By GIJP Mentors Dan Kirsch and Julia Riseman

Architecturally speaking, pipelines and pyramids may not be the flashiest of structures compared with, say, the Taj Mahal, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, or your newest camper cabin.

Strong, enduring, utilitarian – the pipeline and the pyramid are just the right images to highlight the importance of building your camp’s annual giving program.  Along with major gifts, capital campaigns, and Legacy programs (a.k.a. planned giving), annual giving is a key component of a comprehensive development program that is built for long-term growth and success.

An effective annual giving campaign is not an afterthought or a “when we have time” proposition.  It’s not about dashing off an appeal letter to capture the end-of-year flurry of charitable giving.  Annual giving programs that last are carefully planned, deliberately implemented, and results-focused. 

“Channeling” a Culture of Philanthropy

Annual giving typically generates large numbers of gifts of all sizes that directly support current needs – precious, flexible operating dollars that empower your camp to respond to immediate needs and emerging opportunities.  Those annual gifts are usually generated through a variety of methods – the popular term is “channels” – including face to face solicitation by volunteers and staff, direct mail appeals, phonathons, e-mail campaigns, and special events.

Annual giving also helps to develop a camp’s culture of philanthropy.  Such a culture honors the role that philanthropy has played in your camp’s success.  It is not built on only the few mega gifts that name your camp’s newest buildings.  Rather it is grown and nurtured over many years through many types of gifts in all amounts.  Annual giving allows camp fans of all financial means to express their appreciation for the way their camp experience has enriched their lives.  That is the pyramid – built on a broad foundation of more modest annual gifts and rising to sustain higher and higher levels of support.

Creating Value for a Lifetime…and Beyond

Beyond the immediate benefits of each year’s total dollars raised, annual giving programs also build long-term value based on the loyalty, consistency, and dependability of your donor base.  Your camp may have calculated the long-term value of each additional camper you enroll.  Have you considered the lifetime value of each camp donor?

Think about this:

If your annual giving program raises $50,000 from your camp’s fans, that annual income is roughly the equivalent of the return on a $1 million endowment.  Your camp may not have such endowed assets (especially for operating funds), but you certainly have a tremendously valuable asset in the thousands of people who love your camp.  Your annual giving program is the vehicle that generates the return on all of that goodwill and gratitude.

And one other thing to keep in mind.  Research has shown that loyal, consistent, annual support throughout a donor’s lifetime (not necessarily at a top gift level) is the single best predictor of a person’s leaving a charitable bequest (Legacy gift).

Mind Your Data

So as you work to inform, engage, solicit, and steward your constituents for their annual support, you are not only generating more precious operating dollars to respond to your camp’s current needs, but you are also grooming your camp’s next generation of major donors, campaign chairs, Legacy participants, board members, etc.  That’s the pipeline that annual giving can build for you.

Building the kind of loyalty that creates a strong donor pipeline requires a commitment to learning from each year’s results and refining future activities accordingly.  That’s why it is so important to have reliable constituent data and protocols for collecting, tracking, and analyzing the data most relevant to annual giving. (Click here to read more about how to track and segment your constituent data for annual giving.).  The more you can learn about the communications preferences of your audience and the appeals that are most compelling to your various constituents the better you will become at personalizing and targeting your annual giving activities to maximize the return on your work.

In the long run, your commitment to planning, executing, tracking and analyzing your annual giving performance will help to create the Taj Mahal of development programs and the enduring and impactful culture of philanthropy that your camp deserves.

by Natasha Dresner

One Summer seven years ago, a major Jewish philanthropist had a few visits with a Jewish Summer Camp in the Berkshires. Those visits wound up putting nonprofit Jewish Camping on the map and changed its landscape forever. How? Well, for starters, the philanthropist was none other than Harold Grinspoon. But even more importantly than that, the camp scheduled the visit and then showed and told him their story in a way that resonated with his personal and philanthropic interests.

Soon after those visits, Harold created the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, which at last count provides 74 Jewish nonprofit Summer camps and over 800 of their professional and lay leaders with free consulting services in Strategic Thinking and Planning, Board Development, Fundraising, and Technology, as well as Matching Challenge Grants, which to date have helped raise almost $60 million.

The point I want to impress upon you is that all of this started with a simple camp visit. I hear some camps say they’re too busy during the summer and can’t afford to do it. Well, I say you can’t afford NOT to. Not every camp has a Harold Grinspoon, but every camp has a major donor waiting to be invited, and you need to do it NOW!

Next to the fun, safe, and high quality summer camp experience you promised your campers and their families, engaging your major donors and prospects through special, individually tailored, and well-planned camp visits – whether for cultivation, solicitation, or stewardship – is the next most important thing lay and professional leadership must dedicate their time to. Now let’s focus on how.

The following five tips will help you have a successful visit. To learn more, join us on April 27^th at 1 PM EDT for a webinar, Show and Tell: Successful Camp Visits for Donors and Prospects.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good - all of the above tips should help ensure a great visit and a desirable outcome; a less than perfect visit is better than no visit at all.

Remember, it all starts with a single visit!

When we speak to organizations about social media, we’re often asked, “How can we raise money using these tools?” or “How can we get all of our Fans/Followers to donate?” Unfortunately, Facebook and other social media platforms have not proven to be the panacea for raising money that some had hoped. Articles have even been written in major newspapers calling fundraising via Facebook and other social media platforms a dismal failure.

Although it is true that social media remains a relatively untapped resource for direct fundraising, we believe this misses the point: social media is an amazing tool for cultivating prospects and building community. A recent post on the NTEN Blog by Peter Deitz (Social Actions) is a great read for those trying to figure out how Facebook specifically can be used as part of an overall development strategy.

Deitz points out that these tools are great for raising “meaning” more than money currently. Where else can you send out a quick message (or photo or video…) that is immediately viewable to hundreds or thousands of your supporters? Deitz writes:

As a strategy, your goal in using Facebook is to create as many meaningful opportunities as possible for people to learn about, contribute to, and most importantly, spread the word about your shared interest in a particular mission.

Facebook is potentially an incredibly effective cultivation tool. Organizations can engage directly with their constituents on topics of interest. More importantly, Facebook allows these constituents to communicate with each other and build a strong, vibrant online community, all tied together around your organization’s mission.

Photo from URJ Henry S. Jacobs Camp Facebook Page

Building community is exactly what the nonprofit Jewish overnight camps we work with at the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy do best! Bringing that mindset to social media can result in an engaged constituency ready to take action when asked, whether it’s to attend an event, volunteer, or (eventually) make a donation. But – like in traditional fundraising – it’s important to cultivate these relationships beforeexpecting them to give. Facebook and similar tools now make it easier than ever to build strong relationships that will pay off down the road.

An obvious conclusion to this line of thinking is that the amount of money raised on Facebook must not be the only metric to measure how effective these tools are in the overall development process. Deitz mentions that other metrics might include the

number of supporters or Fans recruited, number of comments on status updates, number of “likes” for status updates, number of visitors referred to the organization’s website from Facebook, and number of Causes or Birthday Wishes created that benefit the nonprofit.

Once you’ve engaged your community online and built strong relationships, you are ready to move to the next step in the fundraising process: the ask. If you’ve been able to build your mailing lists from your Facebook Fans, you might make the ask offline via traditional methods like direct mail, or in a Newsletter (or eNewsletter). You might make the ask in person at an event or on a simple status update on your Facebook Page.  We’ve written previously about using Facebook Applications like Causes to raise money online, too. And, if you have built a strong community online, you may even convince your supporters to make the ask for you. As Deitz writes:

When the time comes to raise money, the most basic approach is to ask supporters and fans to share a status update that links to a donation opportunity and to explain in their words why the donation opportunity matters.

As an example, Celia Baczkowski, Director of Development & Alumni Relations at Surprise Lake Camp, often uses her personal status updates for promoting ongoing fundraising appeals:

Think about how powerful it would be for a supporter of the organization to do the same, their personal plea for donations showing up in all of their Friends’ News Feeds! When an organization unlocks that potential, the money will follow. But – just like offline fundraising – it takes time and effort to raise “meaning” and cultivate donors before this can happen. Facebook simply makes this engagement and community-building process easier.

How have you used Facebook or other social media platforms to engage your constituents, build community, or raise “meaning” in your organization? Let us know in the comments!