The Creative Activist

Strategic planning, including SWOT analysis, is for small nonprofits, giant philanthropic foundations, and every other nonprofit. Every nonprofit that seeks financial support of any kind needs a strategy.  The point is to make a plan and work the plan. Business gurus have shared a bunch of strategic planning tools, some generic and some made for a specific purpose. This post is about looking at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats - SWOT.  Knowing about your organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is step one in planning your fundraising efforts.  SWOT - A Quick Review This is not the best place to run through SWOT analysis, but an overview will make it obvious why we need to do it. First, however, you should write down your fundraising goal. Then, you can do some analysis. Here are the steps: Strengths - What about your financial resources? What about your reputation and your connections? How big is your audience on social medi...

This fundraising post is about creative thinking, as we usually think of it. Last time I wrote about a systematic way to explore different elements of fundraising in a search for new ideas. This post is about an intuitive technique for creating ideas by using random concepts to spark new thinking about fundraising. New ideas are often just concepts taken from another field and adapted to fit. The concept of a library has been extended to garden tools. You can lease a washer and drier in Europe, now or pretty soon. With those two examples in mind, take a few minutes to examine this list of concepts: Coupon Vending machine Clearance sale Holiday sale Product recommendations (People who bought X also enjoyed Y) Layaway Buy One Get One (free, half off, et cetera) Lease Deposits Refer-a-friend Credit Renting Sharing (bikes, cars) Fractional ownership Think about a specific fundraising challenge your organization is facing and take another look at the list. Try working w...

This post contains yet another tool for creative thinking about fundraising. I hope you’ve read my most recent posts on that same topic. While this post will stand on its own, the other posts will just add arrows to your quiver. I’ve been writing about tricks I picked up in a book called Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Business Creativity for the 90s by Michael Michalko. This is another post in the same series. Asking questions about a fundraising challenge can lead to new ways to think about fundraising. Let’s assume for the sake of discussion we’ll assume the challenge relates to fundraising. I’ll offer an example as I explain the steps: 1. Specify your challenge – “In what ways might we raise the operating funds we need?” (You don’t have to be quite that precise, but that question is one I know comes up in the nonprofit world, so there it is.) 2. List “what if” scenarios – Usually these scenarios are phrased as questions but that’s not truly necessary. Here are some scenarios to...

Development, mostly in the guise of fundraising, ends up consuming lots of staff time and money. Fundraisers often come up short on donations, grants, and in-kind contributions. Often the shortfall is minor, but sometimes the deficits are serious enough to reduce the organization's effectiveness. Some lateral thinking might be the key to avoiding those chronic funding challenges. What can be done? Plenty of options exist. Hiring fundraising consultants or recruiting more volunteer fundraisers constitute two popular options. This post is simply a call for more flexibility in thinking about what your organization needs and how to get it. When it comes to ending fundraising worries forever, there are three basic approaches: 1. Develop a reliable system for generating more donations. 2. Cut costs. 3. Find new ways to secure resources. Option #3 offers the most room for innovation, so that will be the focus here. (I'll come back to 1 and 2 in future posts, as lateral think...

This is just a quick sort of public-service announcement dedicated to some books activists, working in nonprofits or not, might want to read. These titles are not always easy to follow, but contain powerful lessons for activists. Do you want to know how to raise more money, set up a new program, or start a social marketing campaign? Well, first of all you need two things: (1) A clear goal, (2) some relevant technical knowledge or training, such as training in the basics of social marketing. Assuming those two things are in place, reading one of these books, and applying the lessons therein, will give better results. DeBono's Thinking Course (Edward DeBono) - A summary of many tools and techniques for thinking about problems, evaluating information, and generating new ideas. The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox (Richard Fobes) - A detailed methodology for defining (yes, you need to do that) and solving problems, with notes on how to evaluate ideas for potential effectiv...

As I am trying to promote a systematic (scientific?) approach to addressing the challenges that activists and nonprofits face, fundraising seems like a fit topic to address. Every organization has a fundraising plan of some sort. Each plan includes one or more tactics for getting money or in-kind contributions. The whole process should begin with a formal accounting of what you have and what you need to reach your goals. Try listing them on one sheet of paper divided into two columns. List assets on the right and needs on the left. Start with money, but add equipment, credit, and skills too. Yes, list skills as an asset here because those skills could be turned into money later. Who is your audience? List, on another sheet of paper, who you could approach for support and what they may want or need. Be sure you can also name the benefits you provide the community. People want to feel like their money will accomplish something useful. Write down the benefits of giving and the reasons...

I'll skip the how and why of brainstorming and lateral thinking because I've posted my other entries on those subjects. You are creative, or at least you have the potential to be creative. So, where do you apply that creativity? The right places to apply creativity vary from time to time and organization to organizations. Still, there are some common elements. 1. Fundraising - How can we raise more money? How can we afford to launch this nonprofit? To turn those questions on their head: How do you do more with the resources that you have? 2. Goals and objectives - What goals and objectives should you pursue? Some dedicated thinking time might lead to the conclusion that your goals and objectives need to be changed. 3. Strategy - Are you solving a social problem or simply dealing with the symptoms? Does that focus need to be changed? Would brainstorming lead you to a strategy for attacking the problem? If dealing with symptoms is more realistic, how can you produce the m...

Read Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention blog post on nonprofit marketing trends you should be paying attention to. This post is about three of those trends and my thoughts on them. I hope you get some good ideas... 1. Social Media Marketing All content and activity needs to be shared using sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you don't have a social media strategy, 2013 is the time to start using social media for marketing. Are you as an organization, on the same social media platforms your audience uses? Are individual staff, especially in develop and communication, using the appropriate social media channels to connect with people? If not, consider adding that activity to your 2013 communication plan. 2. Email Marketing Email is not dead.   Use it regularly to share news, get people involved in your events, and to ask for money. Focus on providing information. Only throw out the occasional fundraising appeal. You can, of course, put a brief appeal for donations...

A plan for reaching supporters, and staying in touch with them, has to be part of any nonprofit's strategic plan. That fact shouldn't be news to anyone in the nonprofit world. You probably know of plenty of ways that you could reach people. But, do you know how well your efforts are working? that is, do you know how much you are getting out of your efforts? If you do know, or can find out, then you can also figure out which communication tactics to keep, drop, or start using. That's what this post is about... How much are your current marketing efforts costing in time and money? Take a minute to write down everything you do to communicate with people. Make one line for each thing. Now record how much time and money has been invested in each. You can just use a monthly estimate, or estimate the investment for a one-time event. Next, try to estimate the benefits. How much money was raised? How many names did you add to your mailing list? How much equipment, food, et ...

Getting attention for your organization of for a cause. You can use the usual methods - Facebook, events, Web site updates, blogging, radio and magazine ads, et cetera. But, what do you say exactly? How can you afford magazine and radio advertising? This time I want to just share a simple way to come up with new marketing ideas, and illustrate how it works. I've written before about using a technique called random input to generate new marketing ideas. To review, random imput requires you to state a creative thinking challenge, select an object or activity at random, then compare the two things. Hopefully, reflecting on the random object will give you a new and (potentially) useful idea. This is a post about nonprofit marketing so it should be easy to guess what's coming next. Say you have a small charity that exists primarily to help other anti-poverty organizations raise money and get attention for their specific causes. The challenge you set yourself is this: "H...

Fundraising is the topic of the day. Every nonprofit must constantly work to attract donors and sponsors or risk financial disaster. That statement might seem melodramatic, but I don't think so. Either way, fundraising needs to be a priority all of the time. That truth makes it reasonable to keep looking for ways to raise money, or solicit in-kind contributions of goods and services. The obvious methods - fundraising letters, donation buttons on Web pages, car washes, and et ceters - are always worth considering. Creative thinking about fundraising is always desireable too. This post is about creative thinking in fundraising. We all know how to brainstorm, in some sense of the word. Not everyone knows a specific technique for generating ideas, so I am going to share a simple brainstorming technique - random input. What? Well, this is not difficult. You just start by writing down your challenge or problem in a few words. Next, you randomly select a random thing. Thridly, you...

Some random thoughts on fundraising plans. Well, the thoughts are not entirely random, being inspired by Edward De Bono's book Serious Creativity - read it if you get a chance. If you haven't read the book, you'll still be able to learn a few things here. De Bono's Thinking Course is another recommended read, and a shorter introduction to De Bomo's ideas. The first step in fundraising is, obviously, to make a plan. You know the basics of making a fundraising plan or marketing plan. Here are a couple of things to think about before you go beyond the planning stage. 1. What is the overall objective of your fundraising effort? 2. What specific objectives do you need/want to achieve along the way? 3. What are the aims/purposes/goal of your organization? 4. What fundraising methods might support the organization's purpose? Make sure you take notes. Spend a few minutes thinking about each question and taking notes. Deciding how to actually raise the mone...

Crowdsourcing is the practice of submitting challenges or problems to an online group for their input. Have you ever used crowdsourcing for anything? If not, you might be missing out on a powerful tool. Nonprofits could do lots of things with crowdsourcing: 1. Fundraising - This should be obvious. Your organization could use a crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter.com to raise money for general operations, or for a specific purpose. 2. Marketing - You can also crowdsource advertising, branding, and marketing challenges. There are sites for those things, including Crowspring, Kluster, 99Designs, and PopTent. 3. Naming Things - Stumped trying to come up with a name for a campaign, program, or project? I guess this can happen. Why not use crowdsourcing to solicit ideas? 4. Program Design - Designing a program that will do a great job of meeting a certain need, say mental health assistance for homeless people, might not be tough all of the time. Sometimes you might want a whole cro...

Last time I promised to write more about creative fundraising, among other applications of creative thinking. There are many obvious ways to raise money. So, what place is there for creative thinking about fundraising? Your staff and volunteers are probably busy enough as it is. The urge to stick with traditional fundraising methods is probably strong for just that reason. Traditional steps like applying for grants and courting businesses and writing fundraising letters work fairly well most of the time. So, here is an way to escape the normal fundraising pattern, without too much fuss. Take a few minutes to think about your specific fundraising goals. Be specific and be as comprehensive as you can be in just a few minutes. Now take a few minutes to note which fundraising goals really need money and which could be handled by assembling volunteers or getting donations of goods and services. Repeat for the other goals. As you look over each fundraising goal and think of ways...

This is just about my last post on fundraising, for now at least. I’ve previously written 16 or 17 posts on raising money, getting in-kind contributions, and planning fundraising events. Before I move on to talk about, something to be determined tomorrow, I want to offer some closing remarks “creative fundraising” practices. 1. Use more than one technique to get ideas. Try using an intuitive method to get ideas plus one that requires logic and structure. I described those methods in previous posts, and referenced two of my favorite books: Thinkertoys (Michael Michalko) and Serious Creativity (De Bono). 2. Review the brainstorming techniques I’ve described and then go on to #3 on this list. 3. Take a few minutes for each of these challenges: • Finding new ways to attract donations • Develop a method to attract major donors • Devise a way to solicit more in-kind contributions 4. Work on yet another fundraising challenge that’s specific to your organization. 5. Review you...

This is really a two-part post because I want to talk about yet another way to get fundraising ideas, a method that’s really too simple to need a whole post. You’ll need to spend some time evaluating and refining those ideas. You will almost always need to refine or modify the idea in some way before you can use it. A quick look may reveal that some ideas are illegal, ethically dubious, or not practical for some other reason. You may want to ignore the impractical ideas and look for something that seems more promising. Now, let’s get back to that simple fundraising idea generator. This technique takes only five or six minutes and is almost certain to produce something you can use. That “something” is probably an idea that can be refined rather than some fundraising event you could go and set up tomorrow. The technique is this: Simply decide to concentrate on a specific challenge for five minutes. You might not get anywhere by thinking about fundraising for example. Focus on somethi...

This post contains yet another tool for creative thinking about fundraising. I hope you’ve read my most recent posts on that same topic. While this post will stand on its own, the other posts will just add arrows to your quiver. I’ve been writing about tricks I picked up in a book called Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Business Creativity for the 90s by Michael Michalko. This is another post in the same series. Asking questions about a fundraising challenge can lead to new ways to think about fundraising. Let’s assume for the sake of discussion we’ll assume the challenge relates to fundraising. I’ll offer an example as I explain the steps: 1. Specify your challenge – “In what ways might we raise the operating funds we need?” (You don’t have to be quite that precise, but that question is one I know comes up in the nonprofit world, so there it is.) 2. List “what if” scenarios – Usually these scenarios are phrased as questions but that’s not truly necessary. Here are some scenarios to consid...

This post introduces another brainstorming tool that nonprofits can use to get fundraising ideas. This technique comes from Thinkertoys , by Michael Michalko. You can read the full description there, but this post should offer enough detail to use the technique. Michalko describes the technique in a chapter called “Rattlesnakes and Roses” but you can call the technique what It really is – the use of analogies. By comparing fundraising to an activity in the business world, you might come up with a new way to meet your organization’s financial needs. Here are the steps to using analogies to get new fundraising ideas: 1. State your challenge. Be specific. “Raise money” is not as good as “Raise more money using our Web site.” 2. Extract a key word or phrase from the challenge. “Using our Web site” is a sensible focus for this example. 3. Choose a comparison. Go for a parallel field that’s vastly different from yours. Public education is not a good parallel for nonprofits. Social work is ...

This fundraising post is about creative thinking, as we usually think of it. Last time I wrote about a systematic way to explore different elements of fundraising in a search for new ideas. This post is about an intuitive technique for creating ideas by using random concepts to spark new thinking about fundraising. New ideas are often just concepts taken from another field and adapted to fit. The concept of a library has been extended to garden tools. You can lease a washer and drier in Europe, now or pretty soon. With those two examples in mind, take a few minutes to examine this list of concepts: Coupon Vending machine Clearance sale Holiday sale Product recommendations (People who bought X also enjoyed Y) Layaway Buy One Get One (free, half off, et cetera) Lease Deposits Refer-a-friend Credit Renting Sharing (bikes, cars) Fractional ownership Think about a specific fundraising challenge your organization is facing and take another look at the list. Try working with each concept in ...

Fundraising too often falls back on conventional ideas. You can send out a fundraising letter, or put a donation button on your Web site, or have a bake sale. A relatively ambitious organization might solicit donations for a silent auction or even start selling something. Brainstorming could yield some interesting new fundraising ideas. Brainstorming may be unstructured – (“Let’s look for some new ideas.”) or a formalized search for new ways to raise money. This post is about one of those formalized brainstorming techniques. In Thinkertoys , Michael Michalko writes about something called an Idea Grid. You can consult Thinkertoys for a detailed explanation but I hope that my brief introduction here gives you enough to work with. So, the first step in creating an Idea Grid is to create, well, you create a grid with four quadrants labeled High Involvement, Low Involvement, Think, and Feel. High Involvement represents expensive products like cars and boats. Low Involvement represents che...