Non-grant funding opportunities

How would you like this to be YOUR headline?

"The University of South Alabama in Mobile has announced a $50 million gift from local businessman and philanthropist Abraham "Abe" Mitchell in support of its business school and a new scholarship program.

The largest gift in the history of Alabama public higher education brings to $93 million the total given by Mitchell and his family to the university."       http://www.southalabama.edu/publicrelations/pressreleases/2013pr/050313.html

There is a tendency among smaller nonprofits confine their thinking to Facebook donors and grants. In reality, major gifts and bequests should form a large slice of your funding plan.

Landing a gift like this is a matter of relationship building. You can't just get a list of the 50 richest people in your area and send them a generic mailer.

 

One of the small nonprofit shortcomings that I see constantly is a reluctance to get out there and actively form alliances and use the power of face-to-face conversation. In today's wired world this is still a necessary skill to promote awareness not just of your mission, but of your needs. In business it is often referred to as networking.

One of your administrative focuses should be the creation of a major gift strategy. One person should be in charge of prospecting for events attended or sponsored by local philanthropists. If you don't know who they are, go to  number of events, preferably somewhat related to your mission, but at least that attract the so-called "moneyed" crowd.  If there are  local museums, art galleries, zoos or colleges in your area, go to those institutions and look to see who is on their wall of supporters, or search for press releases related to funding they may have received. Check Facebook or Google the supporters and look for press releases or articles that mention where they may be spending their dollars.  Look on the websites of charities that have a related mission to yours.  Many of them have a supporter page. Check the Board of Director lists for local foundations.  The information is publicly available on many nonprofit-related websites that rate foundations or compile information on them.

Once you have a target list of a dozen or so prospects, attend functions they may be at, and have your 15-second elevator/introduction speech ready  (I'm pleased to meet you.  My name is Jane Doe and I represent the charity, XXX, a nonprofit interested in helping Y")  if you are introduced to them.  Don't pounce on them like a starving hyena, or immediately ask for a meeting or donation.  Just make small talk, comment on an exhibit, or even ask for their opinion of something at the event.  People love to talk about themselves and their interests, so keep it on that level at first.  If you make them feel good about themselves, they will feel good about you.

Some nonprofit staff may feel inadequate or unprepared to attend gala events.  First, that is a skill that you learn, but if you really don't feel comfortable in that situation, or feel that you can't present yourself adequately see if a friend or volunteer would go with you to provide moral support. Just circulate, enjoy the event and observe.  You will very quickly learn the ropes and then you can go forward with your relationship building efforts. More informal gatherings such as community breakfasts or picnics are generally something anyone can enjoy attending and feel comfortable in the environment.

There is an old saying that goes "It's not what you know, it's who you know".  This is good advice for nonprofits, so get out there and start finding people that will support and validate your mission. 

Procedures don't exclude passion!

This blog is largely targeted to small nonprofits and people wanting to start nonprofits, but it apparently  struck a nerve with a board member at an established nonprofit, as evidenced by this email excerpt.

"I am so sick of people like you telling nonprofits to operate like businesses that I can't find words to express it. WE ARE NOT BUSINESSES! Furthermore, we don't want to be a business. We exist to help people or support causes and there is no room in that mission for your silly performance evaluations or business plans or any of that stuff.  All that just takes time and money away from our ability to deliver services and adds to our administrative costs. We can only exist if we can express our passion and create that passion in other people."

I appreciate this person's willingness to share that viewpoint. I do respectfully submit that I have never suggested that being more business-like in the procedures of obtaining grants and controlling administrative processes should take precedence over achieving your mission. In fact I addressed this very issue in the post "Structure not Stricture"(http://cloudlancerwriting.blogspot.com/2013/02/structure-without-stricture-winning.html).

Grant applications generally require some proof of impact. Some programs will not produce the desired results, just as some products are not successful in the marketplace. It is up to you to prove they are worth funding, and I'm not sure how you can do that without having any evaluation procedures in place. If the evaluation shows weaknesses, why would a grantor fund it?

I'm not sure why having procedures in place to measure outcomes or prevent waste of grant funds should be diametrically opposed to the passion for the mission. If I was a donor to this person's organization, I would certainly want to know if they met their program goals, or judge for myself whether their programs actually met my personal passion for their cause. Add to that the undeniable fact that more foundation and corporate funders are expecting a higher level of performance (outcome) measurement and better accounting for funding. The need for planning and measuring program impact seems to be something you would want to do.

I certainly understand that helping even a handful of people or animals, cleaning a mile of highway or whatever your mission addresses is preferable to doing nothing. My goal is to help nonprofits attract funding and keep expenses at a realistic level to provide the maximum ability to achieve and expand the mission. I just don't know any way to do that without utilizing some practices that overlap into the world of conventional business. In far too many cases, what I observe is that there is an unwillingness to confront problems, and not having procedures in place allows the organization to ignore warning signs.

Take the strategic plan (which is not a conventional business plan).  Properly constructed this should actually support and expand enthusiasm, not put a damper on it. Good nonprofit strategic plans are for the purpose of focusing efforts on mission accomplishment, not counting pennies. If it exposes a flaw, wouldn't you rather know about it and fix it  before you commit countless hours and dollars to a project doomed to failure?

If this nonprofit is getting maximum impact for the mission, meeting all their goals and are as big as they ever want to be, then by all means they should continue to do what they are doing. I do wonder how they know that they are meeting their goals if they didn't have a way to set that goal in the first place, and I sincerely hope they are not measuring effectiveness by number of people in a program, rather than by how many people are better off in some way because of the program.

Having said that, I see far more organizations that are barely surviving because they can't answer even the most basic questions that grantors ask, and for them I will continue to advocate for having structure within their organizations. There is a reason why the Internal Revenue Service reported that over 10,000 nonprofits simply ceased to exist in 2012. If I can prevent that through assisting nonprofits to survive and prosper, then I've met my mission goals. 

Rebecca Lee Baisch