This week, I want to write about metrics for Development Directors. Let’s assume that you have a Development Coordinator in place and that the fundraising mail, event logistics, foundation and corporate grant tracking is covered, and the filing is getting done. Also assume that you have just hired a Development Director whose primary job will be direct donor contact – “high-touch” fundraising, rather than “high-tech” fundraising. How will you set expectations? How will you measure their work? How will you justify the aggressive salary increases I advocated last week?

In the 23 March 2006 issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Holly Hall described a point-based assessment metric that measures fundraising job performance for full-time Major Gift Officers (MGOs) not only on results (which though important, is too focused on short-term goals rather than long-term strategy), but also on contacts, proposals, and appropriate usage of Board members. The assessment was created by Richard Dupree at Indiana’s Kelley School of Business in Bloomington. Keep in mind that MGOs at Indiana are working from an alumni list that is already warm, but seen as a starting place for developing your own system, it is provocative.

I liked Dupree’s system a lot because it forced the Major Gift Officer to focus on activities that really mattered. I modified it somewhat for application to smaller organizations who didn’t have the luxury of multiple MGOs, but rather had a single Development Director whose job included direct donor contact.

In Dupree’s system, there is a maximum total of 100 points. If a fundraiser is doing the work, the fundraising goals will be met. Scores of 75 or less warrant remedial measures, and even dismissal after consecutive years of such performance. Scores of 76-85 warrant cost of living increases only. Scores of 86-plus earn the aggressive salary increase schedule mentioned above.

Here is the system as I modified it:

1. Meet Dollar Goal – 25 points
   All or nothing; you made it or you didn’t. You can survive in a job when you aren’t making your fundraising goals, but not very long, and you’d better be doing everything else really well.
2. Face-to-Face contact with donors – 25 points
   One point for every four contacts. The expectation is that a Development Director is meeting with two donors, on average, every week. So what constitutes a “contact”? Contacts count when they are in-person or on the telephone, written-up with a clearly defined follow-up course of action, and filed in the donor file. Written or email contacts can count if a response is secured, follow-up is clearly identified, and the exchanged is printed out and filed in the donors file. However only 10 of the 25 points may be accrued by this method. This is really hard to do, but it is very likely to be the most important possible work the Development Director can do. DoDs cannot raise money from behind their desk. They MUST get out the door. Note that this does not necessarily mean contacting 100 different donors. Many donors will be contacted several times during the year. Also, note that contact with Board members counts only when the contact is related to their capacity as donors.
3. Proposals Submitted – 25 points
   Proposals may be literally written proposals to foundations and corporations, but should also include in-person asks of individual donors. All proposals of $5,000 and more count one point each. Proposals of $20,000 and more count two points each. The point here is that many organizations waste far too much time preparing proposals for $1,000 and less. It takes just as much time to ask for $5,000 as it does for $1,000. This metric forces us to focus our time on the opportunities that will yield the most benefit.
4. Proposals Funded (at any level) – 5 points
   One-half point for each funded proposal. The proposals do not have to be funded at the requested level to count. Metric 3 measure quantity of proposals. This one measures quality.
5. Percentage of funds raised that offset operations expenses – 5 points
   The 5 points is earned when the percentage is greater than 20 percent. Ten to twenty percent earns 2 points instead. Almost every proposal should include funding for operations. Proposals to fund specific projects should include a paragraph that 20 percent goes to fund general operations. (I usually ask Boards to pass a resolution to that effect. Obviously it has to be OK for donors to refuse, but at least the stipulation is out there.)
6. $1,000 annual donors whose gift exceeds their previous year’s gift – 5 points
   First five result in one point each. I restricted this to donors who either gave nothing last year and gave $1,000 this year, or who gave $1,000 or more last year and increased their gift this year. We want to continually ask our most important donors to increase their commitment and their giving.
7. Use of Board Members – 5 points
   One point for the first five calls which both resulted in a gift and in which a Board member was involved in the ask. Most Development Directors are comfortable going on a call with their Executive Director, but the longer term benefit for the organization is for the Board members to shed their discomfort with cultivation and fundraising. This metric rewards including Board members in the development work.
8. Staying within Budget – 5 points
   This is pretty simple. All or nothing; you stayed within budget or you didn’t. Note that this metric implies that the Development Director knows what his/her budget is and has control over it.

The Executive Director should meet with the Development Director to review progress against these metrics at least quarterly to head off any problems and issues and to reinforce an overall environment of accountability.

One last thought on the topic of metrics: Board members should have metrics also. Board members could be held accountable for:

• Meet fundraising goals
• Make 2 contacts per quarter or 8-10 contacts per year
• Make 2 or more “asks” of $5,000 or more to qualified prospects each year
• Include at least 20% in each proposal for unrestricted operations funding
• Receive funding from at least half of the donors solicited
• Include the Executive Director or Board Chair in the cultivation/solicitation process

Thoughts on how to measure the job performance of your development staff? Please share by commenting below or emailing me directly: fundraisinghelp@sbcglobal.net.

Cheers,

-da

Photo: Snowshoeing Along the Trail, Walt Kaesler

In a little bit, I will argue for the latter, but first I want to make the case that most land trusts need a Development Coordinator before they need a Development Director. Let’s look carefully at what a Development Director does. A skilled Development Director will be a planner, strategist, facilitator, evaluator, and “director” of fundraising work. Most Executive Directors I have met expect the Development Director to “take over” the fundraising work from him/her and the Board. Good Development Directors know that this is a recipe for failure.

In the absence of fundraising staff, though, the immediate need is for someone to pick up the detail work. Get acknowledgement notes out on time, keep track of the membership renewal cycles and appeals, meet grant deadlines and track foundation reporting requirements, keep up with the filing, organize the meet and greet events, and make sure everyone’s name tag is spelled correctly. Fundraising success is all in the details, so having someone on staff whose job is to handle the details frees the ED and Board members up to raise more money in less time.

But don’t pay top dollar for a Development Director and then saddle them with the job description implied by the preceding paragraph. Hire a Development Coordinator position instead. Perhaps this person could be groomed to be a Development Director; perhaps not. Either way, be clear about getting the right job description filled first.

With a Development Coordinator in place, consider these factors:

• My Board is actively engaged in fundraising;
• My organization has face-to-face relationships with 50 donors, and I can see that we could double that number in the next few years;
• There’s so much going on that sometimes I feel like I don’t know where to start with fundraising, and it’s beginning to drain our organizational enthusiasm for fundraising;
• Our overall administrative budget is more than $200,000.

If this is you, think about hiring a Development Director this way:

1. Have a year’s salary ready for the position before you hire. Plan for the newly hired Development Director to raise his/her salary right away, but be prepared for it taking until the second year him/her to have a substantial impact.
2. Consider hiring compatible talent (see last week’s post) instead of experience; but if you hire talent, make sure you generously invest in their training and professional development.
3. Last, consider an aggressive pay increase schedule. Consider five years’ experience as worthy of $60K on the open market. Set some significant benchmarks for face-to-face donor contact, work with Board members, asks made, and dollars raised. If your talented newbie meets the benchmarks, consider merit raises between 5-15% for the first several years. Otherwise the talent you just invested in might find it more lucrative elsewhere.

I will spend a good part of 2012 helping two organizations find and train new Development Director positions, and the prospect has spurred me to devote some time to researching and sorting out my own thoughts about hiring fundraising staff for land trusts. It seems like a good January topic, and I am planning to devote the next several Blog Posts to it.

Let’s start with some survey facts from the Association of Fundraising Professionals:

• The average tenure for a Development Officer at an organization is 18 months
• The median salary for a Development Officer is $69K; $62K for environmental organizations

That’s a lot of money to risk for someone who might not last in the position very long. For non-profit organizations, there are two positions for which demand significantly exceeds supply, development and information tech. What this means is that young professionals in either of these fields can stay with an organization for years, receiving annual merit raises of 2-4 percent per year and doubling their initial salary, say, in 20-25 years, or they can job hop every 12-24 months and double their salary in 6-8 years.

If you think about this too long, it drives you crazy. It takes a full year for a new Development Director to really get a good feel for an organization, perhaps even longer for land trusts because of the internal complexity of the work. It may take as much as another year or two before a good DoD really starts hitting on all cylinders. After a three-year investment, the organization would certainly hope to get three-to five years of decent productivity out of the position. It doesn’t help if they leave after two years.

More bad news: Few tenured Development Directors would consider directing the fundraising for a land trust a stepping stone on their ideal career path. I have seen several organizations hire a seasoned development professional only to be jilted six months later when that person spied a more attractive job opening elsewhere.

So what do we do? I’ll start with five hiring principles:

1. Take the time to be picky. Have a clear search image in mind before you start the hiring process, and understand up front that it may take months to find the right person. The general rule of thumb is one month for every $10,000 in salary. For example you might start a new DoD at $40,000 (I’ll address salary more completely next week); be prepared for a four month (or longer!) search. More importantly, be prepared to throw the whole lot out and start the search over if the right candidate isn’t there to begin with.
2. Prioritize commitment to mission. The most important driver of dedication and longevity in the position is a deeply rooted commitment to your mission. Hiring passion and training for skills is easier and more reliable than hiring skills and experience and expecting the candidate to fall in love with you. Look for demonstrable evidence. Ask questions that will reveal candidates’ values related to the work your organization does.
3. Look at who’s working for other organizations. The best candidates for your job are probably already employed. One of the best fundraisers I ever hired was a sales rep from a graphic design company we used. So look at who’s working for other organizations, and particularly those with similar missions. I’m not talking about just other fundraisers. Look for overqualified support positions and interns, too.
4. Hire talent over experience. Remember that much of the work of a good Development Director is behind the scenes; in the words of Kim Klein, to oversee fundraising, rather than to actually raise money. The successful candidate will be able to quickly gain the confidence of the Executive Director and the Board Directors and will be someone they will follow through the annual fundraising activities. In this sense, good people skills and listening skills, the ability to create and manage systems, and overall attention to detail are more important qualities than prior experience with fundraising work. According to Kim Klein, “any job requiring self-motivation, good organizational skills, and planning and working with diverse groups” will show skills related to fundraising.
5. Invest in training. Assuming you do end up hiring someone with little or no fundraising experience, make sure they get adequate training right away and throughout their first few years on the job. Rally is a good venue, as well as LTA’s more regional training conferences. Got some software that is unfamiliar at first? Pay for your new hire to travel to a different land trust using the same software program to shadow someone there. AFP also offers regional and national training sessions. If you have the right candidate, this expenditure will be well worth the investment.

For an excellent primer on hiring a Director of Development, check out this article from Kim Klein.

Got a good story (or horror story) about hiring? Advice? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. If you have questions or comments about this information or anything else related to development work, please contact me at fundraisinghelp@sbcglobal.net or 608-239-5006.

Cheers,

-da

Photo: Winter Pine, Walt Kaesler

Are you as engaged in fundraising as you should be? If not, December is a great month to change that – by saying thank you.

It’s easy:

1. Look over a list of members in your area and identify at least ten members that you would be willing to call (as in – on the telephone). Make a note of their names, phone numbers, and email too if it is available.
2. Ask the appropriate staff person, or the volunteer who is in charge of thank you letters to link your name to the member in the database. (In more sophisticated databases, use the “lead” or “primary contact” designation on the donor record. For access databases, or spreadsheets, simply add a new data item or column for the Board member’s name.)
3. As donors make year-end gifts, ask that a copy of the thank you letter be sent to you (by email if possible).
4. When you call, you are calling to say Thank You, and if that is all you accomplish, that’s plenty for now. Most of the time, you will be leaving messages. However, make sure the conversation or the message contains the following minimal elements:
   • That you are a Board member – and be sure to name the organization.
   • One quick example of how the organization and its members made a difference with the clear association that individual giving made this success possible.
   • And that you look forward to meeting them or seeing them in 2012, for example at a specific event on outing of some sort. Name a specific event and date if possible.
5. If you do get them on the phone, ask how long they’ve been members, what first drew their attention to the organization, and what they like most about what the organization does.
6. Capture what you learn in bullet-form notes and make sure it gets sent to the office and into the files.

Between December and January, making ten such calls should not be a burden, and it carries the twin benefits of increasing their connection to the organization and increasing your own. You’ve heard the saying the she who chops her own wood is twice warmed. The same is true for Thank You calls.

Happy Holidays!

-da

Photo: “People at Dream Lake”, Walt Kaesler

I thoroughly enjoyed your seminar at the recent Rally and wanted to share with you an “AHA” moment that I have had since returning from Milwaukee. Using our database, which serves as the basis of our fundraising program recordkeeping, I identified our top 150 donors and created a three ring binder with printouts of the basic record information for each donor – name/address/record of donations. This is now prominently on my desk as a reminder of where my executive director and I need to focus our efforts. I make notes on each sheet as I am in contact with the donor in some way and will continue to evaluate our progress with at least four contacts per year as you recommended.

Then after struggling to decide how we were going to get a new series of films we shot this summer “out there” beyond our website, I had an AHA moment. We could duplicate DVD’s with the same graphics and images from the website onto the DVD and send a DVD with a “thank you for loyalty and support” note enclosure to each one of the 150 donors and all of our board members not included in that list. This mailing went out last week in advance of our end of the year appeal letter, which goes out next week right before Thanksgiving. Already we have gotten lots of positive feedback and I’ve had board members ask for additional DVD’s to give out to potential donors they want to contact. Just what hoped for! At our board meeting next week I’ll have plenty of additional DVD duplicates and mailers for board members to take with them as well.

Thanks again for a meaningful workshop and much food for thought.

Thanks to “Linda” for sharing her AHA moment from Rally. Do you have an AHA moment that might inspire others? Write it up and send it to me for inclusion in a future First Thing Tuesday post.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-da

Furthermore, such a person is not likely to be idle when you have a Board seat to fill. It might take several years to properly cultivate and recruit such a person to the Board. This process is not unlike that of cultivating a major donor. And if you calculate what they give to the organization over their term of service, it would certainly qualify as a major gift – but I digress.

The point is that the Board Development Committee should be looking at least 7-10 years out. What will the organization look like out there? What will be the most significant organizational challenges, and what kind of leaders will we need to overcome them? What kind of person do we need to cultivate (or get to know) NOW, so they are ready to come onto the Board in 2-3 years – so they are ready to take the lead five years from then?

Think about it.

Your comments and questions are welcomed at fundraisinghelp@sbcglobal.net

Have a great week,

-da

Refusing the gift was never seriously considered, but the land trust was confronted with all sorts of unfortunate problems related to the donor’s wish to remain anonymous. Several other prospects doubted publicly that the land trust could raise all the money. They were skeptical at the optimism expressed by land trust leaders and reluctant to give to a project they were sure would fail. Before too long, the rumor mill went to work with scenarios much worse than the reality, including one where the land trust was supposedly running a scam to buy the property and develop it themselves to great profit.

Before I go any further, let me state very clearly that a donor’s wishes with regard to anonymity must always be honored. I would never advocate violating such a restriction.

Nonetheless, anonymity rarely serves the organization, and that is increasingly true as the value of the gift grows. Anonymity, in the case study above, robbed the organization of the donor confidence that comes when 75% of the money for a particular project has been raised. Anonymity also robbed the organization of the credibility an endorsement from a prominent community citizen publicly making such a gift would have provided. The gift could have been incredibly inspiring to other donors. In fact it didn’t inspire anyone else to give and probably caused some to give less or not to give at all.

Donors wish to remain anonymous for any number of reasons associated with the attention that inevitably follows making extraordinary gifts. Maybe other organizations they support start paying extra, unwanted attention to them as prospects. Maybe they feel their friends or family (kids?) might not approve. Maybe they are simply uncomfortable with any public attention at all.

Sometimes organizations make the gift public even though it’s anonymous – not the same oomph, but better than not being able to talk about the gift at all. Sometimes organizations are able to make the case for the donor to come forward. But most of the time, anonymous gifts stay in relative obscurity.

Here are several things you can do to minimize donor anonymity:

• First of all, clearly understand the issue yourself, and talk about it openly with members of your Board. Donors making significant gifts help the organization in several ways, including setting the bar for others and inspiring them to follow suit.
• Second, do not ask, directly or indirectly, whether a donor wishes to remain anonymous. If they do, they will tell you. If not asking makes you squirm, ask how they wish to be listed, rather than asking whether they wish to be listed.
• Third, when a donor makes it clear that they wish to remain anonymous, ask questions to clarify how they feel. Seek permission to let the Board know, for example; or perhaps to share the story with other donors considering similar gifts. The donor may simply not want you to include the gift in a news release, or may wish to be excluded from published lists, such as might be found in an Annual Report.
• Finally, share with the donor any gifts that might come in that were inspired by their largesse. Knowing that their gift made a difference not just for its financial value but also for its inspirational value, can reinforce their decision in a positive way.

All organizations should have a Gift Acceptance Policy that addresses the issue of Anonymity. For a generic policy that you can modify to suit your organizational specifics, send me an email.

As always, your comments, questions, and anecdotes are welcomed here.

Have a great week,

-da

I recently completed a Development Audit for an organization whose Lapsed Member renewal letter returned a whopping 15 percent. When I dug a little deeper, I learned that they typically send out two renewal letters, both fairly short and to the point (half-page with a response coupon printed along the bottom). The renewals were done monthly. Unresponsive members were dropped until the end of the year when a two-page Lapsed Member letter (We miss you!) was mailed. Members who typically renewed between October and December did not receive the Lapsed Member letter until the end of the following year.

It was this annual letter that had gotten the large response. On the one hand, 15 percent is a terrific response and much better than the 1 percent response typical of direct mail recruitment. On the other hand, many of these same members might have responded earlier if they had been asked.

I suggested that they consider the following modifications:

• Increase the number of renewal notices to four with the last one being a letter very close in substance to the Lapsed Member letter they were already using. Each letter would be separated by one month.
• Unresponsive members should not be dropped at all, but rather carried as regular current members (President’s discretion) for an entire year afterward, at which point they would receive the entire four-letter sequence over again. Only then would unresponsive members be dropped.
• Meanwhile, they would also receive the Spring and/or Fall special appeal just as if they were current members. If they responded to one of the appeals, their gift would also count as a renewal and their renewal date would be advanced to that month.
• Remind each member of the membership gift they gave last year in every letter, and match different response cards such that they are not offered gift options less than what they gave last year.

What are you doing to get more out of your membership systems? Please send comments and questions to fundraisinghelp@sbcglobal.net.

-da

Here are some other articles I found interesting this week:

• Adult Americans send or receive an average of 41 text messages per day. 31% say they prefer texting to talking on the phone. Say what? (Article)
• New HP Study on Social Media: When people see that lots of others disagree with them, they tend to harden their position rather than being swayed to change.
• Marketing research is showing that “loss” messaging significantly outperforms “win” messaging with donors. Instead of claiming that “your donation will help save the 100-acre XYZ project,” try this: “Let’s not lose another 100 acres! Your donation will help at XYZ project.”
• Environmental nonprofits lack a compelling vision for promoting global sustainability, and without such a vision, they will fail to galvanize the support essential to protecting the earth from irreversible damage……….progress must be made piece by piece, wherever and whenever it can be made, rather than waiting to achieve a global consensus.” Is there a better argument for land trusts anywhere?

1. Be crystal clear on why you’re using social media. Most land trusts that I work with are engaged in social media because they think they have to. Take a step back. Define more general communications goals for your land trust, and identify a piece of that structure for social media. Common goals are to generate increasing community awareness of the LT, engage members more significantly in the mission, and/or drive attention to the website. Whatever your particular goals are, make sure you regularly measure results and adapt as needed. Linked-In drives more traffic to my website than almost any other search engine – that tells me something.
2. Know where your target audiences are, and focus your social media energies there. Are your major donors on Facebook? Do your members with families attend a nature walk based on what you tweeted? Does your blog generate social “conversations”?
3. Focus on doing it right, not doing it a lot. Contrary to some popular opinion, quality and regularity are as important, if not more so, than frequency. Be predictable and be engaging first. Post as often as you can reasonably sustain.
4. Consider starting with a single, time-limited campaign that’s very specific. This is pretty good advice. Tie your blog, Facebook posts, and/or tweets to a single topic (phenological events for example, or a work party or other volunteer event) over a specific, limited period of time.
5. Allocate the right time, focus and skills to enable success. Despite what you may hear, social media is not free and not easy. Put the time aside on a regular basis, and then treat that time like a serious appointment, even getting out of the office if needed. I research and write my blogs on Sunday mornings, and I carve out that time to do nothing else.
6. Be prepared to manage the cultural shift usually necessary for real social media participation. Others in your office will not just pick up something new without pushback. The business writer Peter Drucker quips that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Nancy Schwartz puts it this way: “Conversation is a different way of communicating for most organizations, and you’ll have to explain, train and share examples to move this shift along. Encouraging all-staff participation and developing a clear and consistent policy are key strategies.”
7. Measure results to focus your social media energies on what works, or fine-tune what’s not working so well. Metrics for social media are difficult and much is anecdotal. “Eyeball” measures, such as hits and likes, are useful to measure exposure, but need to be paired with “Engagement” measures such as renewal rates, participation in events, and volunteering.

The big take-home from all this is that you need to start with a communications plan. Identify audiences, voices, messaging, and branding. Then mold your social media strategy to your specific goals. Not the other way around.

Got some good examples to share? Your comments and questions are welcomed here, or by email at fundraisinghelp@sbcglobal.net.

-da

• A new study released by Dunham and Company of 487 adults who donated at least $20 in the past year reports that only 2 in 10 Americans plan to continue or increase their giving next year. 1 in ten plan to stop giving altogether.
• Giving USA has revised its estimates for 2008 and 2009 – and now says that donations fell by a higher percentage than in any other time in the past five decades.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy has several articles about declines in foundation fundraising, suggesting that it may be 2016 before donations return to pre-recession levels.
• Policy-makers at all levels of government, desperate to make ends meet, have discussed cutting back charitable tax breaks and depending on non-profit organizations to make up for reductions in government spending on social causes.

So we start getting these kind of predictable questions:

• Are we asking our donors for too much? Too often?
• Now is not a good time to ask someone for money, is it?
• Shouldn’t we wait until the economy levels out?

Here’s the bottom line: There are far more people are willing to make gifts than there are Board members willing to ask. You will hurt your organization more quickly by failing to ask than by asking for too much.

-da