ALL successful enterprises go through difficult times. And that is the key - they go through these times. While you may fear an uncertain future, you cannot allow fear to drive decision-making or to create paralysis. You have to go through these times and come out the other end a vibrant and impactful organization.

ASSESS - Look carefully at your programs, finances, funding mix, systems, and your Board of Directors. Use your mission and values as a guide. What is working well? What needs adjusting? Tough times are when survivors evaluate and make decisions about the future.

STREAMLINE - Focus on the activities that are central to your mission. Do those things extremely well. Make room for the future by deciding what to keep doing vs. what to let go of. Phase out of a program that is no longer relevant to the mission, or a program that is being done much better by others, or a program that no longer is viable.

PLAN - When for-profit companies see an economic downturn, they use the time to prepare for the next upswing. They review and revitalize their strategic long-range plan. This is a great opportunity to clarify your future vision, to "think outside the box" about what is possible, and to set in motion the plans that will prepare for what's next.

RELATE - Engage your significant donors in honest conversation. Tell your story. Listen to what really interests them about what you do. Strengthen your relationships with all your donors - because relationship is the basis for ALL fundraising. Let them know what you are continuing, and what, if anything, you are letting go of.

Talk internally as well. Make sure everyone hears and understands your strategic direction. When people are clear on your future, it instills hope that you will all go through this successfully. It is vital to have everyone telling the same story to your community.

LEAD - Organizations that survive have someone at the helm willing to make difficult decisions with grace and style. Leaders take action quickly and decisively when necessary. Leaders inspire and reassure their staff and the community.

COLLABORATE - Work together with other nonprofits on a more committed level through strategic collaborations. Look beyond the obvious partners to find groups that can help you achieve your mission and vision while making great use of your existing limited resources.

MANAGE - Know your organization inside and out. Manage your reserves and cash flow. Keep updated on a more regular basis. Be ready with alternatives in case you encounter a bump in the road. Meet regularly with your staff to take the organization's pulse, and ensure compliance with the direction you have set.

GET OUTSIDE PERSPECTIVE - Don't get stuck in what you "know." Bring in a fresh set of eyes and a keen understanding of the nonprofit field - someone who isn't afraid to ask you tough questions and help you implement the answers.

If you need more clarification on NOZA features, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

We recently received an exciting announcement from TechSoup regarding its new name change: TechSoup Global. 

"Recently (TechSoup) recast our mission statement to read 'We are working toward a time when every social benefit organization on the planet has the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential.' To better fit this worldwide mission, we are changing our organizational name to Techsoup Global. This new name leverages the well-known and respected Techsoup brand while extending it to match the global focus our organization has today... Techsoup.org will continue to host the great tech content, community and product offerings you see at the site today."

To check out the TechSoup Global website (separate from www.techsoup.org) you can check it out at www.techsoupglobal.org.

NOZA: I understand the American Association of Grant Professionals is an organization that provides nonprofits and consultants resources for grant funding and writing. What would you say are some of the benefits to becoming a member of the AAGP?

VERTZ: AAGP is not just for nonprofits and consultants. About 40% of our members are in education. We also serve healthcare, local governments, nonprofits and consultants. AAGP offers the opportunity for people to network with other grant professionals. We offer professional development through our annual conference and Webinars. In 2009 we are doing 12 Webinars, the second Friday of every month. We also publish an educational journal for members and it will be published next month for 2008. It focuses on different aspects of grantsmanship, for example, how to approach funders, social entrepreneurship, and various ways to better yourself in the grants profession.

We also just created SIGS, Special Interest Groups- it’s a forum on our Web site with several different tailored areas. For example, if you are in K-12 education, that’s one area. If you are in healthcare, that is a separate area. Members can go in, sign up on the forum and communicate ongoing with other grant professionals in their specific area. It is tailored to specific causes and fields. If they want to talk to each other about funding opportunities, grant submissions, etc- they can communicate other people within their special interest groups. We are also, during this year’s conference, holding a workshop focused on each special interest group. In each session, attendees will be asked the same type of questions- "what do you need for professional development?" as an example. We will evaluate their answers and use this information to better tailor our services to our members.

Other member benefits include:

• Supplemental insurance with AFLAC.
• Members can sign up for healthcare insurance. AAGP now contracts with a company that is able to offer health insurance in all 50 states and is especially good for consultants and independent grant professionals.
• Discounts at FedEx Kinkos.
• Discounts at all of our professional development opportunities.
• Corporate discounts
• Much more! Visit www.grantprofessionals.org

NOZA: What kind of support do you provide throughout the grant writing process?

VERTZ: We are a membership association, so our goal is provide professional development and social networking for our members. We try to make their job easier through all types of membership benefits.

We just implemented a credentialing program, which is huge news for the grants world. It’s called the GPC- Grant Professional Certified. It is an actual credential. It took us six years to develop the test. We worked with the University of South Florida and had multiple subject matter expert panels throughout the U.S. What we ended up with is a test of 150 questions and a writing prompt. People are given three hours to complete the multiple choice section and 90 minutes to complete the writing portion of the exam.

The next time the text will be offered is in Long beach in conjunction with our annual conference next month. The last day to sign up is Friday, September 26th. We have over 200 people that have received their GPC and we expect to have a total of 300 before the end of 2008. If people want to go to www.grant credential.org they can learn more about it.

If you need more clarification on NOZA features, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

Fortunately for our NOZA Blog readers, Jim Fowler, the CEO of Jigsaw, agreed to do an interview with us and give overview of how Jigsaw works, highlight the benefits Jigsaw can offer nonprofits and even offer a promotion for our blog readers. So, read on… at the end, you might find an Easter egg.

Brief Overview of Jigsaw:

Jigsaw provides an online business directory of company information and more than 9 million business contacts. If your success depends on reaching out to others, Jigsaw is essential. And that's why over 500 corporations and more than 450,000 members turn to Jigsaw.

Every contact in Jigsaw is complete with full name, title, postal address, hard-to-find email address and telephone number.

Interview with Jim Fowler, CEO and Founder of www.jigsaw.com:

NOZA: I did research on Jigsaw and was really floored. The way you created your database as a points-based system is extremely intuitive. In reading your mission & history, I see that you harnessed concepts from Wikipedia and eBay to create Jigsaw. Can you give our blog readers some detail as to how the point-system on Jigsaw works, and how these two highly successful web-based companies influenced you?

FOWLER: The Jigsaw database is a directory of company and contact data and the point system helps our members create and maintain our database. You don’t need to have points to get the company data- just the contacts. It’s very much like open-source software. Our contacts are the data that everyone wants and needs and you get them by using points. You earn points by adding records, updating records or by buying them.

Every record in "costs" 5 points, and you earn 5 points for adding or updating a record. But if another member comes in within 30 days and finds that the data is bad, the person who added that data gets deducted 10 points. We needed an incentive to get people to put good data in and we needed a disincentive for people to not put in bad data. We use a lot of elements of the eBay feedback system.

The whole database is really a wiki. Many people brining data to the puzzle is much more effective than one company maintaining the data. We have almost 600,000 registered members. And these registered members have added almost 10 million contacts and almost 1.5 million company records.

The concept is the same concept that open-source software has to closed and proprietary software. Encyclopedia Britannica is basically dead- Wikipedia is bigger and badder.

NOZA: What are some anecdotal frustrations that occurred while trying to find quality leads, and ultimately led you to start this database?

FOWLER: It was born out of a point of pain. I was director of sales and I was frustrated at how much time my sales team would spend just trying to find the right people to contact. Sales people spend a minimum of 33 percent of their time just trying to find the right people to sell to.

The data companies that existed did a decent job at company data, but their contact data was sub-par. I thought, "people are way more dynamic than companies and there is no way a closed and proprietary system could maintain business contacts."

What sales people really need is direct contact information. We knew that data companies are controversial out of the gate--so we decided we weren’t going to touch consumer information. We decided we would keep it to information that could be found on business card, minus the mobile number. Nothing you would consider non-business would be found on Jigsaw- not even personal emails.

It really kind of happened all at once. Data is a tough product to work with because it’s so dynamic- and the reason it’s tough is because one company working alone can’t get all this quality information. I thought, how would you do it in a scalable way? You would need to use the wisdom of crowds. So, I was whiteboarding in my office and the whole concept just kind of hit me. I thought you’ve gotta have a carrot and a stick. So basically Jigsaw rewards you when your good and spanks you when your bad.

NOZA: I see that you focus your message to the for-profit sector; did you ever imagine that nonprofits would be using this database to find prospects?

FOWLER: We really did. We knew there were many situations in which people would need business contact data- even in many places that we didn’t yet expect. For example, it’s used by a lot of job seekers. They use Jigsaw to find the hiring manager. We also see people using it for customer support issues- one guy lost his bags on British Airways, got on Jigsaw, found the CEO and got his bags back.

We always knew that nonprofits would use Jigsaw for fundraising. If you do B2B (business to business outreach) you don’t do business with companies you do business with people- and Jigsaw allows you to connect with those people.

NOZA: What do you think that you can offer to the nonprofit community that your competitors can’t?

FOWLER: First and foremost, Jigsaw is free. So, it’s a great concept for them because it’s free, especially if they are willing to share their data. It fits perfectly for nonprofits.

Number two is our Open Data Initiative–a feature unique to Jigsaw that allows anyone to search, build and download a list of complete company records for FREE.

And lastly, our data is just better. At the end of the day, they have to find donors. It is getting much more difficult to communicate with people at home (due to ‘do not call’ lists, etc). Even people who are trying to sell to individuals are communicating at work rather than at home- the same goes for nonprofits.


To find out more information on how Jigsaw can help your nonprofit organization, you can participate in a Jigsaw Webinar. Go to the Webinars page on Jigsaw to learn more.

Also, Jigsaw recently added a company wiki to it's services and features. Similar to Wikipedia, Jigsaw's Company Wiki is a vibrant hub of user-generated content.

I have done a lot of searching of NOZA’s charitable giving database over the past three years. Occasionally I use NOZA to research prospects for organizations with which I volunteer, but my typical usage revolves around conducting demo searches for prospective customers or business partners. Whatever the reason for my searching, my ritual has always been the same: type a name into the "search by name" field, click search, and then cross my fingers, hope and pray for hundreds or even thousands of results.

Then I read the news about Freddie Mac…then Fannie Mae…then Merrill Lynch….then Lehman Brothers. My kneejerk response to the recent news of these troubled companies was to plug their names into NOZA’s database to see their level of charitable giving over the years, and to begin to contemplate the downstream impact on the charitable organizations that have relied on their support. Over the last couple weeks I’ve had to create a new ritual: key-in the name, click search, and cross my fingers and pray that the above mentioned companies return zero results. I figured there was at least a chance that my NOZA searches would return results indicating that Freddie, Fannie, Merrill and Lehman were all ridiculously un-philanthropic, meaning that the nonprofit sector wouldn’t take a huge direct hit. Unfortunately I was wrong. According to NOZA’s database these companies were extremely philanthropic.

Here’s what my searches returned:
Freddie Mac – 1,163 results
Fannie Mae – 1,934 results
Merrill Lynch – 6,320 results
Lehman Brothers - 1,265 results

For those of you unfamiliar with NOZA’s database of charitable giving, each "result" represents a single donation that was made to a U.S. based charity. It is important to realize that NOZA represents only a cross-section of philanthropy (albeit the largest searchable compilation of philanthropy in the world), meaning that the actual impact to charities is many times greater than reflected in NOZA’s cross section of results.

What does this mean for U.S. nonprofits? What does this mean for the individuals and communities served by these nonprofits? I don’t know the answer to those questions but I suppose that those charities who received the highest levels of support from Freddie, Fannie and Lehman will take the biggest hit (hopefully Bank of America will still honor the rich philanthropic history of Merrill Lynch, but we’ll need to wait to find out). These charities will need to either replace the lost dollars from new donors or cut programs.

I’d like to end this post offering a list of all the charities that were recipients of funding from Lehman Brothers. If you are interested in this list, please email support@nozasearch.com for a copy. The magnitude of this crisis is much more tangible once you peel back the onion and see the actual names of the charities affected.

If you need more clarification on NOZA features, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

If you need more clarification on the NOZA features, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

If you need more clarification on the NOZA features, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

If you need more clarification, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

Check out the interview.

Jacqui Higgins
NOZA

If you need more clarification, check out our NOZA video tutorial or email me: contact us.

The group was interested in declaring a successful end to the Campaign because a program was starting in the new building in a few weeks. They thought the opening of the program would be a good time to announce. However, I advised them otherwise.

Although the opening of the program might have seemed like a good time to do so, I told them it was actually premature to announce the Campaign was over, since they did not have all the cash and pledges they wanted.  One of the key reasons was the announcement could be confusing to the remaining outstanding major prospects. The prospects might question whether the group still needed their donation.

My suggestion was that they follow up with the remaining two donors, letting them know (politely, of course), that the organization would like to be able to announce the successful completion of the campaign.  The group needed to give the prospective donors a full report on progress - both on the building, and the fundraising.  I advised that the group try to get the donors to declare how much they are giving, and when.

On the fundraising side, the group needs to show the prospects the cost of the project, along with progress toward the campaign goal.  Since the group has significant in-kind donations of goods and services, they must be sure to include the cost of the in-kind work in the project cost, and the value of the in-kind donations in their campaign results.

When it's really time to announce the completion of the campaign, I told them have a press release ready to send to the local media.  Provide them with a picture - it stands a better chance of being published if there's a picture.  Some groups take out a print advertisement thanking people.  That can get a little costly, and since this was a smaller Campaign (under $300,000) the decision to do so is up to the group. 

In addition, they must have a letter prepared for all their donors, thanking them and reporting on the success of the campaign.  Of course, the Campaign Chair needs to have a letter ready, preferably hand-written, thanking fundraising committee members.

If a group is planning to acknowledge the donors with a plaque inside the building, they should have it ready to install, or already installed.  In that way, they can include a picture of it with their donor thank-you/report.

Since this organization is having a mini-event for the opening of the program using the new facility, I advised them to send out press releases at least a week before.  They should then follow up with media to see if they can get a reporter or camera crew there for the event.  They should invite donors and have people there to personally thank them (not publicly) if they come. 

For groups having a "grand opening" type of event, there's really no reason to have a separate event to announce the completion of the campaign.  Just do the press, newsletter, bulletin, and donor letter tasks mentioned above.

If you have any specific questions in this regard, please feel free to contact me with them by email at greg@visionwrks.com. As always, I wish you success in all your fundraising efforts!