Fundraising #1

[Guest guest]

Fundraising & accountability for animal charities

2010 updated & revised edition

 

Fundraising and accountability are the two-stroke engine that

drives all successful nonprofit work. Seemingly juxtaposed, at

opposite ends of the activity cycle, each actually balances and

propels the other. Fundraising is telling people what you need.

Accountability is telling people what you have done with what you

have. The better you are at persuasively demonstrating

accountability, the better you will be at fundraising. No

fundraising method is more successful than consistently achieving

compelling results.

 

 

Contents:

 

1 - The importance of enabling caring people to help

2 - When to increase fundraising

3 - Fundraising potential

4 - Learn from your dog

5 - Success sells success

5 - Facilities are fundraisers

6 - Feral cats are not role models

6 - Turn the flood of animals into cash flow

7 - Real examples

8 - U.S. nonprofit incorporation

8 - Direct mail basics for animal charities

9 - Getting the donor's attention

9 - Style

9 - Structure of an appeal

9 - Return envelopes

10 - Reply devices

10 - Mailing

10 - P.S.: don't forget the postscript

10 - Fundraising through accountability

10 - The value of itemization

11 - The statistics that serious donors want--

Donated & earned receipts; Expenditures; Program cost;

Fundraising & administrative cost; Total net assets;

Tangible assets; Cash/Securities;

Receipts vs. program ratio; Program vs. overhead ratio.

12 - What ANIMAL PEOPLE expects of ethical charities & fundraisers

14 - The rest of the world cannot afford to repeat U.S mistakes

 

 

The importance of enabling caring people to help

 

Many effective but impoverished animal charities do not get

the support they need simply because they do not ask enough people

for help, or ask often enough--or they spend their fundraising time

chasing elusive foundation grants, instead of developing their own

donor base.

Many of the hardest-working, most honest, and most

devotedly compassionate people who are doing humane work are

inhibited about making their needs known--especially locally, where

others are most able to help, as volunteers and as donors of goods

and services, even if they have no money to give.

In rich and poor nations alike, animal charity directors

often behave as if they themselves are feral cats and street dogs,

doomed to scavenge, in constant danger from a kick, stoning, or

impoundment if they approach anyone who might say " No. "

Many others ask for help under the illusion that fundraising

is begging, that only the rich should be asked to donate, and that

aid will only be given if the beggar seems poorer and more miserable

than everyone else on the street.

These animal charity directors are embarrassed to present a

professional image while soliciting help, and to be seen giving

their animals the best of care, because they fear others will

misinterpret this as meaning that they are rich, and do not really

need or deserve aid.

Such attitudes are not only self-defeating but dead wrong, as

shown by the ongoing success of the richest organizations. The most

successful fundraisers not only attract more aid from the wealthy but

also get generous help from some of the people with the least to give.

Successful fundraising, especially in poor communities,

requires the charity to project itself as a center of community

pride, to which everyone contributes and from which everyone derives

benefit.

The most important benefit that successful charities confer

is the feeling of hope that adverse conditions can be changed.

We see this over and over again, all over the world. This

is the fundraising prescription that has worked for religion since

the dawn of civilization, and it works for animal charities too.

Fundraising is not begging. It is inviting fellow citizens

to join in providing an essential community service. The animal

charity director who asks for help should seek money, volunteers,

supplies, and services with the same pride of purpose that built the

Vatican, Mecca, Ankor Wat, and Shaolin, among other great temple

cities.

Any community that supports a church, a school, a hospital,

or athletics has the means and public spirit to support a humane

society. What is required is selling the idea, which requires

working in a manner that visibly invites participation.

The animal charity that does not ask for help, and does not

enable others to assist in any way they can, is failing itself and

failing the animals it seeks to aid, because it is not empowering

fellow citizens and animal lovers to respond to cruelty and misery

that is often breaking their hearts, because they feel that no one

else cares.

Thousands of people who feel just as badly on behalf of

suffering animals as the people who run animal charities are

miserable every time they see a street dog or feral cat or hear about

cruelty, not only because the animals are suffering, but also

because they feel utterly helpless and frustrated about it.

These kind people want to do something, but will never know

what to do, or how to do it, or whom to trust, until they are

shown an example of someone else helping and are asked to

participate, by giving money, food, transportation, volunteer

time, or whatever else they have to spare that can be of use.

If all a person can do is help to socialize puppies and

kittens by cuddling them for an hour, that is a positive

contribution, and needs to be invited, accepted, and welcomed.

Often this will lead to larger contributions later, sometimes in the

form of a substantial bequest.

Most people wish they could do something to combat suffering,

illness, trauma, and despair on a wider scope than just fighting

the portion that comes into their own lives, but they do not feel

strong enough. They do not feel they have the courage or resilience

that charitable work takes. Animal rescuers and defenders are often

among their secret heroes. Animal charities are doing what they

would do, if they could, and they will be very glad to help in

whatever way they can, if they are asked, invited to participate,

and thanked.

We know this is true even in the poorest nations because it

is true everywhere.

In the U.S., one household in four donates money to animal

causes. One household in 10 feeds homeless cats or dogs, if the

residents see them. We know this because this behavior has been

studied by pollsters and sociologists.

We also know, from some of the same studies, that while

immigrants donate much less money to animal causes, and typically

also have much lower incomes, immigrants feed homeless animals with

even greater generosity than people who were born in the U.S.

Because the U.S. has immigrants from everywhere, studies of

immigrant behavior provide a perspective on global attitudes.

ANIMAL PEOPLE has affirmed on frequent expeditions to other

parts of the world that people who care about animals are everywhere.

We have seen countless bowls of food and water in trash-strewn

allies, plates of leftovers on rooftops, and food waste discreetly

left outside dumpsters, where dogs, cats, and other animals can

find the leavings. From Kiev to Capetown, Calcutta to Machu Pichu,

San Juan to Istanbul, Beijing to Atlanta, scenes we have witnessed

testify to broadly shared concern that only needs organization to

become a transformative movement.

The foundation of empathic transformation is giving, and

giving begins with asking in a manner that empowers the giver to help.

 

When to increase fundraising

 

Effective charities actively and continuously inform

potential supporters of their needs. This requires an active and

continuous investment of time and budget in providing information to

donors, through newsletters, special mailings, e-mail alerts, an

up-to-date web site, a Facebook page, use of Twitter, fundraising

events that give supporters a chance to meet with the charity

directors, and informally talking with anyone who calls.

All of this is part of the essential work of a charity, and

all of it should be viewed as developing and encouraging the donor

base.

Unfortunately, even advisors who try to help animal

charities may at times inadvertently reinforce the inhibitions that

hold too many back. The January/March 2004 edition of the Animal

Welfare Board of India magazine Animal Citizen featured an excellent

guide to animal charity fundraising and obtaining publicity--except

for one mistake:

" Too many nonprofit organizations spend 50% of their money in

order to raise the other 50%, " the anonymous author declared. " This

is bad planning. Your entire cost should not be more than 5%. "

Holding fundraising investment to 5% of the anticipated

return is a surefire prescription for perpetually lacking the

wherewithal to grow.

The Wise Giving Alliance, the largest standard-setting

entity for U.S.-based nonprofit organizations of all types,

recommends that the combined fundraising and administrative expense

of a charity should not exceed 35% of total spending--in a nation

where postage, printing, paper, telephone service, and Internet

service (the usual mediums of fundraising) are all much less costly

relative to personal income than in most of the rest of the world.

Logically, fundraising might cost more in India.

Throughout the past 20 years, the average and median

investment in fundraising and administration by animal charities

reviewed in the annual ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on Animal

Charities, and our earlier " Who gets the money? " reports, has

hovered close to 28%, as determined by our assessment of IRS Form

990 filings and/or balance sheets. We evaluate the expenditures of

a globally representative cross-section of the most prominent animal

charities, of every kind.

Typically 75% of the charities whose data we look at are at

35% or lower. Nearly half are between 21% and 35%. Almost three

times as many animal charities are in the 14% to 21% bracket as were

in the 35% to 42% range.

About two-thirds of the charities with significantly low

fundraising and administrative expense are based in the U.S. or

Britain, and are rich enough to run in large part on interest--in

effect, on the momentum of past decades of fundraising success.

Historically the interest from investing their reserves has financed

their further fundraising, which brings in millions of dollars from

well-primed donor lists.

The other third of animal charities, including about two out

of three animal charities outside the U.S. and Britain, most younger

animal charities, and even ANIMAL PEOPLE in our first 10 years,

significantly under-invests in growth--and survival.

For every animal charity that spends more than 42% of budget

on fundraising and administration, or has financial reserves of more

than twice its annual program spending, two appear to be starving

themselves by not spending enough.

The bottom line is the bottom line. An animal charity that

does not have adequate financial reserves to survive a briefly

slumping national economy without a crisis, and is not already

spending close to 28% of time and budget on fundraising and

administration, needs to increase fundraising investment. Aiming at

28% should keep most charities under the 35% ceiling recommended by

the Wise Giving Alliance, even in a global economic downturn. Aiming

lower is underselling the mission.

 

Fundraising potential

 

The American Pet Products Manufacturing Association reports

that U.S. spending on pets has tripled in just 15 years, from about

$17 billion in 1994 to circa $52 billion in 2009.

During the same 15 years, the annual sum of support raised

by U.S. animal charities has increased from about $2.5 billion in

1994 to perhaps as much as $6.2 billion, of which about $2.7 billion

goes to hands-on animal rescue, sheltering, adoption, and

veterinary care.

British animal charities raise funds at a comparable rate.

Throughout the world, wherever economic statistics are

available, animal charities tend to raise somewhere between 5% and

15% of the amounts that their nations spend on pet care.

The China Animal Agriculture Association's National Kennel

Club announced in February 2005 that there were then more than 150

million pet dogs in China, two and a half times as many as in the

U.S., for a ratio of one pet dog per nine humans, similar to the

ratios of dogs to humans in France and Britain.

The Chinese pet industry had become worth about $60 million

per year, the CAAA National Kennel Club told the Xinhua News Agency

--and was growing fast enough to increase twelvefold by 2008, with

projected potential to level off at about $18 billion per year.

We do not yet have newer data about the size of the Chinese

pet industry, but an ever-increasing volume of pet-related reporting

in Chinese media suggests that growth has continued at the projected

rate. Meanwhile, the Chinese animal advocacy sector has exploded

from the margin of visibility in 2005 to prominence compable to that

of animal advocacy in the U.S., Europe, and India. There are now

hundreds of Chinese animal advocacy organizations and web sites,

with tens of thousands of participants.

ANIMAL PEOPLE projected in 2005 that if Chinese animal

charities could raise 15% of the money that Chinese citizens then

spent on pets, Chinese animal-related nonprofit fundraising

potential would be approximately $4 million a year: more than 10

times the cumulative income of all of the animal welfare charities

then working in Beijing, but only two-thirds as much as the Hong

Kong SPCA alone raised in 2003.

Based on the volume of evident Chinese animal advocacy

activity, this has occurred. The receipts are still thinly

distributed, among many dynamic young organizations, but we remain

confident of our 2005 prediction that Chinese animal charity

fundraising potential could soar to $1.2 billion a year within the

foreseeable future--about as much, adjusting for inflation, as the

U.S. animal protection sector raised as recently as the early 1990s.

We have seen similar explosive increases of revenue among the

animal charities in India. In India, unlike in China, donating

money and volunteer labor on behalf of animals is a culturally

ubiquitous tradition dating back at least 2,500 years. One might

have supposed five years ago that the fundraising potential of India

had already been thoroughly developed, that every potential donor

was already donating, and that further revenue increases among

animal charities would come only as rising affluence enabled

established donors to give more.

This would have been thoroughly wrong. From 2005 to 2010 the

Indian national economy grew by about 35%, second only to the

Chinese growth rate among major nations. The numbers of active

Indian animal charities, animal charity volunteers, and animal

charity donors all more than doubled--and even though far more animal

charities are competing for support, the most dynamic organizations

have enjoyed unprecedented growth.

Among the success stories, Friendicoes SECA, of New Delhi,

increased donations by 40%; Compassion Unlimited Plus Action, of

Bangalore, increased donations by 224%; the Visaka SPCA, of

Visakhapatnam, increased donations by 366%; and Wildlife SOS,

headquartered in New Delhi, with four locations around India,

increased donations 593%.

All four of these examples have appealed successfully not

only to people in their own communities who care about animals, but

also to donors who have emigrated and become financially successful

abroad, and to western visitors and sympathizers--and have learned

to use foreign support as a magnet for more local support, pointing

toward foreign contributions as testimony to the quality and value of

their work.

None of these outstanding Indian fundraising successes enjoy

big budget surpluses or huge cash reserves. Each has taken on so

much more work on behalf of animals that their executives and

administrators are scrambling even harder to raise funds than they

did when they had very little. They have learned, however, that

there is enough public sympathy and generosity toward animals in the

communities they serve that they can continually reach out to do

more--and the more they do, the more favorably their donors respond.

Donors want to see animal charities undertaking and

succeeding at ambitious projects. The first " secret " of fundraising

success is program success. The second " secret " is to publicize

program success. The third " secret " is to continually educate

supporters about the need to donate, and then ask for contributions,

not just once but continuously, at appropriate opportunities

throughout the year.

None of these so-called " secrets " are really secrets. They

are known to every successful fundraiser in every cause. Yet all too

often animal charities act as if successful fundraising is a secret

that they cannot decode, and waste time seeking a magical formula

instead of simply asking their communities for help.

The potential for marked growth of the animal charity donor

base clearly exists, not only in the U.S. and Britain, where the

potential is being realized, and not only in China and India, where

even today it has barely been tapped, but throughout the world.

The animal charities that do the most with the least must

realize that they deserve support as much as the big and rich.

Also essential for animal charities in the economically

disadvantaged parts of the world to realize is that the low-wage

occasional donors who are attracted today will become much more

affluent donors in the near future, as in China and India, as their

national economies develop. Becoming acquainted with small donors

today and expressing appreciation of whatever they can give right

now, if only a few rupees or a bit of help walking dogs, will be

well worthwhile tomorrow.

The animal charity that hesitates to seek such donors now

will be rapidly left behind as affluence increases, while the

charity that made low-wage occasional donors feel welcomed and valued

now will become the charity that enjoys the most support.

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing

original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,

founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the

decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations.

We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

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