When non-profit directors or development staff comes to me looking for help in the world of foundations, the first thing I usually have to do is dispel the most common myths surrounding foundation funding.

Myth #1: Foundation funding is easy.
Myth #2: Foundations are anxious to give money to organizations like mine.
Myth #3: Foundations just require a good grant proposal.

While each of these myths has some basis in reality, none are the whole story.

Myth 1: Foundation Funding is easy.

“Competition is a sin,” said John D. Rockefeller.
“Competition is good and has served us well,” Judge Harold Greene said.

Whichever way you look at it, finding foundation funding is competitive. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are nearly 1.5 million non-profits in the U.S. Like it or not, many of those organizations are seeking the same funding you are. Setting your organization apart in this pool of worthy causes is critical.

Ask yourself, “Why us, why now,” when considering how to make your non-profit stand out from the crowd. Do you have a track record of success? Perhaps you’ve accomplished amazing results in a very short time. Ask your clients and donors why they choose you to find answers if you are really stumped.

Myth 2: Foundations are anxious to give money to organizations like mine.

That may be true, but don’t make assumptions. Most foundations were started with a specific purpose in mind. They give to causes across the spectrum like human services, arts, community development and hundreds of other areas of interest. With the volume of requests growing rapidly, foundations may be more particular than you think.

Nearly every foundation I know gets approximately 10 times more requests than they can actually fund in a year. Many of those requests are form letters or template proposals. The writers have never bothered to research more than the foundation’s address.
Think about building relationship with funders – not just foundations but all your donors and potential donors. Then you’ll know which foundations are likely to fund your mission. Knowing is much better than sending blind proposals.

Myth 3: Foundations just require a good grant proposal.

Writing is only a part of finding foundation funding, a minor part at that. Behind the scenes of a successful foundation funding effort is strategic planning, outcomes measurement and many other components that ensure success. Finding a good writer is great for your organization, but a writer won’t bring dollars with them.

Research, reporting and relationship are essential to having a holistic approach to foundation funding. When you consider the entire approach, you give yourself a chance to stand out from the crowd and find good fits for your mission.

Before you begin…

When you start out to find foundation funding, you must be ready to take on some big issues. Have you asked yourself, “How are we measuring success?” Are you ready to be transparent with a donor?

Many foundations will value your forethought and candor when you approach them for the first time. Foundation staff is charged with giving away money in ways that get the best results. When you can say to a donor, “I believe what we do is the best approach,” then you are ready. Substantiate your claim with measurable outcomes, a prudent budget and realistic timeline. These tools allow you to plant seeds of fruitful funding for years to come.

This article is part of the Mythbusters series.

Here’s a list of each of the articles in this series:

1. Fundraising Myth: If You Build It They Will Come by Sandra Sims
2. The Myth of the “Selfless Volunteer” by Tom Welsh
3. Fundraising Myth: It’s Great to Be Cheap by Marc Pitman
4. Advertising and Marketing Are Too Expensive by Jim Berigan
5. The Myth of the Dried Up Well by Sandy Rees
6. Myths About Foundation Funding by Aaron Atwood

Have you ever heard this saying – “You can’t keep going back to the same well – it will run dry.” You might have heard it from a Board member or Executive Director and usually this comment pops up during a discussion of grant writing or direct mail.

It’s said out of fear – fear that if you ask a donor too many times for support they will stop giving. It’s kind of funny really – we have some self-imposed ceiling on the number of times we can ask a donor for support, and we arbitrarily set this ceiling without input from the donor. Most of the time, we don’t even know exactly how many times we can ask a donor before it becomes annoying. We operate from this vague notion of “too many” to describe it.

Here’s the truth: you can ask a donor for support as many times as you need it, provided certain conditions are met.

1. You are cultivating real donors. A real donor is someone who is invested mentally, emotionally, and financially in your organization. She cares about your organization’s work and the people you serve. She wants to see you be successful in delivering service and fulfilling your mission. Real donors give because they want to and because you asked. They don’t keep a scorecard with marks representing every check they write.
2. You are building relationships with your donors. In order to get real donors, you must build relationships. You spend time getting to know you donors and why they care about your organization. You invite them to tour your facility or to volunteer on the front lines. The more you engage your donor in the work you are doing, the deeper their commitment to your organization will be.
3. You practice donor-centered fundraising. Your fundraising efforts revolve around the donor, not around the organization. You share information with the donor about the impact of her gift and you invite feedback from her. Communication is not just one way. You let the donor tell you how often she wants to hear from you and you honor her wishes. In other words, you allow your donor to opt out of mailings.
4. You have a valid need for support. When you ask your donor for a gift, there is a real need. I’m not talking about being in crisis mode or trying to reduce the debt on your building. A donor will respond to these kinds of needs once in a while, but what they really want to support is continuation or expansion of a program that delivers tangible benefits. You can ask for support for the purchase of a piece of equipment that will help you become more efficient or allow you to serve more people.

If you’ve done a good job of building a relationship with your donors, and you practice donor-centered fundraising, your donor will support you as often as they can and as often as you ask.

If your organization is one of your donor’s favorites (and if you’re doing your job well, it should be), they WANT to support you and see you be successful. They care about your mission and they know it takes resources for you to fulfill it.

And they will be a well that you can visit as often as is needed.

This article is part of the Mythbusters series.

Here’s a list of each of the articles in this series:

1. Fundraising Myth: If You Build It They Will Come by Sandra Sims
2. The Myth of the “Selfless Volunteer” by Tom Welsh
3. Fundraising Myth: It’s Great to Be Cheap by Marc Pitman
4. Advertising and Marketing Are Too Expensive by Jim Berigan
5. The Myth of the Dried Up Well by Sandy Rees
6. Myths About Foundation Funding by Aaron Atwood

In a time when many non-profit organizations are examining their budgets closely and looking anywhere to cut expenses, it is not uncommon that allocations for advertising and marketing are slashed. This may cause some to worry that existing customers will fall out of touch and potential new ones will never hear of you in the first place. This will lead to a dramatic loss of income and could cripple the organization.

However, in my experience working for non-profits, I have come to believe the opposite. I argue that marketing and advertising budgets should get cut in tough times. Of course, if your revenue stream is strong, by all means, use it for promotion. However, if your organization is like many others, you have no choice but to get creative in your strategies.

There are a number of strategies available that you can use to save money in marketing, yet still get your message out. With this article, I will focus specifically on some of the tools available on the Internet to accomplish this goal for you.

Web Sites

A custom-built website from a professional designer can be very expensive. For all of the bells and whistles, you’re looking at several thousand dollars, depending on the company. Fortunately, there are a number of options that will allow you to establish a professional web presence either for free or for much less than you’d get on the open market.

My favorite is WordPress. WordPress is what this blog you’re currently reading is built in. Its sole purpose is to present Blogs (Web Logs). However, the application is very flexible and you can add many terrific components that will provide your site with interactivity, clean organization, SPAM filtering, a shopping cart, comment editing, calendar items, and much more. With WordPress you are able to update the site anytime you wish and it easily holds digital pictures, streaming video, and MP3 music files.

Additionally, there are many sites on the Internet that offer free templates for your use. These templates can be very attractive and will give your site a modern feel.

The best part about WordPress is that it is free. There are two versions of it. The first is hosted on dedicated WordPress servers. There is no charge for this, but you are not able to place advertising on these pages, such as Google AdWords. The second option is to download the WordPress software and pay for it to be hosted on any server set up to interface with WordPress. (Call your local providers to see if they offer this service.). Again, there is no charge for the software, but the server will most likely charge you a monthly rate for hosting.

The only word of caution is that it may take a little while for you to feel comfortable navigating inside your new WordPress environment. There are FAQs and tutorials available to help you, and after some trial and error, you should be on your way.

Overall, there is very little a WordPress site can not do. For many organizations, this is a great solution.

There are other free blogging sites, like Google’s Blogger and LiveJournal. While many of these sites are fine and professional, I do not believe that they offer the extensive flexibility and adaptability that WordPress does.

Email Communications

Email has become, in recent years, a very effective and reliable means of communicating. However, when your email database grows very large, cutting and pasting a list of addresses into the BCC field gets to be cumbersome.

Fortunately, there are a number of pay services available that will allow you to organize your database, design visually attractive messages, and track the delivery route of each individual email after it is sent.

For a couple of years, I have been using Constant Contact and it costs approximately $20 per month. For this low price, I get an amazingly flexible service that I can use as often as I need. I am not a sophisticated web designer; in fact, I have two left thumbs when it comes to the keyboard and mouse. However, Constant Contact provides dozens of free templates that allow me to just plug in the text and images I need, and it does all the hard work for me.

It is simple to import my existing email database and then add or remove names afterwards, if necessary. Once the message is created and sent, customized reports tell me which messages made it to their assigned destinations and which ones bounced back. Furthermore, it will give me information about the failed ones. Perhaps the recipient’s email inbox was full or there was a typo in the address. I found that to be very helpful.

I have used Constant Contact for three different non-profits, and each time I have received great praise from my community. They loved getting important and topical information right in their email inbox and found the format very easy and enjoyable to read.

Merchandise, Apparel, and Online Shopping Cart

Only a few short years ago, a common problem for many non-profits who sold merchandise and apparel with their organization’s logo on them was the requirement to place a minimum order. This meant that non-profits with thin budgets had to make a gamble that they could actually sell the items and not get stuck sitting on inventory.

Now, there is a better option available. Although I have not personally used them myself, I have heard and read many positive reviews of Café Press. Here is one for you to judge for yourself. This service allows you to set up a web-based store and offer a wide range of items with your logo on them. Your customers buy the items online, and Café Press takes care of the shipping. The great part about this is that Café Press makes up the items only after an order is placed. Therefore, you will never over-order.

The prices at Café Press are a little on the high side, but remember, they are taking care of all the administration and saving you from carrying overhead. In the long run, you are probably coming out well ahead!

There are other options available such as contacting your local shops and comparing prices. CustomInk is another great choice that allows you to upload your logos and create artwork online. They will then ship the entire order to you to distribute or sell the items individually to your supporters.

Printing

One of the most common tools in marketing is the good old flier. Fairly easy to make, the flier is a staple of getting the word out in the local market. And even though the Internet has become the premier means of marketing a product, there is still a value in creating printed material.

However, paper prices have risen dramatically, and the cost of a substantial printing run can be prohibitive. Up until recently, organizations had to rely on just a handful of local printers to shop for a good quote. Now however, numerous websites have spring up that will allow you to submit the details of your printing job to a open bulletin board and printers from all over North America can bid on the project, both for cost and for delivery time.

For example, there is Print Industry and Print Local. I have used such a site before and have saved significantly by using printers half-way around the country. The bids are accompanied by a contact name and phone number. You have the ability to interview (over the phone) any of the bidders to get more details. Once you have made your selection, you can communicate with the printer, just as you could have if they were located right around the block. The finished product is shipped directly to your door.

If your print job is time sensitive, make sure to give yourself enough time to submit the details and interview printers. Also allow for shipping time. Remember to account for the shipping costs within the bid.

For specific printing recommendations, I have had excellent service with Overnight Prints. Another online service that offers a variety of printable items is Vista Print.

Get Some Free/Cheap Publicity

While any media outlet would love to sell you premium advertising space, the truth is that most of the time, even the non-profit rates they offer are expensive. I would urge you to purchase advertising space as a last resort, only if you have the money to do it. Don’t cut into the “flesh” of your budget just to run some ads.

The Press Release & Public Service Announcement
First of all, become an expert on writing a press release. You should be drafting these things and sending them to every media outlet in your geographical area as often as you have something happening. Here is an article from eHow.com, which will show you how to craft a professional looking press release. This can be added to a separate pubic service announcement, which is basically a script for a radio or TV spot. Also from eHow, here is a quick guide to writing the PSA. Many times, radio and TV stations are looking for content and will happily pick up on these press releases free of charge.

The key to getting their attention though is to add some excitement to the announcement. Ultimately, this means adding some excitement to your event. In your release, focus on some key aspect of your activity that will pique people’s interest. Maybe you have a minor celebrity coming to the event, or somebody’s famous dessert will be served. Come up with a hook that will make your press release stand out among all the others. It will be hard to gain any attention if you are just putting on the same old auction you’ve been doing for years.

The Classified Section
If you do want to pay money to advertise, I would strongly consider doing it in the classified section of the newspaper. In my experience, the classified section is the most popular in the whole paper. When I was opened a day care center inside our elementary school, I ran a nice sized classified ad for weeks and got a great response. And, the best part was that it was dirt cheap!

Campaign Yard Signs
While it may be alluring to spend a lot of money on a big billboard ad on a heavily traveled road in your community, this can be very expensive- not only for renting the space, but also for creating the huge banner of an ad.

I would suggest paying much less and having hundreds of campaign yard signs made up. Your message space is limited, but if you get enough of them placed strategically in your target area, people will really notice. A new Charter School in my area utilized this strategy and they had the highest enrollment of any school in town that year. I used a company called Political Yard Signs.com, although there are dozens of such companies advertising online.

Conclusion

In the course of carrying out your non-profit’s mission, it is understandable that you would want to do or spend whatever it takes to spread the word. However, reality often forces us to re-adjust our desires and substitute them with practical compromises. Fortunately, when it comes to advertising and marketing, there are numerous alternatives that will both save you money and still bring you success in promotion of your organization.

This article is part of the Mythbusters series.

Here’s a list of each of the articles in this series:

1. Fundraising Myth: If You Build It They Will Come by Sandra Sims
2. The Myth of the “Selfless Volunteer” by Tom Welsh
3. Fundraising Myth: It’s Great to Be Cheap by Marc Pitman
4. Advertising and Marketing Are Too Expensive by Jim Berigan
5. The Myth of the Dried Up Well by Sandy Rees
6. Myths About Foundation Funding by Aaron Atwood

Volunteerism is a defining characteristic of the Not-For-Profit sector, in that it sets us apart from the other two societal sectors. It is usually thought of as a virtuous, selfless enterprise on the part of the volunteer….yet my experience, both as an organizational leader and as a volunteer, is that this is not true. And moreover, to the extent that this notion is unchallenged, it can lead to negative outcomes for both the volunteer and the organization(s) she serves.

Let me explain…

Like most of us, before I began my Not-For-Profit sector career, I had been conditioned to believe that volunteers acted from a selfless need to improve their world, to make a difference in a situation – whether local or worldwide – that they found unacceptable. Volunteers acted in concert with some organization originally founded to meet a need, to fill some gap that was not being addressed by either government or the private sector, right? “Do-gooders,” they are called. Surely THEY did not expect to derive some personal benefit, to gain something, to become a different person, to meet a personal agenda, right? Yet, as I recruited, trained, and worked with volunteers – and as I did a lot of volunteering myself – I noticed that the most successful volunteer experiences were those in which the volunteers themselves felt that they were “giving” and “getting.” What was going on?

I endeavored to find out, by creating a graduate school research project, and by interviewing countless volunteers and volunteer directors. My criteria were simple: I concentrated on service as opposed to governing volunteers, and limited my research to health care settings. This latter criterion was meant to eliminate the influence of any potential for obvious benefit that a volunteer might receive as a result of their service, e.g., a theater usher who might receive comp tickets to a performance. My results surprised me, even though they confirmed my own experience as a volunteer.

Here are my key findings:

• ALL of the volunteer directors I spoke with – from HIV/AIDS-related groups, major medical centers, a direct service foundation, children’s organizations, and more – required their prospective volunteers to clearly identify and state their expectations as a condition of volunteering.

• The vast majority of my respondents agreed that their longest-term volunteer commitments were the ones in which they – the volunteers – felt like they got more out of their experiences than the organizations did.

• Failure on the part of the volunteers to successfully identify their “agendas” almost always led to failure of the overall volunteer experience.

• The identification of agendas and needs on the part of the volunteers was an ongoing process, not one to be performed only at the outset of a term of service.

As my own professional career and my volunteer service progressed, I also witnessed these same principles at work in the governing volunteer experience – among the many Board members I recruited, trained, and served with – albeit in a slightly different way. Board members more often served in part to obtain some organizational skill that might serve to further their professional goals. E.g., a person might join the Finance Committee of the Board in order to learn how to read financial statements.

But how? How do we, as sector professionals and/or as volunteers, arrive at this place where our motives and agendas are on the table for all to see? Moreover, isn’t this approaching heresy – doesn’t the very notion that a volunteer might be seeking a “return on investment” verge on the unthinkable?

And why? Why go through all this? Isn’t it enough that we have a cadre of volunteers at the ready, and that they find opportunities to give of themselves through their favorite organizations?

The “how” is performed via extensive questionnaires and personal interviews between the volunteer directors and their prospective candidates. The most effective queries offer “multiple choice” alternatives: in order to put the prospective, sometimes novice volunteer at ease, they list a number of often-stated volunteer objectives and ask their respondents to “check as many as apply.” They also ask the subject to consider previous volunteer experiences and offer their reflections on them. The interviews that follow thoroughly explore themes arising from the written material.

To the extent that the volunteer director is confident of a “match” between expectations and probable outcomes, it’s a “go.” To the extent that there is a palpable mismatch, or that the volunteer is unwilling to admit any expectations or agendas, it is unlikely that the match will succeed – and often either the candidate and/or the director perceives this and terminates the relationship. (As an example, the director at a major medical center told me that her numerous elderly volunteer candidates would frequently state that one hoped-for outcome was that they would meet a prospective mate. While this was not a “deal-breaker,” it was always clearly stated that this was NOT a likely outcome.)

For prospective Board members, the process may be a bit different. Questionnaires can still be used, and should be followed up by interviews with the ED, other departmental leaders as appropriate (focusing on those whose organizational roles naturally lead to frequent interaction with Board members), and perhaps current Board members (frequently but not exclusively officers and members of the Recruiting Committee).

As to the “why” of all this, I offer these key points:

• Volunteer turnover is expensive, inefficient, and can lead to a negative “rep” for an organization in its community. Volunteer training is costly, from both monetary and opportunity standpoints.

• Community stakeholders are ill-served by organizations whose volunteer programs are anything less than top-notch.

• Social capital is increasingly precious and no organization can afford its waste.

• The very process of thorough, ongoing identification of motives and agendas on the part of organizational leaders packs a powerful message to their volunteers: you are important to us, and the services you perform are valuable to our community.

• Monetary donations frequently go hand-in-hand with donations of time: we tend to give where we serve.

The strongest Not-For-Profit organizations of today realize that effective volunteers are precious commodities – we in the USA are working longer hours than most of the rest of the industrialized world, and our “discretionary time” is increasingly limited. And, too, the competition for volunteers is growing right along with the steady increase in the sheer number of Not-For-Profits out there.

Consequently, their ultimate insight is that the overall quality and longevity of the volunteer experience is determined at the beginning of the relationship, when both the volunteer and the organization are completely open and in agreement about their respective needs, motivations, and agendas. And really, when you think about it, isn’t this true of any relationship?

My own take on this is that we – both volunteers and organizational representatives – need to recognize the mythology of the selfless volunteer for what it is: a myth. And, we need to go even further and embrace a concept that cannot help but emerge from this bit of “myth-busting”: that volunteers have an inherently – albeit unconscious – legitimate expectation that they will be transformed to some degree through their service.

Whether it is the service volunteer who emerges with a new level of empathy for other folks in his world, the Board member who gains new skills that might serve her in her profession, or the worker who learns how to properly plant a tree by getting “down and dirty” and planting a thousand or so of them, volunteering HAS its rewards. That is not only unavoidable, but more importantly, it is as it should be.

This article is part of the Mythbusters series.

Here’s a list of each of the articles in this series:

1. Fundraising Myth: If You Build It They Will Come by Sandra Sims
2. The Myth of the “Selfless Volunteer” by Tom Welsh
3. Fundraising Myth: It’s Great to Be Cheap by Marc Pitman
4. Advertising and Marketing Are Too Expensive by Jim Berigan
5. The Myth of the Dried Up Well by Sandy Rees
6. Myths About Foundation Funding by Aaron Atwood

Big events and celebrity galas that make the news may leave the impression that special events are the best way to raise money for charity. While event fundraisers can be quite successful, it’s important to have realistic expectations.

The famous line from the movie Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” unfortunately doesn’t always work in real life. If you plan a fundraising event and even advertise heavily, that does not mean that attendees will show up.

Often when considering a type of event or event theme, planners will immediately jump to the obvious choices such as a golf tournament or dinner. But what if there are no avid golfers in your list of current supporters? What if you plan a black tie gala only to realize that your audience is more of the BBQ and bluejeans crowd?

On the other end of the scale, there are groups that they really want to do something different. Offering a unique event is a great way to get publicity, stir interest in your cause, and yes, raise funds.

However if you hear of a “new idea,” remember that carbon copying it to your group may not work. It may be “too out there” for your community and just because you’ve planned something different won’t necessarily translate into event attendance.

Always match the type of event to your audience. Consider the mission of your organization and try to plan a fundraiser that somehow highlights your cause, not just something that raises money.

Talk to your volunteers, current donors, board members and other stakeholders. Ask for their opinions about what type of event they’d enjoy attending. Take note of their level of excitement. If people really jump on board with an idea that could be a good sign that it would be successful.

Continue to survey for feedback during the planning process. Doing so will help ensure that you avoid potential pitfalls such as scheduling on the same day as another big community event.

To summarize, when planning a special event if you “build it” with your audience in mind and based on sound fundraising principles, people will more more like to come out and lend their support.

This article is part of the Mythbusters series.

Here’s a list of each of the articles in this series:

1. Fundraising Myth: If You Build It They Will Come by Sandra Sims
2. The Myth of the “Selfless Volunteer” by Tom Welsh
3. Fundraising Myth: It’s Great to Be Cheap by Marc Pitman
4. Advertising and Marketing Are Too Expensive by Jim Berigan
5. The Myth of the Dried Up Well by Sandy Rees
6. Myths About Foundation Funding by Aaron Atwood