Experiments

When my brother and I were very young and very bored, around ages seven and 10, we rummaged through our mother’s drab, gray cookbook, looking for something new to whip up.  We weren’t in the habit of cooking at that age; I think we viewed it as a science experiment of sorts. (The book may have once had a gaily printed paper cover, but in a house of six children and constant chaos, flimsy items like book covers didn’t last long.)

At any rate, we wanted to make something we’d never eaten before. After a careful inspection of the supplies on hand, we decided that the one recipe within our grasp was a creamy sort of onion soup. My memory of the soup’s taste is vaguely positive – I think it turned out well, and was certainly different from our family’s normal fare. What I do remember vividly, though, was our sense of adventure as we made it, the knowledge that we were creating something – to us – entirely new and different. And we did it! We succeeded!

That’s one of the reasons I think technology is good for philanthropy. It compels fundraisers to up their game, to think in ways that are unfamiliar, and to trigger the brain-based benefits created by unfamiliar thinking.

For instance, as a former member of a development staff for an art museum, I have seen how challenging it is to secure funding for that segment of the nonprofit industry – especially in a down economy. And here we have crowdfunding to the rescue! Well, sort of. Using web sites to attract large numbers of donors may be, as one of the folks in this article says, a permanent, more efficient way for artists and arts organizations to reach individual benefactors. Or it may be a flash in the pan. But it has people thinking in new ways, and that’s a good thing.

By the way, when I want to cook something I’ve never cooked before, I just page through this, my favorite cookbook and find something I’ve never made before. I guess some things don’t change.

Kale vs. Cheesecake

March presented me with some serious challenges in time management, and I’ve had to take some time off weekly posts to attend to more pressing matters. But I’m back! And I want to talk about pyramids.

Not only are pyramids fascinating from a historical point of view, they offer a handy way to illustrate important concepts in today’s world. Most of us grow up with constant exposure to the food pyramid. Fundraisers all know about the donor pyramid. These two have a lot in common.

For example, in the food pyramid, the base is made of the most frequent foods we’re supposed to eat –grain-based edibles like rice, pasta, and bread. Next up are the fruits and vegetables, then meat and dairy, and at the very top, fats and sweets.

Likewise, a donor pyramid starts at the bottom with a large number of donors. Like the grains group at the bottom of the food pyramid, these donors don’t contribute a lot of calories/dollars, and they’re not intensely flavorful. Yet, they are crucial for basic survival. Do you see where I’m trying to go here?

Let’s say mid-range and major donors are like the fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat. Lots of flavor and color here, great caloric/nutritional punch, but you need to start being a little careful … you don’t want too much fruit at the expense of vegetables, or too much dairy at the expense of nuts and beans. You don’t want too many donors at this level interested in capital projects, at the expense of program support.

Finally, the peak. This is where the most delicious food resides, like this chocolate caramel cheesecake I made last Sunday. This is where the most wealth comes from in the donor pyramid – those dense, high-calorie, delicious donors who can supply the seven- , eight-, or nine-figure gift. But like cheesecake, too much of anything so potent can be dangerous. Just as too many Americans choose cheesecake instead of brown rice too many times, too many nonprofits chase top-level donors at the expense of the pyramid’s base.

If you think your nonprofit might need to shift its focus to the bottom of the pyramid for a little while, you might want to think of it as a healthy shift in diet.

(Speaking of which, I highly recommend this weekend cleanse by the ubiquitous Dr. Oz. The photo is my attempt at juicing kale. Not so easy if you don’t own a juicer.)

Reading the Table

The summer after my senior year in high school, I worked as a car hop. This was the 1980s, not the 1950s, and the owner of the ice cream shop was nervous about litigation. So, we didn’t wear roller skates.

We wore cute sneakers, and sky-blue satin shorts with navy piping, and yellow scoop neck tees with a little rainbow near the right shoulder and the company name. We also wore yellow balloons tied to our aprons, which bobbed merrily above our heads as we navigated the parking lot, holding ice cream. I’m happy to say that no known photos exist from that time.

But I thought of how that job prepared me to become a good fundraiser when I read this Wall Street Journal article on reading the table. The skills I learned as I served carload after carload of customers are the same ones I use when working with individual and group donors.

Here are a few parallels I found between restaurant work and fundraising – can you think of more?

If you’re grumpy, you typically get better service at a restaurant. If you are a donor that’s hard to satisfy, the person in charge of your philanthropic relationship will make an extra effort to get you what you need to remain engaged.

If you ask a lot of questions about the menu, it may mean you want some guidance on what to order from your server. If you are a donor and ask a lot of questions about the programs and services you’re considering supporting, the fundraiser you are working with needs to figure out how to educate you without turning you off.

Finally, if nobody at the table seems to be in charge, the waiter needs to spend more time and energy figuring out how best to serve the table. Similarly, if a group of donors – say, corporate decision-makers or a reunion committee – can’t get consensus on their philanthropic goals, the fundraiser has their work cut out for them.

If you’re a fundraiser, what tools do you use to “read the table”?

Bread and Butter

Yesterday I made bread for the first time in years. I used the recipe from the bag of King Arthur Flour. I have never owned a bread machine, so I do it by hand. I was surprised at how sticky the dough was, how hard to knead, and then how gratified I was by the sight of it rising. The loaf turned out fat and brown, as well as I might have hoped, and it was gone in a few hours.

At the same time, I was also reading this post on About.com about fundraising. Joanne Fritz outlines the “bread and butter” of fundraising, and that got me thinking about how deceptively simple the basics are. Bread is made of only a few ingredients – flour, yeast, liquid, and usually a pinch of salt. At the top of the “bread and butter” list on Fritz’s post is annual giving. Speaking as someone who’s spent most of her fundraising years in the annual fund, I’ll say that it often does feel like … well, the sliced white bread, compared to major gifts’ steak and sizzle.

To be fair to the major gift folks, their lives aren’t all glamour, as we learn from this Passionate Giving article. But annual giving – or recurring giving, as it’s increasingly becoming– really is the foundation of most healthy nonprofits. It gives nearly everyone the chance to buy an entry ticket as stakeholders of your mission. It gives your organization a chance to impress them with excellent stewardship, several times a year. It reveals and stewards future major donors and those who will leave bequests. It’s the bread and butter of your campaign.

Have you ever dined at an upscale restaurant, and been served stale, tasteless rolls alongside melted foil butter packets? How did that make you feel about the rest of the meal to come? If bread and butter are the first chance to impress someone, it’s worth your time to make it a quality experience.

Dinner Parties II – Guest Lists

I want to talk about dinner parties again, as a metaphor for nonprofit special events. I can’t pretend to be an expert, because I’ve only given a few, and my home is not what you’d call glamorous. (I think “rustic” is putting it kindly.) But I like to think that people can still have as great an experience dining in my rustic abode as they would in a marbled Newport Mansion.

And if we are to listen thoughtfully to editor Jan Masaoka at the indispensible nonprofit newsletter Blue Avocado, we agree nonprofits are all different. In her example, there’s Target, and there’s Williams-Sonoma. Both succeed, but with very different strategies. It’s most important that your nonprofit’s special event is aligned with your mission. (Some great examples can be found at Livestrong,  whose partnered events range from an actual and virtual chance to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro to a fashion show. )

Which brings me back to dinner parties, and the guest list. Who do you invite? Who do you want at the table?  According to my food-writing hero, MFK Fisher, the perfect guest list consists of one long-married couple, one somewhat newly-married couple, and a couple who should be married but doesn’t realize it.

How to use that in deciding on an invitation list for a nonprofit event? Start with dedicated supporters, always. They are the long-married couples of your dinner party. (If you check out Livestrong’s annual golf tournament, you’ll notice it’s been hosted by longtime supporters.)  Add some newlyweds – these would be new donors who have recently come on board, and deserve special attention. Finally, some great prospects — those who should be supporting your mission, but don’t yet realize it.

Finally, for sheer pleasure, I’ll end with this lovely, MFK Fisher-esque musing on dinner parties from one of my favorite style bloggers at Privilege.

The Right Tools

Raw potatoes and burned hot dogs. Or maybe it was the other way around – burned potatoes and cold hot dogs. At any rate, it was a camping trip meal my kids will never let me forget. We were in the Franconia Notch State Park, and it was pouring rain. I had a camp stove I didn’t know how to use very well, and a poorly-made pan. Our supper that night was barely edible, to put it kindly.

If you’ve ever cooked under trying circumstances, with tools you didn’t know how to use or that didn’t work very well, you know what I mean.

Similarly, if you’ve ever tried to execute a fundraising strategy without a good, functional database, you face serious challenges.

“At a minimum, organizations should have good demographic data on who they serve,” says  Isaac D. Castillo , one of the speakers in a recent (and interesting) chat with the Chronicle of Philanthropy about using data to boost fundraising. Later in the same chat, his colleague Andrew Niklaus mentions that, with fundraising software, you get what you pay for. As with any tool, this is also true.

In my experience, too many nonprofit organizations don’t even have basic demographic data, and if they do, it’s not in a program that allows you to access it easily. I once worked with a program that required manual entry of a series of date ranges and other data, and would only print – not display – the one resulting data point, using three sheets of paper each time. It was like trying to cook in the rain, with a dimestore aluminum pan.

What are your experiences with the tools and technology you need to do your job?

A Seat at the Table

My grandparents’ bedspread was lavender, with ruffles. I remember sitting on it with a plate full of food, along with some of my six siblings and 18 cousins, during Thanksgiving gatherings at their tiny lakeside cottage in upstate New York.

Today, the idea of a half-dozen young children eating their Thanksgiving dinner on someone’s bed seems rather horrifying.  I don’t remember any, but I’m sure there were mishaps. I also don’t recall any adult anxiety over the situation. I do remember eating until I was full, and having fun. I’m the oldest of 24 grandchildren on my mother’s side, and big family gatherings were just the way of our tribe. An actual seat – at an actual table – was something reserved for the eldest, most venerated members.

I’ve been thinking of those Thanksgivings in light of a recent column I read, but can’t now find, about there being too many nonprofits in my state, New Hampshire. Of course, there’s been a  national debate  that there are too many nonprofits for quite some time. Most argue that there is too little funding for too many organizations.

I’ve worked for newborn nonprofits cooked up by a group of volunteers on a shoestring, and I’ve worked for nonprofits that have enjoyed more than a century of service and a comfy budget to match. Both of their missions are, I think, critical to the quality of life we enjoy.

A few high-profile nonprofit mergers have happened, but I don’t think it’s a real trend, nor do I think it’s the right answer for the perceived problem of too many mouths to feed (so to speak). My state government is looking at ways to (maybe) discourage the number of nonprofits here, but I don’t think that’s right, either. In my experience, nobody creates a nonprofit lightly – they create them to fill a critical need, or to realize a deeply held dream, or both.

I know funding is difficult to secure, especially for operations. But – and maybe it’s due to my upbringing – I can’t help but think that if a new nonprofit shows up to dinner, we can find a way to fill a plate for them – even if they have to eat it on the lavender bedspread.

Back Away from the Dinner Party

The best dish I ever had at a dinner party was my friend’s ex-girlfriend’s adaptation of a chickpea curry. (This isn’t a picture of that, it’s a picture of a rustic apricot tart I made last summer. Don’t ask.) Most people like dinner parties. Even introverts like me enjoy good company, and if the food is well-made and the drinks delicious and the music interesting and the setting pleasant, there’s almost nothing better.

Dinner parties make people feel good. Maybe that’s why so many nonprofit leaders believe special events are a great way to plump up the bank account. Events are an easy sell, to the board and to the public. Staffers like to pitch in. Adrenaline pumps. Sometimes, the media calls. Fun is had.

The only thing that suffers is the organization’s account balance. Because, here’s a secret – studies show events are not a good way to raise money. This data from 2007 shows that it costs more than a dollar to raise a dollar. I’m no business major, but to me, this doesn’t add up to a great return on investment.

In this 2010 post, nonprofit consultant Susan McLaughlin asks, can you afford another special event?

Think about it this way. If you’re having trouble paying the heating bill, are you going to throw a roast in the oven, stock up on Bordeaux, and invite three other couples over? Well, maybe. But if your goal for the evening was to end up with more food than you started with, you’re better off saving your energy and eating cereal alone for dinner.

I believe nonprofits should have special events (just as folks on a budget should have dinner parties). But these need to happen for the right reasons, and in addition to – not instead of – other efforts at shoring up the bank balance. There’s nothing like an event to raise your profile and make people feel warm and fuzzy about your mission.  There are so many ways to leverage the good feelings that come from a successful soiree.

So, go ahead and plan your dinner parties for 2012. Just be sure you’re doing it for all the right reasons. And message me if you want that chickpea curry recipe.

When Bad Things Happen

I use food to encourage my grown son to visit. Recently, we needed to go over some insurance paperwork, so I sweetened the deal by making a Shepherd’s Pie. The last time I made this dish, I mistakenly used applesauce instead of gravy, and I was determined not to mess it up this time.

I browned lean ground bison. I chopped the onions, carrots and celery to just the right bite-size. I made the crust from locally-grown potatoes mashed with heavy cream and unsalted butter. When the smell filled the kitchen and the filling bubbled below the mashed-potato crust, I took it out of the oven and set it on the table. My son sat down, serving spoon in hand — and we heard a loud crack. The glass casserole dish, inexplicably, imploded.

My husband found us debating whether we could spoon some of the pie from the middle of the dish, without getting any glass in it. It sounds insane to write it now, but at the time, my son and I were both so invested in the perfection of the meal that we were briefly willing to consider the risk of eating broken glass.  In the end, we carefully disposed of the whole mess and went out for Chinese food.

We are lucky to have the cash and a restaurant nearby. For many families, the loss of the evening meal would have meant going to bed hungry.

And so it is in the nonprofit world – those with reserves and access to resources are able to survive the occasional disaster. A few years ago, when the stock market took a dive and Dartmouth College’s endowment fell 23 percent, the institution tightened its belt, but is stronger today than ever.

Of course, very few schools are like Dartmouth – more are like the “colleges in the middle” described in last year’s Chronicle of Higher Education. Not every nonprofit has the ability to bounce back from hardships — even if they do everything right. So much is out of our control.

As we begin another new year, think about how your institution would bounce back from disaster. Do you have enough reserves to keep delivering on your mission? Do you have access to resources that will help you realize your vision? Or will you be looking at a spoonful of ruined supper, wondering if you can risk a bit of broken glass?

The Wrong Ingredients

A few weeks ago I made a shepherd’s pie for a potluck supper. (It wasn’t Alton Brown’s recipe, but I’m a fan of his, so that’s what I’ve linked to here.)

I wanted to use the leftover gravy from a pot roast I’d cooked earlier that week, so I rummaged in my fridge until I found a container of brown, viscous stuff and poured it in. As it blended with the meat and vegetables, I noticed that the texture was a little grainy, but I didn’t think twice about it.

I didn’t think twice because I was in that white heat mode of hurry, ticking off task after task, my internal engine revving as if I had downed six cups of coffee. This I s a feeling I’ve had all too often in the fundraising office, and one that fellow blogger Janet Levine rants about here.

Later, at dinner, my husband commented that there was a sweet taste to the dish he didn’t recognize. I’d eaten a scoop myself but was so distracted by the conversation that my eating was not as, well, mindful as we’re told it should be.

I tried some of the pie again; he was right. And then I realized that in my hurry, instead of mixing the filling with gravy, I’d mixed it with the applesauce I’d made wth the last of the bag of utility apples from the orchard up the road.

None of my friends mentioned that my food tasted funny. It did, eventually, get eaten. It was … okay. But I know that if I’d taken the time to do it right, the casserole would have been a whole lot better. Next time I’m faced with competing priorities, I’ll remember my inadvertent, applesauce shepherd’s pie.