TIPS FOR THE NEW YEAR

Instead of resolutions to diet or exercise, my friend, Kathleen Reidy, Director of Communications for the Lake Bluff School District, and I came up with a few marketing and fundraising tips for you for the New Year:

1. Review and update your web site. Enhance or augment the content. Refresh images and graphics on a regular basis. Besides, the more you do online: blogs, surveys, articles, content changes, for example, the more you optimize your organization's site and the more people find it.
2. Is your fundraising plan in place? If not, checkout online resources and books to develop a condensed plan right now or, better yet, call me.
3. Use your database to best advantage. Segment your lists and create communication campaigns that pay the biggest dividends. Keep your organization uppermost with your target market segments.
4. Focus on what makes your cause or service or organization different or special. Find the one or two top points and then drive them home in all of your messaging.
5. Think about fundraising from the donor’s point of view:
• Is it meaningful? Does the request for funds matter to them. Are you changing your message for the appropriate groups? Do they get something from it (a membership, a feel-good feeling)?
• Is it easy to do? Online, use a credit card, tax donation receipt follow-up without being asked.
• Will they want to tell others? This is dependent on the first two.
6. Mix it up. Always doing the same thing and results are sliding? Try something new.

GET YOUR BOARD "ON BOARD"

If your board is unenthusiastic, unwilling or unaccounted for when it comes to raising money for your organization, you’ve got a tough row to hoe.

More and more nonprofits are reshaping board of director practices and policies regarding resource development. Here are four ways to get your board and senior management to embrace fundraising with the awareness that all volunteers and staff share the responsibility:

1. Enlist a committee.

Ensure you have the “right” people serving on your development committee. Find volunteers dedicated to resource development who have experience in one or more areas of fundraising, whether as a volunteer or professional. Certain leaders on a board are capable of having a huge impact on ‘buy in,’ so be sure to enlist them to make recommendations to the board. A development committee should manage vision and purpose, make quality decisions and define priorities, lead by example. If you don’t have such a committee, recruit strategic volunteers for this crucial function.

2. Share what works.

When you find information by fundraising professionals and other organizations describing their success in fundraising, be sure to share copies with the board and staff. Distribute it at meetings where members might read the hard copy, may bring it up for group discussion or talk with you about it. This gives board members an opportunity to identify what works and to assess what your organization should be doing. Highlighting what other organizations’ fundraising efforts have earned, can, over time, affect performance and board decision-making.

3. Hire an authority.

No matter how hard a senior development officer may try to change the culture of a non-fundraising board, they often need an outside voice to turn on the “responsibility” switch. A nonprofit consultant can do a convincing presentation on why fundraising is crucial to an organization’s ability to raise money and grow. Plus, you can gain a knowledgeable colleague.

4. Laud participants.

Nothing influences other people’s participation than a little praise of their colleagues. You can see the light bulbs go off when another Board member is acknowledged for fundraising. This goes a long way toward producing the next generation of board member. Praise: You can’t do enough of it!

If you need help to inspire, engage and involve your board in fundraising, call me: 847/881-8033.

A LUMP OF COAL

H.R.7327 was the usual rigmarole of Congress making technical corrections related to the Pension Protection Act of 2006 for things like airline carrier bankruptcy funds to Roth IRAs. The “WHAM!” sound heard when this bill passed Congress was non-profit fundraisers slapping their foreheads because the legislation waived the mandatory minimum IRA distribution rule for 2009!

Until President Bush signed the “Worker, Retiree and Employer Recovery Act of 2008” into law on Dec. 23rd, people who are 70½ and older were required to distribute a certain amount of funds from their IRA to avoid a stiff tax penalty. And, the two-year extension (2008 and 2009) of the IRA Rollover provision also allowed those individuals to contribute up to $100,000 from their IRAs as a direct gift to a charity tax-free.

This new law allows individuals who are 70 1/2 and older to keep all of their funds in their IRA without receiving a tax penalty. This temporary waiver of the mandatory minimum distribution rule could detrimentally affect donations under the IRA Rollover provision. All the more reason to communicate clearly, persuasively and regularly with your donors!

CHUCK MORGAN

We’ve lost a fine attorney in the New Year. Charles Morgan, Jr. died Thursday at his home in Destin, FL of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 78.

The day after four black Sunday-school girls were killed in a Birmingham church bombing (1963), Chuck Morgan spoke at the Young Men's Business luncheon, accusing the city's white community of complicity in the murders. Driven out of town by death threats from the KKK within a year, the American Civil Liberties Union asked Chuck to open a Southern Regional Office in Atlanta. He sued for integrated prisons and juries, legislative reapportionment and voting rights, argued the "one man, one vote" principle that redrew political maps. He successfully defended Muhammad Ali in his conscientious objector case.

The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture said Chuck was “involved in much of the litigation that altered political and social life of the South.” In 1966 he successfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Julian Bond, the black political leader refused a seat in the Georgia legislature because of an anti-Vietnam War statement. "He was a giant who remade the South through the courtroom as Martin Luther King, Jr. remade it through marching feet," said Bond, now chairman of the NAACP's national board.

I met Chuck in 1972 when he became head of the ACLU Washington Office. Under his leadership ACLU was the first organization to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon and represented plaintiffs in the Watergate break-in. Our work to change the mindset of America and the Senate led to Nixon's resignation. We attacked government secrecy at the highest levels.

Chuck found time to author a few books, including a chapter on race relations in “Playing Around: The Million Dollar Infield Goes to Florida.” In 1974 a group of mostly authors, "average age forty-one, average condition deplorable" that had a combined income of $1 million joined the Pittsburgh Pirates for spring training. That was the period of stretch knit uniforms that weren’t too flattering on a sedentary attorney.

Working for Chuck Morgan was interesting, exciting and at times unorthodox. Those of us who knew him best know that the American people have lost an eloquent and fearless advocate.

CONNECTORS

Malcolm Gladwell contrasts Paul Revere and William Dawes in his book “The Tipping Point, How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference.” Gladwell believes Revere was far more effective than Dawes, who also rode to warn, because Revere was what he calls a “Connector,” a person with a special gift for bringing the world together. Connectors know lots of people. “Sprinkled among every walk of life, in other words, are a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. They are Connectors.”

Naturally, we expect fundraisers to be Connectors, but we can all be Connectors to varying extents. Merge Gladwell’s Connector theory with Seth Godin’s line “We get what we promote” and there is a means to transform ideas, services and organizations.

Heaps and heaps of people hesitate before spreading the word about a prospective political candidate or a new restaurant or an unknown product out of fear of looking silly -- or that we won't be able to get a table! We’re afraid one misstep will reflect badly upon us. It’s that paralysis that is hurting businesses and causes.

I’m feeling especially bad about not doing more to promote participation in GALLERY 659, the cooperative art gallery supported by Glencoe's Human Relations Forum. They closed their doors late in 2008. They mounted some wonderful exhibits featuring outstanding emerging artists. (I was in their January 2008 show.) Now they are gone -- the North Shore art community's loss is great.

Local non-profit organizations are worrying about having to shut their operations due to this economic climate. In February Public Interest Fundraising will host a symposium to talk about what to do. (Call for info: 847.881.8033)

The uproar over the closing of a favorite gallery or a charity should be enough to remind one that hesitation has its cost. Paul Revere’s ride is cited as the most historically significant case of word-of-mouth communication. In a world where supporters have power, as Barack Obama-voters demonstrated, people can make a difference. If you will miss an organization, a service, or a professional, when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them oodles of new supporters.

There are many reasons for failure, don’t make it because you didn’t do enough.

SOME ARE GIVING MORE

We're counting our blessings as the calendar flips to the new year. Buried among the dire news of joblessness and cutbacks and losses are the facts that people and institutions are stepping up.

The Chicago Community Trust announced a new $3 million initiative designed to expand the capacity of nonprofit agencies working to meet basic needs, such as food and shelter. In response to rising unemployment and increased demand on food pantries and homeless shelters, the "Unity Challenge" will match new donations on a two-to-one basis up to $1 million. The first round of grants will be announced the week of February 1, 2009.

The Ford Foundation has announced that it will honor all outstanding commitments to its grantees and will increase, in 2009 and 2010, the percentage of its endowment that is paid out in grants. The foundation's portfolio was "highly liquid" going into the economic downturn, ensuring the foundation's capacity to continue making grants without disruption. In addition, Ford instituted a series of aggressive internal cost controls early in 2008 that have helped make more funds available for grantmaking.

The GE Foundation will shift its grantmaking priorities next year to include a greater focus on basic needs.

Even as some wealthy individuals are responding to the financial crisis and economic slowdown by giving less, many of America's top philanthropists (George Soros, Eli Broad, Pete Peterson) are choosing to give more, according to BusinessWeek.

These are clear signs that charities cannot afford to stick their heads in the sand and wait "until this is over." They have to keep making the compelling case, inviting people to participate in making things better. That is my New Year's wish!