Nonprofit University Blog

This is going to sound all wrong, but would everyone and their mothers, brothers, aunts and uncles just stop fundraising? Please!

I just went to my browser and there was a message asking me to join a bunch of celebrities and “do good for the world this holiday season.”  Seriously?  My browser is now doing fundraising?  It wants me to give money to celebrities’ causes merely because they are celebrities?  How dumb does my browser think I am?  (Or, how dumb is the vast majority of the world?)  I know the intentions are good, but I fear more harm than good is actually resulting.

First, intellectually I understand the draw of stars (though personally it makes zero sense to me), but what my browser and its celebrities are doing is creating competition in a one-off venture instead of creating one-on-one sustained relationships.  It would be a much more powerful and beneficial arrangement if each celebrity worked directly with a charity, becoming its celebrity spokesperson and working with the charity to craft a special holiday campaign message.  And then, not to disappear after the holidays are over.  Truth is, charities need money to do good for the world all year ‘round. And truth is, people get the same tax break, if that matters to them, whether they give January 1st, December 31^st  and any time in between.

Second, people should be giving to good causes who run good businesses and do an excellent job of delivering on their mission.  Just because a celebrity selects a charity doesn’t mean that the organization is doing a good job of delivering on that mission.  As you may recall from my previous post, this year’s purchase of Christmas ornaments that I bought for my nieces and nephews all support a nonprofit.  Before I purchased the ornaments, I checked out the 990s of all of the organizations.  Even though my contribution was small by many standards, I wanted to be as confident as I could, not knowing the organizations personally, that my money would be used well and wisely.  Over the decades, I’ve seen too many celebrities endorse organizations that are, sadly, more flash than delivery, more Oz than function.  We should all want our contributions, regardless of the amount, to be used for really doing good—and doing it well.

Third, in this particular event, the browser will donate $25,000 to the cause that raises the most money during this challenge.  I’d much prefer that the company make a smart, business decision on where to give its $25K rather than rewarding a popularity contest.  All of these on-line contests where people “vote” for their favorite charities and that brings in money is nice for revenue but it isn’t good for building a donor base which is what builds sustainable donors and, in turn, sustainable nonprofits.  One-time money is nice if there is a one-time need.  But if it isn’t for that purpose, then it is anything but nice unless the organization has the ability to replace that money going forward with continuous funds.

Fourth, while the vast majorities of nonprofits can always use more financial assistance today, and every day, we all also need our donors to be committed donors.  Thus, we need them to be thinking donors, donors who have not just a true passion for our mission but who also believe in the ways and means in which we are delivering our mission.  We need them to like and believe in what and how we do things more than the next organization feeding the homeless, protecting the environment, educating our youth, exposing us to culture, etc.  We need them to love us for us, and not for the celebrity who linked his/her name to us for the holidays.

And fifth, celebrities tend to pick “big” nonprofits to support—nonprofits that work across the globe, a continent, a country.  These are important causes and many do great work.  Just as there is a “Small Business Saturday” where shoppers are supposed to forsake the large, chain retailers and shop the small, local businesses, we need always to “shop” the small, local nonprofits that day in and day out work to make the communities where we live and work healthier, stronger, better, more vibrant, and so much more.

Development, or should I say good development, to be of true, lasting value to an organization must be tied to that organization’s ability to reach out to that donor again and again and again.  It must be a thoughtfully created cycle that is designed to nurture and value tried and true donors while always bringing on new donors.  For this to happen, donors must believe in the organization and its work, not follow their browsers.

Every year I give each of my nephews and nieces a Christmas tree ornament, from the tme they are born until they get married.  My thinking was that I didn’t want the first Christmas tree of their own to be bare or have cheesy ornaments or lacking sentiment.  When they were all young, it was easy, as “age appropriate” ornaments abounded.  As they matured, I did the hand blown glass ornaments, the themed ornaments, the sentimental ornaments.  But each year, it has gotten harder and harder—and, truth be told, more and more expensive.

This year, I confess, I was really struggling.  I was tired of the same ole, same ole.  And then I decided that this was the year for charity ornaments:  ornaments that were sold to benefit a charity.

Sad for me to admit, I decided on this course for this year while shopping in Bloomingdales after Thanksgiving.  They had a display of ornaments, each designed by a “celebrity” (only one of whom I recognized).  Some of the ornaments were pretty, some sweet; others didn’t appeal to me.  The lesser of evils–both in terms of design and charity it would support—had the creator’s name in huge pink letters across the ball.  Yuck!  Silly me:  I wanted the purchase of the ornament to benefit charity, not have the ornament be an advertisement for the charity—or worse—the ornament’s celebrity designer.

For quite some time, I have bought my holiday cards (and note cards, coffee mug and umbrella) from CASA—Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children—of Multnomah and Washington Counties (the Portland, Oregon area).  I loved the cards for the art, the artists, the cause, and the knowledge that once the production costs were covered, the money would go to CASA to help the children, perhaps even some of the very artists who created the cards.  On the back of the cards was an indication of the first name and age of the child artist and a sentence or two about CASA.

This year, I didn’t get my announcement of the availability of the cards.  At first I was annoyed:  how’d they drop me?  I’ve been such a great consumer over the years.  But then I went to the website and was immediately saddened.  There I found the following message:  “After 20 years of fundraising for CASA programs in Multnomah and Washington Counties, along with those across the country, CASA Cards must close its doors in the face of economic hardship. We sincerely thank you for your support and loyalty to our important cause for the past two decades.”  What a statement on our times.

I wanted my ornaments to be like my CASA cards, made by real people for a cause that I truly believe in.  So, I went where so many of us go these days when we are on a mission:  I went to the internet.  To my amazement, my search was so much harder than I could have imagined.  I searched widely and deeply, over and over.  Well into my searching, I hit what I was sure was the jackpot:   a site with the address www.ornaments4charity.com.  Clicking on it, I expected to find my savior:  a one stop shop for all the charities selling ornaments to fund their causes.

What I found was so much better, and what should be an inspiration for everyone.  Ornaments 4 Charity is a family endeavor:  mom, dad, a 4^th grader, and a pre-kindergartener create ornaments each year as a family service project.  Every member of the family has his or her role in the creation, packing and mailing of the ornaments and managing the business.  Each year, the family picks a different charity to support.  This year, their choice was a perfect lesson for the youngest in my family:  100% of the proceeds will go to buy fleece blankets for children in the Stephen Center (Omaha, Nebraska) and local domestic violence shelters; the blankets are the children’s to keep when they transition to permanent housing.

As you may know, I don’t live in Omaha.  The last time I was in Omaha, I was probably the age of many of the children who will receive the blankets.  But I care deeply about children who are living with turmoil, regardless of where they are.  Thus, I am delighted that my purchase of three ornaments (well, two made by the Carlsons and one packaged by the Carlsons but to be made by my nephew) will contribute to a blanket or two.  And, as I have confessed earlier in this blog, when my son was little, we struggled with how to teach him the need to help those less fortunate.  Mr. and Mrs. Carlson have come up with a creative way that allows a family of any means to act on the importance of giving back while simultaneously, and subtly, educating their children about their good fortune and the misfortunes of others.  Truly an inspiration.

Next holiday season, as I seek holiday ornaments for my nieces and nephews, I don’t want to be accosted by celebrity designed (not even made) ornaments–as if I would buy an ornament because it has someone else’s name on it!  Rather, I will head straight for Ornaments 4 Charity, while hoping that without diluting the power of the original, copycats will have reproduced, not quite like rabbits.  There is great need and millions of children needing to learn the importance of giving back.  More than enough for everyone!

Thank you, Carlson family and best wishes for the new year.

I am sure that if you are fortunate, as I am, you have eaten your way through the recent Thanksgiving holiday and anxiously anticipating the holiday feasts still to come.  Thus, I’m pretty certain that for most of you, your body is well fed.

But how’s your soul doing?  This is a need which I hear repeatedly, mostly from people explaining to me why they have decided to leave the corporate world and join the nonprofit world.  I heard it again in a recent  story on NPR about an unemployed young man in England looking to find a job; turns out his career counselor, who left a job in banking because he needed to feed his soul and help others, is himself being made redundant the middle of December.  So, feeding the soul is not simply an American need!

There is a lesson here that every nonprofit should learn—if it doesn’t know it already–and then be particularly mindful of every time it thinks of asking someone for money.  Thus, it is a particularly important lesson this time of year as hundreds of thousands of nonprofits do their end of the year appeal.  It plays directly into the course of being a donor centric organization, something I think all organizations must be.

While people who do not work in the nonprofit sector give to charities for a variety of reasons, from payback to personal connection to hope, and more, there is little doubt that for most, if not all, people also give to feed their souls.  This need to think or say “I’m helping” or “I’m making a difference” does not, in any way, diminish their gift or the other reasons spawning their giving.  But we also must be mindful of it.  And I don’t think many charities are doing so well in that department!

Reading the solicitation letters I receive or looking at solicitation ads in various media outlets, I’m not finding the soul food—the part that allows me to see how giving to this particular charity is going to redeem, let along nourish, my soul.  And I’m looking for it—not because I give to feed my soul, but because I know so many others do.  I want to see how many smart charities are out there, making it easy for donors to connect, not just give.  Much time, energy and money has been spent by nonprofits everywhere making it easy for donors to give on line, via Facebook or Twitter, using Paypal or other third-party sites.  We’ve made the act of giving as convenient as possible for the individual preferences of each donor.

I know most organizations think they have spent a lot of time and energy, maybe even money, crafting the perfect solicitation, the one that will compel the potential donor to become an actual donor.  Most, however, seem to fall way far short!  I’m hearing too much about me the organization and what we’ve done and nothing or not enough about the donor.  Instead, there should be more about what the donor wants to know and not what you want the donor to know about you.  Explain what donors’ gift investments—and, if a repeat donor, his/her investment gift, in particular—accomplished.  It isn’t about what you, the organization, did, but about what happened as a result of donors’ gifts?   In knowing the good work they enabled, donors’ souls are fed.

So, stop reading this, grab your solicitations and, with a most critical eye, submit them to review.  If you find no food for the soul, scrap them and get to work!

A number of years ago, there was a scandal within the world of academia:  it was said that some professors at some of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning were dumbing down their grading systems.  Apparently, a sizeable number of students, and parents, assumed that if you were smart enough to get into these esteemed academies, you were smart enough to receive nothing lower than a B.  Thus, no matter the true quality of your work, if you took a class with those professors who bought into that thinking, or succumbed to the pressure, you were always at least a B student.  Not bad!

We see a parallel practice in the world of nonprofits.  We allow people who are not doing their jobs, and not trying or caring to try to do their jobs well, remain in their positions, week after week, month after month, year after year.  Frequently, we even go beyond that:  we allow them to think that they are doing well by not pointing out negative behavior in performance reviews, or continuing to award raises despite the underperforming, or making excuses for them.  And just as those students who really work to earn the A or B come to resent the professor and the slackers who get the B, so do other employees come to resent the boss and the slackers who get the same rewards as they.

Why is it so hard to understand that when we allow people to believe they are smarter than they truly are, know more than they really do, are performing better than they really are, we are only hurting ourselves, our organizations, our communities?  I’ve wondered about this from my days in academia—and one who would never dumb down a grade no matter what or who asked—to my current days working to help nonprofits perform at their peak.

I continue to be baffled by this, but I recently had a little “Ah hah!” moment when I read a statement that said so and so was a “knowledge and change management expert.”  Truly, I had to read this twice.  I know that many people have a hard time accepting change and that wide scale change can pose challenges to organizational cultures and the people of that culture.  So, on some intellectual level, I get that people may want some help in moving change forward, adapting to change, etc.  It doesn’t sit well with me, and it is an indication of where we have landed as a dumbed-down society, but I’ll get to that in a second.  But an expert to help us with knowledge management?  Really?  Unless we are talking about managing the sources of the knowledge gained—the books, newspapers, research papers, journals and magazines, conversations, etc.,–just what are we talking about?  Someone is going to help me manage the knowledge in my brain?  Just how dumb have we become?

We have spent and continue to spend inordinate amounts of money on trainings, books and consultants to help us do what we no longer can figure out how to do on our own.  I am sure many readers have their favorite gurus, names I won’t bother to mention as this isn’t about one guru or another, on who you rely to tell you how to think better, lead better, succeed better, do whatever better.  In so doing, what they really have taught you is how to rely less on yourself and to have less faith in yourself.  In so doing, they have dumbed you down.

I wonder how much time and money we as a society have wasted chasing down the key to enlightenment, to being the best we can be? how much energy has been diverted looking to others to teach us how to find this magical piece of information?  how much wisdom we have missed while looking to others to teach us how to find wisdom?   how much good will we have trashed sending people to hear others, in essence, tell them they are stupid for not knowing how to organize their own knowledge? how much have we wasted relying on others instead of ourselves?

In these extremely tough economic times, nonprofits must be especially protective of their resources, financial and human, and spend them wisely.  But that does not mean that price and convenience should be the only factors under consideration.  And yet, again and again, I see price and convenience driving decisions instead of quality and benefit; convenience trumping content; time investment eclipsing return on investment.  In so doing, we have gone over to the dark side:  we have successfully dumbed down our organizations and ourselves.