Executive Issues

The honeymoon period for nonprofit CEOs should be magical. It is the best opportunity for them to define themselves, including their vision and values, and paint a bright big picture that board members and other donors can embrace.

Executive directors and CEOs have an incredibly challenging job. In my ongoing research with nonprofit executives, they often tell me that boards hire the nonprofit leader to be a fundraiser, but they don’t allow the leader to staff the nonprofit in a way that frees her up to fundraise. As a result, many nonprofit executives find that constantly “putting out fires” crowds out strategic activities like donor involvement.

I admit it — if you follow these six steps you won’t have a model fundraising program in place. But beating your head against the wall until you finally give up isn’t a good solution, either. Start small and make sure everyone on the team knows about the successes and sees the positive notes and emails you receive from donors. Be the best cheerleader for fundraising.

Confession time. I like sentence fragments. And starting sentences with a conjunction. My high school English teacher would probably be appalled. Writing for fundraising isn’t like writing a five-paragraph essay, though. When you’re communicating with donors, it’s important to sound like a human, rather than a robot who swallowed a thesaurus.

This goal — of writing in a “voice” that connects with your donors — can be tricky to achieve. A lot nonprofit leaders seem to channel their inner English teacher when it comes to their organizations' communications.

I speak to thousands of fundraisers every year, at conferences around the world. And the question I hear most often is a plea for help: "How do I convince my boss?" Fundraisers might well be the most second-guessed professionals in the world.

What we have here is a deep and abiding lack of trust. And where's that lack of trust obvious? I see it in the weeds, among the tiny tactics that make or break success in donor communications.

No one likes a crisis. Especially nonprofit leaders like you. With life already overly busy, increased demand for your services, a constant push to increase funding and more ideas being suggested than you can possibly implement, when do you have time for a crisis? Never.

Alas, that’s the nature of crisis. Things happen when they happen, and usually when you’re least expecting it. So what do you do? Push the worry away and deal with problems if and when they happen? No, instead, you should plan. Here’s a high-level view to get you started.

Focus group respondents revealed a need for leaders to better configure the shared values, style, structure, systems, staffing and strategy within their organizations. The study’s findings were used to construct seven corrective action steps for nonprofit leaders managing the daily activities of charitable fundraisers.

A thoughtful and systematic approach to fundraising and marketing can be somewhat different for each business and circumstance but can generally be characterized as one that fosters: a strong connection between daily fundraising and marketing activities and top-level organizational goals; visibility of planned activities with sufficient flexibility to respond to surprises calmly and confidently; healthy collaboration throughout the organization, between leadership and functional teams; a reliable and scalable system supporting the planning, execution, analysis and optimization of fundraising and marketing activities; and a practical and accessible knowledge management system.

At the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation’s 2010 New York Nonprofit Conference, three top nonprofit executives joined moderator Tom Harrison, chair of Russ Reid and Omnicom's Nonprofit Group of Agencies, as well as chair of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board, to discuss these issues in a two-part session, “Cracking the Shell: Open Dialogue & Discussion With America’s Top Nonprofit C-Level Executives on the Sector’s Most Pressing Issues."

At the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation’s 2010 New York Nonprofit Conference, three top nonprofit executives joined moderator Tom Harrison, chair of Russ Reid and Omnicom's Nonprofit Group of Agencies, as well as chair of the FundRaising Success Editorial Advisory Board, to discuss these issues in a two-part session, “Cracking the Shell: Open Dialogue & Discussion With America’s Top Nonprofit C-Level Executives on the Sector’s Most Pressing Issues."