GOOD NEWS: Donor Do’s
Good News: An enewsletter for donors and nonprofits
on strategic planning, governance, fundraising, and executive leadership.
Donor Do’s
Listening to my donor and nonprofit clients gives me the opportunity to hear what each has to say about the other. Here are a few things that nonprofits cherish about funders:
Partnership and Good Counsel
As important as a donor's financial investment in a nonprofit is to nonprofits, perhaps even more important to nonprofits is a funder's availability as a partner who serves as a sounding board and offers advice when asked. Funders are often experienced in building financially viable enterprises. They also bring networks of professionals and volunteers who may be helpful to nonprofits in need of legal, financial, business, and other counsel. Donors that simply cut checks are valued, of course, but the ones that take the time to get to know and walk alongside the nonprofits they care about are truly rare and cherished.
Teach Them How to Fish
Akin to a mindset of partnership is providing nonprofits with the expert advisors they need when full-time staff, board expertise, or operating budgets are lacking in critical areas such as board development, strategic planning, and fundraising. My most successful nonprofit clients are often funded by donor clients that pay for me or another third party expert to work with the nonprofit for a defined period of time on a specific project. "Get the Board room right, establish a fundraising plan and routine, map out a plan for the future," all are typical requests from funders to me about a nonprofit they care about. Increasingly, funders are willing to financially invest in such capacity building with the understanding that their operating support alone may not be enough to promote the long term success and independence of the nonprofit.
Site Visits
A leading indicator of funders with the mindset of partnership and good counsel is the routine practice of funder site visits to nonprofits. These funders understand that they can not truly know whether their financial investments are showing a return unless they are physically connected to the nonprofit by walking the site, meeting with staff, board members, and perhaps those benefiting from the nonprofit's direct service, where appropriate. Nothing lifts the spirits of nonprofit staff and beneficiaries like the presence of people who care enough to see with their own eyes the important work undertaken by nonprofits. Funders tend to enjoy and learn from the site visit experience too.
Financial Investment
Of course money talks. Most nonprofits can not survive without financial investments from donors. Unrestricted, operating, multiyear support is most appreciated since it gives the nonprofit desperately needed predictability and the flexibility to spend where it is needed most. I would urge donors to resist the understandable temptation to direct funds to a pet project with restrictions. Similarly, making nonprofits "dance on the head of a pin" with insecure, short-term funding perpetuates the starvation cycle that too many nonprofits are on. As one executive director said many years ago, "Ask the funders to support us like they want us to win."
Stuff Steve Is Watching, Listening To, and Reading
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder (58 minute watch)
"One of the things that keeps coming up as a dimension of the experience of awe is the dissolving of the self. In the psychedelic literature they call it ego death. Julian of Norwich in writing about her love of Jesus said, 'I am nothing.' Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'All mean egotism vanishes.' It's paradoxical because these are all moments when we're transcending the worldly self in awe. They are full of joy and we feel like we can let go or die, metaphorically. What a striking property of the human condition that when we let go of the self, all of the joy begins. That's what is right at the core of awe." Professor Dacher Keltner in conversation with Family Action Network's Susan Cain
Watch Here
Trump's Big Beautiful Bill Explained in 15 Minutes (15 minute listen)
"Under the new law, rich people won't get as much tax benefit from donating to charity as they used to. The deduction still exists but it is less valuable for them. This is meant to stop the ultra rich from using huge donations as a way to avoid paying taxes. Some wealthy people donate to charity not just out of kindness but also for strategic reasons like tax savings, influencing policy or public opinion through foundations or nonprofits. Building reputations or legacy, gaining access to elite circles, politics or media, then pushing agendas like funding think tanks, lobbying groups or advocacy organizations. So what the government is trying to do now is by reducing the value of charitable deductions for the rich, the government is saying that you can still give but we are not going to reward you as much in tax breaks, especially if it is part of a power game." Amit Sengupta
Listen Here
The Impact of Large, Unrestricted Gifts: A Five-Year View (10 minute read)
“By and large, the challenges donors often hypothesize that large, unrestricted grants will create — such as leadership team overload, internal culture tensions, strain in relationships with peer organizations, and hampered ability to fundraise — did not materialize. Instead, we heard that the funds created space for leaders to lead, built morale within the organization, allowed for re-granting or other forms of collaboration across the broader field, and served as a 'vote of confidence' in conversations with other donors. Leaders were almost unequivocally positive about their grant experience." The Center for Effective Philanthropy citing authors from the Bridgespan Group
