Yours for the Asking

An Indispensable Guide to Fundraising and Management

Reynold Levy

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780470440780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Non-Profit- & gemeinnützige Organisationen

Learn how to power up your fundraising-from Reynold Levy, the master of fundraising

Drawing on his experience in raising over one billion dollars in six years as President of Lincoln Center, Reynold Levy has written the ultimate insider's guide to asking for and receiving funds. Rich with insights and invaluable advice from Levy's own lessons learned, this powerful book is for you, whether your organization is concerned with health, education, the arts, or humanitarian causes, a think tank or advocacy group, established or fledgling. Insightful, creative, and humorous, Yours for the Asking draws back the curtain to disclose Levy's secrets of success and reveals how you can:

• Tap into the resources of donors, large and small, for your institution or cause
• Reach wealthy people and successfully bring home the bacon
• Put aside fears, qualms, and hesitancies and confidently ask for funds
• Locate the intersection between the interests of business and the needs of your nonprofit organization
• Solve the mystery of fundraising from foundations
• Explore your organization's future in fundraising and discern its long-term trends
• Learn the best ways to combat the adverse impact of a wide, deep, and prolonged recession

Yours for the Asking will transform your view of fundraising from a dreaded aspect of your job to a high calling, from "pleading" for money to helping donors find pleasure in advancing social causes and strengthening key nonprofit institutions. Affluence and generosity abound. It's all yours-for the asking.

CHAPTER 1

FUNDRAISING: A CALL TO ALMS, A CALL TO ACTION

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

—Mahatma Gandhi

How many activities in life are as unpopular as fundraising? Most people, often including trustees who are obligated to ask for money on behalf of the nonprofit institutions they serve, and professionals, paid to solicit funds, would rather walk slowly over hot coals.

There’s something very intimidating about approaching a friend or a relative stranger and requesting a gift. It’s widely viewed as a bold and presumptuous act, one filled with the potential for awkwardness, embarrassment, disappointment, and rejection.

Chief executives of hospitals, universities, and cultural institutions often cite raising money as the least pleasant and most trying of their responsibilities. Many trustees, when faced with the choice, would prefer to donate more than they would otherwise rather than solicit others.

The average length of stay of the presidents of large nonprofits in almost any field including higher education, arts and culture, hospitals, and social service institutions is now some seven years. An important reason for such relatively short terms of service is carrying the burden of the relentless pursuit of charitable gifts, 24/7.

A generation ago, proud and preening parents would brag about their son “the doctor” or “the lawyer.” Nowadays it is the fashion to say one’s children are in hedge funds or private equity. Have you ever heard a mother or father look up to the sky and say “Lord, I wish my child becomes a fundraiser!”?

Truth be told, the answer to that question is more than likely to be no.

That’s a pity.

For in its broadest sense, raising funds is a business skill of the highest order. It is precisely what private equity and hedge managers do everyday to attract capital for their acquisitions and investments. It’s what allows hospitals and institutions of higher education to convince the tax-exempt bond market to support their physical expansion or modernization. And it’s an attribute every chief executive of every nonprofit institution needs to possess.

Put simply, fundraising is nothing more than salesmanship. It’s persuasiveness at work. It’s a performing art.

No parents should shy away from acknowledging that their kids have mastered this form of stagecraft.

Let me begin, then, with a confession.

I like raising money. I like everything about it.

The science of solidly grounded research. The process of solving the mystery of human motivation. The skill of asking well, face to face. Formulating a persuasive written proposal to which the reader cannot reply negatively. Organizing the well-designed, well-executed, well-received special event.

Helping a successful executive find new meaning and joy in life from a charitable gift. Assisting a corporate vice president to identify the perfect intersection, the sweet spot, where business interest and societal need intersect. Inspiring veteran trustees to do more to strengthen their institutions and recruit newcomers to the cause. Unleashing the energy that animates private acts for the public good.

How could anyone not be moved by the challenge of these activities and by the nobility of the ends they seek to realize?

Using language and images evocatively to convince and enchant. Transforming ideas and dreams into realities by eliciting that magic word, yes, from an individual, a foundation staffer, or a company executive.

Listening carefully to donors allows you to bring back invaluable observations to the line staff of your agency and assist in their quest for continuous improvement.

Raising funds from donors helps to create and sustain environments in which gifted professionals can do their best work.

What a thrill. What a high.

In the year 2007, $306 billion of charitable funds were raised, a new record, 3.9 percent above the prior year. This sum is 2.1 percent of America’s gross domestic product. And billions more found their way to nonprofits through a dazzling variety of in-kind gifts and from marketing, sales, advertising, and human resource budgets, forms of support that go largely uncounted by such authoritative sources as Giving USA.

But who among us does not fail to imagine by how many orders of magnitude that figure could grow, and what such growth could mean to healing the sick, training the unemployed, educating the student, researching tomorrow’s cure, maintaining our nation’s competitiveness, and eliminating poverty, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and starvation from the face of the earth?

The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more rose to 8.4 million in 2006, up from 6 million in 2001. The number of households with a net worth of $5 million or more now exceeds 1 million.¹ It’s not just about the title of best-selling books.² The millionaire next door and the middle-class millionaire are realities. And in the aggregate, Americans have been giving away to charity somewhat more than they collectively save each year.

Are we reaching to such new and expanded sources of unimaginable affluence in our midst: the beneficiaries of the commercial real estate boom, or the explosion of wealth that characterizes the private equity and hedge fund communities, for example?

Are we expanding our boards of directors and asking our trustees to give in proportion to their means and in accordance with their most generous impulses?

Are we learning adequately from the successes of others? The pluperfect benefit that sends the donor home thanking you for the opportunity; the direct mail solicitation that breaks through the clutter of busy lives to sing “We need your help” in a not-to-be-denied melody and lyric; the cultivation of leadership that takes off with powerful, peer-driven asking?

So much of the health of the institution you represent resides in how effectively you embrace its mission, harness the energy of advocates, and rally the fortunate to its cause.

Occasional setbacks in the national economy are more likely to be speed bumps than serious barriers to fundraising success. As I write, debate ensues about whether the American economy is in a recession and, if so, for how long and how deep. Short and shallow is my guess. But no matter, don’t let the naysayers and skeptics, the preachers of doom and gloom slow you down, or alter your mood. The power of positive thinking is the very fuel that animates the best fundraisers and salesmen.

Just consider what could have happened to prevent or cure disease, to alleviate poverty, to expand rates of literacy and numeracy, if individual giving and bequests had grown from 2001 to 2006 not at a compound annual rate of 5.3 percent and 3 percent, respectively, but at roughly double that rate 10.5 percent, and 5.9 percent, respectively. Such improved performance would have yielded a total of $62.5 billion in philanthropy, increasing individual giving from the base year 2001 of $172.4 billion not to its real figure of $222.9 billion but to $284.6 billion. Similarly, bequests would have grown from a 2001 base year of $19.8 billion, not to the real figure of $22.9 billion but to $26.4 billion.

By only doubling the rate of growth of individual and bequest giving, contributors in America would have moved overall from $295 billion in contributions to $360 billion by 2006, for a 22 percent growth rate.

Okay, the past is gone and we cannot do anything to improve performance retroactively. Looking to the future, then, if we take the 2006 total of $295 billion and assume its compound annual growth rate is identical to prior years, we will arrive at 2011 with a total giving figure of $377.5 billion. However, if we set an achievable goal of doubling the compound rate of growth of individual and bequest giving, that total will be 22 percent larger, or $461.3 billion. Just imagine how these additional funds would help to address the pressing issues of global warming, of access to and graduation from the nation’s colleges and universities, of reducing substance abuse and funding safe, proven alternatives to incarceration in this country.

To state the gap between the promise of fundraising and its performance another way, consider generosity geographically, ranked by states.³ While California and New York enjoy the highest aggregate wealth as measured by investment assets, according to a six-year study by the New Tithing Group, a San Francisco-based think tank, these states rank twenty-first and twenty-third in terms of generosity, giving about 0.74 percent of their income to charity annually.

By contrast, affluent residents of Utah and Oklahoma donate 1.63 percent and 1.05 percent, respectively, in annual giving.

Consider this: If the top earners in the nation’s five wealthiest states (California, New York, Florida, Texas, and Illinois) donated at the rate of the benefactors in the five most generous (Utah, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Georgia), giving from individuals would have risen in 2005 by $13 billion.

Generosity is unevenly distributed geographically. Raising the level of giving from those states in which more wealthy people live to those in which the affluent give most generously would work wonders. Expanding where generosity lives is a terrific challenge for fundraisers and a tonic for some of the most serious problems that ail the nation and the planet.

AMERICA’S CHARITABLE POTENTIAL

Let your imagination take hold in yet another way. Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist who is leading an effort to eliminate poverty and vastly reduce mortality and morbidity in the Third World, dreams grandly:

According to Forbes magazine, there are some 950 billionaires in the world, with an estimated combined wealth of $3.5 trillion. Even after all the yachts, mansions and luxury living that money can buy many times over, these billionaires will still have nearly $3.5 trillion to save the world. Suppose they pooled their wealth, as [Warren] Buffett has done with Bill and Melinda Gates. By standard principles of foundation management, a $3.5 trillion endowment would have a 5% payout of about $175 billion a year, an amount sufficient to extend basic health care to all in the poorest world; end massive pandemics of AIDS, TB and malaria; jump-start an African Green Revolution; end the digital divide; and address the crying need for safe drinking water for 1 billion people. In short, this billionaire’s foundation would be enough to end extreme poverty itself.⁴

Whether by increasing the rate of growth of giving by American individuals and institutions, or by spreading generosity more evenly across state boundaries or by persuading the ultra-rich to emulate the Buffett and Gates families, what remains abundantly clear is how much room there is for improvement in our performance as fundraisers.

I write Yours for the Asking out of a conviction that fundraising is an important ingredient of what makes great things happen in our inventive, problem-solving nonprofit sector and out of a strong sense that we who are charged with the privilege of raising funds can do better. Much better.

America is the richest country on earth. And while the municipal, state, and federal governments have indispensable roles to play, as do socially responsible businesses, we have yet to witness anything like the full flowering of American philanthropy.

Will another generation of public school kids be deprived of the education they deserve?

Will it be said of this generation that by dint of our efforts, the beginning of the end of poverty truly occurred for the 2 billion people on earth who live on two dollars or less each day?

How soon will cures for Parkinson’s disease and cancer be found?

In the chain of human improvement, those who play leadership roles in nonprofit institutions can be among the strongest links.

I urge you to go about your business with energy, determination, and pride. Much that matters depends on your performance. Many in need know not how much they rely on your skill, professionalism, and attitude.

My reference to “attitude” is no accident. My kinship with those who raise money voluntarily, or for a living, is rooted in their conviction that problems are really opportunities and that obstacles are really minor roadblocks. And my affinity with you flows from your optimism and resilience.

Prospective donors who turn us down never mean no. They mean “now is not the time,” or “less,” or “have someone else ask me,” or “craft your case more effectively.” But our cause is too important, our clients too needy, our world in too much disrepair to take no for an answer. For all of us, the word “no” must be the beginning of a conversation.

In short, the best of those who call development their obligation or their profession are strong believers in Noah’s principle, which says “No more credit for predicting rain. Credit only for building arks.”

Yours for the Asking is intended to be an ark-building primer, a back-to-basics, Fundraising 101 written by someone who has raised money all of his life. I have done so as a professional, principally at the 92nd Street Y, a community center of some distinction located in Manhattan; at the International Rescue Committee, one of the largest and most consequential refugee relief organizations in the world; and at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the most comprehensive institution of its kind anywhere. As a trustee, I’ve raised funds for dozens of organizations on whose boards I served. And as a philanthropist, it has been my privilege to guide millions of dollars of gifts at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, hundreds of millions of donations as the president of the AT&T Foundation, and well over $2 million in our family’s personal giving.

I cite our family’s own proclivity to give for three reasons.

First, it is virtually impossible to ask others to behave in a way contrary to your own conduct. Asking well works when the solicitor is a true believer, a missionary of sorts. The test of that conviction is more than moving prose or spirited rhetoric. You can open the mind of the prospect wider if you have opened your own wallet or pocketbook before your visit. Giving is infectious. The virus of philanthropy starts with the solicitor.

Second, my wife and I have always built donations into our annual budget. We set aside 10 percent of what we earn to benefit others. We do so out of an ardent belief in our obligation to help needy causes and people.

Read the Talmud:

It is not required of thee to complete the task, but neither art thou free to desist therefrom. . . . He who saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole world.

Or consult the Bible (I Corinthians):

And now abideth faith, hope, charit...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• ALSO BY REYNOLD LEVY
• Acknowledgements
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 - FUNDRAISING: A CALL TO ALMS, A CALL TO ACTION
• CHAPTER 2 - SOLICITING INDIVIDUAL PROSPECTS
• CHAPTER 3 - ASKING, FACE TO FACE
• CHAPTER 4 - THE INSTITUTIONAL DONOR: CORPORATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS
• CHAPTER 5 - TECHNIQUE: SPECIAL EVENTS AND DIRECT MAIL
• CHAPTER 6 - TOUGH QUESTIONS: CANDID ANSWERS
• CHAPTER 7 - A PASSPORT TO SUCCESSFUL FUNDRAISING: LESSONS OF A LIFETIME
• CHAPTER 8 - HUMOR AND FUNDRAISING
• CHAPTER 9 - FUNDRAISING: DIMENSIONS OF THE FUTURE
• CHAPTER 10 - QUOTATIONS THAT MATTER
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• APPENDIX I - FUNDRAISING ON STEROIDS: LINCOLN CENTER
• APPENDIX II - NONPROFIT BOARD OF DIRECTORS SIZE: A NATIONAL SAMPLER AND LINCOLN CENTER
• APPENDIX III
• APPENDIX IV - THREE DIRECT MAIL HOME RUNS FROM THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE
• NOTES
• INDEX