Do the Word

In the preceding post we wrote about the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome–the propensity of today’s donors to bail on even a favored charity when they sense that it is in financial trouble.

Today we take a look at the stats that relate to that syndrome–updated numbers about the behavior of Christian donors in the midst of this current recession, as well as what said donors are indicating they’re likely to do for rest of the year. (Hint: It’s not “Write checks to nonprofits in financial distress”.)

The numbers come from the Barna Group in a three-part report called The Economy’s Impact. The fact that generally “mainstream” (i.e., secular) fundraising bloggers didn’t make note of this tremendous wealth of data on giving just underscores the degree to which this gargantuan segment of the nonprofit world (i.e., the Christian part) is at best underreported and at worst completely ignored.

Do make sure to read the whole Barna report, since it is flat out rife with relevant data. For our purposes, though, three statistics are key:

• 48% of all adults said they had reduced their giving to non-profit organizations (excluding churches or other types of congregations) in the last three months.
• 29% of adults said they had reduced their giving to churches and congregations in the same time frame.
• 7% of adults surveyed reported that they donated at least 10% of their income. This percentage has stayed consistent throughout the recession.

The question, as related to the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome, is this:

Why are donors more likely to reduce their giving to nonprofit organizations than to churches?

Frankly, I wish Barna would have asked that question explicitly as part of the survey. In the absence of hard data, however, let’s twist the numbers to make the point we want–er, I mean, let’s use our common sense.

• Is it because nonprofits have not dropped as many A-bombs (Appeal bombs) and made as many urgent, emotional, desperate pleas for funds as churches have?
• Is it because nonprofits do not ask as frequently for money as churches do?
• Is it because nonprofits have not made as good a case for the funds as churches have?

I would confidently answer no to each of the above. The number of urgent, emotional, desperate pleas for money that I’ve received from nonprofits over the last few months outweighs by a factor of one hundred the number of times the subject has even come up at church, not to mention the tone or intensity. And with all due respect to churches, I can think of few times when pastors made more cogent cases for funding than nonprofit execs. No, there’s something more and different going on here.

And therein lies the point I want to make about why donors are cutting back on their nonprofit giving much moreso than their church giving:

It’s the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome.

Let’s face it: The scent of funding desperation that hangs over the nonprofit sector at present is as thick and overpowering as Brut Aftershave. How many communications have you had with your donors in the past three months that haven’t involved the long face, the stiff upper lip, the “We’re doing the past we can” attitude that sounds more like a person struggling with a terminal disease than a nonprofit leader flat out hog wild to change the world?

At least at church more gets talked about than how behind we are on the bills.

And that’s just the point:

Where did we get the idea that the best way to deal with financial shortfalls was to talk more about money? Where did we get the idea that talking less about our mission and purpose and vision and more about our institution and its incessant bills and financial needs is what will draw greater numbers of people to give and dive in deeper than ever before?

Sum it up and say:

There’s something more here than guilt or frequency and desperation of ask that explains why people are cutting their donations to charities at a faster clip than they’re cutting their donations to the churches. There’s a basic principle at root here. Call it life or involvement or activity or participation or engagement or ownership or whatever you want. The bottom line is that when a donor’s basic relationship to you primarily involves them giving you money, you will always–always–get aced out by an organization whose basic relationship with the donor is more holistic.

And that’s the heart of Transformational Giving. The faster we as nonprofits can reshape our organizations accordingly, the more likely we’ll survive this recession, accomplish the purpose we set out to achieve, and be the donor magnets that we have the potential to be…as we shall see when we move on to the third and final part of our series on The Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome:

The Solution.

Traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) is dying a slow and particularly gruesome death in this present recession. Stats on that later this week.

It still holds appeal, though, for some nonprofits who continue to bloody their knuckles clinging fiercely to the cinderblock of hope that the reason their fundraising is suffering is just because they haven’t yet pleaded loudly or urgently or emotionally enough with their donors.

Yet.

Somewhere today, in all likelihood, a nonprofit executive director is sighing, “Well, I’ve held off as long as I could. We can’t go on another month. I have no choice: It’s time now to send…The Letter.”

You know, the most urgent of urgent appeals.

The A-bomb (Appeal bomb) of institutional crisis fundraising.

The We’re-three-paychecks-and-rent-checks-behind-and-if-we-don’t-get-$50,000-by-month’s-end-we’re-going-to-have-to-close-and-I-mean-it emotional and heartfelt note (with enclosed reply card and return envelope) From The Desk Of The Executive Director.

Believe me: I certainly understand the temptation to pull the Appeal-bomb trigger, along with the desperate feeling that there’s nothing else you can do. But before you succumb to this approach, consider the experience of nonprofits who during this recession have already uncorked their A-bombs. What they’ve discovered is perhaps the scariest reality of all associated with this economic downturn, namely:

In the past, when you sent out an A-bomb appeal, donors responded by writing a check.

Today, when donors receive an A-bomb appeal from you, they still send a check…to another nonprofit.

It’s The Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome.

In plague-ravaged Europe of the Middle Ages, when your lymph nodes started to swell up and a few red spots started appearing on your skin, this was the sign for everyone around you to head for the hills. Once those spots turned black and you started breathing heavy and vomiting blood, well, at precisely the point you most needed the help, you’d find yourself very, very alone.

(Well, except for those saintly Christians who would be kind enough to bury you once you expired.)

That’s because with one third of the population of Europe dying, everyone who wasn’t dying was busy doing their best to keep it that way.

Same is true with the Nonprofit Bubonic Plague Syndrome:

Once donors learn that your nonprofit’s nodes are swollen, your social service agency’s skin has red spots, and your program personnel are three paychecks behind, donors’ reaction more than ever before is to flee.

Sure, they’ll make the Sign of the Cross over you and themselves before they go, wish you well, and leave you a damp washcloth. But don’t expect them to try to nurse your nonprofit back to health. Because when the world is steeped in plague, just staying alive is a big enough challenge to fill most donors’ days.

And who can blame them?

With their own ability to give significantly curtailed (see “Bust, Stock Market”, “Bubble, Real Estate”, and “Smithereens, Retirement Account Blown To” for more information), they’re wanting their gifts to do more than keep your lights on, your staff employed, and your rent paid. They don’t mean anything cold and heartless by it. They just want to actually feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty–which is why the outpouring for Haiti earthquake relief was so generous, and yet the average gift was so much smaller than in previous disasters.

So this is a paradox indeed:

• Traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) urges you to drop the A-bomb when you’re totally out of funds.
• But if donors see the signs of the plague beginning to blotch out on your nonprofit, they’ll excuse themselves–and their checks–from your bank account. (Check the file under “Bad, I Don’t Want To Throw Good Money After”).

Fortunately, Transformational Giving (TG) provides a distinct alternative to howling in pain or suffering silently. Stats on that later this week in Part II of our Nonprofit Bubonic Plague series. Then we’ll look at Solutions in Part III just before the weekend.

Until then, hands off the A-bomb trigger, OK?

Great post by Nathaniel Wittemore at Social Entrepreneurship on the story of ZURB, a San Francisco design house whose corporate philanthropy takes the form of an annual “coffee fueled marketing marathon” in which they do an entire pro bono marketing strategy for a nonprofit they select…all in 24 hours.

The way it works is that each year, the ZURBwired program selects one mission to accomplish for a nonprofit. It can be a new website, publicity for a new fundraising campaign or something else entirely. For 24 caffeine-fueled hours, ZURB, the nonprofit and participating partners rethink the project from the ground up. At the end of it, the nonprofit participant is left with both valuable outputs, as well as a new approach to the design process they can employ every day.

It’s the last part of the last sentence that makes the process so powerful.

Described in P/E/O lingo, the 24 hour marketing marathon is a Participation-level activity: short-term, high-touch, high-yield, and understandable without external reference.

But notice that one of ZURB’s goals is to train the lucky nonprofit intensively in a design process that the nonprofit can use with other projects in the future. This is an attempt to coach the nonprofit to E so that their view of design and project management is ZURBified, as it were. In other words, the one day marathon project is designed so that it breaks out into the ordinary ongoing life of the nonprofit organization.

But there’s a hint of O in here on ZURB’s part, too:

ZURB’s work isn’t meant to be a closed process, in which it’s only the nonprofit in question that benefits. Instead, they put everything online for all to see. For the ZURB team, this is a chance to introduce groups to a process of design as much as it is about applying that process in one specific instance.

Take a look at the process here. Really instructive.

What may be most interesting of all is that ZURB is coaching the nonprofit rather than the other way around.

What would happen if a nonprofit took it upon itself to coach a design house in its own area to undertake such an approach. Like, say, for instance, you?