October 24, 2018
THIS POST IS PART OF A SERIES.
YOU CAN READ PART 2 HERE AND PART 3 HERE.
Giving Tuesday is a fundraising force to be reckoned with, with over $645 million raised over the past six years.
Nonprofits across the country are busy preparing their campaigns for this year’s Giving Tuesday, which is rapidly approaching on November 27. As such, we are excited to launch a series of Giving Tuesday blog posts to help you prepare to meet and exceed your fundraising and/or visibility goals for this day of global giving.
We are kicking off the series this week with an introduction to the history of this growing fundraising initiative, and the critical steps your organization should take now to participate this year.
History
Now in its seventh year, Giving Tuesday provides a data-proven occasion for organizations to enhance end-of-year giving. Created by New York’s 92nd Street Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation in 2012, Giving Tuesday has become a global movement, joining diverse groups of individuals, communities, and organizations for the common purpose of encouraging and celebrating giving and philanthropy. The idea was to create a day of giving on the Tuesday directly after Thanksgiving, intentionally following mega-consumer days, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and is unique in that it brings together the collective power of nonprofits, civic organizations, businesses and corporations, and families and individuals.
Many thought leaders and influencers in social media, philanthropy, and grassroots social change became founding partners of the movement including Cisco, Mashable, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), Groupon, UNICEF, Aldo, Sony, Unilever, Skype, Google, and Microsoft. In its first year, the day and concept was quickly popularized by news outlets such as the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and ABC News, and even made it to the official blog of the White House.
By the Numbers
Classy, a leading online and mobile fundraising platform for nonprofits found that nonprofits acquire 3 to 5 times more donors on Giving Tuesday than on a typical day. In 2017 alone, an estimated $300 million was raised online (up from $180 million in 2016) through more than 2.5 million total donations. Last year’s day of giving involved 150+ countries and saw an impressive 21.7 billion social media impressions and 1,010,045 social mentions.
Year over year, Giving Tuesday goals have exceeded expectations. In 2017, Cave Canem Foundation raised well beyond its goal of $5,000, raising about $18,000 in support of African-American poets. The United Way of metropolitan Dallas raised more than $22 million for 92 organizations and logged more than 484,445 volunteer hours. And JPMorgan Chase increased its employee giving 23 percent, generating $4.7 million.
In 2016, DonorsChoose.org had then, their single biggest day in the organization’s history, reporting 17,000 donors, 3,210 completed projects, and $1.8 million raised for classrooms. Also in 2016, the University of Michigan raised $5.5 million and acquired 2,000 new donors.
How Organizations Participate
While Giving Tuesday is a sure bet to increase dollars, the entire day encourages holistic giving in all forms. By harnessing the potential of social media, Giving Tuesday encourages the donation of time, resources, and talents to address local challenges. In 2016, enough toys were collected to break a Guinness world record, and even more notable, one organ-donor registration drive was so successful that someone donated a kidney. The donation of time is also encouraged either day-of or through campaigns and in-person volunteer events that encourage people to sign up to volunteer. Other popular days of service include dance-a-thons, blood drives, and meal and toiletry preparation. Some organizations also encourage or let their stakeholders know how they can hold personal fundraisers on Giving Tuesday with the intent to donate money to their organization.
Last year, the top five issue areas discussed were public and societal benefit, human services, education, health, and the environment and animals. In a survey conducted by Classy, results found that donors feel the number one cause needing the most support this Giving Tuesday 2018 is disaster relief (48 percent) followed by health issues (37 percent) and environmental causes and/or animal issues (36 percent.).
Get Involved!
This year, Giving Tuesday will take place on Tuesday, November 27th, 2018 but organizations should be planning their approach well in advance in order to truly leverage the day.
In order to get started, organizations need to join the movement by registering on Giving Tuesday’s website. The official Giving Tuesday site also provides a downloadable toolkit that provides resources to getting started with a Giving Tuesday campaign along with ideas and case studies on how other organizations creatively found ways to get their stakeholders involved as well as reach new audiences with their campaigns.
Whole Whale, a social-impact-focused digital agency, predicts that $331 million will be raised on Giving Tuesday 2018.
The potential of Giving Tuesday is immense. Check out our next post in the series where we discuss ways in which organizations can make a compelling wish list to encourage individual donors to give.
This is the first of three posts in our Giving Tuesday blog series. Stay tuned next week for our next post.
September 28, 2018
For students around the country, September marks the end of summer and the start of Back to School season.
In celebration of this time of year, we’d like to take this opportunity to highlight the great work that nonprofits throughout the sector are doing in the Education space.
Many nonprofit organizations around the country are working from different angles using a variety of program models to ensure education in the U.S. is effective, accessible, and equitable. At Elevate, we believe that progress is possible through the important work that nonprofits do, and we see proof of this every day through the work and dedication of our education-focused clients.
Below are just a few examples of the work our clients are doing to better their communities and ensure high quality education for all.
DC Scholars Community Schools inspires and empowers school leaders through expert thought partnership, operational support, and programmatic strategy — ensuring a stable, high-impact, well-resourced environment in which scholars and families of Southeast DC succeed. Its work embodies its belief that in order to truly prepare scholars for success in college and beyond, they must create schools that not only deliver rigorous instruction, but also serve as communities of joy where students thrive. DC Scholars Community Schools’ vision is for each of its schools to become a true community school that offers supports and opportunities for students, their families, and their communities.
The Edcamp Foundation builds and supports communities of empowered educators across the United States through peer-led, participant-driven professional learning opportunities. They provide an organizational platform for educators to engage in local learning events using an “unconference” model, while building a nationwide network of teachers to share best practices. The end result of an Edcamp event is engaged, empowered, and prepared teachers who adopt effective methods in their classrooms and become leaders and change agents in their schools.
The Literacy Lab’s mission is to provide low-income children with individualized reading instruction to improve their literacy skills, leading to greater success in school and increased opportunities in life. The Literacy Lab recognizes that many high-need schools are faced with the challenge of both an achievement gap and a resource gap; their approach to this challenge is to provide schools with evidence-based literacy intervention and assessment tools, rigorously trained full-time tutors to implement the model, and a coaching and support structure that ensures the success of the program and students. In the 2017-18 school year alone, over 220 full-time Literacy Lab tutors helped over 4,000 students in over 100 schools every day. This year, The Literacy Lab is going back-to-school with partners in Washington, DC, Kansas City, Missouri, Richmond, Virginia, Baltimore, Maryland, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Philadelphia Education Fund (Ed Fund) has been working to move the needle on public education in Philadelphia for more than three decades. They work to remove barriers to college and career success for students by offering a full complement of research-based programs and services. Through their experienced and committed staff, the Philadelphia Education Fund continues to address the ever-changing academic standards, emerging educational trends, and shifting regional workforce needs through college advising, scholarships, and STEM career exposure. The Ed Fund currently serves 17,000 students across Philadelphia, with programs in 27 schools.
The Education Law Center’s mission is to ensure access to a quality public education for all children in Pennsylvania. They pursue this mission by advocating on behalf of the most vulnerable students — children living in poverty, children of color, children in the foster care and juvenile justice systems, children with disabilities, English Language Learners, LGBTQ students, and children experiencing homelessness. ELC employs a broad range of strategies to accomplish this mission, including direct legal representation, impact litigation, educating parents and students about their legal rights, supporting community-based groups, and policy advocacy at the local, state, and federal levels.
September 12, 2018
As nonprofit organizations rely on financial donations as their primary source of funding, so too must they rely on their Chief Executive Officers (CEO) to be their primary fundraiser.
For a nonprofit organization to reach its full fundraising potential, its CEO must understand the role of fundraising and be a true partner to the development team in the fundraising process.
As development professionals it can be difficult to know how to effectively engage your CEO in your fundraising activities and goals. In this blog post, I’ve shared 7 strategies for doing just that and provided an example of how this has worked for me in the past.
What is the CEO’s role in fundraising?
I like to think of CEOs as Networkers in Chief. Usually, they have reached the position of CEO after years spent at various management levels in their industries, and they are almost always very connected in their field. In addition to being Chief Executive Officer, the CEO is also chief strategic thinker, thought leader of the company and advocate for the organizational vision of a better world. The CEO manages, inspires and excites the board, staff, and donors about the mission and the work of the nonprofit. Community leaders, business leaders, and stakeholders will look to the CEO to set the tone for the organization. Because of the role the CEO plays, he/she will have access to the highest level of leadership in the community which is critical for spreading the organization’s message and building relationships that can lead to significant financial support.
The Development Director/CEO Relationship
It is the job of the development professional to not only explain to the CEO as to why he/she needs to be a fundraising partner but to help him/her understand how powerful a role he/she can play. Development professionals need to work to understand their CEO’s strengths so that they can leverage those strengths in the fundraising process. They also need to work with the CEO closely to understand his/her working style and limitations.
Strategies for Leveraging your Networker in Chief:
I lean on seven tools when encouraging CEOs to be more engaged in the fundraising process:
- Create a strategic fundraising plan. Provide the CEO with a simple, thoughtful, strategic fundraising plan and review it with him/her so they understand the goals and deliverables
- 2. Hold strategy sessions. Set time aside to speak to the CEO about the fundraising process and explain what his/her role is.
- Set calendar appointments to review contacts. Set up scheduled meetings with the CEO to review his/her network of colleagues and friends. This is the beginning of a major gift donor prospect list.
- Share success stories. Share stories of other nonprofit CEO’s achieving fundraising success.
- Have coaching sessions. Make sure the CEO is comfortable asking donors for money and knows how to do it properly. Do role-playing exercises. Help the CEO feel good about his/her role in the ask.
- Utilize the CEO’s strengths. If the CEO is a great writer, ask him/her to partner with you in writing a targeted appeal letter or white paper. If he/she is better at speaking publicly have him/her shoot an appeal video to use for social media posts.
- Lead. Don’t be afraid to tell the CEO to get back on track and hold him/her accountable to a promise. CEOs want development staff to hold them accountable. It is usually the development professional who is uncomfortable playing this role, but that must be overcome to achieve success. A CEO is waiting for you to lead them!
Case Study
I had a recent experience working with an Association in which the CEO had access to many high net worth colleagues and friends who I wanted to cultivate as donor prospects. However, the CEO was very reluctant to reach out to his friend base and ask for money because he felt as if it was a form of begging.
I knew that to get the CEO to open his contact list and start to cultivate his network that we’d have to come up with a specific strategic vision. So, I worked with other executive staff members to identify one important programmatic area in which they wanted to raise money for, and we set up a plan to achieve our fundraising goals. I then set a meeting with our CEO to review our fundraising plan with the specific target. He started feeling more comfortable with the idea of asking his network of colleagues and friends for money for a specific agenda item rather than money for general organizational support.
After getting to know this CEO’s style and comfort zone, I suggested I reach out to his contacts using his name as an introduction in my email. He was supportive of this as it took the burden of solicitation away from him and helped me to form relationships of my own with his network. Once my CEO saw donations from his network of friends and colleagues coming in he felt much more relaxed and confident about fundraising in general.
Laura Tucker has more than 15 years of nonprofit fundraising experience with an expertise in donor cultivation and major gift development. Laura is a highly creative results-driven development strategist with entrepreneurial passion, drive and vision. Laura has many years of professional experience generating revenue and increasing support bases for expanding national nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Her experience includes executive and volunteer leadership roles particularly in the sciences and public safety sectors. Laura is very comfortable working with and re-organizing leadership Boards, gaining corporate philanthropic support and planning and executing consumer driven promotional fundraisers. Given Laura’s background in public relations, she can effectively articulate the mission of the organization she is representing.
July 6, 2018
One of the more challenging aspects of the deadline-oriented world of grant writing is taking the time to step away from work for a vacation.
At Elevate we wholeheartedly believe that vacation is important, and we encourage staff to use their vacation time as they please. Furthermore, when on vacation, we encourage staff to truly disconnect from work and avoid checking email or taking work-related phone calls. But doing this successfully – and without negatively impacting our clients and colleagues – requires some planning and preparation.
By doing a bit of planning ahead prior to their vacation, nonprofit professionals can comfortably step away from their work without leaving their colleagues to struggle in their absence. We’ve outlined some of our vacation planning best practices below. Regardless of your organization’s size and structure, these steps will help your staff adequately plan for their time away, anticipate challenges that may arise, and provide contingencies for unforeseen circumstances.
Vacation Planning Steps
- First things first: request time off through the appropriate channels (we use BambooHR for all our time-off requests) and provide plenty of notice. Confirm that your vacation request is approved before making travel plans.
- Discuss your plans for vacation with your supervisor and identify specific areas of support you and/or your teams may need.
- Inform your colleagues and teams in advance about your vacation plans. Elevate’s internal rule of thumb for a vacation lasting one week is to give one month’s notice to your teams about your planned absence. If a major deadline or project falls during your planned vacation, additional notice may be appropriate.
- Review your meeting schedule and identify any important meetings that are scheduled while you are away. Where appropriate, develop a plan for any meetings scheduled during your vacation. This might include rescheduling check-ins with team members and supervisor, and identifying whether you will miss an all-staff or larger team meeting.
- If you typically lead a meeting that is scheduled for while you are out, you will generally have two options: 1) Reschedule or 2) Prep your team to carry on in your absence. If meetings are to be rescheduled, you should provide as much notice as possible. If meetings are to go on in your absence, we recommend preparing agendas and talking points with your team in advance of your departure. If you are comfortable having a colleague lead the meeting, ensure that they have the information and resources they need, as well as talking points about how to address decisions they are not comfortable making in your absence. (For example, “I’ll flag that for Jill as soon as she returns from vacation next week.”)
- Remember to set an out of office message that indicates the dates you will be out of the office and who to contact if something urgent comes up while you are away.
- After your vacation, review your to-do list (we use Asana for internal task management) and touch base with your team members to recap what took place while you were away!
Additional Considerations for Grant Writers
- Deadline planning: Review your grant calendar(s) and identify deadlines during and immediately after your vacation.
(Don’t have a grants calendar? Check out our blog post on how to create one for your organization!)
- Draft and submission planning: Plan ahead for any drafts or submissions that are due during and immediately following your vacation. As much as possible, work ahead to prepare drafts in advance of your vacation. With your supervisor and/or team, develop a plan for drafts that will need to be drafted, revised, or submitted while you are away. If you are asking a colleague to assist with any drafts in your absence, provide them with ample notice that you will need their help. Make sure your team has all the information needed to manage any submissions that may need to take place while you are out.
What other tips do you have for successful vacation planning? Share them with us on Facebook, and join the conversation!
One of our goals at Elevate is to create a culture of continuous learning for our staff, and one of the best ways to do that is by regularly sharing feedback.
Since regular feedback is closely linked to employee engagement, we recognize that the more insight we give our team members into where they are doing well and where they could improve, the better we can work together.
At Elevate, Directors are primarily responsible for leading client teams, which presents a range of challenges and opportunities around sharing feedback, offering constructive criticism, and fostering the team’s overall growth. Recently, Elevate’s Team Directors got together as a group to discuss their role in sharing and receiving feedback on their teams. Here we are sharing some of the key takeaways from that conversation, as well as links to other resources that may be helpful for anyone wanting to incorporate more regular feedback-sharing into their work relationships.
As team leaders, how do we navigate the reality that we don’t always have the full picture of our supervisees’ workload?
The reality is that no supervisor goes into a feedback conversation knowing their employee’s entire life story. In any company, there may be a variety of personal or professional reasons why someone may be approaching their work in a way that doesn’t align with your expectations as their supervisor.
The key to giving any type of feedback is to approach it as a conversation, not as a directive. Explain what you have observed your colleague is doing well or could improve on, and then ask them how they would approach that situation in the future. By approaching this as a conversation, you don’t risk giving someone advice that doesn’t make sense for their overall situation.
For example, perhaps someone got hit with a complex editing process on another client and couldn’t put as much time or attention into their work on your team. By asking them to share their thoughts about why a particular work product wasn’t as strong as it could have been, you give that person an opportunity to provide the context you need to find a solution together.
How do I give good feedback?
Okay, so maybe no one at the meeting asked this question verbatim, but here’s an answer anyway! Research and years of management best-practices suggest that the most helpful feedback — whether positive or constructive — has the following characteristics:
Clear & Concise
- Providing feedback can feel very challenging, so our instinct can be to ramble. That makes it difficult for recipient to understand the issue, which is actually a much worse experience than simply hearing some constructive feedback. Plan ahead so you know exactly what you want to communicate.
- Avoid the compliment sandwich. While it can feel easier to squeeze in constructive feedback between two positive comments, this structure has a tendency to make people doubt the validity of the positive feedback while also potentially losing clarity, about what they need to improve.
- Don’t let a negative response pull you off your main point. It can be tempting to try and soften the impact of what you are trying to communicate when someone has a hard time hearing the information. Be kind, but clear!
Owned
- Use “I” statements – make it about your experience and observation of the behavior and do not insert your own subjective opinion. i.e. “I’ve noticed that the past 2 drafts got to me a few days after the internal deadline, which can make it difficult for me to turn around edits in time for the client to review.” rather than “it seems like you’re not planning ahead enough to meet our internal deadlines.”
- Be clear about how the work or behavior you have observed has impacted you and your team — don’t try to extrapolate out to other situations.
- Avoid blaming someone else. While it’s tempting to frame feedback as something we “have to do to make [some other internal or external party] happy,” that can actually be a pretty demotivating way to communicate the need for extra effort or attention in a particular area. Instead, take ownership of your request, and be open to feedback that maybe there’s another way to achieve the same goal.
Regular
- Check-ins are critical for providing regular feedback. If you incorporate reciprocal feedback into your regular meetings, it will feel more natural and support stronger collaboration over time. It also makes remembering to share positive feedback a lot easier!
- Feedback is time-sensitive. Nobody likes to hear that they’ve been doing something right or wrong for six months before anyone mentioned something! If you see something worthy of either positive or negative feedback, bring it up at the first opportunity.
Balanced
- Balance positive feedback with constructive feedback
- It typically takes hearing positive feedback 7 times as much as it takes for negative feedback to 1 time
- Important to include what team member is doing well, even if you think it is obvious or feel like there are bigger issues to tackle on other client teams.
Specific
- The more specific your feedback is, the better it is for your colleague’s professional growth. For example, feedback is far more useful when it sounds like: “I noticed that you faced some challenges answering this question in the last proposal. Can I show you how I would have approached that part of the narrative?” rather than, “You could improve your drafting skills.”
- This is also important for positive feedback – e.g. saying “great work” – does not provide specific feedback on what they can continue to build on in the future. It doesn’t help someone develop their skills professionally or build self-awareness about their key strengths.
This is great – but I don’t want to scare my team members by suddenly giving them a ton more feedback that I have been up until now.
We all struggle to make feedback part of our day-to-day work! The key is to be transparent with your team members about wanting to incorporate feedback into your work together. Here are some quicks steps to take to make this happen:
- Let them know that you are working on giving and receiving feedback more regularly and would like to make it part of your work together.
- Clarify that you’d like their feedback as well. Consider asking them for input on your work first, a system a lot like the Management Center’s 2X2 structure. Be sure to respond to the feedback you receive — if people feel like what they say is repeatedly ignored, they’ll stop giving us the information we need to improve our work.
- Ask how they would like to receive feedback. Some people respond better when they receive feedback in writing, others don’t want to dwell on something before they discuss it with you. Either way, don’t assume others prefer to receive feedback the same way you do.
- When you do offer feedback to someone, demonstrate that you want to support them in their professional growth in addition to sharing where you think they need to grow. Improving our work takes time and support, and being a partner to your colleagues during this process can only help.
MORE RESOURCES!
- Did you know employees receiving predominantly negative feedback from their manager are over 20 times more likely to be engaged than those receiving little or no feedback? (Gallup, 2009)
- In addition to these general guidelines, we recommend using models like SAW or AID so you can get into the practice of structuring clear feedback conversations.
- It turns out that we struggle to receive constructive feedback because we are all so bad at giving it. Our very real, physio-emotional response is uncomfortable and can actually make us subtly restructure our social networks at work to avoid people who give us that constructive feedback. Check out the WorkLife TEDx Podcast “How to Love Criticism” by Adam Grant for more information.
May 11, 2018
Mother’s Day is this Sunday May 13, and to celebrate, we want to take this opportunity to recognize and celebrate the many ways our clients and partners are making a difference in the lives of mothers in their communities, and beyond.
At Elevate, we believe in supporting programs and policies that serve mothers in meaningful ways. We do this as an employer, through parental leave and flexible work schedule policies that give staff the support and flexibility they need to be present for their families. But one of the most transformative ways we are able to support mothers is by partnering with nonprofit organizations whose work makes a positive impact on the lives of moms and their families.
By providing everything from wraparound services, to financial tools and resources, to accessible housing, to legal services, these organizations work tirelessly to create meaningful opportunities for moms and families who need them most. The list below illustrates just some of the ways our clients and their programs support mothers of all kinds. We invite you to join us in recognizing and appreciating their work!
Greater DC Diaper Bank works to empower mothers and families throughout the DC region by providing a reliable and adequate source of basic baby needs and personal hygiene products. Through their four unique programs, Greater DC Diaper Bank collects the essential supplies and products families need to be safe, happy, and healthy — and helps distribute them to families in need. Additionally, through their newest project, The Monthly, Greater DC Diaper Bank collects donated tampons and pads, and works with nearly forty nonprofit organizations in the region to distribute them to the people who need them.
Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) is an Israeli-based international nonprofit organization with special consultative status granted by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (ECOSOC). SACH was founded with the mission of improving the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children in developing countries, and creating centers of competence in these countries. All children who come from outside of Israel for treatment are invited to stay at the Children’s Home, a pluralistic, multi-lingual environment that allows children and families to recover in a supportive community. The home accommodates SACH children and their caregivers (often mothers or aunts) and includes a children’s playground, a backyard garden, toys and games for the children, and all modern amenities.
Life Asset works to help alleviate poverty in the Washington DC metropolitan area by empowering people through affordable financial products, services, and education. They provide microloans, financial and business training, networking opportunities, and office and retail space—all of which help promote self-reliance and self-respect, and expand social and economic opportunities for low income individuals.
Life Asset’s work impacts not only the individuals they serve — 80% of whom are women — but also their families, friends, and the community at large. For example: by supporting 40-50 home daycares, Life Asset not only provides a sustainable source of income for entrepreneurs, but this investment also ensures that parents in their communities have the reliable childcare they need to retain a job and support their families.
Hope and a Home is a local nonprofit in the District of Columbia whose mission is to empower low-income families with children in D.C. to create stable homes of their own and to make lasting changes in their lives. Their long term vision is to break the cycle of poverty for qualified families through their programs and services. Among Hope and a Home’s core beliefs is the idea that stable housing, educational success, rewarding work, and a connection to one’s community are invaluable to every family’s development. As such, they embrace a holistic approach as the most effective way to achieve lasting change for children and their families.
Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King County (Habitat SKC) builds families’ strength, stability, and self-reliance through shelter, building new homes to create affordable homeownership opportunities for low-income families and supporting low-income homeowners and communities through home repairs and education. Being able to afford a safe, stable home to call your own is particularly important for parents with children. Of the more than 1,776 people Habitat SKC has helped shelter in its organizational history, 995 of them have been children.
Many of Habitat SKC’s partner families are headed by hardworking single mothers looking to ensure a brighter future for their children. When Elevate’s Habitat SKC client team were in Seattle last November on a site visit, they had the privilege of attending a home dedication ceremony for one of those partner families — watching as a U.S. Army veteran and a single mother of two cut the ribbon with her kids on their brand new home just in time for the holidays!
Volunteers of America has served the people of Pennsylvania since 1896, the same year our nationwide movement began with the promise to “go wherever we are needed, and do whatever comes to hand.” Their innovative human services directly address the quality of life in Pennsylvania by meeting the material, emotional and spiritual needs of individuals; by strengthening families, and by building healthier, more productive, and more compassionate communities for all.
The VOA Children’s Center in Allentown provides accredited, high quality early childhood education and care to underserved families in Allentown, enabling mothers and other caregivers to pursue their own education or career. VOA also supports a number of homeless moms who seek shelter in their Ruth’s Place women’s shelter, by helping them to obtain stable housing so they can reunite with their children. Additionally, they provide case management and a baby pantry for moms through our Caring Alternatives program. Finally, their All of Us Care program in Pittsburgh also provides an after-school option for mothers who need a safe place for their kids to go until they get home from work or school.
The mission of the Brady organization is to create a safer America by cutting gun deaths in half. The Brady Center’s ASK (Asking Saves Kids) campaign is an important component of this mission, and empowers parents to ask the simple question, “Is there an unlocked gun in your home?” before sending children over to play. In partnership with organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and National Parent Teacher Association, The Brady Center provides a variety of resources full of compelling facts and pointers to help parents begin these discussions with their networks.
Children’s Law Center (CLC) fights so every DC child can grow up with a loving family, good health and quality education. As part of this mission, CLC meets—and works closely with—amazing, dedicated moms every day. When we asked the CLC team if we could highlight their work in honor of Mother’s Day, that’s who they immediately thought of—the moms who work so hard to advocate for their families.
They shared just a couple of scenarios of DC moms as powerful advocates for their families. Like moms everywhere, the moms who CLC works with help their children with homework, stay home from work when their kids are too sick to go to school, and rush them to the doctor when their child is ill. But CLC says their moms are extra special because they have to stand up to teachers and landlords who often ignore them. For example, CLC often works with moms who have done everything they can to get their child the educational support necessary to address a learning disability, but the school refuses to help. In these cases, CLC attorneys partner with the parent, taking legal action to fight for the child’s education. CLC also works with moms trying to get the landlord and government agencies to turn heat on in the winter or clean up the mold caused by leaky pipes. They join forces with the mom to force landlords to make critical repairs to protect her family. The list could go on.
The takeaway? Moms are fierce advocates for their families. Moms are often the ones fighting for their family’s health and education. Moms inspire us and the CLC team every day.
JANUARY 18, 2018
In the grant writing world, there is understandably a huge emphasis placed on writing a compelling narrative. However, it is also important to think of grants as packages composed of several components, all of which call for careful thought, planning, and tracking.
First, there is the list of requirements for each submission – what information is required, and how it needs to be formatted and presented; there are the attachments, which often need to be gathered and updated from various corners of the office (see our best tips for keeping them organized); and even the narrative itself often includes sections written by several different team members. A process-oriented approach that treats your grant as a complete package with moving parts that all need attention will not only strengthen the grant’s narrative, but will lead to a stronger overall grant application.
Through the Grants Coordinator and Project Coordinator roles on our teams, Elevate adds a layer of project management approach to the grant writing process that emphasizes the creation, management, and adherence to internal deadlines. This more systematic approach to grant writing helps our teams manage multiple grant deadlines at once, which allows us and the nonprofit organizations we work with to build out robust, well-organized grants calendars.
Below are four ways to systematize the grant writing process to strengthen your grant package, and reduce stress:
1. Pull the application questions first
Before you begin drafting any content, pull the application questions from each specific funder’s website, template, or online portal – and save them in outline form. Though this may seem like a redundant or even unnecessary step, it allows you to see every piece you need to plan for, as well as which narrative components may require input from different staff members. Are there statistics or program outcomes that a certain program staff will need to provide? This step will help you plan ahead and build in enough time to collect the data you need.
2. Create an attachment needs table
Create a table that lists all the required attachment for the grant. This table should include a note of where the attachment can be found, and who may have it. Will you need a program budget? An audit from a specific fiscal year? Letters of support from partners? If the funder allows for supplemental materials, also include any additional collateral you may want to include in your application packet such as media articles, annual reports, and images.
3. Set a timeline for gathering all the pieces
Once you have listed out the various components of your grants package –and noted where to find them–it is time to create a timeline for the compilation of your grant package. Be sure to consider the following as you put together your timeline:
- Prioritize any materials that you may need to procure externally. For example, letters of support from partners or a Certificate of Good Standing from your local government.
- Assign tasks to appropriate team members well in advance.
- Think about how long it may take for various team members to produce certain materials. Be sure to consider each team member’s schedule, workload, and work style.
- Allocate ample time to assemble all the components of your grant package and double check that everything is up-to-date, present, and accounted for.
4. Have one person be responsible for the management and adherence to internal deadlines
It is futile to create a timeline if its deadlines aren’t closely followed. Adhering to internal deadlines is easiest when one person takes the lead on monitoring the timeline. This can be done through task management software (at Elevate we use Asana), project management tools such as Gantt tables, or something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet. No matter which tool you choose, be sure to regularly check on your timeline and gently remind team members of upcoming tasks.
There is no worse feeling than realizing at the last minute that you may not be able to submit a grant because you do not have your adequate time to collect a required letter of support, or that your narrative could have been significantly strengthened if you had built in time to add a programmatic statistic or anecdote. The systematization of the grant writing process, and the implementation, management and adherence to internal deadlines, mitigates the risk of a last-minute grants-related crisis. It creates safeguards that allow you to thoroughly think through every aspect of your grant submission, and ensure that you deliver the strongest possible application to potential funders.
December 11, 2017
For some nonprofits, corporate contributions are the saving grace that powers their operations.
Small nonprofits may receive a check from a local business that helps them get off the ground, or plan a major event. Large nonprofits often attract large corporate donations and sponsorships that sustain their programming year after year – in 2016, 68% of Feeding America’s cash budget came from corporate contributions and promotions.
Corporate contributions have a number of benefits over foundation funding: reporting requirements for corporate contributions are often less onerous than foundation reports, and can lessen the administrative load for nonprofit staff; and corporations may provide a source of unrestricted funds, which may be difficult to obtain from foundation sources.
While many nonprofits embrace corporate contributions as a business’s responsibility to the public, some fundraising professionals and board members may feel a sense of apprehension about accepting corporate donations, particularly when the corporation may have negative associations in their field of work. Should a health and wellness organization accept donations from a food and beverage company that has contributed to the obesity health crisis? Should an environmental conservation group refuse to accept donations from companies known to dodge emissions regulations? Are organizations morally obligated one way or the other – to either accept these donations as an earnest effort to improve relations and well-being within the community, or to reject these donations as a conflict of interest?
While there is no right-or-wrong standard for accepting corporate contributions, this post will address some common apprehensions and provide a number of perspectives on the issue.
Corporate Social Responsibility
In the 1960s when the idea of “corporate social responsibility” was first widely popularized, William Frederick, a professor of business and society, defined corporate social responsibility as a willingness to use economic and human resources not just for the narrow interests of private firms and persons, but more broadly for enhancing total social-economic welfare. Now in 2017, most large corporations have corporate social responsibility (CSR) departments, and produce yearly reports on their efforts. Businesses often attempt to enhance social welfare not just through internal operations (i.e., promoting diversity through hiring practices, creating more sustainable operations, etc.), but by supporting nonprofits primarily in the communities where they operate.
Other perspectives on corporation’s social responsibilities have been more prescriptive: H. Gordon Fitch argued that the role of CSR should not broadly be to solve benefit social welfare, but the “serious attempt to solve social problems caused wholly or in part by the corporation.” Based on this understanding, companies’ giving should reflect the social challenges created (intentionally or unintentionally) by their operations.
While many corporations fund areas related to their work, few select funding areas that acknowledge the potential social problems created by their corporate strategy. For example, Coca Cola will fund “active healthy living” programs, but has backed away from funding healthy diet- or obesity-related initiatives in recent years. Instead, many corporations have opted for “strategic philanthropy” that improve their competitive context – such as Cargill’s programs that fund research to improve agricultural productivity and nutrition.
Regardless of the company’s motives for creating a philanthropic fund, many nonprofit and fundraising professionals consider corporate giving a win-win situation. Nonprofits and their beneficiaries benefit from the funds provided, creating an increase in social good, while corporations benefit from the goodwill and name-recognition that typically goes along with donations to charitable causes. Though rarely does anyone consider corporate contributions to be purely philanthropic, few are bothered by the idea of mutual benefit for nonprofits and corporations.
On the other side, some nonprofits (including policy or law-based organizations) reject corporate contributions in an attempt to remain completely independent from corporate influence. More radically, others believe that corporate donations reduce public pressure on a company to improve potentially harmful practices, or that corporate giving policies are a band-aid solution that ends up creating more inequality – rather than an increase in social good – by avoiding real changes within corporations that would distribute wealth among workers more equitably. But with companies experiencing ever-increasing pressure from stakeholders to drive up profits, changes to corporate structures that don’t benefit the bottom line can seem a distant reality.
Establishing Your Nonprofits’ Stance
Whatever your philosophy about corporate giving, establishing a corporate contributions policy with your board is widely considered a best practice, and can prevent any potential problems down the road. Below are a couple questions we recommend discussing with your board, as a starting point for developing this policy:
Are there any types of corporations we are not willing to accept contributions from?
Some nonprofits choose not to accept or solicit donations from companies that contradict or negatively impact their work or mission. For example, the Environmental Defense Fund’s corporate donation policy prohibits them from accepting contributions from companies involved in: automobiles, chemicals, electric utilities, forestry, fishing, mining, nuclear power, oil/gas, pulp/paper, tobacco, waste management or weapons. Other organizations may be more liberal – accepting contributions from all, or only restricting donations from one or two categories. Some organizations place independence above all, and accept none. The extent to which your nonprofit restricts its corporate contributions will likely depend on your area of work – the Environmental Defense fund is more subject to potential attempts to influence its initiatives and policy work than an organization providing basic needs, and will be subject to greater scrutiny of its independence. In the end, a good guideline is: if you’re not comfortable with the company’s name on your website, t-shirts, or policy products, they are probably not a good partner for your organization. Speaking of…
What are we willing to provide corporations with in terms of name recognition and volunteer opportunities?
Corporations will often request a description of how their contribution will be recognized. Common methods include posting the corporation’s name and logo on your organization’s website, providing a shout-out on social media or in a monthly newsletter, or publically recognizing the contribution at an event. These requirements for recognition will likely be written into your grant agreement with the corporation, so be sure to read these carefully – and don’t be afraid to push back on any requirements that may not align with your abilities or wishes. And if you do accept the contribution – here are a couple ways to say “thanks!”
Additionally, corporations are often looking for volunteer opportunities (and photo opportunities!) for employees. If your company regularly scheduled group volunteer opportunities, this could be a benefit; however, if volunteers aren’t a primary part of your work, arranging a volunteer day could potentially be taxing for your staff.
What type of corporate contributions are we able to accept?
While cash donations are most common, some corporate contributions – namely donations of land, vehicles, or other property – can have tax and legal implications that smaller nonprofits may find difficult to navigate. Other in-kind donations may not make sense for your organization, if you don’t have the space to store, resources to maintain, or a practical need for the donation. While turning down a gift may seem like a faux pas when working to build a corporate relationship, kindly declining or suggesting an equivalent cash donation will be better in the long run than dealing with, say, a room full of outdated computers.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, whether you choose to accept corporate contributions – and if so, what kind – is between you and your board of directors. While the need to meet budget expectations is a constant source of pressure, organizations should carefully weigh both the risks and real benefits of aligning themselves with corporate sponsors.
For best practices for accepting both corporate and foundation giving, check out our post on developing a gift policy.
NOVEMBER 2, 2017
For organizations just starting explore the world of foundation fundraising and grant applications, the intricacies of attachments and additional proposal elements can be downright intimidating.
For almost all foundations, it isn’t enough to submit a compelling narrative and clearly defined goals—you’ll also need to be able to back up your words with budgets, financial statements, board lists, diversity tables, logic models, funder lists, and more. Remarkably, gathering these components can be daunting for both small and large organizations, as you will either be responsible for gathering everything yourself or need to coordinate documentation from multiple departments within your organization.
Despite this foreboding picture, supplementing winning proposals with strong supporting material doesn’t need to be a puzzle of PDFs, spreadsheets, and constantly outdated staff lists. All it takes is an intentional focus on staying organized and a commitment to making the effort to file items properly the first time. As an added bonus, taking these steps consistently and gathering the required attachments ahead of a deadline can strengthen your program design and help further your goals.
Below are some tips to help you keep all your documents organized and up to date:
1. Keep everything in one place.
Nobody wants to dig through all their emails or sift through folders to find that 990 from last year. It’s really easy to create an Attachments folder within your Dropbox or shared drive so that when it comes time to pull together a proposal, you know where everything is.
2. Create an organizational system that works for you, and is comprehensible to others at your organization.
A good starting point is making a folder for each type of attachment (budgets, board list, funders, etc). I’m a big proponent of fine tuning tools or systems to meet your individual needs, but be sure that whatever you choose is either clear enough that someone else could easily follow it or is possible to explain to others. It couldn’t hurt to create a basic user guide or other form of documentation for your coworkers to reference.
3. Use clear file names (with dates!).
To build on that last point, make sure that your naming conventions are clear and consistent, so that they can be easily understood at a glance. I’ve found it’s helpful to include at least and month and year in the name of the file, especially with items that may need to be regularly updated. BONUS TIP: If your files are arranged alphabetically, adding 0- to the beginning of the name will always sort it to the top.
4. Keep a ‘current’ and ‘archive’ folder for each attachment.
This is especially useful and important for those documents that get updated regularly, like funder lists. We’d recommend creating both a CURRENT and an ARCHIVED folder for each, saving as new version of each document in the “current” folder each time you update it, and moving the old one to the “archive” folder. By combining this step with the previous step about including date in your file names, you’ll never have to second guess whether you have the most up-to-date file.
5. Create checklists to stay on track:
As in all things, a list is a great way to keep track of all the moving parts, especially if you’re working on multiple proposals at the same time. In that case, putting your attachment lists side by side can help you cross off multiple items at once.
6. Think a few steps ahead.
The trick to avoiding a late-game scramble to gather all your attachments is thinking ahead! As a good rule of thumb, you should be thinking about what attachments you will need and where to find them at the same time as you are thinking about drafting the proposal. Thinking ahead also applies to updating your documents – updating your funding list as you receive funding will save you from the scramble of making those updates (and hoping you didn’t miss any!) when it’s time to gather attachments for an upcoming deadline.
OCTOBER 19, 2017
Board involvement is essential to organizational advancement, especially when it comes to institutional fundraising.
Members of your organization’s Board of Directors may be able to help identify philanthropists or foundation staff that they meet in their professional circles or at networking events, or by promoting their organizations among new funders through emails and meetings. These connections and personal introductions can be invaluable in the grant seeking process, but it’s equally important to set your Board members up for success by giving them what they need to help you in return.
Below are some specific ways Board members can play a role in the success of your grants program, along with some suggestions for how Development staff can equip them for success.
Stages of Board Cultivation in the Grant Seeking Process
1. Identify Prospective Funders
Development staff can prepare board members for success by sharing the staff and board lists of potential funders—including private foundations, corporate charitable giving, or occasionally “giving circles” operated by volunteers—regularly to leverage existing connections. Some boards prefer to share these intermittently via email, while others will compile lists to share and review during regular board or committee meetings.
Board members have a few options to quickly review their networks. An active LinkedIn network can be immensely helpful, but don’t forget about other social sites like Facebook, Twitter, or alumni associations.
2. Determine Strongest Existing Person-to-Person Connection
At this stage, opportunities for Board support may be broadly described as “access”. Along with their time and talent, robust personal networks are one of the greatest assets a Board member can lend to a nonprofit organization. If a board member knows someone or feels comfortable calling on a mutual acquaintance to set up an introductory meeting, this step can go a long way to improve the likelihood of an accepted proposal.
As staff share lists of foundation personnel or board members who are involved in the funding decision-making process, board members should dedicate time to review to determine whether they have any primary or secondary connections. LinkedIn can be a great tool for this—as well as Facebook or Twitter—but also consider other networks like alumni associations, other boards they might serve on, previous employers, current colleagues, etc.
Even in the sometimes-impersonal area of institutional fundraising, people want to work with people they know and trust. It is human nature to be more likely to respond to an email or return a call from a friend or a trusted colleague, as opposed to an unexpected cold call.
3. Leveraging Relationships to Introduce Your Organization
Staff or board connections are ideal, but occasionally—particularly corporate funders with charitable opportunities—simply finding someone who works tangentially with the target funder can be very helpful.
For example, most financial institutions are required to give a certain amount of revenue to support charitable activities. Many of these application processes are open to all requests, and often ask if the applicant organization has an employee connection. However, proposals that include a contact’s name may be more likely to advance in the review process.
Even if an organization can’t find an immediate connection to the person who reviews applications for funding requests, listing a person who is familiar with your work (e.g. VP of Community Relations, a branch manager, account manager, board member of the bank itself, a long-term volunteer, etc.), they can act as an “internal champion” for your organization. This is incredibly helpful! Sometimes this means that the proposal reviewer may call or meet with this person to ask a few questions or get their general impression of the applicant, other times the board member or development staff may share an email template describing the organization’s work as sort of an informal “letter of support “that the contact can forward to the proposal reviewer.
Sometimes, even if you identify a contact with whom you have a strong relationship, they may not always feel comfortable being this “internal champion”. Either they are new at their organization, they don’t know a lot about you, or perhaps they feel like they’ve already used up their influence advocating for another organization. That’s okay! Consider an easier request that doesn’t ask quite so much of the person, such as simply introducing you to the staff involved in the charitable giving department or simply sharing the name/email/contact info of that staff member so development staff can reach out directly.
This process is also helpful for corporations who have Community Social Responsibility or charitable giving departments and many law firms.
Sample Questions for Board Members to Ask Contacts:
- Do you know anyone at the Foundation or Corporate funder? If not directly, could you help us find a name or email, maybe in a staff directory?
- Can I tell you a bit more about our organization and the work we do in the community?
- What other sort of programs or projects does your organization prefer to support?
- Can I introduce you to our Executive Director or other staff?
- If we apply to this funder, would you feel comfortable if we included your name in our proposal?
- Does your organization require an invitation to apply? If so, can you tell me the process for getting the invitation?
- Can I sign you up for our email newsletter to keep you updated on our work?
4. Solicitation
Depending on the relationship, it may be appropriate for board members to join development staff on a call or with a meeting with their contact. This gives you a chance to learn a bit more about a funder’s priorities. Typically, unless board members feel strongly about their relationship with the contact, this is not the conversation to make the final “ask”. Usually, it’s a chance to talk with the funder and learn how to best position your request (e.g. typical request amount, priority giving areas and trends, program alignment, timing of application, etc.) Generally, the formal ask will be made in the form of a written proposal, submitted either through an online portal, by mail, or by email. Board members may wish to review this final proposal, especially if it includes their name as a direct connection to the funder, but most often this is not necessary.
Volunteers of America of Pennsylvania
