Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, we look at how the newest generation of fundraisers are making their mark on the field. Plus, the Trump memo to freeze funding created chaos; learn how you need to adapt your fundraising strategies in response.

I’m Rasheeda Childress, senior editor for fundraising at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please write me.

Thanks to our sponsor Blackbaud for supporting Fundraising Update.

Yesterday, I took the day off to judge a history-day competition at my daughter’s high school. It was interesting to see events in a project on the AIDS epidemic viewed as “history” that I vividly remember: 13-year-old Ryan White being barred from school and Princess Diana’s ready interaction with AIDS patients, when most people treated them as pariahs. It was a reminder, on the day my story about next-gen fundraisers was published, that the torch is passing. There is an up-and-coming generation that thinks about the world differently, seeing it through a lens shaped by modern technology and ideas.

That is one of the hallmarks I found as I interviewed next-gen fundraisers: They see the world differently because, through their lived experience, they are different.

Carlos Prieto is one of the new crop of fundraisers. During college, when he was trying to figure out what to do with his life, the answer walked right up to him — in the form of a canvasser from Greenpeace. Prieto talked to the canvasser, who spoke passionately about the organization’s mission to protect the environment.

“I fell in love with the idea of combining your passions and spreading that to the masses,” Prieto says.

Jonathan Sprague, Jonathan Sprague/Redux for the Chronicle

He became a canvasser for the Greenpeace Fund. Realizing how much he loved sharing the mission, he worked his way up in the fundraising office, briefly leaving for a position at a different nonprofit. Now a major-gifts officer, Prieto uses texts, emails, and other technology to keep in touch with donors — but he nurtures and cements those relationships in person, often in nature.

“Whether it’s a hike with a donor or just sitting on a bench in a park with them and overlooking their favorite viewpoint, it gets them out of their traditional box and way of thinking,” Prieto says. “Rather than just sitting at a table face-to-face with them and it being more transactional, free-flowing conversation can happen at that point.”

Prieto and others in the next generation of fundraisers are bringing their full selves to their work, and with that comes a passion for the mission that draws them to nonprofits. They constantly question what’s being done and offer new ideas about how to do things better. These up-and-comers have a chameleon-like nature that allows them to easily transition between young new donors and longtime supporters who remind them of their grandparents.

“They’re unbelievably creative people coming in with really unique and exciting ideas, ways to utilize technology effectively, ways to be hyperresponsive to donors in a way that I don’t know was the standard when I started,” says Caitie Deranek Stewart, senior director of development for the University of Florida McKnight Brain Institute.

Despite the energy and conviction early-career fundraisers bring to the work, they face challenges. They struggle to find mentors, get discouraged because they set unrealistic expectations for themselves, and wrestle with finding the right work-life balance. Veteran fundraisers say nonprofits need to find ways to support these fundraisers and encourage them to stick with it because new blood and new ideas will be crucial to turn around a trend that plagues the nonprofit world: fewer donors. It will be up to new fundraisers to court the newest donors, says Angela White, executive vice president of the Eskenazi Health Foundation.

“We need their voices,” says White, who has more than three decades of experience as a fundraiser. “They’re going to help us figure out who are the next gen of our donor pool and how do we start communicating with them and grow those relationships. That’s our hope for the next generation of professionals.”

To learn more about the next generation of fundraisers, check out my complete article.

— Lauren Steiner, CEO of Grants Plus

The Trump administration issued a memo last week pausing all federal funding, which sent the nonprofit world into a frenzy as organizations that rely on that money tried to figure out how to carry out their mission. While the memo was halted by a lawsuit and then rescinded, the administration has vowed to cut federal funding to a variety of programs — such as those involving diversity and reproductive rights — and generally trim government funding.

“The rescinding of the memo has potentially given some organizations false hope this is over,” says Cherian Koshy, a longtime fundraiser who is vice president of the company Kindsight. “But the reality is, it’s not over — not by a long shot.”

The administration’s willingness to cut funding, Koshy and other experts say, is a sign that nonprofits need to take this moment as a wake-up call and rethink their plan for financing their operations — including reserve policies, fundraising strategies, and business models. They also will need to lean into advocacy and take care of their staff as new issues keep cropping up.

“We have to be realistic about the future and understand that funding may not look like it looks today,” says Lauren Steiner, CEO of Grants Plus, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits secure grant funding.

In the wake of the funding freeze memo, it’s crucial to gather the board, executive staff, and fundraising teams together to think through a few issues, says Sarah Krasin, principal and managing director at CCS Fundraising, a consulting firm.

“We’re in a new environment. So how can we equip our boards to be ready, not to react but to really thoughtfully plan for what we know is a changed environment,” she says. She recommends boards and executive teams work together to do things like scenario planning and cash-flow analysis.

For more on how to cope, read my entire article. Also, for additional insight on the impact the funding freeze memo has had on nonprofits, read this article by my colleagues Alex Daniels and Sara Herschander.

• Disaster Philanthropy. With the rise in natural disasters due to climate change, one nonprofit is leaning into that area at a time of change, reports my colleague Tamara Straus.

  “My hot take is that the current model of disaster philanthropy is growing increasingly obsolete in the face of 21st-century disasters,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, associate professor of professional practice at the Columbia Climate School and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “It’s trying to run faster to keep up with a runaway train of disasters.”

  The Emergency Assistance Foundation focuses on disasters and has disbursed more than $329 million to 411,000 individuals and families since 2011. The organization is funded primarily by 350 big corporations that want to give in emergencies to their employees and others, but do not want to navigate the compliance requirements, risks, and staff costs of running a tax-exempt entity.

  For more on EAF and the evolving world of disaster philanthropy, read Tamara’s entire story.

Donna Esteves and her husband, Richard, gave $3 million to support the Donna and Richard Esteves Fund for Women’s Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Health, and to encourage more women philanthropists to give to women’s rights. The couple established the fund with a $1 million gift in 2016.

Donna Esteves co-founded Free Lighting Corporation, which used all-women crews to install energy-efficient lighting systems in homes.

For other notable gifts this week, read my colleague Maria Di Mento’s Gifts Roundup column. To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly and has data going back to 2000.

How to Use A.I. Effectively and Protect Your Organization’s Reputation and Values. Experts say it’s critical for nonprofits to craft guidelines on A.I. use — and they offer advice on how to do it.

A New Year’s Resolution for the Wealthy: Take a Sabbatical From Getting Richer (Opinion). By donating any wealth accumulated after January 1, people of means can help others and enrich their own lives

When Bequests Take a Turn. Gifts bequeathed after a donor’s death are always appreciated, and often significant. A gift left to the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department is raising eyebrows, as the department hopes to use the money for something other than what the donor requested, reports the San Francisco Standard.

Ben Bobo, a resident who loved taking his dogs to city parks and sitting on the benches, left $3.6 million to buy park benches. But the department said it couldn’t “make that many benches,” his estate’s executor, Kim Ridinger, told the publication.

So, Ridinger worked with the department and came up with a plan to use the money for benches and a variety of other needs identified by the department. Ridinger believes this meets Bobo’s intent, but others aren’t so sure.

“The city’s choosing to spend 80 percent of this windfall on something else,” said Henry Symons, the lone public commenter who objected to the new plan proposed by the parks department and Ridinger. “I thought that was quite unfair.”

The agreement has to be approved by a probate judge to be finalized. One attorney in the article suggests the judge could issue a directive to put the money into a fund that would buy, maintain, and replace park benches in perpetuity. Whatever happens with the case, it’s a reminder to those who work in planned giving to discuss with donors the needs of the organization and ways to make the most impactful bequests. (San Francisco Standard)