Has quality of donors been sacrificed for quantity

The month since the death of 92 year old Olive Cooke has been filled with extraordinary commentary and concern about fundraising in the UK.

Nonprofit 'trade' journals have run articles featuring an array of the UK nonprofit sector's biggest names:

• 'Charities in crisis over Olive Cooke case, Shawcross says' (Third Sector).
• 'Shawcross and Bubb lock horns over the fallout of the Olive Cooke case' (Third Sector). 
• 'Rob Wilson writes to IoF asking for greater protection for donors' (Civil Society UK).
• 'Etherington’s suggestions ‘won’t address public concerns’, says Peter Lewis' (Civil Society UK).
• 'Fundraisers should need a licence to practise, says former IoF chair Mark Astarita' (Civil Society UK).

A quick guide to the cast of characters - William Shawcross is the chair of the Charity Commission, Sir Stephen Bubb is the Chair of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO);  Rob Wilson MP is the Minister for Civil Society, Sir Stuart Etherington is the CEO of the National Council of Voluntary Organizations (NCVO); Peter Lewis is the CEO of the Institute of Fundraising (IOF). Unmentioned in the headlines yet central to many of the arguments is another organisation, the Fundraising Standards Review Board (FSRB).

On reading this you might be surprised at the number of worthy sounding bodies and their titled representatives and wonder how fundraising in the sceptred isle could have fallen into such disarray. Here is a brief sypnosis.

A 92 year old lady, known to have complained about the high volume of charity appeals directed her way was found dead beneath a 245 foot high bridge. The media instantly linked her death to the pressure of the incessant fundraising approaches made to her. Within days the British Prime Minister, David Cameron urged action be taken. Both the FRSB, the independent regulator of fundraising, and the IOF, a professional association for fundraisers and fundraising, responded to the incident and ensuing media pressure. The FRSB launched an inquiry into charity fundraising approaches.  The IOF announced strengthened rules for its fundraiser members.

The media pressure continued, notably in the tabloid press. The Mail on Sunday for example ran a story written by an undercover journalist who underwent training with telephone fundraiser, Listen Ltd. The journalist described  how "staff are trained how to cynically squeeze cash from potential donors including 98-year-olds and cancer sufferers." Several household name charities such as Oxfam, Cancer Research UK and the RSPCA were forced into defending their links with the telephone fundraiser. A commentator described the entire ongoing saga as a “a pent-up stream of concern and complaint” [12].

The debates signalled by the trade press headlines above are indicative of the discomfort of the charity sector. NCVO chief executive, Etherington pointed to the conundrum of “The Institute of Fundraising’s dual identity, being both the champion of fundraisers, and a body with a key role in regulating fundraisers". He noted that the IOF as the representative of fundraisers sets the code which the Fundraising Standards Board adjudicates fundraisers against". The players, in other words, are setting the umpire's rules.

The commentary has been joined by the academic and research community. Jo Saxton, chief of an independent  a research consultancy, NfpSynergy wrote: "The sector needs to get its house in order, providing donors with a much better sense of their rights when it comes to giving".   He reminded fundraisers of an apparently forgotten 'Fundraisers Promise", published on the FRSB website.

Among the Promise's statements are: “If you tell us you don’t want to be contacted in a particular way, we will not do so” and “we take care not to cause undue disruption or nuisance”.

Plymouth University’s fundraising think tank, Rogare, is responding by bringing forward a project to develop new ‘normative’ fundraising ethics.  The core of the new norm will be presented at IOF’s Scotland conference in October.  It is that, "ethical fundraising balances the duty of fundraisers to ask for support, with the rights of other stakeholders not to be put under ‘undue’ pressure to donate", says Rogare Director, Ian MacQuillin.

Most interesting to me, of all the various opinions expressed, is one by a veteran of  charity fundraising, Chris Washington-Soare. In a blog he bemoans fundraisers "have fallen for the growth-over-quality revenue generation model for far too long" [16].

In the future, Washington-Soare argues, "Our focus needs to be on nurturing high-quality, high-value donor relationships and slowing down the hamster wheel of growth".

A version of this blog first appeared as an NPQ Newswire on 22 June 2015

Building profiles is good fundraising

What are we to make of this announcement in the Sydney Morning Herald? 



"Elite private schools are using sophisticated technology in order to tailor their fundraising pitches."

The piece then went on to say that schools use software that:

"Builds profiles on each donor, using census data to estimate wealth based on the average wealth of their suburb and the likelihood of them donating to the school.

"It stores every email a parent or donor has ever sent to the school's fundraising body, their payment and donation history, their volunteering efforts, event attendance and community involvement, to build a profile of the donor and measure their propensity to give."

In other words, schools identify and research fundraising prospects. This is exactly what schools, universities, cultural organizations and other charities ought to be doing if they are serious about fundraising, especially if they are serious about attracting major gifts.


Alfred A. Blum, Director of Advancement at Boston College Law School is cited as the source of the following fundraising maxim:

“The best solicitation occurs when the right prospect is asked for the right gift by the right solicitor at the right time in the right way... For that to occur, research is essential”. [For non-North Americans substitute 'ask' for 'solicit'!]

You as a competent fundraiser will also be able to justify good prospect identification and research from a donor's point of view.  How would you as a donor feel about sitting and listening to a pitch from a fundraiser for a project or cause in which you have absolutely no interest? What if you were asked for an amount that would be impossible for you to consider?  Or, conversely, you were approached for a small gift for something toward which you are strongly motivated and would like the opportunity to be significantly involved with?

Good prospect identification and research stops fundraisers wasting the time and effort of donors (as well as their own time and effort). Good prospect research builds a portrait of a door that tells us their interests, their ability to give and their links with your and other organizations. Good fundraising requires keeping and constantly refreshing this information. Most fundraising software provides ways of doing this.

Additionally, there is a heap of web-based software and searchable databases, freely available or paid for, that can provide valuable information to answer the questions you need to ask about someone's interests, ability to give and linkages.  From this information, you will be able to carefully plan your fundraising approaches so as to not waste the precious time and good regard of people.

The most important consideration though is to once again put yourself in the prospect's shoes.  Every time you record and retain some data about a prospect ask yourself, "If I saw or heard that this was being kept on my record how would I feel?"

If you have any doubts about storing information remember these five principles (adapted from the  Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement Ethics and Professional Standards):

• Keep confidential information protected
• Be sure data is accurate
• Be sure data is relevant
• Be clear about the purpose of your research
• Take responsibility and be accountable for your actions as a professional fundraiser

No idea where to start interacting with your prospects?

"I have to start raising funds from individuals in a country where HNWIs have a very poorly developed culture of giving.

"...We have no idea where to start interacting with our prospects"

This message could have come from any number of schools and universities that I know of and, I suspect, a large number of other nonprofits. It has certainly been true of several organizations where I have worked either as a manager or a consultant. I've seen the problem, heard the challenge and felt the anxiety. Or you might say "Been there, done that and bought the T-shirt!"

In my experience there is a simple solution. Get out there and start talking to these HNWI prospects. It's not as difficult as you might think. The second part of this reader's problem – "a very poorly developed culture of giving" – could be precisely the hook on which to start the conversation.

The process starts as with almost all fundraising by identifying and researching the people whom you want to go and meet with. The criteria that you used to identify such people will vary according to your situation. However, in some way it will be related to their capacity to give (not just money but also experience and networks) and the strength of their connection to your institution or cause[1]. Writing this causes me to hope you are reflecting on the importance of fundraisers or someone on your fundraising team doing proper prospect research.

Having identified and qualified a list of prospects with whom you have some connection then the message I suggest you send them goes something like this:

Dear Name

You are one of our most significant supporters/friends/alumni and we are very proud of our connection with you. We know we haven't spoken with you a lot in recent times and now we would like to do so with a very specific purpose.

You, I am sure are aware, that institutions such as ours thrive, grow and make a difference in the community because of the support we receive from many quarters.

However, we recognize that one area where we have a challenge is that we have a very poorly developed culture of asking for gifts.

The purpose of this letter is to ask if we can come and talk with you to get your advice on how we might begin to approach this challenge. We feel that because of your experience and success in your field you will have faced similar challenges and will have a great deal of wisdom to offer us.

I will telephone your office sometime next week to see if I can arrange a time when we can meet you.

Yours sincerely

Of course the actual wording of such a letter will vary with your specific situation. However, the basic structure suggested above is:

• One or more opening factual statements showing that you identify with the reader.  Put yourself in their shoes. What is true about them and what is important to them enough that they will continue to read the letter?

• A short phrase summarizing your mission or case for support.

• State the specific problem (note the re-frame as “asking” not “giving”. Us not “them”).

• A request for their advice (remember the fundraising adage, "Ask someone for money and they will give you advice. Ask them for advice, and they will give you money")

• Timeframe and an indication that you intend to follow this with an action.

Then, do follow-up. Make a time to go and talk. When you do have the conversation remember another important piece of fundraising wisdom: "you have two ears and one mouth - use them in that ratio!" You will learn more and develop a better rapport by listening. 

Ask them what they think about you. How well do they think you are performing? What could you do differently? What would they do in your shoes? Who else do they know who it would be worth having a similar conversation with?

Then you will exit by saying “Thank you for those important suggestions. I will keep you up-to-date on our progress and, if I may, come back and bounce a few ideas of you at some other time.”

Of course, this is only the start of a relationship. However, you will have broken the ice. In all likelihood, you will come away having gleaned some valuable nuggets of information about the prospects, her interests, values, and connections.

This first interaction should only be the beginning of a series of interactions which you will use to bring that person closer and closer to what your organization does. If you treat their ideas and connections with respect you will undoubtedly when their support and that of others like them.

In another blog, I will suggest some ideas on how to continue to bring major prospects closer and closer.

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[1] Your target here will be someone who is one of the “wealthy, wise and well connected”.

Don't research, don't ask

One university Vice Chancellor whom I have worked with takes the view "just ask!"

Luckily for him, his fundraising team doesn’t take this to heart.

Many years ago, when I should have known better, I accompanied another Vice Chancellor on a visit to ask a prospect for a seven figure gifts. I had only been engaged by that particular university a few days previously and didn't think it politic to dissuade him from the ask. The ask was made around a boardroom table with several other people in the room. The temperature dropped several degrees and had a pin hit the floor it would have sounded like a dropped dumbbell.

I should have known better because as a newcomer to major gift fundraising I had the good fortune to share an office with a then, little-known breed of professional called a Prospect Researcher. Until then I hadn't known such a job existed. Since then I have been enormously grateful to the skills I learned from her and a growing number of other professional prospect researchers with whom I've worked.

Success at major gift asking depends on you asking (or as I prefer to say offering an opportunity) for a gift that will make a significant difference in an area which is central to the giver's moral universe. Research will help you understand that person’s moral biography[1].

Research also help you know the size of gift that a potential donor is able to make. This is likely to be a product of their past giving record, where the opportunity that you are offering fits within that moral universe, and their wealth (assets and liquidity).

Research will also help you identify the prospects social and professional networks. This will help you work out whom to involve with you as you begin to draw the prospect towards the opportunity to give and who can help you weave the narrative of your case for support.

It will also help you know the prospects social and cultural tastes and enable you to plan a series of events and moments which are likely to develop the bonds of friendship between the donor and your organization.

To be more concrete, this is what you want to discover through prospect research

• Basic contact and demographic details, including addresses, occupation, family circumstances, age and education.
• Networks and affiliations such as particular recreations, clubs and societies professional and personal), professional networks including board and trustee roles
• Already existing philanthropy (ideally including amounts given) and volunteering
• Income, which can often be inferred from occupation and other indicators; and wealth, which is often much harder to know and seldom has a basis in appearances.

It is my belief that the majority of major gift prospects will expect you to have done this homework. Not doing it and wasting someone's time with an ill judged ask is a major discourtesy. 

The biggest ask I've managed was the leading gift to a medical research institute.  The final stage was a dinner hosted by the chief executive of the organization, in an exclusive and hard to obtain historic venue. There was live classical music (another of his interests) and a formal presentation by the leading researcher and a full table of the institution's leaders and existing supporters. A proposal that had been carefully shaped to conform to the giver's well known tastes and inclinations had previously been submitted. We knew this was what the donor expected.

It was the discourtesy of not doing research that resulted in the frosty silence that I first described above.

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[1] ‘Moral biography’ is the term used by Paul Schervish, the leading researcher of HNWI philanthropy. The term moral biography refers to the way that individuals conscientiously combine in daily life two elements: personal capacity and moral compass (Schervish, PG 2006, 'The Moral Biography of Wealth; Schervish, PG 2008, 'Why the Wealthy Give').

The crack cocaine of fundraising?

Feasibility studies are the crack cocaine of fundraising, says the author of a forthcoming book.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy has run two pieces canvassing the for and against  this provocative suggestion.

Disclaimer alert! I happen to believe that one of the best, if not the best service people like me can offer you as a fundraiser is a feasibility study. I make my living, in part, from doing them. And, curiously, I have heard campaign director after campaign director stand up at fundraising conferences and say just exactly the same: how important it is to engage a consultant to conduct a feasibility study before embarking on a major fundraising campaign.

By major fundraising campaign, I am talking about major capital campaigns. 

A capital campaign, briefly explained, is a fundraising campaign aiming to raise a) a significant amount of money, b) in a defined period of time, c) mainly from very large gifts from wealthy individuals and institutions, d) for a specific, or series of specific projects.

A campaign of this nature can be extremely effective and extremely demanding of all those involved. And all those involved will include your CEO, chair and board and most of your senior colleagues. You will also need to budget spending somewhere in the region of 15% of your campaign target. So immediately, you are talking about a very major investment of your organisation's resources.

You are also going to be 'nailing your colours to the mast' by focusing a lot of your communications and publicity around your capital campaign once it is underway.

Should you seriously consider any of the above without having had a good look at the feasibility of your plan and its likelihood of success?

Could you do a feasibility study yourself? Yes, possibly. But would it be as expert and robust? Well here in essence is what a capital campaign fundraising feasibility study does. When you have finished reading ask yourself these questions again.

The feasibility study will put your case for support to people both within and outside of your organisation and ask, does this make sense? Can this be done? Would you support it? Do you know anyone else who would support it? How can it be improved?

The feasibility study will look at the leadership of your organisation and assess whether it is strong and focused enough to withstand the scrutiny that major gift givers will give it. The study will ask tough questions about the abilities of your chair, CEO and board to achieve what your case for support proposes.

The feasibility study will look at your existing donors and other connections. It will ask what research you have done? Who amongst these people are wealthy and well-connected? How strong is your relationship with them? How likely is it that they are either going to make large gifts themselves or lead you to large gifts?

It will test the information received from these last questions using a tried and tested algorithm – the capital campaign gift chart. From that study will conclude the likelihood of you achieving your target.

Now, back to those questions. Is this a process that you can see, hear or feel yourself undertaking? How honest will the people you know and work with be about your case for support? How rigorous will your questioning be of the leadership, the people who pay your salary?  How objective  do you think potential donors are likely to be when you test your case for support on them? What indication of the likelihood of a gift and the size of that gift will they make to you?

It takes money to raise money

One of the challenges many of you will face in major gift fundraising is convincing your CEO and board that it takes money to raise money.

Sometimes, this happens because by the time  your nonprofit comes around to thinking seriously about major gift fundraising its finances are already constrained. Other times, it may be simple naiveté. A byproduct of the notion that somehow nonprofit means low-cost and that paring administration or overhead to the bone is the right thing to do.

Major gift fundraising is by far the most cost-effective of many fundraising strategy. The return on investment generally achieved by a focused major gift or capital campaign will be around 4 to 5 times the amount expended. However, this means if your target is to raise, $1 million you are going to need a budget of somewhere between $200,000 to $250,000. Do the math and add zeros depending on how much it is that you need to raise.  

Let's have a look at some of the reasons why. First, for anyone of you new to major gift fundraising here is a quick rundown of the basics. You will need a case for support. That case is a well researched and tested argument which will be the basis of your communication and asking for donations. Next you will be to identify and understand who your most likely major givers are. That done, you will need to reach them, have conversations with them, and eventually win their support. All of this will cost money.

To develop a good case for support you will need to develop a thorough understanding of whatever it is for which you are fundraising (this could include your entire organisation, a particular program or project, or building or facility). This does not mean taking for granted and using your organisation’s operational strategies and documents as your case. You will need to flesh these out into language that will resonate with potential donors. This means talking to those responsible for generating these documents. It means talking to those who will be involved in actually doing the work that these documents describe. It means talking to those who will benefit from this work. And, most importantly, it means talking to some of your most likely major givers to test their likely response to your case for support. All of this is going to cost in time and travel. You will probably need to undertake around 20 interviews of say an hour each. The travel costs will depend on the location of your personnel, beneficiaries and major gift prospects. If you are fortunate they are local.  But for many of you the gift prospects may involve airfares and accommodation.

To be successful asking for a major gift it is important that you have a thorough knowledge and have developed an effective plan about how you are going to approach the potential major giver. There is only one way to do this is to carefully research that person or organization. You will need to know what they are likely to support, how much they are likely to give and also how best to approach them. You can do this yourself.  A thorough research profile will take half to a day of work if you have access to the right tools (there are many sources of free information but sometimes really good, accurate information requires paying for subscription services). The alternative, is to use a specialist professional prospect researcher who will charge in the ball park of $250 to $350 per prospect. For larger campaigns, or ongoing major gift fundraising, a full-time in-house prospect researcher as part of your fundraising team, is almost certainly the best way to go.

Having done your research, you will need to plan how you are going to take your case for support out to your major gift prospects and persuade them to make a gift. The general consensus among experienced major gift fundraisers is that you will need to have had somewhere between three and five ‘conversations’ (used here in its widest sense) with a prospect before they are willing to be asked.  Your best major gift prospects will probably be scattered around a wide geography and you won’t always be able to wait for them to come to you.  Proper conversations will usually involve more than one person from your organization, often your CEO or Chair and therefore their travel and accommodation.  Effective conversations and persuasion to support you also will also often require expenditure on hospitality of some sort or another.

Asking, thanking, and looking after your major donors once they have committed will likewise involve more than one person and their travel plus expenditure on additional hospitality, the costs of visits to view results and other communications about outcomes and progress.

Added to this are myriad other expenses related to communication and administration. You will probably want to produce some campaign collateral materials. Usually there will be some events associated with the campaign – the campaign launch, site visits and ultimately some form of completion celebration. There will be phone calls, invitations, thank you cards, progress reports, receipts, data entry and so on all of which will be additional to your normal routine costs.

Have I missed anything? Please feel free to add to this list with your own experience or conjecture. It is vital that you are able to convince your CEO and board that you are given sufficient budget to run a campaign successfully. Anything less is courting disaster.

Words or Numbers?

One of the enduring debates in the not-for-profit world is what I loosely label words versus numbers or  qualitative versus quantitative. It can take many forms.

I hinted at it in my last blog about the two organisations in India that connect donors with nonprofits. In this blog I aim to look at it further.

This argument has its parallels in other fields, including in the social sciences where it is framed as an argument between positivists and ethnographers. I blogged about another aspect of it under the title Whiteboards and herbal tea. In that I was alluding to an important debate about foundation funding criteria between two leading thinkers in contemporary American philanthropy William Schambra  and Paul Brest .

However, my mind at present is focused on making your case for support and how you might construct appeals. My contention is that words and stories (i.e. the qualitative elements) are far more powerful than numbers and statistics (the quantitative). Another argument might be that pictures are vitally important: but that's an argument for another day.

The argument could also be framed in the heart versus head rubric. Of course, I am not arguing that some numeric data may not be important. For example, when you are making a case for support for a capital campaign it will be important to explain the costing which your campaign is based. It may also be important to provide some information about your organisations overall finances and its balance sheet. Those potential donors who may be considering making very large gifts might (and I emphasise might because it is far from always the case) apply their ‘investment logic’ before they commit to a gift. Supposing, for instance, that they come from the world of business investment decision-making? 

However, it is my belief that for major gifts decisions, in particular, donations are more often made for moral, ethical or even emotional reasons. Donors support medical projects because of a personal history touched by health and medicine. They support educational institutions, again because of a personal history touched by education: and, often as an alumna/us of the institution that they are supporting.

In less biographically touching appeals, I still believe that the emotional, 'heart' pulling effect of stories and the words are far more convincing than statistics. This is true even when the statistics are grim. It is shocking to point out that more than 10 percent of the world lives on less than a dollar a day or, that 17,000 children under age five die every day. 

However, if you can really tell the story, or paint the picture of  a child born in a village in sub Saharan Africa to parents whose every waking moment was devoted to scouring for such miserable sustenance that the harsh environment provided. And that even this survival was everyday threatened by effects of climate change and political upheavals. And then your story continues, that the future of that child can be met  with appropriate help and that they will survive and even thrive. Or better still,  you can show how existing funding is changing the ecosystem and infrastructure in the community where that child lives. In summary, tell a story or paint a picture showing there is hope. Isn't that far more compelling than bare statistics?

The great advantage of storytelling over fact-telling is especially reinforced in these examples from the SOFII website *, each of which uses various combinations of media and technology. Another advantage of making your case with stories is that they lend themselves to being retold in multiple ways (and there's only so much you can do with numbers!!)

• Every day in developing countries thousands of women (mainly) face the difficult task of fetching and carrying water from its source to their homes. It's a grueling daily duty most donors would find very hard to imagine.  This is the story told by WaterAid 

• Martin was volunteering in Afghanistan with when he met a young girl called Hadisa. At eight months old, she was carried hundreds of miles by her father to receive treatment after the village elders tried to stone her to death for the shame they thought she brought to their community. The medical facilities in Kabul were not equipped to deal with the severity of Hadisa’s condition. This was the story that led to  Martin founding Facing the World.

• It’s easy for you to ignore a homeless person as they walk past them on the street, but  if you had a homeless person telling their story on your phone for three days you would see that the issues behind youth homelessness are complex and varied.

Please add your own examples of compelling stories, well told (or even the compelling use of numbers!)

* BTW Here also is the story of SOFII told by its founder - himself a master of storytelling.