When I was the prospect researcher for Lesley College (now Lesley University) back in 1993, I researched the owner of a snacks company out of Boston. He said in one of his newspaper interviews, “During the Depression, we cut our prices in half and then hung on.” My management style took a hard turn at that moment.
Another relevant example was the Malden Mills fire, also in Boston. Right after the fire, the owners used their insurance money to pay the employees while the plant was being rebuilt.
In other words, these two companies did not cut staff.
Right now, the United States economy is on a wild ride. We had an economic shock at the start of the Pandemic (2020), a few “Whew!” years, and now we are watching inflation outpace expectations, which makes our donors cautious.
At the top of our K-shaped economy, however, giving in 2025 was higher, “lifted by stock market gains.” Meanwhile, friends and colleagues are reaching out at a steady rate to ask for help after a layoff, especially soon after the US Government announced cuts in government funding to a variety of programs. We are also seeing a LOT of ads for open positions.
In other words, the nonprofit funding landscape is being shifted like tectonic plates in a pinball machine, and the ensuing earthquakes are giving us all the jitters. You may be working at an organization which has to cut something. What do you do?
Ruthie Giles and I talked about this when we last met, and she nudged me to cut prices to support your work. Remembering my snacks company owner, I cut our self-paced course prices in half. Why the courses? Think about better ways to thrive during the earthquake than to lay off staff:
- One course in modeling major gifts donors will hone down your gift officer pools so that each officer has a higher success rate – more gifts for the same budget.
- One course on RFM or one subscription to our RFM Excel add-in helps your annual giving team focus personalized attention on the right prospects – higher gifts for the same budget.
- Taking the three-part series on data science for campaign management yields several projects that yield a more efficient overall system, including making sure that the right prospects go to major gifts and the right prospects stay with annual giving – more and higher gifts for the same budget.
And here are some other ideas for making the work happen, anyway, if you have lost staff.
- Automating one reporting step or making a self-service dashboard reduces time from question to answer and the stress on overwhelmed business intelligence staff.
- Automating several steps in the stewardship process also allows for faster, more efficient stewardship of donors. If you have a staff member who can work with Power Automate, you have the ability to create custom letters which get automatically forwarded to the prospect’s gift officer, who can then add her own notes or make any changes and then ship it off.
- Optimization is an actual method, not just a buzzword. An experienced data scientist can use the optimization algorithms available (we use R, Python, and Excel optimization tools for our clients) to make sure that the right solicitation is sent to the right prospect at the right time. Asking when and how a prospect likes to be asked lifts your results and your ROI – same budget, more gift revenue.
There is always something we can do, even if we need to take vacation time before we do it. And any problem has a solution, but most problems need a tool.
What are you working on and what would solve the problem? Feel free to email me at marianne@staupell.com.