The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution

Overview

Real-world solutions to take any fundraising program from good to great.
The nonprofit sector is facing major fundraising challenges. Government cutbacks, shrinking endowments, and business belt-tightening mean revenue shortfalls that could prevent organizations from fulfilling their missions. To survive and ultimately thrive, a nonprofit needs forceful revenue strategies and an organizational culture that champions them.

Bridging the gap between theory and practical methods, The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution shows readers how to:

• Ensure that executive leadership and board dynamics fully support fundraising initiatives

• Build a broad constituency of donors aligned to the mission

• Determine the right level of funding diversification

• Use tactics such as challenge drives, stretch gifts, and corporate matching; parlor gatherings; leadership councils; year-end drives; corporate partnerships; and major campaigns to power revenue, increase access to wealthy donors, and raise their community profile

• Proactively encourage planned giving

• Avoid revenue plateaus

Full of real-life stories and "casebooks? of the strategies-in-action, this book reveals how any nonprofit can implement advanced fundraising methods and secure the funds they need to excel.

About the Author

LAURENCE A. PAGNONI has spent 25 years in the nonprofit sector as a fundraising consultant and the executive director of three nonprofit organizations. He is chairman of LAPA Fundraising and the author of INFO, a popular blog about cutting-edge nonprofit fundraising.

Back to Top

Jacket Copy

Your nonprofit needs revenue to fulfill its mission. In the face of government cutbacks, shrinking endowments, and business belt-tightening, securing funds can be a daunting challenge. But armed with the right strategies, you can take your organization far beyond mere survival to thrive in any economic environment.

Presenting real-life stories and "casebooks? of strategies in action, The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution bridges the gap between theory and practical methods and shows you how to:

• Determine the right level of funding diversification

• Build a broad constituency of donors aligned to your mission

• Ensure that executive leadership and board dynamics fully support your fundraising initiatives

• Proactively encourage planned giving

• Avoid revenue plateaus

Revealing the inextricable link between successful fundraising and organizational development, the book shows how to increase your access to wealthy donors and raise your community profile to power revenue through tactics such as challenge drives, stretch gifts, and corporate matching gifts; parlor gatherings; leadership councils; year-end drives; corporate partnerships; and major campaigns.

To survive and ultimately thrive, your organization needs forceful revenue strategies and an organizational culture that champions them. This book demonstrates how to implement advanced fundraising methods to secure the funds you need to excel.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE NONPROFIT FUNDRAISING SOLUTION:

"The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution shows us how to create a fundraising culture in any nonprofit organization. The content is spot-on and very thought provoking. It goes further than most to deliver the stuff every CEO needs, trade secrets that fundraisers usually keep to themselves.?

— Michael E. Clark, President, Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York

"Laurence's book is the long-awaited toolkit that America's heroic social change advocates need and deserve. Too many important national and community efforts fall short because fundraising skills are not married to their leader's vision. This book demystifies what it takes to succeed. Reading it is a mandatory first step toward adequately capitalizing the nonprofits we all value. Laurence's insider perspective gives us an enormous competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded marketplace.?

— Billy Shore, CEO, Share Our Strength

LAURENCE A. PAGNONI has spent 25 years in the nonprofit sector as a fundraising consultant and as executive director of three nonprofit organizations. He is chairman of LAPA Fundraising and the author of INFO, a popular blog about cutting-edge nonprofit fundraising. He lives in New York City. For more information, please visit www.thenonprofitfundraisingsolution.com.

Back to Top

Excerpt

Introduction

I never set out to be a fundraiser; I became one of necessity. I began my career as an executive director, working for nonprofit organizations in Virginia, California, and eventually New York City. During my time as an executive director, I managed every facet of the organizations I led, including all aspects of their fundraising. I soon came to realize how essential adequate revenues were to ensuring a nonprofit mission. Without them, our visions for a better civil soci?ety amount to little more than pie in the sky.

Mark Twain once advised people to be careful about reading health books because "you might die of a misprint.? I'm a big fan of Twain's poignant humor, and so when writing this book about nonprofit fundraising, I tried to keep his advice in mind and con?vey vital information carefully. I can assure you that nothing you'll read in this book will kill you or your organization. Chances are, though, that you are already experiencing something like stagnation, which, for those of us who have dedicated ourselves to "changing the world? through nonprofit work, can sometimes feel like its own sort of death. You dream, you sacrifice, you persist, and yet all too often you come up against a brick wall in trying to achieve real success for your mission. The issue isn't that you lack the requisite desire or dedication to excel. The problem is you lack the money to implement your vision. It's a lament that is so common in the nonprofit sector that I sometimes think I hear it in my sleep.

Subsequent to my time as an executive director, I've served non?profit clients as a fundraising counsel for more than eighteen years in my capacity as chairman of LAPA Fundraising, an organization I founded in 1995 in New York City. I've had the privilege of offer?ing or participating in countless conferences, seminars, workshops, and panel discussions aimed at helping nonprofit organizations raise more money. What I've noticed is that although the venues and the audiences change, the questions people ask rarely do. Whether we're in a house of worship, a university, or a conference center, in front of big audiences or tiny conclaves, someone inevitably steps forward and asks: How can I get to the next level? That is, how can my non?profit raise more money and create the conditions for sustainable success and high impact?

"Good question,? I usually say, although a more accurate re?sponse might be, "Good and very popular question.? The issue of how to get a nonprofit to the next level is nearly ubiquitous because most nonprofits in the United States are small or midsize organiza?tions, and some 87 percent of them are trying to change the world on annual revenues of less than $1 million. Fully 73 percent exist on less than $250,000 per annum. Many of these organizations ended their last fiscal year with deficits.¹ These numbers aren't just sober?ing; they indicate quite clearly that unless these trends are somehow reversed, the future effectiveness of nonprofits in America looks gloomy indeed.

Fortunately there are a number of tried-and-true ways to get you to the next level you seek. The book you are about to read is my attempt to show you how to do so, and to help you answer that seminal question for yourselves, your donors, your constituents, your boards of directors, your communities, and most importantly, your clients. I like to say that a nonprofit is making progress when each day it gets to confront a better set of problems than it had the day before, or, in this case, better questions. My hope is that once you've implemented the ideas and tactics I've outlined, you'll never again need to ask, "How do we get to the next level??

We all know your nonprofit requires funding to operate. A lim?ited ability to secure revenue means a meager chance to fulfill your mission. But your success at fundraising is more complex than a simple discussion of dollars and cents because it communicates a profound message about your organization's health and well-being.

Through your fundraising program, you inform members of the community about your moral imperative and your impact on their lives, and you inspire donors to work on your behalf. Most of all, your fundraising program reflects the effectiveness of your overall organization. It's a litmus test of your viability.

The central premise of The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution is that organizational development and successful fundraising are in?extricably linked. Married, if you will. Your organization will do better by seeing itself as a multifaceted entity with fundraising en?trenched firmly at its center. Why? Because the barriers to better fundraising performance are, so often, the same obstacles to organi?zational growth. The task for your nonprofit on its way to the next level is to approach fundraising with as much passion as you have for ameliorating the social problem to which you've dedicated your mission. Getting to the next level has as much to do with organiza?tional development as it does with the fundamentals of fundraising. These two elements need to work in lockstep. The tendency in the past has been to treat fundraising as if it existed in a vacuum, sepa?rate and distinct from the other parts of your organization.

A 2013 report released by San Francisco-based CompasPoint found:

[H]alf the chief fundraisers … expected to leave their current jobs within two years due to an assortment of pressures, including a frequent feeling that they're out on a limb because they're expected to produce results without having enough backup from bosses and boards that haven't managed to put effective, systematic fund?raising plans and approaches into place.²

Too often, fundraising programs exist in a silo. The fundraiser works in isolation, and the fundraising program is not integrated into the day-to-day activities of the organization. This is a pervasive and grievous condition.

A large number of the individuals asking how they can get to the next level come from nonprofits that might be described as high-per?forming, underrecognized, and underresourced. In some cases, their agency has relied on one dominant funding source for too many years. In others, their private foundation grants program is rudimen?tary or largely inactive. Their individual donor program, if they even have one, may also be weak, while they usually have no planned giving program whatsoever. In all probability, their organization has no staff members focused entirely on fundraising, and their board of directors isn't working efficiently as a team and maximizing its strengths, nor is it very knowledgeable about its role in fundraising.

Make no mistake, I'm not trying to be Jim Collins, author of Good to Great,although I am trying to pick up where he leaves off. Many nonprofit leaders buy and refer to works by Collins and authors like him, yet they are baffled as to how to apply these theo?ries to their real-world dilemmas. They want to use Collins's re?search,?they know it's the right stuff, but they lack the revenue to implement the theory. They don't know how to raise all the money needed to, in Collins's words, go from good to great. They have figured out how to raise?enough money to remain in existence, but?they?lack?the tools to get to the much-desired-but-just-out-of-reach next level.

The revenue program of the typical nonprofit needs more love and care than most executives admit because without a robust rev?enue engine, the best ideas or strategies wither on the vine. This book aims to fill the important gap between theory and the practical methods used to secure that needed revenue—down-to-earth, de?tailed steps that can be implemented immediately.

How to Use This Book

Fundraising is a practitioner's craft. It requires the intuition of the artist and inquisitiveness of the scientist. It needs flexibility to pilot new approaches and time to gauge their effectiveness. It's neither primarily theory (although good theory is required), nor wishful thinking or magic. It's not a matter of manipulating your address book. Fundraising is grounded in hard reality, and central to the task is building thoughtful relationships with prospective donors who are value aligned, meaning they care about what you do and do not want to live in a world where what you do is absent.

There is no one-size-fits-all method of organizational devel?opment or fundraising, either. Every nonprofit organization has a unique mission and strategy for supporting that mission.

The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution is divided into two parts. The four chapters in Part One, "What Getting to the Next Level Really Means,? articulate my theories about some of the key aspects of organizational development and explain how to focus on getting your organization ready to execute a robust fundraising program. The ideas that they contain lay the mental groundwork for what advanced fundraising requires. Written from the perspective of the fundraiser, Part One looks at how the issues of organizational cul?ture, leadership, board governance, and higher-level thinking are fundamentally tied to fundraising.

In Part Two, "Advanced Fundraising Tactics to Raise Revenue,? the tactical aspects of fundraising that I've utilized and refined the most are addressed. These chapters cover the nuts and bolts of ad?vanced fundraising. Each of the nine chapters addresses a particu?lar fundraising tactic that you can use. Some of the topics may be familiar to your own fundraising activities, but my take on them may provide a new perspective. Depending on your organization's unique personality, you can modify all of these tactics to accom?modate your particular needs. It may require considerable work on your part, but it's also what will bring you greater revenue.

At the end of many chapters you'll find a Casebook, in which I use a real-life story to illustrate the subject at hand. "At the End of the Day,? which is the designation used to close each chapter, em?phasizes that chapter's main points as you move to the next one. All the organizations and cases referred to in this book are real, though most names have been changed.

The development of relationships is central to fundraising, be it a relationship to a group of donors, to the community, corpora?tions, service providers, your peer nonprofits, or the world at large through social media. These kinds of relationships build the profile of your organization. The tactics used to foster relationships create confidence in your agency; they attract financial support and, most importantly, they enable your nonprofit to deliver its mission as ef?fectively as possible.

I strongly urge you to read Part One as a whole before you turn to Part Two. To get to the next fundraising level, it will take more than a few clever "modifications? to set you on the right course. The correlation between fundraising performance and organizational de?velopment is too often overlooked, yet that's precisely what getting to the next level is all about. Your organization and your way ot thinking about it inevitably have to change. You may have to be?come better at documenting the impact of your programs. You may have to generate better client or program outcomes. Your leadership or your board may need some redirection. Or you may have to alter your culture to become more amenable to the fundraising process.

The chapters in Part Two are designed as stand-alone topics and can be read in whatever order you choose. They are chock-full of real stories that come out of my fundraising experience. Some may make you laugh, others might cause you to cry, but hopefully all contain nuggets of road-tested knowledge to help you on the way to truly achieving your mission.

My own expertise as a fundraiser is in addressing these issues from the perspective of someone who understands how money pro?pels mission into action and has a real impact on the quality of life of the individuals and communities that nonprofit organizations serve. Once you understand the issues of organizational culture, leader?ship, board governance, and higher-level thinking, and see how they are related to fundraising success, implementing the tactics in Part Two will come naturally.

There is never one moment when we arrive at being the best fundraisers we can be. It's an ever-evolving and unfolding process where continuous education and reflection on our experiences are required. Having lived them myself, I understand the stresses and challenges you face in building capacity and growing your organiza?tion, and I have the experience to help guide you toward that goal. I've worked with my clients to build effective revenue engines with?in their nonprofits, and I want to do the same for you in this book.

What I Won't Be Covering and Why

Finally, a mention about what won't be covered: fee-for-service in?come by nonprofits. At first blush, the idea of a nonprofit earn?ing income might seem like an oxymoron, but earned income(fees paid?to a nonprofit for services?rendered to you and me, plus gov?ernmental fees, or the money a nonprofit charges government for delivering services) accounts for 73.5 percent of total nonprofit rev?enue for U.S. charities.³ The estimated percentage of fee-generated income varies somewhat according to how one classifies different revenue sources. This book only addresses contributed income; that is i

ncome donated by individuals, foundations, corporations, and other potential givers. I made that choice?because I'm not an expert on earned income and many good books have already covered the subject. A colleague once said to me, "I hate when I go to conferenc?es where they talk about nonprofit fundraising and act like the 26.5 percent that's contributed?income is the entire picture.? His words are especially prescient given the new models of social venture hy?brids. Earned income is now the primary revenue engine of the U.S. nonprofit sector and numerous international growth models. I don't deny it. I just want my readers to know there are greater authorities on that subject than me.

I think we can all agree that one of the most wonderful aspects of nonprofit work is how much potential it has to truly change the lives of others in a meaningful way. Through the work of nonprof?its, enormous social problems, as well as smaller, more personal ones, can be rectified, mitigated, and eliminated as society itself is advanced as a whole. I know you've come to this book with most of the key ingredients to make that happen, like a stalwart ship on a great ocean of possibility. All that remains is to summon some pow?erful, long-lasting wind for your sails.

?

Back to Top

The Nonprofit Fundraising Solution

Overview

About the Author

Jacket Copy

Excerpt

Table of Contents

Tell-A-Colleague

Confirmation

Order Book