Best Practice: Creating & Revealing An Event's Logo

Those that follow this blog know that I have a special place in my heart for Penn State's Dance Marathon - a.k.a. THON. My second semester of undergraduate studies I was introduced to THON and it changed my life, literally. It introduced me to philanthropy which has been my career focus since finishing my degree at Penn State.

What is THON? Well... it's not your everyday dance marathon. I know the phrase 'dance marathon' conjures up visions of 30 kids in a high school gymnasium. At it's core, that is what THON is, but on a much larger scale.

It is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world and raises significant funding for The Four Diamonds Fund, which helps children with cancer and their families.

Summary of last year's event from thon.org: THON 2010 saw record participation in the 5k, record traffic to THON.org, and all-time high interest being a THON volunteer. With the theme of "Love Belongs Here," more than 300 Captains, 700 dancers, 3300 Committee Members, and 15,000 student volunteers made it THON's most successful year yet. THON 2010 raised $7,838,054.36 For The Kids!

One of the exciting parts of the THON year is when the new logo is revealed. This is a great example of engaging volunteers for talent (the logo is designed by graphic design students), using the logo itself to engage participants, supporters and beneficiaries, & promoting the event through work that the organization would be doing anyway. As you know by now, I have incorporated some of my favorite logos from over the years throughout this post.

Check out this video to learn more about this year's logo:

Example: Focused Campaign Within a Large Nonprofit

The attitude of leadership at large nonprofits toward mini "boutique" campaigns can often be described by one of the most famous cinematic lines of all time: Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

Of course, rather than dear you would need to insert AVP, Director of Annual Giving, or some other title.

A few of my recent conversations have discussed how large nonprofit organizations could benefit from focused boutique campaigns with relatively small goals. Not surprisingly, these conversations have often been as a result of the question How can [Example University] use social media to raise money? My viewpoint is that large organizations can target small segments of their data with unique, specific, urgent campaigns and have great success. Yes, social media can be the primary component. No, it shouldn't be the only component. Things like press releases and mini-events can gain your campaign the attention that can make such a campaign successful.

The push-back associated with campaigns like these is often a resistance to dedicating resources to a campaign that is only $20,000 or something similar. That leads to how I think large organizations could succeed at raising enough money to make the dedication of resources worthwhile: developing a systematic approach and campaign calendar that provides your organization the ability to have dozens of these boutique campaigns per year. This way, your totals will start to turn into "real money" and you will not have to reinvent the wheel with each campaign.

So on the heels of one of these such conversations, I met with my friend and colleague at the University of Texas-Austin, Carolyn Connerat. She is the Executive Director of Development and Campaign Manager for the Campaign for Texas. We were discussing the opportunity for boutique campaigns to be successful at large institutions when she shared the Harry Ransom Center's campaign to save the Gone With The Wind costumes. It was a great success, gained international attention, and only had a goal of $30,000. I have included some images below to illustrate how such a campaign could be successful for other large organizations.

I realize that not ever organization or institution has Scarlett O'Hara's costume to gain attention, but I'm willing to bet you can uncover some creative, fun "small" campaigns that would draw attention.

Have you already had such a boutique campaign? Please share any similar stories in the comments section.

By the way... I know there's a pun somewhere between "boutique" campaign and "Gone With The Wind costumes," I'm just not feeling it... plus, I already used the "don't give a damn" line. :)

Learn more about the campaign & Harry Ransom Center: Web / Twitter / Facebook / YouTube / Flickr

The campaign website:

Facebook promotion of NPR story on the campaign:

Twitter examples:

A great visual thank you for those that supported the campaign (see the page here):

BlueSwarm highlighted by TechCrunch

BlueSwarm was recently highlighted by TechCrunch with the piece primarily focused on BlueSwarm's success with political fundraising and recent efforts to raise angel fund dollars. Let's take a look at BlueSwarm and TechCrunch's piece, Through Non-Profit Eyes. First, a snippet of the original piece:

Since its launch, BlueSwarm has raised more than $172 million for fundraising campaigns, with the vast majority of those funds directed towards political election campaigns.

The startup, which is a platform that leverages social media tools to attract and track donations, has wooed many politicians, including several gubernatorial candidates like Massachusetts’ Charlie Baker, Wisconsin’s Tom Barrett and California’s Meg Whitman. Whitman, who has already invested a decent portion of her personal fortune into her campaign, has also amassed more than $20 million through BlueSwarm.

The company says the platform is currently being used in 50% of US Senate races and 30% of gubernatorial races, in addition to many local races. However, despite the high volume of transactions, the amount of revenues is still fairly low because BlueSwarm only takes a 2.9% cut.

Some screenshots from the BlueSwarm website:

A look at the BlueSwarm Facebook app:

And mobile app for the iPhone:

A look at some of the dashboard tools within the software:

And a video from TechCrunch & BlueSwarm:

What are your thoughts on this software's implications for non-political fundraising? It appears to have great potential for use for annual giving efforts in the academia, environmental, health and cultural segments. My questions would include how well BlueSwarm can "talk" with the oft-antiquated databases of fundraising operations? What questions do you have?

Why do you give?

The Donate Movement is a new effort underway by Goodwill that parallels a campaign from my time at the University of Michigan, which can be easily imitated by most non-profits. It asks supporters to publicly answer a simple question - Why do you give?

Goodwill's efforts include messaging about how much is kept out of landfills by donating clothes and items to Goodwill, how Goodwill supporters are "the original recyclers" and uses some good branding to illustrate these points. While at Michigan, we introduced the Philanthropy Network - which asked donors to share why they support the university. Of course, both the Goodwill and Michigan efforts are tailor-made for sharing via social media, email and mail campaigns. You can see more about the Goodwill campaign by checking out the Twitter hashtag, #donate, which also illustrates Goodwill's desire to build the philanthropic movement in the country, not just for Goodwill.

So why do I support Goodwill? Easy - we all face challenges during our lives that are made easier because of the generosity of others. Giving to Goodwill helps "pay it forward," if you will.

Sometimes we can easily recognize this generosity and identify the individual(s) who helped us. Scholarships are a good example of this case. On the other hand, some times we benefit from things such as medical research where it is less obvious who specifically helped make our lives better. Goodwill provides an opportunity for a community to come together and provide the generosity that can be recognized collectively, while getting more use from items that would otherwise pile up in a landfill.

One of my favorite partnerships for the Goodwill campaign, given my love of soccer, is the tie-in for free LA Galaxy tickets for those that support Goodwill. Goodwill is also compiling a list of blogs and bloggers that share a story of support for the campaign (like I did above) and include the following button:

Examples and highlights from each campaign are below.

The main Donate Movement page - click for more details.

The Philanthropy Network, main page:

A story example:

Selection of stories:

Presentation: Locating/Engaging Lost Alumni

A recent webinar I gave is embedded below. It deals with the topic of using technology and social media to engage and reconnect with lost constituents. This was intended for an audience of higher education fundraisers, but could be reworked for and considered by other non-profit sectors.

Some notes:

• Obviously this does not include the speaking portion of the presentation and, therefore, may be missing some context and a good deal of the information I shared verbally.
• Some portions are not included, such as the question/answer session, etc.
• Please provide feedback, so that all can benefit.

- DTM

Be Our Guest: Jeff Lindauer

Our latest guest is Jeff Lindauer, Associate Vice President for Development with the Indiana University Foundation. He oversees annual giving for 7 of IU's 8 campuses, development research, data & reporting services, prospect management, events, donor relations & stewardship and the Indiana University Student Foundation.

He is also an IU alum who found the profession as a Telefund student caller and manager. And per Jeff... "If I ever win the lottery, I might go back to Telefund part-time. . . I loved that job!"

Jeff also maintains the Getting Giving blog and provides consulting services to a variety of institutions.

Obviously Jeff has a lot on his plate... so many thanks to him for taking part - enjoy his answers and provide your thoughts on his comments and his question for the group.

What is the biggest challenge your fundraising efforts currently face?

I think our biggest challenge has been the internal effect of the economy on our budget. Our funding structure is based on endowment, which led to a series of budget cuts on the program side over the past few years and then a reduction in force that has us completely rethinking how we allocate our resources. That whole ‘more with less’ thing is a reality for most organizations these days.

What are you doing to overcome these challenges?

We had to make some tough decisions. Some very talented people at all levels are no longer with us. The rest (also talented) are working hard to fill in for those who were caught in the RIF because we still need to do our very best work. We have big goals, and they didn’t get smaller with our budget cuts.

We’re making the organizational changes we need, we’re being more efficient and where necessary we are reducing or eliminating aspects of our program that aren’t mission critical. This is allowing us to continue to invest in those that are. And we sure are looking forward to the eventual return of better economic conditions.

Our hope is that we can come out of these economic times as a leaner, stronger fundraising program poised to best use any new resources that will become available in the future.

What is the most successful change/program implementation you have made in your current role?

We have been combining some of our programs, literature and events to accomplish two goals: cut costs and tell our story more broadly. Whether this is a series of fundraising pieces or several smaller events focused on different giving societies, we are trying whenever it makes sense to combine our efforts.

This does NOT mean we don’t have targeted activities or messaging. It DOES mean that certain aspects of our program had become too entrepreneurial. Think silos. Different logos, different paper stock, different ‘trinkets’- you name it. Whenever we could identify overlap or the potential to realize economies of scale, we looked to see if we could accomplish our goals while combining our efforts. There is still much to be done, but progress is being made and we’re seeing a positive effect.

Where do you see social-media’s best application for fundraising?

Relationship building. I’ll admit that I read Brian’s post back in April and I couldn’t agree more with his answer to this question. Social media fundraising just isn’t here yet. Email is growing and someday it might eclipse everything else, but we’re still seeing annual giving programs driven by fundamentals.

Online giving is different than social media. Online giving is simply another payment/solicitation method. Much of the success in the online channel comes from other aspects of the program driving people to the web to make payment. Make a pledge? Pay it online. No stamps? Give online. Surfing the web and looking for information about us? While you’re here, make a gift.

Social media can help build the relationship and educate the world about the good work your nonprofit is doing. Making the ask is something different, and often those campaigns that have a root in social media (forward this tweet and go here to give) generate $5 and $10 donors. I’m not sure that’s the best route to a successful fundraising program in the long-term. I could start my usual rant about participation rate being the worst metric ever invented in the fundraising profession, but that just wear me out. (DTM note: Amen, Jeff... amen!)

Whenever possible, I recommend looking to other parts of the organization to run the social media efforts and then get in on the conversation when you can. If your marketing/alumni relations/other areas are running Facebook or Twitter, etc. why duplicate that effort by adding more Twitter and Facebook accounts? Instead, work with those areas to leverage the conversation that is already happening.

What book / blog / twitter feed would you suggest fundraisers pay attention to?

I think for personal development, I’d recommend almost anything by Seth Godin – but let’s start with his latest, Linchpin.

I’m a Disney fanatic, so I’ll also recommend Be Our Guest. It’s a Disney guide to customer service that everyone should read.

What question would you find most useful for readers to answer?

With text messaging/fundraising being a current hot topic, I’m looking for examples of institutions who have been able to generate significant gifts via texting while at the same time capturing the donor’s information (name/address/phone/etc.) to build a long-term relationship. I remain skeptical about text giving and won’t enter the texting world until I can figure out how to facilitate long-term loyalty and build that proverbial pipeline of major gift donors. If anyone has concrete examples of a campaign that has been able to effectively capture donor information after an initial text gift, I’d love to know more!

Political Campaign's Success on Social Media

Blogs and other news sites regularly provide guidance and insight on how businesses can improve their social media efforts. As a corresponding resource for the non-profit world, More Donors finds the best and most timely topics to share through a pair of non-profit spectacles. This is a look at how political campaigns are using social media for real results. Previous postings of: Through Non-Profit Eyes.

Some characteristics of successful political campaigns and how you can use them to improve your NPO's reach and impact:

Transparency and Credibility

Per Mashable.com: "Spin and misinterpretation can cloud a political message as it passes from candidate, to spokesperson, to media, to public. But this chain can be broken by something as simple as a Facebook update." There is a distinct parallel between this and an NPO's constituents. All too often, the case for support and impact of a donor's support can get lost in mass communications - particularly the impact of an annual gift of relatively smaller size.

• Transparency is craved by donors, as many recent reports have found. By using social media to highlight how decisions are made and prioritized by your leadership, donors and prospects will feel more engaged in the process.
• Credibility has a similar impact on gaining your prospects' trust. This can best be obtained by having actual leadership in your organization posting updates and tweets for followers to see. For example, note Tulane's athletic director, Rick Dickson:

Highly Targeted and Inexpensive Ads

• As we have known for some time, the social web can be a cost-effective medium for targeted advertising.
• Most importantly, you can target your audience specifically by various demographics, closely monitor spending and keep an eye on analytics better than media like television and radio.

Let the People Be Your Voice

• This is obviously the greatest power of social media (hence the social). Gaining the trust and attention of your social media constituents can turn them into advocates with the appropriate call-to-action.
• Do not forget that email needs to part of the engagement. Your messages should have direct and proactive ways to get your email recipients engaged via social media.

Improving Public Service

• Again, per Mashable: “Ivory Tower Syndrome is a problem in every sphere — including politics — where influence and money can divide those in office from the people they serve. Social media can democratize information and reconnect politicians to the vox populi."
• The term ivory tower has biblical roots, but is most commonly used today in the higher education context. Most non-profits, regardless of size, can do a better job of connecting donors, leaders and beneficiaries.

Image courtesy of Mashable.com

Giving USA Report Summary

In case you did not see the plethora of coverage given to the Giving Institute and the Giving USA Foundation's announcement on charitable giving in 2009, you can find the basic numbers by clicking on either of the images below. Some highlights:

• Total giving dropped 3.6%
• Third consecutive year of total USA giving over $300B
• Charitable bequests fell by almost 24%
• Individual giving and foundation grants also fell (4% & 9% respectively)
• Corporate giving increased by 5.5%
• Sectors seeing a growth in giving: International Aid (+6.2%), Health (+3.8%) and Human Services (2.3%)
• Sectors seeing a decline in giving: Grants to Foundations (-8%), Public-Society Benefit Organizations (ex: United Way) (-4.6%), Education (-3.6%), Arts (-2%) and Faith-Based/

And some takeaways:

• It's a great sign that giving only dropped slightly, given all the economic troubles the United States and its citizens experienced during 2009.
• The realization of bequests will continue to decline as the death rate follows a similar trend. That being said, planned giving operations should not be shutdown. Rather, they should be more focused and the metrics used to evaluate success should consider the trend in bequest realizations. Also, your planned giving officers should be developing methods for approaching donors/prospects earlier than the field has historically. People traditionally write a will for the first time when they have kids. Consider making an initial approach to prospects when they are in the late-20's or early 30's. A potential strategy is to offer a flyer via mail or web that helps guide your constituents through the basics of writing a will/trust. Include a brief bit on why they should include your organization.

Images for the basic stats:

Twitter Follow of the Week 4/28

Twitter: @THON
Name: Penn State Dance Marathon
Web: www.thon.org
Bio: THON is the largest student-run philanthropy in the world! It’s a year-long effort that raises funds and awareness for the fight against pediatric cancer.
Followers: 4,529+ you!
Why Follow? THON is more than what the average person thinks of upon hearing the phrase "dance marathon." Great organization with a Twitter feed that is managed by current Penn State student. Provides good insight into how current students - and their generation - is using social media for campaign awareness. A big gain for @THON was when Klohe Kardashian put her support behind THON.

She helped propel #THON into the top ten worldwide trending topics:

Grading #AmericaWants on the Curve

So we know that To Write Love On Her Arms (@TWLOHA) won the USA Today #AmericaWants competition. They now get to create a full-page advertisement and see it run for free as the prize for their efforts.

But who did the most with what they had?

TWLOHA has over 77,000 followers on Twitter.
JJ's List has 377.
charity:water has 1,314,766.

It is fair to say that the organizations started the competition with different "tweetable resources." That being said, I have taken the figures from the competition and the top 100 ranking and graded it "on a curve" to see which orgs were able to get the most tweets per follower. I had to make a few assumptions:

• Only those organizations in the top 100 are considered, so the 60,342 were split amongst the group. This should not affect the analysis significantly.
• I have applied a smooth distribution of the tweets/votes for the sake of comparison. While this is certainly not how the tweets were split between the 100 organizations, it provides relative data for comparison.
  

A few items of note that I stumbled upon in the data:

• There is not one institution of higher education in the list. Considering the number of alumni and fans many large institutions have, it is disappointing that none are represented. This is further illustration that higher education institutions are less likely to be recognized by alumni as a non-profit institution (a study we conducted during my tenure at the University of Michigan found that over 70% of recent graduates did not realize the institution was not-for-profit). This also illustrates the difficulty higher education often has in making its case seem in need of urgent support and attention. It could also indicate that the often-bureaucratic environment of higher education management was unable to react in the same nimble fashion other organizations could.
• Twenty - one out of five! - organizations did not have a link to their Twitter account on their org's home page. This needs to be remedied! Some examples of promoting your social-media presence nicely on a home page: VH-1 Save The Music, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Lupus Research Institute and UNICEF.
  

• The breakdown of the top 100 by category:

1. Medical (35 orgs)
2. Relief (17)
3. Children (14)
4. Community (8)
5. Animals (7)
6. Legal/Justice (5)
7. Environment (3)
8. Agriculture / LGBTQ / Music / Religious (2 each)
9. Camping / Disabilities / Military (1 each)

Now... drum roll please... the organizations that did the most (got the most tweets) with the least (with the lowest number of followers):

1. The ALS Therapy Development Institute - estimated 32.9 tweets per follower
2. Levantando Chile Fund - 22.3 t/f
3. American Partnership for Eosinophilic Disorders - 18.8 t/f
   
4. The Carcinoid Cancer Foundation - 7.0 t/f
5. The Pablove Foundation - 4.8 t/f
6. teensMAD4Rwanda - 4.78 t/f
7. Down Syndrome Association of Orange County - 4.6 t/f
8. Thrive Africa - 4.3 t/f
9. The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation- 3.9 t/f
10. aHomeinHaiti.org - 2.2 t/f
    
11. Ride for Kids - 2.1 t/f
    
12. Camp Fire USA - 1.8 t/f
    
13. Essilor Vision Foundation - 1.29 t/f
    
14. Drop in the Bucket - 1.28 t/f
    
15. Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure - 1.24 t/f
    
16. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - 1.23 t/f
    
17. Small Army for a Cause 1.2 t/f
    
18. JJ's List - 1.0 t/f
    
19. LA's BEST - 0.7 t/f
    
20. Dreamcatchers for Abused Children - 0.6 t/f

Average of the top 100? 0.018 t/f.

Obviously you did not have to be a follower of the organization to tweet your vote, but this provides a scale for comparison. So CONGRATULATIONS to all of these organizations for doing a great job getting organized and promoting their efforts... including our "#AmericaWants on the Curve" winner, the ALS Therapy Development Institute - visit their page here:

Be Our Guest: Brian Dowling

Please welcome Brian Dowling and his expertise to the More Donors Questionnaire. Brian has invested more than 19 years working in Advancement and Development Services managing systems, gift processing, records, web sites, research, and operations.

Brian joined the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation in 2008 as Senior Vice President for Finance and Information Systems and is responsible for deploying creative information technology solutions to help the Foundation achieve its fundraising and engagement goals. Brian worked previously at the University of Michigan and was responsible for managing the technological infrastructure, gift processing and records administration for the Office of University Development in support of a $3.1 billion campaign. The database contained over 1,000,000 entities and average revenue was $250-$370 million representing approximately 184,000 gift transactions.

Prior to that, Brian worked at The University of Toronto. The university’s $1 billion campaign was Canada’s largest and most successful philanthropic effort in higher education. The database of over 700,000 entities supported a large scale advancement operation. Brian has also worked at a number of institutions in both the United States and Canada, where he gained understanding, knowledge and perspectives of managing in small, medium and large shops. This experience included multiple system conversions, web site development, budgetary and financial responsibilities, operations management and more. He has consulted in the United States, Canada and Australia, written numerous articles and presents regularly at conferences.

He invests his spare time in SupportingAdvancement.Com and is an amateur musician. Though Brian didn't mention it in my interview questions, I can attest to the fact he is also an outstanding photographer.

What is the biggest challenge your fundraising efforts currently face?
As with many fundraising organizations just being able to do more with less is a current but also an ongoing challenge. Independently funded organizations are all facing additional challenges in these economic times – which will likely still be challenging for the longer haul.

There are more charities chasing after donors who are less certain. Even though the wealthy are for the most part still so, the real portfolio losses over the last few years have often created a pause in decision making.

As fundraisers, we need to be more efficient, more accountable, work with smaller budgets and yet continue to increase engagement and contributions to the bottom line. From the infrastructure view, we need to do everything we can to keep the fundraisers on the road.

What are you doing to overcome these challenges?
The old saying “if it isn’t or can’t be measured, it won’t be done” is even more important in today’s world. We continually to move towards a more data driven culture managed by facts and not as much by stories. We’re starting the construction of a data warehouse to facilitate much improved reporting that will help to drive our major gift fundraising and accountability. Metrics that drive fundraising performance are always a “win win”.

What is the most successful change/program implementation you have made in your current role?
As an organization, we changed our organizational structure to create a number of efficiencies that just didn’t exist previously. We’ll be doing an office wide move to support the new structure so that those program areas that should be and need to be are all working together.

Changes in structure are never painless, never without concern and never without a lot of thinking and effort. Most organizations don’t do this as often as they should and we’ve all seen some of the silos that result from some of the more conventional thinking around organizational structure.

We’ve also implemented a ramped up lunch and learn training series on a wide variety of topics, everything from An Introduction to Google Analytics to How to Manage Your Files and Folders. Too often, training and professional development is viewed as conference attendance rather than a regular and systematic approach to providing knowledge internally. We’ve engaged niche experts in our organization to talk about their passion and where they have expertise. Training can create a lot of leverage during times of resource shortage and it is too often viewed as a “secondary” activity.

Where do you see social-media’s best application for fundraising?
This may come as a surprise, but at this stage in the game, I don’t. I still think that social media will come along in terms of direct fundraising, but the real “killer app” for fundraising online is still email. In the same vein, if you have a poor online giving site, and your organization’s web site needs a lot to be desired, you need to devote the majority of your resources to the basics.

Having said that, I still think that social media is both essential and critical and should be used as part of our media and messaging stream to drive people to our cause, events and to engage them in creative ways around and within our messaging. You need to take a medium to longer term view, but you should be integrating social media into your messaging and have these responsibilities as part of job descriptions and performance and accountability reviews.

What book would you suggest fundraisers read?
Well, I wouldn’t. The experience of reading is changing dramatically with the advent of devices like the Kindle, online reading and the iPad. Reading is becoming more of almost a “stream of consciousness” and the conventional approach to best, or most inspiring, or most intellectual may no longer be as effective as understanding the hyper pulse of change in today’s world.

I personally prefer the stream of information from blogs, online newsletters, Twitter and similar messaging streams. Caveat – I am in the “technology” business so this may be a more natural approach to the pace of change that I personally need to make decisions – and one that I’ve had to become accustomed to.

This type of messaging – and learning is also coming for fundraisers. There are more blogs, newsletter, free white papers than there ever have been, the key is to ferret out what is meaningful, and factual and relevant without succumbing to the ever shortening attention spans that we’re often subject to.

The readers of the future will be those that can amalgamate the information and misinformation streams in a meaningful way and be able to derive competitive advantage for themselves and their programs.

What question would you find most useful for readers to answer?
The same question as one of the ones I’ve just answered. What is your idea? What is the one thing you did in your organization that made the most difference this year? Why did it work and what would you do to change it?

Be Our Guest:Tina Howard

Please welcome Tina Howard from the University of Illinois. Tina has been with Illinois since 1998 and has served as the Assistant Dean of Development for the College of Business for the last six years. Tina earned her BS in Fashion Merchandising from The Ohio State University and is full of Buckeye pride. I first met Tina on the golf course at Michigan State University during the Big Ten Development Conference... she can teach you a thing or two about golf - I think you'll find the same is true for development!

Here's Tina's input on the More Donors Questionnaire:

1 - What is the biggest challenge your fundraising efforts currently face?
Our biggest challenge right now is the recession (nationwide), the economic condition of the state of Illinois and the impact both are having on our annual fund donors. We are up in donor participation but down in dollars. Meanwhile, the state is about $500,000 behind in budget payments to the University. We have not see any money since our fiscal year started July 1, 2009. Next fiscal year will be worse since Illinois decided to take the education stimulus package all in one year, which was last year.

2 - What are you doing to overcome these challenges?
We are continuing to travel and get the dean, who is fairly new, out in front of our alumni. We are also doing more e-solicitations and e-invitations.

3 - What is the most successful change/program implementation you have made in your current role?
Involving student and faculty members more with regards to annual solicitation and stewardship, letters signed by students and showing the donors how their annual fund support is being used. We have implemented an annual e-solicitation in the winter and an e-thank you in the spring. We have implemented a young alumni networking group and a giving society, as well as a Senior Class Gift Program.

4 - Where do you see social-media’s best application for fundraising?
Facebook is the most popular social media. We use it to reach out to our young alumni and our student organizations.

5 - What question would you find most useful for readers to answer?
#3 above - What is the most successful change/program implementation you have made in your current role?

Be Our Guest, Adam M. Grant, Ph.D.

Dr. Adam M. Grant joins us to share his views on the More Donors Questionnaire. Adam is currently an Associate Professor of Management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. So why is he answering questions about fundraising? Adam has conducted significant management research in the fundraising arena. I have had the good fortune to work with him during my time at the University of Florida and the University of Michigan. Adam completed his undergraduate work at Harvard University and his doctorate at Michigan. While at Michigan, he and I presented this research on motivating student fundraisers. We also were able to work together for the Annual Giving Directors' Consortium's 2008 Conference at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

On to the questionnaire... Please use the comments section to add your thoughts, expertise and questions.

1 - What is the biggest challenge you see facing fundraising efforts?
In my view, a major challenge facing fundraisers is to maintain motivation and engagement—and avoid burnout—in the face of a struggling economy and donor rejections.

2 - What are you doing to overcome these challenges?
For the past decade, my research and consulting has focused on identifying strategies for motivating fundraisers. See, for example:
• Forbes article on the art of motivating employees
• BusinessWeek article on meaning and job performance
• Dan Pink blog on purpose as a motivator
• Financial Times article on motivating fundraisers

3 - What is the most successful change/program implementation (relative to fundraising research)you have made in your current role?
Connecting fundraisers to the recipients who benefit from their efforts. For example, my research has shown that meeting one scholarship recipient can motivate fundraisers to more than double the number of calls they made per week and achieve more than 500% increases in weekly revenue.

4 - Where do you see social-media’s best application for fundraising?
Connecting fundraisers more directly to their impact by creating web conferences, videos, and testimonials. (Editor's note: This is a perspective I had never heard, but find full of potential. Given the research Adam notes in #3, this may be a great way to connect fundraisers and donors to the impact of their work and gifts, respectively)

5 - What book would you suggest fundraisers read?
Let me recommend two:
• Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, and Robert Cialdini
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath

Stressed Students = Future Donors?

It is not directly related to fundraising the way The Daily Beast wrote it, but stay with me... I doubt many of you would be shocked to find which institutions top TDB's list of the 50 Most Stressful Universities given the criteria: cost of room & board (35%), competitiveness (35%), acceptance rate (10%), highly-ranked graduate engineering studies (10%) and crime on campus (10%). The top 5? Stanford, Columbia, MIT, UPenn & Harvard, respectively.

But what happens when we overlay alumni participation rates to these rankings?

Stressful rank 1-10: Average Alumni Participation - 35%
Stressful rank 11-20: Average Alumni Participation - 37%
Stressful rank 21-30: Average Alumni Participation - 26%
Stressful rank 31-40: Average Alumni Participation - 21%
Stressful rank 41-50: Average Alumni Participation - 18%

It should be noted that these alumni participation ranks are taken from the latest US News rankings, which only factor in undergraduate alumni participation.

So what should fundraisers - particularly annual giving professionals - take from this analysis? Make sure to stress out those students while you have them - they'll be more likely to give once they graduate! More seriously, these findings are not that surprising. The factors in the stress analysis correlate with better students who are more likely to come from an affluent background. Most would assume this leads to a higher affluence and affinity for education later in life.

Be Our Guest: Rebecca McPhail-Samples

Rebecca McPhail-Samples is the latest to share her insight with the More Donors Blog. Rebecca is Assistant Vice President for Development at Marshall University, where she has worked for the last five years. Prior to joining Marshall, Rebecca spent time fundraising for other entities in the social-service and higher education sectors.

Now, Rebecca takes a minute to give us her take on the questionnaire...

1 - What is the biggest challenge your fundraising efforts currently face?
Determining the best way to target our solicitation efforts – making the best use of our resources in developing long term plans that integrate communication, education and cultivation that lead to closing major gifts.

2 - What are you doing to overcome these challenges?
We are working internally with our prospect research team to integrate predictive modeling into our overall strategies and exploring the use of external partners in developing our capabilities to analyze our data more effectively.

3 - What is the most successful change/program implementation you have made in your current role?
Integrating electronic communication and solicitation into our overall marketing strategy. Engaging people through social-media, developing tech based giving programs and seeing a dramatic increase in gifts made online.

4 - Where do you see social-media’s best application for fundraising?
Social-media is about engaging our audience - keeping them up-to-date, interested and on the inside of what is happening at the Foundation and Development Center as well as the university at-large. It is best applied as a means to create a cyber-family of sorts and is a great way to show the softer side of fundraising operations…behind the scenes.

5 - What book would you suggest fundraisers read?
The Noticer – by Andy Andrews: This is not the typical sales/discovery book aimed at fundraising, but instead is about the importance of paying attention and building good relationships.

6 - What question would you find most useful for readers to answer?
What are some effective ways to develop student giving programs that can help drive the educational process that turns them into faithful alumni donors?

Use the comment section below to share your thoughts on Rebecca's question... I'll share my thoughts next week... Thank you Rebecca!