In a recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy titled “New Rules of Attraction,” author Holly Hall talked about how the “traditional” methods of fundraising are faltering and charities are increasingly looking for ways to appeal to online donors. These methods include direct mail and telemarketing–both of which appear to be losing ground. A lot of money is being spent on “hiring extra staff members to devise and test new ideas, and are upgrading software to analyze the results.”

None of this appears to be saving money, and instead appears to be costing just as much as direct mail. Indeed, the Nature Conservancy is launching an online campaign to raise $1 million but “conservancy officials have no idea if the electronic drive will meet its goal.”

Interestingly, the article does suggest some “new approaches” things that are working well to attract new donors, including, surprisingly enough, “Making Pitches in Person.” The article then describes the efforts of World Vision, the international relief group, which asks its most loyal donors to volunteer to seek donations from other people. Apparently the organization began to recruit its donors to give presentations about giving to their colleagues at work and church. They now have 255 “Child Ambassadors” (those who give 8 presentations a year) who have recruited more than 4,000 new monthly donors. An example is:

“Vicki Casper, a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines, is World Vision’s most successful recruiter. She has single-handedly persuaded 400 people in the past two years to become monthly donors, including a passenger on a recent flight to Indianapolis. He offered to sponsor a dozen children for at least a yand, as he got off the plane, handed Ms. Casper checks for each child totaling more than $5,000.”

Hmmmm, if you are beginning to think this “new” method sounds kind of old-school, you are not alone. A consultant in the article says just that: old-school techniques such as “member-get-a-member” are gaining traction in an online world. We at Little Green Light would agree.

Little Green Light does something no other database is designed to do: it gives ambassadors, volunteers, members reaching out to their friends and acquaintances access to a database shared by a team of people—they can communicate with their team to build momentum. If Vicki Casper were using LGL, her volunteer coordinator and her whole team would have known about that $5,000 group of checks as soon as she could log in to the internet. We believe that is powerful, momentum building stuff.

LGL focuses on open, fast communication among people who want to raise money for the organization they love. Contact us now at info@littlegreenlight.com if you want a speedy, user-friendly tool to help you stay on task and communicate with your team about fund raising.

Best,

Chris Bicknell

Today I learned that a number of foundations would give more money to collaborations than they would to individual requests! I attended the Philanthropy Partners Conference hosted by the Maine Philanthropy Center today at the beautiful Samoset resort in Rockport, Maine.

The conference was an important opportunity to hear from funders and non-profits alike on topics such as:

• Funders Collaborate?!
• Nonprofit Collaboration – Making It Real and Making It Work: Experiences from the Field
• Listening to Your Partner: What Nonprofits and Funders Value Most About Each Other
• Building Nonprofit Capacity: How Grantmakers are Strengthening the Sector
• Project vs. Operating Support: The Oldest Debate in Grantmaking
• Nonprofit Mergers – By Choice or by Necessity But Not a Dirty Word Anymore
• Investing in Change: Grantmaking and Public Policy

The tone for the conference was set by Rip Rapson, head of the Kresge Foundation who spoke about how foundations needed to change a great deal to really help non-profits achieve the greatest impact possible.

As you can see from the headings of sessions listed above, collaboration was a key theme of the day. Funders spoke of their need to collaborate to tackle big problems and non-profits spoke of their collaborative efforts–both successful and unsuccessful.

One participant asked the collaborator funders to comment on how much time it takes for non-profit people to collaborate and wondered if there was some technology answer that would help build community and trust while also saving some time. The answer from one of the funders (who was recently wowed by Little Green Light) was that “Yes!” Technology can help and is being used in a project he’s working on to increase communication and knowledge sharing among distant participants of a network.

Several other funders stated it simply: “Non-profits who really collaborate shouldn’t worry that their ’slice of the pie’ will decrease. In fact, they all agreed they would give more money in new and more challenging places to true collaborative projects.”

We at Little Green Light find this to be very encouraging and we’re pleased we’ve designed an easy to use tool for our clients to use when they work together on projects. The communication is so simple and the transparency among partner organizations so complete–trust comes naturally!

Best,

Chris Bicknell