Category Archives: Getting Volunteer Help

Do you know when the real work of a big event begins? Not the day of the gala, but afterwards.

Nonprofit organizations often put  much energy into an elegant gala, an annual dinner, a silent auction, or some other special event. The event itself may be a roaring success (or maybe not). But then, as Bay Area fundraising consultant Lela DaVia describes it, “the captive audience attending the event is often forgotten in the aftermath of  staff and volunteers recovering from the hard work. If there’s no follow-through, you may have lost a golden opportunity to cultivate current donors and engage new ones who attended.”

A profitable event can, with the correct follow-through, maximize its fundraising potential by fostering new and ongoing donor involvement.  This was a key theme in DaVia’s January, 2013 workshop at the Foundation Center in San Francisco, entitled “A NONPROFIT’S NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION: IMPROVE DONOR RELATIONS.”

What exactly does effective follow-through involve? In the case of one organization with which DaVia worked, it meant that “after the event, every person in the room was entered into the organization’s database; the guests were segmented into categories; and then they were personally contacted by someone from the organization (ideally a Board member or key volunteer), asking how they learned about the group and inviting participation, for example in the next year’s event-planning efforts.” Sending a follow-up letter or e-mail is another option for communication.

Of course, the organization that holds the event may not have a complete guest list on hand — after all, if a corporation buys a table and invites various employees and their family members to attend, even the ticket-buyer may not know until the last minute who will actually show up. But your group can capture such names by unobtrusive means, such as putting out a guest book, offering a door prize, or holding a contest (in which attendees are quizzed on facts about your organization). You can do all of these to cover all bases.

If this sounds like common sense or something you’ve heard before, remember that it’s still not the way things typically happen. In fact, lack of follow-through was a prime concern expressed by members of DaVia’s workshop audience. In many cases,  despite coming from established nonprofits, and their interest in attending the workshop indicating their organizations’ commitment to professional development, many cited lack of follow-through as a major impediment to their group’s fundraising success. Sometimes the ball got dropped even before the event was over, as in: “We have house parties, but no one is willing to make a clear ask for money.”

Follow-through issues can be compounded when a group brings in a consultant to serve as events planner. The very person who was devoting the most energy to assuring the event’s success must pick up and leave when it’s over, along with a good deal of institutional memory. No matter how great a job the event planner did at creating notebooks or files describing what happened before and during the event and what needs to happen after, the key is  actually reviewing those notebooks to take the next steps. A good new year’s resolution to cultivate those donors from minor to major!

I stopped by my local Foundation Center library the other day, and asked which recent books they were most excited about. (By the way, if there’s a Foundation Center near you, it’s a great resource — free access to nonprofit-related books, advice, software to help you research funding sources, and more.)

The first book the librarian mentioned to me was  Boards on Fire! Inspiring Leaders to Raise Money Joyfully, by Susan Howlett. Dutifully, in order to bring you the latest news, I sat down and read it cover to cover.

Okay, I confess, this took me about half an hour. This book is SHORT! No, let’s call it compact. Lots of substance, no fluff. That’s enough to make me joyful right there, in a world where most authors seem to think they have to get their books to one inch thick to be credible.

The book contains some excellent points about how to overcome your board’s resistance to fundraising. Even if you’ve heard some of them before, it’s a fine refresher, or something to give to a friend who has become an E.D. or development director and feeling frustrated with the board.

Some of the points that stood out were:

• The usual reason that board members are unhappy fundraising is that they weren’t told ahead of time that this would be part of their responsibilities. But even the ones who feel this way can be brought into fundraising step by step, through development of genuine relationships with donors.
• Howlett discourages standard board member contributions upon entry, as well as “give or get” plans, on grounds that you don’t want the board members with greatest capacity to stop fundraising or giving at their “goal.”
• You can’t expect board members to ask others for money until they’ve learned about the organization in depth — its mission (beyond the tag line), its stories, where it fits into the community (including differences from the “competition”), what it actually achieves, and so forth.
• Board meetings can always be made more interesting! Put fundraising early on the agenda, have one board member per meeting share a “mission moment,” and serve food.
• The organization can model donor relations in its own relations with the board, by joyfully asking them for support, and thanking them well.

That’s not all; as I said, the book is already boiled down to the essentials, so I can’t do any further boiling. In any case, I’ve got to start working on shortening a book of my own.

A recent article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “A newsmaker you should know: From fundraising parent to charity’s executive director,” offers a reminder of the way many professional nonprofit fundraisers get their start: by pitching in on a cause that they care about. In Debra Panei’s case, she had been helping raise money for her children’s school when she discovered she “really liked” fundraising.

Thank goodness this happens to some people, because I’ve never heard a child say, “I want to be a fundraiser when I grow up,” much less a parent saying, “Tommy wants to be a lawyer, but I’m really hoping he’ll go into fundraising.” Hopefully that will change someday, as the field of fundraising becomes more professionalized, and an increasing number of colleges offer courses in fundraising and other aspects of nonprofit administration.

In the meantime, people like Debra often have to learn by doing — no small task, as she is the first to admit. When she started her first fundraising position, as a development assistant at St. Barnabas Charities, she says “I found out there is a lot more to fundraising.” Now there’s an understatement!

Fortunately, there are numerous resources to help anyone learning to fundraise. And I’ve been thrilled to discover that my book, “Effective Fundraising for Nonprofits,” is being used as a textbook in numerous fundraising courses, in places like San Francisco State University,  the University of Michigan School of Social Work, the University of Kansas, the Palmer School of Library and Information Science, and the University of the Pacific.

“I have to go to a pre-event training? Just to volunteer? Really?” At least, that’s what I first said (under my breath) when asked to come to an evening training in order to participate in setup at the upcoming “Bay to Barkers” dog walk and festival. Bay to Barkers is an annual fundraiser for the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society (BEBHS), being held this year in Albany, California on Sunday July 29.

Of course, I dutifully arrived at the training. And now I get it: For a big event like this one, there really is a lot of information that the organizers need to convey – and questions that volunteers like me might have.

As Ashley Hurd, President of Eventful (with which BEBHS contracted in order to put on the event), “I’ve learned from years of events-coordination that when they’ve got lots of moving parts, we can save a lot of time and trouble by getting volunteers briefed ahead of time. Once volunteers get to the event, they then know where to go and what they’re doing.”

You don’t need to hold an advance training for every type of nonprofit fundraising event, of course. If the event is small-scale or simple, perhaps with only a few volunteers (or only a few who haven’t done this event before), there’s no need to add another item to everyone’s schedule.

But now that I think back, I can remember instances where I wish the group holding the event had, in fact, held a preparatory training. There was the one where the (overworked) organizer told me, upon arrival the day of, that I’d be the primary First-Aid person. Surprise! Luckily, I’ve had First-Aid training, and don’t mind the sight of blood if it’s not coming out of me, but the organizer didn’t know that. Then, somewhere in mid-afternoon, after a participant complained that the toilet paper had run out in all the Portapotties, the organizer told me with a “didn’t you know?” tone that refilling them was part of my job, too. I bet a lot of participants wish I’d gone to an advance training for that event.

With all that in mind (or not), here are Ashley’s top tips for holding a successful volunteer training:

• Give people plenty of advance notice of the training date. “People don’t like to commit to an extra meeting too far in advance, but if you wait too long, they’re already booked. Continue following up with people about both the training and the event itself.”
• Offer food. “Pizza and sodas, for instance, are always a good way to get people to a meeting.”
• Convey information. “I like to give the big picture of what will be happening and when. I also cover things that participants might ask about, like where the bathrooms and other key things are. You can get into the details of specific volunteer positions, too. In some cases, as people have a few days to think about their job, they ask important questions in between.”
• Pass out a map of the event. “I’m a visual person, so I like to give others the chance to picture where they’ll be, and something to refer to once they’re there.”
• Leave time for questions. “You’ll get plenty of them; everything from, ‘Oh, it’s on Sunday, not Saturday?!’ to ‘Can I bring my own dog along?’”
• Make sure people are comfortable with their job assignments. “If you don’t know all the volunteers well ahead of time, this is a chance to not only make sure people are comfortable with their positions, but that they’re well matched to the work requirements. Not everyone is really suited to be a greeter, for example, or should be out in the parking lot for hours, alone.”
• Thank people. “It’s always important to let volunteers know they’re doing important work, and are appreciated. Saying thanks at a training is one more opportunity to get this message across – and doubly important if it gets inadvertently overlooked at the event itself.”

Me, I’m looking forward to putting all my advance knowledge to use on Sunday. (Yes, Sunday.) But no bandaging, this time.

Whether your nonprofit organization holds garage sales, auctions, or runs a thrift shop, this latest news piece — “Pot donated to charity is worth £360,000 — should make you rethink how you look over the donated goods.

The charity in question was a hospice thrift shop in England. It had received a dusty Chinese bamboo brush pot that, instead of selling in their store, it was smart enough to turn over to an auction house. A “fierce” bidding war ensued. (I’m not going to do the math, but £360,000 is even more in dollars.)

Of course, that’s the sort of good luck that most groups can only wish for — resigned, meanwhile, to sorting through piles of donated ratty  T-shirts and cheap glass vases. But the real question is whether members of your group would recognize such good luck if it came your way. The article makes two things very clear:

• the shop’s workers receive regular training in how to spot items of value, and
• the charity has established an ongoing relationship with the auction house, making it easy to arrange such trainings, as well as appraisals and sales.

It’s not hard to implement something similar where you are, if you go to local experts for advise and help. And even lesser payouts can be significant — for example, if you’re able to sell a first-edition book for $50 rather than $5.

By the way, you’ll notice that the comments to the article express concern that the charity should have offered the item back to the donor. Probably true, if they knew who the donor was — but they may not have, as the article did mention that he or she was “anonymous.”

If your nonprofit publishes a newsletter, magazine, or even a blog, getting volunteer writers can be a great way to both reduce your workload and foster community involvement. But once the piece is written and published, who owns it? For example, if a for-profit magazine wanted to reprint the article, to whom would it pay the licensing fee — your group, or the original writer?

If you don’t know the answer to this, you can bet your volunteers don’t, either — which is why it’s worth figuring out this issue in advance and drafting a short agreement for your volunteers. Luckily, Nolo’s own Rich Stim, an expert on intellectual property matters, gives you the details in his blog post called “Who Owns What I Write for Nonprofit?”

Sometimes you learn the most about grassroots fundraising efforts from the local — and I mean really local, as in neighborhood — paper. The April, 2012 Rockridge News, for example, is where I came across an interesting story by Don Kinkead, about St. Augustine’s Church’s efforts to raise money for the Tonga Parish Mission.

Apparently Father Mark Wiesner was moved, after visits to Kenya, to raise money to help orphaned children there. The area has been hard-hit by HIV-AIDS. He could have just passed the collection plate and asked that parishioners add a little extra for this cause, but . . .

He chose to do something a little different. And different, in fundraising, is often a great way to get people’s attention. Fr. Mark did pass the collection plate alright, but instead of asking for people to put money in, he asked them to take envelopes out. Each of those envelopes contained some seed money, in varying amounts. The total withdrawn from the church’s coffers for starters was $12,100.

Then he challenged the recipients to go forth and raise some real money. “The excitement has been phenomenal,” he is quoted as saying. As of the article’s publication, results included one man using the money to buy $25 worth of candy to sell at his workplace, which raised $150; a ten-year old girl using her $25 to set up a lemonade stand, raising $184; and 20 parishioners banding together to plan an artisan fair to be held on church grounds, profits yet to be determined.

Nonprofit fundraising scams are always in the news, but I feel like there’s been an uptick in the last couple of months — the church in Oakland that makes its students spend evenings in local BART (subway) stations soliciting donations for questionable purposes; the woman in Canandaigua, New York who was charged with raising money on the false pretense of having cancer; and ABC reports about fraudulent charities trying to make money off recent tornado disasters.

It’s enough to scare off any donor.

Which raises the question, what is your nonprofit doing to make sure that any and all of its fundraisers and other representatives can prove that they’re legit? Here are some ideas:

• Be very clear about your group’s identity. Display its name and logo on your website, brochures, and any solicitation sheets that you might, for example, send out with people soliciting donations on the street or of friends. If you are the local chapter of a national group, say so, and indicate where they can find your group online or in the real world.
• Be transparent about your group’s use of money. Your website, for example, should contain clear explanations of where and how funds will be spent. Also include a link to your group’s IRS Form 990.
• Give official materials to staff or volunteers who will be doing public solicitations. The more they carry in the way of pamphlets, log0-bearing paraphernalia, and so on, the more convincing they’ll be. Of course, these can be faked; but at least you won’t have to compete with the low-quality fakes.
• Be aware of local scammers. It’s not uncommon for scam charities to use names that sound generic, or very close to the name of a real group. Watch the news and neighborhood events for such fake groups, and be ready to assure people that they aren’t you.
• Advise solicitors to welcome questions. Having a stranger question whether you’re a fraud can be unsettling. But your fundraising team should be trained for this, and be happy at the opportunity to distinguish your group from the scammers.
• Don’t incentivize immediate donations. Some groups reportedly pay their street solicitors based on a percentage of contributions brought in. Unfortunately, that means that potential donors are discouraged from double-checking on the group and deciding later whether to make a donation. This arrangement leads to uncomfortable donors who may just say “no” if pulling out their credit card on the spot and handing it to a stranger seems too risky.

This problem may have been worsened with the down economy, but it’s never going to go away. The best you can do, in the words of yet another nonprofit, is to “Be prepared.”

Today’s issue of Blue Avocado includes an article I wrote on working with young people as volunteers. It offers tips on dealing with risks and potential liabilities, and details my own deep, dark past as a child volunteer. (Well, not so deep and dark. But certainly long ago . . . .)

Check it out at: http://blueavocado.org/content/when-kids-volunteer-liability-basics.

Here’s podcast three of three, drawn from the recently published The Volunteer’s Guide to Fundraising. In the attached podcast, Author Ilona Bray reveals her own first (and misguided) experience with fundraising, and describes highlights from the book.