4th Annual Nonprofit Business Summit, May 3rd 2011: Part III

Diversified Funding Resources/Earned Income 
Karl Gentles, ED, Back-to-School Clothing Drive
Gayle Pincus, Social Enterprise Consultant, Palo Verde Business Advisors, LLC


A workshop for enterprising nonprofits. What are social entrepreneurs doing to solve social problems? Learn about earned income models for tax exempt, for profit and hybrid social enterprises. With social entrepreneur, Karl Gentles, executive director, Back to School Clothing Drive, and social enterprise consultant, Gayle Pincus, discuss emerging sustainability models, social venture philanthropy, and how business thinking shapes solutions to society’s challenges. Open your eyes to new revenue-generating ideas, upcoming learning opportunities, and how to apply them to your organization!

Some things I learned:


~ A growing number of tax-exempt organizations create earned income streams to strengthen their financial stability and program reach.

*8 Basic Principles of NP Entrepreneurs

~ Earned income is paramount
~ Be a player or don't play at all
~ Starting a business venture is not the only path to success
~ Unrelated business activities are dangerous
~ Be patient-and don't run out of money.
~ Recognize the differences between innovators, entrepreneurs, and professional managers
~ The "nonprofit" culture gets in the way
~ Remember the Noah Principle: No more prizes for predicting rain. You only get a prize if you build the ark.

4th Annual Nonprofit Business Summit, May 3rd 2011: Part II

Making the Ask:  Individual Funding

Nancy A. Dean

Senior VP, Resource Development

Valley of the Sun United Way

(Small to Medium Sized Organizations) –  This session will explore the fundamentals of individual giving, with a focus on tips and techniques for nonprofits with new or less developed individual giving programs.  This interactive session will explore ideas on how to build an individual donor base, techniques on building relationships and making solicitations, and stewardship to grow gifts.  Participants will leave the session with ideas for building or enhancing their individual relationship building skills for long-term results!

I learned a hell of a lot in this workshop. This was another opportunity to obtain the PowerPoint (52 pages this time) by leaving your business card with the facilitator. And once again, I put my card in the pile. This is another useful tool that will come in handy.

Some things I learned:

20 Ways to be Donor Centric
~ Receipt promptly
~ Receipt relevantly
~ Ge the date right
~ Let donors say where their money goes
~ Give donors choices on use of their names (anonymous or not)
~ Say "you" a lot
~ Send a newsletter
~ Make your newsletter about your donors
~ Respect your donors' tastes
~ Don't project yourself onto your donors
~ Be easy to read
~ Make everything about your donors
~ Be specific
~ Be incredibly transparent
~ Let all your donors make a difference
~ Make giving easy online
~ Make it easy for donors to find a human
~ Encourage donors to talk to you
~ Listen to complaints, but don't let them drive the ship
~ Do great work!

*The key to individual fundraising is relationships, knowing your donor (it's more than demographics)and paying attention to research results.

*Key finding in increasing charitable donations from individuals

~ There is $45B of market opportunity, limited in part by high levels of loyalty in charitable giving

~ Donors are generally satisfied with nonprofits, but cite being solicited too often as their key area of frustration

~ Few donors do research before they give, and those that do look to the nonprofit itself to provide simple information about efficiency and effectiveness

~ Behaviors matter: there are six discrete segments of donors with different primary reasons for giving

*Recommendations for improving fundraising capabilities

~ Segment on behaviors, not demographics

~ Tag and track your donors by segment

~ Determine what segments are best for your organization, given your strengths

~ Develop consistent outbound marketing that appeals to target segments

~ Capture donors early

~ Understand how to manage different segments when approached

*Donors break out into six behavioral segments:

~ Repayer - supports alma mater or organization that has had an impact on them or a loved one

~ Casual Giver - primarily gives to well known NPs through payroll deduction or donate money to host a table.

~ High Impact - gives to NPs that he/she feels are generating the greatest social cause or supports causes that seem overlooked by others.

~ Faith Based - gives to their church or organizations that fit with their beliefs

~ See The Difference - gives to small organizations s/he feels they can make a difference or thinks it's important to support local NPs

~ Personal Ties - gives to an organization where they are familiar with the people who run it supports causes because their friends asked them to.

*There are 4 types of BEHAVIORAL Strategy:
~ People oriented
~ Task Oriented
~ Detail Oriented
~ A blend of all three

*There are 4 types of THINKING Strategy
~ Kinesthetic - sensory
~ Visual
~ Auditory
~ Blend of all three

During this workshop, we filled out a Communication Style Assessment form. Each word I circled in the 11 questions had a value of one, two or three attached to it. Based on the number of 1 words, 2 words or 3 words, I was able to determine how I perceive the world. I possess a detail-oriented behavioral strategy with a kinesthetic way of thinking. I think this form would work great in a staffing capacity, to see how well people work together.

4th Annual Nonprofit Business Summit, May 3rd 201: Part I

Effective Board Development and Assessment
Patricia Lewis, ACFRE
Sr. Professional-in-Residence
ASU Lodestar Center for Philosophy and Nonprofit Innovation

Having an engaged, motivated Board of Directors is the key to running a successful, sustainable nonprofit organization.  This workshop describes the entrepreneurial perspective of an organization, and the Board’s role in fund raising and leadership. The Board’s role in annual fund programs including special event fundraising, major gifts, board/staff solicitations, sponsorships, and in-kind goods/services will be covered in this workshop.

Ms. Lewis provided a copy of the PowerPoint for this breakout session for those that left business cards for her. I definitely took advantage. It's a 42-paged document that will make a good reference guide.

A few things I learned:

The core responsibilities of a board are:
~ Vision/Mission
~ Policy
~ Strategic Planning
~ Fiduciary
~ Resources
~ Board Development
~ Community Liason
~ Government Relations
~ Employer of Chief Staff Person
~ Leadership

Engaged Board Members ACT:
~ Regular attendance
~ Prepared to discuss, make decisions, contribute
~ With knowledge of organization, programs/services, customers
~ Are out in the community promoting organization
~ To keep current on related issues: journals, conferences, etc.

Advocacy and Lobbying - Can nonprofits do it? Apparently they can, but walking a fine line in doing so.
~ A policy-led activity
~ Furthers the mission
~ Intensity increases as needed: public education, gov't relations, advocacy, lobbying
~ No restrictions until lobbying activity
501(c)(3)s - IRS allows $1 million, by gradation, based upon total expenditures
501(c)(4)s and (6)s do not have same restrictions

To be honest, I'm not real a political person. I consider myself Switzerland. At this point, I'm going to say that TWZ will not be dipping its toes in political ponds and the board will have to sign something to that effect. They can be asses, elephants or Switzerland in their personal lives. But if they're representing TWZ, they're going to be Switzerland.

Board's Role in FUNdraising:
~ Leadership
~ Ethics
~ Planning
~ Contacts
~ Passion
~ Contacts
~ Involvement
~ Creativity
~ Business acumen
~ Risk
~ Change
~ Evaluation
~ Fun

There were a lot of questions from the audience about board members balking at the idea of fundraising. The overall consensus is that it has to be done, but board members should know upfront if it's expected of them. Hildy Gotlieb, co-founder of Creating the Future, was a guest speaker at the Summit. On her site, she has an article about boards and fundraising.

On the other hand, Tom Suddes of the Suddes Group (love this guy), says that the board is NOT responsible for fundraising.

Overall, it's been interesting to hear about the different sides regarding this hot button of an issue. What I like is that whether it's a "should" or a "should not", there is information to back-up each claim. Tom says no and here's why. Hildy says yes, but here's a better way to do it so it's not so icky.

I love the idea that I'm learning this from scratch and can create my own options by using--and piecing together--techniques that will work for my own organization.

Final week

This week is the final week of the spring semester. I have a project to revise, a research paper to finish writing, and a final exam I have until May 6th to take. I've already signed up for the summer session:

~ Marketing for Nonprofits

~ Program Planning

~ Self-Exploration Through Creative Writing (online through Prescott College)

Originally, I was only going to take two courses (because I remember what happened when I tried three), but I picked up a Grants course that didn't really require me to submit work (just be part of the discussion), so I think during that time I found a balance. I hope I'll be able to keep that balance when the session starts in June.

5 Tools for Overwhelmed Nonprofit Marketers

I've attended a couple of Kivi Leroux Miller's webinars during the course of my degree program and have found them to be really helpful. I try to read her blog when I can and have signed up for her newsletters. I received one today that was interesting. I am nowhere being a good marketer, but I'd like to think that these tools will give me a nice head start (and she was even kind enough to provide examples).

1. The Marketing Bank

The single place where you keep all of your marketing stuff -- like the stuff that you are frequently asked to give to others--like your logos, or your boilerplate text, or the latest stats on this or that. Lots of different kinds of files belong in your marketing bank.

 

2. The Editorial Calendar

Help you see the content you need to create over the next several days, week, and months, depending on how you use them. You can create them by channel (e.g., a calendar for your newsletter and another for Facebook), by audience (e.g., how we'll communicate with parents this month, versus communicating with teachers), or by program (e.g., so you see how different programs are included throughout your communications channels). She created a few samples here.

3. Editorial and Design Style Guides

An editorial style sheet is a chart you fill out showing how you will use, format, and spell certain words. It can also include rules about abbreviations, capitalization, acronyms, and anything else related to how words, numbers, and punctuation appear in your publications. A graphic design style guide puts in writing all the various decisions you've made about how things should look both in print and online.

What goes in a editorial style guide.

What goes in your graphic design style guide.

 

4. A Personal System for Keeping Track of Everything

  This very helpful blog post provides ways to keep track of your busy schedule.

 

5. Affordable, Convenient Skill Building

Learn from others. Kivi says, "We are very lucky in the nonprofit marketing and fundraising world to have a very robust, open community of nonprofits, consultants and vendors who share lots of great stories, case studies, and best practices with each other. You need to make time to learn from them, and to use that to build your own skills." Makes sense. 

I plan to buy her book, The Nonprofit Marketing Guide, because I know that, starting out, I'll be doing a lot of this marketing stuff myself. I think this will be a good guide. No pun intended.

Month of the Military Child Recognition Day

Arizona Operation Military Kids in partnership with the Arizona National Guard Family Programs presents…


MONTH OF THE MILITARY CHILD RECOGNITION DAY
Saturday, April 9th 11:00am – 4:00pm


This event is for the whole Family and includes a picnic-style lunch, an AZNG VIP welcome, plus interactive activity stations hosted by various military and community partners.

Events include a rock wall, static educational displays, ball toss, F-16 simulator, fire truck, crafts & much, much more!

Join us as we salute our Military Youth and their Families!

This event is FREE! Pre-registration required. Visit www.jointsupportservices.org for registration information
This event is open to all current Military Families　
All Branches - Active Duty, Guard and Reserves
--------------------------
I volunteered for the morning shift, 9-12, for this event today and nearly froze. My. Butt. Off. The weather was supposed to warm!

What we got was cold and rain. There were supposed to be more vendors there, and an Apache helicopter was supposed to land there, but some of the vendors bailed (due to the weather) and the 'copter couldn't get clearance to leave its location. Which kinda sucked. I would've enjoyed seeing that.

The Phoenix Suns Gorilla was supposed to show up, as was Howler, the Phoenix Coyotes mascot, but I don't know if they showed. A slightly paunchy Spiderman was there, too, which I thought I was hilarious.

I was in the registration area, so at least we were covered, and we put together a lot of good bags for the kids: journals, stickers, suckers, canteens, caribiners, pens, pencils, pins, hats, CDs...tons of stuff. And they had some goodies to raffle off, too. Including Build A Bear animals! Too cute. I hope more people came in the afternoon and signed up for that raffle because there was A LOT of cool stuff.

When I got home, I stood underneath a hot shower for 15 mins to get warm. I'm so glad I wore a turtleneck, sweatshirt and coat. I even had gloves on and I was still cold! I felt sorry for other people who showed up in just short sleeve shirts and hoodies. One college kid showed up in long basketball shorts! Definitely not warm clothing. Crazy, it's like these people don't check the weather before leaving the house.

Still I had fun participating. A few people from my job were there on the same shift as me and I got a chance to meet other people from different organizations as well as people who came out to support family service members. Pretty cool

Not this, but that...

The great thing about this grant class I'm taking is that we don't have to actually submit homework. We can if we want feedback, but it's not required. Which is good because it kinda takes the pressure off me. In assignment #4, we learned about Goals and Objectives. I threw mine up in the Discussion area to get feedback:

Goal #1 – To increase literacy and writing skills.

·         Objective 1.1 – To offer free writing workshops focusing on various genres.

·         Objective 1.2 – To show students how many professions require good writing skills.

·         Objective 1.3 – To provide free access to writing and tutoring labs.

Goal #2 – To increase the number of youth accepted to post-secondary institutions.

·         Objective 2.1 – To conduct free series of college preparation workshops.

·         Objective 2.2 – To partner with Arizona colleges to provide informational clinics.

·         Objective 2.3 – To equip students with necessary academic skills.

Goal #3 – To provide youth with a positive role model.

·         Objective 3.1 – To foster mentorship between students and creative professionals.

·         Objective 3.2 – To recruit local professionals in the writing field for a period of five months.

·         Objective 3.3 – To give students one-on-one attention and let them know their work is value.

Per my instructors, B&J

Celise, all these are activities, not objectives. Think about what will change as a result of  these activities and quantify these changes to come up with objectives, e.g.

The writing skills of 70% students who participate in XXXX will improve as measured by XXXXX.

Well, crap. Good to know. At this rate, I'm still debating on whether my organization's target audience should just focus on teens or the community in general. I change my mind every couple of days it seems like, so I guess I have time to think about it.

And definitely revise.