The NonProfit Times - May 15, 2008 - (Page 6)

EXECUTIVE Session Continued from page 1 keting channel, I’m measured by how much money I raise through the direct marketing channel. I’m going to be concerned with how much I raise through my channel.And, I’m probably going to be reluctant to share my names. I’m going to be reluctant to share my time slot in the communications plan. I’m going to be reluctant to not contact my people at certain times of the year. It really does come down to measurement and what I feel like I need to do to be measured as successful. Clolery: But that’s, of course, a bad concept. Gaffny: Totally. It’s a bad concept because every test I’ve ever seen indicates that if that name, my constituent, is shared with others within my organization and other channels within my organization, the organization as a whole does much And on that point, I think that the concept of personnel issues is really significant. Let’s say you’ve got a marketing person; you’ve got a communications person; you’ve got a development person. Now, the development person is going to want to run it all, because they’re bringing in money and have these other ones to support. Hazard: They generate the revenue. Deane: When you have an experienced, senior development professional who is skilled enough and has the ability to manage all of that effectively for your organization, it’s fabulous. You bring in a lot of money. Everything’s reinforcing. But what happens, and believe me, it happens everywhere, when that kind of senior fundraising professional is taken away? You can’t retain them. There’s too much demand and too little supply for that kind of skill. And when you can’t suc- have before. There are probably a good number of donors who are regular givers to charities whose households are better wired and integrated than the charities. I know that if I send an email to my charity that they’re going to get it in five nanoseconds, and so I expect an answer in, say, 12 nanoseconds. And so one of the first steps is let’s change the standards. Let’s respond immediately to all of them with a message that says we’ll get back to you in 24 hours or 36 hours. Being able to change those expectations is necessary because donors expect more and that frustrates them when they get less. Carey: In that setting you also have to acknowledge that the charity has to have time to develop its capabilities, to learn to walk before it can run. It’s got to develop a plan, a way to approach both its donor base and its internal constituents to gener- Second, I think that you have to do a better job of diving into the information that you own, and develop insights to understand what you can get out of that. Technology alone is not going to solve the problem. Hazard: I think when you look beyond the standard direct mail, telemarketing, and email marketing, you run into a lot of other issues. An example of that is the Web site. The Web site of one of our large clients is not controlled by the development department, but the other three areas are. It’s about marketing yourself. A lot of my clients don’t have the revenue, the extra money, to invest in marketing themselves well. So while you can only do so much with your donor file, you can only squeeze so much out of a rock. If they’re not marketing themselves well outside of those channels, sometimes you’ll limit it. TOM GAFFNY better. And invariably, my particular channel does much better because of an enhanced relationship. Kristie Hazard: It is also a matter of resources. I am often surprised by how small their various departments are and they just can’t keep up. They can’t capitalize. They can’t feed each other information. Gaffny: That’s a great point. I also think that one of the problems is that the knowledge that sharing names across all channels helps every channel is still something that isn’t widely known yet. We’re trying to get the message out about this concept, that one plus one equals three. Clolery: Curtis, you just went through this process with the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the breaking down of some silos and making sure that the whole organization is marketing. Curtis Deane: I’m not sure it’s exactly analogous, but we did have a staff structure that was basically bifurcated. It was brought together at the senior management level to have one person over everything instead of two people each over half of everything. Part of that was just personnel movement. You have that in every organization, somebody leaves or somebody wants to change -- whatever -- and it gives you an opportunity to restructure in a more kindly way rather than in a forceful way. KRISTIE HAZARD cessfully recruit the equal replacement then it breaks up into silos. And then maybe over time, the communications person leaves. And then the other two see an opportunity to divide that up, so now you’re breaking it into two. It’s really a lot about retaining the key personnel, and the fact that you can’t and the fact that there’s inherent turnover, especially in the fundraising area. The market’s just red-hot for these people. Then what you want to do, in theory, isn’t able to be implemented because you can’t get the horses to pull that wagon. Gaffny: There’s some historical baggage to all this, too, because it wasn’t until recently that we had technology with more integrated databases. It was impossible for the person running the telemarketing campaign, or the person running the special event campaign, because they were not aware that that constituent’s name might have also been part of the direct marketing program. A lot of times, it was just a case of the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing. And I think there are some legacy issues to that. Rick Christ: By the same token, our consumers or donors who are also better educated and more technologically savvy, have expectations that they didn’t CURTIS C. DEANE ate the kind of insights that will help one hand know better what the other hand is doing and create the synergy that Tom was talking about. Clolery: Peter, I’m surprised that you didn’t come out of your shoes at something here, which is that technology sometimes is unhelpful where the databases aren’t talking to each other. Ten years ago the Internet was just really coming into its own and everybody had a new piece of software that was supposed to replace everybody in the fundraising department. How can we be a decade later and still say that the databases don’t talk to each other? Hazard: It’s a combination of financial resources and the organization’s priorities. Carey: There are always resource issues.Although technology is an important enabler and a very necessary tool for all charities nowadays, I strongly believe that it doesn’t substitute for insight, knowledge, and expertise that people bring. They bring it two ways, I think. One, they bring it in embodying the vision, the mission of the organization. If you’re able to translate that into objectives that are meaningful, relevant, and achievable, and then translating those on down into strategies,it’s those strategies that can help break down silos. So the technology enables that. PETER J. CAREY Clolery: You were just saying that the Web site was not part of the other three fundraising departments. Why should it be? Why shouldn’t it be? And if it should be, how do you get somebody from the fundraising side heavily involved in that? Hazard: It goes back to your point.You need to find one key person who has a say in all of these different pieces, and some organizations don’t have that. That’s where you run into a real problem. Deane: I think of the analogy where you have a communications person, a marketing person, and a development person. Many times, the marketing and the communications person might not be from nonprofit backgrounds. The communications person could be from government. The marketing person probably has a for-profit background, but the development professional understands the nonprofit milieu. That’s why I tend to put the leadership role in with the development professional, because it’s all about a nonprofit reality, which is usually reliant on donor revenue. Gaffny: I think it’s an organizational issue. And I think more groups need to institutionalize CRM (constituent relationship marketing), and to identify one person who’s in charge of the holistic organization. It’s marketing, communica- MAY 15, 2008 THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.nptimes.com http://www.nptimes.com

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The NonProfit Times - May 15, 2008 Tying Multiple Sub-Brands To The Primary Idea Executive Session: Giving The Donor The Chance To Say Yes Blogging From The Top Contents Striking The Best Deal Don't Be Fooled Immigrants And Philanthropy Bringing In The Dough Good And Bad Organizational Evaluation Design Your Message You’ve Got Mail? Hybrid Power Calendar NPT Jobs Resource Directory

The NonProfit Times - May 15, 2008

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