Decluttering Your Mission

by LoriNo Comments
Along with most of the modern world, I, too, took it upon myself to create a New Year's Resolution for 2012. OK - so I am also somewhat of an overachiever, so I actually have two. First, decluttering my house, in bite size chunks, became one of my missions for 2012. So much so I found a calendar with daily (except for Sundays) decluttering projects to guide me, encourage me, and hold me accountable. [Note: I found the calendar via Pinterest.] My first HUGE project (I did say bite size, but...) was weeding the pantry. First step was to assess what exactly was in the pantry - best way to do this? Remove all items from said pantry. This was the scene in my kitchen: Decluttering Pantry Project   It only made sense to throw away expired items in the process of removing all items from the pantry. So, this had me thinking about how stale research (and/or prospects) can become when such...
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Director of Mission Advancement

by Lori1 Comment
Like a lot of you, I subscribe to numerous listservs serving the nonprofit space. Advance-L, PRSPCT-L (and yes, every time I type that, I do sing it –in my head – to the tune of that Aretha classic), CFRNET, FUNDSVCS – the list goes on and on. And of course with Twitter, I have created my own listserv of sorts – following (including Twitter lists others have created) other Tweeps with similar interests to my own. One aspect of listservs which intrigues me is the title contained in the posting – not the subject title, but the poster’s job title. This morning, someone posted with a question regarding database conversion and whether or not anyone had a calendar of events or a checklist of tasks they had found to be helpful in the process.  This person’s title? Director of Mission Advancement & Donor Stewardship. I absolutely LOVE the insertion of the word mission before the word advancement. David and I (along...
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Prospects Most Likely to Go MGO

by LoriNo Comments
A list of companies most likely to go IPO came across my Facebook wall the other day, and this list was created by Goldman Sachs. Now, most of you will say, “Well, so what, it’s another list.” But something caught my eye in this piece, as the companies listed are STARTUPS: “So why hold a conference for early stage companies if you’re an IPO underwriter? Well, the event basically functions as an extremely foresighted form of lead generation. According to multiple people I spoke to, these are the 30 or so startups Goldman has designated as potential IPO candidates. And it wants to make a relationship as early on as possible, in case some of them actually do and need Goldman’s services in the process.” Oddly enough, nonprofits might be able to learn a thing or two from GS… What are your organization’s steps to identify who, amongst your constituents, members, and prospects, are most likely to go MGO (major gift offering)? Has your organization developed...
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The End of the Comprehensive Fundraising Campaign?

by David LawsonNo Comments
When what has always worked stops working (or no longer works like it use to) you start to see innovation. I was reminded of that when I saw an article from Inside Higher Ed about Beloit College foregoing the usual 5-7 year comprehensive campaign. Instead they are are going to have a "modular" or "project based" campaign where the focus will be one or two projects over a short period of time. "Administrators hope the approach will set them apart from other institutions, motivate faster giving, and excite donors who can see a quick turnaround on their investments. In total, administrators believe the new approach will raise as much money, if not more, for the college than a traditional model." I think they are onto something. Surveys have shown donors are tired of long, drawn-out campaigns which are followed all too soon by yet another campaign. One of Beloit's donors said, "You can see evidence of what you’ve done and that it’s...
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Desperately Seeking Mathematicians

by LoriNo Comments
It warmed my heart (and it was extremely cold here this a.m., in FLORIDA, so I needed that warmth) to hear a piece on NPR regarding math degrees and BIG DATA. Reportedly, mathematicians can make sense of this data for businesses. No doubt this is true, and “intense curiosity to understand what’s behind the data is a common trait amongst such mathematicians.” I would argue people with BIG LOVE of research (like us – that is, a love of prospect research and data mining) all have this trait as well, with or without math degrees. How many nonprofits and higher ed foundations look for (and hire) mathematicians? Perhaps you should share this NPR story with your HR department, to adjust the requirements for certain development positions. Hey, I’m not suggesting you stop hiring those of us with library science, information studies, history, and/or English degrees. Read on and see why math majors should be included, too. McKinsey released their results of...
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Holiday Giving

by LoriNo Comments
So, here it is, two days post Thanksgiving weekend - yes, we've successfully prolonged this one-day holiday into an entire weekend, and if your school system is like ours, it's a 5-day weekend, according to my teenage son, which made yesterday quite the rude awakening for said teenage son. In reflecting on our holiday, and writing this blog post, I came across my dinner preparation to-do list, as follows: Make cranberry sauce  Start turkey  Put turkey in oven no later than 2 p.m. Mix together mama’s sweet potato casserole Take rolls out of freezer Start Brussels sprouts Start pumpkin soup when turkey is resting Open pinot noir Make turkey gravy Put in rolls and sweet potato casserole Of course, as with all cooks, the recipes were tweaked to the tastes of the cook (moi) and the family members. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving meal in the evening, which is unlike my traditional family T-day schedule, a noonish feasting so one may graze the rest of the day. Why, you ask, did we...
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The 80/20 Rule Fundraisers Don’t Know About

by David LawsonNo Comments
When it comes to data most fundraisers would just like their queries to be faster and their reports on time.  Sadly they are often disappointed on both fronts so it's no wonder they are not asking the most important question: "Are my queries and reports accessing all of our data?" The answer is “No!” Before you send this to your intrepid database administrator let's take a quick trip in the tech time machine to when donor management systems started to proliferate. It is the 80's and entrepreneurs are beginning to use relational databases to create software to store information on donors. Contact information and gifts are the first to be digitized and fundraisers comment that this is not much better than the 3x5 cards that had served them so well before the Jobs/Gates era. Over the next 25 years data fields grew like kudzu and so did the size of our databases. It is understandable then that users assume when they ask a...
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