Collaboration is key.
Collaboration has been a trend in fundraising for some time now. Funders, in particular, are looking for innovative approaches that involve multiple, independent nonprofits collaborating to solve problems. And nonprofits, too, have long collaborated with each other to improve individual organizational performance and to lift the sector overall. Target Analytics, with their collaborative benchmarking, was, I believe, one of the first to organize, in a large-scale way, nonprofits sharing confidential information for the good of all.
Loyal reader, Bob Price, of the Lebanon Valley Brethern Home, in Palmyra, PA, recently let me know of an initiative he’s helped launch that continues in this tradition. The Senior Care Development Network is “a fellowship of fund raisers dedicated to the needs of seniors coming together for mutual support, networking, celebration, and the sharing of information.” While this grew out of a collaboration of nonprofits in the Susquehanna Valley area of Pennsylvania, membership is open to any organization serving seniors and their approach can be a model for other communities and other service sectors.
Phyllis
PG Website tip #2
A couple of weeks ago I offered a tip for your website based on audits of some nonprofit websites I’ve recently conducted. Here’s tip #2:
You should make sure to always include your case for giving prominently on your gift planning site. Except for donor stories that sometimes include a quote that serves as a strong vote of confidence in the organization, the websites I’ve audited don’t directly make the case for why, if the donor is including a charitable provision, it should be made to ABC organization rather than XYZ organization.
You can bet the donor visiting your site is also giving to other organizations, and more than likely organizations doing related work. When I was at PVA, copies of wills we received always included Blinded Veterans, Disabled American Veterans and other veterans groups. So, we should make sure our websites do a good job of reinforcing “why us.”
And rather than add more content to what already seem to be content-heavy websites, for my money, we can dispense with virtually every online word about the more complex and infrequently used gift vehicles in favor of content for donors just starting planning and for our case for giving.
Phyllis
Gratitude report.
Jeff Brooks, who writes one of my favorite blogs, Future Fundraising Now, recently wrote about The Pride Foundation’s donor-centric annual report. The Foundation also distributed their report innovatively, enabling it to be more interactive. This is a great example of what I’ve been talking about in my last few posts, including the one on writing a case statement and the one about using the word “you” in your writing to donors. Jeff’s post is worth a read and if you don’t already subscribe to his blog, I highly recommend it. You can click on the link on the right under Blogroll and get to the subscription page.
Phyllis
Writing a case statement that works.
Hard on the heels of yesterday’s post, I’m pleased to share with you a simple yet intelligent guide to writing a case statement. It’s from another great article by communications pro, Tom Ahern. I shared with you other smart tips from Tom recently. His latest comes in his e-newsletter which you can read and subscribe to here. If you haven’t written a case statement yet, use Tom’s guide and you’ll end up with something that works. If you’ve already written one, test it against Tom’s recommendations and see if your case needs tweaking.
Phyllis
Reach out and touch someone.
As gift planners we’ve long understood that when we can get a donor to experience our work first-hand, their level of commitment increases along with their financial contributions. Now, there is research that explains why and gives gift planners a tip to increase that commitment even if the donor cannot experience our work first-hand.
In the most recent issue of Inside Influence, the e-newletter of persuasion expert Robert Cialdini, Noah Goldstein, author of “Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive,” reports that consumer researchers have found that “physically touching a product might not exactly turn it into gold, but it does increase its perceived value. Tactile contact leads to a greater sense of ownership of that product. The combination of the positive emotions and the enhanced sense of ownership lead to the increase in perceived value”
The authors understand that customers won’t always have the opportunity to touch the product (shopping on the internet being the biggest culprit). However, they found that “when a product was unavailable to touch, simply asking consumers to imagine touching it was enough to increase perceived ownership and value of the product.”
This helps explain the huge success of donor travel offered by nonprofits and the advantages of other opportunities to see (touch) the work, whether that is on a campus, in a remote part of the world or around the corner at the local food bank. For donors who can’t or won’t engage to that degree, using words to make the work real is a step in the right direction.
Phyllis
Keeping focused in good times and bad.
“One of the consequences of tough economic times is short-term thinking.” So writes Karen Osborne, of the Osborne Group, a strategic fundraising consultant I respect tremendously. Writing in a recent issue of her e-newsletter, she goes on to say that this short-term thinking conflicts withour goal as fundraisers of developing meaningful and productive relationships, which is inherently a long-term process. Her assertion is that stewardship offers both short and long-term benefits. Here are her suggestions for steps you can take now that require only a modest investment but that reap big results.
Phyllis
PG Websites tip #1
I’ve recently been asked to audit some gift planning websites and I noticed something they all have in common. They start from the assumption that site visitors (that is, our donors) not only have an estate plan but intend to include a charitable provision. The content of the sites seems to suggest that it’s just a matter of helping the visitor identify the right type of gift. However, statistics show that the vast majority of Americans, even those giving annual fund or direct mail gifts to charity, don’t even have a will.
It seems to me that we should make sure our websites (and all of our other marketing, for that matter) offer assistance to donors who don’t yet have an estate plan, including information on the importance of a will, how easy it is to get started, and how easy and satisfying it can be to leave a lasting legacy. Given what we’ve learned recently about younger donors creating estate plans and making charitable provisions, offering valuable information for those in the planning stages is especially important.
Phyllis
P.S. I’ll be posting more website tips in the future.
“Aren’t you the most beautiful baby in the world?”
Nothing annoys me more than reading a gift planning newsletter or a letter to a donor that goes on and on about the institution instead of talking about the what the donor has helped accomplish or, equally annoying, talks about the donor in the third person instead of the first. “The donor can make a gift” vs “You can make a gift.”
Tom Ahern, of Ahern Communications, Ink., writing in the November issue of the Mal Warwick Associates November e-newsletter, clearly and with good humor, makes the case for why it is so important and why it works. After all, says Ahern, “We are addressed by the word “you” from our earliest days. It begins with: “Aren’t you the most beautiful baby in the world? Oh, yes, you are!””
A must read.
Phyllis
Lessons learned.
Last week the New York Times published a wonderful story of a multi-million dollar bequest to the Metropolitan Opera that served to remind me of some important lessons for gift planners:
1. You never know who your best bequest prospect might be. Mrs. Mona Webster, the Met’s donor, had been a fan of the Met from her home in Scotland, via radio, for decades before she surfaced on the Development staff radar. So, even though we should give lots of thought to who we select for our planned giving marketing efforts, we should never forget the exceptions to the rule.
2. Stay focused on the donor’s needs, rather than the needs of your institution, and you’ll never go wrong. When I was at Paralyzed Veterans of America back in the 90s, we had a donor who was trying to decide between us and another organization for creating a CGA. She was thinking of splitting her assets between the two of us. Our Planned Giving Officer told the donor we would respect her decision and that we could only speak to how the gift to PVA would be used. The other organization apparently tried to talk her out of using part of her assets to fund a CGA with PVA. The result: PVA got the entire amount. In the case of Mrs. Webster, the Met stewarded her not by focusing on their institution but by focusing on Mrs. Webster and her interests. In addition to opera, her other love included birds and some of the stewardship by the Met reflected this other love. I’m sure that illustrated to Mrs. Webster the Met’s understanding of and commitment to her.
3. People give to people. While on vacation in Scotland, Gail Chesler, the Met’s director of planned and special gifts, visited Mrs. Webster just before she died. Note: “while on vacation.” I don’t know Gail Chesler but that fact suggests to me that her relationship with Mrs. Webster was personal, going far beyond a relationship a donor might have with an institution. I’m sure Gail Chesler was an important factor in the gift.
4. Although we may not know about 6 or 7 of every 10 bequests we receive, the ones we do know about, and steward properly, will result in bigger gifts. The article describes some of the stewardship of Mrs. Webster. No doubt that had a bearing on the size of her gift.
Phyllis
P.S. Thank you to Jennie Thompson, consultant extraordinare, for bringing the article to my attention.
No gender differences in legacy giving.
At the recent PPP Conference, Patrick Rooney, Director of the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, reported the findings of an AFP/Legacy Leaders study to determine if there are gender differences in giving motivations for bequest donors and non-donors. The short answer: an unequivocal “no.” But that result obscures some very interesting findings.
The study was consistent with other recent surveys in finding that single individuals (which may equate to the absence of children or grandchildren) were more likely to have a charitable provision in their will. What was new and interesting is that household income correlates favorably with having a charitable provision in the will. In the past, most of us in gift planning thought that long-time, small gift donors were equally good bequest prospects. But the study indicates that the more likely prospects are higher annual givers and those with high household income. I wouldn’t throw out the small, frequent, long-time givers, though. A low income could simply mean that donors with incomes less than $50,000 are living frugally but are sitting on significant assets that are not income-producing or at least not high income-producing but that can form the basis of a legacy gift.
Perhaps the most interesting finding is that educational attainment is the single biggest predictor of likelihood of having a charitable provision. This is true even when income is controlled, that is, even at lower income levels if the donor has a college education, he or she is significantly more likely to be a legacy giver. The exciting thing about this is that both income and educational level are data elements that are available for appending to your file. In other words, you can do a pretty good job of identifying your donors with these characteristics, whereas, frequent religious attendance, another high predictor, is not a commercially available piece of information.
Phyllis
