The Big Reveal: Celebrating a Nonprofit Name Change

Posted on  October 10, 2018
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This past weekend brought the unveiling of the new name of the Centre County Women’s Resource Center. Not only did celebration participants learn about the new name, they were among the first to see the new logo created by the talented folks at Snavely Associates.

You will find background about the process that led to the name change in two articles which were published by Charity Channel (thank you Stephen Nill):

  1.  Changing Your Nonprofit Organization’s Name and Maybe Even Its Brand
  2. Telling the Tale of a Nonprofit Name Change. 

The name change would not have come to pass without the leadership of Anne Ard, Executive Director @CCWRC. @JimFongUPCEA also provided advice and counsel regarding marketing and branding as did @SnavelyAssoc. A task group of volunteers was quite instrumental in winnowing down 75 names to this very special new one.

Are you wondering what I mean by celebration? Centre Care chose a readily accessible, lovely auditorium located in our community and hosted a simple, but lovely reception for supporters and those involved with the name change. The room featured numerous displays which spoke about the mission work done by Centre Safe including:

  1. A Place at the Table Display a
  2. Tree of Peace and a
  3. Bristlecone Project display.

As well, several storyboards provided information about those served by Centre Safe, including women, men and children.

But Centre Safe didn’t stop there, they provided ways for attendees to engage and to share thoughts about domestic and relationship violence.

  1. Participants were invited to write messages of support on luminaria bags that will be used during Light the Night.
  2. We were also invited to write messages about how we or other might help eliminate violence.

Do you have a story to tell about a nonprofit name change or have a question about changing a name? I look forward to hearing from you here because we can all learn from one another.

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Lions, Tigers and Bears: Fundraising in Times of Crisis

Posted on  October 2, 2018
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Thank you to the CT Alliance for inviting me to speak about leading through crisis at the 2018 conference. These are challenging times for nonprofits in general and certainly for those serving citizens of Connecticut.

Thanks as well go to Michael Rosen from ML Innovations for inviting me to submit this guest blog post: Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My: Fundraising in Times of Crisis. The discussion about writing the guest post started after I read Michael’s article:

The Dark Side of the Fundraising Profession

These articles and a number of books remind us that fundraising and nonprofit leadership are not always fun. In fact, our organizations can become enmeshed in thorny, if not challenging situations.

As I said to conferees, crisis aversion is the best course of action. The second best path is to prepare, for example by having policies and procedures in place. What are some of the policies and procedures that nonprofit needs to have around fundraising?

  1. Gift Acceptance Policy and Procedures
  2. Gift Agreement
  3. Endowed Funds Policy and Procedure (if you have or want to enable people to create such funds).

One place where you can find helpful information is this Association of Fundraising Professional’s booklet:

Developing Fundraising Policies and Procedures

Interested in learning more? I would be happy to speak with you individually or to arrange a webinar about this topic.

To contact me please write to sophie@i5fundraising.com or click here and send me a note. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Year-End Mail Storm

Posted on  September 16, 2018
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I would be remiss if I did not first recognize the loss of life and devastation wrought by Hurricane Florence. If you were impacted please know that my thoughts are with you.

If you have not yet had an opportunity to contribute to relief efforts Southern Living Magazine, offers a list of options here.

A different type of storm will soon be on the way, the year-end fundraising mail storm! What might this storm bring to your doorstep and those of your donors?

1.      Year-end appeals — From universities and colleges, international and local nonprofits, all for the most part organizations we’ve supported in the past.

2.      Renewal appeals – From nonprofits, some of which I have not contributed to in a year or even two (in a few cases more year ago than that.

3.      Acquisition Mail – From a few organizations that I can only assume purchased a mailing list from another NPO or a mail house. This is the smallest portion of the pile.

When presenting  to a group of executives, board members, and volunteers from small NPOs I took the stack of appeals with me. Most participants were stunned to see the sheer number of appeals that I had received at year end. I reminded them that when developing a mailing they need to consider how to make their appeal stand out in such a crowded field.

How crowded is that field? As per the National Center on Charitable Statistics there are

1.5 million nonprofits in the U.S. alone

What’s a nonprofit to do in the face of such competition?  As former foundation executive advised:

Tell the Story, Tell the Story, Tell the Story!

Tell compelling stories about the impact that gifts make and share them in person, over the phone, and via email and social media now through year end.

Need some help with storytelling? While I write case statements I learned how to do so thanks in large measure to learning from Tom Ahern. You will find Tom’s books to be informative and enjoyable:

  1. What Your Donors Want . . . and Why?
  2. Seeing Through a Donor’s Eyes: How to Make a Persuasive Case for Everything from Your Annual Drive to Your Planned Giving Program to Your Capital Campaign 
  3. Making More Money with Donor Newsletters

(FYI I earn no income from recommending his books, Tom is simply one of the best in the business).

One other book that I found to be helpful is The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. If you find yourself struggling for words this book will help you find them.

If you are writing a case statement I also recommend Campbell & Company’s YouTube videos featuring Andrew Brommel. Andrew offers excellent points to keep in mind when writing a case statement and makes it clear that there is no one “right” format or length.

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Telling the Tale of a Nonprofit Name Change

Posted on  August 28, 2018
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Rather than writing a full blog post this week I am publishing a link to an article that I penned which Charity Channel kindly published: Telling the Tale of a Nonprofit Name Change. 

  1. Thank you Stephen Nill @CharityChannel for publishing this and the first article Changing Your Nonprofit Organization’s Name and Maybe Even Its Brand. 
  2. With deep admiration for @SnavelyAssoc and @JimFongUPCEA for their advice and counsel regarding marketing, branding, and this name change; they were excellent teachers for me and others involved in the process. 
  3. Special thanks to Anne Ard, Executive Director @CCWRC,  for her leadership and for enabling me to take part in this momentous set of events.

I can’t recommend Jim Fong and Snavely enough they are pros. Charity Channel is a terrific source of information about topics such as this and many others. 

Do you have a story to tell about a nonprofit name change or have a question about changing a name? I look forward to hearing from you here. 

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Fundraisers Channeling Fred Rogers: Showing Your Donors Love

Posted on  August 21, 2018
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Photo by Jesse Goll on Unsplash

Fred Rogers has been on the minds of many this year. Some of us were reminded of his legacy in the PBS special, It’s You I Like. The program is a marvelous celebration of the anniversary of airing of the first episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

In the first edition of Channeling Fred Rogers I shared five qualities that I believe Mr. Rogers possessed, qualities that fundraisers might emulate.

  1. Curiosity
  2. Listening
  3. Realizing that It’s Not About You (Thanks Advancement Resources for this mantra)
  4. Fundraising as Education

This week the focus is on donor love. Tom Ahern speaks about donor love in his post “Reciprocity goes both ways”. Tom says:

“You might not realize it … but you actually DO have something to give back to the donor that’s of great probably inestimable – value for many of them … all those at least with standard-issue psychological software and hardware. Give them …

Your love.

Your respect.         

Your admiration.”

When we fall in love don’t we want to know everything about the other person, e.g., their favorite color, foods they prefer, movies on their top ten list and so on? Similarly, if we plan to ask someone for $100, $100,000, or $1 million would we not want to know who and what matters to them and why?

In How Donors Choose Among Nonprofits the folks at The Agitator provide some guidance regarding best practices. They suggest that we come to understand the identities of our donors (what Advancement Resources would describe as a donor’s passion).

How have I put that love into action? For example, I came to understand how very much one prospective donor loved swimming. She wanted to be sure there would be a pool available to she and others in her community. However, she didn’t have significant financial resources to contribute.

Even so she was one of the first donors to a yet to be announced pool campaign. She gave a small sum, joking that it was all she had besides her two cents. The sum may have been small, but my thank you letter was long and, well, loving.

A long and loving letter for a small gift you say, are you crazy or did you have too much time on your hands?

I spent as much time writing that letter as I did on a thank you for $200,000 and I was glad that I did.

After receiving the letter the donor told me she wanted to frame it. She was so pleased that she became one of the greatest unofficial fundraisers for the project. (There is more to this story, which I will share this fall). 

In what ways have you shown donors love, respect, and admiration? I hope you will share here, I would LOVE to hear from you!

Sophie W. Penney, Ph.D. is the Senior Program Coordinator and Lecturer for Penn State’s all online Certificate Program in Fundraising Leadership and President of i5 Fundraising.

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"The results of philanthropy are always beyond calculation."

Mary Ritter Beard
“I don’t wish to be successful but I definitely wish to be successful in helping someone, sometime for something good.”

Manasa Rao Saarloos
"I have often spoken about the importance of intentionality in philanthropy: that it has to stir the soul. This is true whether you are feeding the homeless, mentoring a child or working on climate change."

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Nelson Mandela

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