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Monthly Archives

May 2018

May 29

The art of major gift fundraising

By Sponsor Insight

Editor’s Note: Gene Tempel, Ed.D., Founding Dean Emeritus of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI and president emeritus of the Indiana University Foundation, contributed content for this article.

By Abby Rolland, Content Coordinator, the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI  

“Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving.”
— Henry A. “Hank” Rosso, founder of The Fund Raising School

For Angela Gill, sharing the joy of giving is one of the best parts of her job as Executive Director of the Major Hospital Foundation in Shelbyville.

That’s a good thing, because the health-care system her foundation serves is expanding. In the past few years, it has opened a new hospital and health campus and partnered with Veteran Health Indiana to open a new garida.net veterans’ clinic. And this year, it will begin building a new nephrology center to focus on kidney health, thanks to a donor’s generosity.

Gill is aided in helping donors find the joy in giving by her extensive professional experience — including holding key roles at the Blue River Community Foundation and Shelby County United Fund before joining the Major Hospital Foundation in 2006 — and her graduate education. She earned her master’s degree in philanthropic studies from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI in 2011.

Since graduating, Gill has applied that knowledge, including an understanding of the art of fundraising, to her work. Recently, the foundation was awarded a major gift from a generous donor to build a freestanding nephrology center. Gill spoke about the process of securing this gift – a years-long process that began with a small gift from an interested individual.

“I had hoped this gentleman might be interested in the work of the hospital and the foundation,” she said. “He’s pretty savvy – he started by making a small gift to see what we would do about it, how we would respond. I stayed in touch with him and let him know everything we were doing.”

Fundraising, Gill said, depends on developing trust and mutual understanding over time.

That echoes advice that Dr. Gene Tempel, founding dean emeritus of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and president emeritus of the Indiana University Foundation, shared in a recent podcast for The Fund Raising School.

“The art of fundraising,” Tempel said, is “the creativity and engagement that are part of the way that fundraising has to be done.” It’s the art that must accompany the science and the technique of fundraising.

For one thing, Tempel said, fundraising is “about listening more than speaking, so that one begins to understand the donor. Listening is about 75 percent of the interaction. One needs to have empathy for the donor, to be able to see the world in which the donor lives from the donor’s point-of-view, to identify with and engage with the donor.”

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“The First Day from The Fund Raising School” is a weekly, 10-minute podcast that provides fundraisers and philanthropy professionals with current news, ideas and research. Hosted by Bill Stanczykiewicz, director of The Fund Raising School at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, it is available through The Fund Raising School App as well as iTunes and Google Play. A video version is also available on The Fund Raising School’s LinkedIn page.

Thinking about making a master’s degree a reality? The Master of Arts in Philanthropic Studies degree can be earned online, in person, or by combining those options.

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“Hank Rosso, the founder of The Fund Raising School, frequently said, ‘Fundraising is the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving,’” Tempel said. “The joy of giving part is really important – one can sense when the donor might find joy in the gift that is being sought. And when the donor finds joy in the expression of a gift, that’s when we have the possibility of a major gift.”

For Gill, collaborating with the major donor to find that joy involved relationship building and exploring how the donor’s interests and the mission and needs of her organization might line up. As the relationship progressed, the donor shared that he would be interested in making a major gift.

“We showed him the drawings and gave him an explanation of what a nephrology center would do,” Gill said, noting that the new center will serve thousands of people every year and will provide a continuum of care to people living in Shelby County. “He was interested and agreed to support it and put his late wife’s name on the center, which we’ll be building later this year.”

Tempel’s insights underscore the value of such collaboration for the donor as well as the organization.

“So often we think of transformational gifts as gifts that transform the organization somehow and have a major impact on the organization. And certainly that’s a valid way of thinking about a big idea, a big gift might help fund a big idea that changes the organization,” he said.

“But it’s most important to think about how the gift might transform the donor, how the gift might make an impact on the donor’s life and see the possibility of something happening that the donor could not or did not have the thought of doing before. When one can help a donor make a transformational gift, a gift that transforms the donor’s life, that’s when we have complete satisfaction and perhaps joy in making the gift from the donor’s perspective.”

Gill shares some additional thoughts for fundraisers to keep in mind when collaborating with major donors:

  • Make sure you have a good relationship with people within your organization. “For me, keeping the door open with the administration and the board of the hospital is extremely important so that both parties know what is going on and are on the same page about both the project and the prospective gift.”
  • Know your donor. “If you go in to a meeting about a gift without knowing what the donor supports, it can be difficult.” Listen carefully and do your research so you know from the outset that what you’re proposing is likely to be a good match.
  • Do the right thing. “If you treat people the right way and listen to them, good things can come your way. They learn to trust you, like what you’re doing, and want to become a part of that work.”

Abby Rolland is the content coordinator at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and a current student in the philanthropic studies graduate certificate program. She has plans to enroll in the full master’s degree. Prior to her current role, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA with Second Helpings, Inc. She is passionate about nonprofits and the impact they have in local and global communities.

May 21

Branding with heart

By Sponsor Insight

By Chad Stuckey, founder and Chief Creative Officer and Blair Wieland, Chief Strategic Officer and Partner, BIG

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Visit gotobig.com to learn more, and say hi.

May 21

Children’s Commission gains a foothold

By Legislation

By Lynn Sygiel, editor, Charitable Advisors

Indiana, like most states in the country, has no shortage of vulnerable, at-risk children. Indiana’s kids, however, may be more fortunate than others in that they have friends in high places.

The state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush and state Sen. Travis Holdman (R-Markle) have been strong advocates for Indiana’s children for a large portion of their time in public service. Both have spent significant time at the grassroots level learning about issues affecting this population.

For Rush, it included volunteering in the 1980s as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), making recommendations to a judge on behalf of neglected or abused children, and as a judge, visiting the institutions where she would sentence young people. Holdman has been associated with Child Protection Services in Indiana for over 40 years.

Five years ago, they worked in concert to affect state-level change. They advocated and tenaciously supported the creation of the Commission on Improving the Status of Children in Indiana. Holdman saw a need and sponsored the legislation and said Rush and others worked doggedly to support the effort. Both believed there needed to be regular attention paid to improving the status of children.

 

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“There were so many different entities that touch children, but there was no coordination between the entities. When we did research for the children’s commission, we found 31 committees or commissions on the record books dealing with children and child-related issues,” said Rush who has served as chief justice since 2014. Over a year, they did a global overview and determined that a children’s commission could pull all these entities together.

Although Holdman said there was no one incident that led to the commission’s creation, the overarching reason was that with the many parts and pieces and different agencies, it often resulted in duplication of services and payment.

Established by Senate Bill 125 in 2013, the 18-member commission includes leaders from the executive, legislative and judicial branches of state government, but more importantly, its positions are specifically named in the statute. Five members form the executive committee and the commission chairmanship rotates among the three branches of government.

Holdman said from the start they were adamant that the leader of a division be the representative.

“Bill drafters wanted to add ‘designee.’ We said, ‘No, we’re not going to put that language in because they will never come to a meeting, if we do that.’ The commissioner of health, the superintendent of public instruction, and the attorney general, all of those leaders need to be personally involved so that we get their attention, and they help determine how to resolve issues for children.

“I think having all three branches is what makes it unique from other states,” said Holdman who rotated off the commission and was replaced by Sen. Erin Houchin (R-Salem). Not all states have commissions, and Indiana’s was scheduled to sunset in 2019. That, however, was changed to 2029 in the most recent legislative session.

Last September, Julie Whitman became the commission’s first full-time executive director. Previously she was Indiana Youth Institute’s (IYI) vice president of Statewide Engagement and Advocacy, and also served as a co-chairperson for the commission’s data sharing and mapping committee.

At the commission’s inception, Rush said that data-gathering was among the most important things it would do. And Whitman is well poised to help make that happen. For the past 24 years, one of IYI’s annual publications has been the KIDS COUNT data book, which provides easily accessible, reliable data regarding childhood well-being in five categories: families and communities, economy, education, health and safety. Whitman believes the commission takes it one step further.

“I think that the commission picks up where KIDS COUNT leaves off, in the sense that the data book gives a general picture of the state. Then these guys are tasked with researching, ‘OK, now what do we do about it? What are other states doing about it?’ So they’re doing a different type of research. Really looking at interventions and best practices and policies,” she said.

One of the first important tasks that the commission did, Holdman said, was to build an inventory of all the services around the state. It helped the commission learn where the gaps and holes in services were geographically.

The commission has also been able to raise the visibility of issues, like infant mortality.

“We brought that to light, got Governor Pence’s attention and the state held the first infant mortality symposium. So as much as anything, it’s not doing the work itself, but bringing the issues to light for the public to be aware of it. Folks in a lot of different communities have stepped up to the plate to address the issue locally,” said the senator who has represented his district since 2008.

Rush said a tangential effect is collaboration.

“You have people who have never sat around the table who are dealing with state-wide policies who have never communicated with each other. When you get different people who care, it’s really interesting to see how these partners help,” she said.

At the start, the commission met quarterly for four hours. When Whitman came on board, she did a listening tour. The majority mentioned the length of meetings. Now the group meets more frequently — six times a year for two hours. Meetings are held from 10 a.m. to noon on the third Wednesday of each month.

And they have made progress.

The commission is not doing this work in isolation. Four task forces provide insight and expertise, each representing one priority of the strategic plan — Child Safety and Services, Educational Outcomes, Mental Health and Substance Abuse and Juvenile Justice and Cross-system Youth.

“None of the commission members sit on the task forces. Altogether under the Children’s Commission umbrella, we have about 150 people working on issues, and that includes the commission members themselves,” said Whitman. The committees include individuals from both government agencies and nonprofit leaders. About 30 to 40 percent are non-governmental employees.

“The commission has really said to these task forces, ‘You are the subject matter experts, bring us your recommendations, we want to take action and create policies that really are driven by what works in the field,’” said Whitman.

“Even though they’re volunteers, they’ve agreed to do this work and hold each other accountable. We’ve started a process where every task force reports out at every commission meeting, so I think this helps them just stay invested in the work and really make sure these objectives are moving forward,” she said.

When the task force is ready to bring a recommendation to the commission, it asks to be placed on the commission’s agenda. At the commission meeting, there is a hearing that includes discussion and questions.

Whitman provided two concrete accomplishments since the fall.

One identified need was additional mental health therapists and counselors. The Mental Health and Substance Abuse Task Force was charged with researching what could be done at the state level to increase the available number. A subcommittee discovered a specific barrier to state licensing: Indiana law has an internship requirement of 1,000 hours, whereas most nationally accredited programs require only 700.

So the committee offered a recommendation to change that requirement, which was approved unanimously, and according to Whitman, also came up with an innovation.

“Once an individual has an initial clinical license, he or she has to have hours of supervision from a person with the same type of licensing. In rural areas, especially, it can be a challenge to find a supervisor who has a specialization to get the required hours of face-to-face supervision,” she said.

So the task force recommended that 50 percent of those hours be virtual to ease the burden.

Both recommendations were approved unanimously. That particular task force is chaired by Sen. Randall Head (R-Logansport), and he filed that bill with the Indiana General Assembly that made it all the way through.

“I thought that was a pretty exciting win for this past year,” said Whitman.

Another example was from the Child Safety and Services Task Force. One of its objectives is addressing teen suicide in Indiana. That task force researched Zero Suicide Academy, which is a policy approach and designed specifically for hospital emergency departments and community mental health centers to make sure that the safety net has no holes and that those contemplating suicide don’t fall through the cracks.

“After completing the research, the task force recommended that the commission endorse the academy. WFYI was at the commission meeting and broadcast a segment. There was greater public awareness. I was able to reach out to the head of the hospital association and say, ‘Hey, the Children’s Commission has just approved this, can you get this information out to your hospital members?” And he was very happy to do so. And that kind of power of collaboration and just raising awareness sometimes, can get an initiative a little further than maybe it would have gotten otherwise,” said Whitman.

Diverse perspectives can help clarification language. Recently at a meeting, there was a discussion about the words “wrap-around services.”

“Some folks who are steeped in the mental health field said ‘wrap-around’ has a very particular meaning within the mental health world, which we think actually is not what was meant here. We think it’s actually school-based services. So they re-worded that objective, and the commission said fine,” said Whitman.

“I think there’s a kind of deference and respect in both directions between the commission and the task forces, so when those subject matter experts come and say, ‘We just wanted to clarify and make sure this was your intent,’ the commission has a great respect for the expertise in those groups.”

So what’s next? Whitman said that the commission is waiting for the Department of Child Services assessment report in June and assumes it will affect what the commission is doing.

“I’m not sure we’re where we need to be, but at least we have a framework in place that we can use to monitor what’s going on to get a better handle on it,” said Holdman.

Whitman said she would love the state to get to a point where we have an overall vulnerable youth dashboard, children’s budget or fiscal map and match them up.
“Ultimately we need to say, ‘What’s the return on investment? What are we doing as a state for kids? Is it as effective as it can be? Is it as efficient as it can be?”