Community Innovation News - Christine Sculati's blog » fundraising

Bird illustrations by 11-year old inspire giving for Gulf Coast disaster

christine — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:09:02 +0000

Olivia Bouler, an 11-year old girl living in New York state, dreams of being an ornithologist when she grows up. Devastated by the BP Gulf Oil Spill, the largest oil spill in U.S. history, she was determined to help. Her talented illustrations of birds have now raised over $100,000 from donors giving to support wildlife recovery efforts.

Right now, she has 23,750 followers and counting on her Facebook page titled, “Save the Gulf: Olivia’s Bird Illustrations” and the attention of multiple media outlets. AOL made a $25,000 donation in her name and offered to host her portfolio of illustrations.

The donor involvement Olivia has catalyzed comes at a time when the full toll of the disaster’s impact on wildlife and people will require philanthropic dollars. According to a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article, donors gave $4-million during the first two months of the disaster. This is “far less than will ultimately be needed,” writes the Chronicle.

The Bay Area-based International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) is working with Tri-State Bird Rescue, the lead oiled wildlife organization on the ground, to set up and staff rehabilitation centers in Louisiana, Alabama Mississippi and Florida, where the growing oil slick is severely impacting birds. Although BP is paying for IBRRC’s wildlife rescue work, they welcome support for their ongoing programs and to cover the cost of future rescue efforts.

Photo credit: IBRRC

Links and Resources:

Save the Gulf: Olivia’s Bird Illustrations Facebook Page
Olivia Bouler – AOL Artists portfolio
Audubon Magazine Article
National Audubon Society
The Thin Green Line Blog (SFGate) How you can help the Gulf and 11-year-old raises $100,000 for Gulf cleanup efforts
International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) blog updates
Gifts for Oil Spill Total $4-Million, but More Is Needed – Chronicle of Philanthropy (summary only, subscription required)
Volunteer Opportunities Scarce in Wake of Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill – Philanthropy News Digest
The Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors BP Oil Drilling Disaster Emergency Response Fund
The New York Times Times Topics – Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service site for Deepwater Horizon spill

Is your nonprofit newsworthy?

christine — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:59:49 +0000

If you have not discovered the Live Chats with The Chronicle of Philanthropy, you will not want to miss checking out some of their informative expert-led discussions on many subjects of interest to nonprofits – from fundraising and marketing to social media and media outreach.

The next topic is: Getting Good News Coverage: How to Persuade Journalists to Cover Your Cause on December 1, 9 a.m. Pacific Time.

For many nonprofits, a good way to get the attention of prospective donors, volunteers, public officials, clients and constituents is by building visibility through the media.

The moderator, Peter Panepento, and experts plan to cover:

How to get the attention of journalists in a competitive landscape
The most effective pitches
The most common errors nonprofit groups make when they approach reporters and editors
How to build productive relationships with reporters and editors

For the chats you can submit your questions in advance or follow along on with the conversation.

The Chronicle also maintains transcripts of past discussions. A few of my favorites include:

Creating Effective Marketing Messages with Nancy E. Schwartz, author of the Getting Attention blog
The Philosophy of Giving with Karen Ansara, co-founder of The Ansara Family Fund, a donor-advised fund at the Boston Foundation, and Anne Ellinger, co-director of Bolder Giving
Building Meaningful Alliances With Other Nonprofit Groups with Clara Miller and Thomas A. McLaughlin of the Nonprofit Finance Fund and Elizabeth Boone, artistic and executive director of Miami Light Project
Foundation Giving: What Might the Future Hold? with Bradford K. Smith, president of the Foundation Center
Shaking Up Journalism and Philanthropy with Alberto Ibargüen, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
What’s the Payoff? How Charities Can Figure Out How Much Time and Money to Invest in Social Networking with Beth Kanter, social media guru

Fundraising: It’s all about relationships

christine — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:02:52 +0000

Last Friday I attended “Relationship Building: What We Can Learn from Alumni Groups.” Co-sponsored by Development Executives Roundtable (DER) and the Foundation Center in San Francisco, three panelists from Bay Area educational institutions talked about how they cultivated longtime donors through relationship building with program alumni. The insights they shared could apply to many nonprofits seeking to build a stronger funding base and support, especially those with alumni groups or memberships.

Moderated by Kelli Nakayama, a DER board member and grants manager for Children’s Hospital and Research Center Foundation, the panelists represented a diversity of Bay Area organizations:

Sue Merrill, Annual Giving Manager, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) - a large public educational and research institution
June Thompson, Executive Director of California Association of Student Councils (CASC) – a student-led nonprofit for youth leadership training with a staff of two
Patricia Cavagnaro, Director of Development, Immaculate Conception Academy – a 126-year old Catholic high school for girls in the Mission District of San Francisco

10 Tips for Building Relationships

Give program alumni, members and other supporters (volunteers, donors) multiple ways to get together because they will want to meet each other and see each other.
Send a regular e-newsletter and ask your constituents what articles they want.
Tell potential donors where their dollars will go. What will their contributions support? Be specific.
Ask beneficiaries of your programs or services to write thank you letters to donors, telling them how their support made a difference in their lives
Give beneficiaries multiple ways to “give back.” If you maintain relationships with beneficiaries, such as program alumni, oftentimes they will want to give back in the future.
Acknowledge donors to thank them for their generosity. Donor walls are a great way to do that. You can also think of creative ways to build and expand the wall over time (Immaculate Conception Academy came up with an innovative and creative solution).
Explore social media as part of your communications strategy, especially if you are building connections among supporters.
Manage donor/volunteer/alumni information effectively with constituent databases (Idealware article).
Use tools to capture best practices and manage institutional knowledge, especially if your organization relies on a large number of volunteers, peer-to-peer training or high turnover. CASC set up a wiki to support their elaborate transition process for volunteers. For help with wikis, Idealware published a how-to article called “Using Wikis for Internal Documentation.”
Thank and acknowledge. Thank and acknowledge.

How nonprofits can use storytelling to engage supporters

christine — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:28:08 +0000

Better Online Storytelling from NTEN's 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference

View more presentations from Roger Burks.

Follow the economic stimulus money to your community

christine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:25:20 +0000

Yesterday San Francisco launched RecoverySF.org to highlight the progress of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in the City and County of San Francisco. The idea is to build transparency so communities can track grants that San Francisco has applied for and won, view official correspondence with federal and state agencies and learn about upcoming public meetings.

While it might appear that the City has received awards of close to $300 million for projects ranging from transportation to work force development, these are only projections. The City must apply for and win the competitive grant awards before the money can be channeled to local projects.

The City promises to post announcements when ARRA funds have been fully awarded and obligated to San Francisco.

California and the federal government have also set up Web sites to track stimulus dollars.

The federal site is: www.recovery.gov.

The state site is recovery.ca.gov

For a complete list of all Recovery Act programs, visit Grants.gov.

See my previous blog post on the Recovery Act for more resources.

Nonprofit Strategies for Tough Times: Economic Stimulus Act FAQ (Philanthropy News Digest blog- PhilanTopic)

Updates:
5/21/09: Recovery.org, run by a private company, might make searching and tracking federal stimulus projects easier to follow than the federal government site Recovery.gov, as recently reported in the Washington Post.

5/22/09: The City of Oakland recently set up www.oaklandstimulus.com for tracking the status of the city’s requests for federal stimulus funds.

What does the new economic stimulus legislation mean for your nonprofit?

christine — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:23:21 +0000

The Obama Administration launched Recovery.gov as a way for the public to track spending and progress of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – also called the “Recovery Act” and the “Stimulus Package.” If you are interested in learning how that spending could relate to nonprofits or public agencies, a few good resources are already available. Many public agencies responsible for distributing funds to state programs and nonprofits, through grants and loans, have already set up Web sites.

Recovery Act Resources for Nonprofits

Zimmerman-Lehman – “The Stimulus Package: Is Your Nonprofit Receiving Funds (or Should It)”

Council on Nonprofits – Special Reports on Economic Stimulus & Recovery

The National Endowment for the Arts has posted grant guidelines for $50 million in Recovery Act grant funds.

Apollo Alliance – Describes how $113.5 billion will benefit “green-collar” jobs and training, cleaner energy, energy efficiency, high-mileage electric vehicles and renewable energy over the next two years.

National Recreation and Park Association – How the Recovery Act will benefit parks and recreation.

California State Water Board – $280 million for “shovel ready” projects in California that will create jobs immediately. At least 20% must go toward “green projects” – water efficiency, energy efficiency, green infrastructure, and environmentally innovative projects.

U.S. Department of Education – Overview and Implementation

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Overview and Grant Programs

U.S. Department of Justice – Including $1 billion to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program; $225 million to the Office on Violence Against Women

Community Development Financial Institutions Fund – Including $3 billion in New Markets Tax Credits and an additional $90 million for the CDFI grant program.

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services – Including more than $15 billion in federal assistance to help states cover the costs of Medicaid programs.

“Corporate Philanthropy in Turbulent Times” program on November 14 in San Francisco

christine — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 02:17:40 +0000

Every year the Foundation Center in San Francisco hosts a forum on regional corporate philanthropy trends in the Bay Area. In light of the state of the economy and possible fundraising impacts on the social sector, this is a good time to hear from corporate giving officers.

Representatives from Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Intel, and Cisco Foundation will present trends in corporate philanthropy and forecast their giving for next year and beyond. Some nonprofits are wondering if we will see impacts reminiscent of the economic fallout earlier in the decade, when giving portfolios shrank and competition for grants and charitable donations became fiercer.

Janet Camarena, the director of the San Francisco Foundation Center, will moderate the forum. She recently launched a new blog for the Center and has invited the community to post questions to the blog for consideration during the November 14, 2008 forum.

Co-sponsored by San Francisco Business Times and the Development Executives Roundtable (DER), this popular forum typically fills to capacity early.

Go to DER’s Web site to register.

The forum is free if you bring your own lunch, $12 for DER members and $10 for non-members.

UPDATE:
The Foundation Center’s video recording of this event is now available on their Web site.

What does an effective nonprofit look like?

christine — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:39:58 +0000

A recent “Meet the Grantmakers” panel at the Foundation Center in San Francisco brought together Jacob Harold of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Anne Valley of The James Irvine Foundation, and Linda Wood of The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund to focus on the theme of “organizational effectiveness.” Threaded throughout the discussions were topics raised at the March 10-12, 2008 conference convened by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations – also known as GEO. GEO promotes organizational effectiveness by identifying and promoting grantmaking practices that improve grantee performance. If your organization passed the letter of inquiry and proposal stages with a funder and needs to get ready for a site visit, the Foundation Center panelists would encourage you to download a free copy of “The Due Diligence Tool.” Many grantmakers are now using this GEO publication to assess nonprofits when making funding decisions. The guide pulls together best practices from a variety of U.S. foundations from small family foundations to large private foundations.

Tools for nonprofit efficiency and impact

christine — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 03:02:52 +0000

I just received the March/April 2008 issue of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, which is dedicated to the topic of fundraising databases. This is a particularly good topic for small community-based nonprofits because databases are more commonly used by organizations with larger budgets and staff capacity. Some nonprofits resist databases because staff are not accustomed to using them. Others do not have the time or resources required to find the right solution and implement new tools through training. Yet once these hurdles are cleared, then an organization could be on course to increasing support and tracking impacts. Databases are tools that facilitate communications and connections with supporters and potential donors.

In the for-profit world businesses use CRM databases – Customer Relationship Management – to track marketing campaigns, leads, and sales. Nonprofits raising money and working with volunteers need the same tool to effectively manage and build relationships with constituents – individual donors, foundations, volunteers, sponsors, and other supporters. Now online resources are out there to make it possible for small nonprofits to take advantage of these tools. To make an informed decision about hard costs (equipment or software) and people costs (time to assess and implement), here are a few resources:

Idealware: The article “A Few Good Tools: Low Cost Constituent Databases” provides product comparisons and considerations.
TechSoup.org: Several good articles here on planning and selecting a database.
The San Francisco Bay Area Non Profits Salesforce.com user group: Salesforce Foundation donates 10 product licenses to eligible 501(c)(3) organizations, and a nonprofit-specific CRM is available.
Network for Good: Articles and research on donor databases.
Community Technology Network of the Bay Area: Articles on on technology planning useful for assessing costs and how to project manage a solution.
N-Power: Resources and articles such as how to select a technology vendor and manage a technology project.

The Foundation Center launches many free online resources for nonprofits

christine — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:24:46 +0000

Since 1956 the Foundation Center has connected nonprofits to free philanthropic resources. For years I have been attending their events in San Francisco including “Meet the Grantmakers” panels and special events with topics from “Fundraising for Small and All-Volunteer Organizations” to “Trends in Bay Area Bank Philanthropy.”

In recent months, the Center has launched several online multimedia resources to make the invaluable information shared in their free events accessible to communities and organizations that cannot attend the lively presentations in Atlanta, Cleveland, New York, San Francisco, or Washington, DC. I just discovered “Philanthropy Chat,” which is a new online audio series featuring interviews with West Coast philanthropists and fundraising experts. Janet Camarena, the director of the Center’s San Francisco library and learning center, hosts the interviews. In the first pilot edition recorded on October 10 she speaks to Ralph Lewin, associate executive director of the California Council for the Humanities. You can listen to the audio recording or read the transcript on the Center’s website and learn about the Council’s current grantmaking programs and how they are using new media technologies.