"Can we count on your donation?" the caller asks.

Oh, your heart bleeds for this cause, as well it probably should - but don't get out that checkbook just yet, and giving a donation over the phone isn't a good idea either.  Instead, take down the name and address of the charity and do a little charity check online.

While I have my arguments with watchdog organizations and the methods they use to judge efficiency, organizations like Charity Navigator, Guidestar, and the Better Business Bureau serve as excellent sources to ensure that the charity you want to donate to is legitimate.  You can also check the website of your Secretary of State or Attorney General, as many will list charities and link to their registration and financial reporting paperwork.

What are you looking for?

1. Evidence that this charity exists: a standard web search of the organization's name will provide you with some information.
2. Evidence that the charity is a legitimate 501(c)(3) organization: check with your Secretary of State or Attorney General's websites, or Guidestar.
3. While I have my arguments with measures of "efficiency", checking Charity Navigator or the Better Business Bureau (or both!) should provide some helpful information, such as the overhead of a given charity and whether any complaints have been lodged against it within the last three years.

None of this is particularly new information, except that my opinion of efficiency and overhead aren't mainstream in or out of the third sector.  I personally subscribe to the more lenient overhead "limit": 25%.

"But Charity!  A full quarter of what I donate might be going to pay for someone's salary?  And you think that's OK?"

Well, yes, I do - perhaps because for the most part, salaries in the NPO world aren't very high except at the top.  Charities rely on "overhead" (particularly the administration part; fund raising expenses are often separated) to ensure that the organization can do what it needs to do.  How can an organization effectively provide services if the electricity has been shut off, the roof of its building is leaking, and they can't pay their employees anything resembling a living wage - or worse, can't even make payroll?

Pallotta expects, implicitly, that readers know the following before they read this article:

1. Donors these days are sophisticated: instead of just writing a check at Christmas to whatever humanitarian organization sends the nicest mailing, many if not most donors are trained (one might even say, conditioned) to look for certain indicators that an NPO is worthy of a donation.  The biggest of these is the percentage of overhead a charity has: that is, what the charity spends on administrative expenses (salaries, keeping the lights on, etc.) and fund raising.
2. Non-profits reveal their various financial information through three sources: the 990, which is the official IRS tax filing a charity must submit each year; the financial summary in the charity's annual report; and the audited financial statement, which serves as a supplement to the 990.
3. The salaries of non-profit workers are, as a general rule, much lower than those of their for-profit counterparts.

Pallotta's argument - that charities are treated as "female" while the for-profit world is treated as "male" - is a provocative one.  Certainly the idea that anyone who makes money from charity work must be evil still holds sway in the public mind: when asking people to sign a petition to stop government funding cuts from the NPO where I work, I was repeatedly told that instead of stealing money from the government, we should first cut the salaries of everyone in the organization.

Pallotta would indicate that this sentiment - don't you dare make money by doing charity work - is part of what holds back the NPO world:

Consider: The for-profit sector is free to pay competitive wages based on the value people produce, yet it’s considered unseemly for anyone to make money in charity. This forces our brightest young men and women to choose between doing well and doing good, and drives most of them, burdened by student debt, into for-profit careers.

I have to segue for a minute here.  I'm lucky, in a sense.  Due to the extraordinary generosity of my parents I'm not struggling under a mountain of student debt.  However, because I have chosen to do good rather than do well, I still live at home.  I cannot - even were I to have roommates - afford to live independently in a relatively safe neighborhood.  My paycheck simply will not cover rent, gas for the car, food, work-appropriate clothing, and the medical expenses my insurance company doesn't cover.  These complaints are echoed by myriad young NPO employees who after a year or two will move on to either the most profitable sectors of the non-profit world (health care, usually) or into the for-profit world.

Back to Pallotta's argument: he isn't saying that because women work in charity, the world imposes restrictions on charities and that's sexist.  His argument is a little more nuanced than that.  Instead, he posits that because of the historical separation between "for-profit" (the realm of men, in Puritan teachings) and charity work (the realm of women according to the same societal beliefs), the non-profit is itself subconsciously treated as female. He concludes by noting that the women's movement changed the world, and that

It’s time now to undertake a similar movement to win equal economic rights for charity: Equal pay, equal ability to spend on markets, and to use financial incentive to attract capital and reward risk, no matter how uncomfortable that kind of equality might make us feel. When AmeriCorps has the same access to capital as Ameritrade, and microfinance has the same market cap as Microsoft, then the nonprofit sector will stand some chance of addressing the massive social problems that confront us. Until then, the sector’s true potential will remain obscured, and the needy will pay the price.

I would posit that in fact the "third sector" has taken advantage of the women's movement.  With the entrance of women to the workforce in ever greater numbers, the third sector has been able to take advantage of these new workers.  Women are socialized to do good, and third sector jobs are often touted as allowing much greater flexibility in the way of work-life balance.  Thus, women are socialized to pick third sector jobs - at least for a while - as a way of doing good and having more time for their families.

It can, perhaps, even be said that NPO jobs render women "non-threatening": many women are constantly socialized to believe that if we make more money than the man we are interested in, dating, or married to, he will feel emasculated, discouraged, and may even cheat or leave because he is "intimidated by" a woman who makes more money.

I don't necessarily agree with the whole of Pallotta's argument, mostly because I think that for-profit companies should be more regulated in what profit-making methods they are legally able to use - subprime mortgages, anyone? - however taken with a grain of salt and a step back from the literal, Pallotta's argument - that until we stop segregating entirely the third sector we will never be able to solve our social ills - has merit.

This is usually a double-edged sword, if the consultant is supposed to oversee the day-to-day operations of a team or entire department.  The group s/he will be overseeing usually has an established dynamic, and the consultant's sudden appearance disrupts that.  Sometimes the consulting firm will send in a consultant who turns out to be poor match, whether due to personality conflicts or lack of relevant experience.

In one case I am familiar with, a consultant about my age was brought in to oversee a team of no less than ten people - most of whom had many years of experience in the field of fundraising.  She had, to be frank, pretty much no not-for-profit experience - and unlike an older consultant, she couldn't make up for that with management experience. Between that complete lack of experience and the frustration enveloping the team, the tension was palpable and affected not just that team, but the entire department.  I can't even imagine what the consultant must have felt like, as most of the department actively gossiped about how poorly equipped she was to handle the job.

In addition to the gossip, some of the younger team members sought out further information about this young woman, using Google and other search methods.  Whether they were seeking disparaging information or not, it certainly turned up - and that didn't help matters either.  While things seem to have calmed down somewhat, as they always do, it's apparent that this young woman is still treated as very much an outsider, and the consulting firm made a misstep - how serious remains to be seen - in placing such an inexperienced person in a position of leadership.  The organization in question, of course, should have stepped in and asked for a more experienced consultant.

Just as important as keeping your contacts straight is keeping your funding solicitations well-organized.  One way to do this is through the use of the "Proposal" system.  Keeping track of the proposals or funding requests you send to people or organizations will help you to track where your time is spent, not to mention the "life cycle" of the proposal in question.

Again, consistency is key when it comes to keeping your proposals in order.  If you know you will have a lot of proposals, develop some guidelines as to how these should be entered into the system.  Should you indicate the calendar or fiscal year in the proposal's name?  What kind of giving this proposal falls under?

An example of codes you might develop for the database:

FY10: Operating = A Fiscal Year 2010 proposal for operating support.

FY10C: Astronomy Building = A Fiscal Year 2010 Capital support proposal for the astronomy building.

Your "naming" system should be as simple as possible while still allowing other employees to see, at a glance, what the donor or potential donor's solicitation history looks like.

The rest of the proposal record should be filled in as appropriate.  Make sure you have the "Sent" or "Asked" date filled out when you actually ask the donor for a gift.  Add in the amount of the ask - did you solicit Jane R. for $500, or for $5,000?  Do you expect to receive the amount you asked for, or a smaller gift?

Similar to the "relationship" post, here too I counsel anyone designing a database entry system to keep it as simple as possible.  Drop down fields should have as many options as necessary to get the job done - without being overwhelming.  Avoid redundancy as much as possible; an employee shouldn't have to edit three parts of a proposal when one will suffice.  This is especially important if you want anyone to actually follow your guidelines!

Databases like Raiser's Edge (RE) are extremely powerful, but they require "care and feeding".  It isn't enough to create a record and drop your donor's information into the document with no regard to consistency.  If you're starting up an NPO, you're lucky: you can design "best practices" now, and while you'll need to make sure your volunteers or employees stick to it, you'll be making a clean start.

If you're part of an established organization, your job is a little more difficult: not only do you need to develop best practices; you should change your pre-existing and active records to the new system, and you'll need to convince your fellow employees to follow the system.  This post will cover tips for your database records involving people and organizations; funding requests will be another post!

What do I mean by consistency and best practices?

1. Make sure that records are classified appropriately.   Your corporate donors should be marked as "Corporate"; your trustees should have their own tag (and if you have a large organization, you may want to decide who can edit a Trustee record - but that's another post).
2. For individuals and people attached to corporate or foundation records, categorize addresses, contact information, contact types, etc., systematically.  For example, all daytime numbers should be labeled "Daytime", not "Daytime-3" or "Day" or "Phone #2".  All business numbers should be labeled "Business", not "Listserv"!
3. Keep the number of available choices in a given record as low as possible while still allowing you to enter all needed information.  You don't need ten different "e-mail" options - would you contact the same donor using two or three of her e-mail addresses?  For your major or corporate donors you may need a secretary or an assistant; attach them as a RELATIONSHIP, rather than trying to squish their information into the primary person's record.  Add a note to the record stating that Mr. Smith's secretary should be contacted, if need be.
4. Do you mail a lot of things out using your database?  Entering titles (Mr./Ms. etc), salutations ("Dear Mr. Smith...") and addressees (Mr. John Smith) will save you time and frustration in the long run.  Who wants to export a 500-name mailing list for a mail merge, only to find that the title "Mr." needs to be entered manually to 200 of those names?

These efforts, among others, will pay off in the long run - and will reduce the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it's time to send out your yearly gala invitations!

Then the recession struck. Suddenly our donors were hemming and hawing about whether they would continue their giving, and the organization's endowment lost far too much. In January, the head of the organization announced that we would have to cut staff, and proceeded to detail the plans for voluntary and involuntary separation.  We then proceeded to sit on our hands for several months while the powers that be decided how best to go about the whole thing in practice rather than theory.

I survived the layoffs in part because it isn't worth it to cut the position of someone so low on the proverbial totem pole. Someone still needs to do the mailing, the filing, the phone calls and database work. What I learned, however, is that an organization like this one has never dealt with the realities of cutting back in a significant, long-term way.  The Development department in particular was incredibly ill-prepared to handle a sudden loss of staff - who was going to order supplies when the office manager left?  Who would handle everyday database support when that person retired?

The answer is that we learned to make do, and when we were shuffled around a little, the remaining staff members picked up the slack where possible, and let other things - anything that didn't directly relate to the business of raising funds - slide until someone could be hired to fill one position with the responsibilities of three.

For a while, things were exceedingly negative. We'd just had 20% of our workforce cut, our yearly goals for fundraising were cut, and the department's events team scrambled to keep everything on track for our big yearly events - because it was more profitable for us to say that "the show must go on" than to cancel.  Some of the staff members had been promoted and switched around, and despite how I hate to admit this, working in an office of mostly women meant witnessing and trying not to participate in a lot of cliquish behavior, with middling success. Things like ordering office supplies became difficult

Over time some of this negativity faded; people became used to the changes and settled in to try and raise as much money as possible before the end of the fiscal year (like most not-for-profits receiving government grants, our fiscal year is July 1-June 30).  Despite the economic collapse, our giving was actually up - slightly - by the time we closed our books.