Nonprofit Spark - Renee McGivern

With so much gloom and doom about the economy here and in Europe, we can lose sight of the fact that nonprofits like yours are still working your magic in your communities. And guess what? There are a lot of people in addition to your current donors who have the financial means to support what you’re doing. What if you’ve been dreaming about expanding by buying or renovating space, adding programs, or establishing an endowment? How will you know you’re ready for a major fundraising campaign and when to move forward with it? On this week’s show, I speak with Rita Galowich, president of Fund Inc, a Chicago-based fundraising consulting firm to nonprofit organizations. Rita has run campaigns of all kinds for her clients and she knows, as all good fundraising consultants do, that there are criteria for success that must be understood and accepted prior to launching. We discuss those today. I interviewed Rita last year about building an individual fundraising program and I encourage you to listen to that, too, because you’ll hear today about how important it is for your organization to have an established donor base before you initiate a big campaign. The other thing about that show is she describes how to develop fundraising skills that will serve you very well when it’s time for a larger campaign. Developing Individual Donors and Your Fundraising Skills aired a year ago, the week of July 25, 2011.

On this week's show, my guest and I discuss a new point of view about fundraising and cultivation to encourage more contributions. Recently, I replayed an interview I did with Martha Taylor of the University of Wisconsin Foundation about unique ways to cultivate women donors. This week, we look at Millennials, the active and passionate men and women between 20 and 35 and the myriad ways they engage with nonprofits. My guest this week is Derrick Feldmann is CEO of Achieve (http://www.achieveguidance.com). It's a fundraising agency that creates campaigns that nonprofits use to attract attention and secure financial support from all audiences, especially Millennials. Achieve partnered with Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates, a company that works with philanthropic organizations, to conduct their third study Millennial involvement with nonprofits. They released the Millennial Impact Report 2012 just a few weeks ago. While it's easy to write off people in this age group as potential donors. my guest this week says, 'Take another look." Some 64% if Millennials volunteered for a nonprofit and 75% said they gave a financial gift in 2011. This is an interesting interview with a Millennial about Millennials, and he challenges us to reconsider how nonprofits define giving, volunteering, and involvement so as to be open to the tremendous contributions this generation has to offer. It's all about authentic communication. In the interview, Feldmann refers to a YouTube video of a presentation by Carolyn Everson, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions at Facebook. She describes the new wave of expectations more and more people have - not just Millennials - for authentic connections with nonprofits. Here's the link to the video, Social by Design (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0zR78qXPRk).

My guest this week has a truly radical idea that you're going to love. She first shared it with me a week ago and then in our actual interview but you know, I could not get my head around it at first. It was almost too simple. She is on a mission to persuade funders to stop asking for budgets from nonprofits who are applying for grants! Say, what?? Carol Cantwell is the founder of Fun with Financials (http://www.funwithfinancials.com), a San Francisco-based company that teaches nonprofits practices that support informed financial decisions. It also assists foundations with their grants and processes so they support nonprofit financial health. Over the years, Carol gained experience working in financial roles at a nonprofit and while working with hundreds of social justice organizations on their finances. She knows full well the burden placed on nonprofits to devise budgets and variations of budgets and reports about budgets in order to obtain foundation grants. She's pointing to the pink elephant in the room that most of us who've sought grants haven't dared to say a word about. I'm so delighted by this that Carol and I have set up a Twitter conversation about it at to start a movement to eliminate budgets for funders. Check out the conversation at #nofunderbudget. Before you participate in the Twitter chat, listen to this interview about Carol's radical, elegant and completely responsible idea.

On this week's show, we explore what you can do to build a collection of great photos that tell the story of your organization. This is another "show and tell" show, which means we want you to look something we're talking about. In this case, We review a blog post (http://www.branded4good.com/blog/photos)that shows examples of photos in online annual reports, on donation pages, in e-newsletters and on Facebook. My guest is Julie Damon, CEO and marketing director of Branded4Good, (http://www.branded4good.com) a company that provides nonprofit marketing and website development services to help organizations build their brand and support their fundraising. Julie and I are particularly passionate about this topic because we're the ones who actually work with the photos you take. Most of them, frankly, are not good and sometimes, there's not even one worth showing from a batch of 200 images you send us. Not having great photos is a lost opportunity for telling your organization's unique story. All the text and explanations in the world are not as powerful as a few great photographs. Julie and I make lots of suggestions here, and I hope you'll be inspired to try even just a couple of them over the next year, and then a couple more the year after that. Within a few years, you'll have a library of great images at your fingertips to use to you pull people closer to your organization and into caring deeply about it. To support you in learning more about photography, I suggest you listen to an interview I did last year with the awards manager for the nonprofit, PhotoPhilanthropy. About 20 minutes into that episode, we review a slideshow of stunning images telling the story of an orphanage in Transylvania. That show, Powerful Photographic Storytelling (http://webtalkradio.net/2011/08/15/nonprofit-spark-%E2%80%93-powerful-photographic-storytelling-081511/), aired the week of August 15, 2011.

The show this week focuses on training because just about every nonprofit has someone in the organization who is training staff, volunteers, board members, service providers or clients. I know a nonprofit that cooks and distributes meals every day. The kitchen director regularly has to train people about food safety and preparation. Another organization trains new staff about mental illness, and how best to work with the clients who come in for services. A third organization runs a massive fundraising walk and trains staff and volunteers how to manage registrations, answer participant questions, and even, perform CPR and apply First Aid. Training is happening all the time in nonprofits, but only in rare cases is there someone on staff who has formal training in how to design great training. Inexperienced trainers talk too much and overwhelm participants with material. Inexperienced trainers don't have participants try out what they're learning so they discover things on their own. Inexperienced trainers are, plain and simple, not making the kind of difference that creates memorable "ah ha" moments for learners. The result is that people take a long time to catch on, they make mistakes, money and time is wasted, legal and financial risks build, and it all creates lots of frustration. Did you know that highly skilled trainers only talk a total of 45 minutes in a day-long seminar? Did you know you should cover only three key points every 60-90 minutes? There is a lot to learn about learning! My guest this week is Gayle Noakes, a principal and the managing director of CLA University at CliftonLarsonAllen (http://www.cliftonlarsonallen.com), our Nonprofit Spark sponsor. Gayle is charged with overseeing the learning and development efforts for the firm. She consults with leaders and facilitates various meetings and events, in partnership with business leaders. She holds an MA in Human Resource Development and Certificate in Organization Development from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN. We talk about common misconceptions managers and new trainers have about training, and offer several ideas for designing a great training program that helps people do great work. Want to learn more about designing effective training? Gayle Noakes and her CliftonLarsonAllen colleague, LaChel Hird, and I are facilitating a follow-up webinar on July 31 from 12-1:30 p.m. EST. Learn more about Six Do's and Don'ts of Training (http://www.sparkplugconsulting.eventbrite.com) online; I'll also talk about the webinar later on the show.

On this week's show, I knit together golden nuggets about non-profit fundraising from three of the wisest development professionals in North America. Together, they have more than 60 years experience and have raised millions of dollars - if not billions - for charities. The interviews were held early last year and I didn't want you to overlook those podcasts because they are so rich with ideas for improving your fundraising results. I start the show with Phil Schumacher of Gunderson Lutheran Medical Center (http://www.gundluth.org)in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, who describes what he'd do - and what he wouldn't do - if he were starting a new development program at a nonprofit. My second guest is consultant and author Jerold Panas (http://jeroldpanas.com)who focuses on the need to have a strong board of directors, and how the staff and board can work together to approach donors. Finally, my third guest is Martha Taylor of the University of Wisconsin Foundation (http://www.supportuw.org/about-us/womens-philanthropy/)who sheds light on how to court women donors to your organization. These are extraordinary fundraising professionals so I hope you make time to sit back and soak in what they have to share.

On this week's show, we focus on a non-profit that is emerging in the communities it serves. It recently initiated individual fundraising activities after almost 30 years of relying exclusively on government funding. Spending time and money on individual fundraising requires a huge cultural shift for the staff and board; many leaders of established human service agencies are understandably fearful of this change. Our guest is Nancy Batterman, the CEO of Employment and Community Options (http://www.comunityoptions.org), a San Diego-based nonprofit that serves adults with developmental disabilities in both southern and northern California. She has been with the organization since it began, and the time and energy she's now putting into fundraising has altered her day to day focus dramatically. And guess what? She's enjoying every minute of it. We talk about how the culture is shifting with the board and the staff, and Nancy has some very specific examples of what she's done to engage them in fundraising. She discusses how they've been working with a fundraising consultant and even a p.r. agency, something totally new for her organization. A great companion show to this one is an interview I did with Keenan Weller of LiveWorkPlay, an Ottawa-based nonprofit that also serves people with developmental disabilities. He talks about how his organization has shifted its focus from being program-concentrated to using marketing and community engagement strategies. The show is titled "A nonprofit reinvents itself: LiveWorkPlay takes on social change (http://www.liveworkplay.org)." It aired the week of April 16, 2012. Nancy Batterman, like Keenan Weller, is an incredibly inspiring leader. Nothing stops her from making sure the people her organization serves find jobs and live independently, even if it means learning to be a great fundraiser. And you know what? If she can do this, you can do this.

Non-profit mission statements often are so lofty no one understands them nor can boards fully identify with them. They sound like a great idea but mission statements often are disconnected from what the board is supposed to do. It's no wonder that board governance gets confusing; members aren't sure why they're there. What if you think of your mission statement as a promise to your community instead? As a board member, a promise is something I am willing to make or not, willing to be held accountable for or not. A promise says that the board and staff will make the community better as a result of their work and describes how that will look. On this week's show, my guest and I explore three things a board can do right now to transform from mediocrity to excellence, starting with making a promise. Gayle Gifford is the author of How to Make Your Board Dramatically More Effective Starting Today (http://www.contributionsmagazine.com/bookstore.html)and president of Cause & Effect (http://www.ceffect.com), a Rhode Island consulting firm that helps nonprofits make a bigger impact on their communities. Gayle asks lots of questions in her book to prod her nonprofit clients to think hard about the kind of organizations they want to be and why. You'll hear a number of her questions on the show this week: notice how they focus a board's attention away from the details of staff work, events, the budget. A great companion show to this is a recent one about nominating committees (http://webtalkradio.net/2012/05/21/nonprofit-spark-nominating-committee-the-unsung-hero-of-non-profit-sustainability-052112/)with Trisha Lester of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits about nominating committees. That show aired the week of May 21.

My guest this week is the executive director of a non-profit association that started with only 70 nonprofit members in 2004 and has already expanded to serving more than 600. He knows from first-hand experience what it takes to build a non-profit and, in fact, advises them on how to succeed. On the show, we talk about characteristics, or actions, of new organizations which are growing and thriving. Patrick McWhorter is the president and CEO of the Alliance of Arizona Nonprofits (http://www.arizonanonprofits.org). He helped launch the Alliance nearly ten years ago, and has served as chief executive since 2005. He manages external relationships, represents the Alliance in the community, and works to sustain the organization. His favorite role is “champion of community impact,” delivering speeches that articulate the value and impact of Arizona’s nonprofits. He has nearly two decades of experience in the nonprofit community, along with tenure in business and government. He has served on many nonprofit boards, including the National Council of Nonprofits, for which he served as Chairman. As you listen to our conversation, you'll hear how grounded, practical and business-like great nonprofits have to be in order to succeed. If you are an older organization that needs a jumpstart, these ideas also will help you!

A recent article in Nonprofit Quarterly caught my eye. It asked if non-profit special events are an addiction, a kind of illness. I tracked down the source of the question and it was a workshop being offered in Indiana entitled, Avoiding the Highly Contagious Special Events bug. My guest on this week's show co-authored an article about this for the Association of Fundraising Professionals and also, taught that workshop. Now, there certainly can be a place for special events in a non-profit's annual life, but what mostly happens is that the staff, board and volunteers are burned out afterward and have little desire to do any other kind of fundraising. Frankly, events often are an avoidance strategy for meeting with individual donors and asking for gifts and they limit a nonprofit's capacity for growth. People are caught in a repetitive cycle of event, exhaustion, event, exhaustion and no energy is left to focus on planning and building a future. On this show, Nick Parkevich and I talk about how you know if you're infected with the special events bug, why that's a problem, and strategies and tools for turning what could be addictive into a building block for strong donor relationships and major gifts. Nick is a partner and consultant with Loring, Sternberg & Associates (http://www.loringsternberg.com), a company that serves small to medium size nonprofits throughout the U.S. They focus on board fundraising and governance training; strategic planning; feasibility studies and more. Prior to consulting, Nick served as the director of advancement at Damar Services, a disability services provider based in Central Indiana, where he led a $40 million campaign that doubled the number of clients that organization serves. See what a serious focus on fundraising can accomplish? He lives and breathes fundraising, and is passionate about making it a source of transformation for donors and organizations. In the show, Nick mentions the book Asking by Gerald Panas. We both recommend you read it. In addition, listen to the interview I did last year with Mr. Panas. He is a masterful fundraising coach and every word he says is pure gold in the episode, Raising Money in Tough Economic Times (http://webtalkradio.net/2011/02/28/nonprofit-spark-–-raising-money-in-tough-economic-times-022811-2/).

The unsung hero of nonprofit boards is the nominating committee. I don't know why, but its work is undervalued by many, many non-profits. The finance committee is a big deal. The fundraising or event committee is a big deal. And then there's the lowly nominating committee, which is pulled together for a few months with the task of finding new board members - and you better be quick about it! My guest this week and I have figured out over the years, that the nominating committee IS the one charged with the responsibility of building the organization's future. The committee members are looking out this year, over three years, over six years and discussing, "Here is where this organization is headed, so here is who must be on our board to secure that future." The nominating committee cannot be an after thought if you are serious about a sustainable future for your organization. This week's guest is Trisha Lester, vice president of the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits (http://www.ncnonprofits.org), a statewide association serving 501(c)(3) organizations. It provides information about best practices and also advocates for the nonprofit sector at the state legislature. On this show, Trisha provides context and advice for your nominating committee, and draws from the experience of her own committee. This is a perfect show to share with your board president, vice president and of course, your nominating committee.

The economy is limping along and so is income for a large number of nonprofits, many whom were just making it before the recession. When you've cut as deep as you can, and foregone salary increases for several years, what should you do? That's right. Give more time and attention to your individual donors and fundraising. On this week's show, I have a delightful conversation with Kim Klein, a passionate fundraising consultant and blogger (http://kimkleinandthecommons.blogspot.com) who will get you thinking about new actions to take to build your non-profit's individual donor base. It's no longer prudent for any non-profit to treat individual fundraising like an afterthought - and we're talking about you if you hastily assemble spring and year-end campaigns that look the same as the past few years. Your lack of imagination is recognized by donors. During our discussion, Kim also describes what sustainability is, and encourages nonprofit leaders to be more thoughtful and vocal about the role of public funding. Kim is the author of several books, including Fundraising for Social Change (http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470887176.html), now in its 6th edition, and also, Reliable Fundraising in Unreliable Times (http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470479507.html). This is a fun, thought-provoking show, and we hope you laugh as much as we did during the interview!

This week's show focuses on writing non-profit grant proposals but it comes from the funders point of view. You can find all kinds of information on the web or in your library about how to write a grant proposal, but actually very little about how it feels to be the one who has to read it and even, reject it. New nonprofit leaders, in particular, will find this show helpful because you'll get honest comments from the director of a small but very typical grant-making organization. What does a funder look for in a proposal? What is it like to sift through dozens more proposals from non-profits than you can possibly fund? What annoys a funder so much that your project will be tossed in the trash? My guest this week is Kristen Smith, the Executive Director of Planet Dog Foundation (//www.planetdogfoundation.org). It's the nonprofit arm of the company, Planet Dog (http://www.planetdog.com), which contributes 2% of every sale of any Planet Dog product to fund the foundation's grant-making activities. Before leading the Planet Dog Foundation, Kristin worked in a variety of nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad, doing development and fundraising, legislative activism, grassroots mobilization and education, communications and public relations. In other words, she's been in your shoes!

This week's episode is a "show and tell show," which means that my guest and I want you to look at sample dashboards as we talk about them. Please download the worksheet with Sample dashboards here (http://www.box.com/s/969f253ec5c272deeef1)before you listen to the show. A dashboard gives nonprofit leaders an at-a-glance view of what's happening in the organization. It measures progress at a higher level, much like your car dashboard indicates what's happening under the hood of your car. New nonprofits who quickly succeed use evaluation to discover what part of what they're doing is effective, and to get better and better at it. They discover what's not working, too, and get it out of the way. Learning and evaluation go hand in hand, and donors can't resist supporting organizations that can say with confidence, "This is what we do, this is what we know works, this is what we've learned, and won't you learn with us?" My guest this week is Myia Welsh (http://www.myiawelsh.com), an independent evaluation consultant who provides ethical and practical solutions to the evaluation challenges of nonprofits. Her passion for helping nonprofits improve programs and meet their missions is backed by more than 12 years of experience in the sector. Organizations that Myia has worked with include The National Human Trafficking Resource Center, the Washington Area Women’s Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Myia holds an MSW specializing in Social Policy and Program Evaluation from the University of Michigan. Myia has been kind enough to create dashboards for a fictitious organization, Happy Paws Animal Rescue, and we talk about each one on the show. Now, it's easy to dismiss these dashboards as being too simple to be useful, but don't be too hasty. Evaluation experts like Myia know how effective dashboards are in supporting decision-making and board governance.

This week's show is a replay of a great episode about non-profit management that aired the week of December 12, 2012. Specifically, we discuss delegating and letting someone go. What are the elements of effective delegation? How do you balance handing over a project and making sure it stays on track? What should you do when you realize you've got a staff person who isn't a fit for the work she's been hired to do? My guests this week, Jerry Hauser and Monique Ayotee-Holtzel of the Management Center (http://www.managementcenter.org), describe a delegation cycle they use to assign and review work. They talk about their own experience and mistakes in managing people and also, a progressive discipline process to address performance problems. Hauser is the CEO of the Management Center, based in Washington, D.C. It's mission is to instill the management practices that make it easier for nonprofit leaders to produce outstanding results. Ayotee-Holtzel, at the time of the original interview, was executive vice president of alumni affairs at Teach for America, which is based in New York, NY. She is now on staff at the Management Center (http://www.managementcenter.org). If you've ever worried about or been accused of being a micromanager, this show is for you!