Secret Table of Contents

Why 50 Secrets?.........................................................................................35 Secrets about Fundraising as a Career....................................................45 Secrets about Fundraising Plans..............................................................65 Secrets about the Nonprofit Sector..........................................................85 Secrets about Fundraising Trends..........................................................105 Secrets about Direct Mail.......................................................................125 Secrets about Grants..............................................................................135 Secrets about Sponsorships...................................................................155 Secrets about Events.............................................................................165 Secrets about Finding More Donors.......................................................185 Secrets about Getting Volunteers to Fundraise......................................195 Secrets about the Author........................................................................20

Why 50 Secrets?

This document was unearthed sometime in 2012 from a time capsule buried deep below the loam in an unincorporated hamlet somewhere outside of Portland, Oregon.

It appears to be written by some twenty-first century fundraising author who also taught things called “webinars.”

Why 50 secrets? We don't know why. Possibly because more would be silly.

What are the secrets?

The document reveals secrets about the nonprofit sector, like

Why You Aren't Going to Get Promoted and

Best Times of the Year to send your Nonprofit Appeal Letter, and

Why Your Boss Has an MBA and No Nonprofit Experience.

AND MORE!

Enjoy this document in the spirit of scholarship, and do let us know what you think of it via holotube or @wildwomanfund on Twitter.

Sincerely,

Your 22nd Century Research Team

5 Secrets about Fundraising as a Career

1. Don't just hang in there! You WON'T be promoted. According to the Bridgespan Group, most nonprofit staff are NOT being groomed for leadership, and only 33% of the time do people from inside the nonprofit even attempt to fill senior leadership level positions. In order to move into a higher role, you will have to jump to another nonprofit.

2. Even if they don't name a salary, you can figure out how much they will pay you. How? You can research how much you're likely to get paid at a nonprofit through looking at 990 forms on Guidestar.org. After you see how much the executive director is making, and the top staff, you MUST negotiate your salary. Look at this chart. Look at it. This happens because we do not negotiate our salaries. Do not be the first person to name a figure.

(chart from Blue Avocado blog)

3. Another dirty little secret, Fundraisers are encouraged to rub shoulders with wealthy donors but the fundraisers are alienated by their own economic status. The fundraiser must feel estranged from these people, because they have so much more money than the fundraiser will ever have. So that alienation you feel? It totally makes sense. Which is yet another reason why you should be paid more. Want more context? Here you go. http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/life-liberty-pursuit-wealthy-donors/

4. Job titles don't mean very much. If you're the only development staff person, whether you're called The Development Manager, The Development Associate, the Development Officer, or Development Director, if you're the sole development staff person, you really are the development director. Want more context? Here: http://wildwomanfundraising.com/hire-development-director/

5. Nonprofit fundraising professionals generally stay 12-18 months in a position, then leave. Because of bad bosses or bad workplace culture. But you can avoid this.

How can you avoid this? The questions you ask in your fundraising interview are VERY VERY IMPORTANT. So important that you can actually pick out an abusive boss or hostile workplace simply by asking the right questions. What ARE the right questions? I'm so glad you asked! Here we go: http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/10-fundraising-interview-questions-succeed-career

5 Secrets about Fundraising Plans

1. Your plan doesn't have to be long. In fact, some of the best plans are 1 page long. And if you make it really long and stick it in a drawer, you'll probably never look at it again until the next year when you say, Oh, what was that fundraising plan again? This should be something easy to pin to the wall, and to keep track of how you're doing on it.

2. Your plan doesn't have to encompass everything. There are so many ways to fundraise! Don't wait until you have all of the information. If you wait you'll never get it done. It will get swept under the rug. If you want to see some ways to fundraise, here you are! http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/52-ways-to-fundraise/

3. Get everyone to help you make your plan, to get them to help you execute it. I know that you know best and everything, but you need EVERYONE to help you fundraise, and in that case, making it fun, with a retreat and a party, will help them all understand what needs to happen to keep the nonprofit afloat.

4. If you don't have a fundraising plan, you don't have a fundraising program. You basically just have an ad-hoc sort of thing. And even if your boss doesn't know how to fundraise and doesn't know what you're doing, that's no excuse for not doing your best with this. It can be as simple as a grid with column headings like: Goal, What we're raising the money for, How we will Raise the Money, Timeline, Who is Responsible, Cost, Outcome.

5. No one knows how to make fundraising plans until they do it.

Don't let lack of experience stop you.

If you come into an organization and they've never made a fundraising plan before, you need to teach them what it is and why it's important. Even if you have to teach yourself first. That's totally okay. And actually, in my book, The Wild Woman's Guide to Fundraising, you CAN see how to do exactly that. See here for more details: http://wildwomanfundraising.com/store

5 Secrets about the Nonprofit Sector

1. Nonprofits don't want to spend money on advertising. But this is critical to their fundraising success. Advertising your nonprofit is NOT wasting money. If no one knows you exist, how are you supposed to raise the money you need to raise? Do you need to be convinced a little more? Okay. http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/advertising-nonprofit-wasting-money/

2. Nonprofits are afraid to take risks. And so we get the same tired bullshit year after year. I myself have personally gotten reprimanded for buying a mailing list for $250 for 2,500 names, and none of them worked out. So I was put off innovating in my job. What if we celebrated taking risks and failing instead? What would that look like? Here: http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/nonprofit-safe-bet-dangerous/

3. Nonprofits encourage a culture of destitution by not paying people a living wage. Seriously. If you look at craigslist or idealist.org, you'll see the jobs are $10-$15/hr US. It's nuts. You can't save on that kind of money. So how do you fight a culture of destitution? Here are my suggestions: http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/uncharitable-culture-of-destitution/

4. Why Your Boss Has an MBA and No Nonprofit Experience: According to Alison Bernstein's whitepaper at the National Endowment for the Arts:

“New managerialism” appears to be the catch-all phrase to cover a shift that transforms knowledgeable leadership into decisive managing. What used to be a prerequisite for a candidate—namely, knowledge of the company or the sector—is now a liability. It’s not an advantage to know the terrain or the people who inhabit it. If you do, you are likely to be less, not

more, effective as a manager. You won’t be able to make hard decisions that could affect the lives and livelihoods of your employees.

Or, if you know the field and have been a part of it, you are regarded as “part of the old guard,” too tied to the past to make the proper, tough reform decisions. New managers are often prized for their outsiderness to the culture of the institution so what used to be a liability in a search process (what does he/she know about whatever the topic, public education? nonprofits? philanthropy?) is now a marker of independence and the ability to see things with a fresh eye.” You can read more here: http://www.nea.org/home/50022.htm

So basically this is a prescription for disaster for nonprofits around the country as people with MBAs and no nonprofit experience are ushered into leadership roles and they simply start firing people for no reason at all. I've had two bosses with MBAs and no nonprofit experience and they both were not good at their jobs as heads of the organizations. But how could that be surprising, when they had no nonprofit experience and had been taught not to have compassion for others?

5. Nonprofits are encouraged to think short-term. They are encouraged to spend the money they have to alleviate the suffering of people right now, rather than waiting to spend the money or invest it to create more money later. And nonprofits are also being encouraged to take over services that the government has traditionally done, such as counseling services, housing services, homeless services, food bank services, social work, elder care, and more. Want more context? Sure thing! http://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/nonprofit-damn-reactionary/

5 Secrets about Fundraising Trends

1. No one is making money with social media. Let me rephrase that. No one who is a small nonprofit is making any kind of significant money through twitter or facebook. If anything, these are simply places where they might get the odd donation from an offline donor, but otherwise, don't worry about facebook and twitter. Sure, set up a presence, maintain it, have conversations with people, get people to come to your events that way, but don't bother trying to fundraise through those platforms. Unless you have 500,000 twitter followers, like Beth Kanter, it's just not going to work.

2. Fundraising consultants are actually good, but not a cure-all. If you haven't done any fundraising in 5 years or have major structural problems at your nonprofit, a consultant is not going to solve those problems. So if someone on your team is pushing for a consultant, that's good, mainly if they can push through the idea that you want.

3. Sending more e-newsletters is better than sending fewer. This seems counterintuitive, but trust me. The more you communicate with your nonprofit donors, the better they will remember you when you finally ask them to give. Each communication should be telling them about what you're doing, how you're doing it, chances for them to participate and get involved in low-barrier ways.

4. Sure, tons of people are starting nonprofits and you might be rolling your eyes. But a lot of nonprofits got stripped of their status in 2010. So there are not as many nonprofits as you think there are. And starting a nonprofit is a lot like starting a business. There's nothing wrong with it, it will create more jobs and it will hopefully help solve a problem. People say there are too many nonprofits.

And to them you need to say, “Show me the numbers.”

5. Nonprofit blogs, who reads them? Basically, nobody. Unless you're saying something that you're passionate about. So, say something intriguing and people will start to read. Say something about trends in your sector. Interview program staff. Have a heart to heart or fireside chat with your executive director once a year. Make a top 10 list. Get nonprofit bloggers who are already established to write a guest post for you. They'll link to you, and get you way more traffic. And that's what you want.

5 Secrets about Direct Mail

1. The best time of year to send direct mail is December. BUT! People seem to be the most generous during that time. But for different causes, there are other months that also make sense to send direct mail. And the Atlas of Giving has more predictions about that. What's the Atlas of Giving? I'm so glad you asked! Here: h ttp://www.wildwomanfundraising.com/planning-fundraising-2012

2. The people who give most through direct mail are elderly women. So write as if you were writing to that particular kind of person. You MUST respect elderly women.

3. Even people who give online like to get direct mail and will move to giving offline. No kidding. Blackbaud's 2011 report on social giving proves this.

4. Don't just provide a wall of text. Provide many stoppers throughout your letter. This will help prevent skimming. What's a stopper? A headline. A picture. The donor's name. The PS should be highlighted in yellow, that's another stopper. And make sure it's no smaller than 12 point font.

5. Direct mail is more effective when you combine it with email. You can even take a picture of your direct mail, or a screenshot, and then put that in the top of your email, and say, “did you get this letter?” to make people go digging through their mail piles to find your letter. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want more information about direct mail, I also have a webinar called “Tons of Money in the Mail” where I give you the goods! See when the next one is at http://wildwomanfundraising.com/upcoming

5 Secrets about Grants

1. Kim Klein says, “Foundations Have So Little Money that I Don't Think About Them Very Much.” Yeah. Think about that. Seriously. People think that fundraising is all grantwriting. And they are wrong. Nonprofits get 75% of their money from individuals, and only about 20% from foundations.

2. The revolution will not be funded. If you have a crazy new program that no one has ever done before, quite likely, even if it is very good, it will not get funded.

3. You can't get around the focus of the foundation. This is sadly too often the case, where a nonprofit wants operating funds, and the foundation, even though it looks like a good fit on the surface, will only fund capital campaigns, or does not accept applications.

4. You MUST Call. Call the foundation first to ask if the grant would be a good fit or not. This is so simple. But somehow it gets shuffled off the list of things to do. Just call, figure out who the program staff person is that deals in your grant area, and ask, "Based on the kind of nonprofit we are, and your funding cycle, and our project, would you recommend that we apply?"

Also, so often people do not call to follow up after a proposal has been submitted. It's a simple thing, but a scary thing, to call and say, "Is there anything else you needed?" and "When can I expect to hear from you?"

5. You don't have metrics for your programs. But grantmakers want them! WHY?? Because Grantmakers are getting more and more corporate. And this is a bad thing.

“Coercive Accountability”. . . is the idea that an organization and its grants can only be effective when it arrays all the data that are known or can be measured by a metric and make decisions based on that metric. But the metric by its very nature only measures what can be measured and thus it is a proxy or an incomplete indicator of what is actually happening.

Real, lasting change cannot be reduced to a single metric. Changing a culture or an institution is typically too sloppy, random, never-ending, and elusive to be captured by a mathematical formula or metric.”

. . .An even more difficult challenge is the assumption behind what is being called “strategic philanthropy.” This phrase implies that the donor not only knows the problem it seeks to help solve but also how best to solve it.”

Want more context? Check out the full article from Alison Bernstein from the Ford foundation at the NEA blog. http://www.nea.org/home/50022.htm

If you want to learn more about how to get grants and surmount these problems, Pamela Grow gives excellent grant webinars at http://www.pamelagrow.com/grant-training-webinars/

5 Secrets about Sponsorships

1. You are not getting something from them, THEY are getting something from YOU. When they have their employees volunteer at your event, it helps them increase employee retention.

2. Your brand is stronger than their brand, and their customers want to see that they are involved with you in a long-term way. Consumers are getting way more savvy, and are willing to switch to a company that really does give back to a nonprofit.

3. Make a unique experience around their sponsorship. What does this mean? It's not just about getting their logo on the banner. See if you can improve the experience for the attendees in some way. Maybe the sponsor can give them water at the walk-a-thon. Or give them slippers at a big gala event. Find the attendees' pain point, and help alleviate it to create a unique sponsor experience.

4. They want more customers and more cash. So you need to show them all of the ways you're getting the word out about the sponsorship.

5. Focus on their needs in the meeting. When you have a sponsorship meeting, ask them what their business issues are. Ask them if they've got new products rolling out, or if they're trying to reach new markets. Want more details? I have a webinar called Wildly Successful Events which goes into much greater detail about this. And I have a book of the same name. Check it out at http://wildwomanfundraising.com/upcoming

5 Secrets about Events

1. Events are the WORST way to make money. They are so much work and they give so little return. The best that can be said is that they combine the identification of donors, the cultivation of donors and the ask all into one night.

2. Your board member relationships are the best way to get money for your event. If your board is not engaged, then it's unlikely that you're going to raise the money that you need to raise with this event.

3. Silent Auctions are the worst way to make money at an event. Mainly because they are so time consuming. You solicit auction items. Then you have to make baskets. Then you have to keep track of everything in the baskets. Then you have to enter everything into the database. Then you have to calculate the actual value of the basket. Then you have to get someone to put together the baskets. It's really so much work for so little return.

4. Live auctions can make you lots of money, and so can raffles. If raffles are allowed in your region, and are not classified as gambling. You'd better check on that one. Live auctions can be lucrative because board members can easily give a weekend or week at their vacation house, and then people can bid with their friends, and you don't have to run around and get things. Just get pictures for the slideshow.

5. Having 3 dry runs of the event is not optional. It is ESSENTIAL.

Seriously. Anecdote! Ah, well do I remember the time when an old boss kept sandbagging me and not approving the script for our big event, FOR MONTHS! So I felt like I could not go forward with rehearsals of the event! And it ended up that the event script never did get approved. So I just went on with it and we did a really crappy little rehearsal right before the event, and of course, as the night wore on, our lack of rehearsal was clearly evident. The boss wanted a church choir and the choir was pretty terrible. But no one had vetted them. The MC didn't know what was going on so he kind of ad-libbed. The board chair went on speaking too long.

Learn from my mistake! 3 dry runs with everyone will help you see things like “Is there a space here that we could fill with someone?” or “What do our testimonials sound like? Can we make them better?” or “How is the AV working? Let's make sure everything works just right!”

5 Secrets about Finding More Donors

1. Volunteers give 10x as much as non-volunteers. So ask your volunteers to give you money, if you haven't already.

2. Look in Annual Reports of Sister Nonprofits. Can you think of 5 nonprofits similar to you? Do they have their annual reports on their websites? And if they don't, would they mail them to you? This can be a fantastic source of donors, sponsors, corporate partners, foundations and more.

3. Look at your local faith community. If your nonprofit has similar values that someone in a religion might have, like feeding the poor or housing the homeless, then you will probably have an easy time going to speak at that church to people about your nonprofit, and negotiating

4. Ask your corporate volunteers if volunteerism is compensated by their company. Your board members' companies could be giving you money every time they come to a board meeting! Aw yeah!

5. If you are trying to recruit a particular kind of person as a volunteer or donor, highlight that kind of person in your volunteer recruitment materials. Remember, volunteers give 10x as much as nonvolunteers. THIS MEANS your volunteer program is essentially a donor recruitment program. So if you're trying to recruit an african american man, for example, put pictures of african american men in your brochures, flyers, on your website, and in your twitter background. You can also recruit this kind of volunteer at churches, in boys and girls clubs, or on Twitter.

5 Secrets about Getting Volunteers to Fundraise

1. Give them a quiz with different ways to fundraise on it. See where they stand on different ways to fundraise, then ask them where they want to grow. There's probably lots of ways to fundraise that they don't know about, and this is a learning opportunity for them.

2. Tailor the fundraising experience directly to their unique skills. It's all about what would mean something to them. Do they thrive on compliments? Do they want autonomy? How can you give them a significant experience with their current skills and passions?

3. You can make it fun! For example, try doing two dry runs before a phone-a-thon. Get the people to ask each other for donations, make up funny names, and give each other monopoly money if they think they did a good job. It makes it like a game and makes everyone laugh. Also, of course, feed people, give them something to drink, and even have some music to fill up the silences.

4. For recruiting high-level professionals, emphasize the high level nature of the role. So if this fundraising role, whether it's an event committee role or a major gift ask, means they get face time with elected officials or if it means they can rub shoulders with a judge and they are an up and coming lawyer, that will really appeal to them. So figure out what their buttons are.

5. Volunteers can give you money simply by volunteering. Starbucks, Target and Old Navy all give you $10 per hour per person for each person you get to help out at your event. How about that?

5 Secrets about the Author

1. The author writes every day. Especially on http://750words.com.

But also at http://wildwomanfundraising.com and http://wildsocialmedia.com

2. The author majored in literature, gender studies and poetry. She is quite grateful for the poetry.

3. The author has taught encaustic painting, which is a kind of ancient beeswax painting from Egypt, but originated by the Greeks who lived in Egypt. It was originally used for burial paintings, though the greeks also painted their statues and ships with Encaustic. Encaustic medium is made from beeswax and damar crystals. The picture on the right is a copy of an ancient burial painting, done by the author.

4. The Author is a Secret Poet: The author published a book of poetry called “The Faberge Wrecking Ball.” Here is the cover, which she also painted.

To read a poem from this chapbook, please go to http://mazarinetreyz.com

5. The Hardest Thing the Author Has Ever Done

Through a chance meeting with a stranger on a train, she found out about Vipassana meditation. She went on a retreat where she didn’t talk to anyone, look at anyone or touch anyone for ten days. It was the hardest thing she's ever done. When She got out of the meditation center, she realized that she wanted to help people, but she didn’t know how.

Over the next several years, through working, learning, and volunteering, she found out about fundraising and decided to make it a career, but on her own terms.

Get more free stuff at http://wildwomanfundraising.com/free-stuff

Read more about fundraising at http://wildwomanfundraising.com

Check out Mazarine's book, The Wild Woman's Guide to Fundraising, at http://wildwomanfundraising.com/store

Follow the author on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wildwomanfund

If you enjoyed this little ebook, please share with a friend. Or a board member. Or a fundraising team. Or an entire country. Go bananas.