© 2024 Jeff Shuck.
Fundraising
Given my history as the founder of one of the country's largest event companies, I'm asked often about the mud-obstacle craze. And specifically, I'm asked if it makes good fundraising sense for nonprofits. The short answer is, you have to go where the people are. The longer answer is here, on this post I wrote yesterday for Plenty's blog. Answers await you there!
The first three months of Plenty have been a whirlwind. It is hard for me to believe that we've only been around since the end of November, because in only a few short months I've learned so much from the fantastic team here.
It wasn't easy leaving Event 360, the company I helped found eleven years ago. Event 360 specializes in event fundraising. Through our work we raised nearly a billion dollars for charity. As the CEO, I was responsible for strategy, for presenting a great deal of our client-facing work, and more than anything, for helping drive the values of the company. Event 360 was (and will always be) my baby, and I'm tremendously proud of what I helped accomplish there.
And yet over the last few years I found my goals and aspirations changing. In particular I became increasingly interested in the philanthropic mechanics behind events -- a mechanic we call peer-to-peer fundraising. As my time and attention steadily turned towards constituent analytics. multi-channel approaches, and overall nonprofit strategy, it was harder for me to devote time to large-scale events.
When I finally talked to my partners at Event 360 about leaving, I found willing friends. They saw my evolving interests and supported my desire to do something new.
To say that I started Plenty from the ground-up would be a complete fabrication, because of course no one does anything worth doing by themselves. And in my case I was very fortunate to have six compatriots join me in the launch. From the beginning, we have tried to put as much emphasis on the foundations of our young firm as we have on the compelling work we do with our clients. We wrote Plenty's values together; we picked the brand together; we assess our performance together.
I was reflecting on all of this while I was at the Run-Walk-Ride Conference in Atlanta last week. In a lot of ways, RWR was our coming-out party. Run-Walk-Ride is a tremendously important conference for the peer-to-peer space, and I've been lucky enough to present there for many years. But this year was the first time I attended with a business card that said, "Plenty."
It was fantastic to see the Plenty team share their expertise and energy throughout the sessions. Our group contributed in so many ways, and it was hard not to be struck by the sheer amount of competence and commitment the team brings to the table. But they bring something else, too. They bring a spirit of inclusiveness -- an eagerness to enlist others to create something bigger than themselves.
In the lead-up to the conference, our team was talking about something we could do at our conference booth. If you've ever staffed a sales conference, you know that "the booth" can fill even the most hard-core salespeople with dread. Working at the booth can be tiring; it can be nerve-wracking; it can be mind-numbingly boring. And so coming up with "something for the booth" is the trap of every trade show. It is easy to talk so much about SWAG and tchotchkes that you miss the core purpose of the booth, which of course is to engage with others.
In any case, we were kicking around ideas and a steadily escalating array of giveaways. Finally, someone on the team suggested we do something very basic: Hand out Post-It notes and ask passersby to write down what they are "Happy to have plenty of." It seemed like a corny idea, but no one had a better one, so we went with it.
You know what happened? People walking by the booth were interested to be asked to contribute. They stopped what they were doing and turned towards us. They would laugh and write a silly thought, then pick up another slip of paper and write something more meaningful. It's funny -- often in our desire to connect with others we forget to ask them to engage with us. We forget that they are the most important part of the conversation.
By the end of the conference, our board was covered with notes about abundance and reflections of gratitude.
I can't think of a better metaphor for my first three months at Plenty. We decided, "let's do something meaningful, together," and that was the most important step.
Here is another nice and different take on the Fourth Estate Leadership Summit. Worth reading. I am in two of the three pictures in the post. (Hint: I am not Jason Russell.)
One of the coolest things I've ever been a part of.
I'm writing after four days at the Fourth Estate Leadership Summit, the youth leadership conference of Invisible Children. It is hard to describe the amount of concentrated purity and light that filled the auditorium during the final session last night. Suffice it to say that I'm infused with so much residual passion and energy that I'm writing this from the ceiling of my hotel room, where I've been floating for the last 12 hours.
I've made no secret about my admiration and support for Invisible Children, not despite of but because of their willingness to embrace creative, nontraditional, and sometimes plain wacky methods to illustrate the radical idea that we each can make change in the world, and so we each should.
Occasionally when I talk to people about my relationship with Invisible Children there's a pause from the other person and then a veiled criticism: "Oh, yeah, wow they try some different things. That must be interesting." I push the bait aside and rush right into the breach. The fact is, I say, that innovation by definition looks different from the norm, and aren't we filled with gratitude for the innovators among us for showing us a better way? When this comment is lost on the other person I know I can move on in search of more inspired conversation.
In any case, because of what I do I attend a lot of nonprofit events, and while there are better ones and weaker ones, many events feel like they were designed by someone who assumes the audience understands and cares. What I love about Invisible Children is that they turn this around – they show you why they themselves understand and care, and then they create something inspired and joyful and poignant that invites you into a deeper understanding. In other words, they don't assume you get it. They assume you don't – but also, importantly, assume you will if you are just shown why.
Their conference had some speeches and break-out sessions like all conferences. In fact, their "traditional" content was some of the best I've ever seen, including the speech from Samantha Power, newly confirmed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, pictured above. But the Fourth Estate also had dance and musical performances and dozens of incredibly well-done movies and choreography and audience interaction. I felt engaged and part of the event: a participant, not an attendee. The Fourth Estate was inspiring and engaging and emotional, and more than anything, fun. When was the last time you went to a conference that you described as "fun"?
Reverend John Jenkins, the President of Notre Dame University, said in his inaugural address, "If we are afraid to be different from the world, how can we make a difference in the world?"
The fact is that all of us are trying to create change, and change by definition means DIFFERENT. It is hard to cure cancer, create literacy, build schools, fight injustice, reclaim green space, or [insert your cause here] by doing the same things that everyone else does.
The next time you are planning an event or program or initiative and you hear people around you telling you "That's not the way we're supposed to do it," keep pushing, because you might be on to something groundbreaking. Invisible Children is not afraid to be different, and that more than anything is the reason that they are moving the needle of change. More, please!
I returned home yesterday from the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference in my usual state: Head and heart full, exhausted but invigorated.
Well, something's not right here.
This year's conference sparked a number of thoughts that I'll tackle in the coming weeks, but top of mind is the idea that I shared at my session yesterday: That despite all of our innovation, invention, energy, talent, and passion, the amount of charitable giving as a percentage of overall GDP has remained flat at 2% for the last forty years. I call this percentage our "share of heart."
On the face this data point seems rather mundane but it is quite striking -- and sobering -- when you stop and think about it. What this tells you is that charitable giving is essentially a function of economic growth. In good times, people give more; in bad times, people give less. This total overall giving is irrespective of the level of need, or the number of nonprofits, or the messages we send, or the hard work you do, or anything really. While certain nonprofits may surge ahead or fall behind, the most important factor to overall generosity does not seem to be generosity at all. It is the inscrutably complex black box called the economy.
The public has a heart, for certain, but only a small share of it goes to the nonprofit space. And over forty years we haven't increased our share of heart at all. As the number of nonprofits grows, the only thing that keeps nonprofits from directly stealing or losing share from one another is economic growth -- growth that, as we've seen over the last five years, might hard to predict, or worse yet, small, or worse still, actually negative.
To truly realize transformative change we need to come to grips with this mathematical reality and have a hard conversation about why our share of heart has stayed constant. Perhaps we need better salaries, relaxed overhead restrictions, and more advocacy, and all of those might help. But my sense is there's something deeper going on here. Either the general public is hard-hearted and there isn't much share of heart to be had; or what we do isn't perceived as the most effective way to effect social change. Since I do not believe the public's sympathies are tapped out, for my part I've concluded that the impact we're making just isn't compelling enough to elicit more donations.
And that conclusion led me to my other 2013 NTC sound bite: The fundraising silver bullet is impact. The best fundraising strategy is not to persuade people that we could make a difference. We have to actually show people that we are making a difference. A longer road, to be sure.
I have a fair idea I'll be talking about this more in the coming weeks, but for some background reading I'd direct you to a few previous posts from the last couple of years here and here and here.
More to come.
I am currently reading The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb, which had been recommended to me so often in the last four years that for a while I became irrationally opposed to reading it. But after two quarters of intense study of predictive analytics and econometrics, this seemed to be a good antidote.
An antidote to statistics it certainly is. Taleb systematically dismantles most of the suppositions underlying finance and statistics. A dense and sometimes rambling read, it is also practical and thought-provoking and utterly fascinating. I'm only halfway through and already the pages sit well-notated and dog-eared. This is a book I will read several times in a row, and -- friends, be warned -- one I will gift many times. I can't wait to hear what my professors think of this...
Buy it.
There's lots to say about this book, and I'll never fit it all into one post. But let me pass along this succinct bit of planning wisdom I read tonight: "The unexpected almost always pushes in a single direction: higher costs and longer time to completion."
I've written about this idea before, and we've probably all experienced it. The bill at Costco is always larger than you think it is going to be; it takes twenty minutes longer to find a parking spot than you anticipate. And in the case of fundraising, a program always takes longer to get off the ground than you hope it will.
Sadly, the counter-measure is not a tighter timeline and fewer resources. It makes sense to plan for things to be a bit more expensive than you'd like them to be. Because, they will be.
I was in a meeting the other day trying to figure out a particularly thorny issue. We had a group of smart, experienced, opinionated people in the room -- my kind of meeting.
About halfway through the meeting, one of the participants produced a huge, multi-page Excel print-out. Many of the pages had colored graphs, three or four to a page. A second set of pages contained an assortment of tables correlating variables against one another. An accompanying narrative outlined that there was a "significant" relationship between some of the variables because the correlation coefficient was over .5.
"As you can clearly see from this graph..."
We all kind of sifted through the print-outs and gave them the old college try while the presenter tried to narrate. After a few minutes, it was clear that none of us, including the presenter, understood what the graphs meant. There was no description of the units or explanation of how they were derived. And so what happened was everyone started to use the graphs to explain their own point of view: "What I think they mean is..."
It was humorous, really, and luckily we all noticed it and started laughing and threw the spreadsheets aside. At the same time, the experience was a good reminder of how easy it is to manipulate -- and be manipulated by -- numbers.
A few tactical takeaways:
My head is still bursting from last week's excellent Run-Walk-Ride Fundraising Council Conference. This year the conference was more vibrant than ever.
One reason was that this year's gathering was the largest ever; more people mean more opinions, more interaction, and more overall passion. I think there was something else, though -- as economic conditions slowly improve, I get the sense that nonprofits are ready to get moving again. It has been a slow few years, and there's a healthy impatience in the air.
Event 360's Suzanne Mooney has written a nice recap of the conference on our blog. And as usual, we've published a fantastic infographic of this year's results; the astute reader will note some interesting trends as compared to last year.
For my part, I was grateful for my annual opportunity to address the entire conference. This year I pulled back from my usual tactical advice and outlined a larger imperative I see: The imperative to start swinging for the fences again. After five years of playing it safe, it is hard to see the continued benefit of conservatism. Our most powerful advocates, like the most powerful ideas, are on the fringes -- and so playing to the averages isn't going to get it done.
I have a chance at this year's NTEN Conference to expand on this theme in a lot more detail, and I'm looking forward to doing just that at the somewhat-awkward time slot of 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 13. I hope to see you there.
No!
An appeal to the world at large: Please stop sending me the link to this year's TED presentations.
Yes, I've seen it. Yes, I know who it is.
Next question?
It has been a rewarding and busy quarter for me. Already this year I've had quite a number of intense, immersive meetings with our nonprofit clients.
Growth has been the central theme of every meeting. There's optimism in the air again, and groups are looking out of the bunker window-slit to try to decide what to do next.
Our engagements include a review of current growth forecasts (along with, eventually, a heavy bit of re-engineering of those forecasts). When I pull up an organization's spreadsheet, I almost always see that some number -- 4%, 8%, 12% -- has been added to last year's results as "baseline growth." When I ask where that number came from, I invariably hear that it came from the C-suite. The more frustrated staff will roll their eyes; the ones plucky enough to play along will say, "Our normal expectation is growth." I've had this experience a number of times this year.
This will sound a bit harsh for a Friday, so bear with me: The normal state of things is not growth. It is decline. My skin will not get better as I age; my 401K will not automatically double every five years; my Betamax video recorder will not be cutting edge technology indefinitely.
Even worse, it is very possible to take things all the way to zero. It happens quite often, actually. Remember Bear Stearns? Palm? Hostess? Blockbuster? Small errors can create massive problems. Small issues can mushroom into monumental failures. My house could end up being worth less than my mortgage.
We've all lived through a massive, five-year economic example that demolition is quicker and more definitive than construction. And yet I fear we may have missed the lesson.
The natural state of your program is decay. This is especially true in fundraising, where participant and donor retention might be 30% or less. In other words, we need to replenish 70% or more of our constituents just to stay even. Making no changes to your fundraising program -- or worse, pulling funds and staff from it -- will speed the deterioration.
This is a great time for fundraising because as the economy picks up the results of the entire sector will pick up. But please don't let that convince you that you can put things on autopilot. "Organic growth" is seldom organic and almost never comes from just riding a wave. Growth comes from hustle, ongoing investment, and constant innovation. When I hear nonprofits say they are going to "take a conservative growth strategy" I get a nervous twinge, because it is usually code for "we're going to wait and hope."
Waiting and hoping is not conservative -- it is incredibly risky, because it will almost certainly accelerate your decline. And it is a patently irresponsible strategy. It's time to get out of the bunker. Investment is your most sensible approach.
If you're game, I'm going to bravely take on this topic – and a few others – in thirty minutes or less at next week's Run-Walk-Ride Fundraising Conference. I hope to see you there.
Well, without meaning to I've let over three weeks slip by without a single post. I figured it was high time I posted an update lest you all think I was trapped under something heavy (When Harry Met Sally reference, yes you're welcome).
2013 is off to a great start for me, and I hope for you. Lots of more detailed posts to come but here are a few tidbits of what has me thinking and wondering:
See, I'm back. :-) More soon.
In the category of "Tell Us Something We Don't Know," last week Compass Point published UnderDeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising, which concludes, among other things, that nonprofits struggle with high turnover, difficulty finding qualified staff, and a lack of a holistic orientation towards fundraising. I had no idea!
I intended to write a summary and commentary on the piece, but the week got away from me – and better still, Katya Andresen of Network for Good has already done both for me here.
Oh, I don't know – I don't mean to be so snarky about the study. It's a good read, and worth a few minutes of your time. That said, I'm not sure I'd consider it groundbreaking. If you've been in the nonprofit space for more than two weeks you knew all of this already.
Fundraising is hard work, and despite what some people will say it isn't sales or marketing or communications. It is its own discipline. It requires practice and patience and determination. And more than ever, it requires leadership.
Yes, fundraising is hard work, but it is work worth doing – and work that, more than ever, desperately needs to be done. Call me old fashioned, but if we want better fundraising leadership the place to start is within ourselves. I'm not saying we don't need structural and cultural change; that would help. However, to overcome the obstacles we have to decide we're going to stop complaining about them and start figuring out ways to climb over them.