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Stratagems
is published monthly by Jim Eskin, External Affairs Counsel, who has more than 30 years of leadership experience in institutional advancement, fundraising, public affairs, and communications. His consulting practice helps people and organizations with philanthropy, advocacy, and image so they can more effectively touch lives and improve the world. He welcomes the opportunity to hear about your funding and institutional advancement needs as a first step in designing a strategy and effective plan toward building a stronger future.
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Contact Jim Eskin at:
10410 Pelican Oak Drive
San Antonio, TX 78254-6727
210-523-8499 (H)
210-415-3748 (C)
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ANSWERS TO THIS MONTH'S QUIZ
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Answers: 1=a, 2=e, 3=b, 4=c, 5=d
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Since the new tax bill was signed into law at the end of last
year, philanthropy faces a steeper hill to climb in 2018. More specifically, with the doubling of the standard deduction, the number of Americans who itemize their taxes will drop by 30 million --- accounting for $100 billion in itemized charitable gifts, according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Since more Americans will do better on their taxes by taking the increased standard deduction --- as opposed to itemizing their deductions --- the tax incentive for those taxpayers to make charitable gifts will disappear. Research shows that this change will result in a decline of giving between $13 billion to $20 billion per year. Rather than wringing its hands, the philanthropic sector needs to recommit to the relationship-building imperatives that have culminated in a $400 billion a year enterprise. This is built on four essential phases:
* Discovery -- Identify those who are likely to donate to our causes, and their priorities, values and needs.
* Cultivation -- Forge a personal and emotional bond so that they will be likely to respond favorably when we ask and provide support at the level requested.
* Solicitation --Set the stage for a successful and enjoyable ask for everyone involved.
*Stewardship -- Acknowledge and thank donors in a way that validates their wisdom in providing support and sets the stage for continued giving.
To be sure, tax savings provide a significant incentive to donate, but are far from a driving force behind the splendor of American philanthropy. Our sector more than ever needs to tell its compelling stories and ask donors without fear, anxiety or hesitation to join us in our respective missions to improve the world.
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Marcy Heim, CEO, The Artful Asker, is a savvy
fundraiser/trainer and profoundly positive individual. Those two terrific qualities go hand-in-hand. (Marcy is also an accomplished singer and has even written and performs a donor appreciation song.) Fundraisers, professional and volunteer, need to be optimistic and believe that their efforts in telling the stories of their causes, building relationships, and asking for gifts will be rewarded. We need to embrace the power of best practices and persuade others to believe in them as well. With that in mind I love the upbeat resolutions Marcy proposes for the New Year:
1. Give thanks that your life is exactly as it is.
2. Decide that 2018 will be the happiest year of your life yet.
3. Every day, follow your heart and instincts down new paths.
Marcy, many thanks for the wonderful example, spirit and energy you provide our profession!
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Here's a New Year's resolution in which doing something for others is a sure way to enrich
yourself: Become a philanthropist. Pledge precious gifts of time, talent, and treasure to any one or more of the many non-profits and good causes that need our help to propel their vital missions. Many people already make sharing and caring a priority in their lives. Simply put, America is profoundly a nation of givers. About two thirds of U.S. households give to charity at an average yearly rate of $2,500 per household. Furthermore, about 25% of the population volunteers their time, skills, and passion to making a difference. The end result is a better world being built with much-needed goods and services to meet myriad pressing challenges in healthcare, education, the lives of children and seniors, animal welfare, economic development, culture, the environment, and many other critical areas. My guest column in San Antonio Express-News addresses the personally enriching and energizing dimension of doing good works.
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How Should I Give Away My Billions?
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After the New York Times questioned Jeff Bezos about his level of philanthropic giving last
year, the Amazon CEO took to Twitter in June to solicit ideas: "I'm thinking I want much of my philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now -- short term -- at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact," he posted on Twitter. "If you have ideas, just reply to this tweet with the idea (and if you think this approach is wrong, would love to hear that too)." Around 50,000 people did. Now, nearly seven months later, the world is still waiting to hear what charitable ideas Bezos will pursue. And as it does, the Amazon founder's net worth has crossed $105 billion, surpassing Bill Gates for the largest fortune in modern history, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But compared to Gates -- who has given away what would amount today to more than $60 billion in cash and Microsoft stock over the past 20 years, mostly to the foundation he runs with his wife, Melinda -- Bezos's philanthropic giving has been significantly more modest. Bezos, along with his wife, MacKenzie, just donated $33 million to a scholarship fund for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Earlier they donated $15 million to their alma mater Princeton in 2011, and the CEO has also given tens of millions of dollars to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Though Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos are relatively quiet as philanthropists, the Bezos Family Foundation, run by Jeff's parents, Jackie and Mike Bezos, is very active.
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More than 60% of donors prefer to give online -- four times as much as any other avenue -- and
half are inspired to give by social media or fundraising events. Those are some of the findings in the 2017 Global Trends In Giving report from the Public Interest Registry and Nonprofit Tech for Good. More than 91% of those surveyed donated in the past year, across a range of causes. The most common recipients of those donations were causes that dealt with:
* Children and youth (13%)
* Religious services and faith (10.4%)
* Human services (9.5%)
* Animals (9.2%)
* Health and safety (8.7%).
Facebook is by far the social media that most inspires giving, at 62%, followed by Twitter (15 percent) and Instagram (10%). Other social media registered at less than 10%, including YouTube (6%), LinkedIn (3%), and WhatsApp (2%). Other social media outlets were less than 1%. Two-thirds of donors have volunteered with a non-profit within the last 12 months were first inspired to get involved through a fundraising event (44%) or e-mail (22%). Volunteers were less likely to be inspired by social media (15%) and e-mail (13%).
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The spirit and power of philanthropy in San Antonio already has shown its first big success
story of 2018. After things looked dire, under the inspiring leadership of San Antonio Symphony Society's new chairwoman Kathleen Weir Vale, private donations of all sizes totaling nearly $1 million have made it possible for the approval of a new contract with musicians to complete the 2017-18 season. Vale has been the equivalent of a force of nature in working with board members, local government, musicians and friends in the community in "retooling" and meeting the critical challenge of ensuring that the music plays on. Dating back to 1939, the San Antonio Symphony has pursued a noble mission of inspiring and enriching our community by vigorously influencing the artistic fabric of San Antonio through excellent symphonic performance, education and service. I enjoyed conducting a fundraising training for the Symphony board in 2016
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Why do American Jews give more to charity than just about any other ethnic or religious group
in America? Primarily because it is ingrained in their traditions of charity, or tzedakah, explains Hanna Shaul Bar Nissim, a postdoctoral Fellow at the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University, whose research expertise is in Jewish and Israeli philanthropy. Higher average education and per capita income also play a role. Even though only about one in 50 Americans is Jewish, U.S. Jews donate at high levels, both as individuals and as a community. Bar Nissim, who studies community philanthropy, summarizes the findings of her research regarding why Jews play an outsized role in American philanthropy. Most Jews, regardless of their economic status, heed their religious and cultural obligations to give. Sixty percent of Jewish households earning less than $50,000 a year donate, compared with 46% for non-Jewish households in that income bracket. The report goes on to say that overall a larger percentage of Jews give to charity than people of other faiths -- 76% in 2012, compared with 63% of other Americans. And while Jews, like other Americans, give to religious institutions, they give relatively less to religion and more to secular causes.
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Empowering Women Entrepreneurs
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Since launching her self-titled label in 2004, Tory Burch has built a billion-dollar business from
what began as a modest accessible luxury clothing and accessories line. With social responsibility and innovation at the core of the company's beliefs, Burch now has more than 3,000 stocklists and 150 boutiques worldwide. She is passionate about empowering women entrepreneurs for success. In fact, she started her company to establish a foundation. The mission of the Tory Burch Foundation is to give women entrepreneurs the tools to level the playing field by providing access to affordable loans, education, and networking. It also maintains that in order to succeed, women must embrace ambition. The inaugural national Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Competition provides the platform for 30 finalists to promote themselves and to ask their networks to support them.
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There can be a kinetic relationship between fundraising and special events, and A.J. Steinberg,
Principal, Queen Bee Fundraising, based in Los Angeles, knows how to make the most of these opportunities. She now works exclusively producing non-profit events throughout Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Malibu and beyond. A distinguished client list includes Cystic Fibrosis, Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots, and Union Rescue Mission. She points out that there is enormous potential to raise the bar in event fundraising. Too many organizations are still stuck with events that miss the mark, are too hard to produce, get too little return on investment, and don't engage guests in any meaningful way. There needs to be more emphasis on doing Asks and Fund a Needs during their events' stage program. For those entering the development profession, she encourages investing in professional development and taking advantage of all the great online and real-time learning resources available. Get to know the psychology of why people give money to organizations, how to make people feel appreciated, and the systems for tracking and following up to ensure proper stewardship. "Events are just one small part of the fundraising puzzle, and all the pieces need to be in place to really maximize your organization's fundraising capacity."
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To succeed, you need to know what matters: What is your purpose, and what are the values
that guide you? This is the credo of John's Crazy Socks, a start-up founded by John Cronin, a 21-year-old with Down Syndrome, and his father, Mark Cronin. The father-son duo launched their sock-empire in 2016, in Huntington, New York. What they sell isn't just awesome socks, but the idea that people with special needs can succeed in every aspect of professional life, including the business sector. John's sock selection and quality is unparalleled, and so is the customer service. The success story began when John and Mark fashioned an online website which would vend what John loved most: socks. More specifically, 1,400 varieties acquired from all over the world, by both large manufacturers and artisans. Some, are even in-house creations. Five percent of John's Crazy Socks' earnings is donated to the Special Olympics, an organization dedicated to providing competition, fun, and even medical care to children and adults with disabilities. John was influenced by the benefits he garnered from the Special Olympics' various programs. John partakes in a myriad of sports including: snowshoe, basketball, track, soccer, floor hockey and bowling.
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When we attended the inaugural Alamo Bowl on the evening of December 31, 1993 as the
California Golden Bears trounced the Iowa Hawkeyes 37 to 3, (the game ended with a New Year's fireworks celebration), we didn't know that the game, now the Valero Alamo Bowl, would grow into such a magnificent and productive annual event. Twenty-five years later it means $1 million in scholarships. These scholarships are split between graduating high school seniors from across the community and students enrolled at all six of San Antonio's four-year universities. Thanks to a dedicated board of directors and staff, the Valero Alamo Bowl has matured into a premier annual festival of events and a point of pride for the community.
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During our recent trip to Boston, we enjoyed a Sabbath service that connected one of my
mother's dearest friends, Ellie Kritzman, and an elementary school friend, Bruce Goody, whom I hadn't seen in about 50 years. Ellie is an accomplished vocalist and opera singer and Bruce plays the flute, and they teamed up at the Avita Assisted Living Center. It was a treat to hear Bruce's story of how much he relishes giving back to the community. Bruce recently closed a 93-year-old family business involved in manufacturing duct work for heating, ventilating and air conditioning that distributed its products to wholesalers throughout New England. Volunteering is filling his life with joy these days, and he finds special passion serving on the board for a Needham, Massachusetts, non-profit, Circle of Hope. The non-profit delivers gently used clothing to 22 homeless shelters throughout the Boston area. Since he delivers to these shelters, he decided to start performing with his guitarist at several of them. They also perform in five churches on a rotating basis every month and perform at Avita and other establishments. He notes that music plays a special role in his community service; he's been playing the flute and performing since age 10. The first time he played at church, a woman approached him after the service. She was in tears. Her sister was dying of cancer. For the few minutes he played during Offertory and Communion, it took her mind away from thinking about her sister's condition. Reaching out to other gives Bruce an uplifting sense of purpose and satisfaction. Bruce and I look forward to staying in touch.
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Everything we've previously been taught about negotiation is wrong: You are not rational, there
is no such thing as "fair," compromise is the worst thing you can do, and the real art of negotiation lies in mastering the intricacies of No, not Yes. These surprising tactics -- which radically diverge from conventional negotiating strategy -- weren't cooked up in a classroom, but are the field-tested tools FBI agents used to talk criminals and hostage-takers around the world into (or out of) just about any scenario you can imagine. In Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator Chris Voss and co-author Tahl Raz break down these strategies so that anyone can use them in the workplace, in business, or at home. Throughout the book, Voss draws on his experiences in truly life-or-death situations to illustrate these techniques, and offers scores of examples of how they translate into our working lives. We spend most of our days at work negotiating for something. Knowing the most successful, crisis-tested approaches to the process will ensure the conversation more frequently goes your way. What sets these strategies apart from other negotiation paradigms -- i.e., the standard thinking in negotiations is to approach them as logical and sequential problems to be solved -- is the injection of emotional intelligence and empathy into the negotiation process.
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If you're like me and many other folks, you've been captivated by Bud Light's "Dilly-Dilly"
commercials -- especially its pervasive catchphrase. The medieval commercials have been ubiquitous since going viral in the Fall. Full of people in a medieval court raising bottles of Bud Light and cheering "dilly-dilly," the ads have confused as many people as they've made laugh. The ad centers around that phrase, "dilly-dilly," and it doesn't appear to be going away. Insiders predict that it's a perfect candidate for a Super Bowl commercial since it has aired almost constantly during NFL and college football broadcasts. So what does Dilly-Dilly mean? Miguel Patricio, Chief Marketing Officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev, says it doesn't mean anything "That's the beauty of it. We all need our moments of nonsense and fun." According to urban legend, however, it is supposed to express "approval" of an action.
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A new study by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy does more than establish "most generous" bragging rights. It's a first-of-its-kind longitudinal analysis of household giving, drawing on a gold-standard survey of 9,000 households conducted nationwide every two years since 2000. Match the following states with their respective average annual household giving.
Answers are shown in the green box at the bottom of the left column. Until next month
1. California a. $ 2,364
2. Kansas b. $2,489
3. Massachusetts c. $2,708
4. Texas d. $5,012
5. Utah e. $5,414
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