Peter Frumkin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who teaches about nonprofits and philanthropy, has seen a lot when it comes to fundraising. In his 20 years of working as an executive and a consultant for nonprofits, he’s seen organizations put expectations on fundraisers that are “absolutely wrong and unhelpful.”
Frumkin is not alone in his view. Last fall, when the Chronicle conducted its survey of fundraiser job satisfaction, the second leading concern among fundraisers planning to leave the field was unreasonable expectations about fundraising goals.
“Every fundraiser I know is stressed, understaffed and cannot fill open positions, struggling with unrealistic fundraising goals,” a Wisconsin director of philanthropy said in the open-ended comments of the survey.
The Chronicle talked to fundraising experts about how nonprofits can set realistic goals. While every organization is different, a few principles can guide groups when they determine fundraising goals. It’s crucial to consider past fundraising, collaborate in goal setting, remember that fundraising is a long-term project, and — especially important right now — factor in the economy.
Past Performance Can Guide
Anyone who’s ever invested in the stock market has seen the disclaimer that “past performance is not indicative of future results.” In fundraising, however, past performance is one of the most common ways to figure out what might be a realistic fundraising goal, several fundraisers told the Chronicle.
Looking at the past three to five years of fundraising performance can help set a baseline for what’s realistic for an organization, says Missy Ryan Penland, 2023 chair of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ U.S. Foundation for Philanthropy.
“You wouldn’t just go one year back because there can be anomalies that occur year to year,” says Penland, who is also senior associate vice president for development at Clemson University.
Marshall Levin, chief philanthropic officer at the JCC Association of North America, agrees. He says basing a goal on the previous year alone can set up a fundraiser for failure.
“If an organization has just hired you and they’re coming off a record-breaking year, and now they expect you can do that — well, that’s not automatic,” Levin says. “Most often, that [record-breaking] campaign took everybody pitching in. Plus, you can’t even talk to the people who made a three-to-five-year commitment for three to five years.”
Nathan Dietz, research director at the Do Good Institute, says that’s why it’s important for organizations to have reliable data. It helps in determining where things stand and where you can go.
“If you don’t have any data, then I would imagine everybody who has to make those decisions [about goals] is just completely at sea,” Dietz says. “They just kind of pick a number out of thin air.”
And picking a number out of thin air is unfair to the organization and to fundraisers. Penland recommends that nonprofits analyze the data they do have to see how the previous fundraising success occurred. Examining the dollars raised and the donors they came from — small individual gifts, major donors, grants, foundations — can build a picture of baseline fundraising. Then, using that knowledge, the organization and fundraiser can create goals.
“As an organization, decide what activities really have the greatest return,” Penland says. “It’s great to do a mailing, but if the mailing is really only bringing in two new donors a year, and all your gifts are coming from people who you had coffee with, it’s probably better to say, ‘Hey, last year we saw 10 donors and this happened. Let’s try to do 20 donors this year.’”
If an organization doesn’t have much data readily available, Penland suggests that fundraisers spend time educating the leadership on the importance of having past data to set reasonable expectations. And if a fundraiser comes into an organization that doesn’t have a good handle on data, Penland recommends spending 30 to 60 days looking at the past three years’ performance to figure out how much was raised and where it came from. “Then together, work to see how we want to set the pathway forward for one to three years of growth for the organization,” she says.
Visits and Requests
Once the baseline is established, Penland recommends creating goals that include both things fundraisers can control, such as their efforts, and things they can only influence, like gifts given. She uses a pithy acronym: “DAD — donors visited, asks made, dollars closed.” Penland says, “The visits and the asks, if done right, will lead to the dollars closed.”
Penland says the DAD metric allows managers to intervene if fundraisers aren’t meeting their goals.
“If people are doing really well on the visits and they’re maybe even asking, but the gifts aren’t closing, it helps us go back and say, ‘OK, you’re getting the visit. Now let’s talk about what you’re learning or how you’re thinking about that,’” she says. “We use the metrics to help coach them. We might need to help them on what they’re asking for — the amount.”
When setting goals for gift officers, consider the people they’ve been asked to steward, because that can affect how much they raise. “Are they carrying a portfolio of donors that have been giving, or are there going to be new people that they go out to?” Penland says. Those are two very different kinds of donors.
Organizations definitely should include metrics other than money when setting goals, Frumkin adds. “The typical metric of success for a fundraiser is dollars raised,” he says. “The most significant metric is opportunities unearthed — the development of new relationships, the creation of new possible bases of support.”
Collaboration Is Crucial
Raising money is a team sport; everybody has to do their part for an organization to meet its goals.
“A lot of people think that if you have trouble raising money, you just go out and get a fundraiser,” Frumkin says. “You turn the job over to them and the executive director stands aside and just waits for the money to come in.”
That’s not going to end well, warns Robert Grimm Jr., director of the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland.
“One of the hard things to do around fundraising — which can help with realistic goals — is to create a culture of philanthropy in the whole organization and view everyone in the organization as a fundraiser,” Grimm says. “The responsibility of fundraising is not just for the development staff you hired.”
In fact, the senior leader plays a crucial role in closing major gifts. “A fundraiser is best suited to develop leads, line up potential supporters, and then allow the executive director to be the one who closes and cements on the final gifts,” he says. “A fundraiser is the advance person; they lay the foundation.”
The executive director and board members can also play a role in helping fundraisers new to the organization start building their connections, Levin of the JCC Association says.
“In my experience, the way to find new people, actually, is through other people opening doors or just mentioning some names,” he says. “You need to have the support personally of the main leaders of the organization, both professional and volunteer.”
Penland says that when fundraisers and senior leaders are on different pages when it comes to fundraising goals, it can help if the fundraiser reminds the leaders of the collaboration needed for this effort.
“If somebody is saying, ‘Well, we need you to raise $300,000 tomorrow,’” Penland says, “I would be going, ‘OK, the five-year trend has been about 100 to 105 donors and $100,000. I am all on board. How can we get the board to help us? Or how can we get other people to help us?’ I’d be trying to redirect the conversation to ‘This is an exciting goal. How are we all going to get behind it?’”
Time Matters
While every nonprofit has immediate needs, fundraising is about building relationships, and that doesn’t happen overnight, fundraisers say.
“I can understand that a lot of organizations are pressed, and they are watching those numbers,” Frumkin says. “But good fundraising takes time. The research shows that the largest gifts are achieved on the fourth touch. It’s not the first. Not the second. It’s the fourth touch that generates the largest commitment of funds. That’s different than just a short-term perspective.”
Fundraisers who are new to an organization also need time to get acclimated. Penland says it can take at least 90 days to get a feel for the organization and its donors, so account for that in goal setting.
Focus on Mission
Frumkin estimates he’s worked with more than 3,000 nonprofit professionals in his career. In his experience, unrealistic fundraising expectations are typically paired with one other critical problem.
“Ninety percent of the time, it is not a fundraising problem,” he says. “It’s a problem of mission.” He said organizations without a clear mission have trouble raising funds from donors who are uninspired to give because they don’t have a clear understanding of what the organization is trying to do. Rather than getting clarity on their mission, these organizations instead try to “get money to cover up a mission problem.”
Organizations not meeting their fundraising goals may need to take a step back and look at their reason for being.
Grimm agrees. “If you’re just trying to raise more money, but you can’t say what the impact is, that’s a problem,” he says. He adds that a clear mission should involve the “whole team in the organization seeing the world they could change or the community they could change.”
Don’t Forget the Economy
Economic uncertainty can weigh on donors. Fundraisers say it’s important to think about the financial outlook when setting fundraising expectations but, at the same time, not let the economy dictate goals.
“It’s a big factor in terms of people’s readiness and willingness to give,” Frumkin says. “When you’re in a period of uncertainty or a period of recession, you have to make adjustments.”
However, the adjustments organizations make need to be based on the reality of their donors. If they’re expressing concern, then factor that into your expectations.
“If the dollars are going to be down, I want to be able to say, ‘Well, we talked to this donor, and they said when the markets return, they’re going to do this,’” Penland says. “It’s important to talk to your board and your bosses about what you’re seeing, and what conversations you’re having.”
But the answer isn’t to stop soliciting gifts.
“People worry about asking for resources when the economy isn’t there,” Penland says. “Your organization still probably needs the support, and in some cases, they might even need it more. So, it’s important to keep doing what we’re doing.”
Credit:Source link
