A book club could help you engage staff, leadership, and volunteers to grow women’s philanthropy by creating structured learning, an opportunity to evaluate current practices and share new ideas, and incentive to shift behaviors and strategies.
Large gifts from donors can transform an orchestra. But how to get there? Trine Sorensen, who serves on the boards of orchestras and other nonprofit arts groups, offers an insider’s perspective on the strategies that lead to principal gifts and features best practices from ALG.
Today’s speed of change will require leaders to find new ways to navigate this pace. My recent conversations with 12 VPs uncovered a shift in how they’re thinking about our work and its rapid evolution. As you enter planning season with your advancement team, keep the following six shifts in mind.
When we’re under pressure, it is normal to revert to what we’ve done successfully before. When a woman doesn’t respond as anticipated and, in fact, asks more questions, gives less than asked or doesn’t agree to be on a board, we turn and focus on those who do respond in the way we prefer. But we risk sub-optimizing what this woman might give us after she is satisfied with her due diligence.
Our best practices in American philanthropy were created with primarily one donor profile in mind: a white, straight man. It’s time to reexamine our approach and include more identities.
Regardless of scale of need, every organization will benefit from a thoughtful, inclusive consideration of the board’s collective leadership responsibility.
In your work as a fundraiser, you may use the term “donor life cycle.” This model charts the path of a donor through several sequential phases of engagement and giving to causes they care about: first gift, occasional gifts, consistent annual gifts, major or stretch gifts, leadership role and accompanying giving, and finally, a planned gift. But because of their personal life stages, women’s “donor life cycles” are often not as linear as the simple model would suggest.
Our profession talks a lot about creating a “culture of philanthropy,” usually disguised as part of a conversation about how certain groups are not giving to expectations. Whatever your circumstances, there is a way for these groups to build a stronger culture of philanthropy. The first step is to recognize that it’s not specifically about giving, but about setting the conditions for giving.
Women want to be engaged before they are asked for a gift. Although we cannot lead with an ask, the conversation about providing support when the time is right should not be ignored. There is a risk in focusing exclusively on engagement and never making the leap to an explicit ask for support.
We are seeing fewer Americans give because we are applying the same approaches we’ve used since the 1960s to today’s very diverse donors. Our fundraising may be too pale, male, and stale. It is time to look in the mirror at our fundraising practices and see what needs to change.