Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Due to the news this week that the Dodge Foundation named Chris Daggett as the new President and CEO, we moved the regularly scheduled blog post for our Monday Board Leadership series to today.

We think that every nonprofit board, large or small, start-up or mature, could benefit from learning from their peers. So over the next several weeks, we will feature board members (and a few executive directors), who recently completed our Board Leadership Training workshops, as Monday guest bloggers. We have asked them to tell their stories of implementing change with their board, including the challenges and successes.

We kicked off the series last week with one of our workshop trainers Allison Trimarco, who gave us some very practical advice and tips on fundraising. Today we hear from workshop participant Matt Finlay, who will build on Allison’s fundraising advice. Matt has been a board member since 2006 for one of our major partners here in our hometown of Morristown, the Community Theatre at the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts.

Therapy for Board Leaders

Boards of trustees are unwieldy things. They’re generally composed of a self-selecting group of opinionated, Type-A personalities. If the board has done its original job correctly, there’s even a modicum of diversity, so getting all those diverse, outsized egos lined up and pointed in the right direction can be quite a challenge. The phrase which comes to mind is “herding cats,” although that doesn’t quite do it. Cats are too languorous. Organizing a board of trustees is more like herding cats on crack.

Unfortunately, boards of trustees often have work to do. Depending on the size of the institution, there may be more or less staff to help with the grunt work, but there is one task which is common to all nonprofit boards: fundraising.

Which brings up the second major problem. Serving on the board of trustees of a prominent nonprofit is often considered highly desirable. It comes with recognition, and free tickets, and consorting with the mayor, and all sorts of other strange and wonderful perks. But there’s a dirty little secret known to most of those on the inside: fundraising stinks. It’s not very fun. The most significant task of a board of trustees just turns out to be unpleasant.

Now, I’m not talking about the partying kind of fundraising. Parties are fun. Especially those which include a cocktail hour. Most board members are quite happy to participate in this type of fundraising. Unfortunately, parties raise only a small portion of the funds which non-profits need for their day-to-day operations. No, the fundraising I am talking about is the kind which requires personal solicitations of large amounts of money from either friends or acquaintances, often with a significant chance of outright rejection. It’s an awkward business at best; at worst, it’s downright atrocious.

I vaguely knew these things when I was approached several years ago to co-chair the new $7 million capital campaign at the Morristown Community Theatre. At first I hesitated. But such a task fits with my personal philosophies about giving back to a community, so I whisked my concerns aside and committed.

I vowed to combat these fundraising roadblocks with the same things that I’d used to great success in business: organization, diligence and tenacity. I’d make the Theatre’s board into a fundraising juggernaut by simply giving them no options. I’d bend their will to fit my needs by organizing meetings, doling out responsibilities, and pestering for action.

It worked. Sort of. For a while. But not really. Then, it wasn’t working at all. Then, I almost became a parody of myself. I found myself in board meetings repeating the same things over and over again. Essentially, it boiled down to please: “Please help us…”; “Please contact those people on your list…”; “Please follow through with your commitments…” “We’re gonna do it this time! Come on, please?” I began to exhibit symptoms of Einstein’s famous definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.

A faithful band of trustees labored on, but I became increasingly disheartened about the process. CEOs often talk about how lonely it is at the top, and while I would never compare my experiences with those of someone running an entire company, I knew what they meant.

Thankfully, I got some perspective from the Dodge Foundation. Thanks to an invitation forwarded by our Executive Director Allison Larena, I was able to attend a Dodge workshop entitled “The Care and Feeding of a Board of Trustees.”

It turns out that my experience was not all that unusual. In fact, according to the Dodge consultants, it’s pretty standard stuff. After a day of Dodge-led therapy, my mood was picking up. Better yet, I had some new ideas about how to manage the board and its capital goals. None of it was terribly profound or earth-shattering, but even the little things can sometimes make a world of difference.

Here are a couple of helpful things which were reinforced in the workshop:

1. From Each According to His Ability (or Desire): The Dodge Foundation didn’t actually make this point using Marx’s famous dictum, but the applicability is almost perfect. Essentially, it means that a board leader ought to extract from each board member only those things which can be reasonably expected to be forthcoming. If a board member says something like “I don’t really like to make fundraising calls…,” then by all means don’t press it. This person will probably not make any calls for you anyway. Insisting will only make the situation uncomfortable. A well constructed board (or committee) will have lots of different jobs filled by lots of different individuals with lots of different skills. Use only those people who will benefit the particular job at hand.
2. Make It As Brainless As Possible: Complexity is anathema to fundraising. Judging from my own personal experience, even something as simple as a missing telephone number is enough to get someone to indefinitely postpone a planned fundraising call. Any serious work or research or preparation is likely to impede the beginning of a fundraising pitch. So take that aspect of the process away from board members. Make the process absolutely brainless and bullet-proof. If you’d like a board member to send a letter to a prospect, then write it for them, hand it to them, watch them read it, have them sign it, and then send it along. Similarly with telephone calls or tours, make sure 100% of the relevant information on a potential donor is at hand before the process even begins. Of course a large staff helps, but even board subcommittees can do the groundwork to make board fundraising brainless. Strangely, if it’s brainless, it can even become fun.
3. Keep It Fun: Have pizza. Gossip. Play music. Go out to Happy Hour. Make your fundraising activities the place to be. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

We’re almost finished with our capital campaign, so I think it’s safe now to pass judgment on the process. In the end, I made the right choice to volunteer for the campaign. I met a great group of people, I helped the community achieve a new level of sophistication in its performing arts capacity, and, perhaps most important, I had a lot of fun.

Thanks go to Allison Larena and her staff at the Theatre, to all of my fellow Trustees who helped with the campaign, and to all the patrons of the Theatre who helped us achieve our goal. Finally, many thanks to the Dodge Foundation for being an informed and consistent resource for nonprofits.

Matthew Finlay manages a private equity fund in Morristown and lives with his wife and three boys in Far Hills.  He has managed several operating and capital campaigns for schools, community enterprises and arts organizations.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
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After several months and a comprehensive search that attracted more than 200 candidates, the Trustees of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation have announced that Christopher J. Daggett will succeed David Grant as the new President and CEO. Chris will spend time with David and the Dodge program team this spring to assure a smooth transition, and he will assume full-time duties as President of the Foundation on June 14, 2010.

Chris has been a respected leader in New Jersey’s nonprofit world for nearly 20 years. He serves on the board of one of our partners in grantmaking, the Schumann Fund for New Jersey. He is also the New Jersey co-chairman of the Regional Plan Association (a Dodge grantee), a leading smart growth advocate with initiatives like America 2050, which strives to meet the infrastructure, economic development and environmental challenges of the nation as we prepare to add about 130 million additional Americans by the year 2050. Additionally, he serves as a New Jersey advisory board co-chair of the Trust for Public Land, which has preserved thousands of acres of open space across the US and has made remarkable contributions to greening urban spaces and revitalizing parks in Newark through its Parks for People program, which Dodge helps fund.

If you live in New Jersey, you probably recognize Chris’s name as the independent candidate for governor in 2009. He was the first independent candidate to raise the threshold amount of money to qualify for public matching funds and to participate in public debates with the major party candidates. He was also endorsed by The Star-Ledger, the state’s leading newspaper.

Previously, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Governor of New Jersey (1982-1983), Regional Administrator of the USEPA (1984-1988), and Commissioner of the NJDEP (1988-1989). In addition, for six years he was a managing director of William E. Simon & Sons, a private investment firm and, since 1996, has operated a brownfields development company, acquiring, remediating and redeveloping environmentally impaired real estate. He will come to the Dodge Foundation from his current position as a Principal with JM Sorge, Inc. (JMS), an environmental consulting and management firm providing assessment, investigation and remediation services to the public and private sectors.

Chris holds an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He lives in Basking Ridge with his wife Bea. They have two grown children, Alexandra and Justine.

We look forward to introducing our grantees and friends to Chris and continuing to work with our partners across the state to foster more creative lives and sustainable communities in New Jersey.

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

Anne Waldman is deeply committed to an approach to performing that treats poems and songs as “word-scapes” or “sound-scapes” created with breath, voice and body. The German language has a word for this: sprechstimme, which translates into “spoke-sung.”

A lifetime celebrant and proponent of poetry as an oral art, Waldman was blurring the lines between reciting, chanting, singing and dramatizing poetry decades before terms like “performance poetry” “slam poetry” or “spoken word art” were in use. She digs down to language’s atavistic roots—coo and cry, whine and howl, whimper and growl—to get at the language below language: the rhythmic sounds hominids may have used before they developed anything we would recognize as speech, and which connects us to our non-human relatives.

And yet, Waldman’s work is also highly spiritual. A student of Buddhism since the early 1960’s, she was co-founder with Allen Ginsberg and others of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, the first writing program in the United States rooted in Buddhist principles.

As the poems she reads in this clip from the 2006 Dodge Festival attest, Waldman is also passionate about the political and social issues of her time. An active peace advocate throughout her career, Waldman has also been outspoken as a protester, organizer and artist on nuclear arms, women’s rights and the environment. For Waldman, her art, activism and spirituality are all part of the ongoing struggle to remain deeply engaged with and committed to the world.

Anne Waldman is the author of over forty books, most recently, Manatee/Humanity. In the Room of Never Grieve: New and Selected Poems 1985-2003 includes selections from her earlier work.

Be sure to return for upcoming Poetry Fridays, when we will feature many poets from past Dodge Poetry Festivals in the weeks ahead.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
For more information, visit the Poetry website.

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David Grant, President and CEO

I had one of those trains of thought last week that come, at least to me, in repose.  It began with pride in a colleague and ended with pride as a father, and along the way, I was reminded about something I have treasured in my time at Dodge.

I was on vacation on the island of Vieques, which is as quiet and laid back as northern New Jersey is energized and in your face.  I took a break from reading and checked the Dodge website – not to work, mind you, just to see what was going on.

It was the day of my colleague Wendy Liscow’s blog entry, “When I Put On These Shoes,” which I read admiringly.  As part of Leadership New Jersey’s Class of 2010, Wendy had spent a day in the shoes of “Miriam,” a harried mother and victim of domestic abuse, and through this simulation, she glimpsed what it is like to negotiate the health care and social service systems as a poor, battered, and frightened woman.

As Wendy pointed out, no day-long exercise can approximate the full realities of Miriam’s life, but it was an admirable exercise in empathy.  I got to thinking about empathy, and where it comes from, and how we can create more of it.

Ironically, I had put down my book for a few minutes to take a break from it.  I was deep into Colum McCann’s novel, Let the Great World Spin.  (If you stop here and order the book, I will have done you a favor today.) I don’t usually take book jacket blurbs too seriously, but I think Dave Eggers got it right on this one when he wrote, “There is so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.”

I had in fact been feeling overwhelmed: fighting back tears over a mother who had lost her son in Vietnam; feeling confused and unsettled as an Irish monk in the Bronx struggled with his vow of chastity; holding my breath as a man walked out onto a tight rope suspended between the two towers of the World Trade Center.  (Yes, the actual walk of Philippe Petit in August, 1974 provides the back drop for all the action.)  I thought to myself if you don’t have a Leadership New Jersey to create an experience of empathy for you, reading literature ain’t bad.

But what comes of all this?  Experiential education works, and great art works, to expand our sympathies and understanding.  But what changes as a result?

Here my train of thought took me to the other part of my bookshelf I love – the much nerdier section of books on organizational development and change.  The latest page-turner there is called Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath, and the subtitle is How to Change Things When Change is Hard. It doesn’t have the prostitutes and judges and cops and man on a wire a hundred and ten floors off the ground of Let the Great World Spin, but it has its own excitement if you’re in the change business.

And it has its own metaphor for how change happens: a human rider on an elephant going down a path.  The Rider is the analytical part of our brain – the part of us that plans for the future and thinks through all the alternatives.  The Elephant is the emotional part of our brain – the part that loves routines and familiarity and comfort.

It’s an effective metaphor right off the bat because it reminds us who is in charge.  We can know intellectually what we should be doing and pull on the reins, but if the Elephant decides to go in another direction, that’s the way we are going.  It’s what happens when we decide we should lose a few pounds but there are Oreos in the house.

You can see both the dangers and the possibilities inherent in this metaphor.  The Rider can think long-term, but can also get overwhelmed by choices and spin his or her wheels through endless analysis.  The Elephant is not thinking long-term – in fact is not thinking at all.  It tends to go for instant gratification if it is there for the taking, or it hangs out in the comfort of the status quo.

But the Elephant is what moves us – literally and figuratively.  It is motivated by love and compassion and sympathy and loyalty.  It is motivated by empathy.  It can provide the energy if the Rider can provide the direction.

So the Heaths simplify the complicated terrain of change – social change or personal change – down to three simple suggestions: 1) Direct the Rider; provide crystal clear directions to a destination we can understand; 2) Motivate the Elephant; engage people’s emotional sides; and 3) Shape the Path; do what you can to create the conditions for change, given the situation you are operating in.

Not a bad way to think about what empathy does – it motivates the elephant.  No wonder Leadership New Jersey engages the emotions of Wendy and the rest of her LNJ cohort: because changing the lives of the Miriams of the world is hard indeed.

I think this is what the “phil” in philanthropy is about, too – the emotional commitment that leads us to tackle things that are hard. What a daily privilege that has been for me here at Dodge since the fall of 1998.  It is why we have been such a steadfast supporter of the arts, and of experiential education.  It is why we tell stories, here on the blog and elsewhere. It is why, when we talk about a more Creative and Sustainable New Jersey, we don’t just analyze the problems as the Rider; we try to motivate the elephant by envisioning, and feeling, what is possible.

One final thought finished my musings on empathy.  Dodge co-sponsored a conference in 2000 called Learning and the Arts, where one researcher reported she had found only one significant correlation between life experiences and observed empathetic behavior – many of the “high empathy” people had had experience in drama.

I won’t have my first-hand daily experience with empathy at Dodge after June, but I look forward to a vicarious one over the next three years. My younger son Rob was just accepted into the MFA program at Yale School of Drama, as an actor.

The Dodge Foundation is nearing the end of the second annual Board Leadership Training series led by the talented trainers of The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University’s School of Business.

Over the past six months, teams of board members and executive leadership attended workshops ranging from Nonprofit Lifecycles, Assessment, Board Care and Feeding, Strategic Planning, Board Fundraising, Board Financial Management, Board/Staff Relationships and Succession Planning. We have heard terrific feedback and ideas from many board members who are actively applying the learning to their board work. We thought that every Board, large or small, start-up or mature, could benefit from learning from their peers. So over the next several weeks, we will feature Board members (and a few executive directors) as Monday guest bloggers to tell their stories of implementing change with their board. They will share their challenges and successes. We hope you will share yours as well and help us create a Board Development Learning Community.

We are kicking off this series today with Allison Trimarco, one of our trainers who spoke on a popular subject: board fundraising. She covered a lot of ground in her day-long seminar, but in this post, she captures one of the major takeaways and offers a wonderful exercise that you can try with your own board.

He’s Just Not That Into You

Matchmaking Between Nonprofits and Donors
by Allison Trimarco

Photo courtesy Sister72/Flickr

I spend a lot of time talking with nonprofit staff and board members about fundraising – what’s working, what’s not, and most frequently, how to get board members more involved in fundraising efforts. Everyone wants their board members to be active participants in raising money for the mission, but nobody has figured out a foolproof method for motivating these otherwise devoted volunteers to take on this critical task.

When I ask leaders what they wish more board members would do, the most common response is introduce new people to our organization, and ask them for their support. Essentially, we want our board members to be matchmakers between our nonprofits and prospective donors, finding people who are going to feel that spark of excitement when they meet us.

This kind of matchmaking is one of the most valuable ways a board member can support his organization, but people are often reluctant to do it. I think professional matchmakers could tell us an important reason behind this reluctance to participate – if the spark is just not there, there’s no point in pushing the relationship. But in our efforts to find new supporters for our mission, this is often what we do.

If a prospective donor doesn’t return repeated phone calls, if they don’t attend events, if they seem reluctant to get together when you invite them to lunch, well, they’re just not that into you. Not every cause is for every person, and it’s not possible to convert everyone you meet into an enthusiastic donor. Continuing to pursue a prospect when their behavior is clearly signaling that they’re not into you is not effective fundraising.

This kind of continued rejection is one of the things that make board members reluctant to fundraise. No one wants to be the person who has to keep calling and calling someone who doesn’t really want to hear from them – none of us liked this feeling when we were dating in high school, and most people don’t want to experience it as part of their community service. It’s okay to let a prospect go if they don’t seem that interested. In fact, it’s the smart, self-respecting thing to do. Don’t ask your board members to spend their energy chasing prospects that will never amount to anything. If you want them to be your matchmakers, let them assess whether or not the “spark” seems to be there, and if it’s not, move on.

How do you know if your fundraising program is (unintentionally) creating “he’s just not that into you” situations for your board members?

1. Prospects stay on a board member’s contact list for years, even though they have never made a significant gift. This is akin to having dinner with an ex-boyfriend a couple of times a year, even though it’s clear you are never going to get married.
2. Your prospect list is full of people who are not connected to your organization in any meaningful way. I think of these as the “random rich people” – names of well-known or wealthy people that get tossed around a lot during meetings. Are you asking board members to reach out to these people even if they don’t know them, and the prospect has never demonstrated any interest in the kind of work you do? If so, you’re basically asking them to respond to a “blind box” personal ad in a newspaper.
3. You’re spending a lot of time organizing different events that are attended by the same people. “Friend-raising” events have a role to play in any fundraising program, but if you’re having trouble getting new people to attend, you should think about a change in approach. Investing time and money in hosting multiple events where the same small group of people gets together and chats won’t bring new donors to the organization – and it distracts board members from meeting new people who could become donors. It’s like hanging out in the same bar every Friday night hoping someone new will come in.
4. Your board hasn’t spent any time thinking about the right kind of donors for your organization. Sustainable funding comes from solid, long-term relationships that meet the needs of everyone involved. It can be easy to have your head turned by flashier prospects, but these folks may not be “marriage material.” If you don’t know who you’re looking for, you’re likely to waste a lot of time on the road to finding the perfect match.

How do you figure out who you’re looking for? Here’s an easy group exercise that you can try at any board meeting to help your matchmakers look for the people who are right for you. All you need is flip chart paper and a marker.

Step 1: Think like a donor, not like a fundraiser.

All of our board members are donors – hopefully to your nonprofit, but also to other charities that matter to them. Ask them to think about why they choose to say yes or no when they are asked for a donation. Put your list of reasons why they say yes or no side-by-side on your flip chart, so you can compare them. Chances are, it will illustrate two fundraising truths: 1) people give to the causes that matter to them, when it is convenient for them to do so, and 2) approaching fundraising in a way that is respectful to the donor is always the most effective technique. This exercise helps remind us all that there are two sides to every fundraising relationship.

Step 2: Why do people like us?

Once you’re in the habit of thinking like a donor, ask yourselves why donors might be interested in supporting your organization. Be careful to avoid “insider” reasons that might be very important to longtime board and staff members, but wouldn’t inspire a new supporter. Think of it this way: on a first date, you don’t tell stories about a previous relationship. You talk about who you are today and the exciting things going on in your life right now. Longtime supporters sometimes want to start a conversation with a prospect by telling the organization’s life story – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Really great matchmakers focus the conversation on today’s achievements and tomorrow’s vision, and relate that to the prospect’s own charitable motivations. Once it looks like the relationship might be going somewhere, you can learn more about each other’s history. To help board members feel more prepared for these “first dates,” spend some time talking about the strengths of your mission and your organization. Understanding this will help you to identify the types of people who are likely to be inspired by your work, making it easier for board members to find new matches.

Step 3: Where are our red flags?

Finally, ask yourselves honestly: why might people hesitate to give to us? Have you been in the news recently for something negative or controversial? Is your cause difficult to understand and embrace? Are your programs effective and your finances strong? Facing these issues head on will help you decide if you need to invest in a bit of a makeover before you send your matchmakers out to look for Mr. or Ms. Right.

The impact of the recession on fundraising is real, and it may be a while before we see more favorable conditions. Helping board members find new ways to generate support for the mission will be a key priority for most organizations, but many continue to think of fundraising as a nerve-wracking, distasteful activity to be avoided at all costs. In reality, fundraising is just the transfer of passion about a cause from one person to another – and our board members are some of the most passionate people around. Encouraging them to share their passion for the mission with the right people – people who are truly into your work and enjoy knowing more about it – is the best way to bring out the matchmaker in everyone.

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Allison Trimarco is the founder and principal of Creative Capacity, a consulting firm that collaborates with nonprofits to find creative solutions to management challenges. She is also an affiliated consultant and instructor at The Nonprofit Center at La Salle University.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Follow the Dodge Foundation on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook