ASI 2010: Inspired to Finish Strong

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ASI 2010 Seminar: Nonprofits

Ken Turpen

Leadership in the New Millennium: Getting to the Bottom of Leadership When You’re at the Top

Fundraising Basics for Ministries: Understanding boards, direct mail, and how to raise funds for just about anything!

Steven Grabiner

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Harold Lance

How to Get Your ASI Project Funded: Or At Least Increase Your Chances

How many of you were in this morning's session?

And these, when I present at workshops and things like that, I hate it when I have to introduce myself because you have to start out with all these I statements.

And It's just a tough way to start out a presentation.

But I want to tell you a little bit about my background so that you'll understand that I know a little bit about the subject matter.

So I have about 25 years of experience working for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in various capacities.

I started out as a teacher, then I became a school principal, and I ran a boarding school for 5 years, and I worked at the North American Division for 12 years, where I was the director of a department on philanthropy.

And I don't know if you knew that, but the church has a department on philanthropy.

It's called Philanthropic Service for Institutions or PSI.

I was the executive director of PSI for 12 years.

So from there, I left and I went to a hospital where I became the president of their foundation.

Did that for a couple years, and now I'm at the University of Texas at Brownsville down along the coast right next to Mexico.

I look out my back door and I can see Mexico in my back door so that's how far south and I'm the associate Vice President for Development at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

And so what I do is I spend most of my time raising money and working with alumni and foundations and corporations.

Let me tell you a little bit about my experience with philanthropy.

I never thought I would have anything to do with fundraising at all.

You know, I was a boys dean and taught PE.

And then when the principal left Platte Valley Academy, they asked me to become the the principal.

And my first day in the office, you know, I'd never been on the other side of the principal's desk and I'm sitting in the only swivel high back chair I'd ever been in.

I've risen to such power at such an early age and I was just 29 And then the treasurer walks in my door, carrying a stack of papers, and this is the transition of power meeting, and I'm scared to death, you know.

And so she starts laying them out, and she says, well, and here's 1.

You need to raise $10, 000 in the next 30 days, or we lose a $10, 000 challenge grant.

And so, you know, for someone who grew up doing nothing but selling light bulbs and candy and doing car washes and things like that and was in charge of a gymnasium budget that was about $300 a year.

It was quite intimidating to have to raise $10, 000, and so I did the first thing that anybody would do.

I called up and asked for an extension on the Challenge Grant Program, and they told me no.

And so, when I asked them, well, why not?

And they said, well, we'll help you raise the money.

And so they told me about how direct mail works, and sent me samples, and I wrote a direct mail piece, used my faculty and staff to fold it, stuff it, stamp it, and get it out in a day, and in 2 weeks, we raised $15, 000.

And so, you know, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I figured out that there's something to this.

You know, there's a reason why you can write a letter to people and they'll stick a check in and they'll mail it back to you.

And then another thing that intrigued me is that Every piece of literature that would come across my desk from any educational association or organization would talk about scholarships, capital campaigns, endowments, and things like that.

And I thought, wow, there's something going on here.

I didn't know anything about philanthropy and then I ended up getting a scholarship from PSI to go to the fundraising school and my life kind of changed.

By the time I left Platte Valley we had a 47% of our alumni giving a gift back to the school every year.

And so I've fallen in love with philanthropy and I'll probably spend the rest of my career in it.

And so that's a little bit about where I'm coming from and I have a deep, deep love for philanthropy.

There's very few things that can top it in terms of the power to change.

Love would be number 1, and we know the source of love.

Philanthropy many times puts love in action.

In fact, if you know what philanthropy means in Greek, it means the love of mankind.

And so when we think of the word philanthropy, it's not just the exchange of money, but it has something to do with the exchange of love between people, and it doesn't just have to be money.

Right now in our culture, philanthropy is quantified in terms of dollars.

So, I love philanthropy, and I have about 30 slides and a lot of different information for you.

This presentation is designed to kind of give you an overview of fundraising.

I would encourage you to, if you have questions, that you might write them down.

I'm going to try to go through some of these slides, and as I go through them, some of your questions might get answered, because I'm gonna kind of give you a nice big picture of how this thing works.

And so if I give you a good overview of how philanthropy works, then maybe I'll answer your questions as I'm going through, And then at the last 5 or 10 minutes, we'll have Q&A, and we'll just talk about some of the issues that you're facing and if you have any questions for me.

And my email address will be up on the screen, and you can get it at the end of the presentation.

And if you don't have the PowerPoint presentation as a handout, basically you can email me a note and I'll email you back the presentation if you'd like to have it.

The bottom line is, is I want to talk about why some organizations are strong when others reduce their services and close their doors.

Why do some people tend to thrive and other organizations always tend to struggle.

First of all, you have to understand that with fundraising, there are reasons why people give to organizations.

And people are going to give to your organization for a lot of reasons other than you need the money.

In fact, the fact that you need money has very little to do with the reason why people will give it to you.

The reason why most people will give you money is because you're accomplishing something wonderful with your ministry.

You have to realize that in the US and in Canada, I don't know what the Canada exact numbers or Canadian numbers are.

In the United States, it's estimated there's like 1 and a half million non-profit organizations.

And as you know, when you go down to the ASI Convention Center, there's a lot of ministries there.

You're competing with 1.5 million nonprofit organizations that are out there looking for the philanthropic dollar.

So quit thinking that because you're a good cause, people are gonna give money to you.

The other thing is, you have to realize, is that people are going to give to vision.

In other words, people want to know what it is that you want to accomplish and what you will accomplish.

It doesn't mean that they won't give to need because every organization does have needs but they're not going to give to needy organizations because when you have a needy organization, what happens is the donors tend to think, well, why aren't other people supporting this?

And a lot of the fundraising I've done over the years, I'll approach a donor and I'll say, would you consider supporting us with this type of gift?

And they'd say, well, who else is giving?

And what they want to know is, why should I give?

1 of my academies that I attended, and I won't tell you which 1 it is, but sent me a direct mail appeal and sent me a picture of a roof that had a hole in it and asked me to give a gift because they needed to repair this roof.

I wonder like, alright if I help you fix the roof, what's going to keep it from getting in that condition again in the first place?

I felt like it was wasted money, so I didn't give to it.

So you're not going to inspire anybody to give to your organization by telling them how badly things are operating in your organization.

Talk about in your when you talk to people about giving to your organizations try to focus in on the things that you are accomplishing and how you are changing lives and try to quantify that with real life stories, not statistics.

People don't, you know, the numbers are important because they paint a particular picture, but the most important thing that people wanna hear is how is it that you're changing lives and they want to hear a real life story that relates back to it.

So people want to give to organizations that are successful and they don't want to give to organizations that are struggling.

Realize that philanthropy is not a short-term solution to a crisis.

Philanthropy does not work well in a crisis situation.

Series

ASI 2010 Seminar: Nonprofits

Fundraising Basics for Ministries: Understanding boards, direct mail, and how to raise funds for just about anything!

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Unusual Business

Culture and Generosity - How Roots Affect Giving

1h 5m

Digital Evangelism

Digital Evangelism Part 2

1h 7m

Stealing Lucifer’s Playground

Stealing Lucifer’s Playground - Part 2

1h 18m

Unusual Witness

Panel Discussion: Sticky Church

1h 18m

ASI 2009 Seminar: Empowering Our Ministries

The Fundamentals of Successful Fundraising

1h 16m

ASI 2010 Seminar: Nonprofits

Leadership in the New Millennium: Getting to the Bottom of Leadership When You’re at the Top

1h 13m

4-Living the Faith

The Social Media Mission Field

1h 5m

Stealing Lucifer's Playground

3. #DigitalEvangelism for Dummies

1h 5m

ASI 2011 Seminar: Spiritual Growth

Effective Personal Evangelism

1h 22m

ASI 2012 Seminar: Business / Nonprofit

Leading with Purpose and Passion

1h 4m

Mastering the Meaning and Methods of Money Management

05 Leaving a Legacy

58m

What Every Lay Member Ought To Know About Using Graphic Design To Win People to Christ

1h 32m

Sound Doctrine