Friday, June 19, 2009

Is it Worth it to Hold Your Summer Event This Year?

It’s the season! Every week, almost every day, another invitation arrives about yet another summer fundraiser. In northern Michigan, endless opportunities abound to dance, picnic, run, bike, sail, or tour, while benefiting a deserving nonprofit. Through the grapevine, we hear that attendance is down and our professional journals reference “donor fatigue.” We wonder about the economy and worry about the weather. Would we better off scheduling a series of lunch dates with major donors? Is this the summer to stop the madness?

Special events are often the primary fundraising approach for small nonprofits. While they only raise a small amount of revenue compared to a large amount of time and energy, they do have benefits.
  • Increased public visibility and an opportunity to tell your story.
  • “Friend-making opportunities” and a vehicle to attract and cultivate prospects.
  • A mechanism to involve and motivate volunteers.
  • Opportunities to thank and strengthen relations with current donors.
With the variety and flexibility of special events being limitless, they are ideal for acquiring, retaining or upgrading donors. One or two special events each year can greatly assist organizations in building a broad base of individual donors, which can provide the organization with increased annual giving (Klein 2000).

According to a 2007 study by Charity Navigator, about half of all charities use special events as a way to fundraise with special events generating 15% of all contributions to organizations. While this may not be a large percentage, it does add up to a significant amount of money.

The Charity Navigator study also found that special events are inefficient in comparison to overall fundraising activities. On average, the charities studied spent $1.33 to raise $1 in special events contributions, compared to an average overall fundraising rate of $.13 to raise $1. Only 15% of the charities that held special events were more efficient when using special events to fundraise than they were in their regular fundraising activities on the whole.

So, how do you evaluate whether to launch, continue or retire a special event? First, be strategic. This is a business decision. What is the primary objective in holding the event?

If your objective is to raise friends and cultivate potential donors, then you must design the event to capture names, build your database, and interact with individuals. You must also have opportunities to educate attendees and tell your story.

If the primary purpose is to thank donors, include opportunities during the event, to recognize, interact with and thank donors.

If it is publicity and visibility you’re seeking, the event must be unusual and newsworthy!

As you evaluate the value of special events in your fundraising program, remember that 76% of fundraising revenue comes from individual donors. Over-reliance on special events will negatively impact your fundraising program, if you sacrifice a focus on individual donors. Be sure to place a sufficient (in fact, the majority of your emphasis) on individual donors and personal contacting.

Friday, June 12, 2009

With Everything Going On, is Now the Time to Plan and Evaluate?

Demand for services is increasing. Staff is stretched to the limit. Current funders are reporting the need to cut back. Attendance at board meetings is dropping. Your major special event will net significantly less than last year-etc., etc., etc. You are working ten hours a day, and more, as you wade through the myriad of details, juggling to keep everything going. You just don’t have time to plan or evaluate your organization’s work.

Executive directors often feel isolated and board members frequently feel powerless as they struggle to meet the needs of the organization and its constituents while “putting out fires,” especially in today’s volatile economic climate.

Whether this is a description of your organization, a reflection of some aspects of the challenges it faces or an exaggerated example that is hard to imagine, the foundation from which to move forward successfully is based in planning and evaluation.

While it’s true that you probably don’t have the time, you do need to take a deep breath and step back from the situation long enough to remember what you already know in theory. Evaluation and planning will save you time, energy and resources in the long-run and better assure that you are maximizing your mission achievement and best serving your community. It is especially important in challenging times and has many benefits that will help immediately as well as lay the foundation for years to come.

If you already engage in systematic planning and evaluation, you know this list is much longer, but the following are a few highlights of benefits to a well-developed and executed process. Through planning and evaluation organizations can:

  1. Prioritize needs and activities and break down the work to be done into manageable pieces, providing focus and calming the chaos that often creeps into challenging situations
  2. Give voice to the board, staff and other key stakeholders in the organization to share their perspectives regarding the organization and how it functions and where it needs to adapt to better meet its mission
  3. Channel information collected from those served to guide program/service development and delivery
  4. Look externally at community need versus mission alignment, competitors versus competitive advantage, uniqueness versus duplicative efforts, organization brand/reputation versus other providers, trends and organization preparedness
  5. Bring the organization together through a framework that unites people to work toward common goals by empowering shared ideas, collaborative solutions, openness to adaptation, and group responsibility. It becomes our plan, not their plan
  6. Facilitate development of systematic processes to set priorities and allocate resources, becoming the blueprint for success
  7. Create a vehicle to engage more people and renew existing commitments to the organization
  8. Serve as a tool to systematically increase efficiencies and effectiveness and consider new revenue streams
  9. Document funding needs and reassure funders that your organization is a solid investment
With the results of the recent economic impact of the nonprofit sector in Michigan report (www.mnaonline.org), we now have validated information about what we knew intuitively: the nonprofit sector is a significant economic driver to Michigan’s economy, both as an employer with at least 1 in 10 employees working in the sector, and as an industry with annual operations roughly equivalent to the manufacturing or retail trade sectors. NorthSky Nonprofit Network recently released survey results for nonprofits in its ten-county service region in northwest Michigan that indicated that 80% of those reporting anticipate an increased need for their services in 2009 while 70% of those reporting anticipate significant difficulty with cash flow in 2009. How to bridge that gap is on the minds of many organizations. Systematic evaluation and planning are key tools to utilize.

NorthSky is a program of Rotary Charities of Traverse City. As such, NorthSky is considered a “first responder” to the nonprofit sector in its region. At NorthSky we promote systematic planning and evaluation and are seeing an increased desire by nonprofits to either initiate systematic planning or to modify existing planning processes to become ongoing management tools. As the environment is changing quickly, embracing a planning and evaluation process is a crucial first step to assure the organization can meet its opportunities and challenges appropriately. As planning should not be episodic but ongoing, the tools and process that NorthSky utilizes to facilitate systematic planning and evaluation are designed as such. There are many different planning and evaluation models so it is possible to find the tools and facilitator that best fit the organization’s culture.

At NorthSky, we utilize an organizational capacity assessment tool to guide the organization in evaluating its current capabilities in the areas of leadership, adaptive, management, operations and technology. With the facilitator, the organization’s leadership utilizes the assessment results as the foundation to develop an organization capacity building plan. The plan prioritizes capacity gaps within the organization that it will build in order to best meet its mission. How these capacities will be developed is also outlined. The organization then moves into the next level of planning. NorthSky utilizes a modification of the LaPiana Real Time Strategic Planning model as it is designed as an ongoing process. The organizational assessment and capacity building plan are considered within the planning process to help assure that the organization can implement its strategies to achieve its goals. As part of the implementation plan, organizations design their evaluation and reporting approaches to provide tools to measure how well they are doing in relation to their desired outcomes. Evaluating how the plan is performing is critical and builds in the mechanism for ongoing systematic planning to respond as necessary to evaluation results.

It is the systematic approach to planning and evaluation that will help your organization the most over time. It does take time, energy and resources to establish, but the return on the investment can be immediate and should have long-lasting benefits with continued use. Organizations need to “work the plan,” not just go through the process.

Developing planning and evaluation systems are generally considered organizational capacity building activities. There are funders and service providers throughout the state that can assist organizations in adopting these tools for sustainability. I would recommend contacting the Capacity Building Services department of MNA for referrals to resources in your area.

Submitted by:
Debbie McKeon
Executive Director, NorthSky Nonprofit Network

Share your thoughts on planning by posting your comments here.

Friday, June 5, 2009

Retreating to Advance Your Board

It’s the season of the board retreat and throughout northern Michigan board leadership is planning for time away. Board retreats can be an effective vehicle for team building, planning, training, and problem solving. Time challenged board meetings with over-loaded agendas provide little opportunity for an in-depth discussion or meaningful educational opportunity. The board retreat provides the luxury of time to dig into an issue or topic, map out a new approach, and get creative in our thinking. So, how do we construct a board retreat to optimize the time and set the stage for team building and creative thinking?

  • Allocate time and resources for sufficient planning prior to the retreat. Obtain input from participants and reserve time on calendars. Give careful thought to logistics such as location and space.
  • Establish a meaningful agenda and discussion topics that tie to priority issues and challenges for the nonprofit.
  • Use hands-on activities, games, and small group discussions to move the session forward. Change the meeting format frequently to maintain participants’ attention and interest and to keep the session energetic.
  • Do not overload the agenda or over-program the day. Provide enough flexibility to move away from the agenda and address unplanned but critical topics that arise.
  • Consider using a retreat theme to make the session not only fun but focused on primary set of objectives. For example, a theme might be sports-related (“Getting to the World Series” or “Going for the Gold”), focused on non profit best practices, and include a physical team-building activity.
  • Set the stage for all the participants to feel successful and enjoy the session. Provide sufficient preparation materials and information prior to the session to prepare attendees. Identify activities and exercises that are comfortable for all participants
  • Provide social time and opportunities for relaxation. Take time to acknowledge and thank the board and to celebrate accomplishments.
  • Follow-up is essential in making the board’s time away of long term value. Identify a transcriber for flip charts notes and to capture group work. Outline next steps prior to adjournment. Place follow-up action steps on subsequent board meeting agendas.
Share your tips on planning a successful board retreat by posting your comments.

Enjoy the week,

Pam Evans