ROLLOVER TIME FLIES

ALERT: The IRA Charitable Rollover Act extends to December 31, 2009. Be sure to include the following information in an e-blast or newsletter to your supporters asap!

What is the IRA Charitable Rollover Act? This provision allows anyone 70-1/2 years or older to make an outright gift from their Individual Retirement Account up to $100,000 a year to a qualified charity – like (insert name here) - without first claiming it as income and being taxed. Take advantage of this important extension today! Consult your tax advisor or call us at (insert phone number here) for additional information.

GRANT WRITER COMMENT

I couldn't agree more. Hiring an outside grant writer might make sense --- in very limited situations, but is rarely the right approach and almost never the best long term solution. It's all about relationships and the wise nonprofit takes grant writing as an opportunity to build upon ... the secret to writing good grants: READ THE GUIDELINES AND FOLLOW THEM. Then, keep these two things in mind: 1) guidelines are written for applicants and not donors. You have to follow them but the donor doesn't and; 2) grant making is personal. People give to people, not to causes. So, a well written grant simply earns you the opportunity to start building that relationship.
Posted by David Zemel

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF....

I started a small conversation on LinkedIn the other day. My point was that schools and organizations and consultants are offering grantwriting courses, but writing is not enough to secure a grant. “Many nonprofits do not realize the value of program knowledge, foundation research and relationship building to the grantsmanship process. Writing in a vacuum rarely leads to success.”

Gail Perry, author of Fired Up Fundraising: Turn Board Passion into Action and former major gifts officer at Duke wrote, “You are totally right. So many nonprofits - and board members too - think that hiring a "grantwriter" is the magic bullet that will rescue their fundraising program. They don't understand that grantseeking is what you might call "a body contact sport." That is, it requires person-to-person conversation. You have to cultivate grantor relationships just like you do individuals. Grantwriting courses shortchange their students if they don't include relationship-development and cultivation strategies.”

Two development pros – same advice – free. You’re welcome!

GOURMET CONSIDERATION

You won’t be able to devour Gourmet magazine after the November issue. Even with a 68-year history and nearly 1 million subscribers, television food shows and online sites have taken a serious bite out of Gourmet's advertising revenue. (Gourmet will remain in book publishing and television programming; Gourmet recipes will still be available on Epicurious.com; and Bon Appétit, Conde Nast’s other epicurean magazine, will continue to publish. Editor Ruth Reichl will be on PBS.) How is this relevant to the nonprofit world?

There are arguments, particularly from the foundation sector, about the proliferation of nonprofit organizations. Since 1996, the number of 501(c)(3) organizations has increased by 81 percent to nearly 1.2 million – is that too many or is that in proportion to the unmet needs of society? Speaking of unmet needs, foundations provide only 13 percent of charitable dollars, usually highly restrictive dollars, often only partial funding, over short periods of time, with burdensome application and reporting requirements.

The Lodestar Foundation takes a carrot approach to overlapping nonprofit interests -- they've created the Collaboration Prize ($250,000) to inspire mergers, acquisitions and collaborations among nonprofit organizations that provide “the same or similar programs or services and compete for clients, financial resources, or staff.” The Museum of Nature and Science won this year for merging three museums in Dallas: The Science Place, Dallas Children’s Museum, and Dallas Museum of Natural History. Lodestar contends the new entity is an “all-encompassing museum with greater attendance and quality of education content. The staff consolidation saved $600,000 in the first year and the ratio of benefits to salaries went from 17.6% to 10.5%, without reducing quality.” YMCA/JCC Integration also won for their merger of the Jewish Community Center and the Young Men’s Christian Association in Toledo. “As a result of combining, the organizations did not build a new YMCA which realized savings of $5-8 million. Staff consolidation alone saved $300,000 and there was administrative savings of $130,000.”

If you are having serious financial problems, for the greater good, should your organization consider a merger? Mergers have to make sense. They are painful, disruptive, expensive and there is no guarantee of a stronger entity. However, because of market forces, merging may be the best way to sustain services. Nonprofit Mergers Workbook Part I: The Leaders Guide to Considering, Negotiating, and Executing a Merger, Updated Edition by David La Piana, might be a good group reading project, when you’re not out raking leaves.

(Oct. 1970 image via cover browser where you can view Gourmet covers from 1959 - 2007)

CROSS OVER

One of my favorite lawyers recently joined LinkedIn. Smart decision for anyone in business, profit or nonprofit. For lawyers, in particular, it is over 30 years from the decisive law firm marketing case, Bates v. Arizona, in which the Supreme Court held that allowing lawyers to advertise would not harm the legal profession or the administration of justice, and, in fact, would supply consumers with valuable information about the availability and cost of legal services.

We see the television commercials and hear the radio ads. Law firm marketing has evolved, yet it continues to be an enigma to many members of the bar. Like my friend, lawyers need to focus their presence online just as nonprofit entities do.

A great website can be a wonderful promotional tool to generate traffic to your site, which in turn can become leads, which in turn can become clients. Web presence can be very helpful for crisis communications. If you are considering getting a website, plan what you want it to say and look like. There are professional web builders available. If you have a website, but aren’t getting the traffic from it you think you could, consult a technology marketing agency for search engine optimization which includes on-page optimization, content creation and link building.

Attorneys should have their own presence on LinkedIn and Facebook. No, not to post pictures from the firm party, but to enable potential clients to have a sense of the person they will hire. If you need help improving business development strategies the way nonprofits do with donor initiatives, feel free to call me for a confidential conversation – 847.227.7174.

FINISH LINE

Last Sunday 48 yr. old Luis Carlos Mejia of Bogota, Columbia won the grueling 89 mile A2A (Athens-to-Atlanta) inline skate race with a time of 4 hours, 58 minutes and 22 seconds. Skaters from all over the world showed up for the 28th running of America's oldest outdoor road skate. The finish line in Piedmont Park had the feel of a Tour de France on little wheels as the brightly colored, lycra clad competitors forced themselves up the shoot to the finish line with onlookers yelling encouragement. Cindy Lamir, president of Impact Business Advisers, coach/non-skater, said, “These racers have what Americans need right now: courage, determination, stamina -- and a sense of accomplishment!”

Similarly, nonprofit leaders face soul-wrenching challenges every day, persevering through adversity. As nonprofit leaders confront doing the right thing with what may now be the fewest resources, we must use every creative morsel within to develop real solutions to real problems. Just as the Atlanta racers use the finish line to mark their accomplishment, year end is the finish line for organizations. At this point in the race, there are less than three months to leave a mark on 2009. Was your fundraising plan sufficient? How well did you stick to your fundraising calendar? Do you need to install some new strategies for success?

From the book Simple Abundance: "Authentic success is knowing that if today were your last day on earth, you could leave without regret. Authentic success is feeling focused and serene when you work, not fragmented. It's knowing that you've done the best that you possibly can, no matter what circumstances you faced.…” Don’t leave anything out of your regimen as you check off the milestones leading to what may be your greatest victory!

* Special congrats to Marcy Turek of Rockford, IL, skating with Team Rainbo, who finished 10th over all, winner of the women’s division at 5:15:46 – yeah, Marcy!

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES

One of the most inexpensive research methods I employ is to look at lessons learned by universities and corporate America. Here’s one. Harvard Grad School of Education Prof. David Perkins heads the Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA) looking at leadership strategies to determine what steps organizations should take to improve the effectiveness of their leadership development initiatives. At the crux of the matter are four things:

Thing 1 - Focusing on the development of leadership, not individual leaders;
Thing 2 - Distributing leadership responsibility throughout an organization;
Thing 3 - Embedding leadership development in the context of people's work;
Thing 4 - Assessing an organization's capacity for, and immunity to, leadership development.

Managing the people side of leadership, internally with staff and externally with donors, is crucial to organizational success. In his book, King Arthur's Round Table, Perkins identifies four different "archetypes" on which to plot the nuanced forms of leadership - Answer-Centered, Inquiry-Centered, Leadership by Leaving Alone (the sink or swim approach), or my favorite, Vision-Centered, which LILA describes as a strong energizing vision about the general direction of an organization, along with great personal commitment.

It is immensely helpful to have the right people on your bus, but, as a leader of the institution, the board or a department or project, you have a great deal to do with shaping the cultural infrastructure of your entity. Gain traction by knowing what kind of leader you are.

Five basic ingredients for transformational leadership, I believe, are:

- Developing a high-achieving culture
- Sharing vision with staff, board and colleagues
- Igniting your team's energies and abilities
- Fostering an innovative, experimental environment
- Creating influence and impact across the organization

With the proviso that every organization has unique needs and different colleagues may require a more directed or a more laissez-faire approach, in this recession, change is the prime responsibility of nonprofit leaders. When everyone wants to hunker down, overcoming resistance to change is difficult, but the struggle can bring success to your mission, to your organization and to your colleagues.