Measuring your fundraising effectiveness

By Kirsten Bullock

Have you ever told someone you were a fundraising professional and they said, ‘oh, you’re a professional beggar then’. It makes me cringe just to type those words. If you’ve been in the field for a while, you know that nothing could be further than the truth. Arm twisting, begging and other ways to manipulate a gift out of someone might work once, but it’s not a way to build long-term, sustainable relationships with those people who will join with you to accomplish your organisation’s goals.

At its best, fundraising is about building long-term partnerships on behalf of the organisation. At its worst, it’s about a transactional approach that results in a one-time gift. Unfortunately, too often it falls into the latter category. And too often, the only measurement we look at is how much money has come in. While that’s certainly a good indicator to track, it’s definitely not the only one that should be followed.

Now the Association of Fundraising Professionals in the USA (AFP) have introduced growth in giving (GiG) reports, based on results from their fundraising effectiveness project (FEP). Just in case you’re not familiar with the fundraising effectiveness project, here’s the summary from AFP’s website:

The goal of the fundraising effectiveness project (FEP) is to help grow philanthropy’s share of the GDP. It pursues this goal by providing nonprofits with tools for tracking and evaluating their annual growth in giving. Growth in giving is the net of gains in giving minus losses in giving. Nonprofits raise more money by investing more money in growth-oriented fundraising strategies that both increase gains and reduce losses. The FEP is focused on ‘effectiveness’ (maximising growth in giving) rather than ‘efficiency’ (minimising costs). It conducts an annual survey and publishes gain/loss statistics in a yearly report through a partnership between AFP, the Urban Institute and AFP’s donor software workgroup.

That definition seems a little wordy to me, so my understanding of the project is that it helps people better measure their fundraising success. It provides a format so that you can compare your year-over-year results and look at indicators for long-term success, rather than just money.

While putting together the report can be a little complicated, the numbers it measures are fairly easy to explain. Gathering the numbers usually requires a good donor management software programme. The good news is that the members of the AFP donor software workgroup (who are partners in this ongoing study) have said that they would build in a report to give you this information.

First, it looks at new donations that are coming in. This could be in the form of new donors, returning donors (those who had stopped giving previously) and donors who gave higher gifts than in the previous year.

Then it compares those numbers to areas of loss in donations. This includes donors who gave less this year than last year, those new donors who gave last year but not this year and those donors (who had given for two or more years) but did not give this year.

AFP, at www.afpnet.org/FEP, has provided tools to help you develop these charts for your organisation. They are available as a service to the community, so you are not required to be a member to access them. Here’s a direct link to the page that provides a template for the report.

All that is well and good, but the most important thing is what the information helps you to accomplish. First, it provides a format for a report you can take to your board to help them understand what the total amount raised means. Next, it can help you measure how you’re doing against other participants in the study. Third, it helps you identify those areas you’re struggling most in – and address them appropriately. And finally, my personal favourite, it will provide validation regarding where you’ve done well – and gives you a reason to celebrate.

The 2010 fundraising effectiveness survey report found that, from 2008 to 2009, respondents reported gains of 45 per cent in new funds coming in. Unfortunately, this was offset by losses of 61.1 per cent, resulting in an overall loss of 8.1 per cent in gifts. The report, in PDF format and available here provides a detailed breakdown (just in case you’re as addicted to data as I am).

Are there similar projects in your part of the world? I’d love to hear about them.

Making it real

by Lucy Gower

We know that people make decisions based on emotion. Great fundraisers deliberately seek ways to develop emotional connections between their donors and their cause. This is usually achieved in a number of ways, through storytelling, use of language, images and film.

If you need any evidence check out the story of the Explore the Bay campaign for Save the Bay that raised $11 million. Fundraising board members Joan Abrams and Kate Kilguss discovered that reconnecting people to their own relationship to the Bay was the key to inspiring them to give.

David Brooks, author of The Social Animal (Random House Inc, USA, 2011), wrote: ‘Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it. Emotion assigns value to things and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations.’

We also know that fundraising is hard. Fundraising is becoming increasingly competitive with thousands of ‘good causes’ trying to attract income from limited resources. Fundraising is a business discipline and, like any business, charitable organisations must be constantly innovating and developing new ideas to keep ahead of the competition. So, the more creative you are in finding ways to connect donors emotionally to your cause, the more successful your fundraising will be.

Storytelling, good use of language, images and film work fine, but is fine good enough? If you can get your donors to experience your cause in a physical way it will be even more powerful.

‘It’s never enough just to tell people about some new idea. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people’s heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.’

John Seely Brown, Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation (Harvard Business Review, USA, 1997).

You have to help people have an experience. There are many ways to do this. Below are some of examples to get you thinking.

Masaru Ibuka, Sony’s then honorary chairman liked carrying his bulky cassette player with him when he travelled. It was rather cumbersome so he instructed Sony engineers to make it smaller. At that time portable cassette players were predominately used by journalists to record interviews, no one understood why anyone would want a cassette player that played and didn’t record. When the Sony Walkman was launched in 1978, Sony employed actors to walk, cycle and, apparently, skateboard around Tokyo demonstrating the use of the Walkman in action. Journalists were taken to a park where they, on their very own Walkmans, could experience the quality sound and see other people using the device. They felt it. It was made real for them. The rest is history.

Chip and Dan Heath tell a compelling story in their latest book, Switch (Random House Inc, USA, 2011), Chip and Dan Heath tell a compelling story of a manufacturer wasting sums of money due to poor purchasing. An employee, desperate to make management understand the waste, hired a summer intern to investigate just one product and the prices that were paid for it. The intern gathered data on the prices paid for standard gloves that were used in all the factories. The result was 424 different gloves and where there were like for like gloves, the cost of these ranged from $5 to $17. At the next board meeting the 424 pairs of gloves were placed on the boardroom table with price tags on. The board members understood. It made the waste real for them in a way that a PowerPoint slide or a spreadsheet would not have done.

During World Water Week UNICEF in New York sold dirty water in dirty water vending machines. No one wanted to drink the dirty water but many made a donation. Watch the clip here to see some emotional responses. Every day, 4,100 children die of water-related diseases. Being asked to buy the dirty water that kills so many made it real for the passers-by.

Plan International pioneered child sponsorship 70 years ago and it remains a key part of their fundraising today. As a child sponsor with them and other sponsorship agencies, such as ActionAid, you can go and visit your child in his or her community and see the difference your donation has made. Sponsors can record and write about their experience. You can learn about The Bramelds trip to Ghana here. It certainly made it real for Lynne and Paul Brameld. It also helps make it real for other child sponsors like them.

Guide Dogs for the Blind hold a blindfold walk where participants are sponsored to walk blindfolded, with the help of a guide dog. I think there is so much more potential for this concept. It helps people understand the crucial role of a guide dog. It makes it real.

Hunger affects a billion people worldwide. WeFeedback asks you to think of your favourite meal and donate that value to help feed others. For example, steak and chips is calculated at $23 that, the steak and chip eater is informed, can feed 92 children. It makes it real.

Unseen tours are walking tours led by homeless guides. They offer a historical yet hitherto unexplored perspective of London, as perceived through the lens of homelessness. The tours include the guides’ own stories and experiences.

Making it real is about helping your donors physically experience your cause. It involves thinking just that bit harder about how to connect your donor emotionally. Whether you make a prototype, or gather real evidence, or play out the real situation, or compare daily lives of your donors and beneficiaries, the more you can do to make it real and emotional, the more connected your donors will be. In a competitive marketplace spending time making it real will make your donors more committed and your fundraising more successful.

If you liked making it real you may also be interested in:

Art of Woo, G Richard Shell and Mario Moussa (Capstone Publishing, UK, 2008).

Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki (The Penguin Group, UK, 2011).

Switch, Chip and Dan Heath (Random House Inc, USA, 2011).

The Social Animal, David Brooks (Random House Inc, USA, 2011).

Dabbling in fundraising won't get you there

By Christiana Stergiou

Organisations that take up fundraising in a casual, half-hearted or even superficial way, I call ‘dabblers’.

Definition of dabble: to take part in an activity in a superficial or casual way.

Recently, I've come across a number of dedicated people who care about their organisations but have no fundraising experience. They dabble. And that’s fine if you're a local sports club or community group with small funding needs, or you only need a couple of dozen donors, or $25k a year.

But dabbling in fundraising only gets you so far. If you require significant, strategic revenue for your work, dabbling in fundraising will not get you to where you want or need to be. In fact, it may even hinder you.

Nonprofit organisations that dabble in fundraising are usually doomed to a vicious cycle of fundraising ineffectively, never having enough money to get ahead and urgently needing to try and raise more. Eventually the organisation that dabbles gets to a point where they have to make serious decisions. I think that in such a situation there are two options. Fundraise properly. Or don't fundraise at all.

Why might you say no to fundraising?

· Fundraising is not easy. There is a perception held by many organisations that don’t raise money from the public, or that ‘dabble’, that fundraising is the easy solution. It is not.

· Fundraising is not free, nor is it very cheap. Effective fundraising costs money. It requires investment and often for the long term. It is not a quick fix. Normally, money that is invested now may not see any return for at least an entire year.

· Fundraising can be scary. Effective fundraising strategies and tactics often require some level of risk, something to which boards and senior managers are usually averse. This is more the case for those who have relied on government funding for years on end. Now a change is terribly frightening.

· Fundraising is not fair. If you don’t have a cause that appeals to the broad public, or perhaps to many people at all, you’ll find it even harder than most to fundraise. Although, that in itself is not a barrier to fundraising; even if you don't have a 'sexy' cause, you might find that you have supporters that care strongly about what you do.

Here are just some of the options I think you could choose ahead of fundraising.

· Get a loan from a benefactor or the bank. Have a business plan to pay it back.

· If you’re running social businesses that are meant to make a profit and fund your charitable works, then make sure they are making the profit they should. Don’t fundraise to prop up unprofitable business activities.

· Invest your money wisely and use the interest you achieve (sometimes doing this will show more of a return then spending the same money ‘dabbling’ in fundraising).

· Don’t fundraise from the public. Spend more time and effort on your government grants and philanthropic trusts and foundations – these are two of the largest sources of income for the nonprofit sector. Work on becoming a sustainable organisation beyond these sources of funding. There are experts out there who specialise in this type of fundraising alone. This is often the most beneficial investment for organisations already dependent on such income.

Dabbling in fundraising is not a plan. In Mal Warwick’s The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success – the best book that I have read about fundraising planning – he argues that there are only five fundraising strategies: growth, involvement, visibility, efficiency and stability (GIVES). You can’t have a fundraising plan that does it all. You really need to choose only one or two of these and focus on them.

For example, right now, a few of the nonprofits I work with have a growth + involvement strategy. That is, their primary strategy is growth (lots more donors, giving lots more money), and a secondary strategy of involvement (more people involved in their cause and mission). The aim is that within five years they may be able to achieve a stability-driven plan (that they will one day know where most of the money they need is coming from each year).

Another important concept that Mal covers in his book is that of opportunity cost. This is the money you would have made if only you'd done things right. Dabbling in fundraising can result in you spending time on the wrong things and things that won't lead to long-term sustainability. When considered carefully, opportunity cost may well drive you to outsource some areas of fundraising to established experts, such as those who specialise in grant funding or direct mail and concentrate your own efforts on 'only doing what only you can do'.

If you want to fundraise, don't dabble. Get serious about fundraising. Invest; plan for the long term. Plan for the day when your organisation knows, year after year, where most of your money will come from.

Now that would be a wonderful day.

How to raise monthly donors on Facebook – yes, Facebook

By Pamela Grow

When I read Australian fundraiser Jonathon Grapsas’ March post about how one nonprofit had managed to raise over $100,000 in monthly gifts via Facebook I was intrigued and mildly incredulous.

I believe that social media is invaluable to nonprofit organisations, particularly the small nonprofits, but I confess that I always thought of it as an initial first step in an organisation’s marketing strategy. When it comes to actual donations, I’ve reflected back upon the numerous Facebook birthday-wish gifts I’ve made to various causes without receiving a thank you, let alone a follow up, from a single organisation.

So I arranged to phone Jonathon to talk to him about fundraising in general and, in particular, about the exceptional social media fundraising success of the Soi Dog Foundation and their $100,000 monthly gifts from Facebook users. (Jonathon is the brilliant head of fundraising innovation for Pareto Fundraising in Australia and publishes one of my favourite fundraising blogs.) Jonathon was kind enough to connect me with Leonard Coyne, the genius behind Soi Dog Foundation’s fundraising and Leonard quite generously agreed to be interviewed over the phone.

The Soi Dog Foundation works to help the homeless, neglected and abused dogs and cats of Thailand by reducing pain and suffering through humane population control. From February to November 2010 (a mere nine months) the Soi Dog Foundation saw a 350 per cent increase in monthly donors, attributed primarily to Facebook traffic. Pretty impressive, no?

What’s more, Leonard’s Facebook experiment for the Soi Dog Foundation resulted in increased audience engagement, a significant increase in one-off donations, supporter driven appeals and even five legacy gifts directly attributable to Facebook. Yes, five legacy gifts.

How did he do it?

As Leonard told me, ‘There’s a lot of noise about social media, but it’s a very ephemeral noise. Too many organisations start up a page or group but there is no discipline in taking it forward.

‘Although many organisations believe that they should establish a group instead of a page (or both) this is not the case. Although groups allow you to ‘mass message’ the group’s members, it is typically fairly ineffectual and regarded as yet another Facebook annoyance if done too frequently. Groups were designed for use by people who have a similar interest. Pages on the other hand were specifically designed to represent an organisation. Pages also offer much more functionality and customisation than groups. Be careful not to confuse your audience with too many pages and groups representing your organisation. One page is the best approach.

‘Nonprofits also need to recognise that an investment of time is required to grow your fan base. One thing that works really well for us is to actively post every other day asking fans to ‘invite’ their Facebook friends to “like” us.’

Leonard’s right, it will definitely take some time to reach that initial mass of active followers who will begin to spread the word organically. The key is consistency. Actively pursue new Facebook followers by way of your regular communications, your organisation’s website, your newsletter, email signatures (don’t forget to create email signatures for your board members as well), and via your blog and Twitter.

Another factor in the Soi Dog Foundation’s Facebook success lies in advertising. Like many internet marketers, Leonard finds Facebook advertising far more effective than Google and he’s spent a fair amount of time in testing. He says, ‘I think anyone advertising on Facebook should be going after a recurring gift. It’s not terribly effective to use Facebook advertising for one-time gifts, recurring giving is key.’

Here are a few other tips for Facebook advertising. Leonard only advertises to women and suggests that in order to find out who you should be targeting, test by age, gender, relationship status, location, education, workplace and any other relevant categories you can think of. This is where your ideal donor profile comes in handy. The best way to get started effectively is to tighten down the criteria to a minimum audience reach of 20,000 people. Figure out what a $20 a month recurring donation is worth to your nonprofit and package it in a way that best appeals to your target audience.

What else can you learn from Soi Dog’s success? I liked the interactive sidebar applications that any organisation can emulate immediately on its own Facebook page. Leonard likens each one to a mini web page.

And, if you’re looking for greater engagement, be willing to relinquish some control. As Leonard notes, ‘It makes perfect sense to utilise Facebook for fundraising. Facebook is a social environment. People use it to interact socially. People are sick of you talking at them. Have dialogues with them, establish relationships and train others to do it. And add heaps of photo galleries.’

For more information on Soi Dog’s strategies, be sure to check out Leonard’s presentation on Slideshare.

How to be a fundraising hedgehog

By Damian O’Broin

In his book Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t (Random House Business Books, 2001), Jim Collins tells a story about a hedgehog and a fox. Actually, it’s Isaiah Berlin’s story, but here’s how Collins tells it:

‘The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot and crafty – the fox looks like the sure winner. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, looking like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. He waddles along, going about his simple day, searching for lunch and taking care of his home.

The fox waits in cunning silence at the juncture in the trail. The hedgehog, minding his own business, wanders right into the path of the fox. ‘Aha, I’ve got you now!’ thinks the fox. He leaps out, bounding across the ground, lightning fast. The little hedgehog, sensing danger, looks up and thinks, ‘Here we go again. Will he ever learn?’ Rolling up into a perfect little ball, the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. The fox, bounding toward his prey, sees the hedgehog defence and calls off the attack. Retreating back to the forest, the fox begins to calculate a new line of attack. Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.’

People are similarly divided into foxes and hedgehogs. But it is the hedgehogs that make the biggest impression because they simplify the complex into a single, simple unifying idea. Think of Karl Marx and class struggle, Charles Darwin and natural selection, Ken Burnett and relationship fundraising. These are people who have looked at a complex world and found a way of simplifying it. They are hedgehogs.

Collins goes on to argue that all the great companies have a ‘hedgehog concept’, a simple, clear idea that drives everything that they do. For the US pharmacy chain Walgreens it was this: ‘To run the best, most convenient drugstores (pharmacies), with high profit per customer visit’. Once they identified this as their hedgehog concept, they implemented it with fanatical consistency, replacing inconvenient stores with more convenient ones, even closing good stores if the opportunity arose to replace them with potentially great ones. As a result, Walgreens’ stock performance outperformed the rest of the market by a factor of 15 between 1975 and 2000, leaving the likes of Intel and Coca-Cola trailing far behind.

But a hedgehog concept isn’t a goal or a strategy. It’s an understanding of what it is that you can be best in the world at. More specifically, your hedgehog concept can be found where the answers to these three questions overlap.

What can you be best in the world at?

What are you deeply passionate about?

What drives your economic engine?

So what does this have to do with fundraising? Well, I think there’s one, simple thing that most charities could realistically aim to be best in the world at. And it’s something that would definitely drive your economic engine: donor care. The question is, are you deeply passionate about it?

Whether you’re a big charity or a small one, in whatever sector or country, you could be the best charity in the world at donor care. All it needs is the passion to do it and the determination to make it happen.

The small Canadian political party Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada (AAEVPC) is hardly a household name, even in Canada, or a widely recognised cause, but they seem determined to become the best nonprofit in the world at donor care. You can read about how they retain 70 per cent of new donors in this recent post on The Agitator.

Just to put that retention figure in context, in The Agitator’s donor retention survey nearly two-thirds of charities reported that less than 40 per cent of donors ever make a second gift.

And the rate of second gifts is as good an indicator of long-term donor retention as you’re going to get. If you can maximise the number of second gifts you get, you’ll see a major increase in donor retention and a consequent growth in the lifetime value of your donors.

So here’s a free hedgehog concept for you to adopt for your charity:

We will be the best charity in the world at caring for and retaining our donors resulting in a high lifetime value per donor.

Take that to heart, make it the basis of everything you do, and riches will follow. Guaranteed.

Storytelling inspired by film

By Lucy Gower

So we have already agreed how crucial storytelling is to your fundraising. If you are still unsure, read my last blog For sale: baby shoes, never worn. Tapping into the motivations of your audience, fulfilling their needs, capturing their imagination and evoking emotion that inspires them to take action is fundamental to successful fundraising.

You also know the importance of finding your story. Once you have found it there are many ways to tell it. Earlier this week I was researching the use of film for creating emotional stories. I found so many different examples and I want to share some with you so that they may inspire your own storytelling.

Grab yourself a coffee and take some time to watch these very different short films and consider how they make you feel.

Jot down your thoughts as you go along.

1. The Force: a super bowl advert for Honda using nostalgia and humour.

2. This amateur video captures the destructive power of the tsunami as it hit Kamaishi in Iwate prefecture, Japan.

3. Child’s i foundation raises £10,000 in 38 hours to save baby Joey’s life through the JustGiving community.

4. Topsy Foundation: AIDS sufferer, Selinah, agreed to film herself for 90 days to help others.

5. The tyranny book: Amnesty Portugal’s alternative Facebook.

6. The girl effect showing the extraordinary potential of 600 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world.

7. Cadbury’s chocolate advertisement. No one said it has to be all doom and gloom.

Desperate, joyous, funny, thoughtful, inspired and tearful are some of the words that I wrote down.

People need to feel something if they are going to take action, whether that action is to reach for their debit card, agree to a meeting, or write to their MP. How can you use some of the techniques in these films to make your supporters feel emotion and inspire them to take action?

Not all of the above examples are from fundraising. Look to related worlds; industries whose core business is to inspire or stir up an emotional response, for example advertising, journalism, or Hollywood.

How can you learn from other industries to develop your stories to emotionally connect with supporters and spur them into action?

Answers on a postcard please.

Getting along – conflicts among staff

By Kirsten Bullock

There seems to be an invisible line drawn between fundraising staff and programme staff, executive staff and frontline staff, support services, such as accounting and technology, and everyone else. It exists in some way in most of the organisations I’ve worked with in the USA and I would be interested to hear from readers elsewhere to see if this staff divide is universal.

As a lifelong student (and someone who tends to think too much), I have spent time trying to determine the root of these conflicts. It seems to me that they stem from three different areas:

1) A belief that everyone else is just like us.

2) A tendency to think that the area we work in is the most important.

3) Focusing on what we heard – rather than what was meant.

We are not all alike

I confess that I am not a detail-oriented person; however, I have the utmost respect for those who are. I must also confess though that I used to get really irritated with people who dwelt on details when I wanted to talk about the big picture (and still do occasionally). Over time, and through communications tests and profiles such as DISC and Myers Briggs, I’ve come to have a much greater respect for the importance of diversity on work teams. It ensures that we will be less likely to overlook items essential to the success of our project, among other benefits.

Marriage was a similar learning curve for me in this area. My husband and I folded our towels differently, put our toilet paper on the holder differently, squeezed the toothpaste differently and had very different cooking styles (it was a few years before we were able to cook together). It didn’t mean either of us, or our families, were wrong, we were just different.

We are equally important

While there could probably be some very energetic discussions about the most important part of an organisation (programmes, fundraising, operations), the truth is that none of them could be successful without the others. We need money to operate programmes, but we need strong programmes to warrant funding and we need good systems in place to assure that everything is operating smoothly.

Communication, especially listening, is the key

Communication is an on-going challenge for people, as evidenced by the deluge of self-help books covering this topic and the increasing number of coaches focusing on it. Two people might be using the same words but mean very different things. Add another culture, even a second or third language into the mix and it’s a wonder we’re able to communicate effectively at all.

Several months ago my mother had some friends from Denmark visiting her. They had gone on a trip to a store and while they were waiting to pay her two friends were having an animated conversation about something fairly mundane. The person behind the register expressed concern to my mother about the argument he assumed they were having because, based on what he knew from his cultural norms, he thought their animation was hostility.

Creating a collaborative environment

So, with these challenges (and many more that we don’t have space to cover here), how do we begin to create a more collaborative environment?

First, understand yourself (with a goal of helping to understand others). The things you find most irritating about others may be things you yourself struggle with, or could be the exact opposite to you. Spend some time thinking about your reaction to other people. If it’s a negative reaction, try to identify what’s causing that reaction and why.

Next, try to see the good in others. When you’re able to identify differences between you and others, try to see the benefits that those differences offer. If you’re like me and love to push forward on projects, it’s good to have one or two people on your team providing cautionary words about possible obstacles. If you’re the type of person who gets stuck because of all the obstacles, it’s beneficial to have someone on the team pushing to move things along.

Bring internal partners into the conversation early. Ask questions about how things operate in their department and understand the implications for their department of what you’re trying to accomplish. Bringing all the parties together at the beginning of a discussion can help avoid delays later on. The primary objective for this meeting would be to discuss what you’re trying to accomplish and then ask for ideas of the best way to get there. It does take longer, but there will be more support for the implementation phase – and you might be pleasantly surprised when a better idea emerges to accomplish whatever it is you’re trying to do.

Understand your organisation’s programmes. Take time to learn about the programmes you’re raising funds for and what the hoped for outcomes are. This is a great opportunity to build bridges with programme staff. And remember, people don’t always remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. Listening goes a long way in helping to build a strong relationship.

Recognise programme and operations staff, talk about them whenever the opportunity arises. As fundraising professionals, we often have the chance to do so publically. Let your programme and operations staff members know how much you appreciate them.

Start a giving programme for staff so, just like donors, they can become investors in the organisation beyond the day-to-day work they do; in some cases, introduce them to the joy of giving. Perhaps in a small way it helps other members of the organisation to get a small glimpse of the way we, as fundraising professionals, have the privilege of helping our donors use their money to accomplish something that they care deeply about and would not be able to accomplish on their own.

So, to summarise, it boils down to being a strong partner by listening and appreciating the strengths each person brings to the table. Hopefully through this process mutual respect will develop and a fruitful partnership can begin. Please let me know how these tips impact your work.