Members Newsletter

Contributions is the official newsletter of the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of AFP. Please use our newsletter to submit announcements, feature stories, and other news pertinent to the fundraising profession. The newsletter will be emailed quarterly to all Greater Cincinnati Chapter AFP members. Please contact Danielle Gentry-Barth at danielle.gentry-barth@thechristcollege.org or Kitty Beck at katherine.beck@thechristhospital.com.
for more information on submitting articles.

Possible Solutions to the Ethical Case Study: Helping the Homeless

Question:

Helping the Homeless
The organization you work for serves the homeless and had a counseling program that is minimally operable. You know that clients of the program could receive better service elsewhere. The executive director and board are not willing to make the comprehensive changes required to improve services. A donor calls, wishing to give a substantial sum to the counseling program.

What should you do?
1) Accept the gift and thank the donor.
2) Advise the donor that the gift can be put to more effective use elsewhere.
3) Give the donor the name of another organization that can make more effective use of the money for this purpose.
4) Resign your position.

Possible Answers:
Accept the gift and thank the donor. Or, you can resign your position. Standard #1 of the AFP Code states that members shall not engage in activities that harm the members’ organization, clients or profession. Standard #2 states that members shall not engage in activities that conflict with their fiduciary, ethical and legal obligations to their organizations and their clients.

Need vs. Program in Direct Mail by Thomas K. Keller, CFRE

Continued from the November 2008 Newsletter

One of the most frequent needs nonprofit leaders feel is to tell the good news about their organizations in their direct mail, and you don’t have to be one of the small players in the charity field to make this mistake.

A representative of the Russ Reid Agency shared the following story concerning the experience of one of their clients at a recent conference of the DMA’s Nonprofit Federation. The client is a very large international relief organization and uses paid infomercials on television to acquire new monthly pledge donors.

While this story involves direct response TV, the point it makes translates to direct mail and Efundraising. And while it involves acquisition, the experience of a broad spectrum of charities bears out the fact that parallel things happen in renewal.

The TV spots involved are usually three minutes in length. A couple years ago, a new board member complained that these infomercials "consisted of nothing but unrelenting misery, when we do so much good work." He asked, "Can't we say something about the good things we do? Surely that will motivate people to give."

Familiar words to many of us who have been in fundraising for a while!

This new board member had some clout. He convinced the board that a new direction was required, and the Russ Reid Agency changed an existing three-minute spot by switching just 20 seconds of program information into their prime existing infomercial.

The new visuals and audio consisted of food being delivered to the poor, a well being dug and delivering water to a village, children eating, and children receiving health care. Remember, this was only 20 seconds out of three minutes, not a whole new spot. The transitions in and out were very smooth.

Watching both spots back-to-back without knowing they had been changed, people in focus groups couldn't consciously notice that they were different. The results in terms of contributions, however, were dramatic.

While the original spot with no imagery or information about program was bringing in new donors at a cost of $165, the new spot raised the cost per new donor to $280. As the representative from Russ Reid said, "That's $115 out of the mouths of starving children."

My point is this: It's tempting to talk about program and success in fundraising, but people give to need. Therefore, it's necessary to keep the focus on need in fundraising materials. The purpose of a direct mail letter is to get people to write checks. The public relations program is the correct venue to educate people on other issues.