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Finding Success with a Succession Plan!

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There is change afoot in the nonprofit sector; in San Luis Obispo County and across the country, boards are seeking new presidents, and nonprofit executives are transitioning to new jobs. Even in our Spokes microcosm, the search for new leadership is on. CEO Lesley Santos Dierks is moving to a volunteer role as a board of director and consultant. Using Spokes’ carefully crafted succession plan, Spokes board and staff are reorganizing, facilitating great potential in this next phase of Spokes evolution.

Why does your organization need a succession plan? Succession planning is a discipline that enables organizations to reduce reliance on any one person or small group for critical functions, thereby building sustainability. Infusing an organization with new individuals is a healthy opportunity to expand viewpoints, diversify, and clarify the organizational vision. Considering that only 27% of organizations surveyed by the 2017 National Index of Nonprofit Board Practices reported that they had a written succession plan in place, it’s clearly something that needs to be added to the agenda.

Organizations experience leadership transition for a variety of reasons. At a minimum, best practices require regular turnover at the board level with term limits. Sometimes there is an unanticipated opening on the board or staff or a natural transition of a long-time leader. And, maybe your volunteer-run organization is hiring its first executive staff person. In each case, a succession plan is key to keeping stakeholders confident and preventing service recipients from experiencing delays. Here are tips to ensure your organization’s future transitions are as smooth as possible.

  • Create clear job descriptions and roles for all volunteer, board of director, and staff roles; monitor and evaluate successes (and failures).
  • Put policies and procedures on paper so any new volunteer and/or staff can get up and running quickly and efficiently. Start with a simple checklist, and imagine walking someone else through each step. Developing an operations manual for your processes will ensure consistency and uniformity. For details on creating these policies for your organization, click here.
  • Continually train and cross-train all volunteers and/or current staff to minimize disruption from unexpected changes. Job shadow or utilize Lynda.com to help staff and volunteers learn the new skills and technologies they need to succeed one another. Spokes consulting services can also be a huge assist!
  • Spread the wealth: make sure donors have relationships with more than one person in the organization. At your next event, make it a priority to introduce your donors to more members of your leadership team.
  • Spokes offers classes and resources to help your board and staff learn the best practices of nonprofit management. Allow us to train them on the basics while you focus on teaching them the more nuanced functions of your operations.
  • Take advantage of member benefits like Executive Director Roundtables and Board President Roundtables. At your next board or staff meeting, play Spokes Best Practices in Nonprofit Management video series.
  • And, when an unexpected transition occurs despite great succession planning efforts, remember that Spokes offers Executive Search services through its consulting program. Learn more here.

Crowdfunding: The Right Strategy for Your Nonprofit

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Here you are, a harried development professional or an executive director who has been struggling to get the board more involved in fundraising, and your newest board member comes to you, excited about the Ice Bucket Challenge or other online fundraising craze, with a “new” idea: “Let’s crowdfund!”

Crowdfunding is a fairly new term to describe raising money for a project by getting small gifts from a large number of people, usually through fundraising webpages and such. In this way, it’s no different than what we call “grassroots fundraising”, except that it’s done online. Artists as well as for-profit entrepreneurs, seeking investments from their community for creative projects or start-up businesses, first used the term “crowdfunding”. It has become increasingly popular with non-profits as online strategies become a larger part of groups’ fundraising and communications work.

But what do you need to know to assess whether crowdfunding is the right tool and strategy for your nonprofit organization? First of all, it’s important to note that crowdfunding relies on the same underlying principles of more traditional, offline fundraising. You will have the greatest likelihood of success with crowdfunding if you have:

  • A realistic monetary goal,
  • A compelling reason for people to give,
  • A list of people to solicit, and
  • A team of staff and/or volunteers who will ask people they know for gifts.

So how is crowdfunding different from other individual donor fundraising strategies? It relies on an online platform, such as Indiegogo, which introduces potential donors to your campaign and encourages them to give. Crowdfunding tends to focus on very specific projects and capital needs—not general support—and offers perks or benefits for different gift levels that are related to a nonprofit’s mission (eg, a handmade card from women working in a cooperative in Africa), or give concrete examples of what different gift amounts would “buy”, such as a day’s worth of meals for homeless residents at a local shelter. While traditional fundraising appeals use these tactics as well, they are a more central feature of crowdfunding campaigns.

These crowdfunding platforms ask for specific information about your campaign—what you are raising the money for, how much you need raise—and often require a deadline by which you will raise your funds. They therefore force you to have a systematized approach to your fundraising campaign. In this way, crowdfunding has helped create more savvy and sophisticated donors, so that even if you don’t think crowdfunding is the right strategy for your nonprofit, the more popular crowdfunding becomes, the more your donors are going to expect clear, well-run fundraising campaigns, with compelling stories, regular updates about the progress toward your goals, and timely thank you notes. If your organization’s fundraising drives don’t have these key elements donors may lose confidence in your operation.

So good crowdfunding is based on sound fundraising practices. But does it save time and will it raise the money you need? According to the Crowdfunding Industry Report, crowdfunding platforms raised $2.7 billion and successfully funded over 1 million campaigns in 2012. It is estimated that global crowdfunding volumes have doubled since 2012, totaling nearly $5.1 billion in 2013. And social media expert Beth Kanter reports that 30% of the $5.1 billion crowdfunded went to nonprofits, an increase of 60% from 2012 to 2013.

Sources differ about the average donation size through crowdfunding, with the range offered being between $75 and $88. Individual solicitors raise an average of $534 for nonprofits through their own crowdfunding pages. And nonprofit organizations have raised an average of $7,000 to $9,238 through crowdfunded campaigns. Only about 40 campaigns have raised more than $1 million since crowdfunding was first used.

So how to know whether crowdfunding is something your nonprofit should try? Crowdfunding as a strategy can be used in conjunction with your annual or semi-annual campaigns. Factors that would suggest doing a crowdfunding campaign include having enough people to participate in asking their contacts and/or enough names on your social media or email lists to approach. Crowdfunding is best for getting lots of small gifts, not for the more personalized approach you’d use for major gift solicitation.

Another factor to consider is how much time a crowdfunding campaign will require from staff, board and other volunteers. Many people think that crowdfunding effort will save time, but that is not always the reality. First off, with more than 500 crowdfunding platforms out there now, it takes a little time to research which will be right for you. Additionally, studies show that campaigns using a video raise twice as much money as those without one. Creating a strong video will require a budget and some basic skills as well.

And just like in traditional fundraising, you have to start the campaign with people you already know—current donors, staff, board and volunteers—who can make the first gifts, and only then might you be successful in reaching new folks. According to Razoo, campaigns that receive their first donation during the first 3 days of the campaign are more likely to hit their goal than those who don’t, regardless of the length of the campaign.

Getting the word out about the campaign is key—through email blasts, in your e-newsletters, on the front page of your website, and on all your social media feeds. (You know all those people who have “liked” your group’s page on Facebook? Now is the time to build up those followers!) And you have to get your board, staff, supporters, and volunteers to do the same: email their friends asking them to donate to the campaign, post asks and information on their social media feeds, and create their own individual pages on the crowdfunding site. You won’t get donations from those you don’t know until you have a good amount of traction from your own network.

So when does it make sense to go the crowdfunding route? Here are some situations in which crowdfunding could be a good option:

  • If you have a very specific, tangible need that is less than $20,000, such as buying a new van to transport the youth you serve or to pay for members to travel to and attend a conference in another state.
  • If you are a brand new organization and don’t have any donors but do have a lot of people wanting to help.
  • If your organization has tried other, more traditional fundraising activities and nothing has really gotten off the ground, especially if your staff, board and volunteers have networks that they relate to often online and via social media.

But remember, asking for gifts from several major donors or prospects in-person could easily exceed the $7,000 to $9,000 average that is raised from crowdfunding campaigns. Also, one by-product of more personal interactions with your donors is that you will lay the groundwork to make future asks a whole lot easier.

Crowdfunding can be one of the tools in your toolkit, but it will not replace or make traditional fundraising strategies irrelevant—such as more high-touch strategies, like personal solicitations of major gifts, mail and e-mail appeals, as well as house parties or other small-scale events. As with any good tool, knowing when and how to use it is critical to using it well.

Mobile Fundraising: Why aren’t we there yet?

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dickBy Richard McPherson
Fundraising Consultant, McPherson Advisor
Originally published by the Nonprofit Technology Network.

 Your mobile phone is probably within arm’s reach right now. And it’s probably on. Like everyone else on the planet (which reportedly has more mobile devices than toothbrushes), you probably use your phone to go online, make reservations, listen to music, take pictures, refer to maps, access social networks, text and occasionally even make a phone call. Mobile devices are fast becoming our all-purpose, constant companions. I could bore you with adoption and usage rates, but you know the bottom line…everybody uses mobile devices. And every time a function gets easier, people use [pounce on] it. Starbucks had 5 million mobile payments (14% of all transactions nationwide) – just last week.

It seems like money should be pouring into nonprofits through mobile phones.

If mobile is so popular, why is fundraising so hard?

Two key elements of “mobile fundraising” are in the way – the well-intentioned do-it-yourself culture of many nonprofits and a basic misunderstanding of the role of texting and giving.

First, if you want to send text messages to ask for gifts, you need an intermediary to deal with phone carriers. You’re only one charity, but your donor base uses multiple carriers. Mobile Cause, Mobile Giving and mGive are the services to which US charities often turn to arrange delivery of your text messages, manage opt-in and out, manage and track transactions – and not least, to guide strategy and practices in a channel which operates very differently from your other digital activities. Some organizations are used to outsourcing activities like canvassing, direct mail or telemarketing, but many rely on internal resources to manage tech solutions like e-mail, which is not an option for mobile campaigns.

Second, fundamental misunderstandings exist about what mobile giving actually is. Mobile campaign companies tell me that many nonprofits still think of mobile fundraising as the “text-to-give” process by which $5 or $10 is added to your phone bill. Let’s start there.

What mobile giving was – and what it is now.

Tragedies like hurricanes and earthquakes instantly dominate headlines and donors’ concern. Repetition of text-to-give messages delivered on television by US presidents and CNN screen crawls have created the understandable sense that this was mobile giving. In these circumstances, it certainly is.

But nonprofits whose mission is not emergency response, and who cannot command mainstream media attention, are turning to “text-to-pledge,” by which a donor texts any amount via their mobile phone and receives a link to a mobile-optimized online giving form to complete. This avoids using carriers as gift collectors, takes the limits off gift levels and promotes the kind of immediate communication fundraisers (and donors) prefer.

Of course if the nonprofit does not have a plan for mobile communications, and if it’s giving forms are not beautiful and easy on a smartphone, the process is dead before it even starts.

But for nonprofits who have invested in a mobile campaign company and the necessary planning, the numbers for text-to-pledge are intriguing:

  • Reported average gifts are in the $64-107 range
  • Pledge fulfillment ranges from 59-84%.
  • At fundraising events and dinners, attendee response rates have hit 22-37% with averages exceeding $100.

These results are a far cry from $5 or $10, delivered months after the gift was made. Clearly our sector needs more case studies of the cost-benefit of text-to-pledge and other expedited mobile giving solutions.

Caution: You’re already in the mobile game, ready or not.

All your organization’s e-mail with a donate button put you squarely in the fight for mobile giving. The number of Americans reading e-mail on their mobile devices has reach the tipping point – over 51% and climbing fast. So your year-end fundraising e-mail blitz will be read mostly on smartphones (some on tablets), and if your e-mail – and the donation form it links to – are not truly mobile optimized, you’re going to feel the pain.

What’s more, you’re probably also pushing your Facebook and Twitter supporters to go to your donate page – which they increasingly do from smartphones. (If you participate in Giving Tuesday this November, remember that over 30% of all traffic to giving pages on that day comes from Facebook, much of it via mobile.)

So the shift to mobile is not some distant trend. By the end of this year analysts say mobile internet access will top laptops and desktops. Whether you are sending text messages or not, your e-mail and online forms are in the mobile arena now.

Digital Wallets, apps and other cool tools. Will they help?

What if your donors never had to enter their credit card or bank information on their smartphones to give? Right now, umpteen millions of dollars are being pumped into creating secure “wallets” to hold this information for consumers so they can simply make a purchase on their phone and tell their wallet to handle the transaction. Financial behemoths like VISA’s V.me wallet, American Express and MasterCard, as well as PayPal, are all working on wallets which can be accessed online. (This is in addition to the current push for point-of-sale mobile payment services which are accessed through phone carriers. The Isis mobile payment service, jointly run by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, is an example. It recently went live, but is being renamed, since it inadvertently shares the name of the world’s now most infamous terrorist group.)

Pioneer if the field, Google Wallet, is already 3 years old and still battles for universal adoption, suggesting it will probably be credit card companies, not tech services, which will tip the scales. After all, credit cards are universally used…and control your credit line.

Another school of thought believes that apps will increase mobile giving. Examples of apps for smartphones and tablets, include Check-in for Good, which is tied to merchant purchases, and Give Mob, which uses the traditional text-to-give function and thus limits gifts to $5 or $10. Neither seems to be used widely by donors and holds little interest for nonprofits seeking a closer relationship with donors – and bigger gifts.

More promising is Give App, the new, free mobile app released just last month by Network for Good and Guidestar. Still in beta, the app allows a donor to search among 1.9 million US nonprofits, give or set up ongoing giving, and store information for future gifts. It also allows donors to set up peer-to-peer fundraisers and share news via social media. Give App will no doubt add features over time, and its value to nonprofits, like any tech tool, will depend on promotion.

There is always the option of creating your own branded app. NPR is releasing such an app this summer, NPR One, aimed at making public radio stories more searchable, accessible and sharable. And right underneath the “Change your Station” button is “How to Donate.” Tests will be underway this fall among public radio stations on the impact and implications of an app which provides content delivery along with an option to give.

It’s easy to imagine large nonprofit brands like the American Red Cross, or major faith groups, deciding to develop their own apps to serve, inform and solicit gifts, though one wonders if consumers’ “app tolerance” is already being tested. Time will tell.

Predictions and Advice

It’s been said that developers always overestimate the speed of technology change and underestimate the impact when it happens. In that spirit, it’s likely that when true mobile transaction convenience arrives, it will change everything about the way we acquire and renew donors. But when? Mobile enthusiasts say 18 months, but developers say that about every tech advance. Mobile skeptics say it will be years. More realistically I believe we can expect major shifts in donor behavior to occur within the next three years, while apps and digital wallets battle for adoption.

Of course, like e-mail and online giving, there will be a learning and testing phase for nonprofits, and the wise get started early. You didn’t wait until everyone else had websites or e-mail programs before starting your own. Playing catch-up with the world’s most universal technology is not where you want to be. So the smart move right now is:

  • Learn the facts and issues. Your schedule should include at least a quarterly webinar on mobile giving from Heather Mansfield, Darian Rodriguez Heyman, or from one of the mobile campaign companies listed here. Sure they want you to buy their services, but they have the best, most current case studies and in my experience genuinely want to help you learn.
  • Learn about the tools. A simple search on “mobile devices” on the NTEN site yields data specific tools for mobile optimizing tools for content and secure giving. Go beyond the nonprofit community to publications like GeekWire and cnet.com. Plus all the credit card sites have clear explanations and current status updates on their wallets. International charities should take note that many mobile payment developments start elsewhere; VISA’s V.me wallet has been live in Europe for several months now.
  • Fix your e-mail and online giving pages. Optimize your e-mail content for mobile devices, and at least your major online giving pages. Check with the NTEN community for services that do this inexpensively.
  • Be a mobile donor and shopper. Sign up for mobile alerts, and join or give to a charity you like. The Heifer Project is everyone’s favorite example of most digital fundraising and mobile is no exception. Join any walk-a-thon or other peer-to-peer event offer mobile engagement and giving. And use a digital wallet at the ball game, coffee shop or department store and compare the experience to giving to your organization.

The key is to admit what you know in your heart…when the convenience part of mobile transactions gets, well, more convenient, everything is going to change. And that may not take much longer.

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