Editor’s note: This is the third in a quarterly series of stories we’re calling “The Leadership Series,” where leaders in the fundraising sector speak to big-picture issues fundraisers need to think about, over and above the day-to-day details of their jobs.
For several years while I was growing up in India, I traversed the Himalayan Mountains with only canvas shoes on my feet and the bare ground for a bed. On those peaks, I gained an appreciation for two maxims that apply just as well to marketing as to mountaineering: Know where you stand, and know how to find true north.
Where is true north for charities in the future? Giving has grown by just 4 percent per annum since 2001 — a tad more than inflation. So many nonprofits are maintaining a steady idle but finding no thrust.
That’s why the years ahead will be fascinating for those executives responsible for raising resources in the nonprofit arena. For many, the fascination will turn into frustration, and their organizations will suffer. For others, the formidable uphill climb will enable them to reap new rewards, and in turn their organizations will experience explosive growth.
The difference will lie in how senior marketing executives direct their organizations’ initiatives in response to three overriding trends in nonprofit fundraising: disintermediation, diversification and deepening.
Trend 1: Disintermediation
The most significant trend facing the nonprofit sector is disintermediation — the increasing likelihood that donors and volunteers will dispense with nonprofit “middlemen” and go directly to the beneficiaries or advocates for their heartfelt causes. For marketers hiking the uphill path, this represents a major shift in the weather pattern. Those failing to recognize its importance — or worse, ignoring it completely — do so only at their own peril, and they place their organizations at risk.
Moreover, one does not need to have Bill Gates’ wealth, Bono’s global celebrity or Al Gore’s political gravitas to launch a charity or set a new direction for society. With the Internet, Web 2.0 and other online entities, it takes little effort.
For example, in 2003, three young men from California went to Sudan and later stumbled on a brutal civil war in northern Uganda where children were being kidnapped to serve as soldiers. Four years, two films and numerous appearances on college campuses later, these young men through their charity — Invisible Children — have helped ignite a movement among teens and young adults to raise awareness and money to help Ugandan children. Nearly 68,000 of their supporters in 15 U.S. cities held events on one day in late April to draw public and media attention to the plight of children half a world away. Their primary mode of communication? The Internet.
PURLs for Profit
Secrets of List Research (2nd Edition)
