From the Ground Up: 8/30/2017. From the Session Description: What is Major Gift Fundraising?

Transcription

1 From the Ground Up: Building a Successful Major Gifts Program With Foundational Culture and Metrics CHRIS KASAVICH, MBA, CFRE From the Session Description: a successful major gifts program efficiently focuses on right action to produce right result, wrapped in a culture of collaboration to advance the mission. What is Major Gift Fundraising? 1

2 Moves Management David Dunlop, Cornell University: Changing people s attitudes so they want to give. Moves are actions you and your organization take to move someone from cultivation to solicitation. It involves being responsive to your donors needs, wants, and objections. To do effective moves management, you have to have the right plumbing in place: Database Workflow CULTURE The Prisoner s Dilemma The best solution? Tit for tat. A foundational culture of collaboration and trust is never an accident. It is a goal, but it is not a destination. Developing this culture requires careful planning of office structure, metrics which measure the right activity, adequate resourcing (financial & human) of that activity, and values driven leadership. 2

3 Before Anything Else Mission, Vision, Core Values Gift Acceptance Policies Funding Needs & Areas What Else? Office Structure Flat vs Tall Which of these supports a moves management mentality better? A good structure provides a roadmap for productive work, key communications, clear lines of succession, effective decision making and internal promotion. Figure this out before you start hiring, or address it before you start growing. If you have a very tall org chart, hiring hard charging self starters is a bad idea. What Does it Mean to Be Senior? Peter Principle Laurence J. Peter, 1969 we rise to our level of incompetence Should the best car salesman be running the dealership? Development tends to promote the best fundraisers to management. Are the skills that make a good fundraiser the same as those for a good manager? Consider multiple paths to progression for your staff. Make it possible for the great manager/adequate fundraiser to have a career. 3

4 A Team of Teams Database / CRM / Gift Processing Senior Leadership / C Suites Stewardship Annual Giving Planned Giving Major Giving Research / Writers/ ConStrats Key Volunteers / Board A Word on Data The software matters less than the content, internal connections, and overall organization and usability. You have to have someone minding the store, but everyone is in charge of the database. After the low hanging fruit has been picked is NOT the time to think about your CRM. Metrics That Matter David Dunlop, Northwestern What gets measured gets done gets fed back and done well and gets repeated. If you want an effective major gifts program, what should you be measuring? Visits? Dollars? Donors? Proposals? 4

5 Metrics What Matters Most Number of new major gift commitments Number of major gift solicitations Dollars raised Number of qualification visits Number of visits Collaboration with other field officers Metrics A Scorecard Approach Position Associate Vice President Executive Director Senior Director Director of Development Associate Director Assistant Director Sample Scorecard Management Responsibilities Number of Major Commitments (30% Weight) Number of Solicitations (20% Weight) YES YES YES YES NO NO NO What will fit best for your organization? Your field officers? Your prospect pool? (20% Weight) Dollars Raised $12M $9M $7M $5M $6M $3M $1M (15% Weight) Qualification Visits (15% Weight) Visits And what are those weights? Resource Allocation Dollars follow and fund the priorities of management. Hiring more fundraisers is usually not the solution to your problem. Do an internal needs assessment to determine where the bottlenecks and constraints are. Salary is, at best, a temporary competitive advantage in keeping talent. 5

6 The Right Stuff In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way. Tina Fey Question 3 This is a position with the intent not the guarantee! that at the conclusion of two years (give or take a couple months) a discussion will occur about your future at MD Anderson Cancer Center. While not formally written as such, I see this as an up or out position. If at the end of two years you are not ready to move up to be a Major Gifts Officer raising six figure gifts consistently a different discussion will occur about your future here. How do you feel about that? 6

7 Leadership A culture of collaboration and trust is never an accident. Leadership must consistently model the behavior it wishes to see in staff. Openness Acceptance of Failure as a Learning Experience Accountability for Results at All Levels (not just Fundraising FTEs) Consistency of Communication: Message and Delivery Lead from the front. Staff Development and Retention Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don t want to. Richard Branson A Commitment to Train (and Retain) Formal departmental mentorships Leverage professional organization mentorship programs Joint visits Weekly meetings with simple agendas StrengthsFinder assessment and discussion Requirement to read and analyze key fundraising and management texts Encourage to sit for the CFRE exam Encourage to present at conferences 7

8 What Major-Gifts Officers Think Looking for outright gifts Focused on gifts from income Donor base has high net worth Longevity as a donor is not vitally important What Planned-Gift Officers Think Looking for future money Focused on gifts from assets Donor base includes those with modest or limited incomes Longevity as a donor is central to prospect segment Planned gifts are confusing and technical Love to talk about the technical aspects of gifts Work under goal deadlines and urgency for gifts Spends a good deal of their time with middle-age donors More focused on problem-solving than closing gifts by a certain date Spends a good deal of their time with older donors A Culture of Philanthropy There is nothing more foundational to a positive development culture than staff giving. The Right Activity: Fundraising will be covered in the next session on Moves Management. 8

9 Final Thoughts Begin with the end in mind: your office and culture must support the best practice activity of major gifts work, otherwise your talented fundraisers will be at odds with the office. Donor centered fundraising should naturally involve collaboration in the office to best meet the needs of the donor and institution. Use the basic principles of Change Management to help guide changes in structure, culture, and metrics. Questions? Chris Kasavich, MBA, CFRE 9

10 PRACTICAL PLANNED GIVING CONFERENCE SPEAKER EVALUATION Date: Speaker: Name (optional): Please rate the following: Excellent Good Neutral Fair Poor I. OVERALL Were your major objectives for this session met? Was the content of the session vital, timely, substantive? Comments: II. RELEVANCE Was the subject matter directly related to the requirements of your job? Comments: III. VALUE Do you believe the benefits of this session were worth the time, effort and cost? Comments: IV. SPEAKER How was their presentation style? Did the session move along at the right pace? Did they have appropriate knowledge on the topic? Comments: V. MATERIALS Were the materials clear and organized and appropriately helpful for the session? Comments: Vi. What did you like the most about the session? VI. Any suggestions to improve future sessions? XII. How many years of gift planning experience do you have?