It is a Sunday afternoon.  During football season, many don’t know is that I watch bowling the first quarter of the NFL game.  I’m not embarrassed to tell you, I love bowling.  So I watch for an hour or so the PBA, Professional Bowlers Association games.

Well, today the intercollegiate game is being broadcast.  It is Wichita State University vs. Some School in Indiana I have never heard of (good Catholic school).  Looks like WSU will win its 11th national championship in 30 years.  They have always been good.

But they were not up to the task of the Hubbard Collingsworth and Lyle Dresher years ago at Emporia State University.  In 1969 ESU won the NATIONAL COLLEGIAT E BOWLING TITLE.  I used to have a jersey to prove it.  Ron Loewen was a part of that support team at ESU.

Why would I bring this up?

You know my mind works in mysterious ways.  ESU beat University of Kansas, WSU, Indiana, and many other schools to be the best. ESU was a little nothing in comparison to those other schools.

But in bowling we were the best.  We were the undisputable #1.

Who would have known that I would be involved in three national championship teams?  ESU Bowling, Wichita State University World Series Championship in 1989 (30 years after my bowling championship); and then in 2010, Hartsook Companies is the largest in the world.

Each one of these victories marked an opportunity seized.

That is where you have to be in fundraising.  No excuses.  No whining.  No turning back.

Your drive has to be pure, your goal has to be exact, and your reward, total victory.

You can feel a lot of pride about how many times you’ve tried and how hard you’ve worked.  Some of it may even look good on a resume.

But ask anyone who’s breathed the air at the top:  there’s nothing like being #1.

John and Dave were sitting at the bar in my favorite watering hole in Portland, Maine.  The Dry Dock has a great salad that just hits the spot and a Bloody Mary to die for—the kind that’s could be a meal in itself, with a huge stalk of celery and a nice, plump shrimp.   But I digress . . .

John, Dave and I struck up a conversation about life and its struggles.  At one point John asked me what I do.  It’s always a challenge for me to explain, since most people don’t know about the business of fundraising.  They always think of a beggar approach.  My decision to come clean about what I do is based on whether I want to take the time to educate the person asking.

This time, I took the longer course of education and explained that we raised money for large campaigns for college, hospitals, the arts and others.  John seemed to get it and asked some really good questions about how it works.  He has a small business recalibrating measuring devices and graduated from a good school in Vermont.  In fact, he had just finished a job for them in their labs.

As we were talking, John recalled being asked to lunch by a representative of the college several months ago.  He had gone to an alumni reception and thought they probably believed he had some money because he works around science things.  (My assessment is, he is doing just fine).  Anyway, he went to lunch with Steve from the college.  They had a good talk about old times and what was going on at the school.  Time was going by and finally John said, “Well, how much do you want?”

A surprised Steve responded, “We usually don’t talk about money until the third lunch.”

John asked again, “How much do you want?”

This time Steve said, “We were thinking of asking you for $200 a month for 5 years.”

My math says that was nearly $10,000.   That’s a nice gift for a first gift from John.  John had brought along his check book and wrote out a check for $1,000.   Steve hurriedly took the check and thanked John, explaining he was running late for another meeting at Dimillo’s, the local boat restaurant.

John said he hasn’t heard from Steve again.  He was wondering whether he was going to get the other two lunches he was promised.

You know I’m working hard to add research to our work as fundraisers.  Certainly, for the fundraiser to work out a strategy before meeting with John was a good idea.  He obviously decided it was going to take three visits to get a five year, $10k gift from John.

This may have been appropriate—I don’t know, but I think John thought it was silly.

We need guidelines.  Early in my career I heard a guideline that you should thank a donor seven times before asking for another gift.  I never thought that was literal; rather, it was an affirmation that you need to express appreciation before barging in on another ask.  However, I once had a young fundraiser who told me he had thought of six ways, but could I help him with a seventh?  It was time to ask again, and he was keeping track.

Along with strategies and guidelines, I guess what we need to teach is thinking.  If we want to fundraising to be a profession, we need to learn how to think like a fundraiser.  Lawyers don’t simply learn the law, they learn how to apply law and think.  Doctors learn the science of the human body, certainly, but they also learn how to make judgments and decisions based on their understanding of medicine.  They don’t just administer a pill or give a shot.

Fundraisers have to make judgments, too.

My company recently took over a client who had retained a wealth screening service for an analysis of their data base.  When they got the reports back with a suggested gift size, they took the unusual step of handing out the reports to their donors and asking them to make those gifts.  Yes, I said they took that report and laid it in front of the donor and asked them to make that gift.  Stupid at best, incomprehensible at worst.

I’m embarrassed when I hear yet another story about bumbling, inept fundraisers who lack judgment and sensitivity.  I can’t defend them.

Next time someone asks me what I do, I might tell them I’m a bartender at the Dry Dock.  Now, that’s a profession to be proud of.  

While there continues to be some headline drama about 2009 Giving, the reality is, it was a good year . . . if you focused on individuals, if you had diversified your funding base, if you were persistent and tenacious, if you worked hard, if you could articulate your mission and present accountability for what you did with the resources you were in trusted with.

To bore you once again with Bob folklore, go back more than 35 years to when I started in fundraising as a fulltime part of my job. Those who know me know that ego has never been a problem for me, so I took the fundraising job on like I knew what I was doing.  I did what virtually every fundraiser does who starts with a general portfolio, I solicited corporations and foundation.  In fact, I submitted 50 requests and confidently waited for the money to roll in. What rolled in was a rejection, and another rejection.  In 6 months we had accounted for one gift and 49 rejections. In case you didn’t know it, I don’t do well with rejection.

But on that day, the Giving USA Report was on top of my mail, with a bold colorful chart of who gives money away.

Individuals 79%
Foundations 9%
Corporate  5%
Bequests  7%

As we say in the South, “Mama didn’t raise no fool.”

As a lawyer, I knew that individuals had to be the donors in bequests. So 86% of all giving was being away during life or at death by individuals.  And I had been toiling away on 14% of the marketplace.

On that day I changed my view of giving and who gives.  Now decades later, thousands of successful clients, and a “boat load” of stories, and nonprofits doing their best to meet the needs of their mission, IT IS THE INDIVIDUAL WHO MADE ALL THIS HAPPEN.  (By the way I soon learned who ran foundations and corporations.  You got it: INDIVIDUALS.)

Now the number is 88% giving from Individuals and individual-influenced funds (family foundations and donor advised funds).  How could this be more vivid?  Yet many of my friends at the media of record in nonprofits write headlines that mislead the average fundraiser who is looking for guidance.  Instead of headlines that call for nonprofits to diversify, focus on individual donors, and realize that giving has only been slightly affected during the Great Recession, they use words like “plunge,” “dive,” and “sink.”  All are unnecessary and overly dramatic reflections on what happened and what is happening.

All account, regardless of the 2009 study report, for an upswing in giving in 2010.  I am glad there are naysayers. I am glad there are fundraisers who want to believe this doom and gloom stuff.  It just leaves more for my clients and the nonprofits we serve.

Sorry to be greedy, but they are the ones leaving money on the table.  Someone will pick it up—it might as well be our clients.
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Oh, by the way, I just learned that the President has in his 2011 budget the reduction of charitable deductions for higher income individuals.  This proposal to beat up on the rich has been around for a year.  The Center on Philanthropy did a study that indicated this would cost philanthropy over $4 billion dollars.

If you want to get mad—this is something to get mad about.  Many nonprofits are having trouble, so let’s cut through tax policy $4 billion more.

Does this make any sense?

The myth that small budget nonprofit organization cannot or should not pursue multimillion dollar campaigns is exactly that: a myth.

The size of your nonprofit organization’s operating budget does not dictate its fundraising prowess.

How do I know? The nonprofits who have been successful:

A battered women’s shelter with an annual budget of $90,000 raises $2.1 million

A youth summer camp with an annual budget of $300,000 raises $8 million

A community arts groups with an annual budget of $160,000 raises $3.8 million

A statewide professional society with an annual budget of $40,000 raises $7 million

A small town Boys & Girls Club with an annual budget of $280,000 raises $2.5 million

A group helping sexually abused children with an annual budget of $450,000 raises $4.5 million

A community based drug and alcohol recovery organization with an annual budget of $150,000 raises $1.3 million and 30 months later raises another $1.1 million.

There are more examples, but I think you get the point.

There are always reasons not to pursue a comprehensive campaign:

“The economy is poor.”

“We don’t have enough staff.”

“The board is not engaged.”

“We don’t have answers to a lot of our questions answered yet (I call this one paralysis thru analysis).”

“We have no big gift donors (and you won’t if you don’t do a campaign).”

“There are groups currently doing campaigns in our city.”

“We’ve never done a multi-million dollar campaign before.”

And my personal favorite, “No one knows who we are (beyond money, campaigns serve to greatly increase the visibility and profile of an organization).”

All of these dynamics were true for these nonprofit groups. Still, they went on to raise major dollars in service to the clients served by their nonprofit group.

Each of these groups had a different mission and a different type constituency. What these successful organizations have in common is a desire to better serve their clients and to serve more people in need. These groups engaged fundraising counsel and each pursued a major campaign. On any given day they had their doubts and concerns about their fundraising, but each trusted and pressed forward with the fundraising process.

Most importantly they did not allow their doubts and fears to delay or high-jack their ultimate goal of raising more money to better serve their clients.

If an organization of any size allows the current view of itself, including the size of its annual budget, to influence its future it strikes me that its future will be much like its past.

by a Hartsook Consultant guest blogger

This was not the headline of the Chronicle of Philanthropy or the news release issued by the group announcing the study.  Their headline was along the lines of, “Two thirds of Americans to give less or the same in 2010.”  If you read their articles, they say that 53% of Americans were going to give the same, and 11% were going to give less.  Therefore, 36% were going to give more.
Did you hear that? 36% WERE GOING TO GIVE MORE IN 2010!

Which nonprofit anticipated 36% of their donor base was going to give more this year?

I say again, “Huh?”  The real headline is the one I started with.  (By the way, I’ll give credit where it’s due: Philanthropy Journal’s headline was closer to the report.)

I’m certain every one of the over three hundred clients we represent like to hear that 89% of their donors would give the same or more.  That would be some pretty good news!

I had not heard of Fenton Communications prior to this survey release.  I have contacted them to talk about this survey, but they have not returned my call.  I have gone to their website and they look like a reputable company, but they clearly don’t understand the fundraising and philanthropy sector.  If they had reported that 89% of the American public either support President Obama or will support him more, it would be incredible.

One of the other conclusions of this study was that older Americans are more conservative about giving.  Really?  It has always been that way.  It would have been news if they weren’t more conservative.

The fact that only 11% are going to decrease giving is the story.  The robust love of  America has been highlighted by this study and the expression of this love is philanthropy.

I apologize if I seem to be beating up on the Fenton Group.  I am not.  I am glad that there is more research.  The Chronicle released a study that 50 large charities saw an increase in giving of 31%.  While a decline in individual giving in 2009 was seen by The Center for Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, it now projects that will be erased, with more giving in 2010.

Last year, millions of dollars were lost by fundraisers in America because they bought this crap about nobody giving.

They believed the glass was 89% empty.  We didn’t.