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Trespassing Won’t Make You Many Friends

July 18, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

The Non Profit Quarterly had a piece by Simone Joyaux which I suspect reflects what will be the necessary practice in fund raising for the future.

She asks fund raisers to stop asking their board members to trespass on their family and friends.

Trespassing is when you ask your friends or colleagues to give gifts and buy tickets . . . just because they are your friends and colleagues. This is the personal and professional favor exchange. This is obligation to a person rather than a cause. It’s a lousy way to raise money. It’s offensive. It alienates the asker and the askee. And it’s not sustainable.

[…]

How often have you, as a fundraiser, asked your board members to name names? How often have you asked them to bring in a list? Did you ask your board members to write notes on the letters that you planned to send to their list?

I say again, trespassing is a bad idea. It alienates board members. It alienates the friends and colleagues of board members. It doesn’t produce loyal donors or sustainable gifts.

Joyaux advises asking board members to suggest those they believe might be interested in supporting one’s organization and then inviting them to learn more about the organization. In the process of interacting with these people, one can gauge whether they are interested in what the organization does and perhaps what specific manifestation of the mission they may be disposed to supporting. From there you can work on cultivating a relationship with them that may see them more involved with the organization.

This suggestion isn’t terribly earth shattering or new. I have heard Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser say this is essentially what he does to garner support for the organizations he leads. When I first heard him speak about how he evaluates what people may be interested in and only really approaches them in relation to their interests, it seemed a less daunting and more considerate approach than soliciting everyone for every cause, even though it is much more time consuming.

As Joyaux notes, existing supporters like board members are probably going to be more comfortable implementing an organizational relationship building approach. After all, they invested the time to develop their personal relationships with friends and colleagues. While they may be willing to donate the fruits of that investment to their favorite non-profit, those relationships were built on entirely different circumstances which may not be entirely compatible with a request for support of a non-profit.

Now that social media allows people to be approached for their support every time they turn on a computer or pick up the phone, it is likely that only those organizations that take the time to cultivate a relationship with people will earn sustained support.

Not that social media won’t be a good tool for keeping people engaged with the organization’s work. It may just not be the strongest method for the organization and individual to gain a good mutual understanding and appreciation of each other’s priorities.

N.B. My apologies. Some how I ended up omitting the link to Joyaux’s piece when I first posted this entry.

Advocacy, Boards, Fundraising, Leadership, Management Philosophy

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Info You Can Use: Federal Employees As Board Members

July 13, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Well this one falls under the heading of, “I did not know that.” The Non Profit Quarterly reports that the Office of Government Ethics has proposed changing a rule that prohibited federal employees from serving as officers on a board without getting special permission.

I had no idea that federal employees faced that sort of restriction. I guess we either never approached a federal employees to be on the boards of the organizations at which I worked.

Actually, according to a link on the OGE’s website, until 1996 “a number of agencies had a practice of assigning employees to participate on the boards of directors of certain outside nonprofit organizations, where such service was deemed to further the statutory mission and/or personnel development interests of the agency.”

In 1996, the Department of Justice issued an opinion that a section of the US Code prohibited this type of activity. The restriction was based on concerns about board officers having fiduciary responsibilities that might conflict with the loyalty owed the United States.

But the Office of Government Ethics feels times are a changin’

“In an era when public-private partnerships are promoted as a positive way for government to achieve its objectives more efficiently, ethics officials find it difficult to explain and justify to agency employees why a waiver is required for official board services that have been determined by the agency to be proper,” OGE wrote. “The potential for a real conflict of interest is too remote or inconsequential to affect the integrity of an employee’s services under these circumstances.”

The comment period for the rule ended early this month. I wasn’t able to determine what the time line for the next phase of the rule making might be.

I don’t imagine non profits will line up outside federal buildings throwing their best come hither looks at employees when the OGE issues their final ruling. (Okay, I lie. I can imagine non profits lined up giving federal employees come hither looks. It is very amusing.) But if you have tried to recruit a federal employees before or have been thinking of doing so, the opportunity may present itself in the near future.

Boards, Info You Can Use

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Info You Can Use: Arts in Medicine

July 12, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

A commentary by Dr. Gary Christenson on the Minnesota Medicine website offers the most complete listing of the benefits of arts in medicine I have yet seen. Whether the piece inspires you to partner with medical services or not, it provides evidence of the benefits of the arts to use alongside illustrations of the intrinsic, economic and educational values.

The commentary starts out relating an anecdote about an actual emergency “stat” call for musicians in a hospital. While acknowledging that such an incident is a rare occurrence in medicine, Dr. Christenson shows that the arts are already playing an important role in the practice of medicine:

(my apologies for the length of the citation. While I did pare it down to a large degree, there were just so many exciting and compelling examples, it was difficult to decide what to excise.)

“Although some might be inclined to dismiss the arts as a triviality, luxury, or unjustified expense in a time of concern over rising health care costs, research is showing that use of the arts in health care can be cost-effective. For example, a recent study done at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare demonstrated that using music therapy when preparing children for CT scans significantly reduced use of sedative medications, associated overnight stays, and nurse time, and resulted in a cost savings of $567 per procedure. It also decreased the need for repeat CTs because of poor-quality scans. When extrapolating those numbers to all pediatric CT scans done in the United States, researchers estimated a potential savings of $2.25 billion per year.”

1. Studying the arts makes medical students into better doctors.

“In our state, storytelling and theater have been used to teach students how to effectively take a medical history. Last year, for example, Mayo Medical School and the Mayo Clinic Center for Humanities and Medicine partnered with the Guthrie Theater to offer the one-week selective “Telling the Patient’s Story,” which drew upon improvisation and storytelling to teach students to take and report patients’ medical history.”

“Harvard Medical School has found that training medical students in the visual arts can help them develop their clinical observational skills. Students who participated in formal training consisting of art observation exercises, didactics that integrate fine arts concepts with physical diagnosis topics, and a life-drawing session demonstrated better visual diagnostic skills when viewing photographs of dermatological lesions than students who only received conventional training.”

“The arts also can convey lessons in ways traditional lectures cannot. It isn’t surprising that the top-rated lecture by first-year medical students on the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus for seven consecutive years was a reading of physician and playwright David Feldshuh’s Miss Evers Boys by Guthrie Theater actors. The play, about the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, illustrates ethical issues related to informed consent and human experimentation.”

2. The arts have therapeutic benefits.

“Museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts have programs for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss that use visual and cognitive stimuli to evoke memories. Dance has been shown to improve the mobility of patients with conditions such as fibromyalgia and Parkinson disease.”

“Storytelling has been noted to improve the quality of life for cancer patients,10 increase lung function associated with asthma, and reduce symptoms and doctor visits. One report noted that regularly playing the Australia didgeridoo decreased apneic episodes for patients with obstructive sleep apnea.”

3. The arts can help prevent disease.

“..a campaign to decrease heart disease in England found that people were much more responsive to the message, “Dance makes the heart grow stronger” than to “Exercise makes the heart grow stronger.” Dance is one of the best ways to improve health on a number of levels. In addition to its physical benefits, dance enhances social engagement, which is important to overall health and well-being, and it’s one of the best activities for delaying the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

4. The arts can improve the patient experience.

“…a body of research has shown that patients tend to be less stressed, less anxious, require less pain medication, and ready for discharge earlier when their environment includes views of the natural world.”

“Bedside visits by musicians and artists also distract children from pain and help them explore their feelings about their illness.”

5. The arts can promote physician well-being.

“…Although many physicians were involved in the arts before entering medical school, they put those activities on hold during their training. University of Minnesota medical students have an opportunity to keep those interests alive… The program…provides students with a small financial award to pursue and develop their interests and skills in such diverse areas as painting, drawing, singing, clowning, photography, and playing an instrument as a way to find relief from the rigors of medical study.”

Using the arts to reduce costs, provide relief and focus to patients and produce more effective doctors, what isn’t to love? As with all things, arts are only one part of bolstering well-being and providing better medical care. There is certainly a potential for it to become a much more important element in providing better medical care if employed and studied to a greater degree.

Dr. Christenson provides 20 footnoted references for his commentary which seems a good place to start for those looking to develop programs and partnerships to integrate the arts in medicine. The research is also obviously a good basis for advocacy about the value of the arts.

Advocacy, Info You Can Use, New Initiatives

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Building Cathedrals, One Budget At A Time

July 11, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

In something of a complement to my post on Wednesday regarding the factors influencing decisions about providing arts classes in higher education, Friday I attended a retreat on budgeting with the rest of the college leadership.

Now if that sounds like something you would dread attending, I was right there with you. I had a copy of The Economist in my portfolio just in case things got too boring. However, it was really a very engaging and educational experience. I have a feeling that the facilitator that was hired to run the session probably anticipated the dread with which we were approaching the day because she started out by telling us we needed to change our perception of what we were doing.

She began with a story/parable about walking along a road and seeing two emaciated men banging away at blocks of stone. Asked what he was doing, the first man sighed that he was chipping stone. The second man seemed to be working with a greater spirit than the first and when asked what he was doing, the second answers with a beatific look on his face, “I am building a cathedral.”

I had heard that one before, but I had to admit that it did pretty much describe how most of us probably approach budgeting–as a burdensome chore. The fact is, we can approach it thinking about what doing a good job on the budget can enable us to accomplish. Its hard work, but no harder than constructing, painting and lighting a set for a play.

The problem for most of us is that no one admires what a good job we did on the budget like they will for the set. Few of us had the guidance of experienced people in crafting a budget. I have clear memories of the different areas of knowledge imparted to me by technical directors and master electricians and carpenters. My memories of practical instruction in budget and finance by mentors is a bit more hazy.

And, of course, it is easier to dream of building cathedrals when you actually have money to budget toward that goal, small as it may be.

In any case, inspiring parables aren’t going to keep morale high very long if things turn mind numblingly boring. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case. We soon broke up into groups. By luck of the draw, (actually, they had us count off by fives), I ended up in a group with the two people whose decision making most impacts my budget. The topic was–what aspects of the process most impact your budget and operations.

Since the theatre does a pretty good job of supporting ourselves with earned revenue compared to other areas, I don’t receive much of my budget from them. However, some years they will take money from our revenue, some years they won’t. But I never know. I said this sort of thing made it very difficult to plan and gave me no incentive to have money left over at the end of the year. Fact is, we could actually be more self supporting and engage in an equipment replacement program that would not require us to ask them for money if our surpluses were allowed to accumulate.

No sort of action or solution was suggested. Nor did I expect one. It was good to have a fairly safe forum in which to address this situation. It probably helped that I was relating a “building a cathedral” opportunity where I envisioned our small annual surplus being used toward a bigger goal.

The day was full of shuffling around to other groups to address other aspects of the budgeting process. One particularly interesting session had us looking at the strategic plan which is what is supposed to be guiding funding priorities. We were tasked to boil each section of the plan down to a sentence that provided a helicopter view of the section so that anyone in the organizational chart could read it and understand how their work contributed to the plan. One of the results was that the language we used to describe our section was similar to that of a couple other groups. This was encouraging because obviously, you want a degree of unity between parts of the strategic plan.

The problem was, that the facilitator was initially unclear about the significant differences between three of the sections. There was something of a suggestion that parts of one section really should be organized under the umbrella of a different section. I was rather impressed by the effectiveness of the exercise in revealing that some clearer delineation might be needed so that everyone in the organization understood their place.

The last phase of the day was creating a common set of criteria for funding that would be shared across the organization as budget requests were passed up the ladder.

These criteria were:

-Aligns with strategic goals
-Leverages resources, strengths and opportunities
-Possess motivation and capacity to implement
-Has data justifying the need and plan to assess the impact

One of the biggest problem faced in the current budgeting process is apparently the lack of supporting data. Requests were being passed up without sufficient rationale based on numbers, industry needs, etc

Then we looked back at the problems with the budgeting process we identified at the beginning of the day and tried to determine if the criteria we had created would help address them. In the end, the problems we felt they couldn’t address were the result of either external factors we didn’t have control over (i.e. the way the overall state system operated and things they required). The other general area was the mysterious process by which things that never even entered the budgeting review process got funded. A working group was formed to address how to make that process more transparent and perhaps more aligned with the common criteria. I am optimistic about the ultimate outcome of the efforts. I don’t think we will ever be rid of funding that circumvents the process, but I am fairly confident there will either be more transparency or less of it occurring.

Most of all I was quite pleased with the entire experience. It is certainly an exercise an art organization might use in order to get everyone invested in the budgeting process and discover the problematic areas related to the practice. It definitely needs a skilled facilitator to lead it. Money has great potential to be a contentious issue and it is easy to get side tracked by specific issues rather than working to identify the root causes.

Info You Can Use, Management Philosophy

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