Good Works Grapevine

Fundraising and the Economy - this blog post from See What’s Out There sheds a very interesting light on using the economy as a scapegoat for donor troubles. Sure, we all know that the downturn in the economy is drastically effecting the revenue streams for nonprofits. But this social experiment proved that donors don’t want to hear about it.

So as you plan your last fundriaising efforts of the year, avoid using the economy as a touch point for donors. Emphasizie your programs and initiatives for 2009. Highlight what worked in 2008. And ask for what you need.

How is your org handling year-end fundraising issues?

This great snippet of info was passed along by an animal welfare colleague…kind of interesting…

An interesting piece of information from the 2008 Bank of America Study of High Net-Worth Philanthropy, researched by The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. This study “reflects the opinions of nearly 700 respondents throughout the United States with household income greater than $200,000 and/or net-worth of at least $1,000,000.”

In 2007, 38.0% of donors stopped supporting a charitable organization, with more than one-quarter of those surveyed (26%) discontinuing support for at least two organizations. The top three reasons why donors stopped giving to a particular charity include “no longer feeling connected to the organization” (57.7%), “deciding to support other causes” (51.3%) and “feeling they were being solicited too often” (42.3%).

Have your donors stopped giving? Why?

I was fortunate enough to meet Katya Andresen at NTC 2008. She presented a great session on the zen of social media. She is very wise in her ways and Network for Good is a resource that all nonprofits should be using. I just received my copy of Fundraising Success magazine yesterday and Katya has written a wonderful article on making it as a nonprofit during a bad economy.

To the Point: 6 Ways to Survive the Economic Meltdown

By the way, a subscription to Fundraising Success magazine is free to nonprofits and its a great resource for ideas, instruction and insight on nonprofit fundraising. I encourage everyone to subscribe.

There have been several articles that have run lately on the plight of nonprofit fundraising during the recent recession. While GoodDogz.org is a smaller nonprofit, we have felt a slight drop in donations this year. Larger organizations are facing a far worse decline in public funding.

We have done a few things to help our situation. We replaced our high priced gala with a low price benefit concert. We made more $$ than we would have with the gala and our donors were appreciative that we weren’t hitting them with a high price event. We are working with the community and its businesses to create partnerships to help promote each other.

Here are some great articles on the health of the fundraising economy with helpful tips.

• Fundraising in a Troubled Economy
• Survival Kit for Fundraising in a Bad Economy (there are tons of great links in this post)
• Economy’s Downturn Prompts New Challenges for Charities
• It’s a Hard Time to be a Charity

Some good news…

The Nonprofit Times just released their survey results on holiday giving…and it looks promising!

• Survey: Donors Plan To Give This Holiday Season

Philanthropy.com ran a great article today called New Study Sheds Light on What Wealthy Donors Care About; Many Say They Will Support Operating Costs. This is something that I often ask myself, because, let’s face it - we’re all looking for big dollar donors. This is good stuff. Here are a few others to wet your whistle!

• How to Work with Young High Net Worth Donors
• $ense and $ensitivity: Keys to Attracting Diverse Donors
• 4 Ways to Attract Online Donors
• What ‘Wealthy, Wired Donors’ Want from Nonprofits (Part 1)
• What ‘Wealthy, Wired Donors’ Want from Nonprofits (Part 2)

A friend asked me my opinion on raising money by hosting an online raffle. According to the law - raffle = gambling and is governed by all sorts of regulations. GoodDogz.org did a free raffle as part of a paid event, which was probably pushing the envelope, and we’ve never done it since. It made me nervous.

Gambling laws are different from state-to-state and although the raffle may be taking place online, typically, you are still governed by the laws of your state. According to this article, it is now legal for non-profits to hold raffles in OK.

I found these tips on Squidoo:

The one problem that many organizations have is, “How do I get started?” I will give you the steps to take to setup your raffle:

Step 1: Contact your State Attorney General’s office.

Step 2: Ask the registration details for conducting a raffle.

Step 3: Organize your raffle with your volunteers and other people associated with your organization.

Step 4: Get your raffle prizes donated to your organization.

Step 5: Market your raffle locally or on the internet.

Since every state and county have their own set of rules and regulations it is just a matter of contacting your State Attorney General’s office to get more information about registering your raffle.

I guess the short answer is - you don’t want to break the law. Take a few minutes to contact your state’s AG to find out how the laws apply to what you are trying to do. You wouldn’t want to earn a bad name for your organization by engaging is what amounts to illegal gambling. That would be bad. Do a little homework and make an informed decision for your organization.

We have a Facebook Cause. We set this cause up about 6 or 8 months ago and so far have 34 members and have raised $115. We are getting ready to roll out a comprehensive social media campaign over the summer and are taking a hard look at our Facebook Cause. While large campaigns like Stop Global Warning and Save Darfur have hundreds of thousands of members, their donations seem out of line with the membership. So, what I’m seeing is that even though your cause may have a gazillion members, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are donating.

Philanthropy.com posted Is Facebook’s Fund Raising a Bust? on their blog on June 2. Clearly, there is some skepticism regarding the effectiveness of Causes for fundraising.

Frogloop from Care2 is a fantastic blog as a whole. If you are working through the ins and outs of marketing your non-profit, get a feed. Among the huge repository of information is this little nugget - a total assessment of Facebook Causes written a couple of months after it was launched. It’s very informative and includes some great tips.

We plan to continue to promote our FB Cause to see what we can get from it, but I’d like to know what experiences others are having. Please share.

We are considering moving all of our fundraising management to a company called QGiv. I met these guys at NTC this year and liked their product. Basically, they help non-profits aggregate their fundraising efforts into one neat package. They are PCI compliant and are audited regularly by a third party provider. Currently we use Just Give, FirstGiving.com, Paypal, a credit card processing company…you see the problem. So, as we re-launch the GoodDogz.org website, we are going to give QGiv a try. If you have any experience with this service, please let me know what you think!

Network for Good is a great resource for non-profits. I highly recommend checking their site out regularly for new info on how to improve fundraising efforts, online outreach and just plain good ideas. Social media can be somewhat hard to get your head around in terms of effective implementation and knowing what outlet will work for your organization. There is a lot of trial and error. Here is a great “toolkit” for vetting the waters of social media before diving in head first. Thanks Network for Good!!

Social Media Starter Pack for Nonprofit Organizations | Online Fundraising & Nonprofit Marketing Resources & Tips | Network For Good Learning Center

I received an email the other day prompting me to join Facebook.com as a Non-Profit Partner. Please let me know if anyone out there signs up for this as well. I’d like to get buy-in from others. So far, I’ve submitted my form but haven’t heard anything back.

Here’s the info:

Dear Cause Administrator,

Since you started a cause on Facebook, you might be interested in an exciting new Causes feature. If you work for the nonprofit for which you started your cause, you can now claim your official Nonprofit Profile on Facebook.

To do so, just submit a nonprofit partner application here:
http://www.causes.com/partners/partners/new

By claiming your profile you become a nonprofit partner, which allows you to control all of your interactions with Causes on Facebook from one central dashboard. Here you can edit your official Nonprofit Profile, select official and featured causes, keep track of all causes benefiting your nonprofit, see a list of all recent donors, and download donor contact information.

If you don’t work for a nonprofit but are in touch with someone who does, feel free to let them know about our new system. If you’ve already submitted a partner application then there’s no need to do so again - you’re all set.

Thanks,
The Causes Team