Request for Clarification on Philanthropy 2.0 Action Steps for the Starving

I teach a course for both wealth advisors and fundraisers on gift planning in a nonprofit context. After assignments on the three sectors, finding your funding model, board responsibilities, planned giving, gifts of noncash assets, marketing planned gifts and major gifts, stewardship, and ethics, I am considering an assignment on emerging trends. In that I want to teach how fundraisers can work with highest capacity funders who consider themselves venture-style funders, demanding metrics, accountability, dash boards, and proven results. (Give Smart: Giving that Gets Results, Leap of Reason, Money Well Spent, Giving 2.0, Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets, Do more than Give, are all excellent books in this business-inspired genre. Jim Collins' Good to Great in the Social Sectors is a classic. Stanford Social Enterprise Review is another gathering place.) What I am finding is that the central message of these books (high capacity, high performing, metrics-driven nonprofits deserve and will get funding, the rest may not) leaves fundraisers helpless. What role can a mere fundraiser play in reforming the entire organization as a precondition of raising funds? Whereas in market circles, you might have sales persons, or a road show to launch a venture, the intake of funds for nonprofits is delegated way down the gift planner, gift solicitor, fundraiser, major gift officer, planned gift person, or grant proposal writer. They can hear the message from the texts written by venture funder, but what are realistic action steps for the fundraiser?

It seems that these books are written with an implied audience of the Board or the Executive Director plus Board. The action step might be to hire an outside consultant from Mckinsey, FSG, or Bridgespan - as if the charity had the money! Hence the emphasis, perhaps, in these books on scale - get big enough to hire us as consultants or die. If these venturesome philanthropy books and philosophies are to have the catalytic, disruptive effect, they envision, and do net good (good created minus evils let loose) they will have to become integrated with Board and ED training, not just for the top 100 charities, but for many nonprofits, even the majority of them. I am not sure I see that happening. If anyone can point me to resources that address the issues raised in this post, I would appreciate it. (What do I say to fundraisers who ask, "What am I supposed to do with this venture philanthropy stuff? Why are you teaching it to me? I just raise money here, I don't run the freaking place!") I am asking, too, because so much has been written brilliantly in these books about a whole new way of looking at funding nonprofits, we are now at the point of having to ask how those insights (which are too clear to be ignored) can be applied to the fragile nonprofits which are in this era of austerity so near sinking. That the small will sink that the big may prosper is a chilling thought. I hope that Darwinism is not imported into our schools, homeless shelters, and religious organizations, from the culture of business. Market failure, broadly considered, includes the dehumanization of all concerned. Market failure unrecognized and un-alleviated is moral failure. How then, as a practical matter, with these business-inspired books, will we help the least among us, and those who raise funds on their behalf?

Comments

[Jim Schaffer]

I think we are OK for a while, Phil. Thankfully, almost all giving still remains relational. Most individual donors give without much research or making demands. For all their blustering about changing philanthropy as if these new thought leaders invented the concept, if they could simply answer one question: Why is it that whether the economy is booming or busting private giving has remained the same for as long as giving has been measured -- 2%+/- of GDP. All the "new" ideas put forth in all those books through all the generations -- no change, except the number of charities has exploded along with books on how to do philanthropy better.

[pcubeta]

Do you notice a difference when the giving is from a foundation that the donor has had for awhile?

[Christine Egger]

On the "helping smaller nonprofits figure out what and how to measure, and how to communicate about that":

Beth Kanter and K.D. Paine's recent book http://measurenetworkednonprofit.org comes to mind. And all of the work NTEN has been doing (http://nten.org, especially their CHANGE publication) to bring small nonprofits up-to-speed on the this conversation (and help them leverage it to the benefit of their beneficiaries and mission). fyi NTEN has 11,000 members, and an annual conference attended by a few thousand, mix of Executive Directors and all kinds of staff.

Jeff Shuck of event360.org is one of my favorite sources, too.

As for "how to help a smaller nonprofit catch the attention and support of venture capitalists", the devil/opportunity is in the details. There's clearly a growing opportunity for many nonprofits to think differently about how they might fund their work through sales of products or services to their beneficiaries or others. Asking people for money because they care about something, and asking people to buy something because they want a product/service, are two very different things. So maybe many of the fundraisers you talk to won't be a part of that conversation. But if you start with the mission, involve them in a brainstorming of all of the ways that mission could be accomplished including what their organization is doing now AND including possible revenue-generating programs, and then do a second round of brainstorming around where fundraising would play a role in either seeding, strengthening, or scaling the market part... maybe the answer to "why are you talking with me about this?" will come from that.

Apologies if this all comes across as way too basic to be helpful, but in essence I'm not sure at all that "missing the point, or not finding anything relevant" about the topics you're touching on here has anything to do with being a small or new nonprofit. It has much more to do with the nonprofit's mission and whether it can be fulfilled via no-boomerang-attached-to-these-dollars, return-on-investment-dollars, something in between, or some combination of all of the above.

[Phil Cubeta]

Thank you, Christine, your points are well taken, I will follow your links and references for further research.