“Bah, Humbug!! — Ebenezer Scrooge May Have Been Right”
Post by James V. Toscano
Just after he responded to those two proper gentlemen, asking for an end of year donation for the poor, with his classic, “Bah, Humbug !” Ebenezer Scrooge must have mumbled under his breath, “The only time I hear from them is when they need money.”
How many of your donors might say the same thing?
If the objective of our efforts is a long-term, productive relationship with our donors, then something more than the periodic appeal is required of us.
We need to know and understand our constituents’ “visions,” their dreams.
We need to reinforce the positive ones, add information and content about our organizations, our successes and our visions, and show them how, working together, their dreams and ours can be made real.
The Resource Development Plan, which derives from the Strategic Plan, should always include a multifaceted, “interactive” Communications Plan — a dynamic and appealing process that enables us to connect with our constituencies, and them with us.
The plan from beginning to end is not only built upon the values and goals of the nonprofit organization, but also the values and goals of our donors and prospective donors.
Newsletters as Default
For many “development offices,” a communications plan means three or four newsletters, and their biggest question is whether to include an envelope!
Seriously, not dismissing the value of the “lowly” four or eight-pager full of short, newsy items with lots of names and pictures, a Communications Program requires more — especially if those pages are no more than dense prose full of the “oft-repeated” ambitions.
The newsletter has its place — as one element of many in a communications plan; but, by itself, it is indicative of an obsolete dynamic — the old “Tell them what we’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what we told them!”
The only (not so minor) problem with this approach is that we lose most of our audience along the way. Somewhere we forget about listening to our donors — on an ad hoc basis, individually, in focus groups, in polls, in email, in written comments in a visitor’s book, in letters — in any way we can hear/listen to what our constituents think.
Listening as Communications
Listening is a big part of the cultivation of donors; and, for a development program (and the development officers that design and guide it) to be effective, listening must also be (a major) part of the communications process.
I’m an advocate for moving this interactive process up a significant number of notches, and using all of the interactive market research and electronic and statistical knowledge we have, to get a better idea of what people think about us. That way, the content of what we try to communicate will be relevant and informed.
So, to listen, as well as speak — our comprehensive plan needs to: poll; conduct focus groups; visit opinion leaders and donors; produce newsletters; mail reports; send email; have a web site that “pushes” as well as “pulls;” issue press releases; send reprints of stories on the nonprofit to key leaders; get our people in the mass media; participate in community leadership activities; talk to service groups, clubs, churches and synagogues; use word of mouth extensively; and, be ready for any opportunity to get the word out to our constituents.
Relationships thrive on/require ongoing, continual communication.
If we want our relationships to grow, to strengthen, in terms of commitment to our goals and objectives and the numbers and sizes of gifts, then the investment in our communications program is needed to assure achievement of our mission.
The need for a communications plan is so compelling that each of us must determine the optimal mix for our individual circumstances.
Which, if not all of the methods listed above, should we include?.
Technology as Solution
Technology allows us to do so many things, with minimal cost. Just think of how many people we can “talk to” if we have their email addresses, yet how many of our forms and procedures neglect to ask for that little bit of information!!
With the web and email emerging as methodologies of choice, technology, for many non-profits, can be an answer to a lack of resources. This is especially true as many of our constituents, especially those of high socio-economic status, use these modalities extensively, and will use them increasingly in the future.
So our communications plan must have a significant component in electronics — in the technology that employs email, websites, push and pull appeals, digital photography to display images of constituents and program activities, and numerous opportunities for enjoyable interaction!!
Each nonprofit needs to decide on its own communications plan and the resources (time and money) it will invest — just so long as we recognize the need for interaction — for listening as much as we speak. And, if we err, it should be on the side of listening.
The probability of constituent retention is directly related to their levels of satisfaction — with program, recognition, cultivation, stewardship and perceived efficiency/effectiveness of non-profit operation, yet few organizations poll their members, donors, clients, patients and other constituencies to determine those levels.
Even fewer organizations conduct focus groups to gauge what content in our communications is coming through, what people really like and dislike about us, what their experiences with us have been, how they react to the various elements of our development program, and what they expect of us. Too often, those things are “decided” by non-profit boards, committees or staff.
Where we sort of do it in the “studies” that precede major (capital) campaigns, we should base the construction of our development plans on the results of various constituent “sampling” procedures.
As you can tell, I strongly advocate the empirical research approach, but that’ll be the subject for a later article.
Assign Key Staff to Donors
Another effective activity is to match donors and prospective donors with key staff — have staff help your supporters get to know and develop a substantive relationship with the organization and its leadership, based on the interests of those constituents.
If there are thirty major donors and prospects, and ten key staff — not just development personnel — engaged in the substantive work of the agency, assign them three apiece, train them, and, thereby, extend the ability of the development office to cultivate — and don’t leave it all to the development officers.
Most often, for example, a donor would rather talk to a museum curator about art than to a development officer about money. The development officer’s role would then become one of follow-up, ensuring that the work of the curator and the role of the museum could advance — and be all that the donor and the museum envisioned.
Our preoccupation with the importance of our mission often obscures the fact that we are in the same marketplace as all of the other for-profit and nonprofit groups in seeking attention and resources, and that we need to need to operate competitively, and successfully, in those arenas.
We really do need to know what our constituents think, so we can educate, so we can shape the content of our messages, so we can build ties and deepen relationships, so we will be able to see our organization achieve significance and make a difference.
We need to be effective marketers, as are those with whom we are competing!
And, if we listen well, we will strengthen the message we communicate; and, thereby, more easily broaden our constituencies, and strengthen our ties with and the loyalties of our constituents.
A well-planned and executed Communications Program, aside from reducing the likelihood of a “Bah, Humbug!!” will also lay the groundwork for a more efficient and effective fund-raising effort — thus expanding our ability to attract the long-term financial support so very necessary for programmatic success. And that is, after all, the ultimate responsibility of any resource development program.
Copyright 2011, The Good Counsel, division of Toscano Advisors, LLC. May be duplicated with citation.