Jani’s Journal Issue 34: Feting Philanthropy & Fundraising
11/12/2024
Celebrating Philanthropy and the Impact of Giving
With National Philanthropy Day (11/14/2024) and Giving Tuesday (12/3/2024) fast approaching, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the ways individuals, corporations, and nonprofits can contribute to lasting change. As end-of-the-year giving season aligns with these notable days, this issue of Jani’s Journal provides insights into strategic philanthropy, effective funding, and the mutually beneficial relationship between businesses and charitable giving. Together, they highlight the need for thoughtful, impactful, and responsible approaches to philanthropy and include valuable tips for your development team.
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Jani’s Jackpot!
If you only have time to read one article, Jani’s Jackpot promises the ultimate payout!
🔗 Finding Your Funding Strategy 🔗
This Bridgespan Group article offers a step-by-step guide to benchmarking your nonprofit’s funding strategies and assessing the funding landscape to achieve long-term sustainability. It covers how to identify peer organizations, analyze funding models, and apply insights to inform your organization’s strategic revenue mix. This benchmarking process empowers nonprofits to make informed, sustainable choices that enhance financial health and mission impact:
Define your peer set by identifying similar organizations based on mission, size, and geographic scope to provide relevant comparisons.
Research your peer set’s funding models by analyzing their publicly available financials, including main revenue sources like grants, donations, and fee-for-service revenue.
Engage with peers by having conversations with selected peers to gain deeper insights into their revenue strategies and funding challenges.
Form hypotheses by using gathered data to form and validate funding hypotheses that align with your organization’s mission and capabilities. Be sure to view Bridgespan’s tool for hypothesis development linked here!
Share key insights by presenting findings to stakeholders with visualizations and distilled themes to guide strategic funding decisions.
Find the Right Funding Mix:
Maximizing Philanthropy’s Impact
🔗 Six Ways CFOs Find to Unlock Their Full Potential 🔗
This McKinsey & Company article explores the evolving role of the CFO, particularly in balancing traditional financial management with strategic partnership, to drive value. Effective CFOs elevate their roles beyond financial stewardship by focusing on strategic priorities that align with the organization's mission, improving efficiency through technology, prioritizing impactful investments, and simplifying complex processes. For nonprofits, a CFO’s commitment to strategic thinking and disciplined resource management is essential for building trust with donors and maximizing the impact of philanthropic funds. Key takeaways include:
Align Strategy and Technology: Use technology to streamline processes and focus on high-level strategic objectives, rather than routine financial tasks.
Prioritize Big Moves: Invest in major initiatives that can drive significant programmatic impact rather than getting bogged down in incremental changes.
Simplify and Clarify Roles: Streamline operations to reduce redundancy and ensure that finance activities are aligned with the organization’s mission and strategic goals.
Maintain Consistent Focus: Build routines and practices to stay centered on essential tasks, improving efficiency and decision-making.
Foster Transparency: By clearly articulating priorities and outcomes, the CFO strengthens relationships with the board, donors, and stakeholders, enhancing trust and accountability in managing donor funds.
🔗 Audacious Philanthropy: Lessons from Fifteen World-Changing Initiatives 🔗
This Harvard Business Review article distills lessons from fifteen historical philanthropic successes, highlighting key strategies for today’s ambitious donors seeking transformative social change. Rather than focusing on incremental impact, successful philanthropists (and the organizations to which they give) approach audacious goals through a structured framework involving long-term investment, collaboration, and adaptability. The article emphasizes that impactful change requires both strategic patience and support for continuous learning. Key lessons learned that enhance the chances of achieving significant, lasting social impact include:
Build a Shared Understanding: Achieving meaningful change starts with a deep, shared understanding of the problem, its causes, and the ecosystem surrounding it, requiring ongoing research and stakeholder alignment.
Set Winnable Milestones: Breaking down ambitious goals into specific, achievable milestones helps maintain motivation and focus, often paired with emotionally compelling messages to rally public and partner support.
Design for Scale: Effective solutions must be designed with scalability in mind, ensuring they can feasibly address large-scale needs without diluting impact.
Drive Demand: Successful initiatives don’t just assume adoption; they invest in demand generation, from marketing efforts to creating supportive regulations or incentives that encourage uptake.
Embrace Adaptation: Long-term initiatives need flexibility and support for course corrections based on robust data and evolving contexts, empowering grantees to adjust and improve strategies over time.
🔗 Online Fundraising May Require Different Design Strategies To Get Donors To Give 🔗
The research is in! This Fast Company article details research-informed ways nonprofits can maximize online giving. For example, research shows device type influences giving behavior, so tailoring fundraising appeals to the specific devices used by donors can increase giving. Nonprofits often use identical donation pages for both smartphones and PCs, yet studies reveal smartphone users are less likely to donate due to a "mobile mindset" that focuses more on personal needs than empathy for others. Other strategies to maximize online giving include:
Highlighting empathy in mobile appeals to bridge the “mobile giving gap,” by designing smartphone-targeted appeals that explicitly emphasize others' needs, which can counteract the self-focused tendencies of mobile users.
Use device-specific targeting through programs like Google Ads that allow nonprofits to tailor ads by device, enabling more effective engagement with mobile users versus PC users.
Prioritize mobile design by ensuring prominent, easily accessible "donate" buttons and a user-friendly mobile design to further improve the likelihood of donations from smartphone users.
🔗 When Corporate Philanthropy Makes the Recipient Look Bad 🔗
This Harvard Business Review article emphasizes that while corporate donations carry reputational risks for nonprofits, simply refusing such funding isn't a practical solution. Corporate partnerships offer critical resources that can fuel growth, enable impactful projects, and support operations that nonprofits might otherwise struggle to afford. However, nonprofits must navigate these relationships carefully to avoid reputational harm, particularly when working with companies from controversial industries. Some ways nonprofits can carefully manage corporate sponsorships to gain financial benefits without undermining their mission or reputation include:
Limit Sponsorship Scope: Organizations can reduce reputational risk by accepting corporate support for specific projects rather than for institution-wide partnerships, as project-based funding is viewed as less compromising.
Avoid Excessive Sponsorships: Relying on multiple corporate sponsors signals a potential deviation from professional values, which can diminish an organization’s perceived artistic or cultural credibility.
Ensure Donor Independence: Corporate donors should avoid influencing organizational decisions, respecting the autonomy of the recipient to maintain credibility.
Transparency and Clarity: Nonprofits should clearly define the purpose and scope of corporate partnerships to maintain transparency and reassure both peers and stakeholders.
Messages for Your Corporate Donors
🔗 Smart Philanthropy Supercharges Your Customers, Community, and Company 🔗
This Forbes article highlights how nonprofits can leverage strategic messaging to attract corporate donors by aligning their philanthropic goals with a company’s desire to build a positive brand reputation, enhance employee engagement, and establish a strong community presence. Corporate philanthropy campaigns showcase how companies can make a meaningful impact while reaping benefits in customer loyalty and brand differentiation. Key messaging for potential corporate partners eager to invest in lasting and impactful initiatives include:
Emphasize Community Impact: Demonstrate how corporate donations directly support and uplift local communities, fostering goodwill and a positive public perception.
Highlight Networking Opportunities: Position philanthropic campaigns as a way for companies to connect with other local leaders, expand their networks, and forge valuable partnerships.
Boost Employee Engagement: Showcase how involvement in philanthropic activities can improve employee morale, create team-building opportunities, and strengthen the company’s internal culture.
Enhance Brand Reputation: Appeal to companies’ interest in enhancing their public image by showing how community support can align with consumers’ growing preference for socially responsible brands.
🔗 Boosting Charitable Giving Can Also Boost Profits 🔗
Not all potential corporate sponsors are interested in lasting impactful change highlighted above. This MIT Sloan Review article outlines how corporate giving, when strategically aligned with consumer engagement, can drive significant financial benefits for businesses. Rather than viewing donations as optional or solely for public relations, companies should integrate giving as a core marketing tool, especially by allowing customers to choose donation recipients. Key messaging for the bottom-line-focused potential corporate partners include:
Increase Sales and Brand Loyalty: Allowing customers to select donation recipients boosts spending, with studies showing up to three times higher consumer spending when customers choose the charity.
Drive Holiday and Year-Round Conversions: Brands that adopted consumer-choice donation models saw increased sales (up to 14%) and higher average order values.
Build Long-Term Engagement: Purpose-driven brands foster consumer loyalty, with people more likely to buy from, protect, and recommend brands that demonstrate social responsibility.
Future-Proof Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Efforts: With heightened focus on social issues post-pandemic, corporate giving strategies aligned with consumer values help attract and retain customers, transforming charitable donations into a competitive edge.
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