SWEET Online Fundraising Blog

Miss Manners Gives Advice On Walkathons

Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin) gives advice about charity accountability to a beleaguered walkathon donor.  The full article can be found here http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/columnists/advice/chi-0410manners_zapr10,0,658025.column.

The well informed Miss Manners gives very sound advice.  Her reader laments, "Now that it is spring, I am receiving the annual round of e-mails soliciting financial pledges for various walkathons, marathons and other sorts of -thons in support of illness-related charities. My friends do not have the illness they -thon for; usually it's a parent or sibling. I do not respond to these requests, if only because I have an expensive chronic illness of my own and extremely limited resources. I also have an ethical qualm about these charities. My illness has its own charity that sponsors a "thon" too; I am a member of that organization, but I have no idea how the thonning benefits people suffering from the illness."

And Miss Manners responds, "Miss Manners believes that you owe it to yourself to find out how the money is spent that you donate to the charity connected with your illness. Usually, it is marked to support research, rather than going directly to patients, but you should be able to get that information, as well as the figures on how much is first deducted for overhead, salaries and the event."

That's good advice.  But it's not always possible to do the due diligence. 

Here's one thing you can tell immediately and with very little effort.  If the charity uses walkathon software from certain companies (they shall remain nameless, but they know who they are), the donor can be certain that 7% to 10% of their donation will be siphoned to the software vendor before the money even reaches the charity. 

That's disheartening and it's not entirely clear why charities would hurt their causes by opting for these self-imposed tariffs from software companies.  It definitely calls the spending practices of these charities into question.  If they are willing to unnecessarily give away 10% of of every donation to a software vendor, then what else are they wasting money on?

Nice Job, MM.

How to Organize a Walkathon: Months 3 & 4

Months 3 & 4 of your walkathon planning focus on walk day details and driving up attendance.

An important note on attendance - at this stage, driving up attendance may not be as important as maximizing the effectiveness of the existing registrants.  For example we've had clients that had 600 walk participants who raised $165,000.  Sounds pretty good, right?  We've also had other clients that had 50 registered participants who raised $200,000.  That's better.  More attendees can be a logistical nightmare and drive up costs.

Here are some common items to complete before the walk.

1. Make final arrangements with the Event venue:  Pay the balance of the rental fee, make sure you've made arrangements for electricity, restrooms, music, LCD projectors, and other materials. 
2. Finalize agenda:  After creating an agenda, debrief the speakers and all organizers of the schedule.  Post the agenda on your website or include it in an email blast to participants.
3. Two more email blasts:  Send one more email to your membership database with a link to the registration and donation pages of the walk website.  Send one email specifically to to the registered participants with fundraising advice, incentive information, and the agenda.  You should also include information about what to do in case of bad weather.
4. Press release:  Fax or email press releases to the local radio station, newspaper, and TV station.  Be creative with your release.  Don't submit a release about the event.  That's boring.  There are hundreds of fundraising events going on all the time.  Try to find a human interest story.  For example, maybe one of your participants served in the military and is now back in the U.S. to do some good.  Or perhaps a local teacher is walking with her whole class.  Pitch something interesting.
5. Order t-shirts:  E-bay is not a bad place to find screen printing and t-shirts on the cheap.  There is no reason to break the bank on this.  It's a good way to keep the walk on people's consciousness throughout the year.
6. Transportation arrangements:  Decide how you will be transporting all of the equipment to the walk site.  Find out if you can you leave things at the walk site overnight on the day before the walk?  Assign someone to drive the the van or truck.  Assign other volunteers to help with loading and unloading?
7. Finalize check-in procedures:  Assign volunteers at the check-in table.  You need to have separate tables for checking in and submitting contributions and pledge sheets.  Handling donations should only be done by someone from the development department or qualified staff.  Leave this up to someone who can be accountable.  If you have extra volunteers, it's probably a good idea to bring a few laptops and start entering data from the pledges onto a spreadsheet.  If you have a wireless connection, then even better.  Start entering transactions into your walk software.

The next article will be focus on stuff you need to do after the walk...

Dog Walk-a-thon adds SWEET software and grows by 167% in 2008

Friends of Dearborn Animal Shelter host the annual Dearborn Mutt Strut.  They raised $30,000 in 2007 and added SWEET in 2008.   Their objective was to raise $60,000.  They ended up raising $80,000.  Not too shabby. 

The Dearborn Mutt Strut is well on its way to becoming a $100,000 and since they have SWEET in place, their walk software costs will never exceed 1-2% of the event's revenue as it grows.

Cost of Fundraising Software Company IPOs trickles down to Donors

An article in this month's Mass High Tech journal (http://www.masshightech.com/) provides some data on the cost of trying to go public.  It caught my eye because a few firms that are in the fundraising software business have raised IPO money in the recent past and others are currently in the application process.  It's a risky proposition for everyone to say the least.  The founders, laywers, accountants, and series A investors stand to gain the most.  Nonprofit organizations, their donors, and pretty much everyone else involved with the company stands to lose a lot.

A survey of software firms in Boston that registered for an IPO in the last 18 months revealed that the costs are $3 to 4 million.  Most of the fees are legal and accounting fees.

That's the cost of doing business and the price is worth it if you consider that ultimately, the SEC just wants to protect investors. 

But what do these unavoidable costs mean to nonprofit organizations and their vendors. 

It's pretty obvious.  Nonprofit clients of fundraising sotware companies are footing the bill for the SEC fees.  So when a percentage of every donation goes to the software provider, it is probably going towards legal and accounting fees associated with the IPO.  It doesn't make sense to me.  Nonprofits should pobably apply their donations toward their mission, and not the IPO's of their software provider.

Especially when there are alternatives.  The software provider can choose to raise money through a private placement for example and not with an IPO.  The nonprofit can choose rom several private companies so their donors are not financing legal and accounting fees of software companies. 

It's a disturbing trend that I hope will stop.  But I suppose the market will ultimately decide if this continues to happen or not.  Kintera is already on the verge of being delisted and who's to say that history won't repeat itself for other fundraising software providers that go the IPO route.