Fundraising For Non-Profit Course, Term Paper Example

Introduction

The non-profit sector is very crucial to the economy of the United States. Fundraising in the private sector is often done by volunteers who come together in order to contribute towards the achievement of a common goal. In sporting institutions such as Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, fundraising provides the society with a reason to come together in an effort to contribute towards the development of a sport and improve the wellbeing of children aged between 6 and 13 years.

Through fundraising, it becomes easy to raise funds and start projects that would be impossible for individual organizations to initiate. Once initiated, the whole society takes pride in the fundraising efforts as well as the success that they often bring about (Anheier, 2000).

The Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League is one of the 1.48 million non-governmental organizations that exist in the United States, 800,000 of which are categorized as charities. Each year, the payroll of nonprofit institutions exceeds $254 billion. Revenue collected through public charity accounts for about 8.5 percent of the gross domestic product of the country. Charitable giving makes up about 2.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Fundraising Opportunities and Challenges for Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League

Over the years, the Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League has had many development opportunities created through fundraising. However, like all other nonprofit sectors that engage in fundraising activities, the football league faces many challenges. One of the challenges is that the providers of the funding are never interested in processes; all they want is results that are commensurate with the funds that they have offered to the organization.

One of the ways of providing a solution to these problems has been to come up with a strategic planning initiative (Anheier & Seibel, 1990). The initiative entails knowing and taking pride in the organization’s history. Sometimes the shared experiences may be negative. However, people who have contributed a lot to the birth of the organization often find themselves with the goal of keeping the hope of a brighter future in the organization alive through planning fundraisings as well as soliciting for sponsorships.

In the process of soliciting funds, managers of organizations have to be keen on how the organizational environment is being monitored. This entails assessing the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the organization’s internal resources. The opportunities and the threats that exist in the manner in which resources are managed have to be identified so that the extent of success of fundraising initiatives can be determined.

In the case of Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, it is very important to consider the mission and vision that govern all the activities that take place each passing day. This way, the available resources, however minimal, can be put to the best use to the delight of sponsors, supporters as well as members.

Fundraising for non-profit organization entails generation of funds that are directed towards achievement of goals that enhance the wellbeing of a certain community, as opposed to generation profits for members. This is where the main challenge. Sometimes, the money raised may not be enough to ensure that the humanitarian goals set are realized. To deal with this challenge, the organizers of all fundraising events have to determine beforehand whether they intend to commit the funds to long-term plans or short-term ones. It becomes easy to solicit for funds publicly when definite goals have been clearly outlined. For Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, a good project for which fundraising may be solicited is renovation of the Pleasantville Recreation Center.

As an organization that caters for the needs of children who are aged between 6 and 13, there is need for special facilities to be provided in order to ensure that as many children as possible get an opportunity to play football. The renovation passes for a short-term objective. A good example of a long-term objective is establishment of another football recreation center in another part of the city.

In fundraising, goals are meaningless unless there are strategies, timelines and courses of action to guide their implementation process (Boeder, 2002). This is a challenge that nonprofit groups have to face. The best time to face this problem is during the planning process. At this time, one should clearly determine the manner in which success is going to be measured. When finance-related goals are measurable, it is possible to know when they have been attained. It is even easier to know how far the group is from hitting the success mark.

The process of implementing the plans that arise out of an idea to hold a fundraising is not an easy one either. There are hurdles to be overcome, compromises to be taken and dilemmas to be solved. Sponsors will be unwilling to commit their funds to an organization whose structures and systems seem rather weak. They determine the strength of an organization by assessing whether critical success factors have been clearly spelt out or not. There is no easy way of tackling these challenges; if the organizational structures require an overhaul, nothing short of an organizational overhaul is going to instill confidence in the financiers of the ongoing projects, no matter how socially beneficial they seem to be (Cutlip, 1990). The trick lies in broadening administrative structures so that there is room for future expansion.

Evaluating performance in fundraising efforts entails tracking the expected results. Reviewing the situation and looking for negative variance is just as important task, though a really challenging one especially for organizations that handle many tasks such as Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League. However, if opportunity variances are assessed well, they can give a hint on the best ways of project implementation so that children can benefit from better football training facilities, thereby attracting more voluntary financiers in the future.

How to Ensure That Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League Is an Institution That Deserves Financial Support Through Fundraising

Some stable organizations perform very poorly when it comes to matters of fundraising while others are very successful in this regard although they may not be well established. For a nonprofit organization to be successful in fundraising campaigns, it should be strong and it should also have a clear mission. Although Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League has recorded significant successes through fundraising, the successes can be increased further through implementation of various simple measures.

Avoiding any disagreements about the institution’s mission statement is one of these simple measures. Everyone at Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League should be informed about the ideals governing all fundraising efforts, and indeed, all ongoing projects. Failure by the management board to show a coherent understanding of how children will benefit from a new football recreation center would automatically spell doom in all ongoing fund-generation activities. It is rather disturbing to note that instances where different leaders of nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations misunderstand the mission statement are very commonplace.

Secondly, strengthening services is very important. Every organization can improve the social services being offered, for the benefit of more people. For Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, focus has not only being on how many children have access to football training facilities, but also on the quality of these facilities as well as training and cheerleading instructional methods. Non-profit organizations are solely set up in order to serve communities (Minow, 2002.). For participants in fundraising, it is not just an issue of whether services that improve the wellbeing of the society are being offered; it is also an issue of whether these services are being offered cost-effectively for sustainability’s sake.

Thirdly, the management board should be strengthened. The nomination process for members of the board should be transparent and it should also be enhanced through ensuring that there is a balance between diversity and professionalism in the way it is constituted. Management problems sometimes arise as a result of lack of proper orientation of members of the board. Once leadership fails at the top, there is no way that it can trickle to the bottom. The board committee structure should not only exist, it should be active. Many committees may be set up as long as there is no overlap of duties (Hines, 1999). Beneficial synergies should take the place of overlapping duties in order to ensure coordination of all their activities.

Community perceptions have a very strong influence on success of fundraising initiatives. After all, all participants belong to this community. Sometimes, leaders of an institution like Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League may have to go out of their way to assure the local community that they are not taking their children out of studies and into football, but rather providing them with an opportunity to spend their free time well.

Mutual respect between board and staff members is another factor that greatly counts for success in achievement of an institution’s mission and ultimately, eases in generation of funds for development projects. Whereas the board of Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League has the responsibility of providing opportunities for interactions, their efforts can only bear fruits if staff members are willing to take the cue and interact freely with the leaders. The board can never formulate a good budget if all the staff members do not participate in this process. This may lead in failure of fundraising efforts.

Many nonprofit institutions find it extremely difficult to maintain an active pool of volunteers. Volunteers play a vital role of attracting funding as well as portraying the organization as a truly non-profit institution that needs to be supported in order to achieve noble goals. For Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League finding committed volunteers may be easy if lovers of the game are targeted by the management board and assured recognition in the process of implementing fundraising activities that help them improve their leadership skills.

Ensuring Efficiency in Budgets and Allocation of Financial Resources

Institutions that are engaged in fundraising activities target donors for their financial burden to be eased. On the other hand, wise donors are always keen to ensure that their funds are going to be put into good use. They often do this by targeting the budget records of an institution. The main aim is often to assess the manner in which financial resources are allocated; whether the rationale for the allocation matches with the mission statement of the institution. If there is no connection between these two aspects, donor funding can be expected to be minimal.

The manner in which financial resources are utilized indicates whether the projects are being implemented cost-effectively or not. Without cost-effectiveness, fiscal health of an institution such as Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League would be in jeopardy. One of the issues that donors are always keen on is institutional accountability and credibility. The budget processes should be very strong for them to attract many donors. For many institutions, building a good reputation in matters of fiscal credibility may be a long process, often taking many years. However, once the reputation has been built, it should be easy for funds to be generated by many donors in both the public and private sectors.

Additionally, matching projects with the philanthropic interests of donors is a big challenge, yet donors are always looking for nothing short of that. If they do not find such projects, they argue, they would rather not give out their hard-earned money. With this in mind, managers of the Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League initiative should be motivated by the knowledge that donors will surely appreciate a well thought-out budgeting process and will reward it with financial support.

In order to ensure that donors identify these efforts, the budgeters must see to it that their document portrays the general view of the project. People should be able to associate every activity with the entire project. Unwanted details should be left out while unclear provisions should be clarified. The budget should be able to maintain control over resources depending on affordability and cost-effectiveness.

Additionally, donors are always keen to know whether the management has the capacity to maintain control over the implementation of the budget once the project has kicked off. The management needs to have the capacity to tell when available resources are being depleted at a faster rate than earlier projected. Indeed, cash-flow projection is an extremely powerful fundraising tool.

Cash-flow projections involve simply the ability by the board to determine when unforeseen, unfavorable situations are about to arise and putting corrective measures in place without having to alter the entire budget. The executive director of Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, for instance, should have an adequate understanding of the budgeting process of the institution. In case the budget process is being refined, the executive director, board members and key staff should be the first people to review the sample budget.

Different Approaches of Setting Fundraising Goals

For experienced professionals, achievement in fundraising is attained when goals are achieved in the most cost-effective methods possible. The five main goals include summarization of new and old gift potential, creation of a goal that is based on the donations of the board of directors, performance of a feasibility study; preparation of comparative statistics and use of an analysis in the determination of every request based on the requested amount of donation.

The first method of setting goals involves summarizing trend of recent gift history. This is the most effective method since adjustments can be made for known losses and the goals of an institution can be set based on this analysis. The second method is best suited to institutions that are heavily reliant on a person-to-person gift initiative. In this case, the people involved in the budgeting process can estimate the amount that will be raised based on the amount of money that the board of directors is expected to contribute.

The third method is about use of a feasibility study. This process requires experienced consultants to conduct confidential interviews involving all prospective pacesetting donors who are strongly in support of the proposed fundraising campaign. Consultants are often preferred since they take an approach throughout the analysis process. When consultants handle these confidential interviews, prospective donors are very candid about the amount of money that they are willing to give towards the fundraising initiative.

The fourth method, involving in-depth of comparative statistics would be ideal for a fundraising project being managed by an institution like Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League. The statistical data to be focused on includes expenses, sources of income, number of donors and amount given in the past by each donor in each fundraising initiative. This enables the managers to predict with some measure of accuracy, the amount of money they should hope to get in the forthcoming fundraising event.

Statistics that are relevant for use by fundraising planners at Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League may be gathered from ad-hoc alliances or published sources, a good example of which is American symphony Orchestra League. In either case, the information gathered forms a good basis for capital campaign and annual fund results. In case the specialist notices that other organizations have been more successful in fundraising efforts, it may be important to borrow a leaf from the fundraising method that these organizations are using.

The fifth method of achieving fundraising goals, involving name-by-name analysis of prospective givers, is best used during capital campaigns. You need to list all the top prospective donors. These are the donors who will be contributing in their capacity as leaders. Then, a decision has to be made on the amount that each donor will be asked to contribute.

Fundraising Through an Annual Funds Drive

The term “annual funds drive” implies that only one gift is expected by institutions that plan annual funds drives. This is not the case; on the contrary, every non-governmental organization strives to encourage as many contributions from member as possible every year (Reiner & Wolpert, 1981). The matter is further complicated by membership drives which many people perceive to be a one-off activity which it is not. Membership drives may be planned at any time of the year. Donors may get “rewarded” by being issued with a newsletter. It may not matter that they may have received a similar newsletter in a previous membership drive within the same year.

Annual funds serve a very important role since in the real sense, they are operating funds. There are no restrictions to the amounts that are received. For Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, annual funds drives are very important since they help in the day-to-day running of recreational centers especially during the league season when football fields are always a beehive of activities.

In most cases, the strategies used to solicit funds include direct mail, telephone solicitation, special events and email. Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League has been using the internet to solicit funds through membership drives and the strategy has been rather successful (Olsen, 2001). The larger the number of requests sent to prospective givers, the higher the chances of success. Gift levels and response rates increase when there is an improvement in list selection, her increase the extent of success as well as mastery of segmentation techniques.

Fundraising Through Capital and Endowment Drives

Many institutions engage in capital and endowment drives only after annual funds drives have recorded success and they are often spearheaded by volunteers. In these kinds of drives, emphasis has to be put on visionary projects. Additionally, pacesetting of leadership contributions is best using this approach. Like in the case of all other funds drives, givers are encouraged to make multi-year contributions in order for amount of funds committed to capital drives to increase.

Capital campaigns tend to be very intense and are organized through a sequential pattern. The advancement or quiet phase involves use of lead gifts and stretch gifts from those people who are closest to an organization. In the intermediate phase, focus is on major gifts, mainly from the philanthropic community. Then, there is the public phase, whereby gifts are requested from all other supporters.

Capital campaigns are best handled through person-to-person solicitation, especially during the advancement stage where the foundation of a successful fundraising campaign is being set. The solicitations made at this stage raise awareness of the institution’s intentions of raising funds for the betterment of the community. The institution’s volunteers need to nurture as many relationships as possible.

Fundraising Through Special Project Support

This mode of fundraising blends the elements of both annual funds drives and capital and endowment funds drives, only that the campaigns are often not very intense. The best strategies for this are major gift fundraising and graftsmanship. Major gifts are often solicited from individual supporters who are affluent as well as corporate givers.

Special project support drives can be very advantageous for Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League fundraising campaigns in that regular donors can offer additional gifts for a second or third time when requested to do so in order to show support for special activities. Additionally, affluent individual givers, corporate donors and foundations view all attractive projects as good opportunities for them to lend support for a worthy cause.

Special project support drives are also a good launching pad for new projects to be jumpstarted. It is also a good way of making modest capital purchases or even to enhance existing development projects. At Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League, these drives may be used to upgrade technological facilities being used at the recreation center. Whenever these drives are initiated, they act as a reminder to members that their continued financial support is needed all the time.

The two-envelope metaphor applies to the special project support drives just as it does to the annual funds drive. In this metaphor, one envelope is for annual contributions while the other is for regular ad-hoc support that members are requested to offer whenever they are required to do so or when an opportunity to give arises.

Conclusion

The main reason why people feel motivated to give funds to nonprofit institutions such as Pleasantville Jokers Junior Football League is the belief that the projects initiated will help improve the wellbeing of the community. This is why donors are interested in understanding the mission of these institutions in order to determine whether the funds they given will be put into good use.

Every nonprofit organization with a clear mission should therefore never shy away from soliciting funds. The strategies used in soliciting these funds should be carefully thought-out and all stakeholders in the organization should be involved.

References

Anheier, H. (2000). Managing Non-Profit Organizations: Towards A New Approach.  New York: Penguin Books.

Anheier, H. & Seibel, W. (1990). The Third Sector: Comparative Studies of Nonprofit Organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Boeder, P. (2002). Non-Profits on E: How Non-Profit Organisations are using the Internet for Communication, Fundraising, and Community Building. First Monday 7(7) p. 20-30.

Cutlip, S. (1990). Fund raising in the United States, Society 27(3) p. 59-62.

Hines J. (1999). Non-Profit Business Activity and the Unrelated Business Income Tax. Tax Policy and the Economy, 13(6) p. 57-84.

Minow, M. (2002). Partners, Not Rivals: Redrawing the Lines between Public and Private, Non-Profit and Profit, and Secular and Religious. Corporate Affairs 10(4) p. 1061-1073.

Olsen, M. (2001). E-Relationship Development Strategy for the Nonprofit Fundraising Professional. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing 6 (4) p. 364 – 373.

Reiner, T. & Wolpert J. (1981). The Non-Profit Sector in the Metropolitan Economy. Economic Geography 57(1) p. 23-33.