One of my most powerful fundraising experiences was with Cornell University. During my ten years with the University I experienced cross-functional collaboration that set the tone for what I expected as I moved on with my career. The effect on fundraising and on team cohesion was powerful.
In addition to reading the Agitator blog that I've pasted below, I recommend Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright. Their research demonstrates how most teams cannot get beyond intra-organizational competition, which impedes—even prevents—high performance. In short, their research shows that the highest performing, most innovative teams, are composed of members who have had an “epiphany” about how they are better by focusing on the cause and not the credit. But, that epiphany can only occur and thrive in environments that support it by structure, policy, and culture.
The beginning of the New Year may offer us opportunity for self reflection and new beginnings--are we focused on the credit or the cause?
Wishing you the best of success in service to your cause,
Jim
The Agitator: Resolved: No Fundraising Silos
Fri, Dec 30 2011
As we noted last week, the superb comments offered by readers of The Agitator are a delight to me and Roger. And we’re gratified that these have grown strongly in number over the past year.
So we thought it fitting to give the last word of the year to an Agitator Commentator.
We picked this recent comment from Steve MacLaughlin at Blackbaud, who talks about the imperative for nonprofit fundraisers to embrace multi-channel fundraising. Use of multiple communication channels reflects the real world of donors … if not yet the real world of some nonprofits!
The bottom line: Different strokes for different folks (donors) is not just some ideal … it’s vital to fundraising success. And the chief obstacles to capturing its fundraising benefits are operational and data silos within organizations.
Here’s what Steve has to say:
“Is it channel conflict or cognitive dissonance? It is sometimes very hard to tell.
There is way too much philosophical debate on which channel should get the credit for the gift. This is mostly fueled by organizational silos or incentives that nonprofits have put in place.
Here’s the reality: Donors are multichannel. They receive messages across multiple channels and they give across multiple channels. They don’t care about your org chart or who gets credit for the donation.
The problem is that many nonprofits are still organized around single channels each doing their own thing, with their own strategies, their own data, their own donors, and their own systems. That’s broken and really costly.
Ultimately, you want to use the right number of channels to drive the right people to take the right action using the most effective and satisfying giving mechanism as possible.
If that means a direct mail piece and a check, then great! If that means a phone call and an online donation, then fantastic. If that if a tweet, an email, a QR code, a website, and a donation for, then so be it.
And if you’re looking at donor behavior across channels, then you will begin to see some trends in what channel mix works best for different types of donors. Oh yeah, did I mention that donors don’t all respond the same way to the same channels? One size fits all approaches are as doomed as single channel tactics.
Statistically speaking, online donors are much more likely to switch to become offline donors. About 32% of online donors will become offline donors compared to only about 3% of offline donors switching channels.
Your results may very. Always be testing.
No one channel should get all the credit or all the blame. You succeed or fail based on how well you do these things together.”
Amen.
Happy New Year!
Roger and Tom
P.S. And here’s our New Year’s Resolution … Resolved: No Silos!
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