Really big gifts are transformational

I love being a major gift fundraiser.  I am convinced that it is the most effective and enjoyable form of fundraising.  So I was thrilled to come across a slew of blogs on major gift fundraising this week.

The great thing about major gifts from the perspective of a nonprofit is that they make major initiatives possible.  Terry Burton, blogs "Really big gifts can have a transformational effect on a nonprofit organization". Terry amongst other things is the author of a definitive text on Naming Rights. Naming Rights, you will know often go with transformational gifts. Reading his book is a good way to begin to plan how you will build a naming rights policy into your major gift strategy.

But back to the more recent blogs I mentioned. Fundraising consultant, David Landsdowne talks about Board Misperceptions and Other Issues Related to Major Gifts.  Among the misconceptions he deals with that old chestnut "We need to raise $100,000. Let's just find a hundred people who'll give $1,000 each."  He also reinforces the importance of stating a dollar amount when asking for a gift.  My favourite definition of asking for a gift comes from another fundraising consultant.  He says asking for a gift is simply putting a figure on the table.

The  blog Ten Reasons (Besides Money) That You Should Plan a Capital Campaign Now!  by fundraising consultants Gail Perry and Andrea Kihlstedt is worth a look as you think about your own potential to get stuck into major gift fundraising. This is the question they pose:

"Do you have big dreams for your organization but find yourself limited to taking tiny steps forward? Wouldn't you love to move forward boldly and make an even bigger—maybe even a huge—difference in the world? Are you ready to be inspired and excited by big thoughts and plans?"


The word 'transformational' was used in the title of the comprehensive research paper (download as .pdf) published by the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies. The headline quote in the exec summary says: "Major gifts play a transformational role in terms of making a gift that is really significant and can often make a huge difference to the organisation". The study is worth you dipping into again to remind you that, "Many... see major gifts as the most ‘underpotentialised’ area of community support in Australia". Also that major gifts have "great unrealised potential as a funding model for community need".

Pro Bono News wrote a very good summary of the paper you could revisit: Major Giving Report in Australia - Donor & Fundraiser Perspectives.

Capital Appeals are their own reward  happens to be about the institution where I was first engaged as a major gift fundraiser. It celebrates the end of a successful capital campaign for a Centre for Carbon Innovation at Edinburgh University.  My first, much earlier role as a major gift fundraiser was the start of a campaign for a Centre for Inflammation Research for the same university.

Can you suggest any other good sources of inspiration and advice on major gifts?

Whiteboards and herbal tea

There's a bit of a barney going on about 'Strategic Philanthropy' between a couple of prominent US 'philanthropoids' . It's fun to read yet somehow I feel that it’s forgotten a basic of philanthropy. Philanthropy is about love of mankind.  Real people not statistics.

William Schambra , started the ding dong with a provocative address in which he suggested that foundations in general and the Hewlett-Packard Foundation in particular were preoccupied with "whiteboards and herbal tea".  Well that wasn’t precisely what he said though it's amongst the memorable phrases.  What he was arguing was that there is a trend, in foundations especially, toward applying scientific models and metrics.  This, he says, threatens to usurp actually going to the frontline and listening to the wisdom and experience of those working at achieving the objectives of the grant seeking charity.

In response Paul Best, the head of the Hewlett-Packard Foundation paints a picture from an imagined past.  What if, he says, 19th Century philanthropy had ignored newly emerging medical research into bacteria and accepted frontline advice based on past practice and local wisdom?  Would serious problems have been tackled? (Note, that he has conflated the original argument into a defence of science as a whole, rather than Schambra's example which referred to a particular use of a specific scientific approach to foundation decision making).

The initial argument, it is acknowledged by Schambra, actually was made in an article Letting Go  in Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR).   It presents a real life case study of a foundation (Hewlett-Packard funnily enough!) which funded, entirely off its own bat, a  program that failed in its objectives.  A little while later some people closely involved with the intended beneficiaries of that funding came back to the foundation with a much better considered proposal.  A proposal designed from the perspective of the beneficiaries, in the knowledge of their specific circumstances and conditions.  It was funded and it was a success.

Now I am a fundraiser not a philanthropoid. For me, resonating through this argument is a more important one for  fundraisers.  When you are making your case for support or when you are running stewardship programs, are  you taking your donors or potential donors to the frontline? Are you introducing them to the people for whom their support makes a difference?

Creating a case for support in my experience is one of the hardest things a fundraiser has to do. It requires you to take a leap out of your world and into the wider world where your beneficiaries and your donors are.  You will have to talk to beneficiaries and learn their needs, wants and aspirations and turn these into stories, using sounds, feelings and pictures.

Of course, there's another strategy that you can use. How much time are you actually spending time in the frontline yourself.  Working alongside your program staff and the beneficiaries of your work. Or at the very least interacting with program staff, asking them questions and showing interest in what they do.

In fact by building rapport with your program staff, spending time in their shoes you will be able to do a much better job of  selling your case for support and dealing authentically with your donors and prospects

India's philanthropy long preceded America

Jamsetji Tata established his philanthropic foundation in India before even that of Carnegie.

This is a discovery made while exploring High Net Worth Philanthropy in India. In this blog interview first published in The Clockwork Muse, I explain how I got interested by philanthropy in India, its dimensions – social, cultural and religious and whether there are differences from Western notions of giving.

1. Please tell us a bit about how you got interested in High-net worth giving in India?

 Like many Protestants I knew very little about traditions of giving other than the one in which I grew up – church collections on Sundays, occasional street day appeals and organized charity appeals for the likes of Oxfam, Red Cross and Save the Children.  Somehow I formed the impression that it was the West alone that provided relief and succour to the developing world.  I never read or heard discussions about indigenous traditions of charity or philanthropy other than my own – even in my early days as a professional fundraiser.

Around 2005 I was working for a firm of international fundraising consultants and through them met Major General Surat Sandhu, who had recently retired from Help Age India to become a fundraising consultant. Sometime later, knowing that I was visiting India, he invited me to give a workshop to some Indian fundraisers. For the first time I began to understand a little bit about NGOs and philanthropy in India. As time went on I became more a more struck by the scale and prevalence of philanthropy in India.

More recently when I was considering the focus of my research for the Ph.D. I wanted to do.  I was reading the extensive press coverage generated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s first visit to India to promote the Giving Pledge. There was a great deal of discussion by Indian HNWIs themselves about their practice of philanthropy. I had never seen that in the West!  It seemed to me here was a fruitful area for further research.  Especially, of course,  because Ph.D. research is supposed to cover topics that haven’t been researched before. The sad fact is there has been almost no academic research on any aspect of Indian philanthropy.

 2. What is your background and experience ?

 As I mentioned briefly above, I am a fundraising consultant. I also train fundraisers. I began my career as an actor, then an arts administrator, then I became a fundraiser first in the arts and then in higher education – universities.

3. What have you uncovered so far about giving behaviors in the subcontinent?

 It’s hard to give a simple answer. The subcontinent is a complex mix of religions, castes, ethnic traditions, geographies, histories, politics and social class. All of these are reflected in one way or another in giving behaviors. However once again I would like to reiterate that there is, or are, strong traditions of giving.

4. Any surprises?

 No surprises other than the initial surprise that philanthropy and giving are so much a part of Indian culture.

 5. What is unique about Indian philanthropy, as compared to western notions of giving?

 I wouldn’t necessary claim that there is anything unique about Indian philanthropy, in comparison to Western philanthropy. One thing to remember is that Western philanthropy grew from traditions that were introduced from the East. The first endowed universities and hospitals in Europe were the result of Medieval Knights returning from the Islamic territories of the Middle East where they had been introduced to the tradition of Islamic philanthropy and waqf.

US philanthropy is an infant in comparison to the traditions of the Middle East and Asia having been imported from Europe in the 19th century.

6. Noam Chomsky said recently in an interview that most Indians are indifferent to others’ suffering? Do you agree with this, purely from a philanthropic perspective

I have great respect for Noam Chomsky as an intellectual and a great liberal. I don’t think the reported comment was particularly profound. He made an interesting observation about the reaction of someone else – Aruna Roy. And he tried to generalize it through his own sensibilities. I think he missed the mark and I hope that it isn’t held against him.

 7. What is the role of philanthropy in a society such as India? How does this intersect with the state’s responsibility?

 There is much debate about the role of philanthropy in societies around the world. The philanthropic sector is sometimes called the third sector to distinguish it from the state sector and the business sector. There are some things that can be achieved by philanthropy which cannot be achieved either through the state or by business. There are also some things that can be done in partnerships of all three – the state, business and philanthropy. Of these, I suppose it would be fair to say, philanthropy has the most freedom to innovate and take risks. Certainly this appears to be a growing trend both in the West and in India.


8. How do you foresee the understanding of philanthropy growing in India, going beyond Corporate Social Responsibility? The field is pretty nascent in India, is that right?

 As I have said already philanthropy is far from nascent in India. In fact, in comparison, it is American philanthropy that is nascent! There is much confusion about corporate social responsibility not just in India but all over the world. Corporate social responsibility and corporate philanthropy are not synonymous. In India the debate about corporate social responsibility has been renewed as a result of the government making it mandatory for some companies. However the definition of corporate social responsibility is still far from determined.

You may be alluding to the fact that there is a strong tradition of philanthropy within the business classes and industrial dynasties of India. There is in the public mind some confusion between corporate philanthropy, family philanthropy and CSR because of this. Similar confusion may even exist amongst those business families themselves.


9. Any concluding thoughts.

 A strong motivation for my undertaking this research into philanthropy in India is a belief that the world should recognize that there is much more to philanthropy than there is contained in Western philanthropy. Until now, 90% if not more, of the research that has been published has been published either by American or British scholars about American, British and Western European philanthropy. I was lucky enough to spend some time in the Middle East and was introduced to Islamic philanthropy. That began my curiosity and interest into other traditions of philanthropy.

India is remarkable because within one country there are so many different traditions. I think the world has a lot to learn from India.

Philanthropy gets a Buffetting

“It’s time for a new operating system. Not a 2.0 or a 3.0, but something built from the ground up. New code”.  With these words Peter Buffett started a controversy worth taking notice of.  

In an opinion piece in the New York Times he questioned the effectiveness of philanthropy, including some examples of mistakes of his own that led to his change of view.

Quick to respond were Matt Bishop and Michael Green the authors of Philanthrocapitalism.  The solution to Buffet's issues is already here, they say.  Its name is surprise, surprise, “Philanthrocapitalism”. My own reading of what Buffett says is different from Bishop and Green.  I do, however, agree with them (and Buffett) on the importance of philanthropic money being used as risk capital, and of achieving systemic change.

Two contributors from Forbes were next off the rank. Howard Husock drew historical parallels between Buffett and two of his American predecessors – John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Henry Ford II. All three argues Husock were wrong to doubt the system that gave them each their untold wealth. 

Tom Watson, on the other hand applauds Buffet  - agreeing with one of his main points and disagreeing with another. The disagreement is on the data on which Buffet’s argument appears to be based.  His agreement too is that philanthropy ought to provide risk capital.

Phil Buchanan from the Center for Effective Philanthropy also takes Buffett to task but he doesn’t spare any of Bishop and Green, Husock or Watson either. Not surprisingly for the President of an organization dedicated to researching how to make philanthropy more effective his conclusion Buchanan approves the overall debate. “We need to ask the big questions,” he says.

Some of the big questions Buffett has asked are

• Aren't the figures who are leading philanthropy also  leaders (or former leaders) of the very system that contributed the inequity now being redressed?
• Are business principles and capitalism really the solutions?
• Do  existing models of philanthropy take sufficient regard of different cultures, geography or societal norms?

What you might wonder does Buffett’s  famous father have to say about the debate? Well he is all in favour (or 'favor' maybe) says Peter on Huff Live.  Adding, "I grew up in a family with both parents being very much around equality, humanism, how can we make this world a better place for all ... I kind of grew up in this environment of social change and saying things out loud.”

By the way, if you're looking forsome music to round this discussion off you can listen to Peter Buffett’s latest song “Already Flown”

The bears and the bees

The bears were thinking.   Sunning themselves on a hillside clearing a pleasant breeze stirring the wildflowers that surrounded them they were grappling with a problem.   “To keep young bears fit and healthy we need to offer alternatives to sitting around eating and sleeping all day long.”  “We need activities that will challenge, educate and provide healthy exercise as well as being sociable and fun -  a picnic with a difference.”

Meantime, in the neighbouring woodlands, the honey bees were pondering another issue.  A bear related issue.  The woodlands were abundant and fruitful.  There were plenty of old trees and hollow logs in which to nest;  and many meadows and other clearings where flowers grew prolifically providing sweet nectar from which to  produce more than enough high quality honey to share with their neighbours.   The problem was that the neighbourhood bears were apt to take liberties, helping themselves to honey whenever and wherever they chose, often damaging bee colonies and the bee environment, despite the bees’ retaliatory stings (which as you know hurt the bee even more than the bear!) .  If only the bees could come to some kind of arrangement with the bears.

As the bees were thinking about the bears the bears started to think about the bees.  Or, more accurately, about honey.  Their plan involved competitions and prizes -  and prizes for bears mean honey in all its various shapes and forms.

And so it came about.  The bears went to the bees and made them a proposal.  If the bees would provide prizes for the games the bears would respond by promoting the honey’s goodness and the bees’ generosity.  As time went by the games became the highlight of the year and the young bears loved the opportunity to compete and win delicious prizes whilst benefiting from the healthy fun to be had.  The organisers were careful to publicize the importance of the bees to the success of the games.  The young bears learned to respect the bees and treat them and all aspects of their honey production with care.   Over time honey became even sweeter and richer, the bears stronger and healthier, the meadows and the woodlands vibrant and joyful; and bee stings came to be considered as some strange mysterious, vaguely remembered thing of the past.

The most obvious and for a long time the most common business partnership relationship is what is described as 'sponsorship'. The classic definition of 'sponsorship' is "an investment, in cash or in kind, in an activity, in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that activity”. The sports world remains, without doubt, the most obvious place to find examples of sponsorship.  Sports remain today where the bulk of sponsorship dollars are spent by business.  However, there are also many examples of businesses investing in and sharing in the benefits of linking themselves through sponsorship deals with other types of high profile activities, including cultural and educational events and other charitable endeavours.

More importantly, for many of you reading this blog, in the last decade or so there has been an increasing awareness that businesses benefit not only from traditional sponsorship arrangements but also from a wider and deeper choice of partnership mechanisms.  In addition to sponsorship, there is a whole spectrum of differing partnership relationships between organisations and businesses.  You may have come across these terms being used:

• corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• corporate philanthropy (CP)
• community engagement (CE)
• corporate community investment (CCI), and
• cause related marketing (CRM)
• corporate shared value (CSV)

However, you can forget the alphabet soup of CC, CCI, CP, CRM, CSR, CSV.  A better  way of thinking about types of corporate relationships with non profits is as a  scale -  from soft to hard, from philanthropy to advertising, and from long term and low profile relationships to high profile and short term relationships.

SOFT						HARD
PHILANTHROPY						ADVERTISING
<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>NON-COMMERCIAL ORIENTATION						COMMERCIAL ORIENTATION
CHARITABLE GIFTS						MARKETING INITIATIVES
LONG TERM OBJECTIVES						SHORT TERM OBJECTIVES
LOW PROFILE						HIGH PROFILE

At one end of this spectrum are very commercial, sales and marketing driven aims.  Mid way are subtler, longer-term economic goals such as communicating positive images to a range of audiences, including employees, potential employees, opinion formers and the communities in which they do business.  At the other end are even subtler goals, sometimes at first glance only tenuously connected with the business such as community and education projects.

Thinking of your organization, which of these goals is you most likely to successfully provide for a corporate partner?  The best way of answering this question is to step out of your shoes and into the business owner’s shoes.  What do you see from their perspective?   What might they hear that would make them interested in you?  What feelings might they have about your nonprofit or the area in which it works?

By being able to put yourself into the shoes of a business or business person and see, hear and feel the world from their perspective, you will find that you can identify what a business is most interested in and, more importantly, what benefits you can offer that will meet their objectives in exchange for their support.

America's 50 Worst Charities

A story has transfixed the US nonprofit sector - an investigation into America’s 50 Worst Charities by the Tampa Bay Times and the Centre for Investigative Reporting.  

You can get a taste of the story on  YouTube.

Amongst other tales of malpractice, the Tampa Bay Times  discovered a family web connects some of these America’s worst charities.  The Reynolds family has their fingers in five different cancer charities. Salaries of these charities in 2011 - at USD$8 million- were thirteen times what were paid out to beneficiaries.  One million dollars was paid to Reynolds family members.  Altogether of the USD$110 million raised by the charities in 2011, USD$75 million was paid to third party telephone fundraising contractors.

The Tennessee based Cancer Fund of America is the biggest of the five charities. It was founded by family patriarch, James T Reynolds Sr. who quit the American Cancer Society, to avoid being pushed for sloppy and questionable practices. Three of Reynolds’s family sit on the Cancer Fund board.  The family’s other charities pay executive salaries to nearly a dozen relatives.

A spokesperson for one of the family’s charities, Kristina Hixson, the wife of  Breast Cancer Society president, James Reynolds Jr. says "We have made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of men and women."

Recipients tell other stories.  One received a package for her terminally ill husband - "It was filled with paper plates, cups, napkins and kids' toys … I just threw it in the trash”.

Amongst the tricks of the trade practised by the Reynolds family has been setting up a telemarketing operation as a brand new charity, misleadingly named Cancer Support Services.  The US$10 per hour Cancer Support Services telephone fundraisers can say that ninety percent of the funds raised go to the charity.  The reality is that the “charity” is no more than an off balance sheet cost centre from which only ten cents per dollar raised actually goes to the Cancer Fund – let alone to those affected by cancer.

Another trick has been to book penny worth donated goods as massively inflated donations to overseas charities.  In 2011, the Reynolds charities claimed shipments valued at nearly $61 million were distributed to charities in Africa and Central America.  Several of the recipients that Cancer Fund claim to have supported say they got nothing.  IRS rulings permit this particular revaluation scam, which enables balance sheets to look very efficient (and thus attractive to donors) and a good deal larger than they really are.

In the full list of  “America’s 50 Worst Charities”  the Cancer Fund comes second to Kids Wish Network.

Forbes has run stories previously on inflated valuations of donated goods making charities look good.

Could it happen in Australia?  Will the new ACNC act as a deterrent? What do you think?

"Chunking Up"

I have worked on a couple of cases for support recently as well as beginning to plan a case for support workshop.  A valuable insight when constructing cases for support came to me,  as I thought these through.  The insight relates to a process referred to as “chunking up” drawn the field of neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

My first experience of creating a case was to “sell” the idea of building a new home for three medical departments.  On the face of it they were very different areas of medicine - obstetrics, lung disease and heart problems.  One big challenge was getting the medics to talk in layman’s language.  Another was drawing these separate threads together, so the advantage vital to writing a case for support.  To put it in language that will make sense to the potential donor.  To locatethe case in the donor’s world.

A breakthrough came over a working dinner with the eminent heads of the three areas.  They discussed their work, their ambitions, and their visions of the future. Then out of the conversation suddenly came an “Aha” moment. There was a common link in all the medical conditions they were practicing.[1]  From that rapidly came the name for the centre and much of the logic and language for the case for support.  Though we didn’t know it as such, the process that had just happened was “chunking up”.

Think of something simple.  Since we were talking of medics, how about “An apple a day keeps the doctor away!” What is an apple an example of?  A fruit.  What is a fruit an example of? A fresh food .  What is a fresh food item? Food. What is food for? Nutrition.  What is nutrition for? Health. What is health for? And so on.  This is chunking up.

You can chunk down too.  What is an example of an apple? Or chunk sideways.  What is another example of a fruit?  Edward de Bono made a career out of chunking sideways and coined the phrase ‘lateral thinking’.   Neither of these is as useful to the point I am making though as chunking up.

What is chunking up for?  Often when you start gathering together a case for support its hard to stop people talking about their own very personal point of view.  Yet as fundraisers we want to make a case that will work in the donors’ own world. That will match their hopes and dreams of a better world.

Take for a very simple example, repainting a classroom. What’s that an example of? Maintaining the school infrastructure?  What is maintaining the school infrastructure an example of?  Good school management.  What is good school management for?  Creating a good learning environment.  What is a good learning environment for?  Educating young minds. What is educating young minds for? Creating good adult citizens for the future. 

What is most likely to matter to a potential donor – the school infrastructure or the adult citizens of the future?  Yet how often have you read or heard people making cases that focus on the infrastructure, the hardware and not the effects or results of change.  Marketeers are taught to emphasise the benefits not the features of a product.  What I have outlined enables you to do exactly that for a case for support in order to make it persuasive and compelling to the donor.

[1]The link was inflammation. Human reproduction, most lung and heart diseases are all examples of inflammation.  Understanding how the mechanism of inflammation worked in the body could uncover what was behind many of the medical problems these doctors worked with.