Original Photo courtesy of Flickr user wallyg (CC Licensed)

Have you ever experienced that dreamy, hungry look on the face of non-profit organizations’ staff when you say: “I have experience in fundraising”? No matter whom you speak to, be it directors or campaigners, the chances are good that you’ll grab their attention. Better yet, if you offer to help their fundraising efforts as a volunteer, they will veer between the wish to hug you and the attempt not to seem too enthusiastic. But once you go into detail, talking about fundraising strategies, possible financial sources and so forth, this lovely atmosphere might be replaced by misunderstanding. There are certainly various ways to raise funds in Europe; and depending on where you want to get your money from, “experience in fundraising” translates into very different skills.

Issue No. One: Grants vs. Individual Donors

My experience in Europe is that fundraising is usually understood as grant writing. By contrast, the idea of developing a strategy to obtain and enlarge a basis of individual donors is met with scepticism. Instead, organizations prefer to put this effort into creating a project proposal from scratch within a few days.

In her book Fundraising for Social Change, Kim Klein breaks the myth that most of a non-profit’s funding should come from foundations or corporations. Instead, 75,6% of contributions  to successful non-profits stem from individuals. Many people in the US and Canada will already know these stats. But then again, the book is written from a American perspective, where community fundraising is a traditional, successful tool  for various reasons – one being a historial lack of social services provided by the state. So what about Europe?

With the welfare state in place and the European Union and many foundations offering grants, individual charity might be much less important. NGOs – particularly small NGOs – often focus their fundraising activities almost exclusively on project grants. This holds especially true in new EU Member States, where European Structural and Cohesion Funds are available (see also a Wikipedia article on these funds). This results in a focus on constant “project work” with no possibility to develop longer-term strategies.  It also sets up a  culture of looking down on fundraising as an “Anglo-Saxon” approach, one which does not work in Europe. Because of this, organizations are increasingly lacking funds for overhead costs. This has been affirmed by Blackbaud’s survey on the European State of the Not-for-Profit Industry 2008. The survey among 466 non-profits in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands shows that 54% of respondents in the UK and 48% in Germany respectively (but only 13% in the Netherlands) are having trouble getting funds for general operating purposes.

I contacted Kim Klein to ask how she would handle this situation. When confronted with this European perspective, she suggested a little more reflection: “Do people in European communities support a church or other faith based institution? Do you ever see people give money to someone who is homeless? Is generosity considered a virtue?” (For the record: the answer to all three questions is “Yes”.)

And she continued: “Usually these questions cause people to realize that money is being raised and money is being given away, even if it is not as common as it would be here in the USA. When I have travelled and gotten these objections, I have reminded people that the history of grassroots fundraising in America is full of these objections: in the 1940’s, many people said ‘Americans will never respond to mail appeals. They are invasive and it is un-American.’ By the 1980’s, most donations were made by mail. In the mid 1990’s, many people said, ‘The internet will never work for fundraising.’ Today on-line fundraising is the fastest growing area of fundraising.”

Issue #2: The Internet

One would expect internet fundraising to be met with the same scepticism as fundraising in general, because after all it also asks for individual giving. But on the contrary, online fundraising  in Europe is up and coming. The survey mentioned above shows that about 50% of organizations already use online fundraising and that this is expected to grow further. Donation buttons seem to have become a standard feature on non-profit websites, and during the last week, I spoke with people from three different  European organizations who were psyched about creating their first Facebook presences, welcoming social media and its possibilities.

I wondered where this seeming contradiction comes from. On the one hand, it could simply be that the young employees and volunteers of these organizations personally like using Facebook and the internet. But on the other hand, today’s patterns of involvement in charity could make online fundraising the appropriate reaction to a more sporadic civic engagement and a reluctance to become actively involved. Clicking a button is easy and the effect of giving money for charity seems to be the same. (Actually, I’m convinced it is not the same – but that’s a story for another blog post… )

In any case, solutions for an effective use of the internet for communications and fundraising are still desperately sought after by many European non-profits, with only about a third of the Blackbaud’s survey respondents considering their websites effective.  The possibilities of online communications channels to the general public are only vaguely recognized. Usually, Facebook presence or other online activities are managed as an afterthought to other duties, or by volunteers.

I’m guessing that you’ve all already thought about these two fundraising issues. So what is your advice to the Europeans? Does individual fundraising make sense in (Central & Eastern) Europe? Are there alternatives to grant writing? Do you know of good examples which can serve as models for European online fundraising efforts? (As far as I know, fundraising via Facebook is not possible for Europe. Yet.)

Please let us know through your comments.

“…Creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for clients, partners, and society at large.”*

Surprise: the secret word for your job is marketing. Why is it a secret? When you work as a fundraiser, “marketing” is a bit of a dirty word – it sounds corporate, and insincere. But good marketing isn’t about lying to people or tricking them into your product – it’s about connecting with the people whose values line up with yours.  And a  little cross-pollination is all it takes to save you reinventing the wheel when it comes to, well, getting on with the job of marketing your non-profit.

Where can you access online marketing advice that applies to non-profits?

Some excellent (and amusing) tips are available in the form of The Age of Persuasion, a CBC radio show about advertising. Hosted by Terry O’Reilly, it’s not available in podcast format, but it is available for streaming. While O’Reilly is specifically talking about advertising, truths about considering your target group and doing your homework are made awfully vivid by stealable examples from the corporate world.

Katya Andresen’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog calls this “Robin Hood Marketing”, that is “the concept of stealing corporate savvy to sell just causes”  and offers clear-cut breakdowns of marketing essentials, such as going to where the attention is. Nedra Weinreich’s excellently-written blog Spare Change focuses on social marketing and how it applies to non-profits.

No matter what, though, you cannot do better than getting an expert into your non-profit. Offline, see if your local university has opportunities for marketing students to intern with you and take their knowledge seriously – an intern who helps you learn the ropes of Robin Hood marketing could be a fantastic board member in the making.

Guess where the term "marketing" originated? Original Photo: Flickr user lumierefi (CC license 2.0)

*quoting the American Marketing Association’s definition – you can see the whole definition on Wikipedia.

If your non-profit is working on a social media plan, you’re going to need to think about how your non-profit tells stories. If you fundraise, you already know that the best collateral a non-profit produces are stories about their audience. Here’s an example – think about the last fundraiser you participated in. Chances are, it told you a story about what kind of person you are – you are someone who votes for change, or believes in the environment, or supports youth organizations. And the way they did it?  Good sequence, emotion, an unexpected turn of events, a telling detail or two: all bench marks of good storytelling.

If you’re not sure how to get started storytelling, stop by We Are Media (a social media starter kit curated by Beth Kanter for NTEN) where you will find a terrific module on storytelling, including interviews with NPR and essential essays.

If you’d like to see hilarious story telling: better stop by An Excellent Boring Presentation.

There are – literally – hundreds of ways to visualize your ideas, and if you’re skeptical, check out the Periodic Table of Visualisation. See any you use as part of your work process? (Are there any useless ones in there?) Got any how-to links to chase like this one from Beth Kanter? And where do you go online for useful tools for drawing up your brilliant scheme? Comments, emails and drawings welcome:)

As a Warsaw resident, I got super excited about this. I thought – hurray, a chance for Poland to access all of the issues around climate change. Take recycling. This is a concept that has not really taken off in Warsaw: public bins are available everywhere, but only to recycle glass and not for other basic elements like paper. What’s more, few Gen Xers or baby boomers recycle because it’s seen as dirty and a pain in the butt – which it is since you have to lug your recycling for blocks to the bins after the one door-to-door program was shut down earlier this year. Now, before you imagine that this is because Poland is somehow underdeveloped or uninformed – consider that nearly the entire population listens to the radio and buys at least one paper every day, that we are all on the internet and that there are two cell phones for every person. If you want to get a message out, UN, now is your chance!

And they are trying.

Conference websites have to be clear, pretty, interactive and  – unlike a normal non-profit website which caters to a target audience – useful to thousands of stakeholders with radically different needs.  To this end, the UN Climate Change conference website has some really good elements for members of the public looking to get informed about climate change. For example, they’ve organized very complex issues into the category of ‘Essential Background’ and an ‘Issues Quickfinder’ that makes it easy to get up to speed. They also include background on recent climate change conferences and set out their priorities clearly on the homepage.

Unsurprisingly, their efforts to make all of these issues intelligible are interspersed with glacier-sized chunks of jargon and a labyrinthine ring of links.  Worse, they’re using social media only as a transmitter, not for interactivity: this means that you’re welcome to watch a press release hosted by Youtube, but no discussion is invited.

It doesn’t have to be like this – for the last few years a main feature of the International AIDS conference websites (the latest was in Mexico) has been a ‘Global Village‘ part of the site for citizen organizing, as well as extensive site for youth to organize together.  Still, the Climate Change conference has just started, and so far I’m mostly impressed with how the UN has coordinated with the media to get their message out over Polish radio, media and the internet.

The shocker is that week’s loser is the usually web-savvy social change organisation Avaaz.  Two weeks before the climate change conference they sent out a message to all their Polish members, asking for help with logistics in Poznan. We offered to volunteer translate over the internet, or to translate in person in Poznan. No response. We went on their website to see what they were doing around the conference and what other activities we could get involved in online. No response! All the climate change info they have up right now is about their work in 2007. Where’s the community discussion, the petition, the outreach between countries, the face on a global problem?  Since when is the UN doing a better job of getting personal online than Avaaz?

Secure Our Dream is a terrific example of what not to do. Let’s take it apart…

1) Unclear Mission
If you’re going to convince people to give you money, you need to be able to clearly articulate where that money is going to go.

Joe’s charity is dedicated to bringing together “individuals who want to help others, while at the same time ensuring our government keeps answering our tough questions.” As Joe writes, despite rumours that he might be running for congress (or giving “a shot at the country and western scene”), he really wants to do his “civic duty.” But what does this mean? What’s the big picture, Joe? Show me the path that my money will take, from my hands, through yours, and make a difference in the world.

2) Unclear Audience
Clearly, there are legions of Republicans, out-of-work plumbers, and, apparently, country and western music fans who will form the base of support for Joe’s charity. But it’s not clear on the website who else will gravitate towards Joe’s cause. This is related to point #1, and it all comes back to relevence: on your website, you need to demonstrate that you know exactly who will give you money, and how their money will make a difference.

3) Unclear Call to Action
Joe generously gives away a “We Are Joe” membership for free – provided you can stomach the grammatical inconsistency. Frankly, I’d rather have a “We Are Joes” membership, or even a “We Is Joe,” which sounds especially good if you grunt it out. The free membership doesn’t apparently get you anything, beyond Joe’s love. You can upgrade to a “freedom membership” or pre-order Joe’s upcoming book. You can also “Shop Joe,” which somehow sounds a little creepy.

One of the big advantages of fundraising on the web is that if you can instantly motivate a donor to give, the transaction can happen right away. If you can make someone feel passionate about your cause then they can instantly help out. You need a clear call to action, which Joe doesn’t have.

4) Crappy design
This is subjective, I suppose, but from a user standpoint the site is a little stinky. The menu options aren’t clear; there’s no strategy to move the user through the site; there’s no fresh content. It’s all a bit of a circa 1995-era website.

5) Top Down, Not Bottom Up
The site is all about Joe: it’s not about his supporters (or potential supporters.) For a cause-related website to survive in the current environment, it has to embrace some level of interactivity from the site visitors. Granted, Joe has put a placeholder in for an upcoming forum for paying members (”Joe the Forum.”) But that’s not going to be enough – the site should be linked over to Facebook pages, to Twitter, to all the other social media tools that encourage a community to form around a cause.

Joe needs to work on his charity site before it becomes a raging success. However, there are some great lessons to learn from looking at something like this – what’s important, and what to avoid.