Werth-It Fundraising Blog

Here’s a comment from an executive director of a nonprofit organization in New York:

Thanks for chatting with me.  Here are some of the questions I’m running
into:What is the Board’s financial participation with your organization?
Please include a summary of the total pledges provided by the Board
members to this particular request.
>
> What percentage of your directors/trustees contributes annually to
> your organization?
>
> What percentage of total annual private sector fundraising is
> comprised of your directors/trustees’ contributions?

I told this E.D. that this is the first time I’ve seen these kinds of questions: in the past, most foundations have just wanted to know whether 100% of the board gave money.  I think this might be a dangerous trend, encouraging groups to only put on the board their donors who can give the most, instead of those who can add balance or provide economic diversity.  On the other hand, having board members make a financial commitment that might be a stretch is a good idea.  Just letting them know that someone is looking at their gifts should encourage them to give (and they should already know that if you publish an annual report listing donors in giving catergories, such as $500-999.)

Do you have thoughts on this subject?  Please post them in the comments, below, or write me at katherine@werth-it.com.

What do these names have in common:  Pat, Sandy, Chris, Hillary, Leslie, Gregory, Glenn, Beryl, Randall, Lee, Lynn, Tony, Marion and Merrill? 

Give up?  They’re all names that could belong to a man or a woman.  Yes, I’ve met women named Gregory, Glenn and Randall, and men named Hillary and Leslie.  You can’t assume someone’s gender from their name.  If you don’t know the person to whom you’re writing, don’t assume the salutation is Mr. or Ms.  Pick up the phone and ask which they prefer.

While you’re at it, why not start a conversation with them?  Ask what attacted them to your organization, and even how you might improve.  It only takes a few minutes, you learn something new, and you’ve made a new friend.

As for me, personally I like having the name Katherine.  No confusion there.   Although I once had a guy walk up to me and say, by way of introduction, “We can never marry.”  It turns out his last name was Kathrin!  He was right: no way I’d want to spend my life being Katherine Kathrin!

I saw Rory Vaden speak.  (www.roryvaden.com)  He was the first runner-up in the Toastmasters International World Championship of Public Speaking.  He talked about the initials after his name, W.C.P.S.-1st runner-up, M.B.A., and then he said, “and N.O.R.C., which stands for “No One Really Cares.”

That’s how I feel about the CFRE certification: No One Really Cares.  I don’t think the profession has done enough to make this certification stand out.  The fact that a number of really brilliant fundraisers — like Joan Flanagan, Rochelle Zeidman, and Kim Klein, for example – haven’t earned the CFRE doesn’t help any.  You can raise millions of dollars and never certify, and employers and clients don’t really care.  For many, I have to explain what it even means.

Here’s a great quote from the Council on Advancement and Support of Education:  “Indeed, Young Dawkins III, president of the University of New Hampshire Foundation and chairman of the CASE’s subcommittee on credentialing, said the council ‘respects the work that CFRE does in helping to advance the profession, but we could find no real correlation between certification and success in the field.’”  Ouch. 

I’d add that there seems to be no salary difference between those with a CFRE and those without one.  When I meet a kid who is still years away from even sitting for his CFRE exams, and he’s already making $75,000 a year, I know that those of us who fundraise will be renumerated for it whether we have the credentials or not, just because there is such a desperate need for fundraising professionals.

Further, the CFRE is expensive to get, and it takes some time to maintain it.  You have to keep track of what you do for several years, including funds raised, classes taken and taught, and you have to do volunteer work that requires service on a board of directors or a committee.  Some of the questions on the written exam are genuinely bad or irrelevant.  It’s both costly and a pain in the neck to certify and recertify.  But all of that pales besides the truth, which is, I’m sorry to say, that N.O.R.C.

In the end, I chose to get it, and I’m choosing to sign up for it again.  It gives me a bit of an edge in the field, it tells others that I’ve accomplished a great deal, and it feels good to have it.  That’s my bottom line, what’s yours? 

Thoughts on this or other subjects?  Questions about fundraising or board development?  Please write me through the comments field or at katherine@werth-it.com.

The CFRE certification — Certified Fund Raising Executive — is the single certification for all fundraising professionals worldwide.  You can’t even apply to get it until you’ve been in the field for five years.  You have to submit documentation on a number of aspects of your paid work, your education, and your volunteer efforts.  It costs $600 to apply, and then you have to pass a three-hour exam.  So, in this and the next blog, I’ll examine the benefits and drawbacks of earning a CFRE.

As to the benefits, for one thing, it impresses people.  They see the initials on a business card, and it stops them, and they ask, “What is that?”  They’re further impressed by the difficulty of getting it, and that so few people hold the credential worldwide (about 5,800 people, according to their website).

Then, getting a CFRE does require that a person has raised at least a million dollars over the past five years, that they are knowledgable in a number of areas of fundraising, that they are a paid professional and not a volunteer, and that they give of their time additionally as a volunteer, usually at the level of serving on a board of directors.

I will also say that the CFRE folks have made it easier to get.  Instead of paperwork, there’s now an online form (www.cfre.org).  You can take the test during a multi-week period on your own scheduling, at a location that’s likely to be close.  Other organizations should copy their system.

Tomorrow, (God willing), I’ll post the drawbacks.

In an average day, I get perhaps a dozen comments to my blog, more on weekends, but I don’t post them.  Why?  Because they’re fake, generated by computers to thousands of websites.  Even a few weeks ago, the fakes were obvious, filled with links to websites about various prescription drugs, and the rest just nonsense words.  I presume they’re uploaded by people in Romania, where it is apparently an entire industry.

However, in the past few weeks, an insidious new kind of comment has taken hold.  Here’s a sample:

“I Googled for something completely different, but found your page about Why I hate black-tie events, part 2 and have to say thanks, nice read.”

Looks like a great comment, right?  Perhaps I should post it?  But it is still a fake.  I can tell because the link is to something completely outside my field, in this case to getting a mortgage.  Their hope is that I will post it, and then Google will rank their website higher in the search engines because they have links back to their site, called “Search Engine Optimization.”  It’s a good fake, but it’s still a generic comment that only looks like it applies to me.  It just contains the name of a posting, which any computer can generate.

When I comment on someone else’s blog, I write something specific to what they’ve written, and I write to sites that I would plausibly read because they relate to me.

In the past, Google has caught on to people trying to ‘game’ their system.  The original ranking of sites based on links counted all links, I believe, and then Google figured out that people were trading links with their friends, so they stopped counting links that appeared to be trades.  I hope that, in time, they’ll figure out these new comments too and this will fade away.

In the meantime, one honest way to get your website listed higher in Google is to blog!  I hope that these people will stop sending out their comments, and concentrate on filling their own blogs with insight.  That might be too much to hope for, since it’s much easier to send out a million comments than write something new, but that’s my hope anyway.

In the meantime, want to make a comment or submit a question?  Please press the link below or write me at the link on www.werth-it.com. 

By special request from my WEV classmates: here’s how to create a blog.

I learned how to create a blog when I attended a technology seminar that lasted an entire weekend.  However, you can create a blog in about five minutes.  This is what you do.

Go to www.wordpress.com.  Press the button that says, “Sign Up Now.”  Follow the ridiculously easy instructions.  Go to your mailbox and click on the link they send.  That’s it.

Try to write something every day just for practice.  Send the name of it to your friends and ask them to post comments.  You can change around the design later if you want, or have a link to your website, or buy a domain name even.  But worry about that later, just start doing it.

If you need more help, email me at katherine@werth-it.com.

Best wishes to all my WEV classmates!

So, which is it?  Fundraising, Fund-raising or Fund Raising?  I used to say Fund Raising, back in the day when the professional organization for our work was the National Society of Fund Raising Executives.  Then I became a Fund-Raising Consultant, and hyphenated it because Fund and Raising modified Consultant.  But when the professional organization changed its name to the Association of Fundraising Professionals, I thought about switching to one word, too.  Of course, they’re all correct.

It bothers me that a ‘fundraiser’ can be both someone who raises money and an event, as in, “We held our fundraiser last night and made $10,000.”  You can see how the wording is unclear, that ‘fundraiser’ here probably refers to an event (and I hope it does, otherwise I’m very underpaid).

So, is fundraising one word, two words or hyphenated?  I guess that’s why we refer to our field as ‘development’!

There’s an expression, “TMI.”  It means “too much information.”  You can use it when your good friend starts telling you about their youthful adventures involving members of the opposite sex.  “TMI!” you cry, and presumably your friend will shut up.

I’ve noticed that sometimes people in the fundraising profession make this mistake.  I was in a class for planned giving (which includes getting dying people to give you money through their will, for example), and the instructor spoke of a local inventor who was making a large gift to the hospital.  That’s fine to say, but she went on to add the name of his wife, her nickname, her medical condition, and the name of his invention.  If you know the couple, or want to look it up, you could figure out who they are, given this information.  UNLESS the fundraiser has permission to use their information, telling others is wrong.  I would bet that the husband/donor would not want his wife’s medical condition known.

We have a responsibility as fundraisers not to tell donor’s stories without their permission.  Plenty of people will give that permission — we just have to ask — but without it, it causes other potential donors to wonder what will be said about us.

If you want more information about donors and privacy, or you have a question, please write me at katherine@werth-it.com.

Did you know that 65% of people over age 65 in America use the internet?  Apparently, it’s so they can communicate with their grandchildren.  We feel that the internet won’t reach older people, especially those capable of making significant gifts, but that’s outdated thinking.  Are you using the internet to reach your older donors?

Whenever something goes on too long, I call it a “hostage crisis.”  For example, a friend undergoing a multi-month housing construction was “in week 40 of the hostage crisis.”  (No offense to people who are or have been in an actual hostage crisis… it’s just an expression.)

I see a lot of events that are like a hostage crisis.  They go on for hour after hour.  For example, there was a local breakfast designed to raise money.  It was supposed to be held from 7:00 to 8:30 a.m.  Well, the executive director spoke for 45 minutes!  The keynote speaker didn’t even start speaking until 8:50!  I think this is a terrible use of people’s time.  Every minute of that event should have been planned.  If you tell people they will get out at 8:30, then you should be saying goodbye at 8:29, no excuses.  People can’t tell if we run a good organization, but they know if we start and end on time and keep our commitments to them.  Be sure that they will judge us for it, too, whether we’re on time or not.

The worst events are golf tournaments and black-tie balls.  They go on for four hours or more!  I think this is inexcusable.  What’s worse, people have a good time but they don’t even know our message or our mission.  One group told me, “We educate  people at the golf tournament through a PowerPoint.”  I asked, “How do you show a Power Point outdoors?”  They replied, “It’s running on a TV at the registration table.”  My conclusion is that no one notices it or pays attention.  The group would know this if they actually spoke to their attendees.  People might have a good time at the golf tournament, but they don’t learn about the organization.  Personally, I’d rather have them for only an hour, but keep their attention focused on our work, not on the event.  And, for me, and I suspect for many people like me, having to spend four hours at an event would be a personal hostage crisis.  I strongly urge you to rethink your events: the world is a busy place, and people increasingly have little time, patience or attention for multi-hour events.  Don’t hold your attendees hostage.