For many of us (baseball fans), spring officially arrived this weekend. Whichever team you support, may their ball season be as productive and rewarding as your fundraising year.
And as you revitalize your new-year’s resolutions and strategies for fundraising, consider an interesting article we came across over the weekend. Written by Sean Stannard-Stockton, CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors and the author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog, it presents three kinds of giving and three ways to raise money for each of those kinds of giving. This particular article he posted on The Stanford Social Innovation Review.
The first of the three forms is ‘Charitable Giving,’ which involves an approach to giving (and a campaign of outreach to those givers) rather like a sales pitch. As Sean defined it on his own blog a month ago, “The effective Charitable Giver, like a savvy shopper purchasing things on their own behalf, wants the best value for their expenditures. So the effective Charitable Giver needs to first decide what category of social value they are interested in purchasing (education, environment, arts appreciation, etc) and then comparison shop for the best value for their grant dollars.”
The next is ‘Philanthropic Investment.’ He builds this idea on George M. Overholser’s study and call-to-action, Nonprofit Growth Capital. Part I: Building Is Not Buying:
Building the Enterprise (e.g. investing capital towards the creation of a tutoring outfit) requires growth capital and close stewardship. It requires a patient process of trial and error. It is highly technical and has a high risk of failure. More often than not, it requires major shifts in strategic direction, and major shifts in personnel. Also, it is an episodic thing – once an enterprise is built, the builders can go on to other projects. Indeed, it is precisely by dismantling their growth capital “scaffolding” that they prove they have built an enterprise that can stand on its own.
Finally, “Strategic philanthropy seeks to buy nonprofit goods and services in a way that aligns with a theory of change defined by the strategic philanthropist, or to invest in the growth of nonprofits needed for the theory’s success. Unlike philanthropic investors and charitable givers who provide resources to a nonprofit so that it may pursue a theory of change, strategic philanthropists are concerned primarily with their own theory of change.”
Each of these kinds of philanthropy, he continues, requires a different kind of outreach because each giver has a different view of what she or his is trying to accomplish. If you don’t speak to that person’s interests, you might not make a meaningful connection or get that person’s gifts. For your organization, as you develop strategies for Q2-4, you want to take careful consideration of each organization and (potential) donor you want to contact.
Think of it as fine-tuning your pitching staff to get the best possible results from each batter you need to face. The best part of this game, though, is that both the pitcher and the hitter want a home run.
