Don't Bounce Back, Bounce Forward!
With more demands combined with less money, time will be the greatest challenge for every development office. Here are ten simple yet highly effective solutions that will allow philanthropy professionals to excel post-Covid.
At the moment there are lots of people furloughed who are quite frustrated and a lot of people in development who, far from working at home, have found that their reality is they are ‘living in the office’. It is easy to assume (and hope) all this will change when life returns to normal, but, sadly, that may not be the case. Time is going to be one of the great follow-up casualties of Covid-19.
There is no doubt that many institutions will be short of money in the months and years ahead. If one is personally short of money, that means the new Ferrari is put back again until next week’s go on the lottery. For organisations, a lack of money means a shortage of time. Long-term, measured objectives switch to medium and short-term goals that needed to be delivered yesterday. Fundraising pressure will rise; that means more asking. The need to find more prospects to ask will increase, driving up the demand for research. Income will need to rise, so that means better engagement to stimulate the loyalty needed to give at capacity. Donor churn must shrink to keep the money flowing in which means that stewardship must be deeper and broader. And all this demand will have to be satisfied with, at best, the same and, quite possibly, even fewer resources than were available before the crisis.
Development professionals are united in the willingness to step up and respond to this need. They fundraise because they care. They care about the education of young people; they care about opportunity; they care that tomorrow’s world can be made better through education. If they see need, they will respond. But it will be a tough ask upon them. Only with the right systems and significant refocusing of approach can they meet these new and challenging targets. However, given the means, educational philanthropy will step-up a gear and its importance to world education will become ever more important.
What can you do to be ready not simply to bounce back but to achieve even more than before?
One Consider all your processes.
How can they be made more efficient? Incredible amounts of time are spent at present using old systems demanding vast manual labour. Are you sending spreadsheets here there and everywhere to deliver mail, digital and phone campaigns? If so, look at systems that bring all this into one space and integrate to your database.
Two Ensure your systems are truly secure.
If you are sending data everywhere, inside and outside the organisation, sooner or later there will be a breach. It’s not the fine that you need to worry about nearly as much as the disruption to confidence among your supporters, your staff and management and the huge amount of time dealing with statutory enquiries. Find systems that let your whole team collaborate in a secure space.
Three React quickly to opportunities.
Whilst investing in building relationships with poorly connected major prospects will still reap rewards, it is vital you don’t miss the gifts sitting in plain sight. If someone gives well in the regular giving programme, you need to be ready to sweep them straight over to major gifts for a visit. A moderate but likely gift will weigh highly right now compared with a speculative but large one down the line.
Four Step up how you ask.
Are you asking in multiple ways? Unless you can stream your engagement, stewardship and asking into a multi-channel symphony, you will not be heard. There will be very many ‘good causes’ making a cacophony that you need to break through. You will not be heard with a single shout but with a steady murmur of relationship building and convincing that will bring people, eventually, to step over the line even though they are not giving right now.
Five Make plans that will work by basing them on evidence.
The database manager has two vital roles right now. The first is to give insight into segments across the database and help identify the ways every possible constituent can be persuaded to give. Who are the people who will give to mail, and who won’t? You can’t afford to ignore the former and you certainly do not have postage for the latter. Who is likely to unsubscribe from your email campaigns, especially if you are sending a concerted stream for a giving day? You simply do not have the luxury to lose people; so you need to be asking everyone you can, but only if there is a decent chance they will say yes. This is a huge point as the desire for funds could easily lead to asking too widely, without first measuring individual engagement, and lead to a significant boom then bust in your programme. In which order should I run my campaigns? Do they tie up with who I am engaging when? Can I accelerate thanking to bring forward asking donors again? Giving will be transformed by answering these questions based on the evidence within your database.
Six Focus your research.
The second big job for the database manager is to find people. There are plenty of institutions where the majority of their constituents are not really asked, year after year. Mailings are going to old addresses. Donors are not getting called because the landline isn’t even plugged in. Good prospects aren’t been seen as their career details are non-existent or years out of date. Everyone knows this and does their best but that isn’t going to be good enough when time becomes so precious. Systems to rapidly find people when they are first lost are vital, as that is when it is most easily and quickly done. And working out who is most important to concentrate your potentially limited research resources on will maximise impact.
Seven Use volunteers.
If you can’t hire staff and don’t have time to do it all yourself, build your volunteer networks. The tools exist to manage dozens of volunteers remotely and turn them into effective ambassadors and askers at a fraction of the cost of what even one additional member of paid staff would be.
Eight Be Radical.
Shoot down every sacred cow. Could you have your student caller team work remotely? Do you need to ask donors again in the same year, for example to move from single to regular gift? Can you trust a parent in Hong Kong to ask someone properly instead of getting on a plane yourself? If the answer is yes, and if only your fear of change is stopping you, change your attitude to fear.
Nine Be Conservative.
If equally, if what you do works, do not break it. Look ruthlessly at the tried and tested methods you have deployed and do more of them. This is not a time for novelty for the sake of it. This is a time for innovation and innovation is defined as improvement, not simply change.
Ten Upscale your reporting efforts.
Take the time to reflect and to produce compelling reports that will help your external and internal audiences understand your success. At the moment there is anxiety and stress and previous trust for your actions could be eroded by fear. It won’t be rational. You are doing a great job. But without a bigger effort to show what you are doing, all the way from planning to acting and delivering, concern can breed. Making everyone know that development is on track won’t simply be about numbers in an environment like this, it will be about communication too. The biggest time saver will be spending a little time on reporting well, instead of a lot of time justifying and answering questions down the line.
So Bounce forward! Now is the time to invest in the right systems.
You cannot meet the time and performance demands upon you unless you have systems that will transform your productivity and the rest of the team. Make data security absolute. You do not have time for interruptions. Build the multi-channel, multi-touch pattern of engagement, asking and thanking that is fundamental to all modern world marketing and communications. Build plans that are evidence-based which your colleagues can invest in and you know you can deliver. Focus your research on the big gains. Use your network to create an army of helpers who will deliver your goals. If you need to change do, but never change for novelties’ sake. If something works, do more of it. Then tell everyone about it. Really tell them about it. Create a framework for excellence that everyone can see is excellent and then you will have the space and time to deliver your vision and do your job, not just bouncing back, but bouncing forward!