Blog
Category :: Clients
I'm excited to report one of my past clients, the Bike Kitchen, just launched a fundraising campaign. I'm really impressed with all of their work and just mailed in a check for $100 to help them reach their fundraising goal. If you ride your bike in Los Angeles, I encourage you to also donate to their campaign so they can continue providing valuable services to the community. For more info and to donate, check out their blog at: http://bicicocina.blogspot.com/.
Speaking of donations, I'm leading two fundraising workshops later this week. One on hosting fundraising events this Thursday and another on researching and cultivating a donor base on friday. For more info, check out my calendar.
Thanks Bike Kitchen!
I’m keeping busy this week with facilitation and am excited to have the opportunity to work with so many groups. Here’s a quick glimpse of my schedule:
Tuesday:
-Facilitating a subcommittee of Green LA Coalition
-Facilitating a community meeting for the City of Seal Beach
Thursday:
-Leading a seminar at the Center for Nonprofit Management on planning successful fundraising events
-Facilitating a discussion with the Board of Directors of LA Voice
Friday
-Leading a seminar at the Flintridge Foundation on Researching and Cultivating Donors
-Facilitating a discussion with the Board of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Hosing Developers
I’m thrilled to work with so many leaders of so many organizations working for positive change in Los Angeles.
I’m excited to be working with the leadership at LA Voice to create a fund development plan. LA Voice is an interfaith organization engaging congregation members on a number of social change related issues in Los Angeles, including affordable housing, homelessness and health care. For an inspiring video about the organization’s work, click here.
Over the years, I’ve worked with many organizations to create a fund development plan, including having recently developed a plan for SOAR Charter School. A fund development plan helps chart a future fundraising course for a nonprofit organization and contains the following:
- An assessment of the organization’s current fundraising generated from a fundraising audit and leadership survey
- A review of the organizations fundraising materials, including past grant proposals, cover letters and appeal letters
- Development of an overall goal targeting specific strategies to achieve that goal
- A timeline/workplan to implement plan
- A list of possible funding sources
- A staffing plan
- An appendix with additional resources.
By investing time to create an overall fundraising strategy, an organization is in a much better position to realize its fundraising goals. Rather than reacting in a haphazard way to fundraising strategies that may sound good but yield weak results, it stays focused on strategies that have the highest chance of building strong donor relationships that lead to sustainable fundraising in the long term. The process also engages staff and the Board of Directors in the process of creating the plan, which helps ensure they’ll be engaged when it comes to implementing the plan.
If you or your organization would like more information about how I may be able to assist you with the creation of a fund development plan, please contact me.
I recently completed a consulting project that took several months for the Green LA Coalition. Green LA works to build a strong movement to win campaigns that can transform Los Angeles into a sustainable city.
For this project, I collaborated closely with another consultant, Beth Steckler. For this project, we interviewed over 30 people within the Coalition’s leadership and outside the organization, along with surveying the entire membership with an online survey. Based on this work, we developed an assessment report and later facilitated a day-long strategic visions retreat for the Coalition’s Steering Committee. From all of the information we gathered through these efforts, we presented a final report with recommendations for how the Coalition could strengthen itself as it moves forward so that it could have the greatest possible impact in making Los Angeles a more sustainable city.
I’m pleased to report the Steering Committee approved the majority of our recommendations and has asked Beth and I to continue consulting for them to help them implement our recommendations.
I also look forward to attending Green LA’s upcoming awards fundraiser on March 15th, from 6pm to 9pm, and invite you to attend.
I’m very pleased to be working with the leadership at the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH). SCANPH creates affordable housing opportunities for low-income people by expanding the knowledge, capacity and influence of the nonprofit development sector. Over the years, SCANPH has championed affordable housing in Southern California and helped build a strong network of local affordable housing developers that have generated housing that’s affordable. SCANPH also has some excited plans to green development in the future, which I’m especially excited to see happen.
I’m working with the organization’s leadership to build their fundraising capacity so that they’re able to bring in the needed resources to do their good work. I’m excited to attend their upcoming Board meeting in March to work with the entire Board of Directors on engaging in the fundraising process. For some tips on how to build a fundraising Board of Directors, check out my recent blog post.
Good listening skills are essential to anyone who wants to successfully facilitate a meeting. It’s also my number one tip on my “Top 10 Tips for Facilitators”.
As a facilitator, you need to listen closely to what everyone has to say. Since you are there to serve the entire group, you must actively listen so you can better understand where everyone is coming from so you can help them accomplish whatever they want to accomplish as a group. Part of the trust you build with the group you facilitate depends on them believing you hear them. Not only that, your active listening will help ensure other people within the group listen to each other, and actually hear what they have to say. When folks within a group listen to each other, they are more likely to understand each other and that helps make it a little easier for the group to come to sustainable agreements.
Here are three quick and easy ways to listen:
- Mirroring: When someone says something (that isn’t too long), you repeat the words back verbatim to the person who said it. This is a tactic I often use when I’m facilitating a br Save ainstorming session with a group.
- Summarizing: People often take a minute or two to make their point to the larger group. If I’m facilitating a discussion, I’ll often quickly summarize what someone says to make sure I heard it right. The point also gets reiterated to the group. If my summary is slightly off, the person will correct me and then I’ll summarize it again.
- Clarifying: Sometimes someone will make a point that isn’t all that clear, or very general. Before calling on the next person, I will often ask a clarifying question to better understand where they are coming from. This helps them hear that their point is made and it helps other people in the group.
I recently used all three of these techniques for a community meeting I facilitated for the City of Seal Beach. I encourage you to give them a try as you facilitate future meetings and see how it goes.
Here's a link to my most recent email newsletter I sent out. Enjoy!
With all of this rain coming down, wouldn't be great if we could do something more productive with all of this water instead of creating massive amounts of pollution run-off that goes straight into the ocean?
I'm pleased to report that a major step in moving Los Angeles towards this direction of a smarter water and land-use policy happened recently thanks in large part to the Green LA Coalition, one of my recent clients. Green LA played a key role in moblizing support for the Low Impact Development Ordinanance, which the Board of Public Works in the City of Los Angeles approved last Friday. I joined the long line of supporters and voiced my support for this ordinance in front of the Board. For a good summary about the meeting and why this is important for Los Angeles, check out Joe Linton's Creek Freak blog posting.
I'm hopeful that the City Council will ultimately approve this policy and look foward to being one of many voices in support of this.
1. Ask: Your job is to ask. The person you ask – their job is to decide.
2. Thank: The most important words in fundraising are “Thank you”. Thanking donors affirms their gift.
3. Build relationships: People give to people. Remember to build relationships with your donors.
4. It’s an ongoing process: The folks who are most likely to give large gifts to your organizations are folks who already give.
5. You might get nine “no’s” before a “yes”: Don’t be afraid if someone you ask says no. Thank them for considering.
6. Develop your case first: Before you start asking for money, it’s important that you have a strong case for your organization.
7. Research, Network and Cultivate: Constantly work to develop potential new donors.
8. Diversify your funding base: Seek to raise funds from multiple sources: individuals, events, foundation grants, government grants and earned-income.
9. Diversify your fundraisers: Fundraising generates the strongest results when lots of people in the organization are involved in the process.
10. It’s an ongoing learning process: We learn fundraising by doing it. I wish you the best as you move forward.
I will elaborate on these in future blog posts and wish all of you the best as raise funds for whatever organizations you are affiliated with in 2010. I also welcome any suggestions you have to raise money for nonprofit organizations. Thanks!
Hispanic Outreach Taskforce – I facilitated an afternoon session that developed a short-term strategy for raising funds. The group has continued to provide numerous programs for the community.
Urban and Environmental Policy Institute – I planned and facilitated a number of pre-meeting to the first annual Bike Summit which brought together 300+ advocates from the region.
Bikestation– I facilitated numerous project management meetings that led to the development of an implementation study for a new Bikestation. The group recently opened a new Bikestation in Washington D.C. and is expanding throughout the country.
I really enjoyed working with so many different leaders working on a variety of sustainability issues throughout our region. I learned a great deal about so many different, but interrelated issues and greatly appreciate the work they are all doing. I look forward to serving even more organizations in 2010.
Here's the course description:
"How do you turn a good grant proposal into a great one? This workshop will explore various strategies to strengthen your grant writing skills. Our discussion of best practices will be based on real world examples that you bring to the workshop. You'll also have the opportunity to receive specific feedback on your proposal. Participants must submit a sample proposal in advance. This workshop is not for beginners.
Maybe I'll see you there!
For more information about the facilitation services I provide for nonprofits, check out my facilitation page.

