Insights Archive - Page 26 of 30

The COVID-19 crisis continues to have a dramatic effect on our personal and professional lives, so out of necessity, many development teams are redirecting their focus to digital communication. As important donor meetings are moving to the video conferencing world in the coming weeks, much has been said about best practices for video conferencing in general. Tips like dressing professionally, ensuring you have the right equipment (i.e. microphones/cameras), and finding the right web platforms for your meeting are certainly useful. But how do you properly prepare to make sure that your next donor meeting is smooth and issue-free? Consider these tips in advance of your next meeting.

Hold Internal Practice Runs

To create a seamless meeting, avoiding any distractions will allow you to focus on the task at hand. You should always be logging into the meeting 15-20 minutes in advance of your session to make sure everything is running smoothly. But if time allows, you should also consider holding mock sessions with internal colleagues at least one day in advance of your meeting. You can utilize this practice time to:

Determine Roles: Divvy up responsibilities on your team where everyone plays a part. If you are using webinar software and inviting multiple people to the conversation, give your teammates official roles on the backend (i.e. organizer, panelist, attendee, etc.) so you can test what each view looks like.
Avoid Technical Issues: Doing a dry run will help you work out any technical kinks that may arise. It will also help you get up to speed on the format and functionality of the software. Testing your internet connection, microphone/phone/computer audio, as well as your web camera and room lighting during these practice runs will allow you to enter the real meeting with confidence that things will look right and operate correctly.

Practice and Time Your Talking Points

It is essential that you avoid going over time in your pitch or presentation. Planning talking points is even more important when using digital platforms. Use the internal practice runs to time things out so you have a better understanding of what to add or cut down for the meeting. Consider also having a colleague act as the donor and ask potential questions so you can time out your answers accordingly. Creating and communicating a detailed agenda well in advance will also go a long way to establishing expectations.

In creating your timeline, make sure you plan for the first five minutes to be used for everyone to sign in and get acclimated to the software. It is also important to leave time for introductions and small talk to keep the conversation personable. For example, it is natural that your donor may want to briefly discuss the COVID-19 crisis and how it is affecting them, and it’s important to allow time for this very important issue to be addressed. By being prepared, you can avoid letting this topic monopolize the agenda. You should also allow for time in case there are any technical issues, such as the donor’s internet connection or phone dropping out temporarily. This way you won’t feel rushed at the end of your meeting.

Create Ways to Keep the Donor Engaged

Keeping your audience engaged throughout is key to ensuring that the meeting is productive for everyone involved. After introductions and preliminary discussions, transition the conversation to an overview of the key points on the agenda. While you want this to stay as structured as possible, tell the donor that you welcome questions throughout to keep the conversation flowing freely. This will also help you gauge what is resonating. There could be multiple people on the call who are not all easily seen on screen, which could make it more difficult to read body language and respond to visual cues. Stopping to ask questions of the donor will go a long way in eliminating those issues.

Additionally, utilizing the technology to incorporate visuals and downloadable documents will allow for richer discussions. These should also be prepared and shared prior to the meeting. On a recent virtual donor session, leaders of a small parish in Connecticut were meeting with an elderly donor through a video conferencing platform. Three days before the meeting, the team sent e-mails to the donor with links to download the software as well as all meeting materials which included the case for support, an FAQ document, and a detailed meeting agenda. This allowed the leaders of the parish to focus more on the conversation and during the meeting itself, they didn’t need to take any time out of the discussion for materials to download. If possible and if time allows, mailing the donor hardcopy documents well before the meeting day adds another element of personability to the session.

Have a Backup Plan for Malfunctions

Because so many professionals are now using digital platforms to hold meetings, even the best programs are seeing technical issues due to bandwidth challenges. It is therefore worthwhile to have backup programs ready to use should your primary platform have technical issues.

In a recent meeting, leaders at an independent school were using video conferencing software to follow up with an important alumni donor and share campaign plans in light of the COVID-19 crisis. The software worked smoothly during the practice run a day before, but when members of the development team logged in 20 minutes before the meeting to test the software, the screen kept freezing and the screenshare function wasn’t working properly. After not being able to solve the issue in short time, the team quickly pivoted and decided to move to a different platform. They logged into the backup platform, sent the donor an email with new login instructions, and were able to hold a successful issue-free meeting that began on time.

As a third backup option, you can always consider moving to an audio-only conference call. Having these options in your back pocket will prepare you for any curve balls thrown your way and will keep you from needing to postpone the meeting.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

It is important to remember that even with meetings being moved to the digital space, the principles and best practices of how you communicate with donors remain the same. Articulate your mission with clarity and confidence and continue to find ways to provide meaningful follow-up correspondence after your meeting. This includes new and expanded materials that reflect what was discussed during the meeting.

Most importantly: thank the donor for their time both on the call and in your follow-up calls/e-mails. The commitment they made during this time of heightened uncertainty can’t be understated, and the donor should feel your appreciation in every step of the process.

Additional Resources for Video Conferencing Best Practices

During this challenging time, we are continuing to offer our perspectives and lessons learned from over seven decades of nonprofit advisory leadership. Click here to access our Strategies During COVID-19 page. Here you will find resources that provide best practices and optimal strategies to help your organization build a path through this crisis and beyond.

CCS Fundraising is a strategic fundraising consulting firm that partners with nonprofits for transformational change. Members of the CCS team are highly experienced and knowledgeable across sectors, disciplines, and regions. With offices throughout the United States and the world, our unique, customized approach provides each client with an embedded team member for the duration of the engagement. To access our full suite of perspectives, publications, and reports, visit our insights page. To learn more about CCS Fundraising’s suite of services, click here.

The COVID-19 crisis has thrust many development professionals into a remote work situation, and more than ever before we’re seeing how the digital space can greatly support our usual fundraising practices. Well before this moment, the rise of online giving has been significant, and the importance of engaging your existing and potential donors online has never been more essential. The best giving day strategies begin at least six months in advance, so now is the time to look ahead and plan for success.

Giving days—24-hour digital fundraising challenges—are worth the investment, especially in this time of uncertainty. Executing a giving day strategy can be a useful tool to raise awareness and funds, as long as you make the right preparations and have reasonable and achievable goals. The organizations that are succeeding in their outreach have robust strategies that align closely with their wider institutional goals and include investments in time and staff resources.

Why Participate?

The purpose of participating in a giving day is to offer new and established donors a special reason to engage with your cause. Getting involved is essential, as they are increasing in popularity year after year. #GivingTuesday, the best-known giving day that takes place annually on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, is growing exponentially. According to the NonProfit Times, #GivingTuesday raised a total of $511 million online in the United States. This was an increase of over $100 million from 2018, an increase of nearly 28 percent.

There are opportunities in every nonprofit sector on #GivingTuesday. For example, #iGiveCatholic, which was deemed “the most successful Catholic crowdfunding event to date” by the National Catholic Register, has taken online Catholic stewardship practices to the next level. #iGiveCatholic is a bishop-led initiative in partnership with lay leaders in Catholic philanthropy that offers assistance to Catholic organizations as they build their outreach strategies for the online giving event. Through this service, organizations gain access to training, toolkits, and materials to execute a successful plan. In 2019, the #iGiveCatholic campaign raised nearly $7.5 million from over 29,000 donors across the country.

There are also regional giving days to investigate in your own area. Whichever days you choose, follow our three steps to maximizing your giving day strategy.

The Three Keys

Preparation

Making the most out of a giving day takes planning. Many organizations stumble by jumping into the giving day conversation without proper outreach strategies, branding, or realistic goals. It is a best practice to create an outreach plan over six months in advance. You should have a calendar filled with strategies for:

Content creation (i.e. branded templates, videos, images, testimonials, podcasts etc.)
Email marketing to your database to build momentum
Social media posts across channels that tell a consistent story of impact
Website enhancements to serve as a “home base” for giving day promotion
Public relations/media outreach

The preparation stage also gives you an opportunity to survey the people who gave the previous year. Tap into your network to ask them what compelled them to give, what content they found most effective, and what they would want to see improved. This will help you create a new strategy that resonates with your core audience.

Standing Out Above the Crowd

As the popularity of giving days grows, the chances are good that your audience will be inundated by pitches from many like-minded organizations. Therefore, the way you present your mission can make all the difference. The first question to ask here is, Why should people give to our cause? Consider the elements of your case that stand out, and boil those differentiators into a ten second elevator pitch to grab attention and clearly present your case.

Once you have narrowed your focus, create professional-looking content that support your case. Think about using campaign-specific graphics and colors in emails and on social media. Remember that you will be attempting to attract new people who may not be familiar with your cause. Your messaging should aim to clearly underline who you are and why this day is special.

Promotion

While it is important to communicate your strategies well in advance, outreach should be ramped up a month before the giving day. This includes communications through all of your social media channels and your email database It is also important to activate your strongest supporters to raise awareness. Pull a short list of your most active volunteers and major financial supporters and make personal calls to ask them for help in spreading the word.

When promoting your giving day, it is also essential to strike a balance between underwhelming and overwhelming your audience. Be purposeful with your outreach and avoid redundancies in your content to keep your audience engaged. For example, sending the same emails several times without adding something new to the conversation could slow momentum as you get closer to the day.

Following Your Giving Day Campaign

The first thing to do after your giving day is to track and publicize your results to celebrate your success. It is also useful to do an immediate internal evaluation to determine which parts of your plan worked and which parts didn’t. This audit will allow you to identify the outreach channels that were the most effective which will help greatly the next year. It is valuable to thank all donors who participated in elevating your cause through all channels.

If you’re just getting started, here are some reminders:

As you think about your strategic plan for this year and beyond, it may be tempting to participate in as many giving days as you can find, but you could risk spreading yourself thin. Take a look at your calendar, identify all the giving days you might want to participate in, and then see which ones fit your organization best. Try a few the first year and then assess which one(s) worked best for you.
It’s okay to start small. Consider a reasonable goal to create an early win.
No matter how far out your next giving day is, it is worthwhile to assemble your team to begin strategizing today. Take a look at the organizations who are doing it well, and brainstorm what it will take for your organization to exceed their success.

This post is an update from a previous published article which can be read here.

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to change the way we work, it is valuable to think about how even the smallest improvements can set you up for success later. This article, which was previously published here, speaks to the small wins that can help your organization build momentum no matter the current situation.

The Importance of Small Wins

It is often said that campaigns are meant to be a marathon, not a sprint. However, it is easy to get lost in the big picture or stuck in the weeds of daily tasks that suddenly make campaign goals seem too daunting or too visionary. It’s important to remember that campaign success is not only about funds raised, but also about the ongoing accomplishments that keep a development team feeling positive about the direction forward. Celebrating small wins in fundraising is important for building momentum, instilling confidence, and establishing a successful path forward to realize big picture goals.

Achieving this kind of incremental success cannot be overlooked or understated. When managing a campaign, there will always be a moment when you face adversity, whether experiencing a setback or feeling trapped with your back against the wall. This is especially true for those whose campaigns have stalled, when you feel like you’ve exhausted all options, and things are just not going as you had hoped. In times like this, it’s important to remember that a small win can be something as simple as completing a productive weekly meeting with your executive director or identifying a new prospect to discover. Acknowledging and celebrating these small yet mighty tasks not only start your campaign off on a strong foot, but also keep you moving forward with cadence.

Whether you’re looking to boost activity or pivot in strategy, there are things you can do right away to ensure your campaign keeps moving forward.

Three Ways to Achieve Small Wins

1. Rally the Troops: Instilling Internal Confidence

Building a sense of ownership, trust, and empowerment among organizational leaders around campaign priorities is an important accomplishment to celebrate at the outset of and throughout a campaign. Knowing that your people support institutional campaign efforts inspires greater confidence among campaign leaders and volunteers who are driving activity forward every day.

Rallying the troops around a collective sense of “we” must be an ongoing effort to ensure overall campaign success. These important individuals are your key insiders that will help you achieve larger fundraising goals. Instilling internal confidence among your troops can be accomplished in the following ways.

Be transparent and communicate often. Your people want to know what’s going on. They want to support the institution and leaders they work for. However, these individuals can only do so if they are aware of what is going on at all levels. Host monthly update meetings with staff, send newsletters or other forms of consistent communication about campaign progress and success, and create opportunities to discuss challenges and frustrations so lines of communication are always open around the positive and negative. This will establish trust and confidence in-house which will be necessary for larger wins down the road. Transparency and communication open the door to internal advocates and ambassadors for your campaign that will build greater momentum for campaign success.
Look inward and create structure on your team. Internal leaders and staff often want to help in any way they can. Creating and assigning roles for each person will create a sense of “we” behind a shared goal, which becomes a much larger win for the organization as whole. Communicate these roles clearly with your team so that everyone knows exactly what part they play and feels a sense of ownership.
Highlight accomplishments at the next staff meeting. As leaders and staff complete tasks, publicly acknowledging their good work to advance campaign efforts will open the door for more people to get involved and allow everyone an opportunity to celebrate small wins together. Celebrating small successes is key to creating a winning culture and can help create an energized and excited team even during the hardest times of a campaign.

2. Maximize Effort: Updating the Pipeline

Campaigns are not just about hitting goal, but also about building and maintaining relationships with donors. While nonprofit organizations often focus on a specific targeted list of campaign prospects when seeking significant funds, a campaign is also an opportunity to clean up the pipeline and identify new individuals who share a commitment to an organization’s mission.

By reviewing and updating your prospect pool, you give your people confidence in knowing that they are spending time wisely on the right donors. Updates may involve removing a prospect who has been unresponsive for a few weeks and pivoting to toward a different prospect who yields greater potential support. Another update may involve moving a prospect from the discovery stage to the cultivation stage following an introductory meeting. Especially when a campaign is stalled, any update to the pipeline is a great way to get the ball rolling again.

Each new prospect is a new opportunity to increase donations, set both staff and donor sights higher, and engage a broader community that may include the next generation of leaders. Once a prospect is in the pipeline, celebrate every move throughout the donor engagement process as a small win toward greater success. After a long week of research, finding a new prospective donor who has the ability and affinity to give, as well as access to your organization, is an outstanding win to celebrate. Identifying a new major gift prospect is exciting and can help reinvigorate leaders and restore confidence among current donors.

3. Prepare: Setting Yourself Up for a Major Win

Organizations often celebrate a completed solicitation visit because it means they are one step closer to a potential gift. While this is an exciting moment in any campaign, the hard work that goes into the preparation required to conduct a successful solicitation visit often goes unacknowledged.

Asking for a transformative gift is not a one-step process. The solicitor(s) must be prepared to present the case, verbalize a request, and handle responses in a personal manner. The first solicitation requires the most preparation. The process to ensure that each solicitor, who may not always be a professional fundraiser, feels confident in their ability to conduct the meeting involves several tasks, which include (but are not limited to):

Material development and review
Strategy meetings
Learning and training sessions

As you walk through the materials and strategy for a solicitation meeting, acknowledge each completed task as an accomplishment and share your progress with other leaders and volunteers. Keep everyone in the know about how much has been accomplished leading up to the first big request. That way, when a gift comes through, everyone can celebrate it together.

Each completed task is an incremental step toward greater success. As a campaign manager, you will notice and want to point out to your team that your leaders become more and more prepared for and confident when conducting solicitations over time, which yields higher returns on requests. This is an example of how incremental success can lead to small wins throughout a campaign.

Getting Started Today

The three ways to achieve small wins outlined above work in tandem with one another to achieve incremental success. When planning a campaign or restructuring a fundraising approach, it’s important to set activity benchmarks in addition to your big goals. Working these small wins into your campaign are important strategies for building momentum, establishing trust, and charting a path forward for boosting activity and realizing big picture goals.

It may help to ask yourself: What does tomorrow look like, and next week? What do I have to look forward to tomorrow, or what will we accomplish next week? How can we build on next week’s win?

When answering these questions, keep in mind that incremental accomplishments illuminate progress and demonstrates success. This helps to motivate everyone involved to drive campaign activity and sets your people up to produce results. Be purposeful about what you communicate. You can position anything as a small win to your leadership and major donors. It helps to create a strong perception of progress, which leads to greater success.

Earlier this week, CCS Fundraising hosted a webinar, Principles of Fundraising: Navigating the Challenges Presented by Coronavirus, to discuss the current COVID-19 crisis and provide guidance on how nonprofits of all sizes and across sectors can proceed during this uncertain time. CCS leadership presented perspectives drawn from over 70 years of fundraising experience through times both prosperous and challenging.

In the recording of the webinar, which can be accessed here, CCS leaders Robert Kissane, Rick Happy, and Lindsay Marciniak shared their thoughts, which included:

Fundamental Learnings from Times of Crisis

Challenging times offer an opportunity for organizations to strengthen and cement their relationships with their stakeholders, as well as to affirm their mission and to demonstrate their relevance. We have learned through experience that donors who stopped supporting specific nonprofits during or after a crisis did so primarily because they no longer felt connected. Nonprofit organizations that stay the course and keep their stakeholders engaged ultimately emerge from challenging periods successfully.

Unique Implications of the Current Situation

While social distancing (or physical distancing) prevents us from meeting in person, there are still many opportunities to connect and continue operations. Furthermore, for many, this distancing offers time to reflect, plan, reach out, and think further ahead than tomorrow’s advancement committee meeting, for example.

Nonprofit staff should be communicating often and frankly with their donors as well as with colleagues, friends, and those who they haven’t connected with in some time. Remember that donors care about the organizations they support, and want to know how this situation is affecting the organization in addition to what is being done to deal with it.

Immediate Strategies to Implement

CCS recently published an article sharing best practices and principles of fundraising that have been tested through time. One key aspect to continuing the success of your program is embracing technology as a sure way to create meaningful and dynamic experiences. Now is also the time to develop a short-term plan to motivate your donors, reaffirm your mission, and most importantly, show empathy with your stakeholders.

For more up-to-date information, visit www.ccsfundraising.com

To access our full suite of perspectives, publications, and reports, visit our insights page. To learn more about CCS Fundraising’s suite of services, click here.

As many nonprofit organizations seek guidance on how to proceed during this time of uncertainty, we want to support your programs by offering practical advice and expertise on how best to move forward. Our leaders at CCS Fundraising held this webinar to share perspectives and proven strategies, drawing from the firm’s 70+ years of experience in advising nonprofits across sectors through challenging periods. Attendees explored:

Key Lessons from Critical Moments in the Past
Unique Implications of the Current Situation
Suggested Strategies During a Crisis

In the recording of the webinar, CCS leaders Robert Kissane, Rick Happy, and Lindsay Marciniak shared their perspectives.

DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION SLIDES

PRESENTED BY

Frederic J. “Rick” Happy

Chair

Lindsay Marciniak

Managing Director

Robert Kissane

Former Chairman

Concerns about the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) underscore the nonprofit sector’s vital leadership role in the welfare of our communities. At CCS Fundraising, our primary concern lies with the health and safety of our people, our nonprofit partners, and those in our communities at greatest risk.

We understand that many nonprofit organizations are seeking guidance on how to proceed during this time of uncertainty. CCS has extensive experience over the past 70 years in times of crisis, economic stress, and natural disasters. There are several lessons we have garnered through these experiences.

These lessons focus on the importance of continuous communication and engagement with stakeholders, prudent adjustments to short-term fundraising activities, and a focused commitment to staying the course of an organization’s overall fundraising plans. Strong leadership and resilience have helped charitable organizations persevere through challenging times. Nonprofit organizations have achieved success through flexibility, creativity, and resolve.

In light of the current and rapidly evolving circumstances, CCS offers the following general principles and specific guidelines around fundraising efforts:

Increase communication: Keep your stakeholders fully informed and deeply engaged. Donors and stakeholders are interested in how organizations are affected by the current situation, and what actions are being taken.
Avoid wholesale cancellation of fundraising plans: Adhere to your overall fundraising plans and strategies, with reasonable adjustments to your day-to-day meetings, events, and activities, depending on your local circumstances.
Reaffirm your mission and impact: Reaffirm your organization’s mission and continuously remind donors of the impact of your work. If you have a special role to play in the current public health issue, explain it.
Develop a short-term action plan: Develop a plan of action, including a communications plan over the next several weeks, featuring an outreach initiative of personal calls and emails to key donors and friends.
Leverage technology: Find ways to more effectively incorporate video conferencing, podcasts, or virtual briefings that make meetings more dynamic and create more personal experiences regardless of distance. Consider how social media or other virtual platforms can serve as temporary alternatives to in-person convenings.
Motivate: Redouble efforts to help motivate development staff, administrative leadership, and trustees by reminding them of the resilience of philanthropy in difficult times. Donors who feel engaged and connected will continue to support their beloved institutions, especially in times of crisis.
Share philanthropic information: Share the latest philanthropic information to both motivate leadership and temper expectations.
Consider special briefings: Consider hosting a series of teleconference briefings with stakeholders on issues pertinent to the current situation. Donors and constituents are interested in knowing how a nonprofit is responding to the current situation: whether classes, events, services, or performances are being altered or canceled; how employees are being cared-for; how operations are affected; if any new services or programs are being initiated in response to current circumstances.
Show empathy and concern for your stakeholders: We have all been impacted by COVID-19 in some way. Giving is a two-way street and donors want to know that you value them and are concerned about their welfare. Offer any resources that might be helpful to your stakeholders.

In challenging times, those nonprofit organizations that stay the course and engage extensively with their stakeholders emerge successfully. These situations offer an important time for nonprofits to demonstrate their relevance and cement their relationships with their donors and friends. Donors look to these organizations as vital resources. In the past, those donors who stopped supporting specific nonprofits during or after a crisis did so primarily because they no longer felt connected to them.

The last point is particularly important, as it may feel like now is a moment to pause or delay your activity. It is very important to note that in previous downturns, those who continued to push forward in their efforts ultimately succeeded, and those who took a step back lost ground.

Thank you for all that you do to strengthen our communities and improve our world. We hope these principles, gleaned through many years of experience and periods of uncertainty, are helpful as you carefully navigate your development and fundraising efforts in the coming months.

To download or print this piece, click here.

For more up-to-date information, visit www.ccsfundraising.com

To access our full suite of perspectives, publications, and reports, visit our insights page. To learn more about CCS Fundraising’s suite of services, click here.

Engaged and good leadership is essential to the success of a parish campaign. Leadership in a parish campaign starts with the Rector. If the Rector is supportive and involved in the fundraising plan, the likelihood of parishioner participation will increase and there is a higher chance the campaign will be successful.

Leadership is a core pillar of a successful capital campaign. The confidence inspired by a leader and their advocacy is infectious. This is not just some cliché; the importance of leadership in any organization is supported by research. A 2016 Harvard Business Review article titled, “The Trickle-Down Effect of Good (and Bad) Leadership,” demonstrated that “good leadership is contagious…and so is bad leadership.”

A Rector’s positive attitude and engagement trickles down to the vestry and trickles even further to the community. Parishioners look up to the Rector for leadership, spiritual guidance, and support. Simply stated – when the Rector is involved, others will want to be involved too. The inverse can be true of negative attitudes and lack of engagement.

However, it is not enough to show up to campaign meetings and announce you have made a gift. Leadership engagement in a campaign, and behaviors that are contagious, are inspired by something much deeper spiritually in the parish community. The two examples that follow focus on the positive influence of good, thoughtful, and mission-driven leadership on the success of capital campaigns.

Establish Early Momentum

The For All the Saints capital campaign was the first major fundraising effort for St. John’s Episcopal Church (Tallahassee, FL) since transitions in leadership and membership at the parish a decade earlier. The campaign focused on both preservation of historic buildings and construction of new facilities. During the campaign feasibility and planning study, the transitions were the top reason participants suggested a campaign could be challenging. This led to a low score for the study compared to other Episcopal parishes in terms of parishioners’ willingness to personally support the campaign. Parishioners identified a challenge and it made them hesitant to participate financially.

Despite this, the annual stewardship and planned giving programs were healthy, demonstrating that parishioners were committed to St. John’s financial wellbeing. Regardless, the Rector, the Reverend Dave Killeen, knew he had to address these hesitations. In partnership with the Rev. Killeen and the Campaign Chair, CCS developed a plan to not only reassure the parish it would be successful, but also demonstrate early success to establish momentum, raise giving sights, and validate the case for support.

The Rev. Killeen and the Campaign Chair led with conviction. At the first campaign leadership meeting two weeks into the campaign, the Rev. Killeen announced the campaign had already secured close to 25% of the goal. The campaign leaders were impressed – audible gasps and applause echoed throughout the room. They reflected on how that progress made the campaign goal feel attainable.

Volunteers were clearly inspired by the Rev. Killeen’s commitment to their success; it was contagious. They heard his stories and saw results. St. John’s went on to secure 301 gifts totaling $4,803,090, or 160% of their original $3,000,000 goal, with the engagement of 64 parish volunteers.

The plan worked. The Rev. Killeen and the Campaign Chair demonstrated the viability of the campaign. The Rev. Killeen not only attended most of the volunteer meetings, he participated in 66 requests visits. He established his expertise, reflected openly on his successes and setbacks, and demonstrated trust in the gift request process. These are leadership traits that are essential to the success of any nonprofit organization.

Be Intentional

The Built with Purpose campaign at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Houston, TX) was focused on retiring the debt incurred from renovations of their sanctuary. The case was compelling, not just because of the before and after pictures showcasing the impact, but because it was clear that if the debt was retired sooner, they could invest more in mission priorities. No one needed convincing.

However, the feasibility and planning study revealed that the willingness of parishioners to volunteer was lower than most Episcopal churches and the study indicated that lack of engagement could be the greatest challenge. Since parishioner-to-parishioner gift requests are a hallmark of successful parish campaigns, the Rector, the Reverend Patrick Miller, knew this had to be addressed, both for the campaign and the long-term vitality of St. Mark’s.

The Rev. Miller chose to be intentional, and engaged parishioners as volunteers who represented the diversity of his growing parish. He realized early on that this campaign would nourish and grow parish life for years to come. For example, when identifying potential volunteers, he went beyond the people who volunteer for everything. He leveraged the campaign to get new people involved and ensure multiple generations were represented. He even had a plan to engage the children and youth. In looking back, everyone was a candidate, because the Rev. Miller believed in his parish and saw this campaign as an opportunity to cement the connectedness of his community.

Another unique aspect of this campaign was that the Rev. Miller “engineered” volunteers’ success. He helped by pairing volunteers with gift requests that he knew would be successful. Specifically, he knew to match people who knew each other, but were not so close it would be uncomfortable to ask each other for money. He matched peers to peers. Volunteers were more confident when he said, “I know this request will be successful if you are involved.” The Rev. Miller understood that if each volunteer had at least one successful gift request, they would be more likely to remain engaged.

The Rev. Miller’s leadership style was intentional and built on a strong belief in the parish’s potential. He personally requested and secured just over $2,000,000 of the total funds secured. Over 40 volunteers accelerated the campaign past their goal and secured 141 gifts totaling $3,102,665. Not only could they pay off the debt early, they could fund essential mission priorities sooner than anyone had imagined.

Ensure Success

Leadership is a necessity for a successful campaign. As my colleague, Vann Ellen Mitchell, said in a recent article, leadership “engagement will make or break the campaign.” The intentionality and awareness that the Rev. Dave Killeen and the Rev. Patrick Miller demonstrated in the planning for their campaigns ensured the success, not just for the campaigns, but for their parish.

As you begin to plan your next campaign, consider these takeaways:

Conduct a feasibility and planning study: Both parishes had completed strategic planning, but the feasibility and planning study assessed the viability of the capital campaign with the parishioners who would ultimately make an investment. The study not only validated the case and plan, but revealed challenges and opportunities that could be directly addressed early.
Build a systematic plan focused on leadership: The campaign plan should focus on a phased approach for organization and efficiency purposes as well as creating a volunteer engagement environment that is manageable and built on the momentum of early success.
Most importantly, ensure your Rector is deeply engaged. It is the Rector’s role to ensure the success of the campaign. Their involvement in the planning, recruitment, and gift request process is essential. Parishioners naturally look to the Rector for leadership, guidance, and support, and during a capital campaign their engagement could not be more important.

We are pleased to present the third edition of Perspectives on Catholic Fundraising, a magazine for executives, development officers, and anyone navigating the current Catholic philanthropic terrain.

In this publication, our experts from the field report on pressing high-level challenges facing Catholic institutions today. These pieces will provide practical tools and actionable solutions to help bolster development programs of any size.

Within the magazine, you will find an infographic detailing the Catholic giving landscape, an accompanying analysis, case studies from some of our partner institutions, and the following articles:

5 Easy Steps Before Planning a Parish Campaign

Taking on a parish campaign of any size requires careful planning. Campaigns rarely fail in the middle or at the end. Success typically hinges on proper preparation prior to launching a major fundraising initiative.

How Adopting Technology Can Help Personalize Outreach

Technology is not meant to supplant personal encounters; it is meant to facilitate them. By incorporating technology into your communications and fundraising plans, you can reach out to a large audience of parishioners in ways that are both faster and more personal than previously imagined.

Considering an Increased Offertory Program for a Sustainable Future

If circumstances currently prevent your parish from conducting a large or extensive campaign, it would be wise to consider an alternative approach: conducting a campaign to increase weekly collections.

Three Keys to Implementing a Successful Giving Day Strategy

Executing a giving day strategy can be a useful tool to raise awareness and funds, as long as you make the right preparations and have reasonable and achievable goals.

Effective Leadership: Maximizing the Impact of Your Campaign Chairs

As a crucial leadership position, the campaign chair should be open to maximizing relationships to assist with major gift prospect visits.

To access our full suite of perspectives, publications, and reports, visit our insights page. To learn more about CCS Fundraising’s suite of services, click here.

So you’ve identified a family who has the potential to make a transformational gift. They’ve made a moderate gift to your annual fund and are showing interest in deepening their engagement. But how do you move them from a transactional annual fund supporter to a transformational investor in your school’s vision? In this article, we explore the specific steps you can take to prepare your prospective major donors for a big ask.

The Growing Power of Independent School Philanthropy

In the spring of 2019, Blackbaud Institute reported that among its sample of over 9,000 nonprofits, K-12 schools saw the highest average gift size of all giving to any sector. In fact, over the past five years, average annualized growth of giving to the education subsector has outpaced the average growth rate for total giving.

The types of gifts across all sectors also looks to be changing. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported that 2018 gains in giving across all sectors were driven exclusively by gifts over $1,000 and that new donors making gifts over $1,000 increased by more than 37 percent.

It is undeniable that major gifts are a vital source of support that can transform the ways in which schools are able to advance their mission and impact students.

Unique Opportunities and Challenges

No other type of nonprofit has the frequency of interaction and proximity to their donors as day schools, where parents are often, if not daily, picking up and dropping off their children, attending meetings, and volunteering in various capacities. This provides independent schools myriad opportunities to build deeper relationships with their prospective donors and demonstrate the impact of their mission. The nature of independent school missions also fosters deeply held sentiments of gratitude from parents and alumni – which in turn provide a deep pipeline of potential ambassadors to draw from.

Alternatively, we also recognize the challenges that come with raising funds with this audience. Parents of primary, middle, and upper school students may be younger in age and less experienced in flexing their philanthropic muscles. This fledgling stage of philanthropy may often mean prospective donors require more education to understand why they are being asked to give to various funding priorities at their school (i.e. annual fund, benefit, or capital campaign), all the while they may also be experiencing solicitations from many different nonprofits simultaneously.

Steps to Get You There

Independent schools have a tremendous opportunity to leverage a highly engaged prospective donor pool to secure significant philanthropic support. Therefore, what steps can independent schools take to foster a relationship that will allow for a transformational gift request to take place? We focus on the act of making a request because there is never a guarantee that a prospective donor will give a transformational gift. But if we take the necessary steps to cultivate and steward a donor properly before a request is made, the likelihood of securing a meaningful investment will be much higher.

1) A Vision that Matters

Before donor outreach begins, it is imperative to outline the collective vision that will advance a school’s mission. A strategic plan is an excellent place to begin this discussion. What were the major takeaways from those discussions with stakeholders and what are the priorities that need to be funded in order to move the school forward? These goals should be at the heart of your discussion with donors. By focusing on the high-level vision, you can reflect on past generations of parents who have created the school you are today and the need for current parents to carry on that legacy of excellence. Always remember that aspirational goals are required to secure aspirational gifts.

2) The Art of Cultivation

Cultivation is not the ask. This work is about building trust with your donors. Create intentional events and interactions that help school leadership, faculty, and advocates share the school’s impact and vision for the future, and provide space for a dialogue that will deepen prospective donor engagement and create buy-in. Some tactics to keep in mind as you develop cultivation events:

Enlist your top donors and strongest proponents to serve as ambassadors. Their testimonies build a culture of pride for philanthropy and peer-to-peer education is often the most effective form of advocacy.
Create opportunities that educate donors about your objectives. Have a capital project? Bring in an architect or expert to talk about the impact of educational spaces on student performance. If a campaign priority has to do with programs or curriculum, i.e. STEM or performing arts, enlist an expert in the field to help showcase the professional landscape that students need to be prepared for.
Be very clear about event objectives. If it is an event to thank donors for their support – keep the program clear of requests. If it a fundraising event or meeting – make sure this is clearly stated in the invitation.

3) Executing Donor Moves Management

It is vitally important to track the interactions that help deepen your relationships with donors and to create space where a request can be made. Listed below is a typical donor cycle:

Cultivation – building a relationship with Head, Board Chair, Director of Advancement, Peers, etc.
Brief – meeting to specifically talk about the campaign or fundraising initiative(s).
Pre-Request – narrowing down donors’ interest and setting the stage for the request, i.e. asking permission to present a proposal for support.
Request – presenting a formal proposal for support and making the ask.
Steward – timely, accurate, and consistent appreciation for generosity and reporting of impact.

What often happens is a donor continues to be cultivated and briefed, but there isn’t a distinct step that allows your school to make an ask. Setting clear expectations for meetings, asking donors specific questions regarding how they would like to proceed, and allowing them to share their level of comfort with giving is extremely helpful. Some sample language to move a donor from cultivation and brief stage into an ask include:

Invitation to a Brief: “The school we are today is in thanks to the families who came before us who invested in our continued excellence. My hope is that you can be one of those leaders in our community. Can we meet to talk about how you can be an integral part of advancing our important work?”
Articulating a Clear Plan: “Can we meet to talk about my vision for the school’s future and how you can be a leader in supporting our campaign?”
Setting the Stage for an Ask Meeting: “Can we sit down in a month so that I can present a formal proposal of support that aligns with your passions for the school and what we talked about today?”

4) Making the Ask

Take the guessing game out of this process by being very clear about the intentions of the meeting and make sure to ask your prospective donor for a specific gift. At this point, you have done the groundwork and your donor knows they will be asked for a gift. Even if you overshoot the gift amount, they know it is well-intentioned and it is rare that donors will be offended by an aspirational ask. And just as important as the ask is your follow-up. The right ask amount will likely necessitate that your donor take some time to deliberate about their gift level. It is extremely important that you continue following up with the donor so that when they have made their decision, you are prepared to accept and show gratitude. A great question to ask when following up with donors is, “What do you need to make your decision on my request for your leadership gift?”

5) Meaningful Stewardship

Well executed stewardship fosters loyal and sustaining support. Our three rules to stewardship include:

Accurate: Make sure your school’s processes are in place. This includes accurate data entry and maintenance. Nothing will hurt stewardship more than mistakes in donor names, student names, etc. Accurate giving history is also crucial to building effective fundraising strategies.
Timely and Consistent: Donors should receive a thank you in a consistent and timely manner. Determine what stewardship touch points each giving level should receive and stick to the plan. The same applies to stewardship events. Establish annual stewardship gatherings that celebrate cohorts of donors. This will help create a feeling of excitement around giving at certain levels and can help inspire donors to elevate their giving to join a higher tier.
Authentic: Create opportunities to steward donors that are commensurate with the level of generosity and make them as personal as possible. Don’t underestimate the power of a phone call, voice message, and/or handwritten note.

Where to Start

A good way to approach this process is to focus on the things you can control:

Audit your stewardship process: A well-oiled thank you process is imperative to sustaining fundraising success. Sit down with your team to make sure everyone understands the stewardship process.
Review the accuracy of your donor information: Is your team inputting information correctly and consistently? Everything from donor information to gift details needs to be entered properly to ensure credible reporting, data review, and development of future strategy.
Identify your top 10 prospects: Determine which of your donors meet the golden trifecta: strong past giving, current affinity to your organization, and accessibility to a member of your fundraising leadership team. Those who meet these three criteria are your most promising donors.
Make an individual plan for each of your top 10: Each donor has unique characteristics and needs. Create a plan for each donor which reflects their place in your donor pipeline and map out how you will get them to a gift request. Honoring where donors are in your pipeline will allow you to have an authentic and honest conversation about how they want to be cultivated and how realistic their potential support will be.

At the heart of fundraising is the ability to keep these structures in mind as you create personalized approaches for each of your donors. Knowing your vision and remaining committed to seeing your goals to their completion is vitally important to fundraising success, but so is your ability to be flexible and resilient as you navigate the infinite complexities of donor needs. Always remember the most compelling cases for support clearly demonstrate how your aspirational funding priorities will advance your mission and deepen impact.

In recent years, many leaders in the nonprofit landscape have taken important steps to incorporate diversity and inclusion into their organizations’ missions and practices. As nonprofits work with an increasingly diverse and globalized set of clients, beneficiaries, partners, and employees, many have engaged in thoughtful self-examination and made changes to ensure they engage effectively and communicate respectfully across any number of cultural barriers. Universities and independent schools may have offices or deans of multicultural education to advance the diversity and inclusivity of their student and faculty bodies. Many hospitals provide initiatives to help doctors better care for a wide cultural spectrum of patients and their families.

Yet how frequently are similar cultural considerations made in nonprofit fundraising? The landscape of philanthropy is also quickly diversifying , and many CCS clients work with constituents from a broad range of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds: from multiethnic Catholic parishes, to hospitals serving predominantly immigrant communities, to museums that increasingly partner with art collectors from mainland China and Hong Kong.

Developing cultural competence is essential to building trust and effective engagement with an increasingly diverse community of donors. It goes beyond making simple generalizations about people of different backgrounds; rather, it challenges professionals to deeply understand their donors’ mindsets and adapt their practices accordingly. Doing so will allow nonprofit fundraisers to build better relationships, expand their organizations’ reach, and more effectively and respectfully engage with philanthropists and donors from varied walks of life on their own terms.

What is Cultural Competence?

In order to fundraise effectively through a multicultural lens, it’s helpful for nonprofits to first understand the multiplicity of cultures that their supporters may identify with. When we hear the word “culture,” we may jump to considering national origin or ethnicity. These are certainly important cultural elements, but they aren’t the only ones. Culture – what social psychologist Geert Hofstede calls “the programming of the mind” – can account for how many different groups of people act, think and communicate. Age, socioeconomic status, religion, race, sexual orientation, nationality, and gender are all cultural factors to consider in fundraising, and (to complicate matters further) each person has several intersecting cultural identities. Families from Germany and China might approach giving to nonprofits very differently, but so might 35-year-old donors and 70-year-old donors, or Orthodox or Secular Jewish philanthropists. Before developing donor strategies, it’s critical for nonprofits to understand any significant groups within their supporter base that share a similar culture or identity.

Once fundraisers have identified their supporters’ cultural identities, they can use cultural competence to translate that information into a lens by which to effectively understand and relate to donors. Cultural competence is the ability to think and function effectively across cultures and work effectively with people from different backgrounds.[1] It can encompass awareness of one’s own and others’ “mental programming” and developing practical knowledge of how that programming will translate into everyday situations.

Applying Cultural Competence to Nonprofit Fundraising

Many nonprofit fundraisers already know their supporters’ cultures well and are cognizant of the best way to approach them. Fundraisers for Catholic churches have found that Vietnamese parishioners frequently prefer to give collectively rather than individually; others have noted that many Latino congregations center their fundraising around community-focused events rather than individual solicitations. Yet there are always ways to deepen and broaden one’s cultural awareness. Cultural factors to consider in working with donors can include:

• Language. What primary language do your constituents and donor base speak? Would they feel more comfortable speaking or receiving materials in their native language, or are their English-language skills a point of pride?

• Religion and spirituality. Religion can heavily impact a donor’s relationship to giving. Many cultures view giving as a religious activity and may prioritize gifts to their church, mosque, synagogue, or temple. Fundraisers should be aware of how religion influences a donor’s motivation, but also how religious observances might influence when and how to best discuss a gift. It’s important to be considerate of major holidays like Yom Kippur, when observant Jewish donors may consider it improper to discuss finances, or Ramadan, when Muslim donors may be fatigued or feel uncomfortable attending events with food as they fast. When planning events, fundraisers should also consider dietary restrictions.

• Age. Studies of generational giving demonstrate that a donor’s age can influence how, where, when, and why they choose to give. For instance, while 60% of donors over 75 contribute to religious causes, only 32% of Millennials aged 24-42 do the same. Age contributes to what people value in communication with an organization as well. For example, younger donors may gravitate toward online giving not only for its convenience, but also because they value reducing the paper use of traditional appeal and thank-you mailings.

• Nationality and ethnicity. Often the most common cultural miscommunications occur between people of different nationalities – people who may have grown up surrounded by norms, values, and unspoken assumptions that create just as much trouble as a language barrier. This can happen with fundraising as well. One independent school fundraiser spent many fruitless attempts to meet with his school’s Korean parent community, only to have them turn down all his meeting requests. He finally learned from a colleague that many parents were actually very interested in supporting the school, but felt uncomfortable because he’d asked to meet with them at home – an extremely intimate setting for Korean nationals. Once he began setting up meetings in bars and restaurants, he found parents were willing and excited to speak with him. Nonprofit fundraisers should make an effort to understand how national culture affects donors’ communication preferences, assumptions around philanthropy, and decision-making processes. In many cultures, the gender of the donor and fundraiser may also play a key role in how (or even if) meetings take place, who becomes involved in “charity work,” and who controls family finances. Yet while these can be deep and important considerations to make, small touches, like remembering to send good wishes to a donor on important cultural holidays, can also make people feel meaningfully seen and appreciated.

• Socioeconomic and educational factors. Finally, a donors’ educational and class background can also determine their approach to philanthropy – or even if they consider philanthropy something exclusively for “other people” with traditionally wealthy backgrounds. Written appeals that sound too formal or complex may come off as elitist to some donors, and organizations may need to put extra effort into engaging donors from backgrounds where giving was neither a possibility nor a priority. Nonprofits should reflect on how they conduct donor education and cultivation, and how they can share the impact of gifts of every size.

Developing Cultural Competence

So how can fundraisers build their cultural competence, avoid cross-cultural mishaps, and engage donors from a wide range of backgrounds? It may be tempting to hunt for easy rules of thumb or generalizations, but cultures and identities are incredibly complex and intersecting. Even two donors of the same ethnicity and religion might have wildly different personalities or value sets. Rather than make generalizations (“Latinos always put family first”) or hunt for resources that skim the cultural surface (“10 Tricks for Working with Businesspeople from X!”), fundraisers should look for ways to incorporate a culturally competent mindset into all their work. Cultural scholar Debra Deardorff[2] recommends building this mindset through a three-pillared “Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes” approach:

Developing the first pillar – cultural knowledge – might mean learning a language or developing expertise in a specific regional culture or religion, by spending time abroad, or attending services. Knowledge also implies cultural self-awareness, built by examining one’s own biases and assumptions. This examination often reveals that much of what seems “normal” or “common sense” may actually be determined by one’s own specific upbringing.

Of course, cultural knowledge is only useful if it’s effectively put into practice with other people. To do so, fundraisers need the second pillar of cultural competence – skills of listening and asking questions, thoughtful empathy, and the ability to work through conflicts and miscommunications. All of this should be undergirded with an open mind, a willingness to learn and be flexible, and a sense of comfort in unfamiliar or ambiguous situations where there may not be one clear “right approach.”

Deardorff’s model demonstrates a holistic approach to cultural competence, and all of these pillars can be incorporated through small changes in our mindset and daily work to have a big impact. Fundraisers can start with an attitude of willingness to learn over the long term, coupled with the humility that it’s not possible to quickly become fully competent in someone else’s culture. From there, they can:

• Reflect. Begin by reflecting as a department or organization to understand – what cultures and identities are represented in our donor body? In our staff? What are our own biases and assumptions that might be based on our cultural background? Do fundraising volunteers seem similar to the people they’re speaking with? Are we making decisions because they’re right for all our donors, or because it’s what we’re used to?
• Ask. Don’t be afraid to ask the right person to understand a complex or unfamiliar cultural situation. That person may be an organizational colleague, a board member or, in some cases, the donor themselves.
• Empathize. Everyone has their own assumptions of what’s normal. In working with donors, consider what actions might seem best from their perspective (which you should have an inkling of, if you’ve reflected and asked the right questions!). Ask, “how might we meet this individual where they are in with their approach and understanding of philanthropy?”
• Learn. In addition to reaching out to ask questions, there are many ways to learn about the history and context of the cultures your donors are a part of. Engage in conversation and ask people where and how you might learn more. If you’re interested specifically in developing your professional cultural competence skills in fundraising, the following resources are helpful:

– Lilya Wagner, Diversity and Philanthropy: Expanding the Circle of Giving
– Urvashi Vaid and Ashindi Maxton, The Apparitional Donor: Understanding and Engaging High Net Worth Donors of Color

– Related CCS Fundraising Articles:

Lasting Effects

Adapting a lens of cultural competency in fundraising will promote understanding through respectful intercultural dialogue. Ultimately, fundraisers with cultural competence will also be more empathetic, supportive, and understanding of the people they work with, regardless of background. Donors who feel authentically seen, heard, and understood will be excited to partner with an organization that allows them to do so on their own cultural terms.

[1] Adapted from Leung, K., Ang, S. and Tan, M.L. (2014), ‘Intercultural Competence’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behaviour, 1:4889-519.

[2] Deardorff, D. K. (2006), The Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalization at Institutions of Higher Education in the United States, Journal of Studies in International Education 10:241-266.