Donor Perspectives: A conversation with Dilnaz Waraich about intentional philanthropy

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Aja Pirtle

Dilnaz Waraich and her family are intentional in their giving, making a family matrix and sitting around the kitchen table each year to discuss priorities. In addition, Waraich is helping to enhance the effectiveness of the third sector with her work.

Her participation in the Community Collaboration Initiative aims to help 25 Muslim American nonprofits to acquire additional knowledge and training that will help them further serve their local communities and carry out their work more effectively.

Recently, Aja May Pirtle from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy sat down (virtually) with Waraich to have the first in a series of conversations about donor perspectives (watch below).

Stewardship ideas for Valentine’s Day and beyond

Posted on February 5, 2021 by Andy Ware

By Kristi Howard-Shultz

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and there’s no better time to express appreciation to your donors. In a year that has been so tough, could we ever love them more?

Start small but start now

With only a few days to drop cards in the mail, there’s still time to send a handwritten note. You can send notes to key donors or just those that have given this month. Your development team can send them but, when it comes to thanking donors, the more the merrier!

Involve others in your organization. Not only does this offer a variety of voices and perspectives to donors, it is also a wonderful way to engage board members in fundraising without having them make an ask. Sending a note from program staff can offer insight into the work of your nonprofit and help staff themselves understand the value of fundraising. A note from a beneficiary of your services can help the donor understand the impact of their gift and the beneficiary connect with another side of your work.

Whether you actually start now or plan to later, handwritten notes are a wonderful way to steward donors, and expanding who is responsible for stewardship in your organization lightens the load and has many benefits beyond the work itself.

It’s achievable

Break it down into segments. You may be your development “department”—a one person shop. You don’t have to have a sophisticated database manager to get started. Below are some ideas on how to break up stewardship by segment so that it is a manageable task—both in volume and messaging.

New donors
Returned donors
Monthly donors
Major donors
Long-term donors

If you do have a specialized staff with greater human and financial resources, all the better! These segments can be fleshed out and all receive regular and specialized messages, outside of gift acknowledgements, tailored just for them.

Make it a habit

It’s easy to put stewardship on the back burner. Schedule a regularly occurring time that’s hard to miss. Maybe it coincides with a staff or board meeting. Maybe it’s not realistic with your current level of staff and volunteers to make it monthly; so make it quarterly. The key is to get it on the calendar and then backdate all the related tasks.

For example:

Call donors the first Wednesday of the month/the day of the board meeting
One week out: Run lists (no more than 10 calls per person)
One month out: Write script (most will be voicemails; keep it short and sweet)
Three days out: Distribute the lists and scripts to your staff, board, and beneficiaries that are helping you make the calls
Three days after: Follow up (clean the lists, say thank you to callers, note feedback, record gifts; some donors make an additional gift when you call to say “thank you!”)

Plan ahead

What stories can you tell and who can you recognize via:

Your annual gala
Local awards
Earned media/cause marketing
Social media
A newsletter drip

This takes advanced planning and sometimes tremendous coordination. It is well worth the effort to celebrate all that you do and those that help you achieve your mission.

It pays dividends

Everybody wins when you expand and formalize your stewardship efforts.

Retention improves
Storytelling improves
Engagement improves

And, in the end, you raise more money to serve more and better!

Kristi Howard Shultz, founder of Kristi Howard-Shultz Consulting, is a nonprofit executive that leads with head and heart. With 20+ years of experience working for nonprofits including nationally-known, time-tested institutions like The Boy Scouts of America, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Boys & Girls Clubs, she has worked in nearly every capacity of fundraising throughout her career. She has a proven track record of success in board and fund development, campaign management, and capacity building. She has built a strong reputation within the community and is sought after for her industry expertise and thought leadership. Kristi is a natural relationship builder who loves to put plans into action. Championing “firsts” for organizations is her specialty.

How do beliefs and identities influence women’s philanthropy? Let’s look at the research

Posted on January 29, 2021 by Andy Ware

research that grows women's philanthropy

Meet Heather O’Connor, the recipient of the 2020 Women’s Philanthropy Institute’s Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

O’Connor is a former fundraiser and CFRE with 20 years of experience in health, education, and social service nonprofits. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and researches women’s charitable giving, philanthropic decision-making processes, and the intersection of social identity and philanthropic behavior.

O’Connor has taught courses on fundraising and philanthropy since 2013. Currently, she teaches for The Fund Raising School and the Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® (CAP®) program at the American College of Financial Services.

Share a little bit about your background. Where are you from, and what brought you to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and the Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI)?

Heather O’Connor (HO): I was raised in Jackson, Tennessee and I attended the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where I earned a BS in Communications. After college, I moved to Chicago to begin a career in fundraising and nonprofit management. In time, I realized I had a particular passion for serving health and social service organizations. That awareness led me to complete an MA in Social Service Administration from The University of Chicago.

Before pursuing my Ph.D., I was executive director for a community-based family planning clinic in Homer, Alaska. I worked in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years and held several positions from fundraising roles to leadership positions.

How does your research connect with the WPI mission to conduct, curate, and disseminate research that grows women’s philanthropy?

HO: Women’s lives are complex and cannot be fully understood through a single perspective. My research aims to extend research on women’s giving by considering their philanthropic motivations and decision-making within the context of their varied social identities and beliefs.

Research from WPI has illustrated how some women use their giving to women and girls as an expression of their beliefs and their vision for a more equal future. This research has also found that women who donate to women’s and girls’ causes view themselves as advocates for women and girls. My work offers a deeper understanding of how dissonant beliefs and identities influence philanthropic behavior by examining how Catholic women pro-choice donors reconcile the tenets of their faith with their philanthropic advocacy for reproductive health.

This project extends research into women’s giving to women and girls by considering one of the most popular causes in this area: women’s reproductive health. Research from WPI shows that these organizations receive the largest portion of overall philanthropic support for women’s and girls’ organizations. This focus on reproductive health and family-planning organizations affords a comparison of women’s motivations in donating to a controversial cause with existing research on women’s giving to other, non-controversial causes.

In addition, this project may extend research on charitable decision-making within the household by examining the extent to which Catholic women are donors to pro-choice organizations and make their gifts with spousal or partner knowledge and support.

Finally, since I’m conducting interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic, the study will provide insights into women’s philanthropic decision-making during a time of crisis. Previous research has shown that charitable giving declines during a recession, yet little is known about how donors may reexamine and reprioritize their giving during these precarious times.

This study will shed light on how giving to pro-choice organizations is considered in the context of a crisis that places focus on organizations that serve basic needs.

What is your research dissertation about, and how does it examine the role of gender in philanthropy?

HO: My project aims to describe how and why women who are Catholic and donors to pro-choice organizations make their philanthropic decisions within the context of their varied identities and beliefs. The central research question is: How do women who are Catholic and donate to pro-choice organizations make their charitable decisions?

My dissertation, “The Unexpected Activist: Catholic Women’s Support for Reproductive Rights,” explores the philanthropic motivations and decision-making processes of Catholic women who donate to pro-choice organizations.

The project aims to extend WPI research on women’s giving by considering their philanthropic behavior in the contexts of their varied (and sometimes incongruent) identities and beliefs. In addition to examining how this potential dissonance may affect philanthropic behavior, the project offers insight into how donors to women’s and girls’ causes may re-prioritize their philanthropic giving during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Are there any specific nonprofit organizations that you hope your research will support?

HO: The research will have implications for practice for pro-choice and reproductive justice organizations that could benefit from a nuanced understanding of this often invisible group of Catholic pro-choice donors. Moreover, the findings may inform larger conversations about understanding donors as complex individuals.

Sometimes efforts to determine whether a potential donor is a fit for the organization fails to take this complexity into account. As a result, organizations may miss opportunities or inadvertently communicate messages that some potential donors find alienating or even offensive. Deeper understanding of the complex, seemingly contradictory motivations of individuals may help fundraisers better identify and approach individual donors.

What are your career goals for when you complete your fellowship with WPI?

HO: I aim to defend my dissertation in the spring of 2021. After graduation, I plan to continue to help nonprofit practitioners understand and apply the latest philanthropic research through research, writing, and teaching.

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The Women’s Philanthropy Institute Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship is offered annually to Ph.D. candidates whose primary research focus is in women’s philanthropy or gender differences in philanthropic behavior and giving. Applications are accepted in late spring for the following academic year.

This interview was conducted by Colleen Rusnak, M.A. student at the IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and graduate assistant at the Women’s Philanthropy Institute.

Building the academic field of philanthropic studies

Posted on January 21, 2021 by Andy Ware

improving philanthropy to improve the world

By Andrea Pactor, M.A.‘03

When I started my master’s degree program at the Center on Philanthropy in 2001, I had no idea philanthropic studies was such a new field.

The 1970s and 80s were a fertile time for experimentation in academia. By the mid-1980s, new academic programs such as women’s studies, American studies, and African American studies had emerged, organized around a problem rather than a methodological method.

As the nonprofit sector became more formally organized with new approaches and new ideas, John Gardner founded Independent Sector in 1976 and its research committee, chaired by Robert Payton, was designed to create the field of philanthropy research.

Mr. Payton, a former vice chancellor for development, U.S. ambassador, president of two universities, and foundation president, was recruited to Indiana University (IUPUI) in 1988 as the first director of the Center on Philanthropy.

Reflections on a 30-year journey

Payton brought a big vision to establish the field of philanthropic studies as an interdisciplinary endeavor that would be infused across liberal arts departments. Dwight Burlingame was among his first hires in 1989; his role beginning in 1990 was to create the academic and research program at the center. No small task!

Dwight’s retirement at the end of December 2020 prompted this reflection on his 30-year journey to establish this academic field with an interdisciplinary approach. While Mr. Payton and he were pivotal pioneers in the early days, others including Center directors Warren Ilchman, Gene Tempel, and Patrick Rooney contributed significantly to its growth.

Anyone who meets Dwight Burlingame quickly becomes aware of his encyclopedic knowledge of philanthropy, yet it is his fourth career. He earned a Ph.D. in library science from Florida State University, expertise that he would leverage to help build the philanthropic studies infrastructure.

Prior to becoming one of the architects of the new field of philanthropic studies at IU, he had also served as a dean and vice president at Bowling Green State University. Along with being an educator throughout his career, books, editing, and writing are among his passions. As one example, he is the editor of the three volume Philanthropy in America: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (2004).

At the start, Dwight analyzed new academic fields to understand their trajectory. He looked at sociology and social work to learn how those fields grew and developed distinct curricula. His own experience with library science also informed direction for the new philanthropic studies field.

For example, the first courses in library science were offered in 1887; the Ph.D. was not offered until 43 years later, in 1930. In contrast, at the Center on Philanthropy, the first Ph.D. courses began in 2003 with the first Ph.D.s awarded in 2008, only 16 years after the Center’s founding.

Developing support for the new interdisciplinary endeavor required many meetings. Dwight recalls a plethora of meetings and lunches with IU faculty across disciplines to discuss a philanthropic studies curriculum and to seek faculty who would be advocates for the fledgling endeavor.

At the same time, Dwight and colleagues created five core philanthropic studies courses (PHST), including the introductory P521, which he taught for 30 years until his retirement. As an example of how the field has grown and added more research and resources, Dwight said that only a few readings have remained constant in that curriculum for three decades.

Research on philanthropy was central to building a credible academic field. In the early years, the Center on Philanthropy awarded research grants to faculty across the country for studies on philanthropy. In addition, the Center awarded curriculum development grants to faculty at IU to develop philanthropy-related courses. The result was the desired interdisciplinary approach with faculty from a range of disciplines including history, political science, sociology, nonprofit studies, philosophy, and public affairs teaching about philanthropy.

The Center grew into the School of Philanthropy in 2012 and hired its own faculty but continues to maintain strong ties with faculty across the university’s eight campuses. Today, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy research grants are available only to its faculty.

Joseph and Matthew Payton Philanthropic Studies Library

Building this field required a library. Today’s students may think the philanthropic studies library was always there. That is not the case. Mr. Payton, shortly after his arrival at the Center in 1988, created a half-time position in the university’s library to create the philanthropic studies collection. This collection now holds more than 50,000 volumes, including Mr. Payton’s vast personal collection.

An archives was also needed. The philanthropy archives started shortly after Dwight arrived on campus. The first collections were from Independent Sector, Ketchum and other fundraising firms, NSFRE (now AFP), nonprofits, and a bit later the foundation archives.

With the library and archives under one roof and with a designated fund to support researchers to use the archives, the philanthropic studies infrastructure took shape and the field grew.

To enhance the visibility and credibility of philanthropic studies as an academic field, Mr. Payton persuaded the IU Press to start a philanthropic and nonprofit studies series. “Dwight and I would be happy to do this,” Dwight recalled Mr. Payton saying at the time. In the ensuing 30 years, Dwight edited 53 books for this series. He co-edited New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising from 1994-2000; this series raised credibility among practitioners.

Dwight’s many other contributions do not stop there. He contributed to the field’s growth with ARNOVA, ISTR, and philanthropic studies programs around the globe. He has mentored countless students over the years. Each contribution is instrumental to the development and rapid acceptance of philanthropic studies as a viable, robust, and important multidisciplinary academic discipline.

At the end of our conversation, I asked Dwight whether he planned to write a memoir about his 30-year journey in philanthropic studies now that he did not have to grade papers and exams. He smiled and said, “No. The records are all in the archives for someone else to examine.”

It will be up to a new generation of philanthropic studies faculty and leaders to reflect on this history and to determine the field’s direction for the next 30 years.

Andrea Pactor, M.A.’03, is the former associate director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute.

10 tips for fundraisers in 2021

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Andy Ware

By Kristi Howard Shultz

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Translated by LUNA Language Services

As we embark on this new year, the pandemic continues to reshape nonprofits’ work in profound and unprecedented ways, but knowledge and insights gained in the past 12 months can position organizations for success in 2021.

Fundraisers can create powerful, positive fundraising plans with these 10 tips gleaned from new research, expertise, and professional practice.

1. Seek relief funding

Relief funding came to the rescue in 2020. As COVID-19 began to spread early in the year, numerous community foundations and United Ways quickly established new funds or activated existing emergency funds, as research by Laurie Paarlberg and colleagues at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found. This response to short- and long-term community needs included collaborations with community partners, corporations and local governments. Relief, recovery, and capacity building funds likely will continue to be a key resource into 2021.

2. Find new ways to collaborate

In addition to philanthropic collaborations with community foundations, seek new partners in places you might not have looked previously. Lake Institute on Faith & Giving found that 33 percent of congregations raised funds to support other congregations and nonprofits in need. Religious organizations, like many others, made the pivot to online services during the pandemic, with more than half reporting an increase in participation. What can you learn from religious organizations and others with membership models? How can you collaborate to raise more money?

3. Build community virtually

Online community building will be a permanent part of nonprofit-donor relationships. This type of community building appeals to women in particular. In fact, Women Give 2020 found that women are giving more gifts and a greater proportion of total dollars on tech platforms, and that women’s and girls’ causes receive substantially more online support from women donors. Technology enables women to give according to their preference. Create a strategy to highlight the women and girls you serve and offer more opportunities for online giving.

4. Tell your story

Cultivating your constituents thoughtfully has never been more important. Keep telling your story and engaging your donors. Then, they will be prepared to lean in and give more, as soon as they can. As we saw throughout the challenges of the past year, philanthropy remains a core value for many people.

5. Lead through this crisis

During a Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy discussion on racial justice, Marc Morial of the National Urban League and Tony Mason of the Indianapolis Urban League shared this, and other, key learnings. They encouraged nonprofit professionals to take advice from those who’ve been there before, and to be intentional in our partnerships. How can we learn from others to meet the needs of the people we serve? Who could you reach out to today?

6. Engage all of your donors

Racial justice giving is booming. From crowdfunding for victims’ families to direct support for grassroots organizations, and funding scholarships at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Black philanthropists are leading the way.

7. Tap into proven methods

Donor advised funds (DAF) were a bright spot in 2020 philanthropy. Over the last 10 years, DAF giving has significantly increased. For the donor, the money is already spent. Make your ask powerful and urgent. Include language about DAF giving in every appeal. A recent study found that nonprofit organizations that explicitly solicited DAF gifts received DAF gifts at a higher rate (87 percent) than nonprofits that did not solicit them.

8. Giving is beautiful

It has long been known that giving can have positive effects on the person who is giving, such as an increase in happiness, confidence, and even physical health. But research from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy has found there may be another potential implication of giving: physical attractiveness. The study found that more attractive people are more likely to be givers, and givers are rated as more attractive. “Our findings suggest that beauty products and procedures may not be the only way to enhance an individual’s attractiveness,” co-author Sara Konrath said. “Perhaps being generous could be the next beauty trend.”

9. Don’t stop fundraising!

The pandemic has changed many things. One thing it hasn’t: the fact that your cause is still worthy. Your work is still impactful. Those you serve are still in need.

10. Embrace optimism

As fundraisers, it’s our greatest gift. Bill Stanczykiewicz said it best: “There is no playbook for this pandemic. It gives nonprofits the opportunity and challenge to use their knowledge and expertise to craft their own playbook.”

Let’s make 2021 our best year yet!

Kristi Howard Shultz is a consultant that leads with head and heart. With 20+ years of experience working for nonprofits including nationally-known, time-tested institutions like The Boy Scouts of America, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Boys & Girls Clubs, she has worked in nearly every capacity of fundraising throughout her career. Kristi is a natural relationship builder who loves to put plans into action. Championing “firsts” for organizations is her specialty.