Cultivating Donors Through Events

Transcription

1 Cultivating Donors Through Events Joshua D. Reichard, PhD, EdS ACSI Northeast Leadership Conference, 2017 Hand-to-Mouth Fundraising Christian Schools must move beyond hand-tomouth fundraising to fund operational gaps. Tuition should cover operational expenses. Christian should should not rely on fundraising for survival. Fundraising should be reserved for subsidizing growth, expansion, and vision-oriented projects. Beyond the Bake Sale Christian Schools must move beyond lowyield fundraisers that exhaust families and the community 1. Selling junk or candy and receiving only a portion of the profits 2. Bowl-a-thons, etc. 3. Bake sales and car washes 4. Dress-down Days While these can help fund some small operational projects (such as class parties or clubs), they are not sustainable. 1

2 Cultivating Relationships vs. Just Raising Money When a school is perceived as constantly asking for money, stakeholders become exhausted and lose faith in the mission of the school. Instead, focus on cultivating relationships with your stakeholders and allow fundraising to be secondary to those relationships. Who Are Your Stakeholders? 1. Parents and their extended families 2. Community leaders 3. Church members 4. Others? Cultivating Relationships with Stakeholders What are you doing to cultivate relationships with your stakeholders? How often do you communicate without asking for money? How often do you invite them into your school to tell them about your mission and your progress toward reaching your vision? How often do you offer tours of your school in action to stakeholders other than prospective families? How often do you intentionally invite stakeholders to your school events? Perhaps more appropriately, how often do you ask your stakeholders for money, other than regular tuition? 2

3 The Benevon Training Program ACSI sponsors an organization called Benevon, which suggests that you should only ask stakeholders for money once per year. Every other point of contact should be about building relationships, not about asking for money. The Benevon training is well worth it and ACSI offers a loan to help your school pay for it. The basic premise is strategically identify and cultivate stakeholders throughout the year, culminating with an annual breakfast and appeal. That is the only time anyone in the school should ever ask for money from stakeholders. Why the sustainable giving method seems to work. A sustainable giving approach to fundraising seems to work: 1. It demonstrates intentionality and stability on behalf of school leaders 2. It diminishes the perception of desperation 3. It elevates relationships over fundraising A More Sustainable Method of Fundraising Bakesale mentality is low-yield, exhausting, and hard to predict The Big Donor is unsustainable and is best reserved for capital campaigns Sustainable giving is predictable and dependable for the long run - the focus is on lots of smaller, sustainable gifts over time, for which you can budget and project over time. 3

4 A Sustainable Giving Fundraising Method 1. Hold monthly or even weekly scripted tours of your school at 8:00am. Let stakeholders and potential stakeholders see your school in action. 2. Keep the tour to less than an hour so people can get to work by 9:00am. 3. Offer a light continental breakfast. 4. Saturate the tour with short stories and testimonies highlighting your mission, vision, and core values. 5. Show that your school is transforming the lives of students for Christ. 6. Show that your school is contributing to your community. Some Important Tips and Strategies for Your Tours 1. Do not make it a sit and get event -- make it interactive with lots of voices and experiences packed into the hour. 2. Never ask for money! You can have a wish list on a hand-out, along with other information about your mission, but do not mention or ask for money. Remember, this is about building relationships. 3. Collect contact information from attendees and have pre-made nametags in advance. Show that you were ready to host them and you value their time. Some Important Tips and Strategies for Your Tours 1. Ask if they can be added to your mailing list. 2. Let the attendees know that they ll receive a personal phone call in the next 24 hours to discuss their experience. Remember, do not ask for money! 3. Ask them about their life -- their profession, what they care about, and how they are connected to your school. Listen and don t be quick to exploit opportunities! 4

5 Some Important Tips and Strategies for Your Tours 1. Ask them to invite someone else to attend a tour if they enjoyed it. 2. Be ready to invite them to another event where they ll be exposed to your school s mission. This could be a sports or fine arts event; ideally they need to see your students doing something positive and productive. 3. Keep in touch throughout the year with your newsletters and at least one more personal phone call. Your Culminating Event to Ask for Money 1. At the end of the school year, ideally in May, you will host an event to ask for money. Breakfasts work better than dinners. Again, you ll keep this event to an hour or less. 2. Feature a testimony from a student as the centerpiece of the event. 3. When you invite stakeholders who attended the tour, be sure to tell them that they will be asked to partner with the school financially at this event. This provides honest disclosure and allows them to prepare in advance. If they do not want to partner financially, they probably will not come to the event and you will not waste their time. Your Culminating Event to Ask for Money Send an RSVP in the postal mail and make a personal phone call to each stakeholder. Tell the attendees specifically the strategic goals for which the funds will be used. Ask for small, monthly commitments of $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, or $1,000/month for a five year period. If you have someone who wants to give more, provide the opportunity to do so on the giving card, but do not make this your central focus. 5

6 Your Culminating Event to Ask for Money This event is not about raising a capital campaign target of money; this is about building relationshipbased sustainable gifts over the long-term Make a strong appeal and ask attendees to commit at the Ask event Immediately follow-up with every attendee, whether they committed a gift or not, after the Ask event Begin to financially plan for sustainable giving over the long term Next Steps Speak with Jan Stump at ACSI about the Benevon training Register and attend the training Implement the program at your school 6