Finding My Spark and Hustle, part 2

It has been more than a week (almost two, now) since I attended Tory Johnson's Spark and Hustle conference here in Pittsburgh and I am still thinking about it.

(That's the sign of a good conference, right?)

Much of that had to do with the people I met and Tory herself. A lot of that had to do with the speakers we heard from, and the rapid-pace format of the day.

Yes, the format. Having worked in the nonprofit fundraising and communications field for 20 years, I've been to a lot of workshops and conferences. A LOT OF THEM. And this one was refreshingly different. We came to Spark and Hustle because we wanted to hear from Tory (check!) and to hear from others (another check!). I looked at the schedule of speakers, expecting the usual breakout sessions and, seeing none, wondered how they were going to fit all this in.

I need not have worried. These ladies had everything covered - from fitness, to branding, to sales and marketing, to social media, to the dreaded accounting and bookkeeping (which was anything but dreadful). And, best of all, no breakout sessions ... which meant we didn't miss any presentations. (There were, however, a few speakers/presentations that I missed and/or don't have many notes on, so I'm just going to highlight those that I do.)

Dr. Vonda Wright
After remarks from Tory (you can read what I wrote about that in Finding My Spark and Hustle, part 1), we heard from the invigorating Dr. Vonda Wright, who charged us to find our mantra, that one word that defines us and what we do as businesswomen. (Examples: For Disney, their word is MAGIC. For IBM, it's THINK. For Vince Lombardi, it's WINNING. Vonda's word is MOVE.)

This is different, Vonda said, from a tagline. A mantra is for you. A tagline is for your customers.

She also advised aspiring entrepreneurs (which is not a job but rather "a philosophy of working") to "be willing to eat tuna." Most interestingly, she told us that 70% of how we age is controlled by us and only 30% is genetic. I found that fascinating.

Dave Yunghans, Constant Contact
We then heard from Dave Yunghans, Regional Development Director for Constant Contact. I happen to be a Constant Contact devotee, having used it to create and produce e-newsletters for the last five years or so. Love it. We spoke about the need (still!) for email in a world that is seemingly dominated by Facebook and Twitter.

Dave spoke to us about the trust factor in online purchasing.

"People will never buy anything from you until they trust you," he said (in, I might add, a Philadelphia accent, which this Philly girl was beyond delighted to hear in this corner of Pennsylvania).

See, I trust this guy already.

Dave provided several eye-opening statistics in his talk:

• 81% of people trust recommendations or online opinions. 
• Only 36% trust advertising (all forms of it). 
• Marketing used to take 7 "touches" to reach someone. Now, it's 33. 
• The average person has 234 Facebook friends. 
• Email that contains video is opened 30% more than email that doesn't. 

We can rise above the ordinary in small and large ways, Dave said, and he gave some great examples of that. Engaging with one's audience happens in small doses, and happens over time.

He also said that "hope is not a strategy," to which I tweeted that for a lot of nonprofits, hope is sadly very much their only fundraising plan. (I'll be doing a blog post on that at some point.)

Rachel Blaufeld, Back'nGrooveMom

Rachel Blaufeld of BacknGrooveMom (standing, in orange) being recognized by Tory Johnson.

At Spark and Hustle, I was thrilled to meet two local bloggers. I've been reading Rachel Blaufeld's blog, Back'nGrooveMom for a few months now. Same with Chaton of Chaton's World. Both ladies were at Spark and Hustle, and it was great to be able to put faces to ... blogs. They were delightful, and I hope our paths cross again soon.

Rachel was instrumental in bringing Tory Johnson's Spark and Hustle to Pittsburgh; initially, the Steel City wasn't on the company's radar at all and Blaufeld convinced them to include Pittsburgh on their 20-city national tour. In this picture, Rachel is being recognized by Tory for her efforts.

Rachel also spoke later in the conference. "Your network is really bigger than the biggest ad," she said. We all have such a powerful network and I think sometimes we forget that.

Dawn Brolin, operator of Professional Accounting Solutions, and Stacy Kildal, founder of Kildal Services, LLC, both selected by Intuit GoPayment.

Accounting + Bookkeeping + Finances + The afternoon spot of a conference that is guaranteed to put people to sleep = A recipe for disaster, right?

Not with these ladies. Check out the photos to see how Dawn Brolin and Stacy Kildal took to the stage, with Lady Gaga's "The Edge of Glory" blaring at top volume.

THESE ARE ACCOUNTANTS, people. And they were absolutely hilarious. I want these ladies as my accountants and I'm willing to bet that every one of the attendees at Spark and Hustle do, too. Best takeaway from their session was giving a client an engagement letter right at the very beginning of the relationship, stating, among other things, "here's how you pay me."

"Walmart gets paid right away," said ... one of the ladies. (I forget which one; I was probably too busy laughing.) "You should too. Am I right?"

Wild applause.

They spoke about technology and how we're moving toward a "zero data entry world." (More wild applause.)

They really need to take this on the road. (Well, I guess they kind of did, with Spark and Hustle.) They've got accounting gold, right here.

Rebecca Harris, Director of the Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University
Among the people I was thrilled to meet was Rebecca Harris. (Especially, as I wrote in "Any Road Will Take You There. Maybe." I tried to take one of her classes almost exactly a year ago!) She has such a wonderful reputation here in the Pittsburgh area. At Spark and Hustle, she spoke about the fears that keep us from starting a business, including the fear of

• failure
• change
• hiring
• selling
• taking chances 
• (and probably many more.)

"We have to take risks," Rebecca emphasized. "The person who risks nothing, has nothing. These fears are actually causing havoc in your life and you have to overcome them."

At this point, I had to leave in order to pick up the kids from camp on time (The Husband was out of town on a work retreat) but not before I heard one more piece of advice from Rebecca.

"You are not a product of your past experiences, abilities, or behaviors."

That keeps so many of us held back, doesn't it? Especially those of us who have been downsized, laid off, fired. I thought about this as I drove home, how this really does play into the fear and the notion that we're not good enough and makes us scared to take risks. I know that has been true for me.

No more, I decided. Whether it is work or whatever it is, we all have the power to reinvent ourselves, to find our own spark and hustle.

Starting now. Today.

  As I mentioned in my previous post, I took Tory Johnson's advice and boldly asked for what I wanted ... a signed copy of Tory's newest book (Tory Johnson's Spark and Hustle: Launch and Grow Your Small Business Now) to give away to one of my blog readers. If this is of interest to you, leave me a comment on this post to be entered to win a copy. (If you left a comment on the previous post, you can leave one on this one too, to double your chances.)

I'll draw a winner next Monday, August 27.

Finding My Spark and Hustle - part 1

At first glance, you wouldn't think that Tory Johnson and I would have much in common.

Yeah, that Tory Johnson, the one pictured with me here. That Tory Johnson, she of the bestselling author fame (more on that at the end of this post) and of the Good Morning America contributor, and founder and CEO of Women for Hire, and Spark and Hustle and more.

But as I listened to her story yesterday here in Pittsburgh during her last stop on her national, 20-city Spark and Hustle tour, I quickly realized we had much more in common than I thought - right down to being mothers of twins.

It has been an ... interesting summer, one that I've spent reflecting, questioning, writing - and yes, job-hunting as a result of The Layoff back in June. That layoff made the answering of the "so, what do you do?" questions yesterday at Spark and Hustle a bit awkward, but I realized that a good many of us were in similar positions as mine.

Even someone as successful and as accomplished as Tory Johnson.

"Sometimes you don't voluntarily give up the paycheck," Tory said in her opening remarks, referencing being fired 20 years ago as a publicist from NBC News. "Sometimes the paycheck gives up you."

Even after subsequently getting another job, there was always a sense of "a nagging panic" which was "the pain of a pink slip." The thing that Tory couldn't shake was that she would always be working for someone who had the power to say that she wasn't needed or wasn't good enough.

She knew that she had to make a change, which led to her founding her company Women for Hire and then Spark and Hustle.

Yesterday, in her fast-paced, no-nonsense style, Tory dispelled many of the common myths about starting a business:

you don't need to have an MBA (Tory didn't finish college);
you don't need to have a fat Rolodex (Tory didn't know many people)
you don't need to be tech-savvy and have a fancy office (she had an AOL dial-up account and baby twins crawling afoot)
you don't need a lot of money ("we've all seen people with a lot of money not be a success.").

What you do need is a spark, an ember of an idea, something that awakes your passion - and the hustle.

It is "all about the hustle - the decisions you make each day," Tory said.

That led into Dr. Vonda Wright as the perfect first speaker. In a separate post, I'll talk about her and the other speakers (which included one of Pittsburgh's most inspiring and well-regarded business leaders, Rebecca Harris of Chatham University's Center for Women's Entrepreneurship; the awesome Rachel Blaufeld from Back'nGrooveMom who was instrumental in bringing Spark and Hustle to Pittsburgh, and Stacy and Dawn, two absolutely hilarious ladies who made accounting systems seem downright fun). Intermingled between the speakers were remarks by Tory - it was a jam-packed day - and I'll cover it all in my next few Spark and Hustle posts. But one more thing!

One of the things we learned was that we have to take risks and to ask for things we want. So ... I asked Tory if she would consider providing an autographed copy of her book for me to give away to one of my blog readers. She gladly agreed, and I am incredibly grateful.

You will want to read this if you are a small business owner or considering becoming one. Simply leave a comment on this post to be eligible to win an autographed copy of Tory Johnson's latest book, SPARK AND HUSTLE: LAUNCH AND GROW YOUR SMALL BUSINESS NOW.

More to come.

The Generosity Plan: Sharing Your Time, Treasure and Talent to Shape the World, by Kathy LeMay (Book Review)

Originally posted on my personal blog 4/19/2010.

The Generosity Plan: Sharing Your Time, Treasure, and Talent to Shape the World, by Kathy LeMay
copyright 2009
240 pages

It's National Volunteer Appreciation Week, and I can't think of a better time to talk about Kathy LeMay's new book, The Generosity Plan.

Actually, I could talk about Kathy LeMay and her work on any given day of any given week.  As I mentioned previously, I first met Kathy at a Women's Funding Network conference in Toronto in 2004.  Even while battling the flu (or some such horrible illness), Kathy inspired all of us with a speech where she admitted that she'd just written a sizeable (for her) check to WFN and in doing so, proudly proclaimed herself to be a philanthropist.

To the hundreds of us gathered in the room, it seemed that Kathy had been considering herself a philanthropist for years.  She certainly had the background, from her work as a volunteer in refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia and launching a successful consulting practice.  But what looked so easy to us in the audience really wasn't, as she writes of that transformational experience in The Generosity Plan.

"To me, writing $25, $50, and even $100 checks wasn't enough to say, 'I am a philanthropist.' Philanthropy still meant big money.  It wasn't until I turned thirty-one years old - after seventeen years of activism everywhere from Massachusetts to the former Yugoslavia - that I stepped in front of a crowd of four hundred at a philanthropy conference and, with my body shaking, named myself a philanthropist. The minute I said it, two women jumped from their chairs and cheered .... One woman said, 'That speech was the permission I needed to make philanthropy my own.'"  (pg. xv)

(Can I just say on a personal level how absolutely so cool it was to see this speech that I attended - and which remains one of the best I have ever heard - mentioned in this book?)

Kathy writes that we all have that power within us to become a philanthropist, to support the causes we care about regardless of how much or how little we have to give.  It doesn't matter if we have five million dollars or five dollars, if we have five days a week or five minutes a day.  What matters is being bold enough to take that first step toward becoming your own definition of a philanthropist.

"Boldness asks you to come out of your comfort zone, if only for a moment.  How do you know if you're stepping into boldness? You know you are being your best bold self when you feel excited, nervous, and hopeful in the same moment. You know you are being your best bold self when the action you are about to take will change you inside. Again, bold doesn't have to be big and flashy, but it should be daring for you. When you are bold for you and your own life, you can feel the change. When you are bold for something bigger than you, you make change." (pg. 147-148)

What if we want to be bold, to do something more meaningful with our gifts, but don't know how to get started - or even what causes we are drawn to? Kathy shows us how.  She takes the reader step-by-step through examples in her personal life and others, and from there, the reader begins to learn how to create his or her personal generosity plan based on causes and issues that you were attracted to as a child, or ones that were important to your family, or those impacting your life now.

She also gives concrete suggestions for working that plan and for developing a network of support for when staying the course becomes difficult. Because, as in any relationship, there is a cycle to one's philanthropic giving and involvement, especially when "our" cause gets swept up in the latest issue that the media or a particular celebrity is touting.

"...the real change happens over the long haul. The difference is made when we stay the course with our cause versus getting involved in everything that becomes visible or high profile. Staying the course lets you know that your vision is sound, your boldness intact, and your authenticity is front and center. Staying the course means that you will be there for your cause through the good times and bad, successes and drawbacks, wins and losses, and ups and downs. Staying the course means you truly believe in what you say you believe and you will stand in this effort for as long as it takes." (pg. 151)

We make all kinds of plans in our lives, Kathy writes, but yet most of us fail to plan thoughtfully for our charitable giving.  How many of us know how to research a nonprofit organization we're interested in supporting, beyond reading its website or annual report?  (Hint: Charity Navigator and GuideStar are great for this.) Or what to look for when we do find this information?  So often, our giving is done sincerely (the raffle tickets purchased from the neighborhood kids, the box of Girl Scout cookies bought from your coworker) but not purposefully in a way that can make a strategic, meaningful, transformative impact on our world and those in need. 

As someone who has spent her entire professional life encouraging others to be generous with their time, talent, and treasure to a variety of nonprofits, The Generosity Plan is a helpful book for nonprofit volunteers and donors.  If you're new to the idea of philanthropy or volunteering, or if you've been involved in charitable causes for years, there is no shortage of suggestions.  Indeed, there is something in here that everyone can begin to use immediately, in our own way and through using our own talents and giving of our own treasure, on the path of being a change agent for our world.

Visit Kathy's website, The Generosity Plan, for more information on the book, other reviews, and upcoming events where she will be speaking. 

FTC disclaimer:  I borrowed this book from the library, and although I consider Kathy a friend and am admittedly a bit of a fangirl of her work, I was not compensated in any way for this review. 

What Fundraisers Can Learn from Whales (and the people who care about them)

We are all about saving the whales in our house.

During a rainy day at summer camp, my 9 year old daughter and her friends watched the movie "Free Willy." She came home wide-eyed, on fire, wanting to know what she personally could do to protect the endangered whales. 

That was a year ago.

Since then, she's conducted a mini-fundraising drive, soliciting donations from our friends and family in order to protect the whales. (Like mother, like daughter ... and this fundraising mother had to explain to said daughter the concept of the small return on direct mail appeals when she was dismayed that everyone didn't immediately respond with wallets wide open.)  Undeterred, my daughter then created a blog called Orcas and Stuff ("so people would know about the whales and would donate" - her words, not mine) and mini-posters to give to her friends.

And then, we adopted an orca.

For my daughter's 9th birthday, my mother-in-law gifted her princess only granddaughter with Princess Angeline, a whale that is part of The Whale Museum's Orca Adoption Program.  She was enthralled, delighted. 

And the people who coordinate the Orca Adoption Program (Connie, Jeanne, and Nikki) have become her new best friends.

How do I know their names?  Because my daughter has been writing to them ...

Dear Whale Museum Here is another email from me. As I said in my last email to you guys I have adopted Princess Angeline J 17. I wanted to ask you guys how do you know which whale is who?

... and writing to them ...

Its me again! I know you said you can tell who is who by the saddle patch but what happens when a whale is spyhopping? How can you tell who they are then?

... and Connie, Jeanne, and Nikki have been writing back. 


In my professional capacity as the PR person for various nonprofits, I've been the recipient of several emails like my daughter's - and I'll admit, once upon a time I might not always have been as quick (or as thoughtful) with the reply as Connie, Jeanne, and Nikki have been.  That was before becoming a parent (which changes your outlook on a great many things) and realizing that there are adults attached to these kids, adults who have the capacity to be donors and sustaining supporters of organizations that our kids believe in, wholeheartedly. 

As development professionals, we talk a lot about engaging with our donors. Many of us struggle mightily with this, get frustrated when it seems like we're talking to ourselves, are puzzled about the best ways to use the newest social media tools (I'm so loving Google +, BTW) to connect more deeply with our constituents. 

This morning, when I saw Connie's latest patient, ever-so-gracious emailed response to my daughter, I realized that The Whale Museum is an example of an organization that has this donor engagement thing down pat.  Whether it's deliberate or not, they've successfully made my daughter believe that she and Princess Angeline, her beloved orca, are the most important thing in the world to them.  She eagerly awaits their replies to her emails, prints them out, and saves them for when she becomes an orca trainer herself (or a veterinarian, depending on the day).

When you think about it, The Whale Museum is simply implementing the basics of donor engagement in their successful cultivation of my daughter as a supporter, and they're tenets that can work for your organization too. 

1. Be Quick. When communicating one-on-one with your constituents, be prompt with the replies. We usually see a response from The Whale Museum within 24 hours of sending them an email.

2. Be a Human Being.  The emails aren't signed from the impersonal "The Whale Museum."  They're signed by Connie, Jeanne, and Nikki from the Orca Adoption Program of The Whale Museum.  My daughter asked me if they were the women who look after her orca, Princess Angeline.  They just might be.

3. Be Real. One of the oldest whales, Ruffles, has not been spotted for a long time and is presumed to be dead.  My daughter has been constantly checking The Whale Museum's website as well as other Internet sources in hopes of receiving news that he is, indeed, still with us.  Alas, it doesn't seem to be so - and when she discovered a YouTube video "in memory of" Ruffles, she immediately emailed  The Whale Museum with her concerns that he was prematurely declared deceased.  (This also prompted a timely lesson on how you can't always believe everything you read online.)  Connie et al replied with a compassionate email in kid-appropriate terms about how they too were saddened over Ruffles' apparent death. 

4. Be There.  As part of the Orca Adoption Program, we receive a monthly e-newsletter about the well-being of all the orcas.  It's highly anticipated in this house, with my daughter eagerly devouring every issue. It's timely, without any outdated information. 

(And as a donor, it's a reminder each month of my support and encouragement to continue ... which we will absolutely be doing, since when you're 9, it's hard to top getting your own orca for your birthday.)

The Fundraiser's Report Card (or, What the Giving USA Foundation's 2010 Report Means for Nonprofits)

Each year on the last day of school, my kids bring their report cards home in a sealed envelope.  This is always a big deal in our house, mainly because they are anxious to see if they've been promoted to the next grade. 

(I'd imagine that their father and I would know if that wasn't happening well before report card time. Regardless, their anticipation of how they did over the past year is kind of fun to see.)

With the release of Giving USA Foundation's 2010 results on charitable giving, today is kind of like report card day for us fundraisers, isn't it?

As those in the nonprofit sector know (but others reading this - hi, Mom! - may not) Giving USA is a highly reputable survey in the philanthropic world and taken seriously, as it should be. 

(I admit to being a little like my kids and myself as a parent on this day:  I'm eager (and optimistic) to see the results, to gauge how we as a profession are doing and where the giving is going, but I'm also usually not all that surprised about the results.)

This year's report doesn't have too many surprises, in my view.  "[T]otal charitable contributions from American individuals, corporations and foundations were an estimated $290.89 billion in 2010, up from a revised estimate of $280.30 billion for 2009. The 2010 estimate represents growth of 3.8 percent in current dollars and 2.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars."

It's encouraging to see an increase - albeit ever so slight - but this shows that the economy is still slamming charitable giving, which translates into countless nonprofits still struggling to provide services to the very people who were once their donors in better times. I hope that this means that giving is on the road to recovery.  It will be interesting to see if the 2010 numbers are revised downward next year, as the previous years' numbers have been.

What I always like to look at in the statistics is where the money is going, and who is giving it.  Again, not too many surprises here. As has been the case in the past, giving by individuals leads the pack (with those holding bequests, no less).  Corporate and foundation giving follow.

Religion still leads (and we know why: because their constituents are asked to give weekly) but is followed by education for the first time in recent years.  That's encouraging for those in that subsector.  Human services is still shaky - and worrisome, especially given how these groups tend to be impacted by volatile state budgets and whatnot. 

So, what does this mean for nonprofits and their fundraising?  Three words.  The same three that we've been chanting since the Great Recession started. 

Individuals, individuals, individuals. 

The big bang for the bucks might be in the corporate coffers, but a bigger bang can be had with the individual donors.  It shows that just as many resources on the nonprofit end need to be devoted to the individual donors and cultivating them for potential bequests.  (Making for another reason why attending the 2011 Millennial Donor Summit is a good idea.)

Again, the need to focus on individuals isn't surprising, but all too often its not where we direct our time. We don't always call at least three donors each day to say thank you or wish them a happy birthday. We don't always follow up after special events. And thank you notes are oftentimes considered the bane of a development officer's existance.

These sorts of tasks are a fundraiser's homework. And if we do our homework right (and every night), there won't be many surprises on our end-of-year report card.

Link to the Giving USA report on the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University's website.

What Other Fundraisers and Nonprofit Professionals are Saying:

Mitch Nauffts of the blog PhilanTopic has a good summary of the Giving USA report's highlights and links to other commentaries about it.    

On her blog Talisman Thinking Out Loud, Barbara Talisman provides fundraisers with ways they can use the report right now.

Jocelyn from Marketing for Nonprofits gives her insightful take.

Andrew Watt, CEO of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, says that the Giving USA report indicates we have a long road ahead.

That Ain't Workin': Comments for Nothin' and Your Clicks For Free

I'm not a Dire Straits fan (in fact, I despise the song with the skewed lyrics in the subject line above). But it's the first thing I thought of when I noticed a few questions posed by some nonprofits in my Facebook News Feed this morning. 

Perhaps you've noticed this sort of thing, too. 

Status update from a local, grassroots organization that supports people with disabilities:

"It's a hot one out there today!  Where does everyone go to stay cool?"

Followed by this, from an educational group:

"Tell us the SPF level on your sunscreen!  Share with us ... we want to know!"

Really?  I mean, do you really want to know such trivia?  And, um ... why?

This sort of question would make sense if this was an organization with a mission having something to do with skin care or preventing cancer, but it's not. Or if the query about places to stay cool was followed up with a listing of summer recreational activities that are conducive and amenable to people with disabilities. That would be informative, interesting, interactive.

Instead, what these general questions represent is mindless chatter disguised as "engaging with our audience."  And for quite awhile now, it has been one of my pet peeves of how nonprofits are using social media - Facebook in particular.  I've noticed this becoming more and more prevalent ... and as a fundraiser and a donor, I don't really get it. 

Or maybe I do.  Maybe one explanation is this:  many of us have had to sell our bosses or our boards on this newfangled notion of "doing social media."  In the best scenarios, they were merely hesitant.  Worse case, they were downright obstinate, refusing to go where everyone had gone before. (I've had the experience of working for both.)  But we sold it to them (because that's what we do) under the guise of "engaging with our audience."  We believed that the masses of people Liking and Friending us would rush home from our galas and our donor recognition dinners to spend the wee small hours of the morning breathlessly awaiting our photo uploads.  And that they would gush over them, making us feel like we were, indeed their number one nonprofit. 

We believed that our Fans and our Friends would engage us in meaningful dialogue, that they would become evangelists for our cause, spreading the word to their friends and family.

And part of us knows ... they're not. 

So we fundraisers/PR directors/development coordinators start feeling a bit desperate, thinking that maybe this isn't working, wondering if we screwed something up with our profile or our settings. We start counting likes and Friends, in case of that moment at a meeting when we're asked how many "friends" our organization has.  How many people we are engaging with, even if we're ... um, really not.

We start floundering, getting off course and off strategy. 

And from a donor's perspective, well ... I think these casual snippets of conversation, as if we were standing around at a fundraising event (talking about our preferred sunscreens?) have the dangerous potential of disenfranchising our donors.  In the case of the two organizations I mentioned above, there aren't any comments on those questions and that isn't a surprise now, is it?  Who can be bothered with answering such drivel?

I think it also communicates what could be perceived in the eyes of our donors as a lack of focus on the goal or mission. We who do social media know that these status updates really only represent nanoseconds of time in the scheme of millions of other to-dos throughout our long days, but our donors might not recognize that.  They see what they see, and if our board members are seeing a barrage of questions about sunscreen and inquiries of "so, what's everyone up to this weekend?"  then it becomes eyebrow-raising, a potential turn-off in terms of interest and support. 

It comes back to the stories, the stories, the stories.  Social media (and don't get me wrong, I adore this Internet thing of ours) is tailor-made for stories galore. I believe it has so much potential but yet so much of that is squandered with the banalities.  The story about your client, that kid your organization helped in that new program, that volunteer who has been an unsung hero for 20 years ... the substantive content gets sacrificed for constant crap.  It's always been quality over quantity, in all of our fundraising communications.  Social media is no different. 

The compelling status updates that link your Friends and Fans to the mission of your organization or what your organization is about are going to be the status updates worth remembering - not forever, no. But my money's on it lasting longer than even the strongest level of sunscreen.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

"Whenever I see a "best practice" example it is usually a larger nonprofit organization. What are small nonprofits doing right? Do you have some examples?"

That's the question my friend Pamela Grow asked the other day on her Simple Development Systems Facebook page.

(Pamela is someone with development savvy I admire - and have used often. I also consider Pamela a friend since - many years ago - we both overlapped at the same nonprofit organization.)

As I was thinking about examples of small nonprofits doing "big best practice things right," I saw a status update from a former board member of mine. He was excited about a gala tomorrow night, and was asking his contacts if they were attending.

And with that, I had my answer to Pamela's question.

You see, when I was the development director for the nonprofit hosting that very gala, that event was our largest fundraiser of the year. (It still is.) As with many of these sorts of things, the Gala is the prime opportunity to see donors and potential supporters.

And one of the most important to-do's for such an event is the simplest: know your guests' names.

Here are two ways we helped make this happen with our staff:

1. Give Them Pizza and Photos. A day or so before our Gala, I ordered pizza for lunch and invited our stressed-out group of hard working staff members into the conference room. (This event was all-hands-on-deck for this organization ... which is another blog post altogether.) Then, I presented a PowerPoint slideshow of the Who's Who of the Gala, complete with photos and all.  One year we even added a Donor Trivia Contest with small prizes.  It was a great stress reliever during a hectic time.

2. Glue Yourself to the Registration Table. When your guests are walking in the door with Mr. and Mrs. Prospective Donor (and they absolutely should be), that's not the time for you as the development director to be elsewhere futzing with silent auction snafus or bitching with a coworker about what a volunteer did or did not do. Your job - and I'd venture to say it's the most important one you'll do all night - is to plant yourself right there at registration/check in/whatever you call it and greet every single one of your donors by name.

Yep. Every single one. (Or as many as you can.) Bonus points if you know their guests' names too.

You know why? Because this simple practice helps to burnish your organization's image in your donor's mind as an organization that cares about them. That knows them.

To me, this simple and best practice is an essential function. I absolutely believe that the person you put in this capacity for your event is vitally important. Registration is not the spot for the summer intern who joined your staff two weeks ago, unless he or she has a photographic memory from your PowerPoint pizza slide show. (Yes, include them in that lunch too. You never know who is going to strike up a conversation with your major gift prospect en route to the restroom. Trust me, it happens.)

This is so easy to do, but is a special event detail that is neglected. I can't think of the last time my husband and I walked into an event and were immediately greeted with, "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Firman! So glad to see you tonight!"

Can you?

When you do this, the look on your donors' faces will be priceless. I've had donors come up and express surprise and gratitude that I remembered their guests' names.  Normally, I would joke that I'd looked at the Excel spreadsheet of attendees so often that I was reciting it in my sleep (which wasn't far from the truth).  But the message was conveyed that ours was an organization where everybody knows their name.

And I'm betting that this made them pretty glad they came to our event.


copyright 2011, Melissa M. Firman, The Firman Group.