076. Trends in Direct Fundraising: Keeping It Real With Erica Waasdorp

Summary

What constitutes a culture of philanthropy within nonprofits and NGOs? It's a term easily bandied around, but how do I see when it's in place?

How has the field of direct giving by small donors, and monthly giving as one donor practice in particular changed in the last 10-20 years?

Are there hurdles to be overcome in persuading donors to adopt monthly giving? 

Finally, there is a lot of discussion about the need for a shift towards ethical storytelling, with local program participants in the driver's seat, and while focusing on the local person's agency. The raison d'etre for this is clear; however, is this aligned with what motivates donors (at least in traditional fundraising 'markets') to give?

 

In this NGO Soul+Strategy podcast episode, I interview Erica Waasdorp, President of A Direct Solution, a consulting agency with expertise in direct giving and monthly giving, on trends in direct fundraising.

Erica's Bio:

• Author and Speaker, and a Master Trainer affiliated with the Association for Fundraising Professionals
• Expertise in Direct Marketing, Monthly Giving, International Fundraising
• US Ambassador for the International Fundraising Congress (IFC)
• Before launching A Direct Solution, she held several consulting, coaching and direct marketing roles in various consulting agencies, nonprofits, and in the publishing industry.

 

We discuss - particularly with regard to the US donor arena: 

• Online donations have blossomed since 2011, to the point where people now have access to many online payment platforms, donation-by-text, etc.
• Religious people are more generous than non-religious people; and so are low to mid-income people (in relative terms, as a proportion of their income), as compared to wealthy people
• Monthly giving is an important strategy to underpin financial sustainability since it guarantees nonprofits potentially significant levels of dependable unrestricted revenue; this in turn allows the agency to do long-term planning.
• In the short term, when setting up monthly giving as one avenue, it is more capacity and resource-intensive for an agency
• Monthly giving as one donation strategy has been around for decades, but many nonprofits have only started focusing on it in a serious way in the last 10 or so years
• There is some tension between the NGO sector’s aspired direction of ethical, authentic storytelling – what Erica calls ‘the complete story’ --, that starts from a program participant’s strengths and assets and the opportunities they have rather than from a deficit perspective, and the need of donors to feel that they contribute to a clear need. This tension is not yet fully acknowledged.
• Intermediary nonprofit ranking and rating sites (e.g. Guidestar, Charity Navigator, Give Well, etc in a US context) fulfill a donor’s felt need for transparency and the ability to trust an agency, but such data is unlikely to shape  donation behavior of new donors in a major way. 
• Child sponsorships are likely to continue as a vehicle for fundraising, but at a lower level than before. Many nonprofits’ donor pools are aging (a lot), and this will remain the case till current day Millenials and subsequent generations age themselves.

 

Resources:

Erica’s LinkedIn Profile

A Direct Solution consulting agency, founded by Erica (the site provides lots of free resources on direct fundraising)

 

YouTube vid