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Klein & Roth Consulting E-Newsletter
Issue 2 - May, 2011
Dear Friend,
Welcome to our May, 2011 e-newsletter. In addition to some tips
about boards, read on for new resources, inspiring work being done by
some of our clients, and exciting news from one of our Associates at
Klein and Roth Consulting.
UPCOMING TRAINING IN NEW YORK
If your organization is a grantee of one of the following funders, you’re eligible to participate in a 3-day training, Raise the Money You Need: Building an Individual Donor Program, May 18-20. A 2-day training, Raise the Money You Need: An Advanced Seminar
is taking place May 22-24. Funders are New York Foundation, Union
Square Awards, North Star Fund, Cricket Island Foundation,
Stonewall Foundation, and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Lead trainers
are Stephanie Roth, and Priscilla Hung (of GIFT). For more
information, contact Isabel Rivera. irivera@nyf.org.
For more trainings and speaking engagements by the team at Klein and Roth Consulting, go to www.kleinandroth.com.
CLIENT HIGHLIGHTS
These are strange and troubling times. We’re facing budget crises
all over the country, high unemployment and continued housing
foreclosures, while the Chevron Corporation just posted its second largest quarterly
profits in its 131 year old history. The killing of Osama bin
Laden is being hailed as the best news ever in the war against
terrorism, with hardly a murmur of doubt or questioning about the
decision to kill him rather than bring him to trial. Continued
attacks on women’s rights to abortion are on the rise, and though
abortion remains legal, it is less and less available to more and more
women every day.
The good news is all the organizations working to bring these issues to
the attention of the public, organizing to make progressive change, and
working for the common good. We are privileged to work with a few
of the thousands of organizations doing great work.
Here are just a few of our clients:
California Calls, a statewide alliance of 27 community
organizations, is working to address the financial crisis in California
by engaging those most affected - low income, communities of color who
make up the majority of the population of the state - in taking
action for more fair and just tax policies. Klein and Roth
Consulting is working with California Calls to include grassroots
fundraising in their organizing strategy and campaigns, and to help them
build a broad base of individual donors throughout the state.
Find out more at www.californiacalls.org
Colorado Progressive Coalition is a statewide,
member-driven organization that engages communities to advance economic
and social justice. CPC advocates at the local, state, and national
levels on issues that affect people of color, low-income
neighborhoods, immigrants, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender
community, and young people. CPC is one of eight community
organizations in Colorado that formed the Grassroots Fundraising
Project, which is working with Klein and Roth consulting to help them
build stronger organizational fundraising cultures, integrate
fundraising and organizing, and decrease their dependence on foundation
funding. www.progressivecoalition.org
Equal Justice Society, based in San Francisco, works
at the intersection of the law and racial justice to fight for social
justice throughout the U.S. Klein and Roth Consulting is working
with the staff and board to strengthen and expand their major donor
program. Check them out at www.equaljusticesociety.org.
BOARD SERVICE: MAKING IT A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE
by Stephanie Roth
What if we stopped asking questions about how we can get the board to
function better, how we can get board members to follow through on their
commitments, how we can get them to raise money and stop being such
deadbeats, and instead asked the question, how can we make the
experience of serving on a board something to look forward to and
enjoy? How can staff think of the board as a part of the
organization that brings important perspectives to the work? Just
reframing how we see boards and staff/board relationships can make an
enormous difference in the quality of work the board does and in the
confidence staff have in their governing board. We’ll
explore this more in future issues of the newsletter, and for today,
here’s one easy thing you can do that we learned about from the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival that they’ve found extremely useful in
strengthening their board. They conduct exit interviews for all
departing board members to gain important information that they use to
strengthen and build a better board culture. Here are the
questions they ask. Try them out and you may be surprised by what
you hear.
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Why did you initially agree to be on the board?
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What specific areas of service on the board have been the most meaningful to you? Why?
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What specific projects, activities or organizational actions stood out for you?
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Have
there been any organizational events or issues that were disappointing
to you? If so, what can we do to prevent this from happening in
the future?
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How do you see yourself assisting the organization in raising funds in the future?
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What could we have done to improve your board experience?
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What do you see as your role with the organization in the future?
TIPS ON GETTING THE BOARD TO RAISE MONEY by Stephanie Roth
Most of you have heard the refrain, “I don’t know anyone with money”
when you bring up the topic of asking for money with the board.
And often your answer is, of course you know people with money – maybe
not a LOT of money, but you have to know at least a few people who would
be willing to give $10 or $25 or $100 to our organization.
In the last issue, we advised you not to spend time trying to convince
the intractable board member to do something they’re never going to
do. In this issue, I’m going to suggest something else:
Take your current donor list and identify the subset of donors who never
hear from you personally (that is, they might get mail and e-appeals
and/or invitations to your events, but they never get a phone call or an
invitation to meet with you one-on-one). Distribute that list
among your board (and staff too), and ask them to identify anyone they
know personally and would be willing to call. If they really don’t
know ANY of your current donors, ask if they’d be willing to call
someone they don’t personally know. The next time you’re sending a
mail or e-appeal to those donors, have board members add a personal
note on the letters of the people they’ll be calling, and then have them
make a follow-up call a week or two after the letters are mailed. If
you give board members the option to choose WHO they’re going to
contact, there’s a greater chance they’ll do it. Remind them
that someone who has previously given to the organization is
going to be more receptive to a phone call than someone who has never
given. If the donor is giving $500 or more, the board member
should try to meet with them in person to ask for another gift.
IMPORTANT BOOKS AND ARTICLES
Read Kim’s latest commentary on the problem with tax havens in her blog, "Kim Klein and the Commons".
A brand new, updated and expanded, Fundraising for Social Change, is hot off the press. This is the 6th
Edition of Kim’s groundbreaking book, one that is not only a must-read
for anyone working in a nonprofit, whether staff member, board member,
activist or volunteer, but is a book that has set the standard for
fundraising practice for the past 25 years. For more info, click here.
"I used Fundraising for Social Change as a textbook for my class
for many years and often recommend it to grassroots organizations as a
primer for developing a fundraising strategy. Kim's years of experience
and her own broad knowledge of the field give the book heft and
credibility. Her pragmatism and sense of humor make it readable and
engaging." —Maria Mottola, executive director, New York Foundation
NEW ARRIVAL!
We’re thrilled to announce the birth of Naima Kali Liu-Fernandez, to
Rona Fernandez and Henry Liu, on March 25, 2011. Rona has been a
Senior Consultant with Klein and Roth Consulting since 2009, and Henry
has been our web designer for the past few years. Welcome, Naima!
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