Fundraising Management

Effective Fundraising Management, by Kathleen S. Kelly. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1998. 663 pp., $49.95 cloth. The Complete Guide to Fundraising Management, by Stanley Weinstein. New York: Wiley, 1999. 307 pp., $49.95 cloth.     

Fundraising and strategic focus

The Five Strategies for Fundraising Success: A Mission‐Based Guide to Achieving Your Goals, by Mal Warwick. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 2000. 293 pp. $30.00 cloth.     

Online Fundraising in the Human Services

SUMMARY

This paper examines emerging possibilities for use of the Internet in human service fundraising. Human service managers must compete for limited funds with their counterparts in educational, religious, health, and other nonprofit organizations. There is enormous potential for raising funds over the Internet; yet, this approach to resource development may not be appropriate or effective in some instances for certain human service agencies. The selection of fundraising approach must be consistent with the organizational context in which it is used. This paper provides examples of cases where use of the Internet may prove to be an effective method for human service fundraising. It also examines cases where use of the Internet may not be a good match for the organizational context, whether in terms of ethics or dollars raised.     

Fundraising: From art to science

Principles of Professional Fundraising: Useful Foundations for Successful Practice, by Joseph R. Mixer. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993. 275 pp. Finding Funding: The Comprehensive Guide to Grant Writing, by Daniel M. Barber. Long Beach, Calif.: Bond Street, 1994. 209 pp.     

Web-Based Support for Fundraising and Grantsmanship

A variety of organizational computing applications, such as information systems, currently assist human service professionals in making decisions. This paper concerns a class of computing applications, called expert systems, which have evolved from the field of artificial intelligence. Expert systems are computer programs which use interface schemes to apply generalized human expertise to the facts of a specific case. Expert system concepts, potentials and implications are presented along with the issues involved in their development and use. A simple expert system, written in BASIC, is included to illustrate the concepts. Expert systems offer great potential for assisting human service professionals in making complex decisions.     

Crowding‐Out and Fundraising Efforts

The crowding‐out of private donations by government grants is an integral element in designing an efficient method of financing nonprofit activity. This article looks at elements of crowd‐out, both the direct impact on donors and the indirect impact caused by the response of nonprofits. We include both theoretical and empirical analyses of the reactions by donors and nonprofits to an increase in government funding based on data from the League of American Orchestras’ annual reports from 2004 to 2007. To combat indirect crowd‐out, renewed emphasis should be placed on grant design; for direct crowd‐out, theories of collective action are appropriate.     

Early Fundraising by Nonincumbent Female Congressional Candidates

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of early contributions by women's PACs to female nonincumbent U.S. House candidates. The results show that women's PACs give early money disproportionately to female Democrats. This advantage provides female Democrats with greater success in raising later funds and in gaining electoral support than nonincumbent female Republicans.     

Using Donor Lifetime Value to Inform Fundraising Strategy

The successful quantification in monetary terms of the value of a donor to a voluntary organization can be a valuable aid to the subsequent development of fundraising strategy. Despite the significance of the concept of lifetime value (LTV), however, many nonprofits remain uncertain as to exactly how it might be calculated. This article reviews the contribution that LTV can make to fundraising and provides a conceptual framework within which it might be calculated.     

Relationship Fundraising: How to Keep Donors Loyal

This article explores how relationship marketing and its variant relationship fundraising may be used to assist nonprofits in reducing the lapse rate of donors to their organization. Employing a postal survey of ten thousand donors to causes in a variety of categories, the author concludes that although approximately one in five donors might lapse because of a change in financial circumstances, a similar number simply elect to switch their support to other organizations. The role of the quality of service offered to the donor in enhancing retention is also highlighted, as are donor perceptions of the feedback they receive and the impact they believe their gift might have on the cause.     

Using Suggested Contributions in Fundraising for Public Good

This article presents a provision point mechanism experiment designed to investigate the impact of suggested contributions in a public-good contribution process. We find that suggesting contributions is ineffective if subjects value the public good equally. However, if valuations for the public good differ among individuals, as they do in the real world, we find that contribution suggestions increase the likelihood of providing the public good, increase the fraction of individuals contributing their suggested share, and improve the equity of the distribution of contributions.     

Returns on Fundraising Expenditures in the Voluntary Sector

There has been much interest of late in the relative efficiency of various forms of fundraising activity. It is the purpose of this article to establish the typical returns that might be expected to accrue from a variety of fundraising methods. Based on a postal survey of the United Kingdom's top five hundred fundraising charities, this article presents the average returns for nine different forms of fundraising. The authors also examine whether differences in returns between charities can be explained by size or sector effects.     

Effects of Donor Priority Strategy on Relationship Fundraising Outcomes

Nonprofit organizations commonly implement donor priority strategies, yet little research has explored the effects of this relationship strategy. Whereas previous research highlighted the positive effects of benefit segmentation and analyzed donor motives to choose a specific donation level, this study investigates the effects of priority benefit perception on relationship factors such as donor satisfaction, donor loyalty, upgrade/downgrade intentions, and voluntary behavior. Based on data from the German cultural sector—804 donors of a friend circle that differentiates two donation levels—the results of the partial least squares path analysis show that donors' perception of priority benefits positively affects donor satisfaction and donor loyalty. The study also shows that a priority strategy negatively influences intentions to downgrade among higher‐prioritized donors and positively enhances intentions to upgrade among lower‐prioritized donors. Applying multigroup comparison the authors find that most relationship effects do not differ significantly across higher‐ and lower‐prioritized donors. This study thereby supports the implementation of donor priority strategy among cultural organizations because of its advantages for developing strong relationships with donors of all levels. Several managerial recommendations are given; for example, managers should better implement only a few instead of a large number of donor levels, should determine carefully which benefits to offer at the different levels, and analyze the donor base in order to identify donors with strong potential for upgrading.     

The Effects of Capital Campaigns on Other Nonprofits’ Fundraising

This study focuses on the effects of capital campaigns on the fundraising performance of other nonprofits within the same geographic region. Drawing from research in organizational ecology and charitable giving, we offer a theory of capital campaign impact that says any impact of a campaign must be looked for in a carefully circumscribed area or population of organizations, and that campaigns raise awareness of the need for services within a particular area. We use data on capital campaigns at arts nonprofit organizations in forty‐eight counties across the United States between 1999 and 2007, coupled with financial data on nonprofits in the arts in the same county to test our hypotheses. The results from our analyses show that a major capital campaign positively affects other nonprofits’ fundraising, and the effect varies depending on the phase of the capital campaign. We discuss possible mechanisms that drive the positive effects of capital campaigns, and conclude with a short illustration.     

Using Advertising Constructs and Methods to Understand Direct Mail Fundraising Appeals

This study examined whether we could use a Solicitation Response Model adapted from the consumer research literature to increase our understanding of nonprofit direct mail solicitations. We sent 389 surveys to people listed in the database of a homeless shelter. In response, 166 people rated an envelope and appeal from the shelter. The model successfully explained potential donors' intention to open the envelope and intention to donate. Emotional responses to the envelope and attitude toward the envelope were more important influences upon acquisition (or new) donors' intention to open the envelope than upon renewal donors' intention. Attitude toward the appeal had a stronger effect upon acquisition donors' intention to donate than it did upon renewal donors' intention. The study suggests differences in the way that appeals should be designed for acquisition and renewal donors. As well, we present a small sample method for diagnosing direct mail charitable solicitations.     

Canadian Leapfrog: From Regulating Charitable Fundraising to Co-Regulating Good Governance

The regulation of charitable fundraising is no longer just about the regulation of fundraising but about good governance, and increasingly involves co-regulatory regimes which blend elements of self- and state regulation. Canada??s charitable sector has undertaken a bold experiment in creating a comprehensive certification system for good governance, including fundraising, which reframes the target of regulation from the informed donor to the well-performing charity and has the ambitious goal of building a community of practice for self-improvement. At the same time, the federal government has introduced new guidance on fundraising that not only outlines accepted cost to revenue ratios but also specifies standards of good governance. It is an open question as to whether this new self- and state regulation will remain as dual systems or evolve into a hybrid co-regulatory regime in which government integrates sector certification into its own risk management.     

Reducing Funding Risk and Implementing a Fundraising Plan: A Case Study

Small nonprofit organizations in the health care and human services fields can find themselves frozen into a dependence on government funding. They run the risk of constricting their management choices and neglecting other potential funding sources. Often a fundamental shift in attitude is necessary in order to deemphasize service-based contracts and to transform private fundraising into a central activity of the business.     

A Better Method for Analyzing the Costs and Benefits of Fundraising at Universities

This article develops a new methodology for a more comprehensive and useful analysis of the costs and benefits of fundraising, as well as the total costs and net benefits associated with development efforts in general. This approach does a better job of linking the timing of return of fundraising efforts and measuring the actual return on investments in fundraising (as opposed to the reported return) than the widely used guidelines from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the National Association of College and University Business Officers (CASE/NACUBO) (1990). The implications are a better methodology for practitioners that they can use to enhance internal decision making and a better methodology for boards to use in evaluating performance and accountability. Recently, other large, public universities have begun using several of these concepts in the assessment of their development offices (Rooney, 1998).