The Agitator also reports on the GivingUSA and the Blackbaud Indexes, but unlike those, the Atlas does not rely on surveys or selective data as provided by a limited number of nonprofits. Rather it measures total giving by sector as it occurs monthly. And, unlike either Giving USA or Blackbaud, the Atlas provides an annual forecast of the year ahead that is then updated monthly.

For 2012 the Atlas forecasts continued growth in giving, but at a slower pace — 3.9% in 2012 compared with 7.5% in 2011.

You can learn more about their methodology, the 2011 results and 2012 forecast in a FREE webinar to be presented on February 1st at 3pm EST. Register at www.infiniteconferencing.com/join and type in the participant code 79508108.

Key Takeaways from 2011 Atlas Report

• Contributions totaled $346.17 billion – a 7.5% increase over 2010.

• Giving growth was particularly strong in four states: PA (+13.1%), IL (+ 12%), FL(+10.9%) and TX (+10.0%).

• Growth in giving to Education was particularly strong (+8.9%) while Human Needs/Disaster Giving lagged other sectors (+ just 5.8%).

• Both Individual Giving (+7.8%) and Bequests (+7.5%) grew. And notably, gifts to Donor Advised Funds reached record levels.

Key Takeaways from 2012 Atlas Forecast

• Giving will continue to grow in 2011. But unlike the 7.5% growth rate for 2011, Atlas is forecasting that giving will grow at a slower pace — 3.9%.
  

• The forecast is bright for charities with an environmental mission – projected to be up 8%.

• But the church/religious sector is forecast to grow at just 1.6%.

• Political fundraising will divert some dollars from charitable giving but the impact will not be significant. The Atlas forecasts it will be much less than 1% for overall charitable giving. Of course some sectors will be more affected than others.

How do your 2011 results compare? And what increase in giving have you projected for 2012? Would love to hear from you.

Roger

P.S. I’ve noted in previous posts that if you’re a consultant, an on-staff fundraiser or board member, The Atlas of Giving, with its forecasts by sector and its state-by-state analysis is a “must” for your library. There’s a Free Edition and a Professional Edition. Check ‘em out at www.atlasofgiving.com.

And don’t forget to register for the Atlas February 1st webinar at www.infiniteconferencing.com/join and type in the participant code 79508108.

Frankly, I’m exhausted from preparing this, but I really hope you’ll invest the  time to read the whole post. Believe me, it’s worth it if you care about the future of your organization.

Here’s why.

Blackbaud has just delivered a “must read” report on Growing Philanthropy in the U.S. Read and heed.

The report, a view of the future we all face, is a distillation of a ‘brainiacs’ session hosted by Blackbaud and moderated and summarized by Adrian Sargeant. They’ve addressed the fact that giving is flat and what to do about it.

You really have to read the whole thing, written by Adrian, a bright light in our universe. But, for the slothful who won’t take the time to read it all, here are the key takeaways:

• Redefine Relationships. Stop being selfish. Focus on giving for giving’s sake.

• Re-orient toward longer term measures of fundraising performance. Immediate measure of ‘success’ (response rates, immediate ROI, giving totals for the year) doom us. Look at long-term values.
  

• Enhance focus on retention and building supporter loyalty.  Listen up! With retention rates in the dumper too few nonprofits really understand that a 10% improvement in retention results in a 200% improvement in lifetime value.  Time to get real.

• Develop a more integrated approach to fundraising. It’s not the method, Stupid, it’s  the message. And the message must focus on the donor’s concerns, not yours.

• Break down organizational silos and encourage greater collaboration between teams. The authors are too kind to say it, but you should be ashamed of your territoriality.

• Give supporters greater control over the relationship. Ken Burnett, The Agitator, DonorVoice and scores more have been preaching this for years. This is the arena where you can quickly add the most value.

• Promote the development of shared back office facilities. Small organizations need to stop whining and get together and share in the development of good stuff in the back room.

• Tackle high turnover rates in the fundraising profession. Face it. It’s not the pay it’s the lack of respect from CEOs and board members that drives folks out of this trade. We have an identity crisis and have to deal with it.

• Educate all stakeholders about the necessity of a longer term and integrated approach. I know, I know, it’s like playing Mozart to a cow, but we have to do it. It’s a real challenge, but we must not allow Boards to be stupid about fundraising, stewardship and philanthropy.

• Empower the regulators to enforce 100 percent filing of Forms 990 to increase their utility. Hey, I know this seems picky, but the fact is that some organizations don’t file, some lie, some don’t.  Transparency is key to the future of philanthropy. Get with it.

• Blow the whistle on organizations claiming to have zero costs of fundraising. As long as watchdog organizations reward ‘zero’ costs, organizations will lie. It’s time to call out the phonies in the watchdog groups and blast the nonprofits that play this game. There simply ain’t no thing as ‘zero’ fundraising costs.

• Fund the development of a website in the U.S. to educate the public, boards, and other stakeholders. Philanthropy is a big business, a significant part of our GNP. Let’s make it as transparent as possible.

• Encourage nonprofits to develop complaints schemes. Anyone who knows anything about donor retention and commitment is familiar with the importance of feedback. (See http://thedonorvoice.com)  This report reminds us of the absolute necessity to provide multiple methods for donor feedback.

• Develop new and more appropriate measures of performance.  Efficiency and cost of fundraising sucks as a measurement of anything.  There are far more appropriate measures.

• Develop the self-regulation of fundraising. Ethics be damned.  There’s a whole host of scum bags out there. But, we can do something about them.

• Encourage the adoption of monthly giving. No shit! Serious Monthly Giving or Sustainer programs produce 600% – 800% more revenue. Get to it. Now!

• Improve the sector’s engagement with young people. This is a loser, from a fundraiser’s perspective. But the report does have some good suggestions. Check ‘em out.

• Encourage and promote best practices in social media.  Importance of social media isn’t $, it goes to building loyalty and commitment.

• Encourage asset-based giving. The Report claims that 93% of a person’s giving potential is realized with a bequest or other planned gift.  Get  at it!

• Develop expertise in broadening participation in giving. Pretty weak tea. Don’t spend much time on this unless you need a kumbaya moment.

• Improve the quality of bequest fundraising practice. Death is our friend. But, with at least 8% of our donors willing to make a bequest, this just has to be taken out of the incompetent (marketing-wise) hands of planned giving officers and placed in the hands of those capable of selling.

• Challenge the wealthy to plan their own philanthropy. Stop bitching. The rich are rich and they’re gonna do pretty much what they want. This section of the report seems to think that enlightened advisors to the rich will help. Not!

• Create a nonprofit mutual fund. Nothing new here given the prevalence of donor advised funds at virtually every fund manager like Fidelity or Vanguard. Not sure what new is recommended. Fuzzy at best.

• Leveraging companies to promote philanthropy. Not sure that this adds much to the body of knowledge re employer matching, cause related marketing, etc, but well to keep in mind for that afternoon you have nothing better to think about.

• Invest in fundraising research institute. Seems  a bit self-serving to me, but because we’re also in the donor research biz. I guess it can’t hurt.

• Redesign the system of professional development and certification for fundraisers. Important stuff here. Knowledge and understanding of donor behavior is key for the future, not the number of AFP merit badges.

• Encourage the development of academic qualifications in fundraising. Jesus! They want to put in a curriculum for fundraising. I couldn’t disagree more, but you may have other ideas. I would simply settle for the fact that more than 50% of all fundraisers understood math or even simple arithmetic..

• Appoint a “sales force’ for the fundraising body of knowledge.  Ignorance is bliss (as is the case for too many CEOs and fundraisers), but this recommendation to gather best practices and the knowledge within the trade is spot on.

• Call out institutions offering certificates purporting to be qualifications. “Hey Mom, I’m  now a certified fundraiser.” An interesting discussion on stopping faux degree or course offerings by some colleges and universities.

• Educate board members about the intricacies of fundraising.  Among all the barriers to successful fundraising and philanthropy, the ‘board’ is the mightiest barrier and pain in the ass. This report rightly targets the boards for education and improvement.

Thanks for reading all this.  And it’s just the summary. Do yourself, you CEO and Board, a big favor and download (and read) the full report.

Roger

P.S. By the way, Adrian Sargeant and Blackbaud, you both deserve a raise.

I called it an important innovation because fundraisers have largely sought guidance through the rear view mirror of past performance, as opposed to steering through the windshield of the present and future. After all, ‘til the Atlas of Giving came along, all we had to rely on were ‘old’ services like Giving USA and the various Blackbaud Charitable Indexes.

So, now that year-end is approaching, I decided to check back and see how their predictions panned out. Quite well, I’m happy to report. In April actual overall fundraising returns were ahead by 11%, but the Atlas forecast that the summer and fall results would decline and the year would finish just 3.8% ahead of 2010.

Today The Atlas of Giving released its monthly report of actual results through the end of September, their forecast through the end of 2011, and also their forecast for 2012. Here are their key findings:

• True to their forecast, giving slowed as the year progressed. The decline began in May and by September was 4.6% lower than the April peak.

• The decline in giving will continue through May of 2012 when an uptick occurs; The Atlas forecasts that overall giving in 2012 will finish 9% ahead of 2011.

• For 2011 the highest growth area is ‘bequests’ (up 7%), with the slowest growth in ‘human services’ (up 3.9%). The one decliner is ‘societal benefit organizations’ (down 1% compared to 2010).

• Despite the declines in the last 2 quarters, The Atlas forecasts that overall giving in  2010 will finish 6.1% higher than 2010. (Their April forecast was +3.8%).

Of particular importance to Agitator readers – and any fundraiser or CEO – is the Atlas’ attention to trends in various sectors of the nonprofit world and also its analysis of state-by-state trends.

There’s far too much valuable detail in today’s Atlas of Giving Report to summarize here. And every fundraiser will have their own take and can form their own guidance from this whopping, data-packed report of 62 pages.

Suffice to say some sectors are in for some good times in 2012. Others are in for trouble. And those organizations with concentrations of donors in one state or another will find both the actual report and the forecasts of giving by state fascinating and helpful.

Forewarned is forearmed. In looking at their website you’ll see that all these data and analyses are available in the Atlas’ “Pro Reports” for a full year for a piddling sum of $99 for 12 months of reports, PLUS they apparently also send you a monthly powerpoint so  you can show the Board not only what’s what, but what’s over the horizon. I only wish in the years I was a consultant I had had access to goodies like these.

Talk about innovation. Talk about non-Flat Earth Fundraising! Atlas, you deserve a raise.

Roger

The headline flagged that the Met had raised $182 million in donations. This amount was fully 50% more than it had raised just the year before.

Now there’s a success story for you!

Unfortunately the article delivered no specifics into how the Met pulled this off. The only additional details were that about half the amount was in pledges, and that the contributions came from 49,100 donors.

Obviously the Met has one hell of a high-dollar fundraising program, benefiting from a proximate audience overflowing with wealth even in weak economic times.

By the way, the math works out to an average gift of $3,707. Eat your heart out! That means a heap of six and seven figure gifts.

The article did however convey some key background points.

First, the Met director, Peter Gelb, had embarked on a strategy based on spending money to make money. A risky call in view of the Met’s overall fiscal condition.

Second, that money went into improving the product and expanding its reach (via High Def theater distribution), implementing an ambitious vision.

Perhaps three fundraising insights here.

1. To grow revenue you do need to invest more … sometimes risky, but no way around that law of nature.

2. The quality of the product matters.

3. Vision matters … and big visions (credibly grounded) score the most points.

Tom

Ontario Nature — bridging the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sides of legacy giving

WWF — innovative communications

University of Oxford — excellent legacy brochure

Heaps of great advice from Mal Warwick.

And look here for a report on the International Legacy Survey conducted by Give Green Canada and CharityVillage.

Thanks SOFII!

Tom

How about this list …

1. Current net cost per new donor, by acquisition media (Most nonprofits must subsidize prospecting, so it’s OK for this number to be a negative one … but how negative?!).

2. Number of new donors who were acquired at that net cost in past twelve months, by media; and number that can be reasonably projected for next twelve months (What is your viable universe looking like?).

3. First-year retention rate for new donors, by acquisition media (The linchpin of future value).

4. Percent of file participating in monthly giving/sustainer program (Do they really love you?).

5. Net lifetime value of donor (projected over, say, three to five years), by acquisition media (How else can you know how much to invest in acquisition? How else can you tell if your recruiting is well-targeted?).

6. Annual measure of ‘bonus money’ (Maybe someone else gets to count it, but it’s yours!):

• Dollar value of bequests generated from ‘small gift’ donor file;
• Dollar value of major gift donors (say, $1000+) generated from ‘small gift’ donor file.

7. Growth in e-relationships over past twelve months (No immediate dollar value here; this is meant to suggest fundraising potential):

• Unique visitors to website(s);
• Email address file size (actives only);
• Social media friends, followers, etc.

8. All of the above with their respective most recent three-year trends.

I can think of a lot of additional numbers that I would like to know. But those above, especially when reviewed in the context of any available comparables from my nonprofit’s fundraising sector, would be plenty to get me started on assessing where my program stood and what improvements to focus upon.

Any additional ‘must know’ numbers you think I should have?

Tom

P.S. Roger would note that these are largely ‘backward’ looking measures. Useful for benchmarking, assessing year-over-year progress, making basic diagnostics, and useful — to a point — in guiding future fundraising strategy and tactics. But with respect to the latter, made more powerful if combined with the latest data overlays and modeling tools that permit house files to be better plumbed. That’s what DonorTrends is all about.

But he recently wrote this article — Donors Love 60:40 — with  which I beg to differ.

Fraser argues that donors care primarily about what you do (i.e., the need you are addressing), and very little about how you do it (which he treats a sort of institutional ‘inside baseball’). These words crystallize his point:

“When I was a young fundraiser, I learned an expression that has stayed with me to this day. It remains my most important piece of philanthropic wisdom. It goes like this: “the institution has no needs”.

That’s right. Your charity has no needs. The people or trees or animals you help have great needs. Your charity is simply the organizational vehicle that gets the donor’s gift to those in need. It’s a three link chain. The donor. Your organization. The need. In this chain, your organization is very small – while the donor and the need are very big.”

He then makes this recommendation:

“Everything you write or say to your donors should follow the 60:40 rule.Sixty per cent of what you say should be about the cause. Forty per cent of what you say should be about your organization.”

Now, I accept the main thrust here. Yes, the need is uppermost in your donor’s mind. Jeff Brooks blogging in Future Fundraising Now reminds us of that in virtually every post. Got it.

But consider two further points.

First, donors are becoming far more performance-oriented. They are scrutinizing organizations much more closely on your results … and your strategies and effectiveness for achieving those results (see BayBuzz post, Fundraising Perfection). In other words, many donors do want to know how your nonprofit will meet the need they’re concerned about better than your competitor, who’s also knocking on their door. Talking about ‘how’ need not be mind-numbingly ‘institutional’; that’s merely a wordsmithing issue.

Second, I submit that for two specific types of donors, the ‘institution’ is awfully damn important — donors making bequests and donors committing to sustainer programs (i.e., monthly gifts). In both of those cases, the donor has moved beyond an immediate response triggered by perceived need, and has moved on to make an assessment about the recipient organization. They’ve decided that that specific organization is the one they trust to get the job done … even after their death in the case of a bequest. They know the need will persist; the question is … will you?!

That’s an institutional commitment. And if you’re going to try to raise that kind of money — money from genuine loyalists — you had better make sure your prospect knows why/how your nonprofit is the better bet.

That said, maybe this is a timing issue. In which case, I’d still disagree with Fraser’s 60:40 rule.

Perhaps to win that first gift, it’s all about need. In which case 90:10 (cause:organization) might be more appropriate than 60:40. But as the cultivation process moves along, make no mistake, your prospective donor begins to evaluate your organization. And your communications ‘ratio’ will need to shift to address their further questions about your effectiveness.

Other thoughts? Weigh in!

Tom

Here’s the story of a donor (Gail) whose loyalty I find truly remarkable, under the circumstances …

• She’s been giving to several groups continuously for thirty years, generally in the $25-$50 range, and generally unrestricted.
• None of the groups has ever acknowledged her cumulative giving.
• Thirty years older and gainfully employed throughout, she sees herself as a viable planned giving prospect.
• She lives in a major metro area where there are probably many donors to the organizations she supports, making face-to-face events probably feasible.
• Two of the groups have about one million active ‘members’ each — that is, these are not organizations that are starved for resources or ‘professional’ fundraising staff.
• Nevertheless, when she called these two groups to find out why they ignored her, their excuses included … limited staff resources, incomplete gift records, no focus to date on ‘donor relationships’.

Gail, your patience and loyalty to these groups is astounding. Clearly, you are much too nice a donor.

I implore you to reveal these groups to me and Roger, so that The Agitator can officially fire them — the fundraising staff, the CEO, the Board … the whole lot of them!

Tom

1. The important giving potential of mid-level donors is explored here, with Kristin McCurry of MINDset Direct as our guest expert. These are the donors who tend to get lost between your direct response and major gifts programs.

2. Roger discusses planned giving with Phyllis Freedman of Smart Giving here. They cover overall strategy, segmentation, donor stewardship, and measuring success.

3. Feeling the heat from your nonprofit competitors? Roger discusses ‘Mission Competition’ here with David Lawson of DonorTrends. Learn how to determine your nonprofit’s ‘Giving Share’ and how to use that intelligence to inform your fundraising strategy.

4. And finally, catch-up on the world of mobile fundraising and engagement with Roger and Stephen King of Direct Intelligence here. And while you’re at it, take a look at our Agitator Mobile app.

Each webinar is one hour in length, with slides.

Check them out.

Tom & Roger

This headline, given to a speech by a Facebook exec at the recent International Fundraising Congress, has created a minor stir around the fundraising blogging world.

Here’s the analysis of blogger and fundraiser Bryan Miller at Giving in a Digital World, who attended the session. He points out that the exec, Canadian Elmer Sotto, was making a far less sensational point — Sotto was merely noting that Facebook was better at relationship building and donor stewardship than direct fundraising. He said that direct mail and email fundraising were the better tools for actually asking for money from established donors. Most of us wouldn’t dispute Sotto on that. Read more on Sotto’s presentation here.

That said, Miller’s article give several illustrations of successful Facebook fundraising campaigns that you might want to look at.

Tom

P.S. Heads up for next Monday — The Agitator’s own Roger Craver and Phyllis Freedman, veteran fundraiser at SmartGiving and formerly Epsilon, are hosting a DonorTrends webinar on ‘Build a Successful Planned Giving Program’ on Monday November 1 at 2:00 pm ET. Here’s a link for registration.

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