February 22, 2011

Dr. William P. Magee, Jr. will be the CEO, Kathleen S. Magee will be the president and Howard J. Unger, currently the chief operating officer of Operation Smile, will hold the same title in the new organization and will have day-to-day management responsibility. Operation Smile Train will be headquartered in Norfolk, Va., and will have an office in New York City.

With a combined history of more than 40 years, Smile Train and Operation Smile have jointly provided 750,000 surgeries to children with cleft lips and/or cleft palates. Together, their operations span more than 90 countries, where they also have helped provide related training to thousands of surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses and other medical professionals.

Where there's a will, there's a relative. There's also a chance that a nonprofit can be mentioned in a bequest, but very often people need encouragement, or even information, before making a charitable bequest in the will.

Speaking during the Association of Fundraising Professionals' annual conference, Sandra Henningsen of Crescendo Interactive, Inc., offered advice to nonprofits on how to position organizations to be included in wills.

Henningsen presented the following bits of information:

* 80 percent of planned gifts are will bequests.

* 70 percent of adults have no will. They cite having too little property, the expense of making a will, uncertainty about the future, joint ownership of assets, not planning to die or simple procrastination.

* The most common bequest life-points are illness, the death of a spouse, birth of a child or grandchild, death of a relative or an increase in assets.

Also, since the average age of the first will is 44 and the average age of the first bequest 49, there are tips to help sustain a wills campaign.

* Summer is a good time to start. People are thinking vacation and peace of mind.

* It is good to make it a case of serving your donors. For example, senior-friendly Web design can be extremely important. Fresh new content, easy readability, constant checking for broken links, all are important.

Henningsen cited an article from The NonProfit Times in 2008 saying that twice as many potential donors are going online after receiving a mail solicitation and that among people 65 and older that number was even higher.

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Before you jump headfirst into social networking, make sure the “Web 1.0” part of your organization is working. That was the message from Alissa Crowley, director of major gifts, at the St. Anthony Foundation, and David Lamb, senior consultant with Blackbaud's Target Analytics, who presented “Using Social Networks For Fundraising,” during an Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP) international conference.

Start with simple online giving tools and a clear, attractive Web site. Set small and simple goals, such as, raising the awareness of a particular issue or cause; increasing your constituency size by 10 percent; engaging a younger constituency, or raising funds for a hot issue.

Assign a champion and give that person the time to interact with the network. Encourage staff members to create profiles and interact with the network. Consider a multi-site strategy, using more than one network, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Flickr.

The keys to success on social networks include:

* Be passionate about your mission.

* Keep your site current.

* Change content continuously, whether it's Twitter and blog posts, status updates, pictures or videos.

* Be interactive and responsive.

* Don't make fundraising the primary focus, instead be sure to inform, engage and inspire.

* Focus on issues, not on your organization.

The responsibilities of a nonprofit chief executive are as difficult as they are innumerable: fulfill the mission, keep the money coming in, make sure staff is happy and, the one that has so far proven impossible, get politicians to stop grandstanding by badmouthing nonprofits.

During the Association of Fundraising Professionals' International Conference on Fundraising, J. Patrick Ryan of Skystone Ryan Inc., identified four areas where a fundraising program will benefit from the leadership of a president/CEO: planning, engaging and recruiting volunteer leaders, nurturing key prospects and soliciting key prospects.

Further, Ryan suggested 10 ways by which a manager can help the president take the lead in fundraising:

* Understand the CEO's agenda, and anxiety about fundraising, if it exists.

* Truly own the fact the person is prepared to give time, cultivate prospects, interact with volunteer leaders, solicit prospects attend events and be the organization's spokesperson.

* Meet weekly with the CEO.

* Be organized, and show it.

* Share information; it makes you the president's friend and trusted colleague.

* Do for your president what you would do for your volunteer fundraising leaders.

* Be clear with your president about how the fundraising program is being carried out, and what the CEO's role is with each phase.

* Make it easy for him/her to learn about fundraising.

* Help the boss to understand the various types of gifts that are being sought, at least on a layman's level.

* Be available as your president's confidant.