For A Good Cause: A Practical Guide to Giving Joyfully

By Diane Lebson, CFRE

“For many volunteers, fundraising is a necessary evil, a dirty F-word that compels them to have uncomfortable conversations with their families and friends . . .”

Through her work with countless female philanthropists, Diane Lebson discovered that there was no definitive guide volunteers and activists could turn to for guidance in navigating the day-to-day activities associated with doing good in the world—so she wrote one. Leveraging the skills and experiences she cultivated over more than twenty-five years as a nonprofit executive, board member, and consultant, For A Good Cause offers practical tips on how to “do” philanthropy. In chapters divided up by specific activities—such as serving on a board, advocating for a cause, starting your own philanthropic venture, becoming a fearless fundraiser, and more— Diane offers practical advice on how to professionalize your philanthropic engagement and make a greater impact. Rounded out with information about best practices, checklists, and profiles of inspiring leaders, For A Good Cause is the do-gooder’s go-to resource for giving joyfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647423049

Diane Lebson, CFRE

Diane grew up as a first-generation American in Milford, Connecticut, the daughter of working-class, Polish immigrants who instilled in her a strong work ethic and desire to “do good.” After studying international relations in college, Diane stayed in Washington and began her nonprofit career on the national staff of United Way, the largest charity in the United States. Over the course of seventeen years, she managed United Way’s national literacy program, directed the national board of trustees, and built a women’s giving program that has to date raised over $1.5 billion and mobilized over 70,000 philanthropists. After leaving United Way, she went on to lead US fundraising operations for an international nongovernmental organization that served orphans and abandoned children, lead a public library foundation, serve as the Chief of Protocol at the US Embassy in Canberra, Australia, and lead the women’s giving program for the American Red Cross. In 2018, she and her husband cofounded Evergreen Philanthropic Solutions, a national consultancy that helps nonprofit organizations, individuals, corporations, and foundations achieve their philanthropic goals. For more about Diane, please visit Evergreen’s website at www.evergreenphilanthropy.com. She lives in Camden, Maine.

Book preview

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED.

In order to provide easy-to-find access to the information you seek, this book has been segmented into four major roles that participants in the charitable sector occupy:

• Volunteer

• Donor

• Board member

• Organizational founder

Each chapter has been clustered into each of these sections. However, there are some chapters that are applicable to more than one role (in particular, board members will also find helpful tips under the volunteer section). Where applicable, those additional roles are noted at the beginning of each chapter.

Throughout this book, the terms nonprofit, charity, philanthropy, activism, and cause are used interchangeably, largely to avoid repeating the same word over and over again throughout the text. The definitions of each of these words are distinct, but what they all have in common is the sentiment of an individual pursuing an activity that will benefit a cause they hold dear. I acknowledge this distinction and thank you for taking this leap with me.

The term giving extends beyond financial contributions to include generous gifts of time, talent, and treasure to a charitable venture.

FINDING YOUR WAY AS A NONPROFIT VOLUNTEER

CHAPTER 1:

CHARITY IS A BIG SPACE.

WHAT’S YOUR PLACE IN IT?

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service’s (CNCS’s) data sharing platform, women volunteer at a higher rate than men. Whereas 44.6 million women (or 33.8% of all women in the United States) volunteer, 32.7 million men (or 26.5% of the American male population) donate their time to causes they care about.¹

One of the factors driving this statistic is the number of organizations that train and deploy women to make a difference in the world:

• The Association of Junior Leagues International: The Junior League is one of the oldest women’s organizations, with over 125,000 members in 290 Leagues throughout the world.²

• The Links, Incorporated: The Links mobilizes over 16,000 women dedicated to enriching, sustaining, and ensuring the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry.³

• The National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) and the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC): Over 5.7 million collegiate women are engaged in the 26 sororities that are governed by the NPC⁴ and the four that are part of the NPHC.⁵

• P.E.O. International: This sisterhood promotes educational opportunities for women and has over 225,000 members throughout North America.⁶

• Philanos: This network provides resources to the 17,500 philanthropists who are part of women’s giving circles worldwide.⁷

• Women United: Over 70,000 women are involved in this global United Way program to solve communities’ most critical problems.⁸

• YWCA of the USA: Over two million women, girls, and their families are part of the YWCA’s movement to eliminate racism and empower women.

This short list is hardly representative of the countless other things that women do to make the world a better place, whether it is making a donation, volunteering for their children’s schools, organizing people via social media to support their causes, saving animals from abuse, traveling overseas to help victims of disaster . . . and more.

Having so many options can be exhilarating, confusing, paralyzing—all at once. These options do not take into consideration the new ideas that individual women come up with every day, just by seeing someone in need, getting frustrated at a recurring problem in their communities, or fate impacting someone she loves. How do you step into the world of philanthropy with intention, knowing that you are deploying your precious gifts of time, talent, and treasure in a way that will make a difference?

First, you need to discern specifically why you want to volunteer. Many people would respond that they give their time to a charitable endeavor because they want to help others or because they want to make the world a better place. That’s a great start, but it won’t help you find the right target for your time. Helping others can take many forms: working at a soup kitchen, managing the website for a political campaign, running a marathon to raise money and awareness for a cause that’s important to you, etc. You get the point: helping others has many different flavors. The question is not whether there are worthwhile causes, it is on which one you can be most connected and impactful.

Furthermore, you need to think about the kind of experience you would like to have while volunteering. Are you an extrovert who wants to spend time getting to know a whole bunch of strangers as you clean a park? Are you an introvert who gets energy by conducting online research for prospective donors? Do you think that kids without homes are worthy of your time—but would get rattled if a child started crying in front of you? Do you remember the famous photo of Diana, Princess of Wales, as she held a child with AIDS in the 1980s? That photo showed in an instant that she was personally committed and did a great deal to remove the stigma of the disease from young kids who could not understand why nobody would hug them. Is that you? There is no judgment about whether you are that type of volunteer or prefer to write a check from your home, but it is important for you to know the difference.

Here are some questions to help you determine which charities might be worth exploring in greater detail:

Journal

1. What is the most vexing social problem in the world today?

2. What is the most miserable volunteer experience you ever had? What did you do? Who was it for? How did it make you feel?

3. What is your fondest memory of volunteering? What did you do? Who was it for? How did it make you feel?

Look at your journal entry and highlight the words that jump out at you. These words may be the name of a particular charity or the actual activity you did. These words are your keywords for an Internet search to find the organizations you may want to explore in greater detail.

Profile:

SANDY LEHMKUHLER

CEO and Co-Founder, Warrior Foundation Freedom Station

https://www.warriorfoundation.org/

Sometimes you do not have to look for your charitable mission—it finds you.

Sandy Lehmkuhler is a Navy wife who is passionate about helping people in the military. In 2004, she was in the elevator of a Navy hospital with young veterans who had pins holding their arms together, missing legs, and medical halos around their heads. Since it was shortly before Christmas, Sandy asked the veterans what they wanted. As they were trained in the military, they politely responded that they did not need a thing so that they would not burden her with their problems. Sandy then hit the stop button and told them that she would not let them off the elevator until they told her what they really needed. Seeing that see she wasn’t kidding, they told her that they wanted to shave. Shaving was impossible for these vets, as the task takes two hands and they each only had one. The vets provided her with the make and model of the electric shaver that they could best use single-handedly.

After doing a little research, Sandy discovered that the shavers the young veterans requested cost $65 a piece. With 300 men at the hospital, she needed nearly $20,000 to get each of them a shaver. Rather than stressing over the cost, Sandy emailed a local radio station asking for help. A few moments after sending her message, she received an invitation for her and her husband to make the request on air the following morning.

Because Sandy’s husband was active duty and could not conduct any fundraising activities, it was up to her to make the appeal. Fundraising was completely foreign to Sandy: she was a military wife, not a seasoned charity spokesperson. But she saw a big need and mustered the courage to ask for the money she needed to buy shavers for 300 men who served our nation and now needed help. A total of over $68,000 was raised that day. That money ended up going a lot farther than planned after the radio station called Norelco (the manufacturer of the shavers), who agreed to sell their product to her at half price.

This endeavor set the foundation for the Warrior Foundation Freedom Station, a nonprofit organization based in San Diego that provides quality-of-life items, support services, and transitional housing to help wounded veterans and their families as they recover. To date, they have raised over $16 million to advance their mission of serving those who have valiantly served our country.

CHAPTER 2:

FALLING IN LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH.

With so many organizations in the charitable space, you have choices about how you can invest your time. One almost has to look at it like buying a stock—the market is vast and there are lots of options; some are good investments and others are wasteful endeavors. The trick is to know where your investment will make the greatest impact. After you conduct your preliminary Internet search about the cause, select at least three organizations on which you would like to conduct more detailed research.

The first place I recommend visiting is GuideStar (www.guidestar.org), a database of nonprofit organizations in the United States. You can establish an account for free and conduct searches on the programs, financial statements, and operations of individual nonprofits. Under the programs section, you can find the activities that the organization conducts to fulfill its mission, such as providing meals to homeless people or respite to disaster victims. Look for programs that make your head nod and your heart feel good. In the financial section, you can download copies of a charity’s annual report and its Form 990, an Internal Revenue Service form on which nonprofit organizations disclose their financial activities such as fundraising, executive compensation, and the money that is invested in the charity’s mission.¹ The operations section details the leadership of the organization (both the executives who are paid to run it and the volunteer board members who provide oversight)—and how much they are compensated.

As you delve more deeply into an organization’s financials, you may also find copies of the current year and historic annual reports, either on GuideStar or on the organization’s website. Be aware that annual reports are public relations documents by organizations, so in many instances the charity will talk about itself in the most glowing of terms. Most annual reports include the following key elements:

• a letter from the leader (board chair, CEO, or executive director) providing an overview of the past year

• descriptions of major endeavors over the course of the year

• a list of board members and key staff

• financial statements

Some organizations have dispensed with the practice of issuing an annual report—and the absence of such a document does not necessarily indicate that there is a problem. True, there may be some organizations that have had a bad year and are transparent about the challenges they faced. But for others, an annual report is a waste of time, either because they are so small and do not have the resources to create such a report or because they are so large and have so much information already available in the public domain. If you are looking at a particularly large organization, they will likely have a publicly-available independent financial audit or report that you can review, either integrated into an annual report or published separately.

While reading an organization’s annual report can give you a good sense for how the organization is talking about itself and what its values are, you can get a more complete and transparent view into an organization by reading its Form 990, since that information is legally required for all nonprofits. Some things to look for include:

• how much money they received via various sources, including donations, grants, income earned from businesses

• how much they spent on such activities as fundraising and programs

• how much they pay their executives

There is so much information on a Form 990 that it can often be confusing, especially when submitted by a larger nonprofit that has multiple lines of activity or substantial assets that are invested in the stock market. You can get a sense for the organization’s financial health by checking line 22 of the Form 990 to ensure that its fund balance is a positive number. If it is, it means that the organization raised more money than it spent, which is typically an indicator that the charity is operating within its means and its leadership is planning for its future by ensuring that they have enough money stored away in case an existing major donor elects not to make a contribution in a given year or if they encounter a significant unanticipated issue the organization has to address. You can also take the number that is on line 9 (program revenue) and divide it into the number that is on line 12 (total revenue). Watchdogs like Charity Watch recommend that at least 80% of an organization’s revenue should be dedicated to its programs to warrant an A rating.² Another good place to look is Schedule J, Part II, to see what the top executives earn.

While you can logically come to conclusions about data on a tax form, less than ideal financial data points can also be easily explained. For example, if an organization has a negative fund balance, it may be because it purchased a building and is still running a capital campaign to pay for it or that it had to spend a lot of money to pay for its programmatic work. Smaller organizations might not be able to reach the 80% threshold cited above because they are in the early phases of their work and are dedicating their funds to open the doors and pay salaries. Nonprofits may be paying their top executives handsomely—but are also raising millions of dollars, which make high compensation levels proportionately well worth the investment. In essence, these are snapshots and it is important to understand from a holistic perspective what the organization is doing to achieve such metrics.

The Overhead Myth

The issue of how much of every donated dollar goes to programming versus overhead is a contentious one in the nonprofit space. Some contend that this is a useful metric to assess the efficacy of a nonprofit. Others believe it is a false metric and expenditures of salary that are competitive with for-profit businesses attract the kind of talent that can dramatically increase the overall size of the donation pool even if the percentage going to overhead is higher than peers. Dan Pallotta, a lecturer on human transformation, gave an iconic 2013 TED Talk where he discussed this argument, and it remains one of the most significant (and unresolved) issues in the philanthropic space.³

Organizations that monitor the nonprofit space often report on overhead statistics to help advise potential donors. As stated at www.overheadmyth.com: In 2013, GuideStar, BBB Wise Giving Alliance, and Charity Navigator wrote an open letter to the donors of America in a campaign to end the Overhead Myth—the false conception that financial ratios are the sole indicator of nonprofit performance.⁴

Prospective donors need to do enough due diligence to understand the story behind the numbers. On occasion, nonprofit organizations categorize expenses as overhead when they could be classified as program expenses (e.g., training)—such judgments can result in a skewed analysis. Also, most of the data used by third parties to calculate overhead ratios is taken from 990 filings, which are typically posted publicly with an 18-month lag. That means that an issue that might have existed two years ago could have been addressed since then.

One prominent organization, the Wounded Warrior Project, experienced tumult when CBS News released a two-part exposé criticizing, among other things, the portion of revenue that they spent on overhead.⁵ Their executive leadership defended their approach based on net results, and the consequence of that defense was an immediate drop in donations. Shortly thereafter, the CEO and COO were dismissed by the board.

Word of mouth and organizational interviews

Once you have conducted your online research, it is time to begin talking with people. Conduct a LinkedIn search to determine if you know anyone who is already volunteering for the organization you are considering and see if they might be willing to talk with you about their experience. Talk with your networks to see if anyone has any experience with the organizations you are investigating.

Crowd-source your inquiry with a nonleading question to your social media contacts (e.g., Does anyone have experience with a nonprofit called XYZ? If so, what can you tell me about them?). You may also run a simple Google search using the organization’s name and the term fraud or complaint to see if anyone has posted derogatory information that might sound credible. It is important to not take individual negative comments at face value, but learning of one criticism might open avenues for research that will help you determine whether this is an organization-level problem or just an individual who had a bad experience.

Last, reach out to the organization and contact a staff member to interview. Who you engage depends a great deal on what role you seek. If you are planning to make a substantial donation to the organization, you will want to speak with the executive director, board chair, or chair of the board’s development committee. But if you are contemplating volunteering, you will likely be directed to speak with a volunteer coordinator. This may be fine, but oftentimes this person has a limited view of the organization’s operations and may not be able to answer more strategic questions about executive compensation or long-term strategic vision. You may be inclined to go right to the top and speak with the CEO or executive director, but that person may be running an operation of hundreds of