Fundraising the SMART Way: Predictable, Consistent Income Growth for Your Charity + Website

Start a fundraising revolution within your organization Fundraising the SMART Way + Website represents a significant advancea true breakthroughin the SMART Way performance management discipline that has helped companies create successful corporate sales initiatives for decades. It focuses on the underlying structure of the development effort, providing prospect–selection benchmarks, performance indicators that mirror the donors giving process, and ways to analyze performance at regular intervals to pinpoint strategic improvement initiatives. This approach moves the fundraising effort away from simply trying harder and towards a more strategic approach designed specifically to establish sustainable income growth. The approach drives the costs of fundraising down , while the resultsincome, numbers of engaged donors, public image, and community of followersall go up. Fundraising the SMART Way + Website is a formal methodology containing the guidelines, benchmarks, reporting methods, performance metrics, analytics, and business intelligence needed to produce a particular outcome, namely continuous improvement of fundraising results. We define the acronym SMART this way: SStrategic MMeasurable ADonor–Action Focused RRealistic, and TTime–Defined Revolutionize how your organization approaches its fundraising initiatives, and optimize your efforts, resources, and measurement strategies for sustainable, long–term success. Fundraising the SMART Way + Website puts an emphasis on practical application. To that end, this book includes scorecards, allowing you to continue to learn in a hands–on fashion long after closing the book.

Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction Why We Need a Fundraising Revolution 1 Fundraising the SMART WayTM 4 How It Works 5 Results from the Leaky Bucket Study 6 Statistics from the Leaky Bucket Assessment 8 The Four Laws of Performance Management 11 Target: Consistent, Predictable Income Growth 14 Effective Fundraising as Competitive Advantage 16 Adopting the SMART Way Model 19 PART ONE Which Funders Are “Right” for You? 21 CHAPTER 1 The Context for Fund Development 25 What Should It Cost to Achieve Your Mission? 26 Analyzing the True Cost of Your Mission 30 Your Opportunity Risk Factor: The Real Value of Your Time 31 What Makes Your Best Funders “Best”? 34 Your Unique Value Proposition: The Value in Value–Added 36 What We Covered 42 What You Can Do 42 CHAPTER 2 Funder Selection Strategies 45 Why Your Best Funders Support You 47 The Exchange of Value 55 Applying the Exchange of Value 59 What We Covered 60 What You Can Do 61 CHAPTER 3 Building Your SMART Way Prospect Scorecard 63 Nine Scorecard Principles 66 Crafting Scorecard Statements 72 Scoring the Prospect 80 Scorecard as Management Control 82 What We Covered 84 What You Can Do 85 CHAPTER 4 The Scorecard as a Management Control Device 87 Using the Scorecard to Manage the Fundraising Process 88 Validating the Scorecard 89 The Suggested Probing Questions 92 Developing Your Questions 96 Field–Test the Scorecard 101 The Control Part 105 What We Covered 106 What You Can Do 106 PART TWO Defining the Fund Development Process 109 CHAPTER 5 The Fund Development Pipeline 113 Pipeline Basics 114 The SMART Way Pipeline Revolution 116 Process Management for Nonprofits: A Primer 117 Moves Management versus the SMART Way 118 Eliminate Process Boundaries or Add Them? 120 Development Drivers 127 What We Covered 129 What You Can Do 129 CHAPTER 6 Setting Performance Targets 131 Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Continuous Improvement 132 Assigning Targets 135 Good Targets, Bad Targets 139 Move Zero Targets 141 Performance Targets and the SMART Way Scorecard 145 Targets for Development Drivers 149 What We Covered 150 What You Can Do 151 PART THREE Implementing Fundraising the SMART Way 153 CHAPTER 7 Reporting and Leading for Better Results 157 Leadership 101 158 First, There is a Mountain . . . 159 “Vertical” versus “Horizontal” Reporting 159 SMART Way Reports 163 Enlightened Leadership Practices 166 Tracking Donor Move Targets 171 Reading the Story the Numbers Tell You 173 What We Covered 174 What You Can Do 174 CHAPTER 8 The Breakthrough: Continuous Improvement 177 The Plan–Do–Check–Act Cycle 178 Root–Cause Analysis Done Right 179 What We Covered 200 What You Can Do 201 CHAPTER 9 Applying SMART Way Methods to Mass–Market Fundraising 203 Selling to Major Accounts versus Transactional Selling 204 The Majors versus the Minors 206 To Find Donors, Stop Looking 208 Mass–Market and Target–Market Fundraising 214 SMART Way Management Controls 216 What We Covered 218 What You Can Do 218 CHAPTER 10 Radical Thinking about the Fundraising Revolution 221 Fundraising and the Russian Revolution 225 Adopting the Mind–set of Potential 228 Revolutionizing the Way We Manage Performance 229 Implications for Information Technology 235 Implications for the Governing Board 237 Parting Remarks 241 About the Author 243 About the Companion website 245 Index 247

ELLEN BRISTOL came into the nonprofit sector after more than twenty years of experience in the corporate world where she specialized in major–account sales of information technology equipment. Since 1995, the year she launched Bristol Strategy Group, she has developed a solid track record as a consultant and author in the fund development arena.