I’m a big fan of using what works, particularly in fundraising. I believe in the effectiveness of direct mail. I subscribe to the donor pyramid. I know a strong case for support is king. Why re-invent the core principals?
But, as we’ve been working with more and more fundraising operations, big and small, I’ve started to think that maybe the core pillars of fundraising as they have existed for some time aren’t quite as strong as I thought.
Maybe a capital campaign doesn’t have to follow a formula. Maybe the mail doesn’t work for some organizations. Maybe not every organization should have a major gift program.
My ruminations on this were brought home to me when I read this Blackbaud report on Diversity in Giving. It seems that the fundraising assumptions that many of us have been holding for many decades may be engaging a less diverse donor base – so it’s not working on everyone.
In fact, the report says: “Philanthropy today looks like the America of 25 years ago.”
A couple of highlights from the report:
- Nearly three-fourths of donors today are non-Hispanic whites, despite the fact that whites make up only 64 percent of the population.
- African-Americans and Hispanics are under-represented in the donor universe. Asian donor participation appears congruent with the Asian population size.
- African-American and Hispanic donors report being solicited less frequently by nonprofits. They suggest they would give more if they were asked more often.
- Nearly half of Asians are more likely to support a friend or family’s request for a donation to a cause, and this group is nearly twice as likely to give via crowdfunding.
I’ve also recently run across this great blog post from Vu Le on Why Individual Giving Strategies Often Don’t Work for Communities of Color that is really worth reading.
In this blog, Vu points out that while fundraising convention encourages organizations to diversify their funding base through individual giving, the assumption that creating an individual program is a no-brainer is flawed.
As Vu says, taking traditional fundraising practices and applying them to communities of color is like “using a spoon to eat spaghetti—you can do it, but it will be slow, messy, and difficult. If we are going to engage communities of color in fundraising, either as donors or as fundraisers, we have to understand cultural context.”
Think about planned giving programs, giving clubs, donor recognition walls, face-to-face solicitation. It’s all in the context of the tradition of mainstream philanthropy that has been in place for decades.
But each of those pieces (and many other pieces of fundraising scripture) could be thought about very differently in a cultural context. Not only could some of these tools fail to take (and I have seen that for sure), but they could also be downright offensive.
One of the mainstays of personal solicitation is looking someone in the eye. But that can give different signals to some and can be seen as aggressive or rude.
Look, I’m a white woman who fundraised for 20 years in one of the whitest verticals of the nonprofit sector – environmentalism. I’m no expert on what this evolution of fundraising is going to take.
But I’m very glad to re-examine some of our assumptions. I’m excited to consider that sometimes it will be OK to use the donor pyramid. Sometimes it will make sense to start a major giving program. Sometimes it will work to do a classic capital campaign. But definitely not always…
What can you weave into your fundraising that takes this shift into account?
