As all budding journalists know, every story can be told through judicious use of the 5 Ws: Who? What? When? Where? Why? Here the Nonprofiteer employs this efficient system to tell the story of how reluctant volunteers can become enthusiastic and successful individual-gifts fundraisers.
For most small- and medium-sized organizations, everything about this story is a blank. So here’s a primer on how to fill in that blank.
WHO to ask?: Only two types of people should be asked individually for gifts: people who’ve given to your group before, and friends of your Board members. With anyone else, it’s sheer impertinence: “Hi, nice to meet you, open your wallet.” Ask friends (of the agency and the Board), and ye shall receive.
What to do when your Board members say, “I don’t want to ask my friends for money”? Reply: “You don’t have to ask your friends. Just ask each other’s friends!” So Angela asks John’s friend, and John asks Angela’s. All they ask of their own friends is to come to a meeting, and all they have to do at that meeting is wax enthusiastic about the group and listen while the other one solicits the gift.
WHAT to ask for?: If they’ve given to the agency before, you’re asking for more. You have to make the leap of imagination (from $250 last year to $1000 this year) before the prospective donor can think about making it.
Don’t worry about being too ambitious in your monetary goal. Very few prospective donors are offended by being mistaken for rich people. (Women, though, are more likely to be taken aback than men, so ask for slightly less from women. They’re more likely to say ‘yes,’ so it all evens out.)
If you’re asking a Board member’s friend, ask for slightly less than the Board member gives him/herself, because the first thing the prospect will do is turn to his Board friend and say, “What do you give?” If the Board member doesn’t think the agency’s worth $500, the friend is unlikely to think it’s worth anything.
What if your Board member’s friend is a gazillionaire? (We should all have this problem.) Then prime the Board member to say, “I give $200, because that’s what I can afford. We’re hoping you’ll likewise consider a gift based on your capacity.” Again, few people mind being suspected of success, so if your Board member is prepared to say, “Listen, I know you made a killing last year when you sold your Google stock . . .” his friend is unlikely to want to correct him!
WHEN to ask: The Nonprofiteer is a prompt—some might say premature—fundraiser. As a cautionary tale, she offers the story of how her alma mater took her out for coffee repeatedly to soften her up for an ask, despite her saying, “Guys, I’m a fundraiser. I know what we’re doing here. Just ask me for the money!” By the time they were ready to ask her, she’d been reminded that the school’s investment philosophy would have permitted owning shares in slave-ships, and did permit investing in companies propping up genocidal regimes; and therefore she declined to give, though she wouldn’t have reneged on a preexisting pledge. So don’t delay; get the yes!
“What about cultivation?” you ask. The Nonprofiteer believes that lots of what passes for “cultivation” in individual-gifts fundraising is nothing more than stalling. Don’t hold “cultivation” events and plan to ask for money later; if you hold an event, either get contributions through the ticket price or ask forcefully that night.
All you need to do to “cultivate” people is to demonstrate that you’re thinking about them on a regular basis, and you can do that by forwarding something you think they’d like to read. Better yet, send them invitations to your activities, whether performances or client graduations or river cleanups. People give where they feel they belong, so be on the lookout for “belonging” opportunities. For this purpose, the less special the event, the better. If you do something special for a donor, make it an ask.
One word of caution about WHEN: don’t ask too soon after the last gift. May and June may be two separate fiscal years to you, but your donors probably think (and give) on a calendar-year basis. So they’ll think you bizarre and ungrateful if you respond to their May gift with a June ask.
WHERE?: Over breakfast, lunch or dinner (or possibly bedtime snack). The Nonprofiteer is a firm believer in the power of food to facilitate fundraising. In any case, the advantage of a meal is that it requires the prospective donor to sit still for about an hour, during which time you can a) learn about her; b) educate her; and c) ask her.
WHY?: Why bother with individual gifts? Why not just write some more grants? (asks your Board.) Three reasons:
By contrast, most individuals give because they’re asked, and what they’re asked for is support for a cause or an agency (not a single program), and once they’ve agreed they keep giving out of habit. So you have to actively offend them before they stop.
So that’s the story of successful individual giving. And if who-what-when-where-why merely piques your interest, you can learn how right here.
Dear Nonprofiteer,
Several friends and I have started a new musical arts ensemble and are seeking to incorporate as a non-profit. There are 8 artists in the ensemble, so we are a very small organization. Since starting the ensemble was my idea, I have been serving as “Artistic Director,” choosing music, organizing rehearsals and performances, etc., as well as being an Artist in the ensemble.
We are currently working on our Bylaws and so have been thinking about how to structure our Board. We have decided to have all the usual positions (President, VP, Secy, Treas) plus an Artist Representative, and a variable number of at-large Board members (no more than 5). We have a provision in our (in-process-of-being-written) Bylaws where the Board can only select or remove the Artistic Director with a 2/3 consensus of the Artists.
At this point, all of our Artists will serve on the Board in some capacity (either as Officers or as at-large members), though we want to allow for a future time when the Artists get to be just Artists and let other people run the business side of things. The other Artists want me to have a say-so in the running of the organization since the group was formed by my “vision”.
So my question is this: Is it legal, ethical, practical, etc., for me to serve as both President AND Artistic Director (and an Artist in the ensemble)? Or should one of the other Artists serve as President and I (as Art Dir) be only ex-officio with no vote?
I should also mention that my husband is also an Artist in the Ensemble, and so would also sit on the Board (for now).
Thank you very much for any advice you can give. Signed,
Wearing Many Hats
Dear Hats:
Last issue first: it is never a good idea to have a married couple on the Board of a nonprofit, nor is it a good idea for one-half of the couple to serve on the Board while the other is employed by the agency. (I gather you’re not getting paid as Artistic Director, but if you can be selected or fired by the Board, you’re an employee.) A husband and wife on the Board stacks the voting since more often than not they will vote together, and the more important the issue the more likely they will march in lockstep. Majority or not, they constitute a bloc, and blocs or factions create trouble on any Board.
And if your husband’s on the Board and you’re the Artistic Director, you’ve stacked the deck in your own favor on every issue while at the same time guaranteeing the maximum damage to the Board (your husband’s resignation) in case of any disagreement. Don’t start out your nonprofit life with a built-in conflict of interest.
Further, as you seem to realize, no staff member (including the Artistic Director) should serve on the Board at all (whether President or not) except in an ex officio, non-voting capacity.
But let me suggest that you pause here to consider why you want to create a nonprofit structure at all. Don’t become a nonprofit because “all arts groups are nonprofit;” the Nonprofiteer did that for a client once and it was a disaster. As soon as there’s any money involved, you’ll find yourself fighting with the Board over whether those dollars should go directly to you, as Artistic Director; to the artists, in some proportionate way; or back into the institution. So imagine yourself confronting that question now, and build the structure that will get you the answer that you want.
It’s fine to fill your Board with ensemble members and thus guarantee complete artistic and financial control of the agency by its artists. But if you do, an “ensemble representative” would be redundant and should be omitted from your bylaws.
You might further consider that if you’re entirely ensemble-governed, you’re missing the opportunity to use the Board for its central purpose, which is to connect the group to the wider community (and, yes, raise money from that wider community to support the work you do). You do your art for people; perhaps some of them should be represented on the Board—not just to do “the business stuff” but to help you maintain perspective about the relationship of your work to its audience.
In other words, as the Nonprofiteer has said in other contexts: nonprofit and 501c3 status are not mere legal trivialities to permit you to collect donations tax-free. They’re statements about the kind of organization you are, namely, one answerable to the community through its Board. You’re trading a certain amount of freedom for a certain amount of stability. If you’re not ready to do that, skip nonprofit status and live hand-to-mouth til you’re ready to be a full-blown community institution–or until you figure out how to support your art entirely at the box office.
Jane Mayer’s excellent piece in this past week’s New Yorker about the brothers Koch, oil billionaires who’ve donated hundreds of millions to nonprofits promoting right-wing causes, finally clarified for the Nonprofiteer her unease at Bill Gates’s campaign to persuade billionaires to donate half their estates to charity. It’s not a question of who has or hasn’t taken the pledge, though that’s an entertaining parlor game. Nor is it the fact that the generosity of extremely wealthy people may not be what the rest of us have in mind when we hear the word “charity.” (The Kochs’ “charity,” for instance, is a term of art encompassing donations to all kinds of institutions, predominantly think-tanks churning out rationales for the economic interests of wealthy people and front groups to make it appear that defending those economic interests is the political will of the non-wealthy majority.)
What’s troubling about the billionaires’ pledge remains so even when the receiving causes are unexceptionable. Gates, for instance, has very generously underwritten substantial efforts by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Good for him, and for the world.
But.
Even the best-intentioned best-directed private donations are a way for moneyed people to work their will on the public, while the rest of us have nothing but the vote. And when the level of contributions is discussed in fractions of $1B, it’s no longer charity within a democracy: it’s benevolent dictatorship.
Maybe our country should be giving less to treat AIDS et al and more to eradicate infant and maternal mortality through the UN Population Fund; maybe not. That’s a decision to be made by the people of the United States, through our government. It’s really not a decision for a single person.
Why not? Well, for starters, the “single person” in question is a billionaire, and thus always a man. That means almost by definition that the highest levels of charitable giving will overlook women, though we constitute more than a majority of the population. And if that’s the case—if society’s needs are met by individual whim instead of collective decisions about the greatest good for the greatest number—then what, actually, is left of self-government?
Of course, billionaires have plenty of assistance in the task of allowing economic power to trump political will. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, holding that corporations are “persons” with First Amendment rights violated by limits on their campaign spending, already put the nation quite a way down that road. But somehow it’s worse when something that sounds so benign—”half my estate to charity, because I’ve been so fortunate”—actually translates as “I set the agenda for the future of this country, because I’ve been so fortunate.”
What we really want from billionaires is for them to pay a lot more in income taxes: say, the 87% of taxable income paid in 1954, or even the 70% paid at the start of the 1980s. And then we as a group can decide where our group’s money goes. All contribute, all decide.
And what we really want from billionaires’ heirs is for them to pay the 77% estate tax rate in effect in 1941, or even the 70% estate tax rate in effect in 1976. (And let’s not hear any nonsense about “death taxes.” The dead aren’t the ones paying.) Why shouldn’t people who get money by inheritance have to pay taxes on it, just like people who get it by working?
Merely to ask that question is to answer it: no democratic society decides that people who don’t work should be privileged over those who do. Societies like that are called “aristocracies,” and all those so-called Constitutional Originalists running around hijacking elections by screaming about excessive taxation should take a moment to remember that our Constitution was designed precisely to interfere with the establishment of a government by inheritance.
The Constitution prohibits not once but twice the granting of any title of nobility; but the Framers didn’t rest there. They fought to cripple and ultimately abolish entail and primogeniture, the primary devices by which English law kept family fortunes together. Why? Because they realized that, if you’re founding a republic, it’s really not a good idea to let money keep piling up generation after generation in the same few pairs of hands.
Self-governing societies can’t operate on noblesse oblige, and societies that do aren’t truly self-governing. As Dr. Franklin said, “A republic—if you can keep it.”
Editor (and fellow nonprofit consultant) Nancy Worssam and I will be reading from our essay anthology In Our Prime, by and about women 50 and over, next Thursday evening, July 29, at 7:30 p.m. at Women and Children First bookstore, 5233 N. Clark Street in Chicago. I hope some of you can join us that evening.
And please listen that morning—it’s only a week from today!—to Chicago Public Radio, 91.5 FM, when 848 host Alison Cuddy interviews Nancy and me about the inspirations for and origins of the book.
In 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.
to report that she’s just been published for the first time on Huffington Post, with a piece called “Full-Body Scans Are a Feminist Issue.” Over the years, some of you have mentioned that you wouldn’t mind hearing her opinions about things other than nonprofit management; be careful what you wish for!
She’s also excited to mention that she’s ramping up her consulting practice again, with a slightly altered focus: in addition to strategic planning and individual-gifts fundraising, she’s concentrating on helping nonprofits use the flood of high-skill volunteers now available in virtually every location and occupation. Her work will include Board recruitment and training, but won’t be confined to it–there must be 50 ways to take advantage of people’s passion, skills and abilities even if they’re not Board material. And the Nonprofiteer is determined to discover each and every one of those ways!
If you’re in Chicago (or have a travel budget) and want to meet with the Nonprofiteer in her guise as NFP Consulting, please just drop her an e-mail.
And meanwhile, let her know what you think of the HuffPo piece. Thanks!
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