On being a delinquent
I know, I’m coming up on the five-month mark of the yawning gap in time since my last post, and all I can muster by way of concern is eh. I took the URL for this blog off my Twitter profile long ago. I left it off the business cards I just had printed. I don’t mention it in any professional bio. This is a dying blog.
And I’m okay with that.
I started this blog in the fall of 2009 when, newly relocated and unemployed, I had plenty of time to blog and the burning desire to stay connected to the nonprofit infrastructure blogosphere that had become like family. (Okay, not family, but really cool virtual colleagues.) Fast-forward to today, and things have, not surprisingly, changed. My interest in all things nonprofit is being supersede by other passions:
1. Cello. Those business cards I had printed? They’re for my budding career as a freelance cellist. My next recital is in May, my first paid solo gig is in June, and my band is playing a show in August. My career as a cellist predates my career in nonprofits by a good decade or so, and I’m nothing short of psyched to see the former take off, even at the expense of the latter.
2. Doing fun stuff with my boyfriend. Decades from now, I’d regret not competing in duathlons, visiting the Hoh Rainforest, and taking a kayaking trip around the San Juans, but I highly doubt I’d think, “Man, I wish I’d blogged more.”
3. My board of directors role. I’ve been on the founding board of a local association for the past year or so, and it makes my nonprofit background newly relevant, but in different ways than before.
Also, I’ve been cheating on my blog with Twitter. It’s so much easier. True story.
The good news is, I’m leaving blogging to the pros. The Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance continues to wow me with its cutting-edge questions and content (long after my discreet exit from the group, back when I knew my blogging days were waning). Other nonprofit blogs keep me up to speed on the sector–there are so many in my Google Reader feed I can’t even remember them all. I think I get more out of commenting on the posts of all these smart folks than I would from writing my own posts right now.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully I’ll see you around the Twitters and the comments.
-Elizabeth
Sometimes it does hurt to ask.
As a development professional, I think of my home mailbox as my little fundraising lab. Every week I get a flurry of donation appeals from groups I’ve given to in the past, as well as some I haven’t, and on the elevator ride up I run a quick triage:
- Maybe
- No
- Why did I even get this?
For months I’ve been getting appeals from a global nonprofit whose work I respect. They focus on a single condition, and their results are both visible and inspiring. My little cousin was born with this condition, so I have a personal connection to the nonprofit. I’m an ideal annual-level donor for them. And they seem to know it, because they mail me an appeal EVERY MONTH.
As fundraisers like to say, the worst that can happen is that a prospect says no. But that’s not really the worst that can happen.
We’ve all gone through this: you get a donation appeal, you send back $25, you mentally check it off your to-do list…and then they ask you again. Often, you get the next appeal–from the same group, remember–before you get an acknowledgment for your first gift. And when that second one comes, you think, “Wait, didn’t I just give these guys money? What do they want now?”
Which is exactly what I thought every month as that aforementioned group’s logo peeked up at me from my stack of mail. Finally, my escape came: an appeal that said “Give now and we’ll never ask you for another dollar!” Yes sir, I thought. That’s exactly what I want. They got another $20 and I got a sigh of relief. Freedom! No more guilt at recycling the envelope, unopened, with the disfigured child on the front, a single tear sliding down his face.
Until the next month. You know what happened. Cue disfigured-weeping-child envelope with enclosed fundraising appeal. Cue disbelief, perhaps naive. This time, I didn’t just say no. I felt officially alienated.
There are many reasons this organization could have sent me an appeal immediately after I literally checked the box that said “Please remove me from mailing list.” Among them:
- Their administrative staff hasn’t entered my mailing preference in the donor management database yet
- I’m on more than one of their mailing lists
- They always ask please-remove-me donors one more time
- They figure it can’t hurt to ask again
Of those reasons, only the last two are reprehensible, even disrespectful. No, my hand didn’t skid across the please-remove-me box by accident. Yes, I thought you meant it when you said you’d never ask me again. I feel like whoever’s on the other end of that trifold two-color mailer is definitely not listening to me.
As a fundraiser, I understand the need to ask. But as a donor, I’m baffled by the lack of comprehension that I don’t want mail from this group anymore. My fellow fundraisers–and I ask this purely out of curiosity–what possible reasons do you have NOT to listen to your donors?
Whether you’re a donor, a fundraiser, or both, you probably have experience with this. Do you agree that sometimes it does hurt to ask?
As if you need a reason to be a nonprofit rockstar
I’m a Millennial, and I like my information bite-sized. But trying to learn things that way–mostly online–can be a piecemeal effort, and at heart I’m more old-fashioned: I love books. So I was tickled when I heard Rosetta Thurman and Trista Harris were crafting a book of advice on nonprofit careers. The result: How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar, which debuted today in both e-book and print formats.
Full disclosure: I was invited to read and review an advance copy, and if you click the link to the book above and decide to buy it from there, I receive a small portion of the sale price. Come on, though. I studied ethics at Oxford. I won’t fawn over a book for a kickback; I’ll fawn over it because it deserves said fawning. Luckily this one does.
I’ll keep this review brisk, because I like long book reviews about as much as you do, and your time is better spent reading the book than reading my blog post about the book.
Reasons to read How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar:
- Curation. It rounds up the most reliable nonprofit career tips from across the Internet–expert blogs, Twitter, news interviews, etc.–and presents them in a coherent collection that’s easier to navigate and notate than that folder of bookmarks I painstakingly saved. This alone makes me a fan.
- Relevance. It references up-to-date career search tips, emphasizing social media and other techniques that are still crossing over into the HR mainstream and therefore benefit from explanation.
- Well-roundedness. It includes tips on managing your finances, work-life balance, and other things that seem peripheral to a career but affect it more they get credit for.
- Ambition. It lists ways to advance your career no matter what phase you’re in: volunteer, intern, entry-level, mid-level, senior, etc. Even if you’re already the boss, you can always get better at it (as both Rosetta and Trista know personally, since they’re now bosses themselves).
- Details. It suggests exact phrasing for milestones such as negotiating a raise. I know, I’m not in it for the money either, but tip #41 alone is worth the price of the entire book several times over.
Rockstar’s weak spots have already been observed by Trina Isakson, and I agree with several of them, including:
- The book feels written for Millennials. I would add that this makes sense given the often fledgling careers of people in my age group. But the recession has sent people of most generations into the job hunt, many of whom who could benefit from Rockstar if it had a less age-specific feel.
- As an introvert, I also find some of the imagery and tips better suited to extroverts.
In addition, as a diehard reader of Rosetta’s blog and a catcher-up to Trista’s, I realized with a jolt that some chapters were recycled almost wholesale from existing–and free–content on said blogs. On one hand, this briefly made me feel like a sucker. On the other, let’s be honest: it’s efficient. Like I said, the real gem of this book is its accomplishment in curating content that is far more useful as a collection than as isolated bits in cyberspace.
That aside, Rockstar is a book worth reading and sharing. For me, it came along at the perfect time: in danger of drifting into career doldrums for a few weeks, I snuck a few pages in my cubicle this afternoon and hit the list of ideas for tip #32: “Fall back in love with your job.” Thank you, Rosetta and Trista. It’s about time I did.
More with less, less with less, or…zilch?
There’s nothing like a recession to teach everyone to do more with less. And as we’re still in the (maybe improving) throes of a downturn, the Nonprofit Millennial Blogging Alliance chose as our next group topic this very idea–specifically, what nonprofits can teach businesses about doing more with less. Our inspiration is Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business by Do Something CEO Nancy Lublin. So while you should really be reading the book, until it arrives from Amazon, you can read our collection of posts! Everyone wins.
Any nonprofit employee can reel off dozens of examples of their organization doing more with less. But I think it’s something of a red herring. Let’s not kid ourselves: nonprofits have been doing more with less for the entire 400-year history of our sector. Whether the economy is in the tank or through the roof, it’s no stretch to say that nonprofits are the most efficient organizations in the country. In fact, it’s almost arrogant to call ourselves “nonprofits”–as in, “Look at all this good we can do with laughably little money! What, you need venture capital, private sector?” (Granted, some nonprofits have more cash than they need; it’s not unheard of to be overfunded and understaffed while scaling up a program. But that’s the exception rather than the rule.)
So doing more with less, while efficient and industrious, isn’t the story. The story, in fact, is about doing less with less.
It doesn’t make sense, does it? Who would want to do less with less? Where’s the achievement in that? The trick, however, is not doing less, period; it’s doing less by yourself.
If the industrial revolution taught us anything, it was about the stunning efficiency of the assembly line. Each worker on the line did one task: attach a hose, for example. That one task wasn’t enough to build an entire car. But hundreds of people doing one thing, and doing it perfectly, built car after car after car. It’s not just mechanical production that demonstrates this concept. Specialists in the animal world work together in symbiotic relationships to accomplish tasks they can’t do alone. (It also makes for cute pictures of hapless birds perched on giant ungulates.)
This is where nonprofits diverge from their counterparts in the private sector. Nonprofits can do less with less–but with greater results–when they specialize and collaborate.
Thanks to the Foundation Center and the Lodestar Foundation, we can search a database of collaboration examples that showcase various types of collaboration across the country. I’ve been watching this concept in action over the past year as Washington Nonprofits, a new state association, has been crystallizing in my home state. (Full disclosure: I’m on its founding board. But that doesn’t make it any less of a solid example.) Washington Nonprofits isn’t being built from scratch; instead, it’s forming through a more Frankensteinian process of existing groups contributing their specialties to a larger purpose. For years Washington’s nonprofit sector was served by a handful of infrastructure organizations that each focused on a geographic area, and some on a facet of nonprofit work, such as volunteerism or leadership training. Certainly the state’s nonprofits were lucky to have them, but their fractured efforts still weren’t the same as a statewide association that could respond to the needs of the entire state sector and represent it at the national level. Recognizing this, in 2009, leaders from these organizations decided it was time to launch a joint effort. The result is an association that blends the skills of multiple leaders to benefit organizations that would otherwise be part of the turf of one at a time.
And turf is the operative word. Specialized nonprofit collaboration works when leaders refuse to get dragged into turf warfare. Turf warfare certainly isn’t unique to nonprofits. In the private sector it’s called competition, and is considered a driver of innovation. Ditto for biology, where the concept of survival of the fittest originated. It’s easy to see why competition would be celebrated in these spheres. Apple and Microsoft, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Domino’s and Pizza Hut…don’t their constant turf wars (or market share wars) give us better and better products?
Of course. But can you imagine what Adonis of a mobile phone Apple and Microsoft could come up with if they actually worked together? Forget just buying it…I think I’d want to bear its little electronic offspring.
Nonprofits may never get credit for anything as sexy as an Applesoft phone. But while businesses are struggling against each other to do more with less, nonprofits at least have a perfect opportunity to do less alone and more together. Embrace the beauty of less with less: Stop trying to squeeze water from a stone. Find someone who needs your rock and has a well.
Subsector-switching, part III: Tera Wozniak Qualls
What subsectors do you distinguish within the nonprofit community?
What subsectors have you worked in so far? How did you transition between them?
Do you consider yourself more strongly drawn toward a specific subsector/cause (such as homelessness and housing issues) or to a specific nonprofit function (such as fundraising, outreach, etc.)?
Do you want/plan to return to a specific subsector in the future? Are you doing anything on the side now to keep your knowledge of that subsector fresh?
Do nonprofits lend themselves more easily to this kind of transition among subsectors around than the public or private sectors do?
Many students or entry-level professionals interested in nonprofit work are faced with a choice: take a menial job or volunteer position for an organization or cause they care deeply about, or take a more lucrative position in the public or private sector that uses their specific skills (writing, research, advocacy, etc.). If you were advising someone on a career move in this situation, which would you recommend they do? Is there another option?
What advice do you have for mid-career nonprofiteers who want to try a different subsector?
Subsector-switching, part II: Elisa M. Ortiz
This is the second in a series on what I call “subsector-switching”–working in one subsector of nonprofits and then changing to another, for any of a variety of reasons. I asked the Nonprofit Millennial Bloggers Alliance for thoughts on subsector switching, and this is the first guest post on the topic, from Elisa M. Ortiz. Elisa is a dedicated activist and organizer for social change with extensive experience developing and leading advocacy and civic engagement campaigns, working with diverse grassroots constituencies, utilizing various social marketing and outreach tools, and training, educating and empowering thousands of people. She currently works at Smart Growth America as the State Campaigns Director, leading state policy reform efforts around transportation and land use. To learn more and connect with Elisa, check out her blog Onward and Upward or follow her on Twitter.
What subsectors do you distinguish within the nonprofit community?
I think of subsectors in two different ways: one based on issue area and one based on mission focus. These aren’t mutually exclusive, of course. In terms of issue focus there are nonprofits covering everything from homeless issues, to women’s rights to transportation and land use (like my own organization) to education to health care and much, much more. On the mission-focused side there are think tanks, advocacy organizations, direct service nonprofits, grant makers and others.
Do you consider yourself more strongly drawn toward a specific subsector/cause (such as homelessness and housing issues) or to a specific nonprofit function (such as fundraising, outreach, etc.)?
Do you want/plan to return to a specific subsector in the future? Are you doing anything on the side now to keep your knowledge of that subsector fresh?
Do nonprofits lend themselves more easily to this kind of transition among subsectors around than the public or private sectors do?
I’m not sure I can answer this since I’ve never worked in either the public or private sectors. But if I had to guess, I’d say that the private sector probably provides more flexibility in transitioning between subsectors. My take is that corporations are focused on finding the right person with the right skills for the job and that skills are transferable across sectors. I think many government jobs are highly specific and focused and therefore it may be harder to transition between departments.
Many students or entry-level professionals interested in nonprofit work are faced with a choice: take a menial job or volunteer position for an organization or cause they care deeply about, or take a more lucrative position in the public or private sector that uses their specific skills (writing, research, advocacy, etc.). If you were advising someone on a career move in this situation, which would you recommend they do? Is there another option?
What advice do you have for mid-career nonprofiteers who want to try a different subsector?
Subsector-switching, part I: Elizabeth Clawson
My six-month-aversary at my new job was a few weeks ago, and after preparing for an executing my review with my boss I finally had time to sit back and think about how things are going, aside from the answers I’d put on the standard HR review form. After all, a year ago I was working in a different organization, for a different cause, and while the learning curve is fortunately steep, it imparts a touch of vertigo some days.
When philanthropy turns passive
I’m doing a bang-up job on my New Year’s resolution so far. Just like I resolved, I’m donating X amount of my income to charity each month. I have a handful of my favorite nonprofits, from the local to the international, and they get money from me every month to employ homeless people in Seattle and woman survivors of war in Bosnia, and to protect civil liberties and abused animals and the environment. My life is good. I have more than I need. So I can afford to give back and still pay my grad school loans.
And thanks to direct debit, I automated it all. A certain day comes and poof! my money goes forth to do good. That’s how I know I’m on target. There’s no other option. I have to do literally nothing each month (except not lose my job) and my favorite nonprofits get my donations.
It’s so easy. And it’s so passive.
Dan Pallotta has a new post on passive philanthropy, a must-read for fundraisers and philanthropists alike. He bemoans the “least-you-can-do” attitude of many nonprofits, which divvy up donors into major gifts (often above the $50k level) and…everyone else. Like me. Guess which group gets most of the attention from the development staff. And by attention, I mean cultivation and opportunity to make a difference for nonprofits and their missions.
Dan (who I realize I wrote about recently as well, but the man knows his stuff) points out that letting the “everyone else” group of donors get away with the least they can do not only lets down nonprofits, but also fails to tap into the potential of these donors. His story about pushing young donors to give more than they (or I) would think themselves capable of struck a chord in me. If someone asked me to give $5,000 to a group and cause I’m passionate about, would I whip out my checkbook? Probably not. But the thought of such an opportunity thrills me. Being able to give so much is a privilege. Being asked is an honor. And actually considering it is only a little crazy.
Which leaves me feeling even more bereft and restless about my automated monthly contributions. I used to scoff at the idea of throwing money at a problem, and now I’m doing it. As a fundraiser myself, no less. For shame, I know.
So how do I break out of this quicksand of passivity? Give more? I can’t. At least, not if I want to pay my loans and feed the cat (and myself) and put gas in the car and maintain my addiction to Cheerios. Do I stop giving and start volunteering? I don’t have enough hours in the week for all the groups I give to.
The closest I can come to a solution is that I should keep up on what’s happening with my chosen nonprofits–read their literature, attend their events, tell my friends and family why I give to them, maybe blog and tweet about them (for what it’s worth). Maybe I’m less cut out to be a philanthropist than an evangelist.
If you’re a fundraiser, how do you connect with your non-major donors? If you’re a non-major donor, how do you fight the seduction of passive philanthropy?
Three views of fundraising
I love fundraising. I’m borderline evangelical about it. And I love my new job, too, even though it’s not really fundraising–same department, but just this side of, well, not interacting with donors at all. And donors are the best part of fundraising. I miss them.
But the best part of blogging is getting to read other bloggers’ brilliant insights, and recently three posts have fueled my brain. All three deal with perception of fundraising, and from different angles: what it is, what it’s not, and what it should be.
First, Dan Pallotta‘s post “Haiti Is a Marketing Lesson,” observing philanthropy through the lens of giving to Haiti, credits the media for spurring $560 million in Haiti relief. The terms he uses are straight out of Economics 101: The media “are building demand for purchasing charity for Haiti on a massive scale. And, small wonder, massive purchasing is occurring. How much do we think would be given to Haiti if the story ended after one news broadcast on the day it happened?”
According to Dan’s observation, philanthropy is a mechanical response to marketing. Push the right buttons on donors and the money will flow. And he goes on to posit the wider application of this money machine:
“Imagine if we gave humanitarian organizations the freedom to build this kind of demand for a cure for malaria or the end of breast cancer. Imagine if we relinquished our fixation on keeping short-term fundraising costs low and set our gaze on what it would take to ‘sell’ enough charity to solve long-term problems. I’m not talking about mimicking traditional corporate advertising, with dumbed-down jingles, adolescent humor, or inauthentic feel-goodism. I’m talking about investing massive resources in reimagined creative approaches — serious, photo-journalistic, perhaps documentary-style educational ad campaigns with all the gravitas and dignity these urgent causes deserve.”
What’s missing from this setup? Fundraisers. The Haiti crisis was a shining example of charitable money without the charitable middlemen. (The corporate middlemen of cell phone companies or Internet interfaces are another matter.) Even’s Dan’s marketing campaigns are just that–marketing. No donor cultivation. No relationship-building. In short, no fundraisers.
On the other hand, I’m not knocking text-message giving, or Internet-giving, or any giving made with the friction-reduction of technology. I’m just asking: how does an organization build relationships with donors who interact only with a keypad or computer screen?
Then again, why even cultivate $10 donors? Patrick Sallee’s post “Fundraising isn’t begging” examines the role of street canvassers, who act as (often annoying) middlemen between charities and donors. Canvassers, he says, reflect poorly on the organizations they work for. “Is this what you want to say about your brand?” he asks. As both a former canvasser and a former donor to canvassers, I agree. There’s a thin line between canvassing and begging, and I can’t even tell where it is. When I was canvassing, passersby avoided me as if I was covered in sewage. When approached by canvassers, I give out of pity–because I’ve been there. (Dear ACLU and Greenpeace: I love you, but it’s true.) And yet as bad as canvassers are for a nonprofit’s brand, they at least go a step closer toward building a relationship with their donors than text-message giving does. They chat, they answer questions, and they otherwise put themselves on the line for their organizations or causes. Canvassing says, “I am willing to be rejected and exhausted for terrible pay just to help someone/something else.” And for that, I have mad respect. Way to walk your talk, canvassers.
But Patrick’s right–you’re begging with credentials.
So if fundraising is just marketing (per Dan), and is not canvassing (per Patrick), what should it be? Jessica Journey answers that in her post “Fundraiser, Are you a Living Donor Coordinator?” Jessica compares the ideal for nonprofit fundraisers to the role of the individual who guided her through donating a kidney recently, a gift considerably more ponderous than $10 via text or canvasser. And in that comparison, she offers a list of questions for fundraisers to ask themselves, including “Are you easy to get a hold of?” (as text-message giving is), “Are you helping donors make an informed decision?” (as canvassers are), and “Are you there for the whole process?” (as neither text-message giving nor canvassers are).
Jessica’s post picked up on something that both Dan’s and Patrick’s, though apt, missed: fundraising is about relationships. And while I may no longer technically be a fundraiser, I see this in the office every day: front-line fundraisers keeping in touch with our supporters, from the $10 givers (though not on a personal level) to the major givers, to make sure their needs and preferences are known and considered. As Jessica’s comparison suggests, giving is never just about the recipient. A donor is not an ATM to be marketed to, or a passerby to ply. Nonprofits enable donors to help others in ways that are effective and accountable, and if a donor is serious about helping others, she will want to build a relationship with nonprofits that can help her do so.
This is what I miss about being a fundraiser: interacting with donors who want this relationship. Granted, not all do. Some will text $10 or humor a canvasser for $20 and never be heard from again. But building a relationship with those donors who want it is part of creating a culture of giving. And that’s something neither marketing nor canvassing can accomplish.
Sexiness is overrated.
Nonprofit infrastructure isn’t sexy. When I started working in it, my friends didn’t understand what I was doing. “What cause are you working for?” they would ask, meaning well and trying to clarify. And when I’d reply that I was working for the health of the entire nonprofit sector, they would ask, “Isn’t that a little too…meta? Helping the helpers?”
Meta, navel-gazing…perhaps. But as unsexy as infrastructure is, it holds the sector together. So when Rosetta described the unexpected and unfortunate struggle of Idealist.org, I picked up the torch in the comments and am carrying it here as well. In my comment I mentioned my concern that associations get mired in the demands of their members and become risk-averse. Idealist isn’t an association and doesn’t pander to the center. It simply connects people and ideas, people and opportunities, people and people.
And like Rosetta and Kevin and other nonprofit bloggers, I ask just one thing. Whether you got a job or volunteer gig from Idealist (as I did), or just peruse it for opportunities–because it’s full of them–you can help save it. Donate to Idealist. Blog and tweet about it. Don’t let one of the beacons of 21st-century infrastructure crumble; our sector will be worse off without it. And I’m not sure we can handle that right now.