CASE STATEMENT CHALLENGE

Special donors are offering a cash contribution to the charitable organization with the best Case Statement submitted prior to the "FUNDRAISING IN THIS ECONOMIC CRISIS" symposium on March 27th.

A Case Statement, also known as a Case for Support, is the essential first document for institutional fundraising readiness. The Case Statement tells the story of the need an organization meets – not the need to raise money – but the need that is met through services and programs.

Challenge participants must be 501(c)(3) organizations and must submit a copy of their Case Statement with a brief cover letter, contact information and proof of tax status to Public Interest Fundraising: kamblake@aol.com. Deadline is Friday, February 27, 2009.

Participants must be in attendance at the Symposium to secure the charitable donation.

If you need assistance or have questions, contact Kathy Miller at 847/227-7174.

FUNDRAISING IN THIS ECONOMY!

Join us for a PIF sponsored interactive symposium that will be informative and free!

When: Friday, March 27, 2009 from 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM

Where: Unitarian Church of Evanston, 1330 Ridge Road, Evanston, IL

This is an event for those who recognize that the economy has changed drastically, those who understand they can’t wait for donors to contact them, those who are prepared to do more than just weather the difficult giving climate. Join us to unearth the potential in the organizational three Rs: Raise more money. Reduce costs. Restructure services.

This symposium will dissect the thorniest problems facing non-profit participants. Presenters and colleagues will share information, search for ingenious solutions, address the Giving Pyramid in this economy, and discuss how to do more with less, benefit from collaboration, finish the year strong and recession-proof your cause.

Call 847/881-8033 or email kamblake@aol.com and leave your name, organization and contact information. Registration is free, but we need a count. March 26 @ Noon is the last day to register – seating is limited.

More information on the Case Statement Challenge to follow!

WWWD

I spent lunch yesterday with a colleague, chewing on a salad and the problems of a client. Naturally, we wondered: What Would Warren Do? Warren Buffet, the Big Kahuna, what would he do in this dreadful economic climate if he ran a NON-profit? Here's what he's said (albeit in another context):

“I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.” OK, he’s talking stock market, but, if your donors closed their wallets, how much money is available for your organization to meet future expenses? Do you have an endowment?

“If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.” People aren’t going to spend their hard earned dollars on a badly managed organization – at least not twice. If the development department is the main means of keeping an organization on supporters’ radar screens, it behooves every development officer to run a whiz bang shop.

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.” There are plenty of things in our organizations that need to be done right. Everyone must rise to the challenge. I’d start with the Board of Directors. Every Board member should give, get and give again – you're probably way ahead of me already -- I mean contribute, fundraise and contribute. Hard choices have to be made, whether it’s taking a salary cut so everyone keeps a job or cutting a program, like Brandeis University, which voted to close their art museum,

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.” Donors and volunteers want to know their giving is making a difference. Now is the time to let your supporters know how and what you are doing. Keep them close.

Non-profits make possible and impossible possibilities reality! Do what you do better. Do more. Adjust so you make change rather than have change foisted on you.

Join colleagues on March 27th at the Unitarian Church in Evanston, IL from 12:30 - 3:30 for the Non-Profit Symposium on Fundraising in a Challenging Environment. We'll drill deeper into best practices. Registration is free (due to Public Interest Fundraising's fundraising) and guests are encouraged to attend. Call me to reserve your spot: 847/881-8033.

CORPORATE MOVEMENT

A new report on corporate giving will be music to some ears and will be ringing in others for quite some time to come. Forty-two percent of corporations and 37 percent of corporate foundations recently surveyed said their charitable giving budgets will decrease in 2009. LBG Research Institute predicts that the overall decrease will be in the 3 percent to 5 percent range.

Fully half of corporate foundations said that their giving budget (including cash and non-cash) will stay the same in 2009. Thirty-seven percent, though, said this budget will decrease. Only 4 percent said their charitable giving budget will increase.

As for corporations themselves, more respondents are decreasing their giving budget (42 percent) and fewer said their budget will remain the same in 2009 (35 percent).

The 76 corporations and corporate foundations that participated in the survey indicated an abrupt move from arts and culture toward basic needs and environmental causes. Forty-nine percent of those that supported arts and cultural institutions in 2008 said they will decrease their giving in that area, while 24 percent of corporations and corporate foundations that support environmental causes plan to increase their support in 2009 for that area. Of those that in 2008 supported organizations serving basic human needs, 23 percent will increase their support this year.

The overwhelming majority of respondents said they plan to be more strategic with their giving, meaning they will shift to supporting local organizations instead of national ones. Corporations said they want to give more money to fewer organizations to increase the impact of their gifts.

LBG Research Institute’s report, Doing More With Less: How the Economic Downturn Will Impact Corporate Giving in 2009, is available for a fee at the institute’s website www.lbgresearch.org. Diversifying your income stream, as well as recouping support, will be discussed in greater detail at the Public Interest Fundraising symposium next month.

ENTRE NOUS

Grantsmanship used to be simpler. I can recall, back in the day, when foundation founders were intimate participants in local organizations and made commitments on a verbal exchange. In the last 25 years, troublesome “customs” have led to where we are now – buried alive applying for a grant and swamped after we’ve been lucky enough to receive one!

The Rand Corp. studied a nonprofit social service agency in western PA a couple of years ago and found that work hours spent on compliance reporting consumed 11 percentof the agency's annual budget! Hindsight is 20/20 -- grantsmanship needs lasik surgery.

That just might be Project Streamline, a coalition of grantseekers and grantmakers founded to study the impact of grant application and reporting practices. The Project commissioned a report last year that should be receiving far more attention in the non-profit sector than it has. Drowning in Paperwork, Distracted From Purpose: Challenges and Opportunities in Grant Application and Reporting looked at the burdensome grantsmanship practices grantseekers have decried for years now.

Acknowledging an “effectiveness paradox,” foundations are “beginning to discover that some measures they’ve adopted to ensure strategic and accountable grant making might be backfiring, resulting in a system that creates burdens on time, energy and ultimately effectiveness not only of nonprofit practitioners but foundations themselves.”

Sara Engelhardt, former program officer at the Carnegie Corporation who left the presidency of the Foundation Center, says the process is congested with middlemen, including trustees and program officers. She believes charities often have to “rewrite their budgets according to very specific requests related to a grant maker's needs.”

For some of my clients a grant is a pyrrhic victory – it costs more to service than the grant is worth. Those are the people Project Streamline wants to hear from at www.projectstreamline.org -- and so would I. You can share your thoughts and opinions and experiences anonymously: “…most of the red tape involved prohibits XXX organization from getting funded,” “…some grantmakers have developed complex application requirements that are not proportionate to the size of their grants.” Let’s hear it!

More on the Common Grant Application and right-sizing of grant applications at a later date.