By Leslie Wells, assistant director of communications, O’Neill School at IUPUI
As two teenage girls stood before the Batesville, Indiana, City Council, they waited to make their case for funding. The Batesville Mayor’s Youth Council had received $5,000 through the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority’s (ICHDA) My Community, My Vision grant program (MCMV). If they couldn’t come up with another $7,000, they’d have to take their public art project back to the drawing board.
In the crowd at the council meeting was Stacy Robinson, a public affairs graduate student from the O’Neill School at IUPUI. She had been working with the Mayor’s Youth Council for months through her My Community, My Vision Fellowship at the O’Neill School. Her assignment: to help the teens develop a proposal that would bring national artist Kelsey Montague to Batesville to paint two interactive murals.
“The meeting actually was a little tense,” Robinson recalls. “Some of the city councilors didn’t like their idea.”
Former Indiana Lieutenant Governor Sue Ellspermann started MCMV in 2014 to bring development to Indiana communities and engage young people. Every year, youth-led organizations from across the state apply to the program. Each group selected receives a $5,000 grant toward a community development project. They are also paired with an O’Neill IUPUI graduate student who guides them through the process. As part of the fellowship, each grad student receives $10,000 over the course of two semesters.
Wolley and O’Neill Associate Professor Adam Eckerd helped create the partnership with ICHDA and bring the MCMV grant program fellowship to the school.
“Students come into an MPA program eager to foster policy change and make communities better, but they don’t often get the opportunity to see that change actually happen,” says Eckerd. “The My Community, My Vision program allows our grad students to get hands-on experience using what they’re learning to lead real positive change in Indiana communities, while also having an influence on high school students who will be future public leaders.”
That combination is why Robinson applied for the fellowship. She came to the O’Neill School because of its reputation in the nonprofit world. Yet experiences like this one help her learn how to apply her education to any sector.
“I liked the idea of learning more about how local government works while working with youth,” said Robinson. “They’re at an interesting time in their lives when they care so much about what’s happening around them, but they often aren’t given opportunities to make change happen.”
Once she was paired with the Mayor’s Youth Council, Robinson sat down with the teens to get a better understanding of what they wanted to do and why.
“They already had community surveys that told them there wasn’t a lot for young people to do,” she says. “They wanted to make Batesville feel like a more vibrant place that young people would want to come back to after graduation.”
Robinson taught the enthusiastic teens to think critically about how to turn their artistic dreams into reality. She worked with them on how to evaluate the project and get more feedback from their neighbors. That community buy-in, Robinson told them, was critical.
“If the community doesn’t like an idea selected by a small group of people, that’s not a good public art project,” she said. “You need to make sure the community is on board with it.”
Not only did the community support the project, but so did the city council. At the meeting, they agreed to cover the remaining costs and move the Youth Council’s plan from paper to paint. Since last summer, two murals now enhance downtown. The first is a tree swing painted on Miss Shannon’s Music Studio in the Batesville Shopping Village. The second, a butterfly mural, is on Hillrom’s Training Center on Walnut Street.
Kim Linkel, an advisor for the Youth Council, says Robinson’s guidance not only made the project better but also helped the teens develop leadership skills.
“Stacy always allowed them to drive the project,” Linkel says. “They’ve realized that they’re not just some club that doesn’t make an impact. They see that, even though they’re young, they can drive change in their community.”
Their newfound confidence came through in the City Council meeting. The teens presented a strong case and convinced councilors to provide additional funding to cover the remaining cost for the murals.
The My Community, My Vision partnership paid off for Batesville, its Mayor’s Youth Council members, and for Robinson.
“It was a really positive experience,” she says. “It was great to actually be able to put things into action that we learned in the classroom and I enjoyed working with the youth. They made me feel excited and hopeful about the future.”
Leslie Wells joined the O’Neill School at IUPUI as its assistant director of communications in 2018. She previously spent more than a decade in broadcast news and three years as media relations manager at the Indiana Youth Institute.
By Abby Rolland,
communications project manager at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
For more than a
decade, the Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) has conducted research to answer this
question. Known for its studies that specifically focus on gender and giving, the
institute doesn’t just report on the findings, but incorporates practical
perspectives and applications in every study it conducts.
When Jeannie Sager joined WPI as director early this year, she was especially drawn to WPI’s mission to curate and disseminate research.
“Sager will be a dynamic new director guiding the next phase of our
Women’s Philanthropy Institute, which is helping to understand the full
potential of women in philanthropy and the potential of women’s philanthropy to
transform the world,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the
school. “Her experience working with women philanthropists as donors and
volunteers will further inform the institute’s work, and her strategic,
creative leadership style will help launch a new decade of excellence for WPI.”
An established
leader in philanthropy and fundraising, Sager brings a wealth of expertise and
more than 25 years of nonprofit leadership and development experience in a
variety of fields, including higher education, independent schools and
healthcare.
At the Indiana
University Health Foundation, she was part of the leadership team that created
a flagship statewide foundation from several disparate hospital foundations
that collectively exceeded its first-year fundraising goal by more than 330%.
Sager also
built a full-scale development program from the ground up at University High
School of Indiana, raising over $30 million in private philanthropic support by
establishing a major gifts program focused on annual gifts.
She believes
nonprofits must form deeper relationships with donors by creating community,
establishing personal connections with potential donors, encouraging longevity
and donor education and inspiring deeper engagement. Nonprofit practitioners,
she said, should incorporate easy-to-understand research findings into their
daily work as they help donors — women and men — discover their passions and
reasons for giving.
She recently
shared two donor anecdotes from her firsthand experiences that illustrate how
WPI research can be embedded into practitioners’ daily experiences and help
inform donor strategy.
“I worked with a woman on her first ever
“major” gift. It was the largest personal gift that she ever made. She was
inspired to make this gift as an opportunity to give back to her department in
honor of two physicians whom she felt invested in her at the beginning of her
career. So, she wanted to create a staff education fund to help other team
members have the opportunity for professional development to hopefully inspire
them to choose that area of healthcare as their specialty.
“She was very adamant about the idea of an
endowment and having these funds available in perpetuity and not subject to
budget constraints. Moreover, she was resolute about finding others to match her
gift and to achieve a goal of $100,000. She was willing to personally
solicit her network of colleagues, both retired and current employees, her
family and grateful patients.”
APPLICATION: Consider the various ways that
women donors engage with each other in giving.
Women also appear particularly interested and involved in collaborative giving, especially compared
to men. The donor in the story personally solicited her own network for
donations to the staff education fund, illustrating her desire to engage others
and give collaboratively to set up the fund.
Leveraging and maximizing dollars for greater
impact can be seen in the growth of giving circles. From 2007 to 2016, the number of giving circles tripled, with women making up the majority of members
in 70% of giving circles. It’s estimated that giving circles have given as much
as $1.29 billion since inception to 2016.
Women also report needing first-hand
involvement to increase their motivations for giving. The donor above felt a
strong connection to the department that she dedicated her career to, and
wanted to help support other nurses and staff long-term.
According
to the report “Where Do Men and Women Give?”
female-deciding
households are more likely to give to health (like the woman above), youth and
family, and international causes. In couples when the wife is the sole
decision-maker, the household is more likely to be motivated to give by
believing that their gift will make a difference.
“When
working in the independent school space, we often engaged in discussions with
spouses or adult children about considering a gift to the school that honored
and equaled the time and talent that their spouse or mother had invested in the
school — imagine hundreds of hours serving as PTO president, working open
houses, organizing fundraisers and working concession stands, etc.
“Reframing
their spouse’s or mother’s time in terms of value helped elevate a major gift
conversation.
“Women
philanthropists tend to give more than money. In addition to being more likely
to donate than men, they also are more likely to volunteer — and volunteer
more hours on average — compared to men. In other words, women give of their
time and talent, for example as PTO presidents, board members, and fundraising
committee members, in addition to giving their treasure.”
APPLICATION: When approaching a woman donor or
those close to her, consider the time, talent, treasure, and testimony she has
given your organization.
Women tend to engage philanthropically beyond
giving money. Fundraisers should keep in mind that
potential women donors may desire a
deep and first-hand connection to the causes that they care about. Women donors
may require a deeper level of engagement from the organizations to which they
donate — from serving as a volunteer or a board member, to requesting frequent
communication and updates about their donation.
Women’s
monetary donations are important, but keep in mind the many other ways women
show their generosity. They volunteer, and they use their networks and their
voices to galvanize further support for causes they care about. In an estimate of informal giving over the last 10 years, 72% of Americans said
they helped a stranger, and 42% said that they volunteered. Women are also more likely to volunteer than
men. As a result,
there’s large potential to engage potential donors, including the woman herself
as well as her family members, by illustrating the impact that she’s had on the
organization.
The bottom-line is as development professionals, think about the last few times that you interacted with women donors. If you can’t think of those interactions, why not? If you’re speaking to only men donors, who or where are the women in their lives that might be involved in those giving decisions? Why are they important to include? Take the time to analyze and evaluate your donor solicitations, and think of how including women will help your fundraising grow.
Abby Rolland serves as the communications project manager at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and is also working towards a master’s degree in philanthropic studies. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Gettysburg College.
By Kevin Kidwell, vice president national tax-exempt sales, OneAmerica®
If you oversee or coordinate your employer-sponsored retirement plan or have a team that’s in charge, you’ve no doubt heard about the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act. Passed by Congress and signed by the president on December 19, 2019, it’s a major bill that affects all Americans.
Like any complex piece of legislation, the SECURE Act impacts companies like OneAmerica®, who administer employer-sponsored retirement plans and are now carefully studying the implications. For our experienced professionals, evaluating and addressing the SECURE Act provisions with clients and financial professionals has been a labor of love ─ especially for our tax-exempt business, because, as our leadership has long said, “Tax exempt is in our DNA.”
This landmark legislation, five years in the making, provides the most significant changes to the retirement industry in more than a decade. In general, the most dramatic changes are to traditional 401(k) plans. However, because nonprofits and healthcare organizations, schools and government agencies are unique and complex, it’s equally important for those who represent tax exempt plans to make sure they remain compliant.
Our analysis uncovered three main takeaways that should fuel important discussions for nonprofits:
We have time to sort it out. The IRS and U.S. Department of Labor have yet to provide key additional guidance, and until then “good faith compliance” is the requirement.
It’s unlikely that the legislation will require you to overhaul your existing employer-sponsored plan. The SECURE Act provides more opportunities and options – such as potentially combining forces with fellow organizations – that could allow your organization to take advantage of scale.
Most likely, the government isn’t done making what they see as improvements to the retirement plan landscape. (Note: Effective dates may also be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The SECURE Act contains nearly 30 provisions designed to increase the availability and use of employer-sponsored retirement plans. They may or may not apply to every participant, company or plan.
Here are some areas the SECURE Act may affect:
Accessibility
Increases the automatic enrollment cap to 15% for safe harbor automatic enrollment plans. (A safe harbor is a provision in a law or regulation that affords protection from liability or penalty under specific situations, or if certain conditions are met.)
Creates opportunities for long-term (by necessity or choice) part-time workers to participate in 401(k) plans.
Contains additional provisions that make offering retirement plans more affordable for small businesses, including tax credits (up to $5,000) and elimination of outdated barriers to joining multiple employer plans (MEPs).
Lifetime income
While retirement plan sponsors are currently required to regularly notify participants of the value of their plan (including the balance), employers will need to also provide defined contribution participants with an estimate of the monthly income as if an annuity were purchased (even if no annuity option is available).
The act provides for a fiduciary safe harbor for selecting a lifetime income provider (usually an insurance company). While selecting a lifetime income option is a fiduciary responsibility, the act absolves the fiduciary of the liability should the provider’s financial condition deteriorate after selection.
If a plan-level decision is made to eliminate the lifetime income option, the plan must allow the participant to take an in-kind direct rollover of the option.
Longevity
The act removes the maximum age for traditional IRA contributions.
The act increases the age for the start of required mandatory distributions (RMD) from age 70.5 to age 72. Those participants between 70.5 and 72 must begin taking the RMD by April of the year following their voluntary exit from their employer or their termination of employment. (NOTE: Due to recently passed CARES Act related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the requirement for RMDs for those over 70-1/2 has been waived for 2020).
HERE ARE SOME FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Q: Are recordkeepers supposed to contact plan sponsors about optional provisions? A: No. While the SECURE Act provides for increased access to retirement preparation, many of the provisions are optional. Plan sponsors are encouraged to reach out to their record-keeper to discuss the provisions and determine which may be appropriate for their plan.
Q: If an individual didn’t take the Required Minimum Distribution (=
Q: What are these MEPs (Multiple Employer Plans) and PEPs (Pooled Employer Plans) everyone is talking about? A: The MEPs were available as an option before the SECURE Act. They are typically appealing to organizations where there was a nexus between otherwise unrelated employers and a “commonality of interest” such as an industry association. These opportunities are primarily steered toward 401(k) and while there are advantages, there are also disadvantages. The SECURE Act created PEPs – Pooled Employer Plans, but that doesn’t apply for tax exempt or 457 government plans (457 is a type of nonqualified, tax advantaged deferred compensation retirement plan that is available for governmental and certain nongovernmental employers).
Q: What’s the post-death beneficiary rule? A: This applies to retirement accounts where the participant dies and an heir or loved one is the recipient or beneficiary. The money can’t accrue indefinitely and the inheritor(s) is required to deplete that account by the end of the 10th year after the person’s passing, with exceptions provided for minor children of the deceased, disabled or chronically ill beneficiaries or beneficiaries no more than 10 years younger than the deceased. So, someone who inherits a retirement plan account in 2020 will have to have withdrawn it by 2030, noting the exceptions above.
Q: What about the new in-service distribution changes? A: Section 457(b) government plans reduced the in-service distribution age to 59.5 from what was previously allowed at age 70.5.
Q: What about the penalties? A: All retirement plans must file a Form 5500 for every year the plan holds assets. Failing to do that will result in penalties for late filing of IRS Form 5500. These fines increase from $25 a day to $250 a day, and the maximum penalty will rise from $15,000 to $150,000.
As the industry continues to comb through the new legislation and awaits required guidance in areas of the legislation that isn’t clear, OneAmerica continues to:
Solicit and analyze additional IRS and DOL guidance.
Educate plan sponsors on the SECURE Act and its provisions.
Engage and partner with plan sponsors to discuss decisions to be made regarding plan changes, including mandatory and optional provisions.
In Kevin Kidwell’s role as vice president of national tax-exempt sales, he works to provide ideas, knowledge, information – both technical and practical – in an effort to facilitate improved plan and participant outcomes. Kidwell has held various positions within the Retirement Services division since 1988. Beginning in 2000, his exclusive focus has been on healthcare and tax-exempt organizations.
Like the proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child,” it also takes a village to develop competitive grant proposals. The more resources and team members you include when creating grant proposals, the more you will be able to paint a compelling picture of your organization and the project in which you are seeking funding.
With the increasingly competitive nature of foundation grants, best practices suggest including staff, participants, volunteers, community partners, and funders within your organization’s “village” to develop strong proposals. There are more than a million charitable organizations registered with the Internal Revenue Service in the United States (National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2019). Just like fundraising focused on individual donors, it is a competitive world when trying to secure foundation grants.
Your grant proposal may be developed by the best writer around, however it will fall short without preparation, planning, and input from all perspectives of the organization. It is essential to identify and utilize all contributors that comprise your village to set you up for optimal success.
Before creating the most competitive proposal, it is necessary to build your village by getting to know who the funders are in the area.
Find your funder community
Learning about who provides grants in your community is the first step in the grants process. Researching, identifying prospects, and cultivating relationships are key components needed when getting to know the local, regional, and national funding landscapes.
Research: There are various databases available to search for funding prospects. At Hedges, we have found that the Foundation Center’s online directory, https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/, is a robust and comprehensive tool providing information about grant funders through keyword and name searches. The directory is available through a paid subscription or for free at the Indianapolis Public Library’s Central Library.
Additional free resources to conduct your searches include: the IRS informational tax return (also known as the 990) available on guidestar.org, topical list serves, Google searches, foundation websites and newsletters. Of course, word of mouth is also a valuable resource so asking your board of directors, community partners, volunteers, and staff to keep their eyes and ears open for grant opportunities is good practice.
Identifying prospects: Once you have identified potential grantors, you will need to narrow your list to only those that are the best match for your organization. Things to consider when identifying prospects include: the focus or purpose areas in which the funder has an interest; similar grants funded, range of grant awards amounts; geographic requirements. Linkages to executive and volunteer leadership are also important.
Thorough research to determine a match with each prospect is imperative. Determining the priorities and interest areas of each foundation is important down to the keywords used. Even the difference between a food pantry and a food bank is notable as is the differences in college readiness and college-success programs. Without a strong match, there is less of a likelihood that your proposal will be funded.
Cultivating relationships: Similar to relationship building with your individual donors, cultivating relationships with foundation staff and board members is critical. This is particularly true with local foundations. Many foundations in Central Indiana encourage or require an in-person meeting, phone call, or other means of communication to share project ideas before an application can be submitted. When in doubt, take every opportunity to get to know funders whenever possible through invitations to coffee, onsite tours and other programming and fundraising events, and engaging funders through social media and other communications.
Another way to cultivate funder relationships is through networking. Share names of foundation leadership, with your board, staff, and volunteers to determine if anyone has connections. Our clients are often able to get a foot in the door because of board affiliations. And as the relationship is developing, do not hesitate to seek advice from potential funders about the work your organization does. Through the grants process, they have a pulse on the community and what programs are successful. With further cultivation, these relationships then can lead to deeper involvement and increased financial support for the organization over time.
Now that you have identified grant funders, it is time to develop your proposal. Here are two tips you will want to consider when using your village for the most competitive proposal:
Share your story
Most funders want to understand why there is a need for your project and organization and how your organization measures impact. Use available data to strengthen your grant proposals by illustrating the need and the expected results.
Community data sources: There are several online tools that provide demographics and statistics by census tract, neighborhood, city, county, region and state. SAVI is a project of The Indiana University Purdue University (IUPUI) Polis Center and is known as one of the first and largest community data-information systems in the country (www.savi.org, 2020). Additional data sources include the U.S. Census Bureau and Stats Indiana. Scholarly articles and studies on the specific issues that your organization addresses are also available through Google Scholar.
Measuring impact: To measure impact it is best to create a logic model. The logic model serves as a roadmap for your program and organization, including what resources you need to implement the program, the activities that will take place, the frequency of the activities and number of participants, and how the activities have impacted participants. A comprehensive overview of logic models is described in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide.
Logic models serve as a foundation for strong impact measurement. By clearly defining the program’s short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes and associated activities, standardized evaluation tools can then be researched to ensure proper measurement of key outcomes. The data to be collected and measured can be captured through a variety of methods including surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, intake forms and staff observations. A few years ago, one of our clients went through a process to develop a comprehensive research-based program logic model. As a result of the logic model and data collection, they were able to show program impact and were awarded a grant from a funder who had declined a grant proposal in the past because there wasn’t a way to show program impact.
Prime your program experts
Tap into your organization’s program experts and make them an integral part of your grant proposal process. Their expertise and input will strengthen every component of your grant proposal. Key program experts include program and financial staff, program participants, community partners, and advocates.
Program staff: The program staff are working on the front lines and implementing programs and services. As logic models and proposals are developed be sure to include them in planning to ensure that the project created is feasible and realistic. A logic model can also serve as a strong training tool for new staff. And remember that front line staff can share stories and accomplishments that will help you, the grant writer, make an inspiring and compelling case for support.
Financial staff: Program and organizational budgets are another way to share your organization’s story, demonstrating how you plan to utilize the requested grant funds, and why a funder’s investment is important for program or project success. If you aren’t already, become good friends with your organization’s Chief Financial Officer, controller, bookkeeper or other staff that are responsible for the finances. Budgets and other financial statements are frequently required as attachments for grant proposals to show fiscal organizational health. Financial staff are the best resource in ensuring that the information shared with a funder is current and accurate.
Program participants: Don’t forget about the most important members of the village – the program participants. Those receiving services know their needs best and should have the opportunity to inform how the programs are designed and how impact is measured and described. Their input can be acquired through surveys, focus groups and interviews, which should be administered regularly.
Community partners: Funders are well-informed about nonprofit organizations in the community and want to know how you collaborate in ways that maximize your collective impact and avoid duplication of services. Consider community organizations as additional members of your village and be able to clearly articulate how you work together and what makes your organization distinctly unique from similar organizations in your field.
Rest assured that successful grant proposals are meant to be created collaboratively. In other words, it really does take a village. So, make sure to meet up with your village and create winning grant proposals that will bring more grant awards to your organization.
Melanie Priest is passionate about making Indianapolis a great place to live, having strong connections in the community and helping nonprofits share their stories of impact. For more than 20 years, Priest has worked closely with the Central Indiana philanthropic community to provide creative solutions to complex problems. As senior consultant, she has worked at Hedges since 2012 securing hundreds of grants for Indianapolis nonprofit organizations to ensure they are able to advance their missions.
In Indiana, the month of March is filled with basketball, and if that madness doesn’t grab you, then just wait till May when the roar of the crowds turns into the roar of the engines. Hoosiers, like people all over the country, love a bit of competition. But not all of it takes place on the playing field, and not every competition ends up with someone holding a trophy.
That’s not to say there aren’t winners, especially in the world of nonprofits, which have adopted the concept as they attempt to expand their presence and draw attention to their work.
The Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation has an admirable mission: “To support creative people, effective institutions and influential networks and build a more just, verdant and peaceful world.” In order to discover those elements, the foundation launched a $100 million grant competition in 2016. It was looking for a single proposal to solve a critical problem affecting people, places or the planet. Called 100&Change, it was open to organizations working in any field of endeavor anywhere. After reviewing 1,904 proposals, it named its recipient in 2017 — Sesame Workshop and International Rescue Committee.
While competitions in general are not new, what is new is nonprofits turning to these challenges to drive innovation. Increasingly, they are discovering that many of the very best ideas lie outside their organizations.
This is true for Early Learning Indiana (ELI). Not only was its recent statewide Child Care Desert competition designed to spur innovation, but there was another motivation – it was a way to expand early learning seats in Indiana, said President and CEO Maureen Weber.
“As an organization, we are really focused on bringing together sort of a system of stakeholders to create accessible, high-quality early education opportunities. We absolutely know that we cannot do this on our own, not on our own in Central Indiana, and not on our own across the state. We needed a way of bringing others into the fold. We felt as though we were having conversations with the same sets of people,” said Weber, who has been in the role for two years.
The light bulb went on for ELI in 2014, when it changed its mission and name, its leadership team and board wanted to do more to expand access and quality early childhood education across the state. They knew that crucial brain development occurs during those early years and can provide a foundation for success in school and beyond. They also knew that early education could have a positive ripple effect that extends to their families, communities and the economy.
The mission gained steam in that same year, ELI approached Lilly Endowment and was awarded a $20 million grant to launch the Partnerships for Early Learners. The initiative was to increase access and quality of early childhood programming across Indiana. ELI now not only had a goal but the funding to pursue it. The next step was to invite potential partners to the table, discover what needs were out there and attempt to fill them.
Andrew Perrin, ELI’s board chair and PNC’s senior vice president and regional sales executive joined the board in 2014.
“My take was the headwinds to getting early childhood education to where it should be were so big that the status quo clearly wasn’t going to cut it. I welcomed any innovation in the space. So, the idea of having a competition, maybe there are other avenues to do it, but I loved the energy of something fresh,” said Perrin.
“I think what makes ELI uniquely positioned is at our core we are a provider of early childhood education. It gives us a level of expertise, as well as, appreciation for what the challenges are. I think that core helps inform our partnerships and advocacy for expanding both quality and accessibility.”
The Partnership for Early Learners initiative added a new role for ELI. It has received and granted over 55 grants to help other providers in the state build their capacity. Early in the effort, Weber said, providers needed funds to meet either licensing or quality requirements. Funds from the grant also helped 400 early childhood educators earn new degrees or credentials.
“Maybe they were lacking a scald valve on their sink or early learning curriculum. So, that was something we could help them invest in and then they could meet the standards and then they could serve children,” said Weber. “We had to get more creative in how we thought about the work, so that the amounts of the work got bigger as well because there were just bigger gaps to close.”
Lack of access, however, continues to prevent many Hoosier children from receiving the benefits of an enriching early learning experience. In 2018, in tandem with Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC), ELI studied access, capacity and need and found that in Indiana, 45.2 percent of children live in a child care desert. ELI defines child care deserts as places with no more than one child care seat for every three children. This study also helped illustrate and raise visibility.
“I think the research, especially in a fiscally conservative state like Indiana, built a business case for early childhood care and education. Anytime you can measure something, it gives people more assurance that this is an effort worth buying into and joining. So, I think what the desert study did was is say, ‘Hey, look, here is the gap,’” said Perrin.
When ELI launched its Child Care Deserts competition last summer, its goal was to address these critical care shortages around the state. Unlike many competitions, ELI offered webinars to ensure applicants understood the data to better incorporate it into proposals. Weber said ELI also shared with potential awardees what is a high-quality seat and the long-term impact of having those available.
“We started this effort by surveying the national landscape and getting a really good sense of what ‘good looks like,’” said Weber. “We wanted to bring those best practices as food for thought to the communities that were applying, while understanding unique community needs. So, part of our education process was to share some great things we’ve seen done across the country. But we also had to understand the unique needs of each community with whom we were working.”
“We spent a lot of time helping our audience prepare their applications, and so we hosted webinars, we had self-service data opportunities so they could know ‘Here’s what the state of the state in our community looks like,’ and had people on tap to sort of help walk through those questions as they had them,” said Weber. “The award itself had to go to a nonprofit, but we encouraged really diverse partnerships. That’s what we had in most places,” said Weber.
Having funding available and the Child Care Deserts study provided an opportunity to have a conversation with a business audience, too, said Weber.
Purposely, there were two phases to the challenge. The first was a letter of intent. From that pool, ELI narrowed the pool to 19, which gave time for those communities to formulate plans and build local partnerships before submitting final proposals. In January, ELI awarded $1.4 million to 13 organizations that will add nearly 1,000 high-quality seats for child care across the state by the end of the year.
Montgomery County Community Foundation was one of the awardees. Although they have many other partners, the funds had to be awarded to a nonprofit. The IBRC study ranked the county among the 10 lowest for child care seats, with only 2 percent of the county’s children under the age of 5 enrolled in high-quality programs. The $100,000 grant will help two local providers add 80 seats by the end of the year.
But that’s not all the grant competition did. Not only will it increase availability in these 13 communities, it elevated the conversations in the community.
As the Montgomery County Community Foundation’s executive director, Kelly Taylor had seen an uptick for early learning and child care grant requests over the past five years. In fact, the foundation had granted nearly $150,000 to child care nonprofits. She said the child care deserts’ study only confirmed what they were hearing. But the competition coalesced the community’s efforts.
“I think what we saw come out of this competition in our community was it rallied diverse groups to work together. We wanted to represent our community well and increase the number of child care seats and have them be of quality level. It really spurred people to action,” Taylor said.
“We know there is still a lot of work to be done, but we think having that success brought a lot of attention to the value of early learning throughout our whole community. We could not have done it on our own. We were able to talk about that data and about what this $100,000 award will do in our community. That has really captured the attention of people in our community and will help us to again continue to move forward,” said Taylor. “We had this early success and we want to build on this. I think it keeps the momentum moving forward.”
Currently, the community is formalizing its Early Childhood Coalition. As part of this effort, it reached out to seven corporate organizations that have provided financial support for the efforts. Part of the plan is to start a resource fund to help providers with training and credentials. In addition, the community foundation and city came together to understand the issue in their community. They engaged a local consulting company to do a community-wide needs assessment. Through surveys, focus groups and a bus tour of existing child care facilities, they understood what is being offered. They did video conferences with other Indiana coalitions to learn what was working.
“We started in August and finished our strategic plan in January. We were meeting constantly during that time, gathering data, analyzing data and putting together a five-year strategic plan. We have a plan to move forward now and really focus on this issue in our community,” said Taylor.
Weber has seen other changes, too.
“When I started in this role nearly two years ago, we were still having conversations about ‘Why this matters. What’s the value? What’s the importance for economic development?’ I have very few of those conversations any more. It’s much more a conversation about what do we do to address the fundamentals. How can we help?” said Weber.
“What we were trying to do was to really elevate the conversation and get people talking from a variety of different perspectives. I really felt like we did broaden the top of the funnel in the number of people that we are reaching,” she said.
By Jan Breiner Frazer, managing member, Planningplus, LLC
Planningplus+ LLC partners with our clients to strategically achieve tangible results, meaningful impact, and a dynamic corporate culture for current and future success. Our core competencies include strategic and operational planning, board development and committee alignment, leadership development, and building the HR infrastructure. As a result of 30+ years of experience, we have developed a number of our own and unique approaches to working with clients.
Here is an idea for you to consider: Are board-term limits always a good idea?
Read any books or articles on board governance and the issue of term limits is always addressed. Best practices mix indicate that board members should have 3-year term limits, allow a year or two off the board, and then they can apply for another term. But is that always a good idea?
In our years of consulting with nonprofit boards, we consistently find that the most significant challenge for the organization is (and always has been) money – keeping the bottom line profitable to be able to serve more in need, recruit and retain employees, upgrade old facilities, add technology, etc., etc., etc. While the executive director is typically the chief fundraiser, along with a chief development officer, boards generally have some type of committees to support those efforts, such as resource development, marketing, public relations.
But from a board member’s perspective, knowing you have only signed on for three years how much long-sustaining work can you really get done?
Yet who better to role model active support during campaigns, fundraisers, and other revenue opportunities than board members who have consistently shown passion for and commitment to the organization over time? Those longer-term board members have lived the ups and downs, challenges and frustrations, and have significant institutional knowledge about the organization. Is it in the best interest of the board to require them to step off the board?
There are both pros and cons for term limits. Establishing term limits ensures the organization can periodically bring on new perspectives, new energy, new passions and new ideas. Oftentimes these fledgling board members can be the ones who ask “why” and challenge thinking. You need them.
You can also reduce the “we tried it and it didn’t work” mantras. Perhaps most important, it is an easy out for board members who sporadically attend board meetings, avoid committee assignments, don’t show up and support events or who just got burned out over time.
On the flip side, there are always board members who have made significant contributions to the organization, both in time and money and want to continue serving. During capital campaigns, critical funding initiatives, and/or turnaround times these board members have already shown the passion for the mission and with their institutional knowledge of the agency can make a case for support.
As an example, one of our long-term clients, Big Brothers Big Sisters, demonstrated the benefits of retaining long-term, active board members during its capital campaign for a new building. According to Darcey Palmer-Schultz, CEO, it was many of those board members, their contacts, and their time commitments that had a direct impact on the outcome of the campaign. Palmer-Schultz believes that long-term board membership is one of the most common threads in the nonprofit’s major donor base, and she cannot imagine achieving the same level of success without them.
Many boards designate an “emeritus” status for high-dollar donors who don’t want to have to attend board meetings but want to be connected. This is often found in fairly large boards. Our recommendation, however, goes a step farther – to designate a class of board members who best understand the organization and its history, who have participated in the tough lessons learned, and who can mentor new board members coming on board. They are active members of the board, attend and participate in board and committee meetings, and otherwise fulfill all the duties of a responsible board member. On an annual basis these members can choose to continue to serve on a year-by-year basis, and could constitute one-third or one-half of the board, dependent on the size of the board. When working with boards we often refer to this group as the leadership council.
Traditional board members are those elected for the three-year term. More often than not, they have done a great job but after serving a regular term are ready to step back and simply volunteer and/or financially support the organization. After a year or two off the board, they are welcome to again serve for a three-year term (assuming they fulfilled all the responsibilities of board members).
Whichever way you go, our point is that enforced term limits may not be in your organization’s best interests. Consider balancing long-term passion and institutional knowledge with the influx of new ideas and perspectives when it comes time for this year’s elections.
Utilizing our history in board development, committee structure, and board/CEO relationships, we can help.
Jan Breiner Frazier, managing member of Planning Plus, has been a consulting professional since 1987. She has designed and facilitated strategic, annual, and operational planning sessions for a multitude of organizations, often bringing together diverse philosophies, opinions, and perspectives to help groups collectively meet stated objectives. Often, her planning projects have resulted in assisting with organizational design and process improvement initiatives. Her work with nonprofit boards and associations has ranged from strategic planning, board development and committee structure to identifying organizational competencies. Prior to her consulting work, she was the personnel/marketing director for a multi-state wholesale/retail organization, with additional experience in administrative management in public accounting, law and utility construction. She can be reached at jfrazier@planningplusllc.com.
Jodi Snell grew up in a small town. Under 20,000 people live in Jacksonville, Illinois, but Snell remembers her parents were always busy helping to make their tiny community a better place.
Like organizing a softball tournament to raise money for a young cancer patient and her family. Snell recalls personally delivering a Game Boy to the girl in the hospital and recalling that garidathe joy was clearly two-fold: on the girl’s part and hers.
Amanda Lopez had similar experiences in her hometown of Wabash, Indiana. Her mom and dad over the years were foster parents to more than 100 children.
In each case the message is the same. For those who do it, community work can be a rewarding. Most volunteers say it is time well spent and personally fulfilling, even if they can’t be sure they made a significance difference.
In the nonprofit world, where organizations depend on donations and grants, it’s a different story. Nonprofits must prove their worth to keep the operating cash flowing.
And how exactly do they do that? With a little help from folks like Snell and Lopez whose vocabularies these days are full of somewhat dry words as program evaluation, data collection, logic model, outputs and outcomes.
Lopez is the president and founder of Wabash-based Transform Consulting Company. She learned the importance of evaluating programs from her days at Purdue University. She was a member of a service-learning project team whose goal was to interest third graders in engineering and science. But without a tool to measure success, it was hard to know if the kids were really coming on board.
As the only non-engineering student in the group, Lopez had a double role: to ensure that activities were developmentally appropriate and to execute short- and long-term evaluations to provide data.
“That really opened my eyes up to evaluation and the opportunity there,” Lopez said.
“When I went to grad school, I focused on systems and evaluations. (How can we) collect the right data that tracks and reports the impact that (nonprofits are) having or gives them the data that they need to improve and strengthen,” she said. After a stint in the government and coastal agencies, in 2008, she returned to Indiana and formed her consulting company to help nonprofits do just that.
Snell moved to Indiana after college with plans to be a teacher. But at the time, Indiana was laying off teachers, so she stepped into a job in the nonprofit sector. She quickly realized it was her dream job. In those early years, she admits that while she did evaluation work, it wasn’t formalized. ln fact, she describes it as “scrappy.” But from the start, she understood the importance of assessment.
Now, one of her responsibilities at the Indianapolis-based Hedges & Associates is to lead the evaluation team’s work. Since beginning in 2002, the company has offered services to build nonprofits’ capacity and later help with evaluations.
In 2013, a widely circulated essay by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates extolled the role that measurement plays in improving the human condition, how it improved the delivery of vital services worldwide. But he also offered a rueful observation.
“This may seem basic,” he wrote, “but it is amazing how often it (measurement) is not done and how hard it is to get right.”
Perhaps in response to the essay, Snell said local nonprofits began requesting technical support, heavily focused on quantitative measurements. To that end, the company hired a technical evaluation expert to help develop stronger metrics and intentional strategy.
But in many cases, this was a bit disconnected from reality. Snell’s team learned that what should be done might not be what nonprofits had the ability or capacity to do.
“Nonprofits were all of a sudden expected to track certain metrics and do certain things with very little resources provided to do so. Evaluation work is not cheap. It is labor intensive, it takes a lot of time even when you think of just cleaning up data,” said Snell.
So, her team began asking to see a nonprofit’s data before it developed a proposal or entered into a contract.
“Before we develop a proposal, can we see what you’re working with? We will take a look at it, and if it’s not consistently collected or there’s not enough data to make a valid finding, we’ll say, ‘Don’t waste your time.’” Instead, in those cases, she said, they suggested qualitative collection, to determine where to improve and oftentimes the development of a logic model and evaluation foundational pieces, helping to put measurement tools in place.
“Many nonprofits didn’t have data or the right data to do thorough and meaningful evaluations. What they needed was support to determine what to collect as a precursor to evaluation,” Snell said. “Then a year or two years from now, we have something meaningful to evaluate.”
Snell said initially local foundations drove evaluations, but now more individuals and corporate donors have joined the ranks. More importantly, some nonprofits have tackled evaluation, not because of outside influence, but because the organization is committed to its outcomes.
Today, the use of data governs almost every aspect of our lives. This is particularly true for philanthropy, which relies on it to inform decision-making, define problems and measure impact. Lopez and Snell have seen this shift firsthand. Nonprofits understand that they must show qualitative and quantitative data, but the challenge for many nonprofits revolves around the “hows” – how to accomplish it, how to pay for it and how to help staff understand the correlation between collecting data and their day-to-day functions.
And nationally, that’s been the case. In a 2018 book, the authors of Engine of Impact: Essentials of Strategic Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector, 50 percent of the 3,000 nonprofit stakeholders surveyed struggle with impact evaluation. Respondents cited inadequate or unreliable measurement of impact and performance being a challenge, and of the group, 42 percent said that more than half of their major donors require impact evaluations, but only a fraction are willing to pay for it.
And that’s not all they worry about. Lopez said nonprofit staffs often have a palpable fear of not meeting targets and that that will have an adverse impact on funding.
“We really try to build a culture of ‘We do evaluation for the purpose of learning and growth and improvement.’ And it’s OK, if that means we’re not hitting those targets. Let’s figure out why and what to do differently. If we’re not studying and implementing an evaluation plan, we’re not going to learn,” she said.
Snell said she found that local funders are looking for the nonprofit that discovers what’s not working and changes it. While the funders want outcomes, they’re practical and know that it takes time to set up tracking procedures and measuring for some time before it can be attributed.
“I think you definitely have to be looking at which of your programs are producing outcomes, but I think the other side of that is we’re working with humans,” said Snell. “Most of our work is in the social services sector. Some of the evaluation pieces may not always feel ethical. When you’re thinking about a test group, would you deprive a certain group of the population from a certain service to see if it works? I think there will always be that challenge of how valid you can get the data.” said Snell.
Bottom line, Lopez believes that Central Indiana funders are more partner-oriented.
“Local funders have pushed grantees to get clear about outcomes and have strong metrics in place with quantitative data to demonstrate their impact,” Lopez said. “For them it is not a high-stakes test – meet the metrics or funding isn’t continued – but rather, ‘Let’s have an honest conversation around where you are or aren’t meeting those metrics and what kind of capacity support is needed. Accountability is a strong word, but in a way, they’re really pushing the grantees that they’re partnering with to get clear about their outcomes and have strong metrics in place with quantitative data to demonstrate their impact.”
“And that’s where typically, we’ll be asked to come in to help support these nonprofits,” said Lopez. “Organizations are collecting data, that’s really not the issue. When it comes to evaluation, it’s helping them to figure out: Are they collecting the right data? Is the data clean and accurate to reflect what they’re wanting to collect? And how are they using it to make meaning and inform their work. And That’s what we really come in to help them with.”
Oftentimes, federal and state funding requires an external evaluator. But she’s seen the tide change at the federal level, moving from compliance to quality improvement and looking beyond a checklist of accomplishments. They are asking the nonprofits to show how their work is moving the needle.
“In multiyear grants, they want to see how you’re choosing your data and show that you’re using that data from the first year to inform any changes for the next year of programming, professional development and other refinements,” Lopez said.
What most nonprofits struggle with is carving out the time to collect the data.
“So, we really try to help them understand the critical value and importance of building that into their schedule, just like they would build in the next level of programming or services that they would offer. There are really tremendous and helpful data tools out there,” said Lopez who uses a participatory evaluation framework.
“We really want to build their capacity and that sustainability beyond our engagement because we know that most of them cannot afford to hire us forever to do evaluation work. We really want it to become a part of their culture, not just something they outsource to the consultant when a grant report is due. That’s why we spend time building that capacity and knowledge, called data literacy, and evaluation literacy within the organization,” she said.
Snell said it needs to be part of staff’s job responsibilities, not an afterthought.
“Nonprofit professionals typically didn’t start in their career wanting to be evaluators. Right? They started because they are caring and passionate about the program,” said Snell. “However, we owe it to the individuals we’re signing up to serve to know if what we’re doing really matters. This is a step to get there, and it’s not as scary as what people think.”
The opportunity and responsibility are there to utilize the results for planning and decision-making.
“That’s when you see the transformation really occur. And when we see it, it gets us excited.” Citing an example of a local Head Start organization that her company trained, agency staff reached out after it reviewed its data. The staff called because they wanted to go deeper and look at how dads are engaged.
“They felt like that’s an area of concern and stopped to really use their data and to dig into ‘What is happening with dads and where are the gaps and opportunities?’ before they just went to program changes. We’re like ‘Yay, this is so exciting.’ We didn’t have to remind them. They got it.” said Lopez.
Snell cited similar experiences.
“We’ve seen some really great success stories from organizations that have utilized research to inform and change their programming decisions,” she said. “We had one client who was able to secure funding for a whole new curriculum to be developed based on what we learned about the outcomes they weren’t able to get to with the current curriculum.”
Another local organization, she said, did the full evaluation gamut and learned that their collection measurements weren’t telling the entire story.
“We were able to reset how they were evaluating and now their story will be even stronger. I sat in hours and hours of interviews with their participants, and (through) the collection process (learned), we just weren’t getting to that same data,” said Snell who’s hopeful that both the qualitative and quantitative information will tell the same story in the next year.
Lopez believes that if a nonprofit is struggling with fund development, enrollment or retention, evaluation can help solve those problems.
“A lot of the issues that we hear a nonprofit is struggling with, usually evaluation can help solve. A lot of times, individual donors are becoming more sophisticated and want to see the impact that their dollars will have. Your evaluation can help tell that story of how (a donor’s) funding goes to support the cause and furthering its mission. It goes back to using your data.”
Not every organization is ready to jump into impact evaluation, there is a continuum. Some nonprofits begin with number counts. But as nonprofits become more sophisticated, here is some advice from Snell and Lopez.
• Meet your staff where they are. Hedges offers a workshop called “Love your Logic Model” and Transform offers “Evaluation 101.” Both companies believe in starting staffs with the basics. With turnover rate in the sector high, implementing standard operating procedures with internal systems and procedures in place is key to continuing the effort.
• Involve programming staff early in the impact strategy, helping to see the entire picture.
• Start by including metrics in job descriptions and take time to explain to potential candidates how data collection is part of the culture.
• Create a work-flow chart with a clear understanding of how evaluation fits into the day-to-day work plans to ensure the effort is not an addition, but a daily expectation.
• Continuously refine how data is collected.
• Reinforce that if data indicates a programming isn’t working, the focus needs to be on readjustment, not blame.
• Design pilot or innovative programs with research. There are multiple evaluation methods and numerous processes nonprofits can use to match desired outcomes.
• If resources are tight, interviewing participants should top the list to inform your program with the voices of those you are serving.
• Share what you are learning with two audiences – internal and external. Internally can be a powerful affirmation or enlighten staff, board and volunteers about targets not hit.
• Research to locate best tool, particularly with the more “social side” like self-efficacy there are tried-and-true evaluation tools that have been validated to test those specifically.
Evaluation Resources
If you’re interested in keeping up-to-date on evaluation, Amanda Lopez and Jodi Snell recommend two membership organizations that offer top-notch resources, webinars and conferences and share the ethics of evaluation and trends.
If you are looking for further reading, Snell recommends the 2011 publication “Leap of Reason” by Mario Morino. The author focuses on integrating evaluation into regular work.
“It’s the expectation that everyone is driven by those outcomes. What I really like is that nonprofit evaluation is not being driven by an outside force, but it’s the responsibility to the community you signed up to serve to make sure that what you’re doing works. If you’re not making sure it works than what are you doing. Why would we keep doing what we’re doing?”
Lopez has several tool recommendations.
• Data-informed decision-making toolkit : Transform Consulting worked with the Indiana Early Learning Advisory Committee (ELAC) data workgroup to create this material, but the resource could be utilized by any organization. Some highlights: The data visual is a good overview tool and follows the 4-step evaluation process. It also includes a list of publicly available data by category and data visualization tips and strategies.
• Data Playbook: A helpful resource for organizations to guide the evaluation process and plan. Lopez’s team used it to help develop the Indiana Early Learning Advisory Committee’s data toolkit.
• National Head Start Association (NHSA) launched its own Data Playbook resource for how to use data to inform programmatic changes (CQI process). Even if an organization is not in the early childhood education industry, this site provides an example of how organizations are using data to drive change and how applicable it is.
By Leslie Wells, assistant director of communications, O’Neill School at IUPUI
In 2017, Nigena Livingston was building Urban Act Academy, a K to 8 charter school in Indianapolis, from the ground up. She had worked as an educator for more than 15 years, but launching a charter school was unfamiliar territory.
She was beginning to write the school’s charter and establish its founding board, but she lacked clear direction.
“I had been a principal but felt like a novice when it came to being a CEO,” Livingston says. “I needed more information about boards and board management. I wanted to know how to support my board so that we would know we were on track and doing right by our students.”
So she enrolled in IU Executive Education’s Effective Nonprofit Governance certificate course through the O’Neill School. The six-session program includes lessons on the responsibilities of board members, the evolution of a board, how members help with fundraising, and how to best hold CEOs accountable for advancing the organization’s mission.
“The board is essential to any organization’s success,” says Livingston. “If it’s not treated as essential, your organization won’t thrive. This course included all the information I needed to ensure I was recruiting board members who could participate in meaningful ways and advance our organization.”
Shortly before Livingston began her journey, Amanda Leffler — a nursing education consultant who serves on various boards — was elected board president for the Indiana League for Nursing. She says that election aligned perfectly with the Effective Nonprofit Governance program.
“Enrolling in the program was a strategic decision on my part,” she recalls. “This was an opportunity to learn how to govern a board of directors and grow into a new role.”
Leffler says the classes help participants better understand a nonprofit board’s purpose, how it should operate and how board members can help an organization fulfill its mission.
“Understanding the fundamentals taught in this course is critical to knowing where your organization is, where you want it to go, and how to get there,” Leffler adds.
In addition to content, Leffler and Livingston agree that the diversity of their cohorts provided a deeper understanding and context to the lessons they were learning.
“It was helpful to have non-educators in the room with organizations that face similar challenges to us,” Livingston says. “That helped us turn other organizations’ missteps into teachable moments.”
One critical takeaway for both Leffler and Livingston was gaining a better understanding of the various stages of board development and how to help boards progress — or take steps back — to grow alongside the nonprofit.
“I remember when our board was being nice but not being critical,” Livingston says. “Because of this course, I was able to provide leadership about how they should push me. Rather than just talking about what we want to do, we’re now becoming more evidence-based and developing policies.”
Leffler says that learning the five stages of the nonprofit organization lifecycle has given her “an immense advantage” over her colleagues.
“I approach each of the boards on which I serve in a different way depending on where they are in their life cycle,” she says.
She uses that knowledge to mentor her fellow board members and her nursing students.
“This course trains the trainer,” she says. “I took what I learned and pass it on to help others with whom I work grow, as well. I teach my students how to craft an elevator speech because that is something they need to know, no matter where they are.”
The lessons learned in the program extend well beyond the boardroom. Leffler says not only did she learn to be a better board member and leader, she also learned how to apply what she was learning to her everyday life.
“The knowledge and experiences I gained throughout the program are truly invaluable, especially for anyone looking to serve in the nonprofit sector,” Leffler says. “The tools are practical and simple to implement into everyday practice.”
Leslie Wells joined the O’Neill School at IUPUI as its assistant director of communications in 2018. She previously spent more than a decade in broadcast news and three years as media relations manager at the Indiana Youth Institute.
By Genevieve Shaker, associate professor of philanthropic studies, and Abby Rolland, communications project manager, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
Small gifts do matter
Nowadays, it’s easy to assume that small gifts* don’t matter. The U.S.’s biggest 50 individual donors gave $7.8 billion to nonprofits in 2018. The percentage of households that give is declining, even though total donations are increasing because major donors are giving more money.
However, small gifts still matter for at least three, important reasons.
First, when combined, small gifts can make a big difference for a cause.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey struck the U.S. Gulf Coast. After disasters strike, the American Red Cross funds shelter, here food and relief items, basic health and mental health services, and other support. In the wake of Harvey, the Red Cross received over one million donations of gifts under $100. These gifts totaled over $35 million. Small gifts and funded immediate relief and long-term recovery efforts for hundreds of thousands of displaced Americans.
Second, small gifts matter to the nonprofit sector as a whole.
In 2016, 53.09% of households gave to charity. While this percentage declined from 2000 to 2016, it illustrates that the majority of American households do donate. These donor households gave an average amount of $2,763, supporting all kinds of nonprofit organizations. Individual donations (including bequests) totaled $331.8 billion in 2018, or 77% of charitable giving. Even though large donations are crucial, many, many small gifts also contributed to this total.
Third, small gifts matter because donors typically begin modestly, giving larger gifts.
World Vision US (WVUS) received its first donations from Dave and Dana Dornsife in the 1980s, when the Dornsifes click began contributing $20 to cover a monthly child sponsorship. Thirty years of continued donations later, and the Dornsifes gave $35 million in matching fund donations from 2011-2015. The match inspired over $256 million in donations, bringing clean water, sanitation and hygiene to 8.6 million people. Good stewardship and donor capacity can combine, leading to larger gifts and inspiring other donors to make contributions.
How can nonprofits and fundraisers build support for and sustain small gifts?
1.) Craft a strategy and fundraising plan that matches the audience at the given gift level.
It’s not sustainable to use the same strategy for a major donor as you would use for an annual fund donor. Tailor targeted approaches for each gift level and population that you’re soliciting and stewarding.
2.) Once you create a strategy, map out a plan and be sure to evaluate it.
Make sure that the strategies you’re using to earn those small gifts are cost-effective for your organization. Always evaluate the solicitation effort and consider what needs to be done differently if necessary. Implement new goals and tactics if previous efforts didn’t work.
3.) Once you identify new donors, create a plan to effectively engage with them.
Invest in communications and donor engagement. Craft a holistic strategy that not only considers the acquisition of a first gift but creates a good experience after the gift is made. Thanks to new technologies, nonprofits now have a range of tools for personalizing donor experiences at all levels.
4.) Show all donors that you know who they are.
Thank them. Spell their names correctly. Recognize donors in communications. Not only does it encourage them to give to your organization again, but nonprofits also have an ethical responsibility to document and demonstrate that their donor information is correct.
5.) Make sure to communicate the impact of giving on the cause.
Overall, donors expect information that tells them about the good they are doing. Not only will this help steward donors appropriately, showing what gifts achieve makes the case for future contributions (and involvement) at various levels.
Every donor should feel valued and know that they and their gift matter. Stewarding gifts properly is a part of our ethical responsibility … and a key to ensuring nonprofits’ financial futures.
*Small gifts may be defined as under $100 but the definition varies depending on the organization.
Genevieve G. Shaker, Ph.D., is associate professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI. Her research focuses on fundraising, higher education advancement, philanthropy in the workplace, and philanthropy, public good, and faculty work. She is associate editor of the journal Philanthropy & Education.
Abby Rolland serves as the communications project manager at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and is also working towards a master’s degree in philanthropic studies. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Gettysburg College.
By Barry Newman, senior human resources representative, Synergy
It might be obvious that severely overworked employees will burn out, but what about the harder-to-spot cases of employees who shoulder a little bit too much stress each day?
Improving work-life balance for your employees has been proven to create a more loyal and more productive workforce. While change can’t happen overnight, there are several methods for encouraging a healthier balance and preventing employee burn out.
Retire the nine-to-five mentality
As long as your industry and work product allow for it, try to provide more tailored scheduling for your workforce. This can make a huge impact, since 89% of surveyed professionals stated the number one thing that would improve their work-life balance would be flexible working hours. Look at each position and consider: why must this here employee be here for these exact hours? In many cases there will be certain meetings that need attending, but outside of that, allowing employees to come in early so they can finish their workday early or shift hours in another way can provide a huge boost to morale.
Offer remote working options
Today’s world is a digital one. Just as with business hours that are more flexible than ever, so too is the location from which employees work. Once again, look at each position and ask: ‘Why click does this employee have to physically be here every single day?’ If all they need is an Internet connection and computer to complete the majority of their job, there should be the potential to allow them to work remotely at least one day per month. In fact, the most engaged workers are those working remotely about 60% of the time, indicating a healthy work-life balance is critical to business success. Best yet, offering remote working options can be a great way to increase attractive benefits without adding any cost.
Tweak the office environment
People are products of their environments. Sterile, fluorescent office interiors are no longer in vogue. Employees desire to walk into a warmer workplace, one that is more vibrant and comfortable. While complete overhauls and construction from scratch can cost thousands, even small tweaks to your environment make a big difference. After all, employees spend a great deal of time at work. Think about the minor but impactful changes you can make, such as adding a new couch and TV to the breakroom, providing an unlimited supply of energy drinks and snacks, or putting a picnic table outside during the summer months.
Promote physical and mental health
An employer looking to improve their organization’s work-life balance must also consider physical and mental health, as psychological and physical problems stemming from burned-out employees cost between $125 and $190 billion per year in healthcare in the U.S.
Encourage employees to be active by enacting a step-counting contest or offering a discounted membership to a local gym. Bring in an exercise instructor once per week or month and have a yoga or other class outside at lunch or after work. Grant employees up to a $20 reimbursement for the purchase of well-being apps that can help them meditate or deal with stress in positive ways. Whatever the form it takes, promoting physical and mental health is an essential duty as an employer.
Adopt paid sick leave
Laws requiring paid sick leave are spreading, but even if it’s not a law in your area currently, it’s something that can go a long way to improving employee work-life balance. Many professionals force themselves to come into work when sick simply because they don’t want to take PTO that they’ve planned to use for their vacation or for an activity with loved ones. This is a dangerous trend since that employee who won’t likely match their normal work rate anyway can get co-workers sick. Build a sick leave policy into the employee handbook and benefits package so employees aren’t put in that situation. They will get healthy faster and appreciate their employer more.
5 ways to improve employee work-life balance
Improving employee work-life balance is more than just offering ample vacation time. While discretion will vary depending on the type and size of your organization, boosting employee morale is the duty of all managers, HR employees, and senior staff. Working together to determine what works best for your employees and implementing those strategies is the key to turning your employee experience from a seesaw to a balance beam.
Provide a boost to your HR and make your employees happier.
Barry Newmanis a human-resources professional with nearly 50 years of experience in all facets of HR in a variety of industries. For the last 25 of which have been with The Synergy Companies, a leading Professional Employer Organization providing Midwest-based clients with outsourced human resources management, payroll and benefits. Reach out to Synergy today.
