A Small Guide to Large Gifts: Major Donor Fundraising

by Buzz Harris, Executive Director, Development Resource Center

Minor office drama can illustrate fundamental truths about fundraising. You’ve lost your stapler. Again. If you email folks in the surrounding cubes, odds are good that several of them will offer a loaner.

Imagine, though, that you need help getting your cranky bulldog, Mr. Teeth, to the vet. Even emailing forty or fifty coworkers is unlikely to generate a volunteer. Email messages aren’t a powerful enough medium for such a request. But someone has to hold onto your dog. The headrests can’t take more gnawing.

Upcoming Seminars: Recession Rescue-Nonprofit Survival School

Nonprofits across the U.S. are suffering in the current recession.  The Development Resource Center has decided, as a public service, to offer a series of free monthly seminars via conference call to small- and medium-sized nonprofits that are feeling the pinch.  We will offer concrete advice on fundraising in a recession as well as management and fiscal policy counsel that we call “best practices for bad times.”

This seminar will be taught by Shava Nerad, former E.D. of the Tor Project, and Buzz Harris, E.D. of the DRC.  Registrants will receive information about the conference call via email.

Tuition: free of charge

Seminars will be held from 7:30 P.M. – 8:30 P.M. (EDT) on Apr. 22nd; May 5th & 26th; and June 11th, 18th, & 25th.  Check back over the next few weeks for additional future dates.

Click here to register.

Forging the Board of Your Dreams, Part II: Board Recruitment and New Trustee Orientation

by Buzz Harris, Executive Director, The Development Resource Center

Nonprofit boards often struggle to find new members. And they rarely have a documented process in place to tell them how. Let’s eavesdrop on a typical conversation between Liz, a current trustee, and Malik, a potential board member…

Liz: Hi Malik. Thanks for meeting me for coffee.

Malik: Sure Liz, no problem. What did you want to see me about?

Event Alert (MA/NH): “Getting A Grip On Grants”

Congresswoman Niki Tsongas is hosting an event entitled Getting A Grip On Grants: How to Navigate Federal, State, and Private Grant Resources with a Focus on Collaboration and Regionalization in the Grants Process.

It will take place on Monday, March 16th, 2009 from 7:30 A.M. – 12:30 P.M. at the University of Massachusetts Lowell campus in the Wannalancit Building, 600 Suffolk St., Lowell, MA, 01854.  Parking is available in the Ayotte Garage adjacent to the Tsongas Arena.

There is no cost to attend, but RSVP is required.  Please visit http://www.tsongas.house.gov to register.

Advanced Grant Writing Seminar coming soon!

Shava Nerad is the former Executive Director of the Tor Project, a major online  privacy group, and a faculty member at the Development Resource Center.   We’ve been good friends since we met at the Arisia Science Fiction Convention in Boston some years ago.  Ironically our respective partners were friends and had always thought that Shava and I would get on famously.  They introduced us to each other at an Arisia party and then sat back and watched us talk nonprofit shop for the better part of two hours.  Both were quite smug.

The Retired Executive’s Corner—Winter ’09

by Edward Pater, The Development Resource Center

Almost everyone in the nonprofit communities understands and uses the concept of stewardship.  In this time when so many of our organizations face serious challenges to their financial health it is important to see stewardship as not only the proper care of what has been entrusted to us but also the recognition of and the care for the possibilities at hand.  There is potential “out there,” we can ignore it or we can use it – that will be the measure of our stewardship.

Braving the Fast Lane on the Social Networking Infobahn

by Buzz Harris, Executive Director, Development Resource Center

It’s Wednesday in the digital workplace. You’re a Luddite. An anxious Luddite. One of the office twentysomethings is in urgent monologue with you about “Web Two-Point-Oh.” Your digital footprint is “so 1995” and you need a “MyFace” account immediately! You’ve heard this before. You’ve read about it. And the kid is smart.

What’s a manager a shade greyer than the cybergeneration to do? First, don’t panic. Yes there is a new generation of marketing and communications tools out there: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, RSS feeds, and the fast-evolving Blog, among others. Your anxiety is natural. Society has hit one of those moments of rapid technological change when what was true for generations suddenly isn’t.

The Wayback Machine: The Nonprofit Clinic—Summer ’08 Edition

Successful Fundraising in Difficult Economic Times

by Buzz Harris, Executive Director, The Development Resource Center

~ Note: This article pre-dates our blog. We decided to share it here as it is still timely. ~

Fundraising during a recession is always challenging. Here is a multi-part strategy to ensure that your organization’s journey through recession is a smoother, more prosperous one. Bring your board and staff together separately to review and recommit themselves to the organization’s mission. Inform both groups, candidly and transparently, about your income and expenses and the reasonable expectations for fundraising. Faced with this challenge they may have valuable input and suggestions. Solicit their thoughts and support.

Featured Funder: RESIST

RESIST is a progressive foundation that supports grassroots organizing for peace, economic, social and environmental justice, and provides political education for social change activism. RESIST funds organizations that are actively part of a movement for social change and demonstrate an understanding of the connections among oppressions.

As part of the application process, grant applicants must provide specific information concerning their position, programs and coalition work on a range of political issues, including race, class, gender, reproductive rights, lesbian and gay rights, age, and disability.

Ask the Editors: Fiscal Sponsorship

“My group wants to become a nonprofit. I’ve heard that we can ‘borrow’ another group’s nonprofit status. Is that true? How do we do it?” – Bob K., Minneapolis, Minnesota

The basic answer to your first question is “yes.” Existing nonprofit groups can take another group under their 501(c)(3) umbrella, if they wish, by acting as a Fiscal Sponsor. Under a Fiscal Sponsorship arrangement a group that is not currently a nonprofit signs a letter of agreement with an existing organization that is already recognized by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The letter, in effect, makes the new group a ‘project’ of the host organization. The advantages for the sponsoree are many.