Estate Attorney’s on the Phone… Now What?

We all have gotten those calls to our offices – the attorney letting us know our organization is a named beneficiary of someone’s estate, now in probate.  It is a time of profound gratitude, knowing someone has included us in their final acts of generosity.  And it is also often the only time to get some important information from the probate attorney.  Once they have notified our organization in the most basic way, they move on, and getting a return phone call can be tricky.  And then we wait in the dark for a check to arrive, often a year or more later.

So, to make the most of that call, I find it helpful to have a quick checklist list of questions pre-printed and in a handy spot.  Here are the questions I always ask:

Your Biggest Software Implementation Risk? It May Not Be What You Think.

My friend called me in a panic. “Our kitchen is half-gutted, and it’s a disaster! Our renovation is going horribly – they put in the wood flooring crooked, they built a wall where we wanted a window, nothing works right, and we’re scheduled to host my daughter’s wedding in two weeks! And we’re contractually obligated to pay them even though this is a mess! But I am pretty happy that our appliances all work really well!”

“Oh, my. How did you pick the firm for the renovation?” I asked.

“We chose the firm that manufactured our appliances. We very carefully considered all the options for appliances, and chose this one. They make amazing equipment! So we didn’t consider anyone else for the renovation project.”

OK, so in real life no one would assume an appliance manufacturer could renovate their kitchen. Yet I am always surprised to find that many organizations that work carefully to consider software options for their mission-critical software system default to using the vendor for implementation services.

And yet, the truth of the matter is that vendors who make great software may or may not have services that are right for your organization. Someone who builds a great appliance doesn’t necessarily know how to stain hardwood. The talent required for developing great software is quite different from the skills required for providing professional services.

A Changing Conversation on Nonprofit Website Transactions

We’ve been working with nonprofit technology for more than twenty years, and nonprofit websites have been a part of our client conversations for at least the last decade.  It has been interesting to me to note how those conversations have changed over time and their impact on technology projects.

 

Our website must tell our story effectively.

These were the words we heard years ago, as nonprofit websites became an important part of substantiating and communicating to prospective supporters.  The idea was to tell a story, with web visitors being an inactive audience.  And for a time, that was a good goal to have.

Our website should take donations / sell a ticket.

Ah, now we are interacting! No longer static web brochures, websites for nonprofits starting as early as a decade ago needed to be able to handle a transaction. The bar for a long while was low: can a fairly determined and motivated supporter or patron complete a transaction with us? If a nonprofit could answer yes, that was a good achievement.  “We can sell a membership online” was, for a time, a boast that could make other nonprofit colleagues take note. 

The Hat Never Comes Off

Whatever your political sensibilities, the tape of the NPR Foundation’s former top fundraiser sharing unguarded opinions to build rapport in a lunch with people posing as left-leaning potential major donors is decidedly cringe-worthy.

A mere 12 minutes into their lunch (3:26 on the published video), Ron Shiller, then president of NPR Foundation, says “I’ll talk personally, as opposed to wearing my NPR hat.” And then launches into his opinions on Republicans and anti-intellectualism, among other things. The individual posing as the potential donor is heard on the recording saying “I like it when you take off your NPR hat,” an ironic reference to the fact that the conservative actor is happy to be taping such inflammatory statements but meant on the face of it to indicate the potential donor’s approval of such informal rapport-building conversation.

Theorist Erving Goffman posited that we are creating our selves through social interaction at any given moment in time, what he termed “front stage”  behavior. No one can be witness to another’s “back stage” self, the place where we stop being a social construct. In practice, we routinely issue invitations like Ron Shiller’s – to that supposed back-stage self – by saying things like “this is off the record,” or “I am taking off my organizational hat.” The reality is we are simply signaling that our construct is now going to be different, somehow more genuine, and that it should be perceived without reference to our organization.

Yes, there’s the rub. Ah, how tempting it can be to ask a donor to perceive us without reference to our organization.  Sometimes we really feel a personal connection with a donor we have known a long time.  Other times we are simply searching for a common point upon which to build a relationship between ourselves, individually, and that donor.

How Do You Measure Success for Major Gift Officers

There is nothing I enjoy more than informally talking shop with my fundraising colleagues. One recurring theme, casually bantered about in our social gatherings, and more seriously examined as part of our work with metrics and reporting, is that executives who manage major gift officers face challenges.

Major gift cultivation takes a long time to pay off, and executives struggle to find the best candidates.  They rely on gut instinct and anecdotal evidence to “feel” if an officer is successful, and they need months and sometimes a year or more to identify who is really working out.  Waiting for the money to come in, everyone agrees, just doesn’t cut it anymore.  No one wants to miss opportunities to identify which gift officers need help and who is on the path to success.

Although I would never discount the value of professional instincts in assessing gift officers’ effectiveness, gut can only get someone so far. The key to minimizing this struggle is, in a word, metrics. And I mean metrics beyond how much money the officer brought in, or number of calls this month. Dollars in the door can be a good measure, to be sure, but it is a lagging indicator of successful activity, and it will fluctuate even for a great officer. Everyone has stories about the officer with great call numbers every month who, seemingly mysteriously, just didn’t work out. So what can we measure to give us clues to performance beyond the dollars?