Fundraising

Happy Ninth Birthday Event 360!

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A quick post to share that today is an important day in our E360 family. Yesterday was Event 360’s ninth birthday, meaning that today is the first day of our tenth year. 

If you put your future on the flip of a coin you’d still get much better odds than if you banked on your company surviving into its tenth year. Fewer than one-third make it that far.

The fact that we’ve turned nine and are ending one of our busiest, most exciting, and most successful years – with a growing number of exciting projects, in the most difficult economy of the last three generations – says volumes about the vision, values, and commitment of our team. I’m continually amazed at what a great group of people we have here.  

Together with our clients and partners, we’re building an exciting future. Our mission continues to be simple: We help nonprofits use experiences to create a better world. There’s a lot of need out there, but we’re helping to make a difference.

And the best is yet to come. Onwards and upwards!

A problem of the heart

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Allison Fine, one of a dozen or so excellent nonprofit experts I follow regularly, posted an article yesterday asking why it is that giving has been essentially flat for 40 years at 2% of GDP. The occasion of her post was the publication by Blackbaud of a whitepaper entitled Growing Philanthropy. It is a meaty report, with 32 recommendations for nonprofits about how to increase overall giving. There is a lot of substance there, and yet I fear its size will inspire more people put it on their “I should read this” pile than actually read it.

It is also rather academic, and as such while I think it adds to the dialogue I’m not sure it describes the whole solution, or even identifies the entire problem. The problem cannot just be solved with best practices and organizational efficiency. We need passionate calls to action to the many who are not yet involved, and passionate encouragement for further engagement to those that already are.

Taking a step back for a moment, the concept that giving is consistent as a percentage of GDP is a Big Idea in capital letters. Once you get your head around it, you realize you have found one of the core dynamics shaping the entire nonprofit system. It is surprising not only for its 40-year consistency, but more notably for the fact that most nonprofit leaders seem to be completely unaware of it. I am constantly struck but how few nonprofit executives, development professionals, and marketers will acknowledge that giving is pegged to GDP. The few who do know seem to think (or hope) that their own organizations exist outside of this reality. 

Giving USA has been tracking this for years and years. About five years ago – prior to banking explosions but well into early signs of recession – I wrote several position papers on this topic for our clients at Event 360. If giving is constant as a percentage of GDP, it stands to reason that dollar giving will go up in times of growth – and unfortunately, will decline in times of recession. That is exactly what happened, of course; but even organizations which saw the recession coming were unprepared for the drop in giving. 

The more pressing question, as Allison points out, is not “does the dynamic exist” but “why does it exist, and how can we change it?” My own experience with very large peer-to-peer programs has probably colored my view – but I will say that we consistently find it is easier to get people who are already giving to give more than it is to get people who haven’t done anything to make the first gift. My sense is that this same truism operates at a system-wide level in the whole nonprofit space. 

More to the point, after twenty years in the space I’m not sure that we’ve gotten any better at getting the large numbers of people who do not donate a thing to get involved. And before I go further: My last sentence references another Big Idea that those of us who live and breathe charity tend to forget. We are surrounded by giving and so we forget that large numbers of people do not give at all. A Harris Interactive poll conducted late last year found that only 12% of people admit to not giving at all. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad! But ominously, the same poll found that only about a quarter of people felt “some responsibility to improve the world they live in.” Wow. (Further, we tend to forget that of individuals who do give, over a third of that giving come from and goes to religious organizations – the only organizations I’ve run across which have integrated a recurring, weekly, in-person, experiential ask into their mission. They ask in the pews, every Sunday.)

In any case, my point is that I think we’ve gotten a lot better at activating those who are charitable, but not any better at inspiring new charitableness. When one-quarter is literally carrying the weight of the world, we’ve got a big challenge on our hands. Improving effectiveness with social media, making better investment decisions, providing better training, and sharing workable solutions are all important. But this is a problem of the heart as much as the head. We need to make giving more accessible and less tedious, and as amazing as it may sound, we need to do more to not only emphasize this cause or that but to convey the obligation, transcendence, and joy of giving itself.

How To Choose An Event Fundraising Consultant

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Over my career, I’ve often been asked by potential clients for advice on how to pick the best event fundraising consultant. Initially, the question left me a bit bemused – after all, as the President and CEO of an event fundraising company myself, I could hardly be called an impartial observer! Well, let’s see… um, pick me!

But I have grown to understand the question. As event fundraising programs have become more successful, they have become a more important part of a nonprofit’s fundraising portfolio. This importance means many groups are looking for clearer guideposts. And, with increasing success comes increasing competition – more and more groups are entering the space, and there’s a need for a better roadmap. 

Here are a few suggestions. 

  • Area of Focus. Does the firm focus specifically on event fundraising in the nonprofit space? Many marketing and event production firms occasionally dip their toe into event fundraising. These forays seldom work. Producing concerts, competitive races, or product launches is often impressive and complicated work – but it isn’t event fundraising. Event fundraising is a specific discipline that involves creating an impactful experience to reflect an organization’s mission and coupling it with an effective, directed ask for support. It is one thing to create a fun event to sell a new product that someone may want or need; it is something altogether different to create a moving experience that convinces someone to contribute money out of generosity and empathy. Look for a firm with specific competency and experience in coupling event production with fundraising; this means experience not only in traditional marketing, but also in traditional fundraising practices as well. A good event fundraising firm understands the development pyramid and can speak to issues like donor retention and donor migration.
  • Professional Affiliations and Certifications. Following from the above, a legitimate event fundraising firm will have affiliations to prove it. Is the firm (and its principals) a member of AFP? APRA? The Giving Institute? And, has the staff spent time studying the discipline? Many of our consultants have or are pursuing certifications from the Fundraising School at the Center of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Similarly, we ask our project managers to pursue PMP certifications. 
  • Industry Familiarity. Here’s a quick litmus test: What magazines are sitting on the waiting room coffee table? Do you see the latest issues of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and the Journal of the Nonprofit DMA Foundation? Or do you see AdWeek and Fast Company? There’s nothing wrong with the latter two publications – I read both of them, plus Fortune, the Harvard Business Review, and many others. But I spend a lot of time learning about the nonprofit space.
  • Methodology. Can the consultant tell you how they will approach their work? What is their process, and how is it monitored? What tools and frameworks do they use, and have those been reviewed by peers in a public setting, or are they proprietary? My experience is that there is little in the space that is actually proprietary; almost everything is derivative. I mean that in a good way. The most effective tools, methods, and approaches are adapted and improved from earlier, tested work. Event fundraising, at its core, is fundraising, and there are many proven tools and approaches that have been tested, published, and refined.
  • Fees. As you begin to talk with a firm, do not hesitate to discuss fee structure right up front. In fact, doing so can save you much consternation later. 
    • How much? A good event fundraising firm will be able to tell you a range for their fees, and be willing to refer you to another group if your needs do not match their usual profile (more on that below). 
    • Flat or proportionate? It is against the AFP Code of Ethics, as well as any sense of professional integrity as a fundraiser, to base compensation on a percentage of the amount of money raised. As more firms enter into event fundraising, I’ve noticed that this line is getting blurred. Per capita structures that are based on the number of participants who attend or the number of web hits received are just cloaked percentage structures. It is tempting to believe that such structures “align incentives”; what they really do is give a firm a reason to overcharge you if they simply do their job, and a reason to ignore you if a program doesn’t take off. A real event fundraising firm is going to say, “This is our fee.” It should be a number, period. If you have to break out a calculator to understand the fee, it might be time to end the meeting. 
    • How are participant registration fees treated? Do you get them? Some events, particularly athletic events, charge participants a registration fee in addition to required fundraising. These registration fees are your money, not the consultant’s. Sadly, with the rise of pseudo-charitable events that give a “portion” of their income to charity, this wall is eroding. An event in which you receive a portion of the net and none of the registration income is a cause-marketing relationship, not a fundraising effort. On that note: Accountants differ in what they will allow regarding treatment of these fees. I have seen some count them as donation income, and others that are violently opposed to that accounting treatment and instead treat participant registration fees as an offset to expenses. In either case, registration fees from participants should be part of the nonprofit’s income, not the income of the event fundraising firm. And if you are actually paying for the registration fees yourself… take a closer look. 
    • Are there performance bonuses involved? In some cases, firms will ask for a performance bonus upon attaining some level of achievement. We don’t usually structure our engagements in this way, but it is somewhat common. Such bonuses are not unethical (as long as they aren’t based on percentages), but can be abused. Make sure the performance in question is actually the performance you want to reward.
  • Projections. Once you get further down the road and begin talking about specifics of an event, you may see some registration and income projections. Here are a few things to watch for.
    • Did you pay for the income projections? A good event fundraising firm, like any good fundraising firm, will be very wary of giving you income projections without first being engaged (that is, hired) as part of a defined, focused feasibility effort. Yes, that means a commitment on your part – but it ensures you substantiated, researched work. Be wary of income projections that float into your office free of charge. 
    • Are they intuitively realistic? I’ve seen concept projections that show first-year events generating thousands and thousands of participants. Does that seem right to you? Would you believe it if a major giving firm told you that you could generate thousands of major donors in one year starting from a full stop? A good firm will show a growth rate, and more sophisticated firms like Event 360 will show you sensitivity analysis with a range of outcomes and risks attached to them. Just like direct mail efforts, some programs might take several years to generate net income. If you see big numbers promised and an equally big page of disclaimers in small print, it is time to ask a few more questions. 
    • Does it promise money from nothing? No effort works without capital. While most event fundraising programs become self-funding, they never start that way. How much up-front funding is required? 
  • Intellectual Property. How will intellectual property be treated? A reputable event fundraising firm will likely retain rights to specific models and intellectual frameworks, but will happily tell you, at the outset, that the rest of their work is work for hire and that you will own the event marks, iconography, collateral, and tools. 
  • Expenses. How will expenses be treated? When you get into budget specifics, make sure you bring your finance team into the room. Again, some of these questions are worth asking right at the outset. 
    • Who pays the vendors? There are two models we use in our projects, and the model we use depends entirely on the wishes of each particular client. In one model, we pay vendors directly and submit full documentation for reimbursement; in the second, we manage the relationships but the client’s own accounting group pays vendors directly. Either works, and a good event fundraising firm won’t have any skin in that game. The documentation you receive should be very thorough either way. 
    • What approvals do you have? Regardless of whose logo is on the checks, the nonprofit should have full rights to approve all expenses (above petty cash amounts) before they are incurred. Is the firm willing to grant you contractual rights to this oversight?
    • Are you allowed to use your preferred vendors? There are times when my firm may have a special pricing relationship with a vendor, in which case we would strongly suggest that a client use one vendor over another. But those cases are few and far between. In all things, from catering to marketing services to software, you should have a large say in the decisions and, if you so desire, make sure your event fundraising firm is willing to issue competitive RFPs for the subcontractors it uses. 
  • References. I’ll end with one you probably already know, but is worth repeating – a good event fundraising firm will have many performance references.
    • Are they willing to furnish names of people you can actually speak with? When you do speak with the references, make sure to ask not only about performance but relationship. What was the firm like to work with?
    • Are the references recent? In fundraising, we’re only as good as our last initiative. It is great to get the story of what happened five or ten years ago, but what is the firm doing now?
    • Is the firm willing to tell you what didn’t work? Everyone has failures, and unfortunately in fundraising not all initiatives are successful. Be wary of firms that don’t have any mistakes they can tell you about. Can you speak with clients for whom the firm’s work didn’t pan out? Can the firm’s team tell you what they learned, and how their latest work is different?

I hope this list helps. I’ve been excited to see the growth in the event fundraising space over the last 20 years. There are more participants, donors, and nonprofits interested than ever before, and they are creating some great experiences with the help of event fundraising firms like mine. 

And perhaps that leads to my last piece of advice: There are a number of great event fundraising firms out there, and none of them do everything. I feel strongly that my team at Event 360 is the one of the brightest and most passionate you’ll ever meet. But I also know of – or actually personally know – most of  the other folks in the space, and like Event 360, each of them do some things really well. Jack Hudson at OP-3, Brian Pendleton at CauseForce, Steve Biondolillo of Biondolillo Associates, Billy Starr at Pan-Mass Challenge, Craig Miller at MZA, Dave McGillivray at DMSE Sports – all are great professionals who have made and continue to make a huge impact for nonprofits across the country. 

There is a lot of good advice out there. When you hear someone tell you they are the first, the best, and the only, it might be time to look for a second opinion.  

Incomparable

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Incomparable: It’s a big word. Yet I had two great experiences in Boston last week which both deserve it:

1. A tour through the new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care at Dana-Farber, which houses among other wonderful things an incredible (an incredibly moving) gene wall. It is basically an experiential rendering of their progress in gene therapy. Not-so-great picture to the left. What an incredible institution.

2. While in the city, I met the incomparable Aubrey Barr, who has been running the NYC Marathon as a fundraiser for Memorial Sloan-Kettering for over 20 years and has personally raised over $500,000. Aubrey and I were recently introduced and are doing a presentation together at the Nonprofit DMA Conference in August. It was inspiring to meet with her. 

It’s likely that many of the people I work with every day of my life would be considered “incomparable” to others. Boston was a reminder of that, and I’m grateful. 

Your Part Matters

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Hello friends, I hope this finds you well.

Will you make a donation to support me in the fight against cancer?

Wait! Before you leave the page, or put off a decision until later, allow me to take two minutes of your time to tell you what I’m doing, and why.

I’m walking this October in the San Francisco Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. It is a three day, sixty mile walk through the rather significant hills of the Bay Area. I’m doing it with thousands of others to help raise millions of dollars for the fight against cancer. I’ve started my training and I’m walking daily hoping that the dunes of Michiana are at least a decent representation of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

You probably know that the fight against cancer has been both a personal and professional passion of mine for years. In 1999, my mother died of cancer. It was a pivotal event in my life, there’s no doubt about it. Her death left my family with lots of questions and a drive to help find a cure. 

For over ten years I’ve dedicated my business and my life to achieving that goal. My company has helped produced dozens and dozens of events that have raised hundreds millions of dollars for the fight against cancer.

But this past fall, the fight became intimate for me again when my father was unexpectedly killed. His untimely death brought back all of the questions, the anger, and the uncertainty I felt over a decade ago. None of us think we need a reminder about the fragility of life. And yet, when I received such a reminder, I realized how naïve I had grown. 

We live in a world that increasingly feels to move without regard to our actions. We are told the economy is beyond us; that conflict will continue regardless of our motives; that in our future is an emptying world. It is easy to simply stay put, to let the world revolve and take us with it, to decide that our part doesn’t matter.

My father’s death was a reminder that our part DOES matter. Perhaps if enough of us just realized that our efforts make a difference, we’d see a difference being made. Perhaps if enough of us started moving the right way, we’d be able to take the world in the direction we want it to go.

My participation in the Komen 3-Day for the Cure is one way of getting myself moving. The event raises critical funds in the fight against breast cancer funds that are used not only for care of the sick, but for research that is absolutely needed to prevent more men and women from losing their lives to cancer. 

It is simply not acceptable to me that my children think of my mother as an abstract concept. They have no memories of hugs, or smells of oatmeal cookies, of the scent of her perfume. It is neither acceptable to me that my four-year-old daughter, nearly every night, says as I put her to sleep, “Wouldn’t it be great if there were no heaven, so no one would leave us?” These are not the thoughts my parents would have wanted for their grandchildren. 

My hope is that my participation in this event will also impact my children’s memories of their grandparents. My hope is that my children will someday say, “my grandparents inspired my dad to make a difference.”

I hope you will support me by clicking the link at the top left and donating an amount commensurate to the journey I’m making. I promise I’ll keep you updated on every mile, every dollar, and every blister that brings us closer to the world we all want to create.

In any case, thank you. I know it is not easy to read these fundraising letters. I know we all get too many of them and that makes them hard for me to write, too. 

But I’ve learned that it is easier to write a fundraising letter than it is to write a eulogy. 

Thank you. Your part matters.

Best wishes,

Jeff

Homer Simpson for Nonprofits

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I’m pleased to pass on that Event 360 has partnered with Network for Good and Sea Change Strategies to sponsor a new eBook, Homer Simpson for Nonprofits: The Truth about How People Really Think and What It Means for Promoting Your Cause.

This guide covers the basics of behavioral economics and how you can use these principles to craft more effective messages that will win the hearts and minds of your audience.

Some of the ideas:

  • Small, not big - The bigger the scale of what you’re communicating, the smaller the impact on your audience
  • Hopeful, not hopeless - People tend to act on what they believe they can change—If your problem seems intractable, enormous and endless, people won’t be motivated to help
  • Peer pressure still works (Nope, it doesn’t end after high school) - People are more likely to do something if they know other people like them are doing it. 

You can download the eBook here.

Independent Events

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One of the more interesting trends in the event fundraising space is the rise of third-party events — that is, events to benefit an organization that are managed outside of the organization itself. Such events, born from an increasingly self-motivated constituency, have attractive benefits. For one, their cost is relatively low. Perhaps more importantly, they can provide a truly donor-directed experience, in that the initiatives are created and managed by the donor participants themselves.

However, such programs have large potential pitfalls — lack of control, data collection challenges, difficulty in oversight and evaluation, and possible negative brand exposure to name a few of the largest. 

My colleagues at Event 360 recently teamed up with Blackbaud to research and document some of the best practices in this emerging field. The resulting whitepaper makes for an interesting read, and a good primer to how to get some of the basics in place so that you enjoy the benefits rather than suffer the headaches. 

I invite you to download it here. 

From Awareness to Fundraising

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One of the primary relationships in event fundraising is the link between participants and donations. In general, the more participants a program has, the more donations it should raise. This is because participants bring in donors, and donors give donations – and so as participants increase, the overall fundraising should increase as well.

However, although this is a primary mathematical relationship, it is also the number one challenge facing most nonprofit organizations. Simply put, many fundraising events underperform – not because of a lack of participants, but because the participants do not fundraise. In almost every engagement we manage, therefore, we find that at least part of our task is to take an event that has successfully created awareness and help our client transform it into a successful fundraising program.

Do your events raise awareness, but no money? Are you struggling to turn participants into fundraisers? The good news is that you can impact these results. From our work, we have identified four key steps to transform an event from a gathering of people into an effective fundraising program:

  • A well-articulated ask;
  • A segmented participant base;
  • A customized communication plan targeted to the segments; and
  • A management culture that supports fundraising.

I’ve recently written a free white-paper outlining these steps in a bit more detail. I invite you to download it here.

Remember that attendance doesn’t fuel the programs that change the world — revenue does. Best wishes and good luck!

 

The Importance of Focus

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This past week I had the opportunity to lead a webinar for the Run-Walk-Ride Fundraising Council, an organization designed to support fundraising professionals who focus on athletic fundraising.

The title of the presentation was “Doing More With Less” — and not surprisingly, given the difficult economic climate, a number of nonprofit professionals came on the call hoping to find ways to stretch, pull, and tweeze their dollars.

I opened the presentation by sharing the brutal fact that if we define “doing more with less” as literally increasing activity with fewer resources, we’re in for disappointment. It can’t be done; the immutable laws of physics will get in the way. Unfortunately, we cannot create something out of nothing.

However, if we define “doing more with less” as creating better results with fewer resources, then at least have a fighting chance of accomplishing something. More than a fighting chance, actually, because in my experience a great deal of fundraising activity does little more than occupy our time, while the true results come from a few key areas — specific groups of people, specific messages, specific appeals, and so forth.

The real key to thriving in times like these is not to put on another pot of coffee and double the number of hours you and your team are logging. The key is focus. Focusing on the donors, participants, tools, and areas that bring in the results requires an ability to identify those key areas, a willingness to redirect efforts to them, and a discipline to let other activities go. 

Focus is the watchword for fundraising in a difficult climate, and the organizations that understand that are not only coping well with the recession, they are well preparing themselves for the good times ahead. 

For more information and to listen to the entire webinar, click here. (For access to the slides referenced in the presentation, click here.)