Nolo’s Fundraising Tips for Busy Nonprofits

A November 8th article in The New York Times called "Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push for Healthier Foods," by Patricia Leigh Brown, raises a question that was probably inevitable: When will general concerns for healthy -- not to mention non-allergy-producing foods -- undo bake sales' once inevitable profits?

According to the article, the traditional school bake sale is "fast becoming obsolete" in California, where state regulations forbid selling snacks to students that don't meet certain nutritional guidelines regarding saturated fat, other fat, and sugar. Other states' school districts seem to be headed in the same direction Kentucky, for example, was listed as having especially tight school regulations.

Still, if you're planning your next bake sale, I wouldn't panic yet. For one thing, even the school group featured in the article managed to do an end-run around the rules by holding their bake sale across the street from the school. The taste for sweets will probably never go away.

For another, the great thing about food is that it's endlessly versatile. Let's take the sweet issue: I held a bake sale recently (yes, in California), where I asked someone to bring cheese bread as an alternative to all the sugar. It turned out to be a popular item. Even sweet treats can be created using bananas, fruit juice, honey, maple syrup, or agave nectar in place of the sugar -- all you have to do is check the right cookbooks or websites (try ones dedicated to people with allergies or diabetes). Or if that sounds like too much work, how about creating baggies of trail mix, including colorful additions like dried cranberries? 

Also, as someone with food allergies, I can guarantee you'll have more customers if you put a sign next to each baked good explaining what's in it. Delicious baked items can be made without many of the common allergens including eggs, dairy, wheat or other gluten-containing flours, and peanuts as well as other nuts. If you really want to make an effort on this one, it's easiest to start by finding a volunteer who's experienced in baking for people with allergies.

With steps like these, you'll not only bring in profits, but feel good about what you're doing -- providing nutritious, home-baked foods in a world of junk calories.

Well, with the election now hours away, it's hard to blog about anything else. And I can't decide whether to follow every news tidbit or just tune it out until it's over. Meanwhile, my email inbox offers no lack of election-related reading material -- most of them ending with a pitch for money.

But I must say I've been impressed at the Obama campaign's ability to produce email subject lines that ignite curiosity. As another fundraising commentator pointed out (I'm sorry, I can't remember who gets the credit), one method that the campaign has used is to have the emails come from different sources -- Joe Biden, Michelle Obama (I usually open those), various campaign staffers, and Barack Obama himself. Even if they're really written by a communications person, that added sense of individual perspective goes an amazingly long way toward making me want to hear what they have to say.

Many of the emails' subject lines are also cleverly suspenseful -- things like, "Last chance," or "Our best shot in Ohio." Or they offer videos, or other special features.

Obviously, their campaign didn't invent these techniques, but they've provided a look at how any nonprofit can, despite emailing people on an almost daily basis, keep those emails from becoming an unwanted and repetitive barrage.

Sometimes a simple "thank you" is the best way to forge connections between a nonprofit and its supporters -- and that's just what People's Grocery recently did, with its "Flavors of the Garden" party. People's Grocery is a relatively new organization, developing creative solutions to the health problems in West Oakland stemming from a lack of access to and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods. Their projects include operating community gardens to grow and distribute organic fruits and vegetables, youth training, nutrition and cooking classes, and more. You can also sign up for a regular "Grub Box" of organic seasonal produce, the cost of which helps sponsor similar boxes going to low-income residents of West Oakland.

The party was billed as "a special thank you celebration for all our Harvesting Justice Table Captains, volunteers, donors, & supporters with delicious appetizers and yummy beverages crafted by local Bay Area chefs from organic seasonal produce grown at People's Grocery's gardens and farm. See the new Grub Box, meet the people who are People's Grocery, listen to live music and taste the flavor of summer with People's Grocery."

It lived up to its billing -- great food and music, good company, all in a lovely urban garden setting. But, the cynic might ask, did it directly contribute to their bottom line? Well, from my limited one-person view, I'd say yes. For starters, I was there as the guest of a volunteer, but the entry person was prepared for folks like me, and put my name on their mailing list. I know I'll be hearing more from them, but that's good -- I encourage organizations to make sure everyone who shows the slightest interest has their name captured for future contact.

And I heard one volunteer, perhaps inspired by the good time she was having, say, "I want to give People's Grocery more money after I get my next disability pension check -- I hope it doesn't go down too much with the whole economic crisis, but I'll try to give anyway." I'll let that one speak for itself.

Is a newsletter for members in your nonprofit's future? Or are you wondering why your existing newsletter isn't getting the results it should?

Check out the latest of my interviews with expert nonprofiteurs. This time you'll hear from Cheryl Woodard and Lucia Hwang, authors of Every Nonprofit's Guide to Publishing, talking about how your nonprofit newsletter can make money. Some of Cheryl's clients bring in money with every newsletter they publish, and you can do the same -- by first paying attention to important tips on budgeting, using volunteers, and writing text that excites -- rather than bores -- the reader. 

Some interesting news tidbits recently:

First off, did you notice the FTC warning consumers about scam charities supposedly fundraising for people affected by the earthquake in China and cyclone in Myanmar? (It was written up by Dan Thanh Dang in the June 15th Baltimore Sun.) Potential donors are being warned to double-check that any phone calls really came from the charity, ask what percentage of the donation will go toward services, and more. Of course, this affects every nonprofit as donors' level of suspicion goes up. No sense fighting it -- just be ready to provide every possible tidbit to reassure donors that you're for real.

Another interesting story came from the June 12th edition of Conde Nast's Portfolio, written by Dalia Fahmy and titled "Charity Prize Fight". The story discusses how nonprofit foundations are using contests -- for example, to create the best, most commercially viable solution to global warming -- as a way to simultaneously address a problem, get publicity, and stimulate more giving. (The global warming contest is, by the way, from Richard Branson's Virgin Unite foundation.)

How is this news important to smaller, non-foundation charities? Aside from staying alert for a contest you can enter (been keeping a solution to global warming up your sleeve?), creating contests among your donors and members might make for an interesting change of pace. The simplest would be an online contest -- say, to raise the most money through grassroots efforts, suggest the best name for an animal under your care, or the like. Instead of cash prizes, offer a personal tour of your facility or a meeting with the E.D.. And be sure to call the media!

Finally, on the lighter side of fundraising, it's interesting to watch overseas trends. As far as I can tell, the British are maniacs for stunt-based fundraising -- like this bungee-jumping priest, or this skydiving grandmother. And then there were the two store managers who (voluntarily, it appears) were locked in their shop window, given a phone, and told to raise 1,000 British pounds for charity before they'd be let out. Is there a lesson to be taken from these? I await your comments.

Recession or not, reports of empty storefronts are popping up nationwide -- signs advertising "Free Rent" have actually been spotted in Las Vegas. That's bad news for the economy, but could actually be good news for some nonprofits.

Landlords hate to have an empty storefront. It's a potential target for thieves and vandals, and reduces traffic to other stores in the same strip or complex. But finding another tenant and negotiating a new lease can take weeks or months to complete.

Some nonprofits have been finding ways to fill the gap. For no or very low rent, they've used empty retail space for such temporary purposes as animal adoptions, a soup kitchen, a depot to collect and contribute clothes to the poor, and more. It's a win-win situation: The nonprofits get higher visibility and a way to reach more people (both clients and potential donors); the landlord gets the benefits mentioned above, plus possible increased foot traffic to other stores; and both might get some good media coverage from the partnership.

If your nonprofit could benefit from such an arrangement, look around your area for empty storefronts and get in touch with the landlords. They might have already heard of your idea -- particularly if they read the "Commercial Lease Law Insider," a respected publication that featured an article called "Protect Yourself When Temporarily Filling Retail Space with Nonprofits" in its September 2007 issue.

The "protection" part of the article simply referred to the fact that the landlord needs to sign some sort of agreement with any nonprofit to which it lends or rents space. Signing such an agreement is in your interest, too, to make sure everyone has the same understanding of price and other terms.

Instead of a standard lease, the landlord is most likely to want a license agreement, which is appropriate for situations where the arrangement is so temporary that the landlord shouldn't have to evict you if you refuse to leave by the agreed-upon date. If, however, your organization turns into a long-term tenant, you'll want to sign a standard commercial lease. For help with this, see Negotiate the Best Lease for Your Business, by Janet Portman and Fred S. Steingold (Nolo).

Tired of the printed word? Check out Nolo's new series of podcasts about fundraising, where I interview experienced fundraisers about hot topics and their organization's success stories.

The first three interviewees are Pat Joseph, talking about his experience blogging for The Sierra Club; Lynn Eve Komaromi, sharing insights from ten years at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and Elizabeth Stampe, discussing strategies for attracting new members to Greenbelt Alliance.

Enjoy -- and let me know your suggestions for future interviewees!

For any fundraiser, the idea that your hard-won grant and donation money might be eaten away by employee theft is, if not unthinkable, demoralizing at many levels. And, if discovered, it will make future fundraising a lot harder.

But if we're to believe a recent analysis in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (December 2007 issue), around 13% of the roughly $300 billion given to charity in 2006 was stolen by organization insiders. (I confess upfront, I didn't pay to read the actual report, but read an excellent analysis of it by Stephanie Strom in the March 29 issue of The New York Times).

My first reaction is disbelief -- which may be justified since, as Strom notes, they arrived at that figure by simply applying the same assumption to nonprofits as to government and for-profit organizations, namely that they lose 6% of revenue to fraud each year.

That's a pretty broad assumption. And I'd like to believe that nonprofit employees are "above" the rest, since most of them are working for a cause they believe in.

But the most disturbing part of the report may be the finding -- which does appear to have been nonprofit-specific -- that the typical thief was an employee, usually female, who earned less than $50,000 a year and had worked for the nonprofit at least three years. She wasn't going for million-dollar temptations, but took less than $40,000.

I'm projecting here, but doesn't that sound like someone who's frustrated by how little she's earning for a lot of hard work? Who perhaps doesn't even think of what she's doing as stealing, but just getting back a little of what she deserves?

If that's true, then this is a classic "no free lunch" illustration: Underpaying nonprofit employees will come back to hurt the group eventually. So my concluding pitch would be, in every grant proposal or other project budget, to try and give the hardworking employees a raise. Even a small amount can go a long way toward showing appreciation and preventing employee disgruntlement.

I'm trying to get back to my self-appointed task of reading academic papers on fundraising so that you don't have to, and summarizing any of interest. So, here's the first, starting with the conclusions:

Those stickers, return address stamps, or other goodies you've been tucking into your direct mail enclosures? They might catch some people's eyes, but turn others off. And the colorful stories that we're all schooled to start off appeal letters with? They help only a little.

Now, for a few details.

The study was laid out in the Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing's Fall 2007 edition (Volume 18), in an article called "Creating Effective Direct Mail Charitable Solicitations: The Effects of Enclosures and Different Appeals," by William D. Diamond and Easwar S. Iyer.

What the authors did was to send different versions of a wildlife-related appeal letters to different lists of donors. One list contained people who already donate to wildlife causes and another list contained people who donate to medical causes. Some letters started with a colorful vignette, and some included a sticker saying "Save the Buffalo."

Essentially, the sticker seems to have served as a clue to the readers about whether this was a cause they were interested in and should read any further. Many of the wildlife-donor types kept reading, while the medical-donor types tended to say, "Nope, not for me."

As for the story that opened some of the appeal letters, I wish we could have read it to judge for ourselves whether it should have raised the readers' interest significantly. But the authors' conclusion (which I'm paraphrasing hugely) seems pretty logical: That, for people already interested in a topic, hard information is also quite important, especially given that they're savvy consumers who've probably read a million of these stories.

There's just no getting around the fact that direct-mail recipients are, more and more, looking for an excuse to drop nonprofit appeal letters into the circular file. The study's authors also pulled together some telling statistics, namely that Americans receive around 14 billion direct-mail solicitations per year, and a substantial number of people receive over 1,000 solicitations per year. Gulp.

The bigger conclusion here seems to be that people are either going to donate to your cause or not, for reasons that have little to do with the appeal letter's contents. (Not a reason to do a bad letter, but nor is it a reason to sweat the small stuff.) I'm not ready to get on the "direct mail is dead" bandwagon -- it's obviously still a way to let donors know you're there, working hard -- but the stats also suggest that finding other ways to raise that awareness would be wise, too.

There's been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about the importance of bringing powerful, colorful stories to your potential donors. For a rundown of articles and other commentary, see the February 22, 2008 entry in Kivi Leroux's Nonprofit Communications Blog.

Don't miss the priceless parody of The Wizard of Oz as written in nonprofit jargon, by Andy Goodman (in his October 2003 newsletter). He starts out, "An at-risk youth from a blended family in the farm belt is rendered unconscious by an extreme weather event."

Andy follows his parody with a list of seven questions to help sharpen your stories -- things like "Who is the protagonist?" and "What keeps it interesting?" All good stuff. But it occurs to me that someone could answer these questions and still churn out lifeless prose like his parody. Very few people write great copy the first time through.

That's why I want to put in a plug for editing. As both a writer and and editor, I've had to learn that there's nothing precious about my words when I first put them on the page. In some cases, they're just plain awful -- but hey (I tell myself), they're mere placeholders, awaiting the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th drafts.

It's often not until I see my early, botched attempts at expressing an idea that my brain starts to kick into gear and think of a better way of getting the point across. From what I've read, I'm not the only writer who works this way. And even without such flashes of inspiration, good editing means looking at each and every word on the page and asking, "Is that one boring -- can I substitute it with a better one?" or "Is that word necessary -- can I cut it out?"

With solid editing, in which you build a story from the ground up, any writer can turn that "at-risk youth" into Dorothy with her ruby slippers.