Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Barry McLeish (Deerfield, WI) is currently serving as the International Vice President to the McConkey/Johnston Group, a fundraising and marketing management consulting firm specializing in nonprofit organizations and associations. Before joining McConkey/Johnston, McLeish was the Director of Development for a $22 million dollar nonprofit organization and served as project director for the organization's $30 million dollar capital campaign. McLeish is a frequent and popular seminar leader, having spoken at numerous conventions in the US and Canada on fundraising, marketing, and market planning for nonprofit and for-profit organizations, including large marketing seminars for Merrill Lynch and the American Association of Manufacturers. He is the author of three books: The Personal Support Raising Handbook (Intervarsity Press), The Donor Bond (Taft Publishers), and Successful Marketing Strategies for Nonprofit Organizations (Wiley).

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Yours, Mine & Ours

Creating a Compelling Donor Experience

Thousands of men and women around the world have taken part in worldwide collective shows of support for those who have fallen in the aftermaths of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Asian tsunami, and, most recently, following the New Orleans and Mississippi flooding disasters. Donors enjoy a sense of satisfaction at contributing to solve an immediate social need, but apart from donations given during devastating tragedies, how can you give your nonprofit's donors and contributors a reason to consistently involve themselves in your organization's philanthropic world?

Written by nonprofit marketing guru Barry McLeish, Yours, Mine, and Ours provocatively challenges nonprofit managers' assumptions about what successful nonprofit management looks like in light of new donor strategies. Filled with revealing case studies that highlight examples of current nonprofit practices, this maverick book shows you how to:

• Harness the capabilities the Internet offers and face the numerous issues and opportunities it presents

• Design a compelling donor experience that leads to increased giving through stakeholder collaboration, shared values, and new knowledge creation

• Achieve both immediate and long-term goals in today's competitive fundraising climate

• Promote and expertly present your nonprofit as effectively as do more "glamorous" causes

With donors, customers, and volunteers wanting to exercise their influence in every part of the nonprofit transaction, Yours, Mine, and Ours equips your nonprofit to transform itself into an organization with which every donor wants to be a part.

Aus dem Klappentext

Yours, Mine & Ours

Creating a Compelling Donor Experience

Thousands of men and women around the world have taken part in worldwide collective shows of support for those who have fallen in the aftermaths of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Asian tsunami, and, most recently, following the New Orleans and Mississippi flooding disasters. Donors enjoy a sense of satisfaction at contributing to solve an immediate social need, but apart from donations given during devastating tragedies, how can you give your nonprofit's donors and contributors a reason to consistently involve themselves in your organization's philanthropic world?

Written by nonprofit marketing guru Barry McLeish, Yours, Mine, and Ours provocatively challenges nonprofit managers' assumptions about what successful nonprofit management looks like in light of new donor strategies. Filled with revealing case studies that highlight examples of current nonprofit practices, this maverick book shows you how to:

• Harness the capabilities the Internet offers and face the numerous issues and opportunities it presents

• Design a compelling donor experience that leads to increased giving through stakeholder collaboration, shared values, and new knowledge creation

• Achieve both immediate and long-term goals in today's competitive fundraising climate

• Promote and expertly present your nonprofit as effectively as do more "glamorous" causes

With donors, customers, and volunteers wanting to exercise their influence in every part of the nonprofit transaction, Yours, Mine, and Ours equips your nonprofit to transform itself into an organization with which every donor wants to be a part.

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Yours, Mine, and Ours

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

The nonprofit sector has within it the ability to create a combined virtue that goes far beyond anything the government or the for-profit sector provides. Michael O'Neill, the director of the Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management, suggests, "the independent sector can experiment with new strategies of social action, respond quickly to new social needs, and generally provide 'social risk capital.'" However, the nonprofit sector has never been tested as it is being now. The challenges to it are stunning both in their breadth and their complexity. At a time when the United States seems no longer confidently progressive in many areas of social engagement nor certain of its moral center, and with internal and external tensions threatening both the central wellbeing of the country as well as its relationships with the rest of the world, how should nonprofit sector organizations navigate? How should they go about creating a compelling donor or volunteer experience for the stakeholders entrusted to their care?

These questions have never been more important than right now, simply because so many in our society-those in need of the services nonprofit organizations provide, those providing the services, taxpayers, elected officials, donors, volunteers, and communities at large-have a stake in seeing strong improvements within the public or third sector of this country. Many of the protections once in place to help those in need of these services are being dismantled by cities, states, and our nation's government in disagreements over financial priorities, or are being curtailed by inflationary or political pressures. Nonprofit organizations no longer have a straight path to run on. They are often in flux, requiring constant managerial flexibility and marketing reorientation.

American Philanthropy

There is unprecedented need in the United States today. There is also unprecedented affluence. America emerged from the trauma of World War II as the richest, most powerful nation in the world, having been neither invaded nor financially ravaged. Today, mass affluence is a societal reality, accessible to many. Even families living at the poverty level in America live better than 75% of the world. In fact, the wealthy in the United States reputedly have so much money, it is frequently cited by seminar and nonprofit leaders that if they pooled their resources together, America's affluent could feed the world's poor and still live comfortably. Whether this is true or not is open to debate, but what is true is that American benevolence is stronger than that of virtually any other country in the world, and the United States is the most generous nation in regard to contributed time and money. Studies show that anywhere from 75% to 86% of Americans have stated that they've been involved philanthropically with a cause. Charitable gifts given in 1999 by 58% of Americans amounted to almost one-third of the U.S. domestic federal budget-roughly 2% of the nation's income. What's more, charitable giving has become fashionable, rating a cover story in the July 24, 2000 issue of Time magazine along with prominent displays in other national news and financial magazines since then. It was also the subject of the first-ever White House conference on philanthropy. Gifts given during the time of the Asian tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake, and the hurricane disaster in New Orleans have been at unprecedented levels.

Similarly, the number of unpaid, volunteer workers in the nonprofit sector is striking, with volunteerism up even among young people. Some surveys indicate volunteering has risen 14 percentage points during the past 15 years, with roughly 58% of America's population having volunteered during the previous 12 months. And every year Americans donate around 15.5 billion hours of volunteer time, worth an estimated $4,239 billion in services. Religious organizations, local schools, neighborhood organizations, and volunteer organizations based at one's workplace are the primary beneficiaries of this growth, with some civic organizations lagging behind in volunteer attraction.

In light of the relative "youth" of most nonprofit organizations (almost 70% have been registered during the past 30 years, while the nonprofit sector itself has grown almost 60% during the past two decades), the reach of some of the approximately one million nonprofit agencies is substantial. Representing almost 10% of this nation's workforce, the nonprofit world is apparent in almost every facet of life. However, alongside the positive developments and the humanizing effects the nonprofit world has upon society are strong marketplace indicators suggesting that changes are coming toward it in a nonlinear, sudden, and constant fashion.

Most importantly, these changes are being reflected in the increasing importance of donor values, the influence some donors want in organizational affairs on a day-to-day basis, and the manner by which some of their gifts are being made. Although this is not a new phenomenon, its effects are being felt today in almost all sectors of the nonprofit world. For example, according to a cover story in The Chronicle of Philanthropy a few years ago, the United Way faced the prospect of losing some of its market influence and strength in its traditional fund-raising practices because fewer workers were in offices (working instead at home and through flexible hours) and increasingly because United Way's donor base wanted to have a say in where their philanthropic dollars went (i.e., as opposed to relying on the United Way to allocate their gifts). Similarly, The Nonprofit Times reported that the percentage of people opting out of charitable direct mail in categories ranging from health care to disaster relief began to outnumber those choosing to opt in. In addition, hundreds of nonprofit organizations have reported receiving random donations during the past 36 months through their web sites from individuals they do not know.

Although some believe the nonprofit world and its member groups and associations have been characterized by tranquility and a lack of upheaval, nonprofit organizations are experiencing major changes and environmental pressures as they have for the past 20 years. These discontinuities have required many agencies to build stronger leadership and management teams and, in hundreds of cases, to change their marketing tactics.

During the 1960s and 1970s, nonprofit organizations saw rapid growth largely due to the infusion of funds the government pumped into the sector, particularly in health, education, research, and the arts. This picture changed in the 1980s during Reagan's presidency through severe government cutbacks; the sector was threatened again in 1995 as nonprofit funding sources came under the possibility of even more severe cutbacks when the House debated whether to replace social service and welfare programs with private volunteer charity. Though public sector funding decreased, non-profit organizations were often expected to shoulder even more of society's vexing social problems. As recently as the latter half of 2000, estate-tax repeals passed both houses of Congress (though later rejected by the administration), whose effect would likely have reduced some contributions to many charities.

The presence of so much affluence in America has had a tendency to cover up marketplace funding changes, and often it masks where in society, intervention is needed. While some donors are focusing resources and consolidating personal giving and volunteering, the rapid increase in nonprofit organizational creation during the past 30 years has typically not led to a duplication of services with some "lucky" individuals benefiting many times over, though the potential is clearly there. However, some societal changes are now so massive and rapid that they threaten to sweep away many of the foundational underpinnings the nonprofit world has stood on for dozens of years. These changes are more than an acceleration or the culmination point of existing trends; they are what authors Jim Taylor, Watts Wacker, and Howard Means described as a "fulcrum point in history," where many elements of change are converging, including

The splintering of social, political, and economic organizations

The collapse of producer-controlled markets

A shift away from reason-based logic to chaos-based logic

What will these changes mean for the nonprofit world? Clearly that world is susceptible to changes in its funding outlets as well as expectations society may have about how the sector should operate. A story about a man looking for lost money, often told at management seminars, is appropriate here:

A man is on his knees under a street lamp, obviously looking for something under a well-lit area. A stranger passes by and asks the gentleman what he is doing. The gentleman replies that he is looking for his lost money. The stranger, wanting to be helpful, asks where the money was lost. "Over there," says the gentleman pointing away from the light. "Why, then, are you looking here instead of where you think your money is?" asks the stranger. "Because the light is better here," replies the gentleman.

As in the story, environmental changes could mean the preconceived expectations organizations have built their operations upon over the years may not work in chaotic conditions and may not be the only means by which they can achieve their goals. For some nonprofit organizations, new ways of operating are both plentiful and easily observable. In other institutions, talks of mergers with like-minded groups and the consolidation of provided services has become an important topic of conversation. Many agencies are also experimenting with board and governance models. For still others, textbook notions of a strong chief executive officer (coupled with a visionary management team whose members know where they are going at all times) guiding a unified work culture that is predictable and has an agreed-upon company vision may be the wrong metric against which some organizations should gauge their performance. This "institutional wisdom" may actually be dependent upon the economic and societal environments an agency encounters.

Similarly, some nonprofit leaders, in spite of their competencies as executives and managers, may not have a firm grasp of where their organizations will end up. These institutions may be leaders in their field and still not have an "institution-wide shared vision." Jeff McLinden, a vice president for the marketing and management consulting firm McConkey/Johnston, International suggests,

For some organizations, the conventional rules of management and customer or donor interaction may not be the best way to prosper in some of the managerial or competitive situations they encounter. There is no one strategic management or marketing framework that is working for every nonprofit organization; there is "truth" in dozens of management and marketing approaches. Each nonprofit organization therefore must do business in a way that allows it to test the validity of the way chosen to approach the marketplace, what the medical world has called "evidence-based practice."

Managing without Knowing the Future

Examples of nonprofit leaders having to manage without knowing how the American philanthropic future will impact their organizations abound. This is especially true in the explosive emergence of the Internet and the way it has changed the actual and mental geography of workers within many organizations. The Internet's presence has created for some a marketing and managerial quandary as to how their institutions should maximize it. Hundreds of nonprofit organizations have raced to create web sites and hire web teams without asking necessary prior tactical questions about their institution's objectives within its Internet usage. Consequently, most agencies in the United States today have created little more than vanity sites and, in the process, have allowed the customer or donor neither to be at the center of the site nor predisposed toward its cause. These same agencies have also failed to achieve the conversion ratios they had hoped for in converting the number of hits on their site to bona fide leads or gifts.

How does an agency harness the capabilities the Internet offers and simultaneously face the numerous issues and opportunities it presents? "Not knowing the future," agencies would be well served to first decide that simply bombarding their clientele with more direct mail, telemarketing, and expensive brochure creations while proclaiming that their institution is the best and the brightest is not the way to success. Media have become increasingly interactive, and stakeholders are exercising more control over what they give to or consume-how, when, and where. In some organizations with donors wanting more flexibility in the way they give and communicate, the Internet should be an option. For other groups, if target markets no longer respond positively to direct mail or telemarketing campaigns, the Internet may present a possible alternative. For still other groups dealing with stakeholders in the ages of 18 to 34, the Internet is this target group's primary source for information and entertainment. In each instance, the Internet may help reduce the interaction distance with institutions individuals express interest in and possibly create a stakeholder dialog as opposed to the monolog so many agencies currently impose upon their audiences.

In each of the foregoing cases of current or perceived future need, the Internet will prove helpful. Tactically, it may also afford organizations the opportunity to build new audience segments composed of like-minded e-givers (donors through the Internet), as well as changing how they give, when they give, and what they give to. Each new initiative and response consequently requires organizations to deal with staff and stakeholders differently than before. It is true that there have been widely reported success stories of Internet fund-raising and advocacy usage, including the American Red Cross, which reportedly raised over $1 million dollars for Balkan Relief in 1999; presidential hopefuls McCain's and later Dean's millions raised in their campaign bids; as much as 10% of the $1.5 billion given in relief donations after the terrorist actions in New York City; and the millions given during the Asian, Pakistani, and New Orleans' crises. This still does not mean the Internet is an immediate sure bet financially for all nonprofit organizations today. The Internet has certainly represented a huge leap in information delivery for organizations. Will it do the same in the areas of fund-raising and transaction facilitation?

A nonprofit manager would have to look at additional concerns if he or she were required to make a reasonable decision regarding the deployment of resources for future Internet involvement. Excepting for highly vertical appeals or nationwide emergencies, the amount of money given charitably through the Internet has hovered at less than 2%. Of the more than $190 billion charitable donations given in 1999, about 1.2% of the donors did their giving through the Web. This amount represents about 14 cents out of every $100 dollars given. Though comparatively small today, Internet giving potential may loom large for some nonprofit organizations in the future, especially given the outpouring of e-gifts after the 9/11 disaster and the tsunami, earthquake, and hurricane crises. "If the growth in Internet commerce is any indication, it could be tremendous," says independent sector senior analyst Michael T. McCormack.

What "tremendous" might mean to development directors contemplating strategic decisions for the days ahead is hard to know. Certainly new tools are available to nonprofit marketers, including targeted e-mail lists, affiliated or consolidated giving sites like charitymall.com and Helping.org, and other interactive applications that allow shopping opportunities online (with a percentage of each purchase being earmarked for a particular charity). Each of these marketing options may seem attractive to an organization struggling to support its fund-raising efforts, especially if previous efforts have met with dwindling response rates in some parts of their customer and donor files.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Yours, Mine, and Oursby Barry J. McLeish Copyright © 2007 by Barry J. McLeish. Excerpted by permission.
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