to discuss Kumbaya’s latest achievements and challenges in a warm, conversational, circle-of-friends setting. You would recruit Study Group members [from outside the Board] and be its leader. There would be a suggested donation, which you could set. [The executive director] would attend some of the meetings to speak about our latest doings, and you could bring in outside speakers whose work relates to that of Kumbaya, at your discretion.Let me know your thoughts–especially if you have suggestions of how to make the Study Group better. Warm regards, Chairlady”
What the heck is a study group? Am I being shoved into an irrelevant wing of Kumbaya? Why didn’t Chairlady raise this idea at a Board meeting–is it somehow personal to me? Calling it “our” makes it sound underway: shouldn’t I have heard more about it? But then again, maybe I should chill and consider the idea rationally.
Signed, Schoolmarm
Dear Schoolmarm,
I don’t think there’s an issue of your being “shoved into an irrelevant wing of Kumbaya,” especially as Chairlady’s letter suggests that she has the irrelevancy market cornered. The “Study Group” construct is new to me, but it sounds as though Chairlady has one of two things in mind:
- a desire to create an auxiliary board of some kind which, as she fondly imagines, will consist of people willing to make significant contributions to Kumbaya without being permitted to share in its governance, OR
- a desire to expand the governing board without any notion of how to go about identifying and recruiting possible members.
In either case, she’s identified you as someone who gets things done, and simply dumped the project into your lap: “This is a good idea; why don’t you do it?”
She might indeed think that your background as a teacher will enable you to invent programming which will engage and educate an audience. But as the programming is obviously merely a means to another end–fundraising or Board recruitment, as the case may be–your skills in that area aren’t reason enough for you to take on a task that the Board hasn’t discussed and approved.
Reply to Chairlady thusly:
“Thanks for thinking of me in connection with this project. As a teacher, though, I know that people attend educational programs when they think they’re going to get something out of them. I can’t imagine who might be motivated to attend (and pay for) what sounds like a regularly-scheduled commercial for the work of Kumbaya, unless they’re already interested in the agency and wish to consider becoming further involved. So what kind of involvement, exactly, are we prepared to offer Study Group members? Are we creating a fundraising auxiliary, or a bullpen from which to bring on additional Board members?
Let’s discuss this at the next Board meeting. Once we’ve clarified a Study Group member’s role and responsibilities, you and I can talk again about whether my programming and presentation skills are the ones most useful to lead such a group, or whether in fact you need someone who’s a terrific recruiter or a gung-ho organizer of fundraising events. I look forward to discussing this with you and the rest of the Board.”
Yes, yes, it may be heavy-handed to mention Board discussion of the issue TWICE in a s ingle paragraph, but your point (“Shouldn’t I have heard about this?”) is well taken: only the full Board, and not the Chair in her discretion, should create outreach systems for Kumbaya. Asking you to implement her most recent brainstorm NOT EQUALS consulting with you as a Board member about whether it’s an appropriate initiative for the agency.
I suspect the idea is a cockroach: once it’s exposed to the light of Board consideration, it will scuttle away and be heard from no more.
Gentle readers: Of course, your nonprofit is impeccably managed; but what about those incompetents down the street? Write to the Nonprofiteer about all the mal- and nonfeasance with which you’re surrounded, and she’ll chastise the guilty and praise the virtuous and wise (that would be you). Please e-mail (subject line: Dear Nonprofiteer . . .) early and often.
Membership trends: A word to the wise art museum
March 31, 2009A fascinating report charting current trends in membership includes a rude wake-up call for art museums, where membership is declining–in marked contrast to other member-based agencies (including associations, conservation groups, aquaria and zoos).
Maybe it turns out that increasing your door price 50% (a la the Art Institute of Chicago) isn’t, after all, a way to get people to say, “Might as well get a membership,” but instead a way to get people to say, “Those bleepers! Bleep them–let’s go to the zoo.”
[Clip]
Membership Totals
When comparing 2008 to 2007, the largest percentage of responders, 48.7%, stated that they ended the year with more members than the previous year, and 10.5% stated that membership totals “stayed the same.” Less than half (42.1%) stated that membership totals had decreased.
Membership Revenues
From the revenue perspective, membership departments fared even better: 59.2% stated that membership revenues were up in 2008 over 2007 while 14.5% stated that membership revenues “stayed the same.” The percentage that reported revenues decreasing from year to year was 37.5%.
[Clip]
Pulse of Membership by Sector
The most interesting results emerged from comparing sectors of the membership world. The categories of respondents included Museums, Conservation/Nature-related organizations, Associations and Zoos and Aquariums. The difference in responses by sectors was significant and very telling. In general, Associations, Zoos and Aquariums, Science Museums, Conservation/Nature organizations, and “Other” types of membership organizations reported much more positive membership results compared to Art and History Museums. Respondents totaling 80% of Associations and Conservation/Nature organizations reported greater membership totals in 2008, as did 61.5% of Botanical Gardens, 58.3% of Zoos and Aquariums, and 53.8% of Science Museums and “Other” membership organizations. Only 33.9% of Art Museums and 44.4% of History Museums reported greater membership totals in 2008. Art Museums reported fewer members at a rate of 51.8%, and 61.1% of History Museums reported fewer members in 2008 as well.
On the revenue side, all types of membership organizations, except Art Museums, reported greater membership revenues in 2008 than in 2007. While all other membership organizations reported greater revenues (76.9% of Botanical Gardens and Science Museums, and 72.2% of Zoos and Botanical Gardens), only 41.1% of Art Museums reported higher revenues.
[Clip]
Over half of Botanical Gardens, Science Museums, Zoo and Aquariums, Associations and Conservation/Nature organizations reported attracting more members in 2008 than in 2007. Art Museums (40%) and History Museums (50%) attracted fewer members in 2008 than in 2007.
If you would like to receive the full tabulation of survey responses, email your request to info@membership-consultants.com.
Dear Nonprofiteer, Isn’t Oprah omnipotent?
March 13, 2009Dear Nonprofiteer,
I’m wondering if you saw the Chicago Tribune story last week about the billboards erected by the organization SmileTrain to “solicit” Oprah Winfrey and what your reaction is. Since I am writing, it’s clear that I think there is a problem here. It’s clearly a clever campaign in that, although it failed to win a donation from Oprah, it has attracted the attention of passers-by and of the media. But at the same time, isn’t it bad fundraising practice and bordering on unethical?
Signed, Taken Aback
Dear Taken,
I’m not sure I see an ethical problem, exactly: if a billboard were addressed to a regular person (“Hey, Kelly Kleiman you stingy bitch, why don’t you give more money to SmileTrain?”), that might be an invasion of privacy; but Oprah is pretty much a public figure, and there’s no particular reason she shouldn’t be importuned by billboards as well as discussed in the tabloids.
What’s wrong with the approach is that it suggests a single wealthy individual is responsible for satisfying the fundraising needs of this agency. If fundraising consultants in Chicago had a nickel for every time a client said, “Why don’t we ask Oprah?” they’d be able to support all their favorite charities forever. But of course Oprah–and Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, and Michael Jordan, and Robert Redford, and every other celebrity–has charitable priorities of her own, and any agency that doesn’t happen to fit into them is not going to attract the celebrity’s support simply by virtue of waving a big flag.
Fundraising takes place in concentric circles: your biggest supporters are the people who are closest to you, your Board of Directors and others directly touched by the services you provide. If someone on the SmileTrain Board of Directors knew Oprah personally and could ask for her support, that’s different; but to pick her name out of the newspaper, just because it’s in the newspaper, as someone who should support the group is just pure laziness masquerading as fundraising planning.
And yes, there may be an argument to be made that laziness in fundraising planning is tantamount to an ethical violation; but do we really need to go there? The point is: SmileTrain should solicit support based on its mission from people with whom it has or can create some connection. Buying a billboard to announce that it has no connection with a celebrity, but still feels entitled to her assistance, just makes the agency look desperate.
I’d be interested in hearing you articulate the ethical concerns to which you refer, and in hearing SmileTrain articulate its rationale for the billboard. Of course, if the first rule of public relations is, “Say what you like about me as long as you spell my name right,” then the agency has already accomplished its purpose, and its rationale–to get its name mentioned–is clear.
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