Donor Dollars to Donor Engagement? Where Is Your Focus?

Think about the last nonprofit you donated to. After contributing money and maybe receiving an email or letter recognizing your donation, do you feel like that nonprofit staff knows you or your passions? Do they know what causes you care about? 

If you said no, you are (unfortunately) among the vast majority. 80% of people don’t believe the nonprofit they support knows anything about their preferences. Making matters worse, 65% say they would give more if they felt the nonprofit actually knew them.

Those are shocking numbers to anyone and a scary reality for the individuals trying to accomplish mission-driven work at one of the more than 1.9 million nonprofits in our country.

Considering that there was a $243 billion dollar pot of philanthropic money given in 2016, connecting with supporters in order to gain a bigger piece of that pie seems of utmost importance.

I’ve been an active supporter of nonprofits — specifically Veteran nonprofits or “Veteran Serving Organizations (VSOs)” — for most of my life. I’ve served on nonprofit boards and volunteered in a variety of ways. Yet until recently I didn’t realize the core challenge of connectivity and engagement that has continued to grow. As technology has advanced and along with it our ability to communicate through numerous channels, our growth-minded, small-staffed nonprofits have struggled to keep up. 

This is truer than ever in the military- and veteran-serving nonprofit space, where 69% of the more than 42,000 VSOs report less than $100,000 in annual revenue. The resources for these nonprofits have remained stagnate for years, meaning little to no advancement in the purposeful work they are trying to accomplish.

And, even to an outside supporter, it can appear the founders and staff are focused on one thing, and one thing only…

Show me the money.

And who can blame them, really?

When the monthly budget report makes your stomach clench before you open the document, it is very difficult to remain focused on the core activities of your nonprofit. You stop dreaming about how to execute that new project or more efficiently offer your current services. You instead wonder if you can support the next individual or family who calls requesting your resources. Creativity slows. Collaboration halts. The only “advancements” you consider are based on ideas from donors who have a check ready to write… provided you use it precisely as directed even if it does deviate from the mission you worked so hard to establish.

The challenges — and the money chase — are eerily similar to those I witness in the startup space. While I’m still in my early days in the venture capital world, there are consistent themes among the countless companies we’ve interviewed as well as the few we’ve elected to invest in at Task Force X. For startups and nonprofits alike, I’ve watched team members pour blood, sweat, and tears into those first few years. It is a grueling journey, but the teams are hungry and excited by the prospect of what they can accomplish, led by their purpose and their mission. And they often make solid strides forward.

And then it is time to grow again — add staff, add programs, add resources. But scaling has dollar signs associated with it. And when money gets scarce, it dominates discussions and distracts the team from performing. They focus on the next gift, the next investment, instead of finding the right tools to engage people who care about the purposeful work being done.

While the focus remains on sniffing out the almighty dollar, opportunities to develop relationships, engage supporters, and communicate the important cause are being lost.

So, how do we change this recurring nonprofit predicament?

We can start by creating solutions that fill the gaps nonprofits face.

One of the people most passionate about this is GoodUnited* co-founder, Nick Black. As one of the founders of the nonprofit Stop Soldier Suicide, Nick experienced all of the aforementioned issues. Poised for growth based on his passion and knowledge of the problem, he didn’t have tools to simplify his ability to connect with people who wanted to make a difference to the cause. Ultimately, he and his small, overwhelmed team lacked time to do more significant work on the problem at hand.

Enter GoodUnited, a software solution to personalize philanthropy and connect supporters to Veteran causes they care about. In addition to providing on-demand content experts, the technology platform gathers the information nonprofits need to truly understand their supporters so they can communicate in meaningful ways. And supporters become more engaged with the causes they care about.

Meeting Nick and getting involved with GoodUnited began to peak my interest in the current challenges in the nonprofit world. I’ve since gotten involved in other organizations, such as CauseEngine and NAVSO, that are also beginning to fill the important voids for nonprofits. CauseEngine saw the nonprofit need for high-quality consultants and subject matter experts at an affordable price. So they set out developing a vetted, trusted network of individuals who want to serve the nonprofit community.

I recently joined the Board of NAVSO, the National Association of Veteran-Serving Organizations. Our focus is on transforming the veteran services marketplace so veterans and military families find quality resources they need, when and where they need them. We offer a variety of educational tools and resources to equip organizations to serve these families more effectively and efficiently. The motto: You serve them. We serve you.

I like to believe I’m in the majority when I say it is the Mission, the work being done, that really attracts me to a cause and drives me to be a supporter. But I also know there are thousands upon thousands of nonprofits doing powerful work that I know nothing about because they don’t have the bandwidth to connect with me. I see now why it is imperative we create these solutions for the organizations that are working to solve critical problems in our communities, our country, our world.

And as these and other tools surface, my plea to nonprofits is USE them. Engage GoodUnited’s tools. Leverage NAVSO’s resources. Team with CauseEngine to accomplish projects. Get out of your box. Hit the pause button on chasing dollars for a moment and add the tools you need to get your time back and reenergize your team to do the work you set out to do. We’ll all benefit from that kind of collaboration. Never Quit!

*Note: TFX is an investor in GoodUnited.