Building Charismatic Organizations

Last night, I finished reading Shirley Sagawa's book on building magnetic nonprofits. Lots of underlining and sticky notes! Here is one paragraph that sung out to me as particularly perfect in two projects ChangeMatters is working on now (a major gifts, including storytelling, workshop and an arts organization turnaround). How compelling, how inviting, how engaging are we?

“If you have done your job right, the gravitational pull of your organization—its people, purpose, plan, and proof—has convinced your audience that they want to help. It’s at this point that you much challenge yourself to think of involvement opportunities other than check writing—even if what you want and need most is money. If you ask for a donation you might get it. But if you offer a variety of interesting ways to become involved, chances are that over time, you will get larger donations or more of them if a cash transaction is not the only dimension of your relationship. Ultimately that relationship, not just that donation, is what you seek.

“Charismatic organizations often offer a wide range of involvement opportunities, from volunteer positions to education. And they thank those who get engaged in meaningful ways that keep them coming back.”

I did get this message pretty powerfully from Dance Place, where I attended a performance Saturday night. It was all there in the homegrown "playbill." Class list; performance calendar; mission; letter; photos; friendly and positive language; ways to follow and friend; invitations to come to a show, bring your children, become a member, take a class, buy dancewear, make a contribution, come to a party, volunteer; asking and thanking. And stories, stories everywhere.

Grammar Girl to the Rescue!

Are you trying to persuade or convince a funder to give you a grant? In her latest podcast, Grammar Girl has the answer. (Note: I'm late to the iPod era and have been searching for fun and educational podcasts to follow, although you can simply listen to her episodes on your computer.)

Sometimes in the rush to meet proposal deadlines, grammar and style checks can go out the window. However, it is this very polish that can help set your submission apart from the others. At stake is clarity. Make it easy for the funder to understand your concepts and program design. You also never know if someone on the selection committee is a stickler for good grammar!

Most of the episodes are between five and seven minutes, just long enough for a quick learning break. But maybe you'd rather just check Facebook instead.

The Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund

Hey, all you schools and education nonprofits, The New York Times reported yesterday about the DOE's upcoming grants for innovation. See excerpts below:

The federal Department of Education sketched out a new nationwide competition on Tuesday under which some 2,700 school districts and nonprofit groups are expected to compete for pieces of a $650 million innovation fund.

Federal officials said the Investing in Innovation Fund would be distributed in three categories. Small development grants of up to $5 million will support new, unproven ideas that seem worth exploring, they said. Validation grants of up to $30 million will support existing programs that have shown evidence that they can work. Scale-up grants of up to $50 million will go to programs that have developed a strong track record for improving student achievement, the officials said.

The public will have 30 days to comment on the proposed rules after they are published this week. Applications by districts and nonprofits are due in the spring.

The fact sheet on the fund is here.

Explaining Social Media

Thanks to the folks at Digital Wagon Train for highlighting this presentation on social media. Let me know if you present it at your next board meeting.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

Principles for Nonprofit Boards

Over the last few weeks, I've been working with the board of a nonprofit arts center to develop a fresh committee structure. Best texts for this have been David LaPiana's article for Board Cafe, "Why Boards Should Only Have Three Committees;" Jonathan D. Schick's book, "The Nonprofit Secret," (particularly the six principles of successful board/CEO partnerships).

Key principles and guidelines for nonprofit boards:

1. The board creates committees to help accomplish our own job, not the Executive Director’s job.

2. We focus on governance, not management. In general, this means that the board monitors and provides counsel to management and should not get involved in the day-to-day affairs of the organization. In practice, sometimes this distinction is not precise.

3. The board has one employee (the Executive Director) and the Executive Director has one employer (the board as a whole). Board members do not have power or authority individually.

4. We have a role with responsibilities as a full board, as well as roles and responsibilities as individual board members.

5. Each board member serves on one committee (and two, if a member of the Executive Committee).

6. The purpose of an Executive Committee is to represent the full board and, in rare instances, make urgent interim decisions, and to assess and support the performance of the executive director. The purpose is not to reduce the power of the full board.

Major Donor Fundraising

Working on a couple of training events, and rediscovered a bunch of old posts on cultivation and fundraising with major donors:

Seven Fundraising Principles

Asking for Gifts

Turning Contacts into Donors

Checking in with Grassroots Donors

Fundraising Dream

Personalized Donor Cultivation

Everyone is a Fundraiser

Moving from Start Up to What?

How many founders recognize this point in the organizational life cycle?

Led by vision and passion, the founder brings an almost heroic commitment to the cause. A small number of other highly committed volunteers and relatively low-paid staff keep operations afloat. The organization is entrepreneurial and jumps on opportunities. It focuses on accomplishing mission, creating programs and keeping them running. Organizational structure and management style are relaxed, informal, and creatively developed for the particular organization's culture and style. Loosely defined and sometimes overlapping staff and volunteer roles and responsibilities are tailored to leadership personality and interests rather than necessary functions. Communication among staff and key volunteers is frequent and fluid, and they feel kind of like a family. In organizations initiated by a charismatic and entreprenuerial founder, boards typically function as «following boards» that faithfully take the lead of the founder and offer relatively little independent challenge or significant support.

At this stage, an organization may face the predictable, inherent challenges—and trauma—of the pressure to grow. Or die. Early successes will generate publicity, which will attract more clients and interested partners. The leadership then needs to make a shift from focusing on establishing a vision and a solid program to the more complicated focus on management of capital, capacity, and resources, and on developing a sustainable business model.

This is typically a painful and difficult stage of transition for organizational founders. The key staff and volunteers are working very hard, but getting tired of carrying a full load and not being able to get traction for growth. Founders and boards discover that charisma and cause are not sufficient skills for manage a growing organization. The demand is for structure and planning. The habits are of flexibility and enterprise. And in tough economic times, the organization may not be able to afford to change. You've got a crisis point.

What makes the difference in being able to choose a strategic response? If there is capital to invest--or if you can secure new funding, this can be an excellent problem because you've got resources to organize and hire for structure and growth. If not, but there are willing and capable partners, a founder can consider mergers or other restructuring. If there's no money to risk and no partners, then what?

After you've already considered everything and tried almost anything, by which I mean cash "triage," crisis fundraising, cleaning house, transformation (perhaps through wildly exciting fresh program partnerships and Crazy Eddie-intensity marketing), then what's left is dissolution.

And if you have to go there, it is possible to go there honorably and responsibly. A strategic plan (really) for dissolution can help you bequeath programs and other intangible organizational assets, provide "hospice care" to stakeholders, acknowledge and celebrate the precious and valuable life the organization led. And the lives it touched.

Your Organization's Donation Page

How are you inviting people to invest? Offering opportunities for your group's fans to engage? Creating a chance for individuals to connect to the work. Fans are the ones who can give donations and create buzz and push a movement.

Does your donations page read something like this?

Grassroots Gifts
Participation is powerful. $10 each from 1,000 individuals becomes $10,000. Contribute what you can. Invite your family and friends to participate in Our Organization's Important Activity Fund.

Lead Gifts
Your Lead Gift of $5,000 or more will build the foundation for the Important Activity Fund. Be a Leader and please give generously to the Important Activity Fund. A Lead Gift donation will be acknowledged with a one-of-a-kind premium.

The above examples explain that donations will add up and be valuable to the organization. OK, but not exactly inspiring. Your page needs to tell us how our donations will make a difference to the problem you are working to fix!

Donors/Fans want to help fix what's not right in the world. We appreciate nonprofits because their leaders have a strategy and plan (and presumably, partners and networks and programs) to do this. Nonprofit leaders have done the hard work and all they need now is money, volunteer time, and help spreading the word. Ask us for that and show us how our contributions will make a real difference in the world.

Reflection: National Conference on Service & Volunteering

Let me just say: Chaka Khan.

Really the conference was extraordinary. The opening session, stunning. The sessions, strong. The networking, friendly. The colleagues, creative and sharp. The closing panel discussion, important, and Paul Hawken's closing comments, inspirational. Much of the action was covered live by the folks at MediaGuns.

Somehow, the planners were able to create a conference appropriate for nearly 5000 VISTA leaders, AmeriCorps members, SeniorCorps directors, nonprofit execs, foundation program officers, "capacity-builders" like me, and corporate executives. Anyone in this field for more than 2 hours could imagine how tough that would be.

What ChangeMatters will be doing a lot more of, as a result of our participation:

• Looking for more ways to connect community-based arts organizations with community service action groups;
• Collaborating with colleagues to help service organizations raise more resources, improve governance, and plan for growth;
• Adding more tools to enable us to work more effectively as a growing "new economy consulting firm" (thanks to Laura Gassner Otting for this conceptual framework);
  
• Developing a board orientation program for arts organizations;
  
• Finding fresh venues and creating new ways to just do what we do.

In addition, I'm working on the ChangeMatters soundtrack. Suggestions welcome.

Advice on How NOT to Hire Development Help

Consultant Janet Levine blogs about how __not__ to hire development staff for a nonprofit organization. She identifies real and common issues around making a good hire for these challenging roles.

Here’s are her ideas:
1. DON’T “spend a lot of time thinking about what I really wanted this person to do.”

2. DON’t expect that person to “log in the gifts, send out thank you letters, manage the annual gala and the golf tournament, make nice to board members (but don’t for pity’s sake ask them for anything), keep the files up to date, get out a newsletter, arrange for the bus to pick up….and oh yeah, in your spare time, could you make sure you close the financial gap between our revenue and expenses.”

3. DON’T develop interview “questions that will truly dig into a person’s style and beliefs. “

4. DON’T give candidates “a transparent picture of the situation.”

5. DO create a job description and DO develop “screening questions that have no connection to reality. “

Ten Survival Strategies for Arts Organizations

John R. Killacky writes the most excellent article I've seen on what to __do__ about the economic crisis in the arts. He offers ten survival --or I would say, and Thrive-al-- strategies for arts organizations. Thanks to the newsletter Blue Avocado for highlighting this.

Each strategy is so thoughtful and practical, I had a hard time deciding what to highlight. I'm going with this:

"Capitalize to mission delivery, not sustainability. Michael Kaiser from the Kennedy Center is adamant: 'We mustn't be scared into thinking smaller. Small thinking begets smaller revenue that begets smaller institutions and reduces excitement and involvement.'"

But be sure to read the whole piece.

Resource Roundup: Extreme Fundraising, Pro Bono Help, Facebook Fail?, and More.

Stepping up: Nonprofits cutting costs and raising revenue creatively.

Are your ears burning?: Charities need to track what is said about them online.

Pro Bono: How to overcome a lack of volunteer consultants.

Perspectives: 20 nonprofit & philanthropy blogs written by people of color.

What donors want: Does your website offer it? (via About.com)

Stay exempt: IRS provides online mini-course on the new 990 form for charities.

America’s next top funding models?

It takes money to make money: Nonprofits increase 'gift tax' on donors.

Say “cheese”: Free stock photos online .

Going down: Direct-response appeals suffer in the recession.

Lost “Causes”?: Is Facebook fundraising faltering?

• Response from Beth’s Blog
• Response from A. Fine Blog

Extreme fundraising: Endurance, blogging, and charity.

Merger Madness

Philanthropy News reports on the merger trend.

This can be an energizing idea--and right on strategy--for organizations that have been stuck or stagnating for the last few years...but are now confronting the economic crisis today. The idea is energizing because it's an interesting but tough idea: challenge + opportunity + strategic thinking + openness + hard work=excitement.

Because it's energizing, it is also a strategy that may be really attractive to funders (drama! innovation! cutting edge! Though of course the foundations themselves would never do it, you know, in the interest of efficiency and there being simply too many foundations! LOL).

Anyway, when funders really like an approach, they (bless their hearts) tend to recommend it to everyone. And that means, we (non-profit board members, executives, advisors) must be open, thoughtful, reasonable, "energized," but most of all both strategic and cautious. And while we should be open, we must not be overly influenced by the funding community to jump into a merger process without fully considering and then actively embracing the real cost of restructuring (in resources, time, emotion, culture, distraction).

Mission and money, together, must drive decisions about best opportunities impact (note: I did not say "survival," I said "impact").

Who is considering restructuring now, in this economic climate. What are funders saying?

Here are some excellent resources on nonprofit mergers.

And definitely, read the article by Priscilla Hung, "Time to Merge," which ran in the Jan/Feb 2009 issue of Grassroots Fundraising Journal (scroll down and click on the article to get the free download). She describes in practical terms, some of the issues and challenges, opportunities and successes of their recent merger.

Social Media for Charity? Or for Social Change?

Just posted a comment in response to Beth Kanter's provocative post on whether social media fundraising for good should actually be characterized as social media fundraising for charity, which I've edited and amended below:

So, the charity vs. social change is not a new debate. The tools have changed, and that's what opens up possibilities for doing more, better of each. Where I've always come down is the world needs both front line responsive charity and systemic solutions to tough root problems. As a good friend and trusted colleague says (about the old saying "teach a man to fish..."), "sometimes, in some communities, there is no river."

A lot of the social media fundraising has what feels like "dance for cancer" lite liveliness about it that appeals to the masses. Even when it is addressing tough and deadly serious issues. It gives me a nagging worry that some of these techniques water down the public understanding of the issues.

But I do see promise for using these new techniques and technologies to broaden (albeit shallow) participation __as well as__ deepen the relationships, connections, authentic engagement in __both__ charitable work and social change efforts.

Interesting to note: the blogging and social media folks are focused on (yes, I'll say it) social media fundraising for charity by individuals, not on fundraising/organizing/fan building for social change by nonprofit organizations.

The former is flash. The latter is potential power.

Previous posts on the subject: ROI for Social Media Fundraising and Study Misses Some Points.

We Want Serve America Act, but Without Ridiculous, Irritating, and Unnecessary Lobbying Restrictions

Letter just sent to my Maryland members of Congress (thanks to prompting by Maryland Nonprofits):

Nonprofit organizations in Maryland and across the broadly support the Serve America Act - S 277. However the House-passed "Give Act" (HR 1388)includes an amendment with problem language that would ban legislative lobbying by these public service organizations--a right that should continue to be protected.

Some of the language added by Rep. Foxx of NC, the amendment may include legitimate concerns. But significant pieces are a serious problem for service organizations:

• lobbying, even with private funds and even outside the context of National Service programs;
• participation in national service programs for organizations "co-located" on the same premises as an organization that lobbies for charitable purposes
• "Participating in, or endorsing, events or activities that are likely to include advocacy for or against ... proposed legislation."

Honestly! Charities have been through this fight before. It is not charities who are the lobbying fiends! Charitable organizations cannot do a lot of lobbying (no more than 20% of their activity, and most actually do almost none). The lobbying they do do can only be legislative (not electoral), __by existing law__.

Please oppose this language. Narrow the amendment or prevent it from being added to the Senate Bill or in any conference committee.

Thank you for your support. Amy Kincaid