CCS Fundraising

Type: Article

In the CCS Philanthropic Climate Survey conducted in January 2021, many nonprofit leaders shared that the renewed societal focus on racial equity and social justice has activated their organization to begin taking the necessary steps to adjust their overall workplace policies and board activities.

An organization’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is much bigger than individual silos of work or initiatives. To create meaningful impact, DEI must be a cornerstone of the organization’s mission and integrated into every facet of its work and culture. Many nonprofits are looking to diversify their board, aiming to understand what a focus on DEI means for their organization and board members. This is the beginning of a long, much-needed journey where everyone at your organization, including the board, can play a role and lead by example.

As you continue on this journey, consider the three key areas outlined below to ensure your board is diverse, inclusive, and equity-focused:

1) Assess the example your organization sets for the board

Consider creating a road map of how your organization as a whole will deploy DEI strategies and assess your efforts along the way, holding your organization accountable.

Take time to reflect on the following questions:

  • Is your strategic plan informed by ongoing feedback and guidance from the communities you exist to serve?
  • How are you creating an impact that is both deep and broad, understanding and working to solve the root causes of challenges facing the communities you serve?
  • How are you telling your organization’s story? What language and images are you using to honor the dignity of the communities you serve and avoiding the pitfalls of a savior complex?
  • Do your staff, board, and volunteer recruitment practices break down biases and intentionally seek out diversified perspectives and backgrounds?
  • How are you creating a work environment that embraces diverse cultures and perspectives, allowing your team to be present in their authentic self?
  • Are your staff, board, and volunteers reflective of the communities you serve or partner with?
  • Are you creating regular and frequent space for open discussions and education around DEI, supporting your team to be comfortable with being uncomfortable?
  • Have you created a DEI commitment statement? If so, has it been shared with your board and the broader community?

2) Cultivate a strong board culture that celebrates differences

The culture of a nonprofit board can define how work is carried out and the role the board plays in an organization’s mission. Individual volunteers provide their time, talent, and treasure because they have a connection to or passion for the cause. Open communication, trust, respect, accountability, and transparency among fellow board members and organizational leadership are crucial to success. Organizations must understand the complete identity of their board members to effectively engage and collaborate.

As you progress on your DEI journey, don’t forget to bring your board members along. The board chair sets the tone and cultivates the board culture through leading by example as it relates to how the board operates. A strong board culture doesn’t just happen overnight—it takes time and patience to cultivate. It is important to reflect on how inclusive your board culture is, what blind spots might exist, and what opportunities lie ahead.

Questions to consider:

  • Does your board have regular and ongoing conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion?
  • What education opportunities exist in your current structure or need to be added in order to guide the board in meaningful DEI work?
  • When it comes to building a diverse board that truly reflects the community that your organization serves, what is the process for identifying these individuals? Is it inclusive?
  • Does your organization acknowledge, value, encourage, and leverage the different perspectives and life experiences of board members to create action plans on how to advance your mission or purpose?
  • How might you foster an environment that ensures board members reflect, listen, and learn from one another's experiences?
  • Are you providing opportunities for your board members to identify and process their blind spots and/or unconscious biases?
  • How is your board creating accountability to measure DEI progress and success?
  • How can the board adapt to better support the work that needs to be accomplished in the most impactful way?

3) Board composition and diversity: working to represent the communities served

A nonprofit’s board composition can either help or hinder how connected an organization is to the community they have set out to serve. It can signal if the organization values the perspectives, needs, and priorities of the community. While many organizations acknowledge the need to focus on building and recruiting a diverse board, the makeup of these leadership bodies across the country remains unchanged. According to BoardSource’s 2021 Leading with Intent report, less than 17% of board chairs identify as Black, indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC), and only 22% of board members nationally identify as Black, indigenous, and/or people of color.

Acknowledging the shortfall is only the first step to making change. Diversity is not a box your organization can check off and forget about. Think bigger and avoid the common pitfalls of tokenism by being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to ensuring everyone has a seat at the table. It will require implementing intentional DEI policies and practices to recruitment efforts in order to diversify board leadership. Diversity must move from intentionality to actuality and eventually be ingrained into your organization’s DNA. Take the time to honestly acknowledge where your organization sits on this diversity spectrum.

Diversity is much more than the color of one’s skin. It involves cultural backgrounds, lived experiences, skillsets, and viewpoints that an individual can bring to an organization. But one unifying tenet that should always remain constant in your search for board members is finding individuals who are aligned with your organization’s values.

As you take the next step to diversify your board, here are some key questions to consider:

  • Why is it important to your organization to build board diversity?
  • Does your current board composition show the community your commitment to understanding their needs?
  • Identify any gaps: what skillsets, perspectives, and identities are you missing on your current board?
  • Determine the key traits or characteristics of those in the community you serve. Compare these traits to the traits of your current board. What is missing?
  • How are you expanding your reach and recruiting candidates from diverse backgrounds and experiences? Are you choosing new diversity-focused websites or organizations to promote the opportunity?
  • How are you describing the organization’s focus on diversity with potential board candidates?

Final Thoughts

These three focus areas and key questions are a starting point to engage in thoughtful conversations with leadership, key volunteers, and board members on how DEI can and should be prioritized within your board. Take the time to be intentional in building a board culture where everyone’s perspective matters, where the diversity of your board reflects the communities you serve, and in which your approach to diversity aligns with your organization’s values. Understanding why diversity matters to your organization, board, and community is the foundation to becoming more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.

Your organization may find these additional resources helpful on your journey:

Mergers and acquisitions are widespread across the healthcare sector and have a direct impact on philanthropy. Whether it is a health system acquiring a community hospital as part of a larger growth plan or two health systems merging to improve healthcare services across a region, such significant institutional changes require foundations and development teams to adapt thoughtfully and efficiently in a fast-changing environment.

Based on decades of experience in the healthcare sector and witnessing firsthand countless mergers and acquisitions across the country, CCS offers the following lessons learned to help healthcare leaders in philanthropy seize new opportunities and navigate unforeseen challenges during this process.

Look Inward & Prioritize Communication

Moving forward with the new, shared corporate identity from the start is important, as changes are easier to make when the merger is first announced rather than many months or even years afterward. Initial steps to accomplish this include:

  • Define a unified brand and marketing strategy that highlights the benefits of coming together.
  • Do your due diligence and take inventory of what communication and messaging assets exist across institutions. Be prepared to answer the question: how will the newly merged entity better help our patients, their families, and our staff?
  • Ensure that digital content, website(s), and materials between the two entities are aligned from the start.
  • Plan for the appropriate, unified constituent outreach, starting with internal stakeholders, such as your Board and staff, and then including external stakeholders like major donors, grateful patients, and third-party event leaders.

Prioritizing communications and refining the message to your audience is imperative, but remember, one message does not fit all. Internal audiences will want to know more about the structure and mechanics of the merger, but it is best to keep these communications at a high level. With external audiences, focus on the benefits of the merger to patients, their families, physicians, and staff.

Define Leadership Structure & Clarify Roles

Merging leadership to form a single operation can be tricky and difficult, especially when the leaders and staff of each institution are popular among their constituents and donors. However, trying to preserve separate cultures across entities can leave a team vulnerable to a fragmented and disorganized environment.

Creating a single combined organizational structure to support the new institution is essential to success. Clear decisions about leadership and staff structure allow merged teams to understand their respective roles and to work collaboratively as their institutions come together. Institutional leadership should be clearly defined at the top and designed to be collaborative, not competitive. Remember, everyone is on the same team now. The new organization chart should encourage teamwork and communication. Additional considerations for establishing a healthy, unified team include:

  • Begin the alignment of operations, policies, Board responsibilities, donor societies, etc. as soon as possible to prevent any imbalances between the two organizations. Clever philanthropic leaders will take advantage of the impending merger to revise outdated policies, transition ineffective leaders and volunteers, eliminate inefficient legacy projects, and create new philanthropic initiatives.
  • In one case study, CCS worked with a health system in Boston following a community hospital acquisition to slowly dissolve the hospital foundation Board and integrate key Board members into the main foundation Board of Trustees for the entire system. To maintain local trust and a smooth transition, the system updated its foundation Board bylaws to require a specific number of representatives to sit on the local hospital Board. This revision also generated greater connectedness and philanthropic opportunity at the local level.
  • Prioritize performance metrics and volunteer committee operations in the newly established structure to ensure expectation setting, continued growth, and professional development. Leadership should continuously measure success and be open to needed changes throughout the first year.
  • In another case study, CCS worked with an academic healthcare institution in the Central U.S. region to support the merging of two separate development teams into one. Three key questions asked early on to inform the appropriate transition timing and approach included: What staffing structure do we need to support a unified effort?; Does the team have the necessary tools for success?; Do we have the right talent?

Engage Top Donors in the Process

Having previously made significant investments in the merging organizations, top donors will appreciate getting information in advance of any public announcements. Let the donor pyramid guide the sequencing of your communications – start with top donors first!

To ensure better coordination of top donors, the integration of (or collaboration between) the two institutional database systems is important to implement as soon as possible. Have a plan to reach out to key stakeholders as the merger is being announced and provide periodic updates afterward. Create a schedule for periodic communication but be careful not to over-communicate. Drawing constant attention to the merger may make it appear that difficulties exist. Periodic updates are welcome and assure donors that the process is going smoothly. Finally, the merger may present an opportunity to engage your top donors in a new way.

In another case study, CCS worked with a health system in New Jersey following the acquisition of a community hospital to help local hospital leaders inspire local donors to think bigger about their impact at the system level. In addition to supporting their community hospital directly, donors learned how their gift could have an elevated impact across the system.

Anticipate Pitfalls

Moving too quickly or too slowly can cause challenges. Rushing the merger of philanthropic efforts can cause confusion and frustration among donors and staff alike. Waiting too long can cause the entrenchment of leaders, the continuation of inefficient foundation workflows, the duplication of efforts, and help to perpetuate separate philanthropic cultures within the merging institutions. What’s the right speed? Of course, it depends on the size and scale of the organizations. That said, CCS offers the following sequence and general practice for consideration:

Time PeriodConsiderations
Pre-Merger– Communicate with internal stakeholders
– Audit each foundation’s strengths and opportunities
– Create branding and marketing materials
Early Merger– Integrate the database
– Align foundation and Board policies
– Create new organizational structure with clear and collaborative responsibilities
– Prioritize communications with external stakeholders
Mid-Merger– Consider sharing services for efficiency and enhanced coordination (gift processing, communications, human resources, planned giving, annual fund appeals, etc.)

CCS has experience helping healthcare organizations navigate mergers and acquisitions and a host of other challenges. If you are undergoing a merger or acquisition, email us to discuss how to apply the concepts in this article to your individual case.

Woven into CCS’s mission is our commitment to foster transformational change. We strive to ensure that our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is reflected in the organizations and communities with which we partner. Most importantly, we are devoted to ensuring our approach and work is grounded in the realities and unique capacities of our partners. We therefore aim to share our learnings from primarily Hispanic parishes across the U.S. to elevate fundraising and operations as it pertains to sustaining the faith across these communities.

Hispanics make up a growing portion of practicing Catholics in the United States. Scott Whitaker, Director of Stewardship & Development at the Diocese of Austin, shared that in the Diocese of Austin, more and more young brothers and sisters of Hispanic origin are involved in the church and make up the vast majority of Catholics under 18 years old. As Scott expressed: “Hispanic families believe in community, gathering, and being with each other. They love their faith and have rich traditions and cultures that they bring to the church.” There are several ways parish and diocesan leaders can strive to ensure stability and growth in fundraising and stewardship at Hispanic parishes.

Recognize the deep and diverse history within each parish.

Beyond recognizing the need to engage Hispanic communities and tailor our approach to these parishes, CCS Executive Director José Rodriguez notes the diversity within the Hispanic community itself: “Hispanic parishes are very diverse. Hispanics come from a variety of countries with distinct histories and cultures. In addition, within a certain national cultural identity, communities from distinct regions can differ greatly in their ways of living, speaking, and approaching their environment.” Catherine V. Fraser, Interim Chief Development Officer at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, also calls out the diversity of experiences in Hispanic communities: “Parishioners may have distinct cultural experiences depending on their country of origin and their immigration experience. They may have arrived in the United States fleeing civil war and genocide, or they may have come for more economic opportunity. They may have deep ties to their former homes, or they may have lost those connections. What unites the Hispanic communities is their commitment to the parish and their devotion to their faith.”

Importantly, the distribution of immigration is often community-driven, creating different Hispanic communities in different places. As Catherine highlights, “Some parishes have people from South America, others from Central American countries, like Honduras or El Salvador. Many are from Mexico, but even within Mexico, we see deep diversity of experience.” Thus, it is important to take into consideration the varied cultural and language traditions of different Hispanic communities when developing programs and communications.

Let donors guide their own giving decisions.

According to a study done at Stanford, Hispanic Americans are experiencing greater income development than their previous generations. However, when first approaching a Hispanic parish, a phrase that José heard many times is “everyone here is poor.” In fact, through her many years of experience fundraising for the Catholic Church, Gaby Nuñez, Vice President at CCS, learned that it is detrimental to a church’s own financial wellness to make such assumptions, because it reduces the likelihood to ask for charitable support.

Engage volunteers and community knowledge to ensure families are stewarded at the right level.

Among predominantly Hispanic parishes, there is a significant amount of cash giving. This means that fundraisers cannot necessarily rely on giving records. As Gaby puts it: “It’s important to take the time to review and engage leading parishioners and pastors about who should be approached and what giving request levels are appropriate. On more than one occasion, after assigning a request level based on limited previous giving history for a donor, a volunteer leader advised the team to put forth a larger request, which turned out to be successful.”

Stay digitally connected, regardless of location, demographic, and circumstance.

Likewise, with 24 years of experience working with the Catholic Church, Martin Camacho, Corporate Vice President at CCS, highlights the importance of staying digitally connected even at small community parishes. In his experience in rural Texas during the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was first thought that the parishioners would not have easy access to the internet and that the parish would not be able to complete its campaign using virtual methods. However, these assumptions were quickly dismantled, as Martin shares, “It was remarkable how parishioners invested in fundraising. I don’t recall a single person not being able to join online meetings. One woman was helped by her young grandchildren to get her on Zoom; we could see the children peeking from over her shoulder. In the same way that Hispanic communities can gather three or more generations at Mass, parishioners made fundraising a family affair, and it was successful — they reached 300% of their goal.”

Establish deep relationships between pastor and parishioner.

While Hispanic parishes developed innovative ways to use technology and stay connected through online gatherings, drive-through events, and more, it is important to acknowledge that these communities, along with other communities of color, were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott Whitaker observed that Hispanic communities in the Diocese of Austin experienced higher rates of virus transmission and loss of employment. Parishes also saw a greater decline in offertory and longer, sometimes still ongoing, recovery of the financial loss. In these contexts, Martin and Gaby both observe that parishes where pastors knew churchgoers on a personal level were able to reach out to parishioners and express pastoral care, thus enriching a sense of community.  “This is not new, we’ve known about this for years, but the pastor is absolutely critical. If you have a pastor that embraces the Hispanic culture and is able to inspire them, all we can do to work with these pastors directly and help them grow is absolutely key,” said Scott.

Looking forward, as the Hispanic Catholic community continues to grow, it will be important for pastoral leaders, staff, and volunteers to recognize the particular context of each community, focus on gathering data to optimize communications, and adjust fundraising and programmatic strategies to the needs of the parish. Given the growing Hispanic population coupled with the threat of disengaged participation, “We need to understand the needs better and ensure that our parishes are engaging Hispanic communities with effective ministerial outreach,” concludes Catherine, “We also must recognize this need is urgent.”

With increased enrollment challenges and constraints on tuition revenue, continued pressure to have competitive programs and facilities, and the growing need for endowment and financial aid, Heads of School are increasingly called upon to play an active role in securing philanthropic dollars. While new Heads of School are often prepared for the academic and administrative aspects of the job, CCS has found that first-time Heads are often surprised by the demands on their time posed by the school’s fundraising program.

With ample time between appointment and the first day on the job, CCS has recommendations for how new Heads can prepare themselves to be comfortable and confident in the role of “fundraiser-in-chief.”

Step 1: Foster a Culture of Philanthropy

A Head of School builds a culture of giving whether they realize it or not; each positive parent or alumni interaction, back-to-school night, soccer game, or science fair contributes to an invested and engaged community. As fundraiser-in-chief, a Head of School is responsible for the added work of articulating the need for continued support and making asks of the larger community.

The role of Head of School is an act of balancing both the internal and the external. Heads must manage internal priorities, including students, faculty, staff, finances, facilities, programs, DEI, and COVID-19 responses, along with external priorities, including communications, parents, and alumni. In addition to day-to-day administration, the Head serves as the voice and face of the school and its values. The Head is responsible for communicating the school’s vision and plan to all of the constituencies that make up an independent school community. While a Head’s time is limited and priorities are constantly shifting, fundraising touches almost every aspect of independent school life and merits dedicated time from the start to foster a strong culture of philanthropy.

Step 2: Chart Your Course

With many schools selecting new Heads a year in advance, newly appointed Heads have ample time to begin developing ideas for what they would like to accomplish during each year of their tenure. Any ideation around the big picture must also consider fundraising strategy, which can and should be different with each successive year of a Head’s time at a school.

To start, it is helpful to look at the first three years, the typical length of a new Head’s initial contract, to develop a better understanding of the types of fundraising activities a Head will participate in and the amount of time fundraising will require.

A Head’s first year should be spent getting to know the school community. Meetings with Board members, alumni, and parents will help a new Head gain a sense of where a school is and where it can go. These interactions will foster meaningful relationships with the school’s key stakeholders, which will lay a groundwork of trust that can only ease any future solicitations. A new Head will also need to rely heavily on the school’s advancement or development team to build a thorough understanding of fundraising development and culture. The development team will also play an integral role in helping a Head determine who to solicit and how to solicit them, in addition to arranging important cultivation and stewardship events that strengthen the school’s culture of philanthropy.

In our experience, a Head’s second year shifts away from year one’s focus on community building towards the development of a clear vision and strategy. A new Head will often begin a strategic planning or strategic initiatives process, during which he or she will work with their leadership team, the Board, and community committees to define and articulate a vision for the school’s future. This process should include a carefully coordinated fundraising plan to develop the resources that will likely be necessary to implement and to fund initiatives of the strategic plan. Many schools include fundraising considerations and encounter challenges when mapping their strategic plan to the fundraising potential after the fact.​ Getting ahead of the game and including fundraising from the start will smooth the transition from planning to implementation and execution. The time spent participating in fundraising activity will increase from year one, but the majority of time will likely be spent in stewardship and cultivation conversations, rather than direct solicitations.

For many Heads, year three will mean the preparatory and planning phase of a major gift campaign to resource the strategic plan. A Head of School may find that the community needs more time for feasibility and planning work to understand the donor base and capacity. This is also the time to define the specific case elements for the campaign. A Head will likely experience increased committee work and travel as he or she begins the important early work of securing leadership gifts toward the campaign goals.​ By the third year, particularly if the school is entering a campaign or major gift effort, a Head can expect that upwards of 50% of his or her time will be consumed by some type of fundraising activity, possibly more.

Step 3: Build Your Team

Though the Head of School is the fundraiser-in-chief, his or her responsibilities are too numerous and too demanding for all fundraising activity to fall on the Head’s plate. The Head is part of a larger fundraising team that includes the Board of Trustees and the development office. Each group plays a vital role in ensuring fundraising success at an independent school.

Ideally, every member of the Board will be a participant in the fundraising process, actively soliciting donors on behalf of the school. In reality, however, many Board members may not be comfortable asking for money. The good news is that there are numerous roles a Board can play to help advance the school’s fundraising initiatives. A Head of School can expect Board members to:

  • Serve as advocates in the community, promoting the school’s mission and values
  • Understand and execute fundraising best practices
  • And, most importantly, participate with money, time, and connections

Many schools have a development or advancement committee which helps to create big-picture strategy around fundraising, is deeply involved in solicitation, and provides critical support to the school’s development team. Members of the development committee can act as a sounding board for the development team and provide feedback on what will resonate with the school community. They play a critical role in identifying prospects and encourage community-wide giving, strengthened by their own personally significant giving. Finally, they should work as ambassadors, warming up prospects for cultivation and solicitation, and thanking them for their support.

Just as a new Head will have expectations of the Board, so too will the Board have expectations for the Head and the development office. A Head should work closely with the development team to ensure that Board members feel well equipped to complete the fundraising tasks associated with their role. Development teams, in conjunction with the Head, should provide clearly defined responsibilities and expectations, along with short and long-term strategies and plans, access to fundraising training, and, most importantly, direct lines of communication. Board members are not just volunteers, but major stakeholders in an institution, and it is essential that they receive the resources they need to fundraise successfully.

Critical to the success of every school’s fundraising program is the development team. Members of the development team will provide essential support to the Head of School and the Board of trustees by setting strategy, preparing for and participating in solicitations, maintaining donor records, and often developing donor communications. The director of development should be a trusted partner to the Head of School, a skilled communicator who has a deep passion for the institution and its mission.

The director of development will need to be a strong manager, overseeing the fundraising staff, which should include frontline fundraisers (those who ask for money), and support staff (those who maintain the donor database, conduct research, and plan events). Though most of the development staff may not be in regular contact with the Head of School, they will need to advocate for the Head’s vision and earn donors’ trust. It is essential that this team receive the resources they need to do their jobs; a well-resourced development office will not only convey professionalism to donors but will also minimize staff turnover.

New Heads are often interested in their profession because of their passion to educate young people. Fundraising is the key that unlocks the school’s ability to provide an outstanding education, cutting-edge resources, a supportive community, and opportunities that transform students and the community at large. By fostering a community of philanthropy, charting your course, and building your team, a new Head can meet their philanthropic goals and exceed at delivering their mission.

 

 

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Nonprofit organizations with missions and activities that connect them with an international community should consider whether pursuing international donors is a viable strategy in their annual fundraising plans.

To build a successful international fundraising program, establishing an internal infrastructure and developing systems to qualify, cultivate, solicit, and steward international donors is critical. This article lays out four key areas for nonprofits to consider before launching a comprehensive international fundraising program.

1) Internal Infrastructure

Before developing a strategy for international donors, your organization should first evaluate its internal capabilities and whether it is equipped to effectively accept, track, and steward international funds.

Specific considerations include:

  1. Does our staffing structure support the effective management of international donors?
  2. Does our gift processing system accept multiple currencies and track international activity?

Staffing

The most effective way to connect with international donors is to have a local staff who can understand and appropriately match local philanthropic cultures. For some nonprofits, establishing a local organization in a foreign country is a productive strategy. Doing so enables your nonprofit to build meaningful relationships with local prospects and allows donors to take advantage of local tax rules.

Establishing such structures is often a substantial lift operationally, requiring clear reporting structures, transfer agreements, and processes to move and allocate funding. Further, many countries do not allow this “pass-through” agreement and require specific registration to redirect contributions abroad. This means that unless your nonprofit is conducting business in the identified country, it may not make sense to set up the infrastructure for an intermediary organization.

If building an intermediary organization is not realistic for your organization, consider which of your staff members have the bandwidth to engage international donors and the ability to travel as needed. When making this determination, consider whether there are high concentrations of prospects in any one region that a staff member can be assigned to and periodically travel to. Refer to U.S. income tax treaties to determine whether international donors may claim tax deductibility for their gift.

Systems

Before cultivating donors, it is similarly critical to consider if your nonprofit has strong gift acceptance policies and CRM processes that enable tracking necessary donor activity and information.

With the system itself in place, your organization should then outline a process that determines how to recognize fluctuations in currencies. For example, pledges are often recognized at the USD equivalency at the time of making a gift, not at each pledge payment period. There are several businesses that work with nonprofits to help set up currency converting systems, including Western Union Business and PayPal.

Having each of these internal pieces in place will allow your organization to move forward with cultivation with confidence.

2) Developing a Prospect List

Prospect research is an essential step in building your fundraising plan, as it unveils the opportunities that exist in your community of supporters. There are several helpful tools that can assist with research and information gathering on international donors:

One important factor to note while undertaking research for donors in the European Union and the United Kingdom: legislation known as the GDPR, which is widely recognized as the strongest donor privacy law in the world. It imposes strict obligations on organizations globally if they collect data on E.U. and U.K. citizens, including:

  • Inform donors on what data is being collected, how it will be used and stored, and gain their permission.
  • Upon request, provide donors a record of their personal data within 28 days.
  • Allow for the “right to be forgotten.”
  • Hold data securely and for a defined period. A data storage policy is mandatory and data may not be held indefinitely. Policies must be concise, transparent, and provided to donors.

The GDPR legislation is complex and your nonprofit may want to seek counsel from an advisor with deep knowledge of the legislation before undertaking prospect research. Furthermore, creating opportunities for donors to consent to receive communications from your nonprofit is an important first step in your engagement plan.

3) Engaging Prospects

As your organization ramps up its engagement with international prospects, it is imperative to create a cultivation plan that connects these individuals with an organization’s mission, programmatic activities, and impact.

In developing this plan, gain awareness of the philanthropic culture of the donor’s home country and region. Many countries have unique philanthropic cultures and individual donors may hold varying expectations for how an organization will engage with them. Possessing a strong understanding of the distinct cultural groups within a country or region is also critical.

Moreover, consider whether the U.S. has a positive relationship with the home country of the international donor. If not, this may have implications on how your organization engages with the donor in a public fashion and how your organization might recognize a gift.

After researching a country or region’s philanthropic culture and traditions, it is important to consider the following questions as you develop an engagement plan:

  • Has the individual demonstrated an alignment with the mission through their philanthropic support of other organizations?
  • Do they want to be kept apprised of programmatic activities?
  • Do they like attending events? If so, are any events accessible to them?
  • Do they want access to members of your board or corporate partners?
  • Do they want public recognition of their gift?

These questions are not dissimilar from those your organization would consider for a local donor, but the culture of philanthropy in an international donor’s home country or region may dictate different answers to these questions and lead to the creation of a unique engagement plan.

Finally, once organizations begin to plan for in-person gatherings again, consider including a virtual option to engage with international donors who cannot travel to visit an organization in person.

4) Tax Laws and Regulations

In the U.S., specific tax structures exist to incentivize philanthropic giving from individuals and corporations. However, this is not always the case for donors residing outside of the U.S. It is important for your organization to consult with tax lawyers to understand when a donor might be eligible to claim a tax deduction when making a gift. Below, we have outlined a generalized framework for assessing eligibility.

Donors Who Are Eligible for Tax Deductibility: To claim a tax deduction in the U.S. for charitable giving, an individual must file their income taxes in the United States through an IRS form 1040. This includes individuals who are not living in the U.S. but who have U.S.-sourced income, whether that includes compensation, sold inventory, or dividends from a U.S. corporation.

Donors Who Might Be Eligible for Tax Deductibility: There are several examples of tax treaties that enable international donors to offset local taxes by making gifts to U.S. organizations. It is worthwhile to examine whether there is a tax treaty between your organization and your donor’s home country and whether this reveals opportunities in nuanced tax rules.

Donors Ineligible for Tax Deductibility: If a donor does not own a residence in the U.S., does not pay U.S. income tax, and does not live in a country with a tax treaty with the U.S., that donor will typically be unable to claim a tax benefit for their gift to a U.S. organization. For this donor, consider whether they are open to supporting your organization without a tax incentive or whether their gift can be made through an intermediary organization in the local country.

When making an ask to a foreign donor, there are two key considerations to keep in mind:

  • Advise the donor to consult their own tax professionals or local tax law. Be sure that all acknowledgments or tax letters have clear language stating that these gifts are or are not tax deductible in the United States.
  • Focus the solicitation on your organization’s mission and the impact of their gift over any incentives or tax benefits.

Final Thoughts

Building a supportive infrastructure, conducting research, creating personalized engagement plans, and understanding local customs, practices, laws, and regulations are all critical steps an organization should take before launching an international fundraising program. If your organization is developing a fundraising strategy for international donors, or considering your donor engagement strategy more generally, CCS Fundraising offers a suite of services that can help. For more information, contact CCS today.

This piece has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not to be construed as legal or tax advice. Individuals should consult their lawyer, accountant, or tax advisor with regard to such matters.

Do you have spreadsheet fatigue?

Are you juggling disconnected donor information across multiple spreadsheets? Tired of trying to remember which spreadsheet includes your most recent interaction, which spreadsheet includes prospect research, and which spreadsheet includes an upcoming solicitation strategy? The best solution to this common problem is to switch from tracking this information in spreadsheets to optimize reporting from—or within—your CRM (customer relationship management) software.

I understand—it can feel onerous to enter information into a CRM, create a report, and then export data from the CRM into a spreadsheet rather than just update your existing spreadsheet. But there are valuable benefits to tracking donor information in your CRM rather than spreadsheets, including:

1) A CRM serves as a vault of organizational knowledge for years to come

One study found that the average tenure of a fundraiser is 16 months. To continue a seamless relationship with donors during staff transitions, it is vital that all donor interactions, research, and notes are recorded in the CRM rather than peppered throughout various spreadsheets and documents.

2) Managing data in your CRM provides access to insights in real-time

Rather than searching for the most recent version of a spreadsheet on your desktop or shared drive, a CRM allows you to get up-to-date data from the source. You can even create dashboards to ensure key data points are always at your fingertips—for example, gifts from prospects in your portfolio or donor interactions to date.

3) Spreadsheets are more susceptible to errors

Especially if your organization collaboratively edits shared spreadsheets, there is a much greater chance that the contents of a cell are mistakenly deleted or changed compared to a mistake happening in your CRM. In addition, working in a CRM greatly minimizes the risk of mistakenly overwriting important past information, such as a column for “most recent interactions.”

4) A CRM ensures you stay on top of follow-up tasks and outreach

While next steps can get buried in a spreadsheet, keeping track of follow-up actions in your CRM provides you with many options to review your to-do list, whether it is in a dashboard or notifications that remind you of what tasks are coming up and what might be overdue.

Transitioning from Spreadsheets to Your Donor Database

Would you like to start making the switch from spreadsheets to your CRM? Some simple first steps include:

  1. Look at each piece of information you keep in your spreadsheet and see where it fits in your CRM. In tasks? Prospect status? Notes? An opportunity? Map out where each column will live.
  2. If not already in your CRM, upload or enter the information.
  3. Build out a dashboard to visualize information within your CRM.

OR

  1. Create a report to pull the data you would like to see.
  2. Copy and paste the data from that report into your original designed template.

Note: if you are stuck on one of the above steps, you may need to consult a database expert, either at your organization or externally, who can help ensure that your CRM is organized in a way to best serve you and your team.

Voila! You have an updated, accurate donor or prospect report to help you and your team review important information and create a strategy. While porting information to your CRM requires an investment of time, it will certainly be worth it.

Learn more about CCS’s Systems and Change Management services.

On July 31, 2021, the extended federal moratorium on housing evictions due to COVID-19 will end. The eviction ban, which offers renters protection if they cannot pay rent, has been in place since September 2020 by the Department of Health and Human Services and was extended through July in March 2020. While some states have extended their own eviction moratoriums beyond July 2021, many have not, and those living in states that have may only qualify for relief if they are already in the process of seeking support.

What will the end of the ban mean for individuals and families who are struggling to afford rising rent costs and are at-risk of being evicted? What impacts will be had on the operational capacity and fundraising needs of organizations that address homelessness and housing stability who will be called upon to step up and provide resources for safe, stable housing and rental assistance?

According to the Census Bureau, roughly 3.6 million people claim they face eviction in the next two months and 7 million people are behind on their rent in the U.S. Based on past and recent experiences, nonprofit organizations in the homeless and housing space are already bracing for a significant spike in demand as was seen following the housing market crash of 2008 and throughout 2020 as public spaces closed and quarantines were established.

Across all nonprofits, fundraising is a critical lifeline for sustaining and growing program and service capacity. In addition to prioritizing the fortification of operations and program capacity, as well as exploring new partnerships to meet an anticipated rise in demand, housing-based organizations must also actively respond through their communications, community engagement, and fundraising efforts.

Your best donors are those who are informed and engaged. CCS Fundraising recommends assessing and updating your communications plan and fundraising materials to elevate the visibility of this emergent need, and focus on engaging the new donors who stepped up and joined you during COVID-19 as well as those donors loyal to the organization over the years.

Communications and Case

With regards to assessing and updating communications and fundraising collateral, your newsletters, annual appeals, major gift proposals, stewardship reports, and sharable social media content will be strengthened by including the following:

  • The ongoing impact that your organization had on homelessness since the start of the pandemic and eviction ban, as well as how demand and service delivery have evolved
  • Information about the policy change and the broader context of the state of homelessness both nationally and locally
  • Emphasis on the importance of stable housing and the incredibly damaging impacts of eviction as it relates to fighting chronic homelessness, holding down a job, pursuing career and education goals, supporting families, and providing safety in a pandemic
  • Elevated and amplified client stories and experiences
  • Your mission’s alignment to broader policy changes, whether that is agile service delivery, public advocacy, or other
  • Your steadfast commitment to serve your community during times of change

Intuitively, different constituencies of donors are motivated to give for a variety of reasons. Tailored messaging for different types of donors will only further strengthen your communications and fundraising materials as you seek support in FY21 and beyond.

Strategic Donor Engagement

Donor retention is central to a strong base of annual support and the cultivation of major gifts. New donors that contributed to your organization for the first time during COVID-19 should receive messaging that communicates the value proposition of your organization. Many of these new donors joined you out of a sense of duty to support their community in a time of urgent need. As this urgent need remains, thanking these new donors for stepping up and asking for their continued support is essential. Consider answering: What were you able to do with their support? How big is your addressable population? How dire is the need? What is your measurable impact on the community?

Repeat donors and major donors are often your greatest sources of significant gifts and multi-year pledges. These donors, especially those considered your nearest and dearest, should receive personalized messaging that underscores the continued importance of their support and the very specific impact of their generosity. In addition to sharing impact, offer them specific action steps that they can take to support your plan in response to the policy change. Appreciating the impacts of ending the eviction ban may have long term implications, seeking special two-to-three-year pledges can help provide reliable support you can count on in an uncertain and ever-evolving environment.

Other Thoughts and Considerations for Nonprofits

In addition to seeing the need for and impact of their support, donors want to know what else can be done to address homelessness and housing stability. Beyond raising awareness through communications and publicity, and strategically engaging donors, all nonprofits in this space should explore how new or stronger partnerships with other public, nonprofit, and corporate entities can be used to address homelessness and housing insecurity within their community.  At the state and local level, nonprofits should also explore how donors can tap into grassroots advocacy efforts to change the system and ensure access to stable housing which is paramount to ending the cycle of homelessness for individuals and families.

A strong major gifts program requires well-composed portfolios. While donor conversation is and will always be critical for confirming their inclination to give and gift capacity, many issues in constructing portfolios can be resolved ahead of time with data captured in a CRM system. These five tips will help your development department leverage the data in its donor database to ensure the right prospects are in gift officers’ portfolios.

1) Capture and update contacts within your database

Every year, the employees of your nonprofit come across hundreds, if not thousands, of potential donors, advocates, and supporters for your institution. To make the most of these relationships, it is critical to ensure their information is accurately captured at the relationship’s onset. Consider setting practices and processes around systematically adding new contacts into your donor database and storing relationship information not just within your gifts officers’ or program officers’ heads, in a notebook, or in Excel, but also within your current CRM.

What if one of your program coordinators regularly engages a volunteer who happens to be the significant other of a Fortune 500 CEO? What if you discover in passing that a new single ticket buyer is a board member of a community foundation on your target list? Capturing contacts within databases helps ensure your organization is not missing opportunities to identify and strategically engage fundraising and friend-building prospects.

As you enter contacts, basic database hygiene is key. Capture correct names, salutations, addresses, gift records, and contact information. If you have not already, you should also note the date of your last wealth screening activity.

2) Wealth screen regularly

As your organization adds potential supporters to its database, engage in a wealth screening at least every three years to gain insight into the overall giving capacity of your organization’s contacts. For higher education institutions, consider conducting a wealth screen with every new class of admitted students. For hospitals, which generally have a higher volume of face-to-face interactions with potential donors, consider completing wealth screens more frequently as part of a grateful patient program.

3) Conduct a segmentation analysis

It isn’t enough to simply add new contacts to your database, or regularly complete wealth screens. Good portfolios are created through segmentation.

Segment your donors with a recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis to help target which donors should be elevated to a gift officer’s portfolio and which may be a better fit within your annual fund communications pipeline. Recency considers the last gift a donor made to your institution, frequency considers how often gifts are made to your institution, and monetary value considers how much the donor has given to your institution. Combining RFM scores and wealth screening data can help define segments of donors to add or remove from a gift officer’s portfolio.

Depending on the size and complexity of your institution’s database, you may also consider undertaking predictive modeling to segment your donors. This approach entails looking at a broad swath of internal data points as well as wealth screening information to help optimize gift officer portfolios.

4) Monitor annual fund appeal responses for sudden or gradual gift amount lifts over time

Donors may signal readiness to be moved into a major gifts officer portfolio based on the trends of their giving. Keep a close eye on the average return for cyclical annual fund appeals. Are any donors generally giving significantly above the average for your appeals? Has a donor’s giving steadily increased year over year? Has there been a seemingly random four or five-figure gift from a donor unassigned to a gifts officer portfolio? These are all signs that the institution might consider engaging this donor on a more personal level.

5) Have candid conversations on moves management

Does a donor sparsely return calls, emails, or contact? Has a donor not responded to a gift appeal in the past few years? It might be time to remove these donors from a gifts officer portfolio. However, before this happens, be sure actions are being adequately tracked within your database and taken into consideration. Who was the last point of contact? Who is the primary solicitor?  When was the last contact—and with what partners, materials, and talking points? These details are critical for diagnosing cause and effect and developing institutional knowledge rather than operating from anecdotal observations.

The journey to successfully collecting and using CRM data to make decisions on portfolio strategy can be complex and time-consuming. However, it is well worth the investment to elevate your major gifts program and scale your fundraising capacity.

Is your organization considering how to build an effective fundraising data and reporting structure? Learn more about CCS’s Systems and Change Management services.

CCS Fundraising is thrilled to share the tenth edition of Snapshot of Today’s Philanthropic Landscape. This report compiles and contextualizes research from across the field of philanthropy to help U.S. nonprofits wade through the available data and create informed fundraising strategies.

“For the past ten years, CCS has aggregated the latest research on the state of U.S. philanthropy in our Snapshot of Today’s Philanthropic Landscape report,” say the publication Co-Editors, Tom Kissane, Principal and Managing Director and Natalie Skinner, Senior Vice President. “It is heartening to see the resiliency of philanthropy reflected in this year’s edition, as Giving USA estimates that Americans gave a record-setting $471.44 billion in 2020. At the same time, we must recognize that this outpouring of generosity sits within a complex and turbulent landscape. It is more important than ever for nonprofit leaders and fundraisers to understand the philanthropic terrain and be diligent and intentional as they connect with donors. We are elated to share this tenth-edition report as a resource to help mission-driven organizations uncover philanthropic trends and develop data-informed fundraising strategies.”

The report discusses essential findings from across the field of philanthropic research, including:

  • Individuals, foundations, and corporations donated $471.44 billion in 2020, a new record and an incredible demonstration of generosity and resilience in a complex year.[1]
  • Donors are responding to the unique conditions of today’s world, making philanthropic gifts and pledges of more than $21 billion to U.S. COVID-19 relief and more than $14 billion to U.S. racial justice efforts in 2020 and 2021 to date.[2]
  • Donations in support of pandemic relief and racial justice did not diminish overall philanthropic giving in 2020; donations to eight of the ten charitable causes tracked by Giving USA increased in 2020.[1]
  • Individuals continue to drive U.S. philanthropy, contributing 69% of giving in 2020.[1] An increasingly large portion of giving comes from wealthier individuals: 80% of charitable dollars come from 20% of households.[3]
  • Foundation giving grew faster than any other source in 2020, at a rate of 17%.[1]
  • Though corporate giving decreased by 6.1% in 2020, [1]  corporations stood out for significant philanthropic commitments to U.S. racial equity efforts and pandemic relief. [2]
  • The wealth of high net worth individuals grew in 2020, as did their giving; 2020’s top 53 donors gave a combined $24.7 billion.[4]
  • Nonprofits accepting non-cash donations grow nearly five times faster on average than organizations accepting only cash gifts.[5]
  • Digital giving increased by 21% to comprise 13% of all charitable giving in 2020, a new height.[6]

Read the full report for more findings and insights on the data from CCS’s fundraising experts. To download a copy of Snapshot of Today’s Philanthropic Landscape, 10th Edition, click here.

[1] Giving USA Foundation, Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2020 (2021).

[2] Candid, “Philanthropic response to coronavirus (COVID-19)” (Accessed July 16, 2021) and “Funding for racial equity” (Accessed July 16, 2021).

[3] Blackbaud, Vital Signs, Part 3: How Major Donors Are Shaping Philanthropy (2020).

[4] The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “The Philanthropy 50” (2021).

[5] Dr. Russell James III, Cash is Not King in Fundraising: Results from 1 Million Nonprofit Tax Returns (2018).

[6] Blackbaud, Charitable Giving Report (2021).

For nonprofits, customer relationship management (CRM) databases are libraries of donor information that enable essential activities like contacting donors, accounting for financial history, and noting primary relationships with an institution.

Your database only functions as well as the staff managing it. Building human-backed processes and systems for CRM maintenance will help your nonprofit strengthen its library of institutional knowledge on donors and empower fundraisers with the information they need to succeed.

DO educate your staff on the importance of tracking the information of friends and donors within a single platform.

Fundraising is a team sport. Whether you’re a frontline fundraiser or a program manager, a culture of philanthropy is important for identifying long-term relationships that lead to larger gifts for your institution. Tracking relationships within a central database is key to this success, and wards against losing knowledge over time with the natural transition of staff to new roles and responsibilities.

Train your fundraising staff to:

  • Understand the importance of inserting timely, accurate, and compliant information into the database
  • Engage in conversations with programmatic staff to identify and build knowledge on potential donors, referral sources, and partners for strategizing gift requests
  • Correctly input donor interests, actions, relationships, proposals, and other materials within your CRM

DON’T assume that database maintenance or usage is just one person’s job.

In high-functioning development offices, all staff members have basic knowledge of how to use the database to do their specific jobs. Whether you’re a frontline fundraiser, development assistant, prospect researcher, events coordinator, or administrative support staff member, all have a role to play in keeping institutional knowledge up to date.

Ensure all staff members are aware of basic information the institution gathers from donors, what to do when they learn a donor’s name and information are incorrect, and how to search for donors and pertinent information within the database.

DO develop a process for regularly updating and maintaining donor contact information.

As the adage goes, what gets measured gets managed. Become familiar with the percentage of donors within your database for which you have incorrect emails and mailing addresses recorded. Create a plan to proactively improve the quality of data within your system.

  • Inquire with your CRM provider to learn if your software includes a direct mail/email address validator or a feature to review deceased records. If your database does not, seek an online batch address validation tool.
  • Regularly screen your database for incomplete contact information and encourage relationship managers to help fill in the gaps. Note what percentage of entries are incomplete.
  • Assign one or more point person(s) for inserting new donors into your system, updating donor contact information and salutations, noting donors who are deceased, and documenting the assignment of primary solicitors and relationship managers.

DON’T assume all employees have equal technical skills and time to learn your database.

Usually, some staff members are more technologically adept than others. And frontline fundraisers prioritize engaging donors more than data entry! But the good news is that baseline database skills can be acquired with intentional and targeted training. There are also batch data upload tools and tricks you can employ to help streamline data entry and save end-users’ time.

It is important to meet staff where they are and gradually build their capacity with continuous, ongoing training and informational refreshers. Tailor the training to cover reports the staff member would be accountable for inserting data into and/or need to utilize regularly. In addition, supply easy-to-use glossaries of terms and quick how-to documents to help staff recall learnings.

Is your organization considering how to build an effective fundraising data and reporting structure? Learn more about CCS’s Systems and Change Management services.