Grants Accelerator is a regular blog series about leveraging your grants strategy to enhance organizational sustainability. In this installment, Partner and Managing Director Ali Marcus explores the misconceptions of multi-year grants. Multi-year funding is often treated like the holy grail of the fundraising world. Everyone wants it, but few organizations can include it in their budgets year after year. Like the lottery, the promise of significant sums of money breeds mythical expectations about how to win it, keep it, and rely on it for stability. Through working with 70+ clients over the past ten years, I’ve seen these expectations cripple grant pursuits. I want to highlight some key myths, and reveal the hidden, true opportunities that a multi-year grants strategy brings to your fundraising and organizational goals. Myth #1: Multi-year funding is the primary grants strategy that our organization should pursue. Truth: Multi-year funding belongs within a bigger, more diverse grants strategy. I speak to Executive Directors, Development Directors, and Board members all the time who say “we are only or primarily interested in multiyear funding.” This makes sense from the perspective of the organization’s need for stable funding for programs and operations, but it doesn’t reflect how funders operate.  The reality is most foundations don’t make many multi-year grants. It’s worth pursuing multi-year opportunities, but they must be balanced with a larger focus on single-year grants that are more available. Hidden Opportunity! Think of multi-year grants like you think of bequest gifts. They are a windfall to your budget in those years, but they should not be used to forecast future grants potential. Instead, use those years that you do have the funding to invest more time in cultivating other foundation relationships to help you accelerate out of your multi-year grant when it ends. It’s also a good time to set appropriate expectations with your Board about the role of current and future multi-year funding opportunities. Myth #2: Multi-year funding represents a long-term commitment from the foundation. Truth: Multi-year grants are rarely renewed (at least immediately). Like everything in fundraising, multiyear grants are all about relationships. Often, a foundation will test a single year grant – sometimes for several years in a row, even – to gauge the potential of the organization. If the relationship and results are strong, it could lead to an invitation to apply for multi-year funding. This is where an organization can be lulled into a false sense of security after several consecutive years of consistent funding. Yet, despite the strength of the relationship, multi-year grants are rarely a renewable source of funding. In fact, I find that foundations are more likely to renew a single year gift, because they are usually smaller and lower risk. Foundations change their priorities often (most as frequently as every three-to-five years), which can complicate renewing multi-year funding if it doesn’t fit into the new strategy. Hidden Opportunity! Even if you know multi-year funding is hard to secure and keep, there are good reasons to invest in these funder relationships. Through the multi-year application process, your organization becomes more visible to program officers and the foundation trustees. This opens up potential for single year or discretionary grants even if they decline the multi-year proposal.  If your organization does secure a multi-year grant, the reporting and stewardship relationship is a good opportunity to educate the funder about your work. The program officer may have your organization in mind for future funding strategies, even if they decide not to immediately renew the funding relationship. Myth #3: Every organization should pursue multi-year funding. Truth: Multi-year grants often require more time, resources, and systems to apply for and manage. Not every organization is prepared to pursue multi-year funding. Single year grants are usually easier to access than multi-year grants. Foundations see multi-year relationships as higher stakes in their overall funding portfolio, so they spend more time vetting the organization and project. This means longer applications, more in-depth project and evaluation plans, and longer decision-making cycles. Organizations spend more time and staff resources preparing the application and for site visits to win an opportunity that has a lower probability of success. Even after the grant is secured, multi-year funding often requires more sophisticated evaluation and reporting to the funder. This is risky for organizations that don’t already have stable sources of funding and well-defined evaluation and reporting processes. Hidden Opportunity! If your organization has reached a point where you would like to access more sophisticated (and likely larger) funding sources, pursuing a multi-year grant is a great excuse to build your systems and experience. I suggest thinking of any multi-year grant application as a capacity investment rather than a funding source. It will push your board and staff leaders to project your staffing, programming, and growth several years out. This is useful not only for this single grant application, but also to strengthen your vision for other grant applications and conversations with individual and corporate donors. This exercise contributes to your long-term sustainability by connecting the dots between grant seeking, longer term fundraising strategy, and multi-year programming vision. You will be better prepared for all funding opportunities, even if you don’t secure that specific multi-year grant.

This article was written by Ariel Glassman. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. Behind every great fundraising team is a great development plan. And every great development plan includes strong evaluation, including the right metrics. Staying ahead of the curve in fundraising requires continuous monitoring and improvement. If you don’t measure something, you can’t manage or grow it. Because fundraising looks a little different at every nonprofit, you’ll use a unique set of success indicators to track what’s important to your organization. Still, there are three metrics that apply to most nonprofits’ fundraising work, regardless of size or sector. This trio is the foundation for analyzing your fundraising outcomes and the overall health of your development program. Metric #1: New Donor Retention Rate The percentage of first-time donors who make a second gift. Acquisition and retention are broadly-used indicators of fundraising health. Many organizations track total donor retention as well as the number of new, first-time donors they acquire each year. But, there’s another retention metric worth obsessing over: the new donor retention rate. While a donor’s first gift is the most difficult and expensive gift to obtain, their second gift is the most important. Nationally, more than 3 out of 4 new donors disappear into thin air, never to be seen again. Yet, 60 percent of donors who make a second gift will continue to give. Getting new donors to that critical second gift is the key to growing short-term revenue and increasing the lifetime value of your donor base. This metric can tell you how well your donor stewardship efforts are working. If you don’t see progress year-over-year, it’s time to focus on stewardship. New Donor Retention Rate = (# of Year 1 Donor Households that Gave in Year 2) ÷ (# of Year 1 Donors) Metric #2: Event Donor Conversion Rate The percentage of event donors who convert to or add other giving methods and opportunities. Fundraising events can be expensive, time-consuming, unpredictable, and stressful. They can also spike public interest in your organization and give you an opportunity to woo donors to more reliable and efficient donor engagement and fundraising activities. Many organizations track their event’s return on investment (ROI), cost per dollar raised (CPDR), number of new donors acquired, strict event donor retention rates (how many event donors give again at an event in the future), average gift size, zero-giver rates, and many more. All of these metrics tell us, in one way or another, how well that particular event performed, but they don’t reveal how well your event fulfills its purpose in the grand scheme of your fundraising ecosystem. Enter donor conversation rate. This metric is a strategic indicator of how well your follow-up stewardship and engagement activities drive event donors towards a second gift (the pure retention rate of event donors, also worth tracking) and towards deeper mission engagement. It’s the measure of how well you are leveraging transactional event interactions into actual relationships with your donors –an indicator of the value and meaning you bring to their lives. Event Donor Conversation Rate = (# of Multi-Gift Households Since Event) ÷ (# of Event Households) Metric #3: Number (or Percent) of Loyal Donors How many active donors have given for 5-10+ years Loyalty is one of the key indicators of propensity to give a major gift – right up there with volunteering. It’s also one of the only easily trackable indicators for propensity to make a planned gift. Many nonprofits have experienced the classic bequest scenario – a donor who gives $50 annual gifts for 25 years passes away and leaves a significant gift in their will. This leads staff to ask: who could have seen it coming? While no one can predict a surprise bequest, a loyal donor metric can help you understand how fertile your donor base is for planned giving. If you can identify how many donors meet your loyalty criterion, you can go one step further and identify who they are – which means you can focus specific cultivation steps on them or even send them more information about bequests for your organization. This isn’t just a metric – it’s actionable strategy. Before you can calculate your loyal donor metric, you need to establish what “loyal” means to your organization. For some older organizations, it could be 25 years of giving or more. For younger organizations, perhaps the criterion is a donor who has made gifts in 7 of the last 10 years. Percent of Loyal Households = (# of Loyal Households) ÷ (# of Active Households)

This article was written by Bailey Disher. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. Here are two fundraising riddles for you: What’s an organization called with a vision and no strategy? A nice idea. What’s an organization called with a strategy and no vision? A nice plan. The real punchline: It doesn’t matter. Organizations need both to go anywhere fast. Think of it this way. If your organization were a car, vision would be the steering wheel. It directs everything in an organization, from programmatic expansion to hiring decisions and your fundraising plan. And strategy would be the engine. It moves the organization forward by thoughtfully focusing people and resources. In my consulting role, I work alongside organizations establishing or expanding their grants program. I see organizations that are clear on their vision for lasting community impact, but lack the time, energy, and resources to develop the strategy for getting there. When it comes time to prepare and submit a grant application, the grantwriter becomes the translator who connects the programs, finance, executive, and development silos, trying to piece together a clear picture of how the organization will accomplish its vision. It takes twice as long to write a grant proposal when the organizational vision and program strategies are not aligned (or even created) in advance. Plus, the final proposal can feel like a Frankenstein of ideas instead of a cohesive story. This is the grantwriting equivalent of running with weights strapped to your legs. There’s a better way. In organizations where vision and strategy are aligned, you can feel the difference. These organizations make proactive decisions about funding opportunities, program implementation, and potential partnerships that are fully aligned with their vision. For our client, Team Read, this difference is clarity. Everyone in the organization knows where they are going and how they will get there. Team Read works with school districts and libraries to pair struggling elementary school readers with trained teen reading coaches for one-on-one tutoring after school and during the summer. Executive Director Maureen Massey helps staff and Board navigate the organization’s growth by serving as the conductor of vision and strategy. As a relatively small organization (annual budget is $800,000 with six staff members), she makes sure programs, finance, and fundraising are moving forward in lockstep with the strategic plan. Ostara partnered with Team Read to develop a grant strategy that has accelerated the organization’s vision. This included intentional conversations to clarify program growth, evaluation, and budget strategies for pilot programs.  The result of these conversations allowed Team Read to proactively lead conversations with funders about strategic growth plans. Foundation partners responded to their long-term vision and growth strategy with multi-year, renewed, and increased funding. Funders are confident Team Read has a big vision and a plan to make it happen. Your Strategy Revolution When your organization is clear on your organizational and programmatic visions, you can take the next step to prioritize grant opportunities that help you reach your goals. You can start your own strategy revolution by convening a group from across all departments in your organization (executive, programs, finance, and fundraising to name a few) to develop answers to these key questions that underpin every strong organizational (and grants) strategy: Why is our solution the best solution for the community (program strategy)? How will we know we are successful (evaluation strategy)? Who do we need to involve to realize our vision (partnership strategy)? What is our long-term plan for funding (funding strategy)? Let’s keep this conversation going. We are looking forward to hearing about your strategy wins and challenges! On August 15, 2018, Brittany Kirk and Bailey Disher will present a grants webinar on “The Grant Nexus: Connecting Development, Finance, and Programs for Higher Impact” in partnership with Washington Nonprofits. Join our mailing list to receive updates about this opportunity! Also, if you’re looking chat with us about crafting your grants strategy, we are here to connect. Thanks!

Do you remember watching the returns from Seattle Foundation’s inaugural GiveBIG roll across Twitter like it was Election Day (Or Christmas)? I do. GiveBIG and Giving Day has become an anchor fundraising strategy for organizations big and small over the past seven years. For all the good GiveBIG has done (raising over $92 million and spurring nonprofits to develop online and social media fundraising strategies), change is healthy. Here’s the good news. Giving days—events that generate awareness, find new donors, and raise money—have long been a part of Northwest fundraising (if you don’t believe me, check out this footage from the 1985 Seattle Children’s Hospital Telethon). And giving days will outlive GiveBIG – Seattle University just raised over $200,000 during their Seattle U Gives two-day event! And more good news. These standalone giving days are not only for large institutions. As my colleague Ariel Glassman and I shared with the group of more than 100 people gathered for our recent workshop “Fundraising in a Post-GiveBIG World,” you can plan your own giving day to engage new and longtime supporters. Like other events in your fundraising mix, it can take up to a year to plan and execute a giving day. Even if 2018 feels like a long goodbye to GiveBIG, plan ahead with a long hello to your new giving day event with this year-long roadmap. Convene a Giving Day Focus Group. Gather together some of your best GiveBIG supporters and other donors to ask them what they liked best and least about GiveBIG. Use this feedback to shape your new giving day event. Choose a Date. You can select an established giving day like #GivingTuesday or a mission-aligned date. For example, an HIV prevention organization could select World AIDS Day. You can also consider your current fundraising cash flow (maybe the bulk of your fundraising currently happens in the spring, so you choose a fall date). When you select the length of your event (12 hours, 24 hours, or two days), consider the resources and staff/volunteer time you can devote. Set Your Goal. A financial goal that you publicly highlight before, during, and after the giving day helps create urgency (even if you have a higher internal goal). It also helps donors to scale their gifts according to the goal. For especially ambitious goals, identify donors in advance who can give challenge gifts throughout the day to build momentum. This will help make your goal more achievable. Develop a Plan. Include your giving day strategy as part of your annual development plan or create a short, separate overview of your giving day strategy. The plan should detail how everyone in the organization can support the event. Build your team: A giving day is a perfect way to involve everyone in fundraising. Communicate your giving day plans early and often to your board, program staff, and volunteers. The more people you enlist in spreading the word, the greater the likelihood is you will reach new donors. Consider creating a giving day committee and giving day ambassador kit to empower even more people to share ownership. Tell Your Story. Like all good fundraising communication, your giving day messages should convey the difference a donor’s gift today will make in your programs. Share the urgency for raising this amount now and why donor support is critical. Lead with the purpose for the funds, whether you are raising money for something specific (like $50,000 to purchase a new van for your programs) or for general funding. Celebrate. Your work doesn’t end when the giving day is over. In the weeks and months following your day, celebrate what donors have helped you to accomplish. Incorporate creative strategies like personal video thank-you messages or Board phone calls. Your goal is to make sure each giving day donor knows they are appreciated. Follow Up. Pay special attention to new donors and make them feel welcome so their support extends far beyond a one-time gift. Consider creating a welcome email for new donors that orients them to other ways they can get involved and support your organization. Interested in going deeper? Check out Ariel Glassman’s presentation about Making the Most of GiveBIG. Many of her detailed GiveBIG strategies are relevant to standalone giving days, too!

This article was written by Ariel Glassman. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. Ah, January; the time of year when fundraisers everywhere strategize about how to zoom past their budget goals for the new year. For many nonprofits in Seattle and King County, that includes participating in GiveBIG. This annual community-wide giving day, hosted by the Seattle Foundation, has generated over $92 million for King County-based nonprofits since 2011. It has become a philanthropic force to be reckoned with, and over the last seven years, many nonprofits have to come to rely on GiveBIG to help keep their budgets in the black. But, the next GiveBIG event – May 9, 2018 – will be the last. While it’s certainly a loss for our philanthropic community, we’re a resilient bunch – and there’s plenty of time to make sure your 2019 operating budget can succeed without a GiveBIG campaign. It’s time to take a step back and lay the groundwork for new strategies to replace GiveBIG. Here’s how to get started: Figure out what GiveBIG accomplished for you – besides immediate funding. For most nonprofits, GiveBIG hasn’t just brought dollars in the door – it’s generated a wealth of other advantageous outcomes. For example – donor acquisition. It’s likely that 30-60% of your giving day donors are new donors, who are critical to the overall health of your fundraising pipeline and long-term fundraising results. If that’s the case, you should focus on figuring out other ways to bring new donors into the fold in 2019 and beyond. For another example, it’s possible that GiveBIG has successfully converted new gala donors into more consistent non-event givers. Or recovered lapsed donors. Or turned volunteers into cash donors. The possibilities are endless. Until you figure out GiveBIG’s non-revenue impact on the health of your fundraising, you can’t plan for how to replace it – or the funding itself! So, dig into your GiveBIG data and find out what goodies GiveBIG has brought your organization over the years. Figure out who your GiveBIG donors are. Along with understanding how GiveBIG has affected your fundraising program overall, knowing who your GiveBIG donors are will determine what you need to do with them next. Though every donor base is different, and your GiveBIG donors are not homogenous, a deep inspection will likely reveal patterns that can help you hone your strategy and get the best return on investment from your future GiveBIG replacement activities. What do I mean by “who they are”? First, demographics like age, industry of employment, where they live, how much they earn, and whether they have children influence giving behaviors and motivations. For example, whether your donors skew younger or older will influence whether it’s a smarter bet to replace GiveBIG with a crowdfunding campaign or other digital strategy, or with more traditional mechanisms like direct mail. Second, looking at how your GiveBIG donors connect to your organization can provide clues on what to do with them in 2019 and beyond. Perhaps your top GiveBIG donors are board members, or members of your young leadership board or advisory council. Perhaps they are program volunteers, or contacts of your board members, or members of the local Rotary or Junior League. Small development shops with fewer donors may simply be able to eyeball their GiveBIG donor lists and understand the pattern of GiveBIG donor demographics and linkages, while larger organizations with hundreds or even thousands of GiveBIG donors may need to rely on electronic donor surveys or donor focus groups to establish this information. Third, examining giving behaviors can glean useful insights. How often do your GiveBIG donors give? Is GiveBIG their only gift each year, or do some or all of them make multiple gifts through different giving opportunities? If so, which other tactics do they participate in? Development teams of any size should be able to use their donor database to figure these patterns out. It’s worth the effort; understanding these dynamics can illuminate the path of least resistance for continued fruitful relationships with your GiveBIG donors. Use the final GiveBIG event as a lever to bring these donors with you into the GiveBIG-less future. As you create your GiveBIG plan over the next 4 months, assess each element for opportunities to specifically plant the seeds of why your organization is worth continued engagement after GiveBIG sunsets. Demonstrate your tangible impact, and show donors the role their gift plays in achieving it. Remember, GiveBIG is an opportunity to give, not a reason. Focus your solicitation and stewardship communications on the specific outcomes and timeline of impact that gifts to your organization make possible – which is what great fundraising does all year long. The more you condition donors to give based on these truly relevant reasons, rather than on the arbitrary timing of GiveBIG, the easier it will be for you to retain them when GiveBIG is no longer an option. Make sure your donors know that the difference they made through GiveBIG is inherently connected to the work you do all year long. Most critically, don’t rely on the assumption that everyone knows GiveBIG will sunset after 2018. Your donors are not as hooked in to the world of philanthropy as nonprofit staff, and many might not know that GiveBIG is ending. So be explicit about the change, be open with your donors about the impact of their gift and of GiveBIG on your organization as a funding opportunity, and let them know that you will be planning other opportunities for them to contribute and help in 2019. A video thank-you message following GiveBIG that contains this information is a great start – and there are many more possibilities you can explore. These three ideas will help you strategically position your nonprofit for fundraising success post GiveBIG. For an opportunity to interactively explore these and other related topics in-depth with other fundraisers and with members of Seattle’s nonprofit community, click through to RSVP for Ostara’s January 31 interactive workshop on Fundraising in a Post-GiveBIG World. We hope to see you there!

This article was written by Ariel Glassman. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. The end (of the fiscal year) is nigh; Giving Tuesday is upon us. Well, not quite. You still have some time to make a great plan for the nationwide giving bonanza that will take place on Tuesday, November 28. Planning a successful giving day isn’t rocket science – but it is a microcosm of many classic principles of fundraising, from online giving to events to capital campaigns. You probably already know all the reasons why you should invest in digital ads on social media platforms, pre-schedule your tweets, and solicit and leverage a matching gift for Giving Tuesday. But there are other strategies you can use to elevate your campaign, raise more money, build solid relationships with your donors, and reap the benefits of this giving day beyond this fiscal year. This year, make sure you: 1) Define and focus on a specific funding need. Giving Tuesday alone is not a reason for someone to give – it’s an opportunity. You still need to give your donors a compelling reason to act on the intrinsic motivation that makes them care about your mission in the first place. It’s critical that you do not rely on “gap messaging” that focuses on filling the hole in your budget as the end of the calendar or fiscal year approaches. The gap in your budget has nothing to do with the donor, and it’s not the donor’s problem to solve. Your job is to show them the big problem your organization exists to solve, and communicate how something specific you do is an opportunity for the donor to help solve that problem in a specific and tangible way. Any call to action to donors should be able to answer the following questions in the donor’s mind: “Why me? Why this? Why now?” The urgency piece is the hardest to get right. Sure, the fact that it’s Giving Tuesday helps, but that it doesn’t help you stand out from the crowd of other nonprofits fundraising intensely that day. Make sure the donors know when and why you need their money. Choose a specific activity or program with a communicable timeline, as well as an end point or milestone at which you can communicate success back to the donors who funded it. In doing so, you’re defining and demonstrating urgency in a way that will set you apart from all the general operations asks flying around on Giving Tuesday. And you’ll raise more money. If you work around actually restricting the gifts by closing with an ask for the donor to give “to solve urgent problems like this” or “to support our efforts to change lives like this,” you can have your cake and eat it too. 2) Set a public goal – and make it one you can crush. How you set a public goal for Giving Tuesday matters for many reasons. First and foremost – yes, you do need to set a public goal. Having a public financial goal helps donors see where their gift fits into the solution to the problem you are asking them to help solve. People act when they think they can tip the scales. If they don’t know what your goal is, they can’t contextualize their own gift and decide if their actions can make a meaningful dent in it. Even more critically, giving days are an incredible source of new donors for nonprofits of all types. This is a spectacular opportunity for you to gain ground on the difficult and expensive journey of donor acquisition and building your donor pipeline. How you respond to a donor’s first gift sets the tone for their relationship to your organization and the likelihood of retaining that donor in the future. Shared success is the foundation of relationship-building, and the best way to start a new relationship. And shared success is always relative to a goal. If you set a goal you can outperform, you create a big shared win for you and your donors. That’s a great start to permanently hooking new donors on your cause. If you set an ambitious goal and either don’t make it or barely make it, you don’t get to claim that epic victory that first-time donors will feel great about. You and the donor are in this story together, and setting an achievable goal is the first step in creating that narrative and influencing how they end up feeling about their gift and your organization. 3) Make your Giving Tuesday donors feel special with instant stewardship. We’ve written about instant stewardship for GiveBIG before – both why you should do instant stewardship, and exactly how to pull off instant stewardship for development teams of all sizes. Great news: instant stewardship is just as applicable to Giving Tuesday as it is to GiveBIG. To sum up: instant stewardship is a fast, easy, cheap way for any nonprofit in any mission space to overcome the short half-life of digital philanthropic engagement and increase your chances of retaining the new donors you will acquire on Giving Tuesday. Go back and read our previous posts for all the details, and get cracking! 4) Create and deploy a simple toolkit for others to use to help you raise money on Giving Tuesday. Fundraising is absolutely a team sport. Recent data from online giving platform GiveGab’s survey of their participants shows that, on average, a nonprofit with an “engaged” board raised $4,150 on their giving day, or roughly double those with a “slightly engaged” board, who raised $1,800. It really is worth it to invest in amplifying your campaign by building a strong team of evangelists who will give, share, and cheerlead. Think about all the people and affinity groups who are already “on your team” in some way: staff, board members, volunteers, advisory council members, young leadership group members, and yes, your existing donors! What do they all have in common? Well, they’re probably very busy people. As the fundraising professional, your job is to make it as easy as possible for them to help you raise money on Giving Tuesday. Leaving them to their own devices without support and tools is a surefire way to leave money on the table. So – set them up to succeed with a simple, concise digital toolkit for Giving Tuesday. Provide them with messaging around the funding need and your goal; sample social media posts, hashtags and graphics; testimonial quotes’ and sample emails they can personalize and forward to their networks. Make sure that this communications content is story-oriented and impact-oriented.

This article was written by Kari Dasher. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. If you love fall like I do, I imagine you are thoroughly enjoying the arrival of crisp October mornings that precede perfectly warm and sunny afternoons, with three more months of fierce weekly gridiron competition to go and the Thanksgiving holiday (my favorite) on the horizon. Of course, the arrival of fall also means that 2017’s year-end giving season is here. With nearly a third of annual giving occurring in December and 12% of all giving happening between December 29 and 31, you and your team likely began preparing as early as September. And between the annual gala, year-end appeal and plethora of major donor solicitations – not to mention, holiday vacations – the last four months of the year are stressful. So, herein, a bit of perspective for staying grounded and joyful throughout the journey. REPLENISH Fall is perhaps, if nothing else, the season of giving and service. Self-care is of paramount importance now more than any other time of year. It may be counterintuitive that pausing for a healthy mid-day meal and conversation with your colleagues or a walk to breathe deeply with the sun on your face or prioritizing extra rest – and extra fun! – during weekends can be the difference between success and near-burnout. Eleanor Brownn‘s often remind me that self-care prepares us to share our gifts with the world. “When you take time to replenish your spirit, it allows you to serve others from the overflow.” So, go ahead; take a bit of time to cook, hike, go to the symphony or ballet or a show – and carry your light throughout the giving season and into the New Year. LEVERAGE WHAT YOU KNOW Inspire and assign your board and volunteers to help meet the goal. Whatever your year-end strategies, make them about your clients and donors. Emphasize online giving in the last week of the year. Learn from challenges, but keep moving ahead. Remember that you’re running a marathon, not a sprint, so plan accordingly. Remind donors how their gifts are changing someone’s world. Celebrate the smallest of successes. Give thanks. GIVE GRACE GENEROUSLY As pressures mount to exceed year-end goals – and your colleague excitedly reminds you every day that they will be home for the holidays in 59 days and counting – making it a practice to extend grace and gratitude to yourself, your colleagues and your family makes it possible to start the New Year with strengthened relationships. Some ways to do this: say kindly what needs to be said. Apologize and accept apology. Be self- and socially aware and deploy your best emotional intelligence tools. Genuinely care about and seek others’ experience and perspective. BE THE DIFFERENCE Know that your efforts to inspire contributor partnership on behalf of your clients – and our collective community – continue to make a small difference in counterbalancing the heartbreaking examples of hate, violence, toxic rhetoric and despair happening around the world and here at home. There are crowds of good people in our communities who want to use their talents and resources to make a difference. You and your organization are the catalysts for their giving. And now more than ever, our colleagues, clients, donors – and world – are counting on us.

I’ve been developing fundraising programs with several new organizations lately, and have often been asked the question, “What are your top tips for building a successful fundraising program?” As I considered my top recommendations, I realized they’re applicable for both new and established organizations. Here are the top 5 tips that can strengthen your fundraising program and help give your organization a jumpstart: Spend time getting to know your volunteers – they are your best potential donors in the future. Thank them often and ask their advice. Thank donors of any amount. Use email, letters and a good old fashioned phone call. If someone makes a gift to your organization (of any amount) they deserve the be thanked promptly. Go into each event you do with a goal in mind. Is it educational? Is it a celebration? Is it a time to ask for a gift? Defining a goal for every event (and I do mean EVERY event) before it even occurs can help clarify your appropriate follow-up. Involve your program team in fundraising. They live and breathe the mission. Not to say that fundraisers don’t also, but our program teams often have stories that communicate our mission in a way that is compelling and lasting. Invite them in on a call. Invite them in to make thank yous. They are a key resource in organizational storytelling. Segment your audiences. Not everyone deserves the same letter or appeal. By taking the time to segment your audience by what THEY care about (and not what we think they SHOULD care about), you will develop a more meaningful relationship.  Speak to them directly watch their engagement with your mission grow! Try out implementing one or all of these tips this fall and let us know how it impacts your organization We always love to hear success stories from organizations incorporating best practices into their work. Do you have any other key tips that you’ve seen work wonders? Let us know in the comments!

Relationships are important in any business. They are especially important in fundraising. Building trust and showing true interest in a person’s experiences, beliefs and values will bring rewarding return to you personally and professionally. How are you building relationships? Here are three strategies I utilize in building relationships in my personal and professional world. Please share yours in the comments section below, we could all use support and ideas in how to build meaningful relationships. Remember something. Remember the person’s name. Where they work. What their dogs name is. Where they traveled last. Remember something allows you to continue to build upon the relationship when you see the person again. Ask Questions. Generally people like to talk about themselves. It is human nature. Ask a person a question and let them talk. Usually in their response they will give you another question to ask which allows the opportunity for people to continue to share what is important to them. I always recommend having 3-5 questions in mind for every person you meet (hint: it is okay if they are always the same question). Good themes: family, work, travel and hobbies. Make connections. Use your networks to connect people. Most of us have a friend or colleague looking for something and I would bet, most of us know a person who could help. Keep your LinkedIn profile updated and when someone mentions they are looking to “connect with…” offer your LI profile to help them (hint: take your current resume and use it to help build your LI profile). As we know, good relationship-building is plain old good fundraising. Try out some of these strategies to help deepen your donors’ connection with your organization, and develop meaningful relationships with those invested in your mission.

This article was written by Casey Caylor. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. Grant funding is a pillar of fund development for many nonprofit organizations. While grants are an important source of income for organizations, a great grant program is about more than just the money. Inve­sting staff time and resources into developing a high functioning grant program can generate some amazing, unanticipated upsides. When you build a successful grant program, you also: Build a community of support for your programs. Funders like to see that your organization has the support of other donors; they are more likely to support your work as part of a community. If your organization has any interest in pursuing larger regional or national grants, you will need to develop a strong base of smaller local and regional funders that support existing programs before a larger national foundation is likely to invest. The grant process can also generate new partnerships with foundations and other nonprofits through program collaborations and opportunities to participate in thought leadership. Translate visionary ideas into tangible and realistic programs. A successful grant program helps translate a strategic plan into action, and helps develop a plan for future growth. Grant writers often hold an overarching, yet detailed view of the organization, as they are privy to detailed programmatic information, organizational strategy and financial details. They are in the perfect role to listen for new, visionary ideas, and facilitate internal conversations that translate these ideas into a compelling narrative with a clear budget. The result: they set these ideas on a path to becoming reality. Strong grant work guides your organization through critical questions: Who will this project serve? How will we secure funding? What is our budget? What is our timeline? Why now? Build internal systems that foster transparency and reflection. Grant funding almost always requires that organizations report back on the impact and expenditure of the grant award. Funders use this information to hold organizations accountable and make sure their funds are being used as they intended. The process of reporting financial expenditures and program outcomes compels organizations to build out internal systems that help them to better understand their community impact (and better articulate outcomes with other funders), track spending in a way that aligns with annual budgets, and approach program design with increased awareness of implementation and realistic goals. These internal systems and processes provide the necessary feed back to improve the next round of grant proposals, and have lasting benefits on an organization – far beyond that of an improved grants process. Foster a culture of philanthropy. At the Ostara Group, we view every organization through the lens of its organizational culture of philanthropy – or a culture in which fund development is valued as a long-term, mission-aligned program of the organization. A culture where members of the organization are committed to and personally involved in fundraising. The grant program plays an important role in fostering a culture of philanthropy by identifying funding opportunities, integrating departmental staff around the common goal of sustaining your mission, and building experience in collaborating with foundations to deepen or increase your impact on the community you serve. It takes a strong leader to develop a robust grant program, and it requires the collaboration of every department in your organization. It takes time and hard work from your staff and leadership in development, programming, and finance. The next time you are grappling with a tricky grant application, or frustrated about how long it is taking to build a relationship with a key potential funder, pause and think about how this work benefits your organization beyond financial gain – deepening your impact and increasing your sustainability!

This article was written by Ariel Glassman. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. Yesterday, we parsed out the many benefits of instant stewardship of your giving day donors – and promised we’d explain how to get it done today. So: here’s a step-by-step primer on how to flawlessly execute instant stewardship on GiveBIG. Because you’ll be executing instant stewardship in a fast-moving environment on the day of GiveBIG itself, it’s useful to separate this primer into two sections: What you need to do prepare for instant stewardship before GiveBIG, and what you need to do on GiveBIG itself. Spoiler alert: Much of the work actually happens before GiveBIG – and it builds on work you were already planning to do. Before GiveBIG: Draft a basic template for the content of the email you will send to each giving day donor in response to their gift. Keep this short and sweet – length isn’t as important as response time and personalization. Create, ask and confirm a list of the participating development and non-development staff. This activity can become unwieldy above 5 people, so stick to that upper limit. From all the participants, define one person as the staff lead for this process. The instant stewardship process will flow more smoothly if it is clear where the buck stops, and who has the answers to any questions participants have. In this case, if you’re reading this post, it’s probably you. Make sure this person is set up to receive all the gift notification emails from the GiveBIG online platform. Define which participants will steward which donors. For example, you might assign donors under $100 to your development associate, donors from $100 to $500 to the development director, and donors above $500 to the executive director. Make sure everyone knows in advance exactly when they need to take action, and for whom. Creating an automatic set of “if-then” rules like this reduces confusion and process friction, and increases the speed of execution. During GiveBIG: The staff lead should immediately steward all the pre-scheduled donors whose gifts automatically processed at midnight as soon as they can, if you haven’t done so as they pre-scheduled their gifts. This applies to donors of all sizes, even if you have multiple people handling different segments of donors. Don’t expect your teammates to be up and stewarding donors with you at 6 AM (or 12:01 AM), especially if they’re not fundraising staff. Begin the automatic rule-based stewardship when your team has arrived at the office for their normal day – and make sure you’ve set an expectation for what time that is. I’m looking at you, arts organizations. Each participant should open up the donor database and be prepared to look up each donor as they give so that your stewardship can include personal, relational details. Keep it open all day. The staff lead should watch the inbox receiving your GiveBIG gift notification emails like a hawk. If you have 3-5 people participating, it will be easiest for the staff lead to receive and distribute all emails to participants for stewardship, based on the automatic set of rules created. This helps keep most of the internal pressure for instant stewardship on the fundraiser who is the staff lead, and makes it easier for other staff who are participating. The easier it is for other teammates to help you, the more likely they will be to help you again next year. The actual instant stewardship email can happen in one of two ways: Open up a new stand-alone email message. This method takes a little longer, and requires the content of the email to provide more context and explanation, so that what it references it is obvious at a glance to the donor receiving the message. After all, they’re busy people too – don’t make them work to figure why you’re landing in their inbox. However, organizations with a very formal brand and personality may prefer the clean and sophisticated feel of this method. Forward the actual gift notification receipt back to the donor, and include your personal message with it. This has fewer steps and thus takes less time, and the inclusion of the receipt and the pre-populated subject line help you set the context for the donor.  For these reasons, I prefer this method, but it may work best for organizations with a more casual and personal brand or relationship to their donors. Distribute high-fives liberally among your teammates throughout the day (yes, it’s OK to high-five yourself if you’re flying solo on this). If you really want your teammates to help you again next year, gift them little treats or coffee shop gift cards the next day to thank them. And that’s how you do it. But what should it look like? I’ve written a few samples that should help you figure out how to adapt this tactic to your organization, including what types of information in the database to eyeball for each donor so you can personalize them more – such as repeat GiveBIG participation, artistic engagement in performances or exhibits, and more. The most important goal is to ensure that it sounds like it came from a real human (because it did!), and that it contains at least one detail particular to the donor. These examples assume that you’ve chosen to forward the gift notification back to the donor, so you don’t have to mention the gift amount again, and the context is obvious to the donor immediately. An arts organization might write… “Hi Mary – thank you so much for this amazing donation! You also just brought us closer to completing our matching gift challenge. I hope you’re enjoying your subscription this season. Thanks again for supporting TheaterXYZ on GiveBIG! Have a great day! Ariel” An education advocacy group might write… “Hi Jamie – thank you so much! This is really wonderful. It feels so good to see our community coming together around early childhood learning in real time. Thanks for being on our team for the third GiveBIG in a row! Warmly, Ariel” A few final thoughts: If you’re having trouble finding teammates to participate, try gamifying the process to create an incentive. For example, offer a desirable prize to whoever can demonstrate the fastest turnaround time between receiving a notification and sending the instant stewardship email.  The email timestamps make it easy to prove. While speed is of the essence, you’re also a human, not a robot, which is kind of the whole point of this activity. So of course it’s alright if you miss the 90-second window for a gift because you needed a bio-break, or because your executive director had a time-sensitive question. It’s fine if you can turn these around within 5 minutes rather than 90 seconds. I just happen to know 90 seconds is generally possible, because I’ve done it myself, over and over. Some large organizations have thousands of GiveBIG donors, and some smaller organizations have very few staff. If you’re worried about having the capacity to execute instant stewardship for all GiveBIG donors for any reason, it’s fine to focus this effort on certain donor segments. Create a donor pyramid from your past GiveBIG data to look at how many donors you’ve had at each level, find the level where the number of donors giving that amount drops dramatically, and use that as the floor for instant stewardship outreach. Go ahead and steward your pre-schedules now to get them done! That can lighten your day-of load. Voila! Instant stewardship – a powerful tool for donor retention and making the absolute most of an opportunity like GiveBIG. Now, ask yourself: since instant stewardship of online donors only takes 90 seconds, and notifications of your regular online gifts also get pushed to you… why not execute instant stewardship for online gifts year-round? Happy fundraising!

This article was written by Ariel Glassman. She is no longer with Ostara, but we want to preserve this piece so that you can learn from her and from the work she did while part of the Ostara team. After six years, many nonprofits in Seattle and King County seem to have their GiveBIG action plans down pat. But as the number of nonprofits competing for donor dollars grows, organizations should continuously evolve their practices and increase the sophistication of their campaigns. Chances are, even the most tried-and-true, dependable GiveBIG and giving day campaigns could use a little freshening up. GiveBIG comes at a busy time of year for most nonprofits. The prospect of adding something new to your campaign might not be so appealing. But there’s one tactic that is so effective and efficient that I recommend it to every single client. You’re probably thinking there has to be a catch. It’s probably expensive, annoying to plan, and/or overly complicated to execute. Right? Nope. This activity: Costs nothing Is fast, easy, and fun to do Helps you in the short and long term Works for nonprofits of any budget or staff size Works for nonprofits operating in any mission space or impact sector Can improve your internal culture of philanthropy (yes, really) Is over when GiveBIG is over (phew!) So, what is this magical unicorn, this fairy dust-sprinkled activity? I’m so glad you asked. It’s instant stewardship. If you attended my “Making the Most of GiveBIG” workshop at the Seattle Foundation last month, you heard me ring this particular bell over and over. Instant stewardship is the practice of sending each of your giving day donors a customized email thank-you from a real human within 90 seconds after the push notification of the gift arrives.  It takes the concept of stewardship – the care and feeding of your donors through demonstrations of gratitude and impact – and dramatically accelerates the usual timeline. Stewardship drives retention. I probably don’t need to tell you how important donor retention is to the health of your fundraising program and achieving your mission. Spoiler alert: It’s really important. Retention of giving day donors requires special attention because 30-60% of them will be new. GiveBIG is a huge opportunity to acquire new donors. Unfortunately, new donors are hard to keep. Only 19% of an organization’s new donors make a second gift. Ouch. But if you can get that second gift, 63% of these returning donors will keep giving beyond that point. That’s huge, and that’s where the majority of your fundraising revenue comes from. That’s why stewardship is so important, and even more important for opportunities that bring you new donors – like GiveBIG. You need to intervene to ensure that they’re on the path to their second gift. But new research shows that it’s not enough just to thank and steward donors. Online engagement has a half-life of about 24 hours, so response time matters. According to fundraising communications expert (and one of my professional heroes) Tom Ahern, new donors who get a personal thank-you within 48 hours are 4 times more likely to make that all-important second gift. Waiting even one day after GiveBIG to personally thank a donor cuts the impact of the thank-you in half. If you wait two days, that thank-you reaches only a quarter of its full potential; and so on and so forth. This is why the speed of stewardship is so important. Instant stewardship can also help build your internal culture of philanthropy and make your job easier in the long run. Non-fundraising staff often resist participating in development work, usually because they think fundraising is all about asking, and they fear being expected to make asks. This barrier to a genuinely participatory culture of philanthropy can be difficult to overcome. Change sticks when it’s incremental; you have to let people dip their toes in new waters before asking them to dive in.  And they have to be shown, not told. Instant stewardship during a giving day like GiveBIG is an opportunity to give resistant or tentative non-fundraising staff an easy, early win in the juiciest part of the fundraising cycle – thanking donors! The process can be managed in a way that allows you to delegate some of this (easy, fun, quick) activity to non-fundraisers in your organization, and show them how good it feels to be part of your organization’s gratitude machine. That quick taste of initial success can build their confidence and openness towards fundraising in the future. That’s why you should execute instant stewardship for your giving day donors. Click here for the second post in this series – a step-by-step tutorial for flawless execution of instant stewardship on giving days.