Last week, I had the pleasure of traveling to Vancouver with 3 of my Greenlights teammates for AFP’s International Conference on Fundraising. I’m happy to report that we all returned to Austin with some new ideas and perspectives, and it was wonderful to have my colleagues there to discuss what we were experiencing, each through our own particular lens. It was also really fun to simply spend time with Amy, Kate and Katy, and to get to know them better, but that’s another blog!

Most of our discussions after the keynotes and sessions were about the apparent “split” in fund development approaches proposed by young, entrepreneurial social change leaders, like Scott Harrison, Founder and President of charity: water as compared to the guidance shared by seasoned development professionals who have decades of fundraising experience, like renowned author and researcher, Penelope Burk.

Where Harrison implored us all to tackle the world’s problems head-on, directing 100% of donor contributions to programs where donors see concrete evidence of problems being solved quickly, seasoned experts like Burk, provided important insights into what it takes to engage donors in life-long relationships with organizations and their missions.

Harrison challenged the usefulness of the traditional development department, armed with countless stories of how nonprofit organizations dilute their impact and bore today’s results-oriented, fast-paced young leaders into apathy. Burk, on the other hand, encouraged more attention to nurturing those in the fundraising profession, spurred by her research on the small number of fundraisers who know how to secure planned gift commitments that can lead to long-term sustainability of their organizations.

I attended a great session that helped me understand these different takes on affecting change by Jon Duschinsky, Founder of Be The Change, a London-based group that encourages “movements” over “organizations”. Duschinsky defines a movement as “a group of people who come together because they have a common belief system and they want to change something.” That sounds a lot like nonprofit organizations to me, but there are definitely differences. Here’s how I have come to see it (and please forgive the generalizations and over-simplification of both approaches):

For a great example of a movement, we need to look no further than the Kony 2012 phenomenon. Here the movement used social media (a key reason that today’s movements are even possible) to engage a huge number of people in easy, meaningful and very direct ways.

I believe that higher education institutions are examples of nonprofit organizations that have many reasons to be the large organizations they are. Most universities would not be effective or credible as spontaneous, bottom up movements.

I am thrilled and grateful that the “movement” crowd is understandably sick of waiting around for organizations to solve the myriad problems in our world and that they are inspiring a huge segment of our population to get involved in ways that make sense for them. I am also concerned that these new leaders are underestimating the tremendous power of established nonprofit organizations, their development teams and the donors who love them. Their donors tend to be older individuals who value the stability of an organizational structure, but they are just as passionate about changing lives.

Overall, it seems that we all agree that it’s imperative that we treat our donors like the smart, approachable, emotional, results-oriented and busy investors that they are, and that demonstrating the real results we can and do achieve together is where our focus needs to be.

What is your take on these different approaches to driving change?

The 2011 Board Summit

As you may know, we’re gearing up for another Board Summit and are currently accepting applications for nonprofits to be featured. Our team is passionate about this event for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s an opportunity to help fill some of the estimated 7,000+ empty board seats in town!

If you represent a nonprofit that wants great new board members (and there are few out there that don’t), I encourage you to really think about applying to be featured at the event. And before you say “Board Summit isn’t for us. We want to be strategic about who we invite to join our board”, think again!

The truth about the event is that it is an amazing opportunity to meet a diverse crowd of about 350 professionals from the corporate, academic, government, and even nonprofit, sectors all of whom are actively looking for a nonprofit family to join. They learned about the event through their involvement with Leadership Austin, LBJ Future Forum, FuturoFund, the Austin Young Chamber of Commerce or any number of amazing groups that help encourage the community leaders they know to attend. Each year, many of Austin’s leading companies like Raymond James, DLA Piper, Applied Materials, Dell, Maxwell Locke & Ritter, National Instruments, and others are Catalyst Sponsors of the event, providing their employees with registrations to attend.

Every individual that comes to meet the 50+ nonprofits genuinely wants to get involved in a leadership capacity. Many have served on boards before and are looking for a new nonprofit “home”. If they haven’t been on a board before, they can attend a special training that evening to learn about the roles and responsibilities of board members and find out what questions to ask before joining to be sure it’s a good fit for them and for the nonprofit.

Of course you want to be strategic about who you invite on your board! Every nonprofit board should discuss and agree upon the skills and connections they want and need in new board members before they go looking for them (the Board Recruitment Matrix in our Resource Library is a great tool for that, by the way.)

But once you have your wish list ready, the Board Summit is designed to introduce you to some truly amazing candidates that you might not otherwise meet. Most featured nonprofits leave the event with a long list of individuals who visited with them because they care about their mission and want to be considered for board service. The decision to bring someone onto the board should not be taken lightly and definitely requires more interaction than is possible at the Summit. So each featured nonprofit gets ideas and guidance for taking those next steps, too!

So, if you need more smart, accessible, connected, passionate and trained community leaders on your board…give the Board Summit a try. The short and easy-to-complete application is due by March 15!

Our big membership drive, underway this month, gives us an exciting opportunity to feature some of the incredible nonprofits in Greenlights’ member family.  This week we begin a month-long series about just a few of the top-notch nonprofits we get to interact with, beginning with the Multicultural Refugee Coalition (MRC has been a Greenlights member since their founding about 3 years ago).

Meg Goodwin Erskine, MRC’s co-founder and executive director, talked with me about her dynamic group and how Greenlights has helped them quickly become an exceptional nonprofit making our community stronger:

Ann: Tell us a little about your organization, its mission and services.

Meg: Since 2009, our mission has been to empower refugees toward self-sufficiency through community, education and reconciliation.  Our current programs include computer literacy, job skills, sewing, soccer, gardening, and children’s and youth programs.  Basically, we are a long-term support network for refugees settled in Austin.

Ann: What does it mean to be a refugee “settled in Austin?”  Is there something special about that phrase?

Meg: For sure. A refugee is someone fleeing persecution that has been legally “settled” in a new country via the UN. Refugees don’t get to choose where their new home will be – they are placed in communities across the US (and the world) that are able to take them in. Austin accepts about 1,000 refugees a year, but the government only provides support services for them for the first six months. As you can imagine, restarting an individual or family’s life in a completely new culture can be pretty daunting and complex, so a wide range of services and programs are needed to help them achieve self-sufficiency.

Ann: In what ways has MRC benefited from its Greenlights membership?

Meg: In many, many ways. We’ve really seen how important it is to take time to attend the workshops, not only because they are always really helpful classes, but also because of the networking you get with others.  I found this to be especially true in the ED Essentials course. In fact, our current board secretary and I met at a Greenlights workshop on logic models! It’s great that our whole organization gets our member benefits, including board members, who we require to attend Board Essentials as part of their orientation. We’ve loved being featured at Board Summit, finding great forms and templates in the Resource Library, and just knowing that we can always call you with questions and you’ll help.

Ann: MRC uses the Mitte Carriage House pretty regularly, too, right?

Meg: Yes, that’s our favorite benefit! We hold our monthly board meetings at the Mitte Carriage House since we don’t have a community center yet. Having such a professional, central and free space that is outside of our regular spaces is wonderful.

Ann: What advice do you have for other small nonprofits who might be facing challenges similar to MRCs?

Meg: Get connected with the larger community and explore strategic alliances with other groups that can help you fulfill your mission.  Our biggest challenge is definitely fundraising, but we’ve found that there are many groups that offer great services that we want to provide to refugees (like computer literacy). For example, we are partnering with Austin Free-Net to provide computer literacy classes since they are experts in that.  MRC brings our expertise of working with refugees, who represent the kind of new, different group of students that Austin Free-Net was looking for. My advice would be to just put the Greenlights membership in your budget and then just take advantage of it, especially by attending events where you can learn and network.

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Learn more about the great work of the Multicultural Refugee Coalition or get involved at www.mrcaustin.org.

Learn more about Greenlights member benefits and join our community today!
Join or renew your membership during this month’s membership drive to be entered for a chance to win a free ticket to the Texas Nonprofit Summit (scheduled for September 20-21, 2012)!

There are few tools as powerful for enhancing a nonprofit’s fundraising than an analysis of donation and donor data. By taking an objective look at the numbers behind your fundraising efforts, an enlightening picture can emerge of how loyal your donors are, what approaches provide the biggest ROI and which supporters might be ready to be asked to increase their involvement. Having real answers to key questions can make a big difference in how much money you raise and how much time and money you put into raising it.

For many large nonprofits, analyzing donor data is a regular part of annual planning. For many smaller organizations or those that don’t have many donors, an analysis of donors’ giving patterns may seem overly formal or perhaps not needed at all. But just in case you suspect you don’t understand your donors as well as you should, here are a few guidelines to follow for a simple “Do-It-Yourself” donor data analysis:

The Data:

Most relevant data can be reviewed in a couple of worksheets within an Excel spreadsheet. Here are some of the types of information you’ll want collect and use to do your analysis:

• Donor names/some other identifier
• The type of entity each donor is (an individual, foundation, business, etc.)
• Gift amount for each gift given by each donor, the date on which each gift was given, and the appeal/campaign/event through which each was given. It’s great if you can look at all gifts over a three year span of time or more, but examining two year’s worth of donations and donors can tell you a lot.
• Any special restrictions or special purposes for gifts, especially if the purpose of the gift isn’t repeatable (like a one-time gift from an estate).
• Any other information you have about your donors or their behavior that would be helpful to consider when planning for next year, such as the city in which donors live or their attendance at events.

The Analysis:

Analyzing your donor data at this level is all about asking key questions and trying to find the answer by sorting the data in different ways. Here are some of questions to ask yourself:

• How well do we retain donors from year-to-year? The old adage is true: it’s a lot cheaper to keep a current customer (or donor) than it is to find a new one. If many of your donors only give once and then don’t give again, you’re probably not spending enough time staying connected to them.
• Which types of appeals or strategies are most successful? Which are least successful? There are many ways to define a successful fundraising strategy and you can decide what success means to you. For most organizations, “success” is a combination of money raised and the number of donors who give. Don’t forget to consider the staff, board and volunteer time and the money that went into each appeal! Would it have been easier to secure 10 gifts of $1,000 through in-person asks to individuals instead of burning out your volunteers with a special event that netted the same $10,000?
• Who are your top donors in terms of gift amounts? Who are the most loyal, even if they aren’t giving big gifts? Both groups deserve special attention and would likely do more if you show them how much you value their involvement. A “big” gift to your organization could be $200 or $2,000 or you could simply choose to focus on a certain percentage of donors who give the most and/or most frequently.
• What type and level of donors are giving the most/the least amount of money? Are you giving enough (or perhaps too much) attention to a certain type of level of donor?
• What natural “groups” of donors emerge from looking at the data? Could you develop targeted messages to reach a certain group more effectively?

There are many more questions that you could explore – these are just a few of the most common that we ask at Greenlights when helping our clients with an analysis. If you can’t answer these questions because you don’t have enough data to ask them, then consider using them as a guide to outline plans for starting to collect needed information over the next year.

Whether doing a quick analysis now or putting together a plan to be able to do it in the future, your organization’s fundraising is sure to be more strategic and efficient in the year ahead. If you have some donor analysis advice, please share it here.  Happy Analyzing!

Kathy LeMay speaking at the Texas Nonprofit Summit

As you probably know, OneStar Foundation and Greenlights teamed up on Sept. 8-9, 2011 to host the annual Texas Nonprofit Summit and, by all accounts, it was our biggest and best nonprofit management conference yet! There was more of everything this year – more attendees, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, networking, and definitely more staff and volunteer hours invested to make it all happen. It is certainly exciting to see the Summit continue to grow and to have successfully brought together more than 700 new and old friends this time around. But the numbers only tell part of the story, and they don’t tell the most important part.

Beth Kanter speaking to a guest at the Texas Nonprofit Summit

In the new, relative quiet of our offices this week, there is one prevailing sentiment about the Summit that surrounds us: thankfulness. All of us on “Team TNS” are thankful that so many busy nonprofit leaders chose to spend their precious time and energy at the Summit. We are thankful that things went smoothly and that the food was plentiful and good. We are very grateful to have had so many wonderful speakers share their perspectives with the sector, and so many knowledgeable exhibitors share their services and resources. And the thanks we’ve received from those that attended make us especially grateful to have the honor of hosting an event designed to help them “lead the charge for social change” in more impactful ways.

Evan Smith speaking at the Texas Nonprofit Summit

Thank you to everyone that attended, sponsored, presented, exhibited and volunteered to make the Summit great. If you weren’t able to attend, you can still check out the slide decks from several presentations and even watch recordings of the two keynote addresses and Evan Smith’s session (those will be posted on the Greenlights and OneStar sites soon).

We sincerely hope you’ll mark your calendars for September 20 and 21, 2012, when we’ll gratefully do everything we can to make the 2012 Texas Nonprofit Summit even better!