The start of a fiscal year never allows downtime: We are called to start the engines again — but at 0 — and then keep cranking. However, the start of the fiscal year does require planning. While we are taking a snapshot of our database at fiscal year end, opening up the new work plan, resetting the clock on the dashboards, we would do well to also reset our rules around fundraising for the coming year.
Most rules in a fundraising shop are set either by tradition or by the new head of fundraising, whichever event is newest. However, since both staff and fundraising change year by year for most shops, consider doing a retreat to reaffirm your definitions, work plans, and strategy. Tedious as this idea is, it sets into cement common language, tools, and goals. And that, in turn, makes a powerful fundraising team. Consider these exercises for your next retreat.
“The minute I think, ‘It goes without saying,’ it has to be said.”
–Marin Amundson-Graham, vice president for advancement, Knox College
Definitions
In her book, Prospect Management: The Essential Guide for a High Functioning Nonprofit Prospect Management System, Ruthie Giles talks about the importance of common language around terms like, “Gift”, “Pledge”, “Donor”, “Major Gifts”. Indeed, your gift processors and your leadership both work in the rock/hard place of honoring tax and accounting law while being as flexible as possible with donors. For instance, a gift made by a DAF creates decisions around soft credit, recognition credit, honor roll reporting, and eventually the DAF donor’s intention vs. the DAF’s (and the organization’s) rules.
In your shop, make sure that you have common definitions around these terms especially:
- Gift (in-kind included? Pledges count or just cash in? When is someone a donor? When she pledges or when she sends something? How do you count planned gifts?)
- Donor (At the time he pledges or when the cash comes in? What about event tickets? Memberships?)
- Major Gifts prospect (just capacity or is there more to this?)
- Stages and stage codes
- Capacity levels (try not to mix in old and new capacity levels, recode if you change your mind about how they are defined)
- Do prospects who do not fit all of your criteria get sent to Annual Giving for cultivation?
- Engagement (define what counts BEFORE staff start taking credit)
- Annual giving terms:
- Renewal/Upgrade
- LYBNT
- SYBNT
- New donor (includes donors who reactivate after a certain number of years?)
- Planned gift (does a will intention count?)
- Choose Return on Investment or Cost Per Dollar Raised for assessing the effectiveness of your program
What other terms are passed around in your shop?
Work plan
Leadership loves work plans because they show how the shop will reach its fundraising goal. Work plans work brilliantly if they are worked. Every staff member’s work plan will both illuminate where your shop is missing services (for instance, a stewardship officer is great but do you need a technician on staff to automate receipts?). Make sure that the goals in the work plans are reachable, concrete, and measurable.
With this section, I do mean all staff, not just gift officers. Consider these concepts while drafting your staff’s plans:
- For gift processors, demographic maintenance, and business intelligence, the work plan should measure on-time performance. I supervised a staff of data processors who had 95% on time performance, and they never knew it before I showed them.
- For Annual Giving, the goal is not only to raise a certain amount of unrestricted money, but also to make an annual ask of all constituents. Your Annual Giving staff should have a work plan that solicits each prospect in the right way at the right time (A lot of my blogs and presentations are about how to figure that out).
- For Major Gifts, each gift officer should have a fundraising goal appropriate to her portfolio’s capacity and prospect-to-gift ratio. I have never liked counting visits – I evangelize yearly reaching all prospects in one’s pool and moving them forward (or out of the portfolio if they don’t respond). Because of that, I advocate appropriately sized portfolios which have geographic concentrations so your gift officers can succeed.
- For Engagement, consider your definitions. Do you want to have them host certain events? Or bring out more social media? What do your business intelligence and data science teams say?
- For Prospect Research and Prospect Management, the work plan should have a concrete (but obtainable) number of prospects delivered or researched. Be careful about allowing gift officers to ask for research over and over, however, because that bogs a Research team down.
- For all other staff, consider what outcomes you need from them to reach your yearly goal. Some years, your IT staff’s work plan will be a CRM conversion only, and some years, your Stewardship team’s work plan will focus on better or more forms of outreach and appreciation.
After you have completed on these two exercises, consider what tools you really need to reach your goals. I visit shops often where a department head will buy a new tool that serves the same purpose as a tool in another department, or that there are suddenly 4 ways for staff to communicate with each other, necessitating constant monitoring by everyone. Consider asking your Operations lead to conduct a tool survey and make recommendations, helping to transition staff off of redundant tools with change management and good training.
Strategy
Once you and your team have clarity around the words and the work, build out your strategy. So many of our clients are running at top speed right now, trying to fill deficits, that next year’s mid-tier prospects are being ignored. Any strategic plan must include reaching out to all constituents in your database. And, if your analytics staff have done their modeling right, you will know what segments should be solicited in what way, at what time of year, and by whom.
When that is done and everyone is exhausted, thank your staff and cheer for them, and feed them if you can. This kind of work is conducted four times a year at high-performing companies, and it is one of those for-profit habits that we need to use, too.