Case Study Butler CC

I did my case study over Butler County Community College, and I decided to blog about it this week since I will be giving my presentation on Monday and no one will be in class, except the people that have not gone.

I really actually enjoyed this project, because I found out some really interesting information and learned a lot about the different techniques you can use.

I interviewed with Stacy Cofer who works for the foundations department at BCCC. They have a really strong fund raising department and have really been growing the last few years. She works with a team of about five other people and then they have some student volunteers.  They do most of their fund-raising from events. Such as, auction, poker night, and dinners. I think this works well for them since Butler is a small community and they can get people involved.

A strength is their retention rate, they have a great relationship with all of their donors. A weakness might be that they don’t really research or compare themselves to other small colleges that fund-raise.  If they did they might be able to get some good new ideas.

Grant Writing

After writing a grant this week, I realized how much of a draining and studious task it really is.  Even after splitting it up between four people, it is still very time demanding.  You really have to do a lot of research and use a lot of outside sources.  I am sure it would be easier if you were working for the company, because you would already have the stuff you needed.  Even after we got done, I could not imagine having the job of looking over the grants and  who deserved the money. The grant is not pretty or colorful and I think difficult to find interesting. 

 

I found this on this website and thought it was useful/helpful: http://www.epa.gov/ogd/recipient/tips.htm

• Rule #1: Believe that someone wants to give you the money!
• Project your organization into the future.
• Start with the end in mind…look at your organization’s big picture. Who are you? What are your strengths and priorities?
• Create a plan not just a proposal.
• Do your homework: Research prospective funders. Try and search locally first. Target funding source that has interest in your organization and program.

I think that the frist and last suggestions are key. I am really glad I have a little experience with grant writing now. Everyone that I have talked to has said it is so key to know how to do this! I think to become good at it, the only thing I can do is, practice! 🙂

Junk Mail Ban Response

I decided to blog over the presentation today over the forest ethics banning junk mail.  I think this is a good/bad idea.  Obviously it is great for the environment and eliminates something annoying in our lives.  On the other hand people are always talking about how mailers are the most  unefficient and most used.  I think it’s the fact that no they do not have a good return or response rate, but you remember that companies name.

Companies should try something like using recycled paper, or a small postcard to send. This way you would get the tree-hugger’s attention and at the same time not make such an impact on the environment.  I think that the whole letter, envelope, return letter etc, is not appropriate.

Ariticle on Today’s Giving…

http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=4208

 

I recently read an article (posted above), on online giving.  After reading this article I completely agree that online giving is a bad thing. Sometimes people assume that since we are in a technological age, that EVERYTHING we do needs to be modern. I think this is very un true and online giving is pushing away some of the biggest donors. 

People feel over whelmed and bomb-barded by the emails and messages they are getting online.  Email is a place that many people have their bills come, and work. Two very stressful things. I think that when you get on your email an “ask” form is the last thing people want to look at. 

 

These are are few facts that the article cited above gave:

Among the key findings:

• Fifty-six percent said that charities send too many e-mail messages, and 47 percent said they do not read as many messages from charities as they did in the past.
• Seventy-four percent said it’s inappropriate for a charity to obtain their e-mail address from a commercial database, while 82 percent said they don’t think it’s right for charities to send them messages about another organization.
• Eighty-one percent of donors dislike messages that take an urgent tone in seeking a repeat donation.

I think  that charities CAN switch over to some email, maybe a tax reminder, or a thank you email, or even an update email newsletter telling them about the cause they donated.

Searching for Ideas

This blog post might be a little week. Considering we had no class Friday, and no presentations, my brain is working slow to think of something to blog about. 🙂

While I was Google searching some news stories of non-profit or philanthropy I came across an online newspaper for the non-profit world. I thought I might blog about this, just so I could share this with everyone.  It’s interesting for several reasons, I think it might give people an idea of what is going on out there, (give them something to clog about), also gives organizations ideas of what other people are trying for fundraising-lets them know whats working and what is not.

The website is called:   http://www.philanthropy.com/    The Newspaper of the non-profit world.  I am sure a lot of people have heard about  it, but I don’t really know if they realize how great of a tool this is.  It covers everything from, grant tips, celebrity philanthropy, philanthropy careers to suggestions on where to donate.

They have a specific section of careers, and they list over 650 avalible positions.  You can type in your zip code and find a non-profit job near you. And I remind you this is ALL free. It will even break it down into fundraising positions, administrative, executive etc…

One of my favorite sections was the “suggested books” section: It has a list of books about non-profit, and fund raising that are good. You can click on the title and get a review of that book.

This is a great site, and people should take advantage of it!

Product Red=Questionable Cause…

I am going to blog about Michelle Dean’s presentation today, over the prodct Red. She brought to our attention that these companies may be using this as an advertising ploy–for them to gain more attention.
 Prodcut Red is raising a lot of money which is good, but people are not learing about aids awarness and the companies are hardly giving anything. A lot of the companies are over pricing their items so they will hae something to give back. For example a regular I-pod costs $120 bucks, a red I-pod costs $140 bucks. This is only so the company can “look” like they are giving money, when all they are really doing is overpricing items. I also think that a lot of the money goes to promoting the “product red” There a lots of,  ads, photos, and commercials I have seen, and that is a lot of money. For example if $1.00 goes to charity $9.00 will go to promote product red.
I have mixed feelings on this, I think that no matter what they are giving something to a good cause. If their ethis have to be a little twisted…..so what. The point is that lots of money is going to causes it otherwise wouldn’t have.
It would be great if companies were donating $100 ‘s of millions to charity….but that is pretty un-realistic, so take what you get.

Buying contributes to charity

I did my article presentation this week over some websites that give back to charity when you buy through them.  Most of the class thought this was an “ok” idea. It is not a life changing fund-raising tactic, but a lot of people would take advantage of this but, not go out of their way too.  Two of the websites I found were ebaygiving and goodshop.com Some other people have heard about other things such as  Toms Shoes, that for every pair you buy, they send a pair to someone in a third world country. 

I think that one way that this on-line buying could really benefit people is that if a non-profit org. used it as a fundraiser. I think that if they took donations of gifts, or things people would buy off e bay, and then sold them, and they got all the money for the organization that would be great. I can really see someone like FHCC using this, and making a few hundred off of it. 

I belive that one of the reasons it is not working or blowing up right now, is that people have not heard about it.  The general conscience I got from the class was if they had two items in front of them they could buy, and one the profit would go to charity and the other would go to Joe Brown’s pocket of course they would by the one for charity, even if it meant no tax deduction for them. 

I think this is a great idea, and hope that larger corporations start to grab on to this.

Volunteer

I am writing this week, continuing our discussion on adults volunteering their time. I think another big reason that adults have trouble finding time or actually getting motivated to volunteer is because of what they might be passionate about. As a youth you might get involved with your church and go to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen and think that’s good enough.

As an adult you have more experiences and may have a passionate cause. Such as, breast cancer, it is very hard to donate your time to breast cancer research. It is easier to just send in a check and feel good about that. Most adults are so busy, they cannot find time to volunteer their time. But, in the long run this is really going to take a toll, because it all starts with youth. If the kids see their parents volunteering they will want to go along, or get involved as well.  I am sure we will see a much bigger Delcine as time goes on.

Case Statement

I found a case statement for The University of North Carolina’s Social Work Program. The url for this is:

They wrote this case statement because, they were trying to get alumni donations to : recruit more teachers, more scholarship and to maintain nice facilities.

I thought this was a good case statement and would have prob. gave it an 80% on the grading scale.   They did a good job on the visual aspects, which is good for today’s young generation.  It expressed the mission at the beginning and said the purpose of the case statement. It was a very professional presentation and I like how it broke it down into donor categories. Ex: If you donate 500 you are a Golden Teacher donor, and your money Will go towards…. If you donate 1,000 you are a Ford Hall donor and your money will go towards….

They also included personal stories in the case statement which made it more personal.  I have not seen A LOT of case statements but this one seemed to be trendy and infomational.It also talked about different ways to give BESIDES donating money.

Social Enterprise (Social Entrepreneurship)

I recently came across an article on-line the other day that was talking about social entrepreneurship and the non-profit sector.  I thought this quote was really interesting I found on the website :  http://www.managementhelp.org/soc_entr/soc_entr.htm, “Nonprofits have to recognize that they’re businesses, not just causes. There’s a way to combine the very best of the not-for-profit, philanthropic world with the very best of the for-profit, enterprising world. This hybrid is the wave of the future for both profit and nonprofit companies.”

I never really looked at non-profits as being a business but, I guess if they want to succeeded then that’s what they have to make themselves.   It’s hard to have a “caring” mind-set, and a business mind set at the same time. I think this could be dangerous in a way because if you want people to think you are working for a good cause and you want them to donate money, you cannot deal with that as a business transaction.

I think that Social Entrepreneurship, can help any non-profit. But, not all non-profits need their help. Sometimes I think it will hurt them in the long run.