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Sponsor Insight

Mar 13

Serve better through design: Use design thinking to better engage your audiences

By Sponsor Insight

By Mark Shreve, business development manager, SmallBox

Nonprofit organizations are not immune to the same challenges presented to for-profit businesses. You must survive economic swings, respond to political orders and actions, address shifting demographic needs, compete for attention, and increase impact to those you serve and do all this with shrinking budgets and teams.

Shall I say more?

But most nonprofits also are serving their audiences — members, donors, students, patients — with greater attention, a byproduct of operating in the Experience Economy, where people want to move beyond consumption and focus on participation.

As you battle for their attention, you’re also fighting for their support. Nonprofits often have the added challenge of asking these same audiences to fund the experience delivered to them. In order to adapt to these forces effectively and efficiently, and to generate meaningful experiences that will attract, engage, and retain their audiences, we believe, nonprofit organizations should turn to human-centered design principles.

Human-centered or design thinking provides a framework to understand how audiences — members, donors, students, patients — think, act and feel. This process allows a deeper investigation than just proposing initiatives that may satisfy your audiences. It demands thinking about the entire experience delivered, and do it with contextual data to yield greater results. When every penny counts, this process ensures failing forward and finds lasting impact faster.

Design thinking empowers you to be a more creative and effective problem solver

If you have ever wished to take a timeout and disrupt your approach to work, now is your chance. Human-centered design has been helping healthcare, education and cultural institutions.

SmallBox follows a five-stage and circuitous process that builds on empathy, encourages collaboration, and yields a prototype to test with audiences. The idea here is to be inclusive, thorough, exploratory, and not just innovate for the sake of innovation. Make the investment of time to do this right, and it will benefit those the nonprofit serves and those who lead the work.

Let’s move beyond theory and into practice. The first step in a human-centered process is to empathize with your audiences. It’s their experience you’re developing so understand their point of view is critical to success.

Our approach is to ask, listen (not always obvious!), and involve your audiences. Here are a few examples from recent projects:

  • Ask your audiences and improve communications: A small college wanted to explore their alumni communications to maximize resources, align their team’s efforts and to increase engagement among their audiences. First step, we surveyed 3,000 people to understand how they wanted to receive communications and what they valued most from different touch points. Insights gathered from this survey directed our work to redevelop the experience of creating and distributing content in the alumni magazine, which resulted in just one touch point with their audiences.

Take away: As you seek to understand what your audience needs, consider asking them to envision a future state to shed them of their current blinders!

  • Listen to your audiences and increase the value of membership: A large state university sought to redesign the membership experience for segmented generational groups. The perceived value of membership varied between boomers and millennials. After listening to alumni via participatory ideation sessions, a new “freemium” option was added to mirror the discounted services model this group was accustomed to receiving before they invested more.

Take away: Human-centered design keeps audiences at the center of the problem so if you ask, be prepared to listen!

  • Involve your audiences and attract donors: A hospital foundation wanted to attract more donors in the Indianapolis community. So, rather than pitch to prospective donors, we asked them to pitch to the foundation. During a participatory focus group, we provided scenarios to foundation volunteers and community leaders and challenged them to create experiences to tie donors to the work of the foundation. What we heard in those sessions will inform messaging and touch points with the community.

Take away: Involve your audiences in the process for more buy-in!

After each of these organizations empathized, they moved to the next phases of the process – framing their insights and takeaways, ideating on new solutions and then prototyping and testing the viability of those solutions.

So, when was the last time you stopped juggling your tasks to really connect with and talk to your audiences?

Take the first step. Like the idea, but not sure where to begin? Convene a group of stakeholders to determine if the experience you’ve created is the one most aligned with those you serve. If not, turn to a human-centered framework to guide you as you redesign the experience.

mark-shreve Mark Shreve has supported nonprofit organizations for over a decade and is currently the business development manager at SmallBox, a brand experience agency that helps with organizational alignment and customer engagement.

SmallBox collaborates with organizations dedicated to creating impact and serving others. Initiate a conversation with Mark at mark@smallbox.com.

Mar 06

Developing an effective dashboard and key performance indicators

By Sponsor Insight

By Jim Simpson, CPA and director, Financial Technologies & Management

Nonprofits are complex organizations that are built around mission and outcomes, which must be supported by the right revenue and expense models.

Dashboards are one way to simply communicate and give an overview of the organization by using a graphical summary of important information. It is an easy way for decision-makers to see where and whether the organization is on the planned financial path, and additionally can be used with funders and stakeholders to transparently show progress towards desired goals.

But a dashboard without metrics is useless to the organization, it is important to develop the associated metrics and constantly review to ensure you are actually measuring success for the organization.

Effective dashboards

Charts and graphs are not considered a dashboard unless that have the following characteristics:

  • Align success definitions across organization
  • Encourage communication regarding progress towards goals
  • Identify successes and challenges
  • Actual data and evidence to make decisions
  • Strengthen relationships between different activities

A properly designed dashboard allows a nonprofit to monitor its effectiveness as evidenced by the financial health along with the impact of the programs and services provided. Board and staff should develop strategy and goals to create dashboards with focused conversation and collaboration.

When you select the dashboard elements, you should understand the data you will track and how that data will influence decision making. Questions to ask include: Are the metrics for the organization or particular function? Is the tool for the board, staff, or funders?

Successful dashboards achieve the following:

  • Successfully communicate strategic-level results
  • Present data in a user-friendly visual format
  • Create snapshot of current status and trends over time
  • Show performance against defined targets
  • Highlight out-of-the-ordinary results
  • Create a manageable set of key performance indicators

Consider each revenue and expense stream and the factors that influence the reliability and predictability and what contributes to the increasing or decreasing of these streams.

Performance indicators (KPIs)

it is important to determine the program-delivery mechanism that influences results. Different types of nonprofits have different organizational models with different drivers for success. It is important to select Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that focus the organization on data that will support decision-making. Consider whether you need a dashboard that reflects trends over time or performance against goals.

In order to get started, focus on the most important part of the process, which is to define the key drivers and metrics while focusing on the most pressing issues to start. This will help you start the process of developing your organization’s key performance indicators and the related dashboards to move your organization towards data driven decision-making.

When creating a dashboard and KPI’s, you should do the following:

  • Start with the big picture
  • Identify the audience and how to engage it
  • Define business model drivers and key levers inherent in program delivery
  • Choose KPIs in a thoughtful, team-based process that is inclusive
  • Re-evaluating KPIs is an ongoing process
  • Establish a culture of data driven decision making

Successful Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) achieve the following:

  • Represent business model drivers
  • Reflect progress towards intended outcomes
  • Guides priorities and decisions
  • Limited number of KPIs that can be realistically monitored
  • Should be periodically reassessed

When putting the dashboard reporting into action make sure you consider the following:

  • Where does data come from?
  • Who is responsible to collect data?
  • How will dashboard be updated and how often?
  • What platform or tools should we use to update dashboard?

jim-simpson Jim Simpson, CPA and director of Financial Technologies & Management, is a nonprofit financial leader and trainer, CFO, controller, forensic consultant and software advisor, including Abila MIP Fund Accounting since 1999. He has served CFO, controller and software advisor for over 25 years to over 350 nonprofit organizations.

Contact Financial Technologies & Management to see how we can help your nonprofit with accounting solutions. You can schedule an appointment directly from the website at WWW.FTMLLC.COM, email info@ftmllc.com or phone at 317-819-0780.

Feb 27

Maximizing major gift fundraising

By Sponsor Insight

By Tim Ardillo, consultant, Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates

Did you know development programs that rely solely on transactional giving, like direct mail and special events, generally have a return of investment (ROI) of about 200 percent, while programs that are relationship-based and major gift focused can enjoy a much higher ROI of 500 percent or more?

That’s why it’s so important to have a diversified development program with a strong and systemized major and planned gifts component. Now is a good time to evaluate your major gift practices to make certain that you are being as effective as possible when you, your volunteers, development staff, and CEO are cultivating major gift prospects. Though this blog focuses on major gifts, it is important to remember to approach conversations with donors and prospects holistically – integrating annual, planned, and major gifts into the discussions when appropriate based on the donors’ needs.

Johnson, Grossnickle and Associates recently hosted “Essential Elements of a Successful Major Gift Program,” a free webinar to review and share best practices in major gift fundraising. I encourage you to watch a recording of the webinar, which includes a thorough and integrated five-point checklist to help you make sure your major gift program is primed for success.

In addition, here are four fundamental steps you can take to develop a process for identification and cultivation of major gift prospects that is purposeful, organized, and ongoing:

Identify prospects to be included in prospect management.

Prospect assignments for organizational leadership and development staff should include a balanced pipeline of major gift prospects in cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship. A list should be compiled based on previous giving levels, recommendations from staff and board members, and additional research conducted by the staff. Prospects who should be assigned for contact management include those who are anticipated to have the capacity and inclination to make a major gift to the organization. What constitutes a major gift depends on the size of the organization, its operating budget, and its donor base.  For some organizations, a major gift may be $10,000; for others, $100,000 or more.

Assign identified prospects to specific staff members.

After the list has been complied, development staff leadership should review the list and begin determining who has the best relationship with the prospective donor and can engage the prospect in a strategic and meaningful way.

Commit to personal visits with donors and prospective major donors.

Organizational leadership and development staff must set aside time for personal visits as a top priority. Engaging major gift donors will require multiple visits, increased overall correspondence, and a focused effort – and will require the organization’s leadership, including board members and staff, to engage donors and prospects in new ways. A full-time development officer who has no additional responsibilities other than cultivating major donors should be expected to complete 125 personal visits with donors and prospects on the cultivation continuum per year, or the equivalent of two to three visits weekly. Some of these personal visits will likely involve cultivating the same prospect more than once.

Meet on a regular basis to review current portfolios and activities.

The development staff should meet frequently, perhaps every other week, to review recent activities and plan out next steps. These regular meetings for reporting and strategizing help to create urgency and hold everyone accountable for their assignments and results.

Integrating these strategies into a major gift program will ensure that you are maximizing the gift potential of your current major gift prospects and also help to identify and qualify future donors. This systemized approach forces you to have a strategy in place for each donor’s future trajectory with your organization.

 

tim-ardillo Tim Ardillo, CFRE, brings JGA’s clients guidance from a breadth of fundraising experience across a variety of nonprofit sectors. With a development career that spans more than 20 years, Ardillo has experience in fundraising efforts ranging from annual fund development, major and planned giving and campaigns. His most recent experience as Director of Institutional Advancement for the Indianapolis Zoo gave him the opportunity to serve as campaign director to complete a more than $34 million capital campaign and the launch of a $10 million endowment campaign. Ardillo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Marketing from the University of Louisiana, Monroe.

Feb 20

Meeting a need no longer enough

By Sponsor Insight

By Jessica Love, associate executive director, Prosperity Indiana

Generally, nonprofits are established to make a difference for the people or places they serve. As a result, the impact and outcomes are inherent in the work.

But these days, meeting an individual or community need is generally not good enough for a nonprofit to thrive, or even survive, in a world “competing” for donations, sponsorships and grants. Nonprofits must prove they are doing the good they set out to accomplish – and that they’re about outcomes as much or more than they are about outputs.

The National Council of Nonprofits cites this same challenge in an article, titled Impact and Evaluation of Outcomes. The article highlights concepts from Leap of Reason (2011). Of note is that measuring outcomes is not just about attracting resources to your nonprofit, but about mission. A nonprofit will only know that it is indeed helping individuals, solving problems in communities, and protecting the environment, etc., if it is evaluating its performance and then communicating the impact. The article also provides helpful links to numerous resources to improve outcome measurement.

Unfortunately, tracking outcomes is often disjointed from one organization to another and from one funder to another. Additionally, outcomes are often just tracked to meet external requirements or cite specific accomplishments, and may not tell the larger story of the organization’s or program’s success.

According to Andrew Means, co-founder of the Impact Lab and founder of Data Analysts for Social Good, technology is one example. The nonprofit sector often doesn’t see technology as a set of tools created to make jobs better. Means suggested that nonprofits, acting as partners in creating a social sector powered by information, have a huge opportunity “to actually use data and data technology to inform the way that we program.”

He also suggested that nonprofits beginning to use data to measure impact should first start “where they are.” As their work advances, they should seek to invest wisely and align themselves with data experts so as to not waste time with bad data. It is critical, according to Means that nonprofits work together to take advantage of the data.

“No nonprofit has the market concentration of Amazon, or Netflix, or Google. We need to come together, and share our data, work more collaboratively with one another to really understand and identify ways of increasing our impact. If you want to do really great data work, you have to do it collaboratively with other organizations,” he said.

That’s where a new initiative of Prosperity Indiana – the Outcomes Platform – will support its members in a more meaningful way.

In a survey of the membership, 90 percent of respondents said they use data to support their programs and to document and demonstrate success. More than half of all respondents indicated Excel is the tracking tool of choice.

Prosperity Indiana values the importance of developing specific, measureable, aggressive yet achievable, realistic and time-bound goals, but realizes that without a dynamic system for collecting, measuring and tracking goals, strategies, actions and accomplishments, it’s difficult to determine whether those aspirations were achieved.

Because limitations are inherent across the field and clearly identified by Prosperity Indiana’s member survey, Prosperity Indiana wants to provide a way to overcome the challenges of time, staff and financial resources and training.

Providing/developing a cloud-based system for use across the membership to collectively measure impact by tracking of organizational outcomes and planning initiatives against community-level indicators, Prosperity Indiana’s new data collection system will give a clearer picture of impact through a tool that creates visual representations of the data with a web embed option.

Through an evolving relationship with an award-winning online database developer, Insightformation, Prosperity Indiana hopes to provide access to this cloud-based tool for at least 100 nonprofit members with the specific goal of meeting the community economic development sector’s diverse data needs.

 

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The initiative

Goals of Prosperity Indiana’s initiative include providing the system at low- or no-cost, reducing the amount of staff time it takes to track outcomes while providing a better system for doing so, and developing in-house capacity to provide training and technical assistance to members on the data collection, measurement and reporting processes. Prosperity Indiana is also seeking collaboration with other associations and funders to develop a system that meets the needs of the field in such an all-encompassing way that reporting redundancies can be eliminated.

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And according to the authors of the Stanford Social Innovation Review article in July 2015, Architecting for Data, we are right on track.

Prosperity Indiana seeks to provide a system that meets four criteria: “organized (stored in a consistent structure), well described (documented formally or informally so folks know what it is and where it came from), accessible (easy available for folks to find and use), and usable (stored in a format people in your organization know how to wrangle).”

Those interested in learning more about Prosperity Indiana’s Outcomes Platform may contact Jessica Love, Associate Executive Director, at jlove@prosperityindiana.org.

jessica-love Jessica Love is the associate executive director for Prosperity Indiana and works with the executive director to provide team leadership for staff. She is responsible for developing and managing organizational systems for Prosperity Indiana to ensure effective management and control. She also provides one-on-one technical assistance to Prosperity Indiana members, informed by her media and grants management background. With 15 years experience in the nonprofit sector, Love’s consulting work focuses primarily on resource development and creating processes and tools for effective management and program compliance.

Feb 06

Planning your next capital campaign: 9 steps to success

By Sponsor Insight

By Jen Pendleton, vice president Indiana, Aly Sterling

Launching a capital campaign is like moving into a new home. If you want the transition to your new home to run smoothly, you’ll need to plan ahead.

The same can be said of capital campaigns; a lot of preparation goes into a capital campaign so that your nonprofit can reach or even exceed its goals.

In case you’re not familiar with the term, a capital campaign is an intense effort undertaken by a nonprofit organization to raise a specific dollar amount within a defined period of time. The purpose of a capital campaign is to fund a specific project, usually something significant and concrete such as a new facility or equipment.

If you want to plan a capital campaign for your nonprofit, we’ve come up with a step-by-step guide to help you along the way. Here are the nine steps we’ll cover:

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Jan 16

The outlook for giving

By Sponsor Insight

By Una Osili, director of research, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Looking for some good news to start off the year? Nonprofit organizations and the people they serve can find encouragement in the anticipated charitable-giving climate.

Giving in the U.S. will grow by 3.6 percent in 2017 and by an additional 3.8 percent in 2018, according to The Philanthropy Outlook 2017 & 2018 produced by Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy researchers and presented by Marts & Lundy, a leading fundraising and philanthropy consulting firm. The Outlook generates projections for year-to-year growth rates in overall giving; giving by type of donor; and giving to education, health, and public-society benefit nonprofits.

All types of donors are expected to increase giving in both years:

  • Growth in giving by foundations will lead the way (5.9 percent in 2017 and 6.0 percent in 2018).
  • Estate giving is expected to increase by 5.4 percent this year and 5.2 percent next year.
  • Giving by individuals is predicted to grow 3.0 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.
  • Giving by corporations will lag behind the other sources of giving, rising by just 2.4 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.

Health, education and public-society benefit organizations — the three types of nonprofits addresses in the report — are all expected to see considerable. Giving to health is predicted to grow by 8.5 percent in 2017 and 7.9 percent in 2018. Giving to education is projected to rise 6.3 percent in 2017 and 6.0 percent in 2018, continuing recent years’ trends. Philanthropic support for the public-society benefit subsector, which includes United Ways, human and civil rights nonprofits, national donor-advised funds, and other similar types of organizations, will also be strong, with growth of 5.2 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively, boosted in part by continued growth in contributions to donor-advised funds.

Marts & Lundy President and Chief Executive Officer Phil Hills counsels that “The increase in philanthropic support across the entire sector provides organizations with the opportunity to increase services in a time of expanding need. For education and health, access and innovation will likely be significant issues to address. Student debt, rising costs of patient care and the need to continue funding for life-changing research will continue to be focal points for giving.”

The Outlook indicates that continued growth in the overall economy, as reflected in the value of stocks, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and household income, will drive the rise in philanthropic giving this year and next. Explanations of the economic factors and conditions likely to influence the predicted changes, implications of the results, and suggestions for nonprofit professionals and fundraisers in light of the anticipated giving climate are included in the report, which is available free of charge at www.philanthropyoutlook.com.

una Una Osili is director of research and professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and professor of economics at IUPUI.

Jan 09

Considerations for choosing your nonprofit’s fiscal year end

By Sponsor Insight

By Nikki Kubly, director, BKD

Throughout the years, I’ve received questions from not-for-profit organizations (NFP) regarding the costs and benefits of changing to a fiscal year-end. I’ve seen organizations transition from Dec. 31 to fiscal year-end for many reasons, but the overarching motive is the budget challenge. Many organizations with individual-driven contributions receive a majority of revenues in the fourth quarter of the calendar year. With a calendar year-end, many NFP organizations are waiting for generous donors to contribute last-minute for personal tax reasons.

This article touches on some of the benefits and costs of changing to a fiscal year-end.

The IRS states a fiscal year should coincide with the organization’s natural operating cycle. These are some example questions:

  • What is your organization’s most significant quarter for revenue generation?
  • Do you rely mostly on individual giving, traditionally taking place near the December 31 year-end?
  • Are you an educational institution where a significant portion of tuition is generated in the fall?
  • Are revenues mostly generated in the summer months,g., zoos?
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Dec 19

Summer 2017: Asking some big questions

By Sponsor Insight

By Jamie Levine Daniel and Suzann Lupton, School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI

Creative placemaking refers to a collaborative process we can use to help shape public spaces in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, creative placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing evolution.

Installation of public art, such as the murals along the sides of building in the Mass Ave. District, and community beautification projects are just a couple of examples of how Indianapolis has embraced this evolving field.

With community-based participation at its center, an effective placemaking process capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspirations, and potential, and results in the creation of quality public spaces that contribute to people’s health, happiness and well being.

Many organizations across the state are interested in helping to build strong, creative communities. Not as many, however, understand the physical, financial and human resources needed to lead these efforts.

To address this need, the Indiana Arts Commission recently created the Capacity Building Partnership Program. The goal of the program is to develop and support initiatives that “further develop the professional skills of the staff of cultural organizations, community leaders and individual artists” and strengthen the connection between people and the places they share.

One project of this program is a placemaking capacity-building workshop organized and hosted by SPEA at IUPUI and presented by several Indiana organizations with deep knowledge and experience in placemaking. One goal of this workshop is to move the discussion of programs and service provision away from inputs and outputs, and toward a broader conceptual discussion.

Of course, understanding the basics is important and questions of interest include: Should we do this? Who is this for? Who wins and who loses if we allocate resources here? If we decide to move forward with an initiative, what happens after the program ends? How will we know if the initiative did what we wanted it to do?

To address these questions, the workshop will include a Creative Placemaking 101 session and “Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper,” a session designed to generate low cost, introductory creative placemaking actions. Local stakeholders Big Car, Prosperity Indiana, the Harrison Center, the Hamilton County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, the Polis Center, Indiana Housing and Community Development, the Office of Community and Rural Affairs are among the organizations that will help lead those discussions.

Additionally, the workshop will examine some of the assumptions that are made about programs and service delivery; hone external and political environmental assessment skills (e.g., asset mapping, building social capital, assess the political climate, creating alliances); and building networks that cross local, regional, demographic and wealth boundaries.

The workshop’s focus is on arts and culture, using the lens of creative placemaking, but this approach can be used to examine public and nonprofit service delivery across subfields.

If this piques your interest, keep an eye out for the early summer 2017 event. We will have complete details of time, location and registration information finalized in January.

julie Jamie Levine Daniel is an Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI. She holds a doctorate in public policy and management from the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.

suzann Suzann Lupton is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management and Director of Academic Affairs at the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI. She is a doctoral candidate in philanthropic studies at IUPUI and a graduate of the Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

Nov 28

High net-worth donors: Impact on major gift fundraising

By Sponsor Insight

By Angela White, senior consultant and CEO, Johnson Grossnickle and Associates

Major gift donors are crucial for the ongoing sustainability of your nonprofit’s mission. In fact, high net-worth donors often provide as much as 94 percent of the funds for nonprofit campaign initiatives. So, it is important that we understand their giving patterns, preferences and motivations.

The 2016 U.S. Trust® Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy released this week provides nonprofits with valuable insights on this important donor demographic. It is the sixth edition of the biennial study, researched by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and U.S. Trust.

The report surveyed 1,435 U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more (excluding the value of their primary home) and/or an annual household income of $200,000 or more.

On Dec. 7, I have planned a webinar with Una Osili, Director of Research at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and Claire Costello, Managing Director of the Philanthropic Solutions Group at U.S. Trust. We will review in depth the findings and discuss how nonprofits can use this data to structure their major gift fundraising program. Please register now to join us!

In the meantime, here are 10 of the key findings from the report:

  1. High net-worth (HNW) Americans are exceedingly generous, with more than 91 percent of HNW households donating to charity in 2015, far surpassing the 59 percent of donors in the U.S. general population.
  2. The average gift size of HNW households ($25,509) is 10 times greater than general population households average gift ($2,520).
  3. The volunteer rate among the wealthy (50 percent) is double that of the general population (25 percent). This is an important figure, as the study found 84 percent of wealthy individuals donate to at least some of the organizations where they volunteer and volunteering HNW households gave 56 percent more than those who did not.
  4. Most HNW households intend to continue to give at this generous level in the future (55 percent) or even increase their giving (28 percent) in the next three years. Just 3 percent of HNW households plan to decrease their giving in the next three years.
  5. High net worth donors gave to an average of eight different charities and a variety of causes. “Basic Needs” were the charitable category supported most frequently, with 63 percent of HNW households having donating to those charities in 2015, followed by religious (49.6 percent) and health charities (40.2 percent).
  6. Religious and basic needs organizations received the highest share of HNW charitable dollars in 2015. Religious organizations received 36 percent of overall dollars given, basic needs followed at 27.9 percent and education received 12.4 percent.
  7. High net worth households were motived to give primarily because they believe in the mission of the organization (54.1 percent). Other top motivators were believing their gift can make a difference (44 percent) and personal satisfaction (39 percent). Only 18 percent of donors said they were motivated to give because they would receive a tax benefit.
  8. HNW donors indicated they believe charitable giving (45 percent) and volunteering (31 percent) have the greatest potential for positive impact on society, far above voting for a political candidate (13 percent) or impact investing (3 percent).
  9. More than half (54 percent) of the HNW donors indicated that they are concerned about the impact their donations may be having, and 78 percent indicated they don’t follow up with charities to evaluate the impact of their donation.
  10. High net-worth donors envision themselves making a charitable bequest, indicating that they expect to leave 12 percent of their wealth to charities – an important beacon of future planned giving opportunities for nonprofits.

angela-whiteAngela E. White, CFRE, has been instrumental in JGA’s success since 1996, when she joined the JGA team. In 2011, she became CEO of JGA, responsible for providing day-to-day leadership to the firm and guiding the JGA staff, while continuing to provide tailored consulting services directly to our clients. White has a high level of expertise in philanthropic consulting in healthcare, education, social services, arts, and faith-based organizations. She also has considerable depth in strategic planning and data analysis.

Nov 21

Design thinking: a human-centered approach to transform work

By Sponsor Insight

By Teresa Tatum, marketing manager, SmallBox

The reality of modern business is one of ever-accelerating evolution and change.

New technologies can uproot and transform entire industries, from new service models to new devices to new ways of working. These realities put tremendous pressure on organizations to adapt quickly.

But evolving just to keep up can be messy and aimless. Rethinking your business, however, should be intentional — and that’s why we at SmallBox use the design thinking process.

Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that puts people — specifically, your audiences — first. One of the benefits of this human-centered approach is that it’s empathy-heavy on the front end.

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