Compassion & Choices relies on ‘omnichannel’ marketing — a steady flow of consistent messaging — to fuel its fight for end-of-life rights.
David Mckenna
If you think of Girl Scouts of the USA as a quaint organization that covers its operating expenses mainly by trotting out hordes of docile recruits to sell cookies on a grand scale, you’re not alone.
You’re not right … but you’re also not alone.
Mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs — all pretty common buzzwords in the for-profit world. But, increasingly, savvy nonprofits are realizing the benefits of looking outside themselves and introducing a variety of new ventures under the umbrella of their firmly established brand.
The right projects can help an organization expand or enhance the breadth of services it offers or the reach of its service area. They can bring in new supporters and volunteers, or engage existing ones in new ways. And they can, ultimately, mean more donations.
It would be hard to imagine a fundraising challenge more daunting than the one faced by the Archdiocese of Boston in January 2002, when the nationwide sexual-abuse scandal was at its height. The task was to win back the support of area Catholics dismayed by reports that the head of the archdiocese, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, had kept on dozens of priests who had sexually abused children and adolescents.
Bernard Ross is an authority on fundraising in the nonprofit sector and an inspiring public speaker, but he wouldn’t describe himself as a motivator.
In fact, the influential 50-year-old director of the London-based Management Centre thinks the idea of motivating anyone to do anything often is nothing more than a conceit that managers harbor about themselves.
M.J. Dunion knew she had a mess to clean up six years ago when she was hired as director of development operations at Boston Medical Center, formed when a private academic medical institution and a city hospital merged. Her main task was to combine several departments that had been using different databases in fundraising efforts. She knew this largely was a matter of using the right technology as efficiently as possible.
According to conventional wisdom, the world of fundraising for nonprofit organizations includes separate camps of volunteers and donors. Donors shall give their money, volunteers shall give their time, and never the twain shall meet, right?
Not necessarily. Increasingly, fundraising officials at nonprofits are seeking volunteers willing to make the leap to financial sponsorship. Volunteers are being asked to contribute money precisely because they’re already physically and emotionally involved with the organization. If they’re more or less committed to the cause through volunteer work, it makes sense to ask them to make a monetary contribution.
