March 21, 2019

In part one of this series, we talked about why building a successful grants program means playing the long game – one that requires patience, perseverance, and resilience.

This post breaks down exactly what it means to build resilience in your grants program and the specific steps you can take to start moving in the right direction.

Step 1: Build resilience and put yourself in the right conditions

(Last wine analogy, I promise!) The pinot noir grape has a very thin skin, giving it a beautiful ruby color. Its transparency famously allows it to tell the truest story of the conditions it faced that year (i.e., the soil and the climate). It can survive in high heat and deep cooling (but only to an extent) and doesn’t do well in overcrowded plots.

The pinot noir grape can be resilient—but only if a winemaker understands its strengths and weaknesses and uses that information to put it in the best possible conditions.

And then it just sings.

As grant writers, we too have to learn how to put ourselves in the best possible conditions for building funder relationships and developing strong proposals. The trick I have learned, after surviving tons of declinations, is to learn from them and even lean into it.

First: request and honestly consider funder feedback. Funder feedback is one of the most valuable resources in a developing grants program. Thinking that, “Funders/foundations just don’t get it”, or, “We have zero chance of winning this,” will never result in improved cultivation or relationships—and certainly won’t help you win more grants. But seeking feedback and reflecting on what can be legitimately improved upon is key to your success.

Sometimes, asking once is not enough. After the initial declination, funders may say that they can’t or won’t provide feedback. But don’t give up. Wait a month or so and ask again. Respectfully request a conversation so that you can better understand how their funding priorities align with your work.

The worst that can happen is that they say “no.” I know this is not comforting, but hopefully it does give you a little bit of confidence that there are only so many outcomes. And you can’t control their decision-making—only your own preparation. For many funders, it can take more than one application to break through, and plenty of foundations do not have the human resources to speak with all potential applicants. 

Step 2: Lift up your genuine strengths and recognize your organizational challenges

Know what your strengths are and stick with them. To connect authentically with funders, maintain an awareness of trends, but do not bend to them. There is nothing more obvious to a funder than a proposal that includes a program or work-plan that was clearly designed specifically to match the available funding but does not actually portray the applicant’s authentic strengths or mission-aligned endeavors.

Be honest with yourself about your organizational challenges and liabilities. Is your grants program understaffed? Under-resourced? Do you have high-quality, evidence-based programs and evaluation measures in place to prove your effectiveness? Is your program sustainable? Answering these questions with honesty and clarity is critical to writing an application that speaks to funders.

Step 3: Focus on strategies that align with your priorities

Develop your internal capacity for strategies that work. First, plan and staff-up for the long-term. Understand that you should budget with the assumption that it will take 12-18 months to realize serious returns, in either funding or significant learning about what does or doesn’t work. Then, make sure you’re properly staffed to dedicate the time needed to conduct in-depth research and draft quality proposals. This could also mean outsourcing some of the work.

In your prospect research, choose quality over quantity. Learn to say “no” to external trends (what seems “hot” in funding, if it is not already what you do authentically) and internal pressures (boards, CEOs, etc.) Saying “no” is an art and can be incredibly difficult but is key to your success.

Seek opportunities to have conversations with internal stakeholders and decision-makers, and be prepared to justify the strategy you’ve developed. Explain that quality over quantity is going to result in fewer, but better and more sustainable outcomes.

Develop a strategy for your prospect research (i.e., coming up with keywords for your work, key fields you work in, peers in your field, etc.) and stay disciplined until you find your diamonds. Don’t waste your time with barely-aligned funders. There’s a fine balance between knowing when you have no shot and not leaving money on the table when there is a real chance. Learning to recognize this takes time and experience. Even then, you won’t always be right.

Once you have extensively researched well-aligned funders, invest in good cultivation to learn if you are well-aligned with their priorities. Write to them asking for clarification of funding priorities, expressing genuine interest in making the best of their time and your own. In these conversations, it is important to learn from what they have to say, as opposed to seeking validation for your programs.

If cultivation seems difficult, read up on how others get over their personal hurdles, and how organizations can best distribute fundraising responsibilities based on personalities. Keep a cultivation chart (an Excel sheet works great!) to track your progress with each funder, the stage you’re in with them, and historical notes so you can go back and remember what you spoke with them about.

How Will I Know if I’m on the Right Track?

Like the pinot noir grape, grants programs require cultivation and commitment. You will know that you’re on the right track when you start to have meaningful conversations and develop relationships with funders, knowing that this may take months or even a year. Most funders really want to help you—the reality is that they are just as busy as you are. So, you need to remain humble. Be grateful for their time and continue improving your conditions to put yourself in the best light for funding.

Follow these steps, and you can be very successful at fundraising through grants.

March 15, 2019

A few years ago, I was asking a winemaker about the process of winemaking. He was working at a relatively young winery in a developing wine region. He told me that it would take seven years before he would come to understand the outcome of his strategy and his gut feeling about what he had planted.

I keep this story in mind every time my clients and I begin feeling anxious about the results of a grant submission.

Having been on the other side of grantmaking, I know that it takes a significant amount of human resources to make funding decisions. It’s not uncommon to have to wait 6-8 months (or even up to a year) before hearing back about a funding decision. And, whether or not they ultimately fund your proposal, you want funders spending the time they need to make sure those precious dollars are going where they are needed most. Just like good winemaking, good grant writing takes time, patience, and perseverance. 

Why Grant Writing Feels Personal

I feel on a daily basis the justifiable stress and anxiety of all my nonprofit clients as they try to meet their revenue goals and get “in” with funders. It’s not uncommon to email funders and receive no response. Or, worse, to be emailing back and forth with funders and to suddenly be ghosted and never hear back from them again.

Not earning a response to a well-crafted and genuine note to a funder can feel like a personal rejection, or a rejection of the work you believe in. We all know what it feels like to put a ton of work into a complicated application, only to be declined with a very short and (often sweet) note that somehow, the awardees were more compelling or meritorious — but they regret that they can’t tell you why. (Always respectfully request feedback, anyway; read on to find out how.)

The more you apply, the more you lose. Sometimes it can feel like one (gleeful) step forward, just to then take 3-4 steps back.

It feels personal because the stakes are so high. You believe in your mission, and very likely, many people depend on you and your organization’s work; it’s hard to understand why someone else might not believe in it with the same enthusiasm that you have.

The (Semi-) Good News: You’re Not Alone

Grant writing is notoriously difficult. The national win rate (rate of success winning a grant applied for) is 17% A win rate of 30-40% on new funding (funders not familiar with your organization) and 50-60% on combined (existing programs and funders and new programs and funders) is considered   extraordinary.

Still, we understand the challenge. In addition to the odds seemingly being stacked against nonprofits when it comes to winning grants, one of the reasons so many nonprofit organizations struggle with their grant programs is because they lack the necessary resources. Research, cultivation (communicating with funders before applying), and writing proposals are all time-intensive and expensive processes. I’ve seen large organizations with multi-million-dollar budgets struggle to properly staff and efficiently manage the amount of time and coordination it takes among the development, program, and administrative staff to get a successful proposal out the door—even when the Elevate team adds writing and research capacity.

Just like wine-making, grant writing is experimental. You’re not going to be able to predict the success of your grants program until you have enough experience—and enough funder feedback to learn what will work for your organization. There’s a lot to fine tune – from your grant language, your programmatic strengths and weaknesses, what funders respond to, and beyond.

Just like some grapes grow and thrive best in certain climates or soil, your proposals and your programs will resonate with certain funders more than others. Further, just like in winemaking, your work is susceptible to external factors and trends beyond your control. Grapes are susceptible to the climate and wine production is usually responsive to market trends, just as grantmaking is susceptible to the economy and philanthropic trends.

Great. It’s Tough. What Now?

What exactly does all this mean for your organization?

Stay tuned for part 2 of this series, where we’ll break down exactly what it means to build up resilience in your grants program!

February 13, 2019

Program budgets are one of the most common attachment requests from funders, yet they are often one of the most confounding requests for even well-established nonprofit organizations.

However, having strong, fiscally-sound program budgets can not only improve your chances of winning a grant, but also support organizational budget planning and program management.

Below are our answers to four frequently asked questions, to help you begin to craft your own program budget:

1. Why are program budgets important to funders?

In short, funders want to know where their money is going. Organizational budgets often have lots of information rolled up into a handful of line items. And for multi-service organizations, in particular, it can be difficult to determine how much time and money any one program requires. A well-crafted program budget will complement your grant narrative, providing a more detailed picture of the inputs required to operate each program effectively and the need for the exact funding requested.

2. How do we create a program budget?

Creating program budgets should ideally be a collaborative process between your program, development, and finance teams, as each holds specific information needed to complete this task.

The program team should identify the inputs to the program: what staff members work on that particular program, what other contractors or vendors provide supports for this program, and what other direct costs are needed to execute the program (listed below).

The development team should identify the relevant revenue sources for the program: what current and prospective funding streams and/or particular funders support that program and determine what other financial resources are needed to match the program’s expenses.

The finance team should then take these inputs and calculate the exact revenue and expense for each program aligned to their internal accounting controls.

3. What do we include in a program budget?

Program budgets not only can but SHOULD include the salary and fringe benefits costs associated with the staff time relevant to this project. Other common direct expense line items that should be included in a program budget may include:

• Supplies
• Equipment
• Evaluation
• Client transportation
• Program staff transportation
• Recruitment and/or marketing
• Printing
• Curriculum
• Staff training and professional development
• Database fees
• Facilities costs or space rental fees
• Telecommunication costs

Note: if you are unsure of how to differentiate between Supplies and Equipment, the University of Arizona defines equipment as, “tangible personal property (including information technology systems) having a useful life of more than one year and an acquisition cost of $5,000 or more per unit.”

Don’t forget – you can and SHOULD include a 5-10% administrative cost to your program expenses! Administrative expenses help to cover the very necessary costs of running your organization—management and administrative salaries, annual audits, central office costs, etc. Once you have determined the direct costs to your program, add an additional 5-10% administrative expense to the budget total. However, be sure to check each funder’s guidelines to see if they have any specific restrictions on administrative costs.

4. How do we calculate how much to allocate to the program budget?

This will vary by organization and your exact accounting methods. However, two helpful rules of thumb are:

To calculate salary costs: you must determine which staff members support that program and what percent of each staff person’s time is dedicated to that program, then calculate this cost based on their full-time salary.

Use the following formula to calculate staff costs:
(% of staff time spent on program) x (staff salary + benefits)

For example:
(0.4) X ($52,500+ $7,500) = $24,000 allocated to the program budget.

You can use a similar formula when calculating direct costs shared across multiple programs.

To determine direct costs that are shared by multiple programs across the organization: try your best to determine what share of the costs goes to each program and allocate accordingly. If, for example, you use a database to store information for all three of your programs, the total annual cost of your database fees should be divided by three across each program budget.

Proactively creating budgets for each of your programs not only avoids stress during the grant submission process, but can actually support organizational budgeting, strategy, and growth.

November 26, 2018

THIS POST IS PART OF A SERIES.
YOU CAN READ PART 1 HERE AND PART 2 HERE.

As Giving Tuesday has become known as the global day of giving, it also needs to be viewed as the launch of an organization’s year-end fundraising campaign.

In my work as a development consultant, I caution organizations to not put all their eggs into one basket when it comes to Giving Tuesday. What I mean by this is that Giving Tuesday can be disappointing if an organization uses it as a one-day event to reach its fundraising goal.

Rather, your organization’s Giving Tuesday campaign should act as more of a kickoff than a standalone strategy, and work in conjunction with your end-of-year campaign. Using Giving Tuesday as a soft launch allows your organization to be strategic in its approach to raising funds to meet your end-of-year goals. By using the buzz and excitement around this special day to garner the first donations for your year-end campaign, you can build the social proof your campaign page needs to spur others to donate through the end of the year.

GIVING TUESDAY: PART OF A BIGGER STRATEGY

As you finalize your Giving Tuesday campaign, here are some Do’s and Don’ts to help you establish its role in your larger end-of-year fundraising strategy:

GIVING TUESDAY DON’TS

• Don’t think of Giving Tuesday as short term gain. Think of it instead as a long-term investment into a full end of the year fundraising campaign.
• Don’t view Giving Tuesday as being only about fundraising. It doesn’t have to be.  In fact, you don’t have to ask for money at all on Giving Tuesday. I suggest rather using it as a day to raise awareness of your organization and its mission. Highlight how money raised from supporters will increase the social impact of the organization.
• Don’t set a goal specific to Giving Tuesday, but rather an end of the year campaign goal.
• Don’t use Giving Tuesday as the benchmark for judging how your campaign will perform.  It’s only one tool in your campaign toolbox.

GIVING TUESDAY DO’S

• Do use Giving Tuesday as a way to enhance your relationships with your donors, prospects, corporate partners and sponsors.
• Do use Giving Tuesday as one (and only one) of your strategies to reach your end of year campaign goal. It’s a great way to launch and test new messaging about your organization’s mission and programs.
• Do use Giving Tuesday as an opportunity to tell the story of your organization and your mission. STORYTELLING is key on Giving Tuesday, and it is a perfect time to share compelling and interesting information about your organization.
• Do accompany your Giving Tuesday launch with a well thought out social media and mobile strategy. Share a variety of types of social posts including video (if possible), storytelling, interesting snippets of data about your programs, compelling metrics, and historical facts about your organization.  With every posting, be sure to include a prominent ‘Donate’ button.
• Do follow up after Giving Tuesday with your end of year campaign, in which you will ask for support throughout the duration of it.

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.

October 31, 2018

THIS POST IS PART 2 OF A SERIES.
YOU CAN READ PART 1 HERE AND PART 3 HERE.

There are many different strategies that nonprofits use to increase their giving.

Whether your organization decides to set up an online profile on a giving platform or use traditional appeal letters to reach potential donors, a tried and tested way to increase donations is the use of tiered donation lists or suggested donation options to make a compelling ask.

With Giving Tuesday around the corner, we are taking a closer look at both how and why you should consider using a tiered donation list in your donation appeals.

Why set donations tiers?

Tiered donation lists and suggested donations are based on the social influence effect, which coerces an individual’s decision-making based on social norms or social information provided to them. In a study on the Impact of Social Influence on the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods, researchers Jen Shang and Rachel Croson found that suggesting donation levels increased average contributions by 12% for all donors by telling donors what is an ‘appropriate’ level to give. Furthermore, these increased donation levels were sustained with higher donor renewal rates in subsequent years!

Tiered donation lists take suggested donations a step further by providing context and impact for each donation level. This allows potential donors to understand how their money is making a difference. In their study on what they coined as the “identified intervention effect,” researchers found that highlighting details about the charity’s impact significantly increased a donor’s generosity.

By combining details about a nonprofit’s impact with suggested donation levels, tiered donation lists use a multiplier effect to increase the generosity and giving probability of potential donors.

Making Impact Goals: The SMART Approach

When creating fundraising or impact goals for your organization, a good way to make sure you are providing a compelling fundraising appeal is to use the SMART Approach. This approach was originally conceived for project management by George Doran in a 1981 article titled, There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to Write Management’s Goals and Objectives.

To put simply, your impact should be:

• Specific – Where is the impact taking place? Who is benefitting? What is the impact? How will the impact improve a beneficiary’s standard of living?
• Measurable – Number of people impacted? Number of units of aid provided?
• Attainable – Can the impact/fundraising target be achieved within the specified time frame?
• Relevant – Is the impact something donors can connect with?
• Time-Based – What timeline will create a sense of urgency while also being realistic?

One way to structure your appeal is to list your SMART fundraising goal, followed by SMART tiered donation options that relate to your fundraising goal. For example:

There are a variety of ways to structure your tiered donation lists. The benefit of using different measurable impacts, as in the example above, is that it allows for donors to get a better idea of the different activities an organization is doing to make an impact.

Notice that in the example above, each donation option speaks to something that every person can identify with in pursuing an education – paying school tuition, having school uniform/supplies, and transportation to go to school. It is very important that the impacts you choose to highlight are relatable to your target audience. Additionally, setting a timeline is crucial to convince donors as to why donating now is necessary. In some cases, organizations provide matching donation incentives for donors to donate within a specific time frame. For #GivingTuesday, you should decide if you want to combine your giving campaign with the end of year holiday giving period.

Some organizations choose to use a specific measured impact goal and have all the options refer to the specific impact metric. The World Bicycle Relief is a great example of this where they use donation tiers to show that $150 would be the cost for one bicycle and countdown to their goal of providing 1,400 bicycles. The more specific your impact goal is, the easier it is to make a clear call to action for your potential donors.

For some ideas of other ways you could be structuring your donation tiers, check out CauseVox’s summary of the top five donation tier structures.

How to Set Donation Amounts

Now that you have some ideas of how to convey the impact in donation tiers, you’re probably thinking about what donation tiers work best to inspire giving. The short answer to this is that it depends.

While you can use the impact targets you feature to guide the amounts you choose for each tier, a more scientific approach would be to look at your past giving and giving within your sector to make your tiers. According to Nonprofit Source, the average online gift amount for #GivingTuesday in 2017 exceeded $134. Additionally, Blackbaud analyzed $1.9 billion in online gifts in 2016 from more than 4,000 nonprofit organizations in the United States to create a median gift amount for each sector. These figures can be combined with your organization’s past giving to come up with a good benchmark and giving tiers.

Use Anchoring to Your Advantage

To take things a step further, you could try adding a default option to your tiered donation list to leverage a marketing technique called anchoring. This technique relies on the brain’s tendency to heavily rely on the first piece of information (such as price) offered when making decisions. In the case of donations, it will cause people to tend to give closer to the anchored value than they otherwise might have.

Marketing researchers Indranil Goswami and Oleg Urminsky suggest that fundraisers might be overly apprehensive about using defaults in their donation campaigns. In their 2016 study, they found that setting donation defaults increased donation revenue in two ways: (1) by setting a lower default, it increased the number of smaller donors that gave to an organization; and (2) by setting higher defaults, it increased the average giving of each donor but reduced the total number of donors who gave.

The anchoring strategy you choose should be dependent on your priorities. If you want to enlarge your pool of donors to help increase your organization’s visibility and donor engagement, then going for a lower anchor or default may serve you better but may come at the expense of a reduced average giving amount across donors. A higher anchor may increase your average giving amongst current donors, but make it harder for you to attract newer donors.

Regardless of the approach you choose, keep in mind that this is an iterative process that requires experimentation to find the best strategy for your organization. Coming up with the best list takes practice, so try showing these lists to current donors and volunteers to get feedback as you find what works for you.

This is the second of three posts in our Giving Tuesday blog series. Check back next soon for our final post.

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:

1. 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. 2. Hold strategy sessions. Set time aside to speak to the CEO about the fundraising process and explain what his/her role is.
3. 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.
4. Share success stories. Share stories of other nonprofit CEO’s achieving fundraising success.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.

April 11, 2018

When asking donors to give their money, volunteers or staff to give their time, and even constituents to participate in your programs – it is particularly important to know why they should volunteer, give, and engage with your organization as opposed to another similar nonprofit.

Therefore, you must know the other organizations in your space, and clearly understand and communicate how you are performing different activities, or performing similar activities in different ways.

One of your most important roles as a nonprofit leader is to see the broader context and communicate it both internally and externally.  Here is an example: Elevate once worked with a charter school who was seeking to raise national funding for its work. When we were brainstorming why the funders should support their work, a school leader explained with enthusiasm about all the learning that was happening in their classroom every single day.

But students learning could not be their differentiating factor, we explained: that is why the local school district funds their work in the first place. That is the bare minimum; it is what they have in common with (most) other schools, not what makes them different or better amid a crowded field.

So how can your organization set itself apart from others doing similar work in your field?

Your Unique Approach

Your unique approach is something you have probably thought about. A lot. But your position is also something that is dynamic, and shifting as the ecosystem around it does and as you learn more about what works and what does not. When building new programs or approaching new stakeholders, it will be critical that your organizational strategy is in step with the broader context of what’s happening around you.

Differentiation must be your strategy!

Not only does this benefit the most people and prevent duplication of efforts, but it improves your sustainability by ensuring donors and grantmakers do not believe there is a good substitute for your work, and stay loyal to you!

How might your organization or program be different? Factors to consider:

Geography

Are you the only service provider in a certain region? Do you have a nation-wide reach compared to organizations with just a local footprint?  Elevate works with many different Jewish social service agencies – but the one in Seattle is not competing with the one in Philadelphia or Miami.

Size or Reach

Are you the largest service provider of a particular demographic – like middle school students? Or do you reach all the senior centers in a certain county?

Theory of Change

Does your theory of change (which we will discuss more at length!) distinguish your work? One of Elevate’s former clients developed their own inquiry-based method of teacher professional development. Do you have a similar method for change that you’ve refined over time?

Program Design

Do you use best practices in delivering your programs, or a promising new model that makes your program different in exciting ways? Are there features of your programs that others do not offer?

Impact

Does your program have a track record that is proven and deep? Does the change because of your program highlight a more effective program?

Stakeholder Engagement

Does your organization bring unique stakeholder perspectives to the table or ‘uncommon bedfellows’ to work on a common issue. For example, a former Elevate client was committed to bringing evangelical Christians into the progressive movement by highlighting common areas of interest – like care for creation and peace.  Another brings military leaders to advice on progressive foreign policy issues.

Comprehensive or Linked Services

Do you offer a broader array of services than others or a more holistic or comprehensive experience for participants? Are you a one-stop-shop for a variety of needs?

Partnerships

Do you have long-standing or particularly deep partnerships that make your program more effective or legitimate in the community?

Broader Contribution to the Field

Are you helping to organize other actors in your space? Do you provide some other mechanism for thought leadership?  Do others look to you to galvanize a collective response? For example, one of Elevate’s clients is the national leader in the creative aging space and presents at conferences on their work.

Funding Mix

Do you have earned revenue or government support, when it is not common in your space? Do you have support from the most prominent foundations or donors, who have invested in your interventions and programs?

Leadership and Authenticity

Is your Board of Directors, leadership, or staff led by former or current program participants? Does it have people who have first-hand experience with your issue?  For example, an Elevate client is the only national organization against torture led by torture survivors.

Momentum or Growth

Has your organization been the fastest growing, or entered new schools, regions, or cities in the past year?

Timeliness or Relevance

Are there external factors that make your issue particularly pressing? A change in conversation or a world event that makes your work particularly distinctive? For example, Elevate works with a client who is the leading organization working on climate change from a Catholic perspective, and the Pope’s landmark Encyclical letter, Laudato Si’ in 2014, about the care for our common home helped to differentiate their work from other climate organizations at that time.

Agenda Setting

Are you addressing an issue that others have not tackled before? For example, Elevate worked with a client raising awareness and developing responses to street harassment, which was largely an untapped issue area.

Download Elevate’s free Differentiation worksheets!

You’ll also receive periodic email updates from us, including when we publish new blog posts about twice per month. You can unsubscribe at any time.

GET THE WORKSHEETS

This Matters the most for Nonprofits

Because there are always limited resources, it is important that you legitimately do not spend your time and money duplicating efforts that are already working elsewhere.  This is more important in the social and nonprofit sector than in the business and for-profit space. If individual investors want to try to compete with an existing enterprise, it is the investors who lose if it does not work out.

However, if your nonprofit wants to duplicate efforts that are already being done, the opportunity cost of other interventions that could be benefiting society in some other way are a public loss, not just a private one.

As an added bonus: clear and meaningful differentiation is essential to a strong fundraising program, and will ensure you raise more funding than if you are competing with similar organizations.

March 22, 2018

Having a thoughtful grants strategy is essential to achieving results efficiently. While you might think the term ‘strategy’ is jargony and overused – and we won’t disagree! – it has an actual, limited meaning, and an interesting history.

A strategy is a high-level plan to achieve your goals under conditions of uncertainty. The term ‘strategy’ comes from Greek and initially referred to a ‘generalship’ or the art of commanding troops in war. When it entered the Western languages in the 1700s, its meaning was broadened to incorporate any way people used to pursue their goals, especially their political goals.

One of the key confusions today is that nonprofits often engage in some version of strategic planning, which can take a lot of different forms or final products. For example:

A Strategic Plan

is a plan that outlines your overall organizational goals for a certain time period (generally one to five years) and outlines how your organization will achieve those goals. Your strategic plan will incorporate the full organization – not only programs, outcomes, and new initiatives, but also operations, infrastructure, and staffing.

A Strategic Planning Process

is the process by which the staff and Board of Directors create this plan. It usually includes conducting external research, analyzing and committing to measurable goals, and approving priorities.

While these examples of strategy play an important role in any nonprofits’ success, your grants program needs also needs its own basic, high-level strategy that has a distinct meaning and goal separate from the above.

Defining your GRANTS STRATEGY

Your grants strategy should include your fundraising goals and priorities, the strategic thinking you have done about how to achieve those goals, and your recommendations or plan about what to actually do throughout the year.

As a nonprofit, with limited resources, you do not want to spend your time and energy moving in the wrong direction. Creating a brief grants strategy plan and memo can help you clarify what to do and what to not do.

While you might think that your grants strategy is “to find everything that possibly aligns and pursue it” – and it just might be – there are a few questions we want you to also think about first! They include:

Strategy for your Case Statement & Putting it all together

Once you can answer the questions above, you will be able to pull together a brief high-level strategy for the year. But you also need to do some strategic thinking about how to present your organization to funders. When it comes time to actually apply, you should also be able to answer the following:

• Briefly, what are the top 2-5 reasons funders should support your organization or program? What are its strengths and how is it different?
• What new language do you need to develop? Is there anything you are doing now that you can re-package for a different audience?

• What are your greatest weaknesses or key programs’ weaknesses? How will you message or frame these?

• Why should funders give now? What is the broader context? What trends do you see that are relevant for a context?
• What is the future vision or strategy for your organization? Is it clear how you will get there? Do you need more details from the organization?

When you put all these pieces together, you should have all the components of a focused grants strategy for your organization that reflects your priorities, gives you a focused sense of direction, and ultimately delivers results.

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.

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.