– January 2013

“70% of Charities Forecast Rise in Donations in 2013”

– April 2013

What story do these two headlines, which were published only three months apart in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, reveal about the state of fundraising for nonprofits? It’s a story of contradictions. Why would a group of professionals, expecting a more successful year than in the past seven years, have such job dissatisfaction?

Despite the fact that most nonprofits are expecting an upturn in donations, most organizations still won’t reach their full fundraising potential until their development leaders are happier and more satisfied with their jobs.

The bad news first:

Released in January 2013, “UnderDeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising” reveals that systemic problems within nonprofits result in dissatisfied heads of development and fundraising feeling as though they are not reaching their potential. The study, a joint project of CompassPoint and the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, highlights three key findings:

1) High turnover and long vacancies;

2) Lack of qualified candidates;

3) Organizational cultures that don’t support fundraising success.

Top fundraisers are too often working within a system that doesn’t approach fundraising holistically; despite development’s critical role in ensuring that the purpose of the organization is achieved (not to mention, simply keeping the lights on), often staff outside of development don’t feel connected to fundraising, don’t feel a responsibility for it and often don’t even understand it.

Now for some good news:

The economy is improving. Unemployment is down and people are feeling more confident; all of this historically leads to increased giving by individuals, institutions and corporations. A study by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, “Nonprofit Fundraising Study,” shows that 58% of surveyed nonprofits in the U.S. and Canada saw an increase in giving in 2012, 63% met their 2012 fundraising goals and 70% expect an increase in giving in 2013.

With an upturn in giving, nonprofit professionals must take a hard look at what is and isn’t working in their development efforts, ensuring that the turnaround isn’t a missed opportunity for their organizations.

And finally, some news you can use:

Among a variety of recommendations for improving fundraising results, provided by these two studies, there are several ways that Edelman can be especially helpful to our nonprofit clients.

• Engage all divisions in fundraising: One organization, Fight Colorectal Cancer, saw a 400% increase in individual giving during March 1 – April 15 of this year when compared to the same time last year. Fight Colorectal Cancer’s Executive Director, Carlea Bauman attributes that, in part, to engaging events, such as one in Times Square, and higher visibility through media outreach. Development isn’t seen as one person’s role, it’s an organizational-wide responsibility.
• Develop compelling content: The aforementioned “Nonprofit Fundraising Survey” showed that two types of online engagement were especially helpful to fundraising: free information, such as white papers or research studies, and infographics.
• Strategic stakeholder engagement: Many nonprofits will need to focus their resources and hone in on what yields the most return. Edelman, as a counselor with an external perspective, can help them do this.
• Communications tactics should fit the audience: Nonprofits need a crystal clear picture of who is donating and where the largest amount of money is coming from. With that information, communications strategies and tactics can be targeted to fit the audience. Chances are, a variety of tactics and approaches will be needed to meet a diverse audience; ensuring these tactics complement and reinforce each other is something for which the Edelman team is invaluable.

]]> http://purpose.edelman.com/how-strategic-planning-engagement-can-improve-fundraising-for-nonprofits/feed/ 0 http://purpose.edelman.com/girl-scouts-of-the-usa-turning-girls-into-smart-cookies/ http://purpose.edelman.com/girl-scouts-of-the-usa-turning-girls-into-smart-cookies/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 16:20:45 +0000 The goodpurpose team http://purpose.edelman.com/?p=5538 ...]]> This post originally appeared as a case study on Edelman.com.

The facts are staggering:

• 35 percent of girls ages 8-17 in the U.S. say they would not be comfortable being a leader
• 38 percent say they are not sure they are cut out to be a leader at all
• Four out of 10 girls say they have had no opportunities to interact with successful women during the last school year

Charged with celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the iconic youth organization for girls, Girl Scouts of the USA, Edelman knew it wanted to go above and beyond a simple membership push or a centennial celebration. Instead, the firm helped create ToGetHerThere – a Girl Scouts advocacy and fundraising cause to ensure balanced leadership within one generation. The effort is the largest campaign dedicated to girls’ leadership in the organization’s history.

To launch the movement, Edelman hosted a New York event that featured a panel of female leaders, including ABC News journalist, Deborah Roberts; editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, Joanna Coles; and finance editor for NBC’s ”Today Show,” Jean Chatzky. In Washington, D.C., 25 members of Congress were joined by an audience of nearly 500 at a launch event on Capitol Hill.

Edelman Digital created an interactive website, urging visitors to get informed, make their opinions known to legislators and contribute to the initiative’s goal of raising $1 billion in 10 years for the cause.

The firm created print ads, which appeared on billboards and bus shelters, as well as in subways, airports and publications. Edelman also handled the radio ads for the campaign and worked with crowdsourced video company Poptent to create television public service announcements (below and additional one here). To reach a broader audience, all materials were translated into Spanish.

“This is a critically important initiative for girls all across the country, not just Girl Scouts,” said journalist Katie Couric in an interview on “Good Morning America.”

So far, the campaign has raised awareness of the Girl Scouts’ vision for girls’ leadership and triggered memorable moments, including 11 of the 17 female U.S. Senators who were former Girl Scouts assembling on Capitol Hill, and congresswoman Loretta Sanchez wiping away a tear while relating that as the young daughter of Mexican parents, she made her first friends after joining the Girl Scouts.

Additionally, media coverage generated 760 million impressions; the website sparked 180,000 visits and nearly 8,000 advocacy actions; the Facebook page drew more than 4,000 “likes;” and the Twitter handlegained over 1,000 followers.

Importantly, the campaign has just begun. Watch this space.

The longevity of a nonprofit depends on the support of like-minded individuals who are connected to the organization and feel inspired by its mission and values. These brand ambassadors make up the brand community and are the backbone of a nonprofit. There are key questions a nonprofit should ask when engaging their external constituents: Who is your brand community? How will you foster the brand community? How will you grow the brand community and empower champions?

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival began as an idea for local theater to save Stratford, Ontario from economic upheaval. The theater is now regarded as an institution of international renown because of its diverse and loyal brand community. Even 60 years ago, founder Tom Patterson realized the importance of a critical mass of key influencers, and utilized their passion to develop Stratford’s brand ambassadors.

Breakthrough Nonprofit Brands like Stratford think of community-building as an ongoing journey that starts with cultivating individual relationships and moving supporters down a continuum of engagement. BNBs mobilize diverse external communities from base to breakthrough through three success factors: cultivating (base), fostering (build) and growing the brand community (breakthrough). The core focus behind these steps is to understand, serve, nurture and empower the brand community. Here’s a snapshot and summary of the major philosophy behind this strategy:

Base: Cultivate a Brand Community

Breakthrough Nonprofit Brands proactively build diverse communities and believe in the power of activation to achieve change. The foundation of a BNB community lies in the strength of its individual relationships, built through understanding people’s passions and interests. To BNBs, these individuals aren’t just people; they are friends that are going on a journey to achieve something together. Individuals begin as participants, witnessing the organization’s positive impact, and from then on are moved along a continuum of engagement. The BNB attracts participants by communicating the vast benefits of membership and creating a deep sense of belonging.

Build: Fostering the Brand Community By Nurturing Supporters

BNBs foster the community through activities and shared experiences and allow individuals to engage on every level. The key component is storytelling, and appealing to the heart through a more personal connection. BNBs use stories to instill belief in the organization and to create a stronger bond with the organization, what it stands for and the impact it has made. A powerful nonprofit will provide its supporters with ways to fulfill their own interests and needs, promote a cycle of credibility by connecting individuals to its social mission and tangible results, and convince individuals to adopt its mission to reflect their own values.

Breakthrough: Grow the Brand Community & Empower Champions

BNBs reframe their case for involvement to appeal to disparate groups. They utilize unique ways to put their mission and values into the hands of new groups, and attempt to build connections with them through unique types of participation. BNBs partner with leaders in new target communities and encourage them to bring new participants to the journey.

Tying it Together & Stratford Today

Through this approach, a brand can expand its external community and encourage individuals to adopt the organization’s brand meaning as a part of their own personal identity. Today, The Stratford Shakespeare Festival continues to expand its brand and develop its community through its marketing and by engaging with new and unexpected audiences through social media.

What are your strategies for developing your brand community? How do convince potential brand ambassadors to adopt your organization’s mission?

Philosophy’s Shower for the Cure

Philosophy donates 100% of the profits from this delightful shower gel to women’s cancer research. Perfect and simple gift for mom!

Raven + Lily: Empowering Women Through Design

This site features an array of handmade, beautiful gifts. “Raven + Lily currently helps employ marginalized women in Africa, India, Cambodia and the United States at fair trade wages to give them access to a safe job, sustainable income, healthcare, education, and a real chance to break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families. Every product from Raven + Lily is handmade, fair trade and eco-friendly.”

Apolis

Similar to Raven + Lily, this B-Corporation works with manufacturers and artisans worldwide, helping them in turn access the global market. Click here to choose which region you’d like to support.

Don’t forget that TOMS has expanded to eyewear!

The company’s famous buy-one-give-one model includes all of their footwear, and in 2011 expanded to eyewear. So get your mom some comfortable shoes, or some sweet shades. Someone in the developing world will get a pair (or eyecare!), too.

Save The Children: Gift Catalog

The organization behind the annual and riveting State of the World’s Mothers Report has a gift catalog that brings incredible help to families in the developing world. Gift purchases include a personalized card letting your loved one know what you donated in his/her name. Purchase preschool care and education, a goat or a donkey!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Maplecroft, a global risk and strategic consulting firm in the U.K., noted recently that “resilience to major weather ….events is not improving in some of the world’s most important growth markets, leaving large sections of their populations, essential infrastructure and economies at ‘extreme risk.’”

That view aligns with that of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index.  The open-source GAIN Index underlines that climate change, population growth, urbanization and resource scarcity jeopardize urbanizing nations.

Why should we care?  Because we care about humanity and should make it a priority to help the most vulnerable adapt.  And because supply chains and investors are exposed to greater risk than anticipated as natural disasters exacerbate other political and societal risks.

Maplecroft describes an interesting contrast. Its Socio-Economic Resilience Index ranks the U.S. at 169^th and ‘low risk,’ even though it features in the “20 most at-risk countries for exposure to hurricanes, tsunamis, extra-tropical cyclones, storm surges, flooding, volcanic risk and wildfires.” The Philippine’s socio-economic resilience to natural disasters, meanwhile, ranks No. 65 and ‘high risk’ because, while it has registered strong economic growth over the last four years, “better disaster resilience has not materialized,” which keeps its index ranking unchanged.

The WEF Global Risks 2013 Eighth Edition posits that the twin threats of economic upheaval and accelerating climate change will collide during the next decade, delaying adaptation efforts while exposing nations to unpredictable financial loss from disasters. It contends that denser cities are more threatened by higher temperatures, exacerbated drought, storms and heat waves, although rural areas certainly are vulnerable from many of these weather-related events. I do see a big climate risk derived from the ongoing population shift toward coastal zones.

In the CDP Supply Chain Report 2012-13, “Reducing Risk and Driving Business Value,” 70 percent identify a current or future risk related to climate change. Seventy-three percent say they feel that climate change presents a physical risk to their operations.  More than half of the supply-chain risks identified due to drought and precipitation extremes already are affecting respondents’ operations or are expected to have an effect within the next five years.  According to the survey, the primary impacts will be a reduction/disruption in production capacity and increased operational costs.

Since 2011, the World Economic Forum has been leading a Supply Chain Risk Initiative to consider safeguards for global supply chains.  Among other priorities, it aims to:

• More explicitly assess supply chain and transport risks as part of procurement, management and governance processes
• Develop trusted networks of suppliers, customers, competitors and government focused on risk management
• Improve network risk visibility, through two-way information-sharing and collaborative development of standardized risk assessment and quantification tools
• Improve pre- and post-event communication on systemic disruptions and balance security and facilitation to bring a more balanced public discussion

Combining those with a Ten Point Checklist for Making Corporations Resilient and Asking the Climate Question: How to Create a Climate Adaptation Plan would deliver a robust execution plan.

So, as you consider your supply chains, you might want to ponder if food shortages, fragile states, variable water supplies and the vagaries of emerging economies have affected it before, since these geopolitical, societal, environmental and economic factors are likely to be stressed simultaneously by climate change in the future.

Especially since these issues are likely to take priority for limited resources, it is worth considering how climate adaptation can be a collateral benefit of actions aimed primarily at nearer-term economic, geopolitical, societal and environmental factors. If we don’t, twining these threats with accelerating climate change could collide in the next decade, delaying adaptation efforts while exposing companies to unpredictable financial loss from disasters.

In celebration of ten, here are ten qualities that a built-to-last sustainable citizenship program must have:

1. Brand Focus: Deeply understand your organization, including goals, assets and challenges. Select a cause that is aligned with your corporate goals and is core to the brand.

2. Connected Leadership: The most powerful programs are “leader-led.” Consumers want to see values-based leadership from companies and brands, with a long-term commitment to addressing societal issues.

3. Thoughtful Construction: Start with program depth versus scale. Build authentic and credible long-term plans and strategies that maximize the impact your investment can make.

4. Integrated Measurement: That which gets measured gets done. Incorporate measurement into all phases of program design and activation, with balanced metrics for social and business impacts.

5. Employee Involvement: Whenever possible, turn employees and/or volunteers into ambassadors. Include them in program development as well as execution.

6. Multi-dimensional Engagement: Partner with NGOs for credibility and content; with customers, consumers, communities and others to fuel movements to advance the issue.

7. Local Customization: Powerful and lasting initiatives must have programmatic components and partner options that can be tailored for local adoption.

8. Shared Ownership: Create degrees of freedom for individual consumer/volunteer activation within a set framework, in order to give appropriate amounts of “ownership” away.  Enabling others to act independently can build bridges, passion and impact.

9. Authentic Narration: Storytelling is key to building emotion and engagement. Find the stories internally (from your employees, volunteers) and externally (from beneficiaries, consumers) and tell them viscerally and visually.

10. Continuous Innovation: Constantly evolve program elements to stay relevant, maintaining careful focus on your program’s original vision and goals. Remember that goals are long-term, strategies mid-term and tactics short-term.

This post is produced by B+SP’s Corporate Citizenship Center of Excellence, a team of experts, idealists and actionists committed to driving mutual benefit for business and society through the development and support of purpose-driven corporate citizenship efforts. To view the previous post, click here.

From philanthropic activities to today’s sustainability agenda, companies worldwide have certainly come a long way. For centuries, a company’s basic social role was understood simply as providing jobs and paying taxes. More generous entrepreneurs added charity work to this mix, and some of them sought to generate greater social impact by utilizing corporate resources. In doing so, they created the foundations of corporate social investment, as companies supplied not just funds, but principles and management tools to increase NGO efficiency.

In order to reconcile financial results with the fight against environmental degradation and social inequity, the concept of the triple bottom line arose. Companies began to be evaluated for their environmental and social performance in addition to their economic performance. Since then, business models are adapting to meet sustainability guidelines and standards, and business commitments consider all stakeholders – not just shareholders.

Another equally important transformation has occurred in recent years. The power and activism of citizens has grown considerably thanks to social, political and technological factors, calling into question the traditional pyramid of influence in which elites – brands, leaders, politicians, etc. – could transmit empty messages to powerless consumers, often sculpting public opinion in the process.

The aforementioned developments affect and alter the process of brand building. A brand cannot just be known – it must be recognized and respected in order to mobilize and strengthen bonds with stakeholders.

Communications in this new world begins with the company’s purpose – its reason for being – and its values. These elements define the gravitational field of a brand, attracting people through identification and keeping them in orbit through reason and emotion. A brand becomes relevant to its stakeholders when it shares aspirations, opinions, styles and causes. The brand is strengthened and minimizes risk when it is genuine, true, fair and proactive. Relevance and transparency, therefore, is what gives substance to communications.

The means by which brands transmit their messages has also expanded. The reign of traditional media is over. Today, every medium can be considered strategic for establishing dialogues: blogs, social media, search engines, the companies’ own channels: All companies are also media companies.

Public relations is the discipline that best responds to all of these changes, because in its nature lies consideration for the views and interests of others. Its historical focus is the conversation and the sharing of value, established in complex and fragmented environments.

Simple brand exposure, paid or unpaid, endorsed by quantitative metrics is no longer enough to ensure a brand’s survival in the new market. Nowadays, brand purpose is as critical to the business as is strategic management of its relationships.

Yacoff Sarkovas is the CEO of Edelman Significa in Brazil.

Amway’s One by One Campaign for Children

Ten years in, Amway has remarkably and positively impacted 10 million children around the world. One by One’s mission is centered around inspiring and encouraging individual actions for children in need. When identifying a cause platform in 2003, we needed to determine an issue that could galvanize Amway’s international distributors and employees, while staying true to their corporate vision. Through interviews with their people, we found that helping children in need was a cause close to their hearts. With the combined effort of 3 million distributors, 20,000 employees and several partnering organizations, Amway’s One by One Campaign for Children has implemented efforts such as integrating better nutrition at schools in rural China, disbursing life-saving immunizations for African youth and many more impactful initiatives. Since its inception in 2003, nearly 2.7 million employee volunteer hours have been logged and over $190 million has been donated towards children’s causes. Though this cause program has achieved much, Amway continues to challenge themselves, their distributors and their employees to deepen their impact through the One by One campaign.

American Heart Association’s ‘Go Red for Women’

This February 1^st, the American Heart Association painted the country red. Literally: The Empire State Building, the city of Cincinnati, even Elvis’ Graceland were all illuminated in red in honor of the 10^th Annual Wear Red Day. Here at Edelman, employees were outfitted in shades of carmine, poppy and crimson to show their support for a critical cause—heart disease in women. Due to 10 years of this program, 330 fewer women die of heart disease each day. In their commitment towards this issue, Go Red for Women has spread awareness among women about heart disease, and challenged them to assess their risk of getting it and take action to prevent it. By giving women the tools to lead a healthy lifestyle, the American Heart Association has impacted the lives of many. Go Red for Women has also funded significant research in preventing heart disease. This campaign’s efforts in spreading awareness for this common killer have been far-reaching and successful, and Go Red for Women will continue its tremendous work until heart disease in women becomes obsolete.

PNC’s ‘Grow Up Great’

In 2003, PNC found meaning in an emergent cause: school readiness. As the bank serves as a supportive pillar in the communities in which it operates, PNC found it vital to strengthen those communities through their rising generations. Its program, Grow Up Great, has since grown into the nation’s foremost corporate commitment to early childhood education. This 10-year, $100 million initiative to help prepare underserved children from birth-to-age-5 for success in school through advocacy, grant making, education volunteerism and measurement has led the field in its strategic thinking, outcomes and social leadership. Grow Up Great has also created strong partnerships and content with prominent players for this target age group, including Sesame Workshop, Head Start and The Fred Rogers Company. To date, more than 1 million preschool age children have been impacted through PNC Grow Up Great grants and programs emphasizing math, science and the arts. What’s more, fifty-five percent of employees strongly agree that PNC Grow Up Great gives them a sense of pride and they are nearly nine times more likely to be engaged with their jobs. PNC has given more than $43 million in Grow Up Great grants, and more than 75,000 teachers have received professional development.

As a result of the success of this program, in October 2011, PNC extended its commitment to early childhood education by $250 million for an additional 10 years. This extension will strengthen existing programs in math and the arts, expand the successful ‘Grow Up Great with Science’ program and equip nonprofit organizations to facilitate financial education instruction for preschoolers.

In celebration of these 10-year anniversaries, we’ve created a list of 10 qualities that a built-to-last sustainable citizenship program must have. We’ll be posting it in a few days, so please stay tuned and check back later this week for this indispensable list. [UPDATE: Please click here to view the 10 qualities!]

This post is produced by B+SP’s Corporate Citizenship Center of Excellence (COE), a team of experts, idealists and actionists committed to driving mutual benefit for business and society through the development and support of purpose-driven corporate citizenship efforts. To view the previous COE post, please click here.

This post originally appeared on edelman.com on April 22, 2013. We couldn’t be more excited about the smartphone physical’s implications for purpose, particularly in the developing world.

____

Above is my carotid artery — delivered to me via email, after being shown to me in the course of my first smartphone physical.

Yes, a smartphone physical.

Last week at TEDMED in Washington, D.C., I was given a physical in the hallway of the Kennedy Center via medical technology designed to work through a smartphone. No fewer than 10 separate tests assessing weight, body fat percentage, heart electrophysiology, visual acuity, optic disk visualization, ear canal visualization, thyroid condition, blood pressure, lung function and oxygen saturation levels were given. The results were sent to me instantly via my smartphone.

In less than 30 minutes (and fully clothed) this physical powerfully demonstrated the progress we have made in making health care accessible, engaging, time-efficient, portable and instantaneous. Medgadget curated the technologies that are now made by companies including iHealth Labs, CellScope and ThinkLabs.

Imagine the possibilities for rural health, low-resource health settings and global health: the ability to capture information in one location and have it interpreted within minutes in another place, with medical expertise provided via telemedicine. This is made possible by more portable technology, literally in a physician’s pocket, which will greatly expand our definition of “point of care.”

A minority of TEDMED delegates expressed positive or even neutral descriptions of their most recent physicals. Most delegates participating in the experience collectively described their traditional physicals with words like “time-consuming,” “boring,” “rushed,” “forgettable,” “uneventful,” “tedious” and “unremarkable.”  One said, “I felt like my data were hidden from me.” Those having the smartphone version referred to it as “engaging,” “interactive,” “easy,” “personal,” “time-efficient” and as something that made them feel like they were “a partner versus a patient.”

Smartphone technology holds the potential to help both physicians and patients, and to lead to a more productive and satisfying interaction on both sides of the exam room. Physicians will be able to share with patients what they see and hear. Patients can better understand what the physician is assessing, and they might even collect their own clinically relevant data, much as we collect cheek swabs to send to DNA testing companies.

The traditional physical is both essential and in need of a makeover. Smartphone technology that finds its way to the clinic is adopted by physicians and proves this cost-effective system holds the potential to reinvigorate and modernize one of the most basic and important pillars of medical practice. Get ready!

Kym White is the global practice chair, Health.

Here at Edelman, we give a lot of thought year-round to inspiring people to engage. We often work with corporate clients to create “spectrums” of volunteer opportunities for their employees that range from low engagement (e.g. book drives, one-time hands-on volunteer events) to high engagement (e.g. executive nonprofit board service, six month pro bono contracts). But there’s another kind of spectrum that’s important to consider when looking to inspire engagement – a generational spectrum.

Often professionals of different generations and different stages of their careers are looking for different things from their company’s employee volunteer program. Below are a few examples of how companies can think along the generational spectrum.

How is your company thinking along the generational volunteer spectrum? This National Volunteer Week, we encourage you to take some time to brainstorm how you might cater to employees at each stage of their career development through your employee volunteer program.

This post is produced in partnership by Edelman’s Employee Engagement practice and B+SP’s Corporate Citizenship Center of Excellence, a team of experts, idealists, and actionists committed to driving mutual benefit for business and society through the development and support of purpose-driven corporate citizenship efforts. Click to see the previous post here.

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