Earlier I have written about the 3Ps and the portfolio approach that philanthropists need to take in their efforts to do good while doing well. Here I want to focus on the importance of nonprofit leaders having a portfolio mindset when it comes to fundraising.
To help nonprofit leaders to look beyond fundraising events as the only tactic to meet its fundraising goals, the critical first step is to create a shared understanding of the charity’s strategic vision. This includes the fundraising goals; how fundraising outcomes will be evaluated and how these outcomes will impact the mission.
1. Creating a fundraising decision-making framework
The portfolio approach divides donor development into four categories—enlist, enhance, co-relate and co-create. This framework supports fundraisers, fundraising committees and Boards to maximize their impact through each of these categories.
· Enrol: The outreach efforts to engage supporters for the cause through online and offline activities. Mass or niche events, road-shows, online campaigns are good tactics for enrolment of donors.
· Enhance: Establish an in-house donor relationship enhancement effort to nurture event and campaign donors to enhance their support through regular and monthly giving opportunities. Journey with the individuals, corporates, family offices, faith or social organisations to enhance their engagement with your cause.
· Co-relate - cross-functional groups, which may include board and staff focused on communications, volunteer management, program, finance, among others, identify and generate co-relations that fundraisers can utilize to engage donors. Cause-related marketing to selected segment is one way to co-related causes and customers.
· Co-create: Fundraisers engage with existing donors to identify community needs aligned to the mission of the organisation, that the donor has not considered supporting and (often jointly) develop new solutions to address that community need.
2. Developing a values-based fundraising portfolio
The key to working collaboratively across the organization is to establish a fundraising culture focused on delivering the mission.
This means being able to communicate how the fundraising strategy is measured and how specific campaigns and methodologies contribute to increasing the success of meeting the goals. This creates trust and enables a values-based culture because every employee, Board member and volunteer can understand what really matters to the organization and see how they/ their teams are impacting the charity’s ability to mobilise resources for the mission of the organisation. This drives support for initiatives that deliver the most benefit, regardless of where the project, initiative or campaign may have originated. In a values-based culture, everyone becomes focused on achieving the charity’s strategic objectives.
The decision-making framework discussed above is a useful tool to create a supporter experience and journey that is not merely focused on donor acquisition. It is important that values are defined and expressed on a common scale so that fundraising methodologies can be compared against each other.
Fundraising thrives when there is a culture of fundraising across the organisation. One that values the importance of mobilising resources for the mission and where the Board and Executive Director / Chief Executive officer takes the lead as role models for the behaviour. Here is the transformational response of an organisation that decided that fundraising is everybody’s role within the organisation, while the fundraising team will lead, engage, monitor and report the progress of the organisational effort.
3. Evaluating the portfolio to continuously improve
The fundraising activity positioning matrix designed by Usha Menon is an example of such an evaluation tool.
The fundraising activity mapping helps the organizations to quickly understand if various fundraising initiatives are delivering what is expected and to take strategic decision on each of the initiatives in the fundraising portfolio. Such evaluation allows the Board and management to understand and make decisions that both maximize fundraising benefits (both tangible and intangible) and drives the achievement of the organisation’s fundraising strategy.
In this case the two values used as criteria for evaluation are: mission focused fundraising and strength of supporter relationship. More details on how to use the matrix are given here.
