Opportunities abound: How to make the most of your degree

Posted on November 12, 2019 by Abby Rolland

“Like mighty winds, opportunities abound to those who decide to see them. They exist in limitless amounts and are waiting to be applied.” –Lincoln Patz

Josh Moore, M.A.’17, took Patz’s message to heart when he enrolled at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, Moore spent four years working for his fraternity as a traveling consultant, learning about philanthropy in a membership organization.

At that point, Moore knew that he wanted to pursue a career in fundraising.

“My last two years in the fraternity job, I spent time on campuses, building agreements for the fraternity to either be re-started or established,” he said. “It required many of the same skills that a fundraiser needs: listening more than talking to others, finding how what we do fits with their values, and discovering what they’re looking for in a partner organization.”

Following his desire to expand his education, Moore applied to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, was accepted, earned a University Fellowship his first year, and joined the new cohort of in-person master’s degree students. (more…)

Engaging the six ‘rights’ of fundraising

Posted on November 8, 2019 by Abby Rolland

Bill Stanczykiewicz (BS): Here’s a simple message to engage your board, your staff, and your volunteers, in order to strengthen the fundraising for your nonprofit.

I’m Bill Stanczykiewicz and this is the First Day from The Fund Raising School.

Today, I’m joined by my predecessor, Dr. Tim Seiler, who led The Fund Raising School for 20 years and now is the Rosso Fellow in Philanthropic Fundraising. Tim is an often sought-out national and international expert on fundraising.

Tim, we have the 14-stage fundraising cycle, and you often say that failing to plan is planning to fail.

There’s another way to discuss fundraising planning, and that’s using the six rights. How can fundraisers use this paradigm?

Dr. Tim Seiler (TS): I’ve come to understand over the years that the fundraising cycle is complicated and complex. I still believe in it, but I think it is more of an organizational strategy cycle than it is a fundraising cycle.

The six rights include having the right person, asking the right prospective donor, for the right gift for the right program, at the right time and in the right way.

When I talk about those six rights, I usually say fundraising is simple; it’s just not easy. Identifying those rights is where the complexity arises.

Who is the right person or persons? This can be one or more people on your team.

The right prospective donor has to be identified at his or her ability to give at the level that you want to ask for. He or she has to be interested in the organization – there has to be some inclination to be philanthropic, and direct that philanthropic gift towards the organization that solicits it.

I think it’s fair to say that the majority of nonprofit organizations have several programs or services that they offer and donors might want to make a choice. In doing our prospective donor research, it’s important to identify the right program. Part of fundraising, and development as a broader category, is communication. Part of communication is gleaning information – asking the right questions of the prospective donors so that we know what their interests are. We’ll make a stronger case based on donor interest. The right program is what the donor is most interested in. Things do change though, so we have to prepare for that as well.

The right gift can be a little trickier. The right gift historically from the fundraising perspective has been let’s determine the right amount to ask for and then let’s ask for it. What’s the right gift, or what’s the right amount to ask the donor for? If we can’t determine a specific amount, then we have often referred to the gift range chart, and then asked the potential donor if he or she would give a gift from a certain range. As fundraising has become more effective, major gift officers have also become more effective in teasing out that information from the donor. In other words, asking them what they think of is the right gift for this program or campaign?

So somewhere in there is the right gift to ask for, in terms of the specific amount, a range, or what the donor might be thinking.

And in the right way – we would continue to argue that in most instances, that’s sitting down and just having an honest conversation saying, ‘We know you care about this. Will you be willing to support us at this level or at a level you deem appropriate within the context of this campaign?’

We know there’s a growth in fundraising in other ways and evidence suggests that those strategies are pretty effective, including e-fundraising. That’s growing the base of donors in a lot of instances, and that works.

If you’re talking about the right gift as a special gift or a major gift, that probably needs to be solicited in a face-to-face solicitation or in a personal conversation.

BS: Fundraising is a management function, and is part of overall management of a nonprofit organization. The six rights, in my view, are very handy as we try to engage with people who are actually doing the fundraising for the organization.

How do we communicate this so that more right people are helping us find the other right prospective donors? I’m thinking about board members, volunteers, donors. How do we communicate this across the entire organization?

TS: I use the old cliché about connecting the dots. Sometimes it’s donors, or board members, or volunteers. Sometimes it’s the program staff within our organization who are connected to or linked to the prospective donors whom we’d like to meet or give a gift. We can ask these people if they can help us make a connection to potential donors. They can identify and they can help us in qualifying the gift, such as identifying the right amount or right program. A lot of the time the volunteers who are peers of the people with whom we are seeking the gift from can help us in terms of developing the right kind of plan to set up the conversation, to explore the interest, and ultimately to earn the right to ask for a gift.

BS: On volunteers, research shows that if we treat our volunteers well, 80 percent of them could become donors and introduce us to others who could potentially donate.

Along the right person line – people say that they’re not on the C level. How do we encourage these people to see themselves as the right person in this six rights paradigm?

TS: A lot of times it’s just at the level of how you know someone. You’re a neighbor, or you work together in the same organization even if your titles are different. Maybe you’re not a peer economically, but you can be a peer in other ways. We talk about peer solicitation and proportional giving and proportional asking: you can give more or give less depending on your standing and capacity to give. As long as there is mutual respect between the persons involved in the conversation, I think it can work.

BS: We can engage everyone through these six rights of fundraising.

Listen to the full podcast

Philanthropy Plugged In: Creating Community in the Digital Age

Posted on November 6, 2019 by Andrea Pactor

It happens every three years. It sells out. It is one-of-a-kind. And, previous attendees have called it “inspiring,” “thought-provoking,” and “galvanizing.”

“It” is the triennial Women’s Philanthropy Institute’s symposium. The 2020 symposium, Philanthropy Plugged In: Creating community in the digital age, is March 31-April 1 in Chicago. Registration opens today. We hope you’ll join us for a look at how the digital transformation is reshaping the way we connect, build community, fundraise, and give.

It is hard to believe that just 15 years ago, Facebook was only available to college students and Gmail was introduced in limited beta format. This fundamental shift in how we connect and communicate has affected all of us, especially women. In general, more women (78 percent) than men (65 percent) use social media. Women are more likely to use Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

We are so busy engaging digitally that we haven’t stopped to assess how the digital age is affecting our philanthropic behavior. At Philanthropy Plugged In, we will pause and reflect on how technology is influencing women’s ability to connect through philanthropy, encourages more strategic giving, builds a more diverse community of engaged citizens and donors, and increases giving.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Women Give research series, we will release Women Give 2020 at the symposium. We want to celebrate this milestone with you! The new research looks at the intersection of gender, technology, and giving to better understand differences between how men and women use technology for the common good.

We’ll also look at the power of community in philanthropy—how women are being intentional about creating community online and offline. You’ll learn from inspiring leaders like Sloane Davidson, founder and CEO of Hello Neighbor, and Sheryl Olitzsky, co-founder and executive director of Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom.

We’ll discuss the risks and rewards of technology. Is technology empowering us to give? How is the rise of online giving affecting donor engagement, loyalty, and retention? Does technology enable us to reach new and more diverse donors? Are female social entrepreneurs accounting for implicit bias in their algorithms? Amany Killawi, co-founder and COO of LaunchGood, and Rachel Klausner, founder and CEO of Millie, are among the leaders who will share their experiences with us at the 2020 symposium.

Amidst the panel discussions, short talks, breakout sessions, and action labs, we’ll also take time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment and explore how our foremothers created community to achieve its passage.

There are technology conferences, fundraising conferences, and marketing conferences. But, seldom do all three big topics converge in one place at one time to enlighten, inform, and prompt action. With more than 20 speakers and a robust agenda, Philanthropy Plugged In explores the landscape today and anticipates what tomorrow might look like.

Consider these important words from Theresa Butler-Porter, who leads philanthropic relations at Lakefield College School Foundation: “As fundraisers, and facilitators of transformational relationships, we will fail catastrophically if we turn down opportunities like this one to understand more fully the underpinnings and impending power of women philanthropists.”

‘Seeing doers doing’: A reflection on reshaping black philanthropy

Posted on November 4, 2019 by Abby Rolland

The featured panel members speak about their experiences. From left to right: Edward Jones, Charmaine Brown, Collin Mays, Tiara Dungy, Kim Nyoni, Akilah Wallace.

By David Johnson

Where are African American philanthropists giving their resources, and why are they donating to specific causes? What will the future of giving in the African American community look like? Bachelor’s degree student David Johnson reflects on a Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy panel event featuring six African American panelists working in various ways to reshape black philanthropy.

The Mays panel was a very refreshing event! Seeing people that are active in the community, especially the black community, is inspiring and uplifting. I am so proud to be a part of a school that supports such work!

I found that the panel was very structured, and the moderator, Dr. Una Osili, did an outstanding job keeping the panel on topic and continuously talking about key aspects of the community, such as access to education and direct impact initiatives. The panelists were very well established and in different points in their careers, which gave them good perspectives to share.

I liked how each of the panelists had their own voice and thoughts of how the black community could grow, including focusing on programs like financial literacy, strategic economic plans, and food desert solutions. Those thoughts were well understood and were clearly identified. It appears that many of the panelists were aware, knowledgeable, and capable of tackling these issues, and on a daily basis are actively pushing themselves to find appropriate solutions and put them into action.

Perhaps some of the well-off and well-educated African-Americans could talk to their networks to get the jobs done that they identified but again, the average person cannot attain such goals. Maybe the panel was intended for this purpose; to inspire our leaders to do great things for our community in unified ways.

However, on the other end of the stick, the issues and the way they were described needed to be more consumable, broken down and constructed in a way so that the average person could potentially participate or contribute to the growth of the black community. I only heard this information from Akilah Wallace, executive director of Faith in Texas advising a young lady in the audience to take action at her church to start initiatives that urged people to perhaps start a giving circle or a small community foundation. That is something the average person could accomplish with any level of means. More advice from the panelists like this would help, especially when given the floor to speak and when people are listening.

Overall, the panel and panelists were a pleasure to see and experience! A blessing to have such amazing people to be here with us and supporting the field. I love seeing doers doing and I urge all who read this to do the good things we talk about. Identifying issues and brainstorming ideas on how to help are great but acting on the plan is key!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr says, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

My name is David Johnson, an undergraduate student intending to get my Ph.D. in Philanthropic Studies from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. I run a start-up nonprofit called Spring Oath, who does work bridging the disconnect between community and community organizations in the Indianapolis area.

Watch the recorded event

Understanding and catalyzing immigrant philanthropy

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Abby Rolland

In Myth No. 3 of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s article “Eight Myths of U.S. Philanthropy,” Una Osili, Ph.D., associate dean for research and international programs, professor of economics and philanthropic studies, and dean’s fellow at the Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy, explores how immigrants give of their time, talent, treasure, and testimony, foiling the xenophobic rhetoric and narrative that immigrants take and don’t give.

Data from the Philanthropy Panel Study (PPS), part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), suggest that immigrant status does not have a statistically significant impact on the likelihood of giving and the amount of charitable giving after controlling for permanent income, education, savings, and other variables. In addition, Osili and Jia Xue, Ph.D., found statistics that show immigrants and their children are less likely to be a burden on U.S. institutions.

Itay Greenspan, Ph.D., Marlene Walk, Ph.D., and Femida Handy, Ph.D., discovered that even though immigrants volunteer less than native-born individuals, contextual factors such as social networks and membership in organizations play a strong role on likelihood of volunteering, while sociodemographic factors (excepting education) were not associated with immigrants’ proclivity to volunteer.

The authors explain that organizational adaptations and policy interventions could increase immigrants’ likelihood to volunteer, while current lower levels of participation compared to native-born individuals may stem from a lack of equal opportunities and discriminatory or inequitable practices rather than personal barriers.

In addition, the informal philanthropy that immigrants partake in is often not studied.

Jamie Goodwin, a Ph.D. candidate at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, studied informal immigrant giving and volunteering along the U.S.-Mexico border.

One example she provides of a thriving informal network of philanthropy was the Camino de Salvación, a small church in Tijuana, Mexico. Led by pastor, sociologist, and historian Juan Altamirano, this alburgue (shelter) offers just that: safe shelter for immigrants and refugees fleeing poor conditions and crises. This church works on the basis of reciprocal generosity: people assist by sharing meals, helping to find rides and navigate the bus system, looking for work, and caring for children and the sick.

This largely unseen generosity is keeping many of them from going hungry and homeless and enhancing their personal safety in precarious conditions.

So, immigrants formally and informally give and volunteer. How can nonprofit practitioners engage with them to encourage giving and volunteering with their respective institutions?

Lilya Wagner, Ed.D., director of Philanthropic Service for Institutions, explains that nonprofits need to broaden the definition of philanthropy to include traditions, preferences, and ways of giving by diverse populations, and not attempt to function under the comfortable “one size fits all” mentality.

“Understanding the giving traditions and habits of the diverse populations in North America is not just an add-on; it’s a necessity,” she says.

Recognizing and knowing diverse giving and volunteering patterns, formal and informal philanthropy, and barriers to and cultural understandings of philanthropy will help inform nonprofit practitioners and others understand and catalyze immigrant philanthropy.

Underneath the myth “immigrants take – they don’t give” is research and lived experience that show that immigrants give much to a society, and have so for many years.