WGHA’s Agency (formerly “Party with a Purpose”) is an annual event targeted to Seattleites ages 25-34. Each year the party raises awareness and funds for a particular global health issue (different issues are chosen each year).  Kristen and Jessica and the Agency board have learned a lot about what makes young donors tick.  The biggest question to ask when you start thinking about attracting young donors: are you really ready to attract young donors? We’re a different breed than what you may be used to, and it may require a whole new set of strategies for your organization.

• We’re much more likely to get involved because of our friends instead of your mission. For a while, I happened to be the only 20-something I knew carrying a torch for circus in Seattle, but after bringing my friends to events like Circus Open Mic and SANCA (School for Acrobatics and New Circus Arts) trapeze shows, they can speak about the impact of circus on childhood obesity, and some are even on the heels of attending their first circus fundraiser (and first fundraiser, for that matter). Help us get our friends involved by creating a social aspect to your fundraising (and friend-raising) approach.
• Forget about snail mail. “If we get mail from you, we’ll wonder why you spent the time and money to print and stamp it. A witty email will catch our attention much better,” says Kristen. Email also gives us an instant chance to follow up with you by providing us with a link to register for your event, donate to your organization, or just learn more via your website or social media. Plus, you’ll earn major environmentalism points.
• Don’t expect major gifts—yet. Gifts of $25 or $50 are big for us: encourage giving at this level. If ten of our friends throw $50 your way at your event, you’ve earned what for many organizations is a major gift with almost no solicitation time. Remember, in the two years since this party started, many young donors have gone from interns to coordinators to managers, which means we have a lot more discretionary money than we used to. Keep us coming back every year and you’ll see a return on your investment.
• Entertain us. Agency had elements like a silent disco (where everyone puts on headphones and dances in a big group to their own tunes) and a red carpet photo booth. Mission-centric? Nope. Hilarious and memorable? You bet. Agency’s “purpose” in 2010 was diarrheal disease among kids around the world – not the sexiest topic, or the easiest to raise money for, but Agency made it work. The party sold out and was able to raise awareness for through lots of creative educational opportunities before and during the event, not to mention donate 100 percent of ticket proceeds to organizations that fight this disease. When’s the last time you saw an organization with enough moxie to get folks all dressed up and out for a night on the town to talk about poop problems?
• Appeal to our creativity. We’ll volunteer for your organization, but we don’t want to be licking stamps (see earlier tip on disdain for printed solicitations). Chances are we studied something really cool in college and are eager to trot it out: we might be experts on graphic design, or DJing, or underwater basketweaving, and you can bet we can help make your organization more innovative and get noticed with these skills. Spend some time getting to know us.
• Not ready for us yet? That’s okay. We can be a lot to handle when you start from scratch. But all nonprofits, especially organizations with a focus on arts, education, or with a membership base, may want to think about getting ready for us as your current donors and subscribers age out.
• Oh, and a really cool video never hurt anyone.

How does your organization approach young donors? Have you had successes (or utter failures)? We at TCG want to hear about it! Email me at blairf@collinsgroup.com, or, better yet, continue the conversation with TCG (@CollinsGrp) and me (@feehanbe) on Twitter.

You can read more about the 2012 Agency event here: it’ll be a shining example of throwing conventional fundraising out the window to make way for new and as-yet un-thought-of ideas about targeting millennials.

With lights dimmed, we walked from room to room around our house. The amber glow of the lights in an otherwise dark room clearly sparked a certain wonder in his eyes as he perked up out of his semi-conscious state and began a constant stream of baby chatter while his eyes moved from light to light.

As we settled on the living room sofa, I became fascinated in his amazement. He was visibly processing new information, discovering lights that have always been there, but are now seen in a new and different way. I know those young eyes will be discovering new and amazing things for many more years and indeed I hope it never ends.

My time at The Collins Group has given me far more than what is expected from a job: it’s provided me a constant stream of personal amazement and inspiration. During my tenure, I’ve had the opportunity to sit around the table with or stand before dedicated nonprofit leaders, selfless volunteers, and some of the smartest, kindest, and best-looking colleagues one could ever hope for.

As I prepare to move on to lead the Bainbridge Community Foundation, I can think of a number of lessons that I’ve learned from the amazing people who have surrounded me. I will carry them forever in my personal and professional life and offer them here for your own consideration. (It should be pointed out that Stuart Grover, chairman emeritus of The Collins Group, is celebrated for his ability to summarize broad and complex concepts into three easy points. I have five. I guess I still have more learning to do.)

In no particular order (in fact, if I could present them in a circle, I would):

• Be honest: Honesty is the root of good communication and communication is the foundation of understanding
• Be brave: Leadership is the single greatest asset of success and to be a leader means stepping out of your comfort zone. I credit my clients for showing me this (you know who you are)
• Foster innovation: Fostering innovation and creativity encourages us to challenge old concepts, deconstruct them, and build new strategies with a much deeper understanding of how it can be successful.
• Laugh: You know it’s important, so do it more often, eh? It is a magic cure for the blues, a great reliever of stress and perhaps the strongest thread in our social fabric
• Help others (to do the above): Humans are social animals. We’re not built for going it alone. We owe it to each other to help one another out.

So, thank you all so very much – to my clients who have all become friends, to my colleagues who always have been, and to those of you who I haven’t met but will no doubt learn something from in the future. Thanks also on behalf of my little one-year-old who is fascinated by an evolving world around him, made better, by you.

Julie Bianchi has joined the firm as an Associate Consultant. You may know Julie from her time in Relationship Banking at Pacific Continental Bank or perhaps you saw her at the last NDOA Conference (she co-chaired the 2009-2010 Conference Committee and was the 2009 Volunteer of the Year). We’re thrilled to have her on board.

Blair Feehan is our new Project & Marketing Coordinator. Blair has spent the last few years working in marketing and with volunteers at the Jewish Federation of Seattle and, in her spare time, running a local circus and vaudeville show. If she can organize a circus, we’re pretty sure she can reign in a consulting team.

And one more special announcement…

Kate Roosevelt has been named Executive Vice President. As co-owner of the firm and head of the client services team, she is an extremely valuable and valued team member.  Congrats, Kate!

In this January 11 blog post, Charity Navigator CEO Ken Berger discusses those changes. In short, the site is moving from a financial evaluation model to incorporating financial performance with accountability and transparency and, soon, results. The site will partner with Great Nonprofits and Keystone in order to develop the evaluation metrics.

On the positive side, this represents a departure from self-reported 990 data alone, which many nonprofits argue doesn’t begin to convey effectiveness. On the potentially negative side, those organizations that publish their own results and track their effectiveness in a similar way to that which Charity Navigator proposes will receive the earliest and potentially the highest marks.

So what do you think?  Is this change a step in the right direction to measure effectiveness and results over the financial dollars? Or might this be yet another way for large organizations to take the spotlight?

How much should I budget to give per year? A ten percent tithe is common for religious denominations. I grew up Catholic and it was my job every week to drop our family donation envelope in the basket. We donated because we were a member of that community and it was our duty and our privilege to support it. But now, I consider myself to be a member of multiple communities now and it is my duty and privilege to support all of them.

According to the 2010 Giving USA annual report, in 2009, individuals gave 2.1 percent of their disposable income to charitable causes. My personal giving last year was about 2.3 percent, so I’m right with the pack. Ten percent of my net income to philanthropic causes is too much of a stretch for my single-earner/parent household, but could I do five percent?

What I can do for sure is be more organized and thoughtful about my giving. Instead of adding all my receipts up after the fact and being surprised at what I gave (or didn’t), I’m going to decide what percentage of my income can be set aside for charitable giving and plan out my 2011 gifts.

To help in this task, I’ve created a very simple Personal Annual Giving Plan tool in Excel. I’ve filled in some organization examples and amounts. You can delete and fill in your own. The base net salary I’ve used as an example is $50,000. Five percent dedicated to annual giving would be gifts totaling $2,500. What would it look like if you gave five percent of your disposable income to charitable organizations? Is it possible? If not, what’s reasonable for you?

So, I wasn’t too surprised when I received a letter from the IRS asking for a modified audit of my 2008 tax return. We are outliers in our income bracket for the amount we give to charity and the number of charities we support. The IRS did not want to audit our complete return; they just wanted documentation of the 40 charitable gifts we reported that totaled over 10 percent of our income.

Benchmarking is another aspect of my annual January tasks. What can I learn about what other households in my income bracket give? The best source for this information is research commissioned by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University (COP). This past November, COP released the “2010 Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy.” If you are involved in major gifts in any way, as a donor, nonprofit leader, or a fundraising professional, and have not yet read the 75-page report, please make it a priority.

Half of all giving in America and 65-70 percent of all individual giving is made by high net worth households (HNWH). So, you may wonder, what is the criteria to be one? In the COP research, a HNWH is a household with income of at least $200,000 annually and net worth of at least $1 million excluding the primary residence. Nearly all HNWHs give, and the amount increases as the level of income and wealth increases. Most high net worth individuals are volunteers as well as donors, and their giving to specific organizations typically follows their volunteerism.

Giving by the wealthiest dropped in 2009 compared to 2007, as did the stock market and confidence in financial security. However, giving as a percent of income did not change significantly except for the wealthiest ($20 million and more in assets) households.

What did I learn about my giving compared to the median giving for other high net worth households in my level? Median giving by all HNWH is only $12,000, but the totals for the wealthiest households are much higher. (Please refer to the full report for more info). Now I understand why we received the letter from the IRS. Our giving is much higher than peers in our income range! For my husband and I personally, it’s not about our net worth, but rather our values. High net worth or not, I encourage you all to give to the best of your ability.

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We hear variations of these familiar messages from nonprofits across sectors – from education to social services, from the arts to the environment. But what do we really mean when we use these well-worn statements?

This past weekend I had the privilege of working with a group of high school students participating in the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle‘s teen philanthropy initiative, “J.Team.” Over the course of a school year, 28 teenagers from throughout the Puget Sound region are coming together once a month to pool their resources (matched by a generous challenge grant from the community), identify organizations of interest, and then spend the year conducting site visits, meeting staff, and listening to clients, with the goal of awarding grants where they believe they can have the greatest impact. The generosity of last year’s group of teens helped to further the missions of six diverse local and international organizations.

This month, the teens were meeting at a nursing home that had recently submitted an RFP to the group. I used my time with them to discuss the similarities and differences between nonprofits and for-profits (the Seattle Opera vs. Lady Gaga provided a simple comparison!) and the most effective strategies for increasing their pool of funds. Each teen committed to identifying a friend or family member (parents excluded) for a face-to-face solicitation in the first quarter of 2011. Although a few were initially hesitant, they instinctively understood that they would not be asking because J. Team has needs, but because as a group they have the power to meet needs.

But the most inspiring part of the experience for me was not our “nuts and bolts” training session. Instead, it was listening beforehand to the students engage with the site visit speaker, a social worker who was requesting funds for his nursing home’s new hospice. It was dinner time on a dark, very rainy, and cold Sunday evening, yet here were young adults asking thoughtful and thorough questions like experts: “How will our relatively small amount of money make a difference?” “Exactly how many people will we help?” “Who else will you ask to support your work?” “What will happen if we don’t give you money?” “Is it sad to work with people who are dying, and why did you choose to do it?”

As adults, when we speak about children as “our future” or as “tomorrow’s leaders,” each of us means something different. Some of us believe that it is our collective responsibility to care for all of society’s children, not just our own. Some of us want to ensure that our personal passions remain a priority when we are no longer here. And some of us understand that like those who came before us, we hold the world in trust for the next generation. Whatever our motivations, J.Team taught me an invaluable lesson: that many children – or in this case teens - aren’t waiting for us to create a better future; they are partnering with us to create it today.

Is your organization leveraging the enthusiasm and energy of young people? Share the good news with us!

The good works done by the people and businesses in our community to benefit the nonprofit sector is incredible. If you really want to be inspired, check out the winners of the Youth in Philanthropy awards. They’re going to be running this country some day — and they’ll do it well.

To see a list of 2010 honorees, visit the AFP Washington website and the AFP Oregon and SW Washington site.