I’m often asked by the schools that we work with “How would you organize our development office so that we can make more money?” The reality in most of these situations is that these development offices are usually significantly underfunded and under-resourced. Even though the demand from the board room and business office is that more non-tuition money is needed – and fast, the budgets and resources allocated to the challenge often remain woefully inadequate.

So how should you organize if the budgets don’t get increased and the resources remain less than you would like? Optimal organization requires an alignment of the (limited) resources that are available, with the most strategically important activities – those that will maximize development revenues in the short term and the long term. If the activities are not the right activities, then it won’t be possible to maximize development revenues. In many situations, schools are simply not focused on the right activities.

A few months ago we launched a Facebook page as well as a LinkedIn profile. Now we’re moving into Twitter as a way to connect with the Catholic education community. Follow us at api_consulting to get updates about new Advancement Partners content and other development news.

This Advancement Minute addresses the fundamentally important topic of identifying major gift prospects. As the video outlines, there are five key steps to identifying top prospects. I want to focus on just three of the steps in this blog:

Electronic screening: this is a critically important first step that all Catholic high schools should engage in. The cost has come down considerably and it is impossible to reach you major gift potential without this information. With the help of contemporary technology, we are now able to “make the target smaller” and identify where the wealth is within our database. If there are 10,000 constituents within your school’s database, over 90% of the wealth will be held by approximately 400 people. Knowing who those folks are and involving them in the school will set you in the right major gift direction.

This Advancement Minute focuses on the difference between ‘fundraising’ and ‘advancement’. Catholic schools need both but you will raise more money if you create a more comprehensive, advancement-based approach.

Fundamentally, they differ at the grassroots level. Fundraising is mass market oriented while advancement is individual oriented. This is a critical difference because it contrasts the eventual results. By creating a program to secure philanthropic investments from individuals you are entering the world of what is commonly known in the development business as ‘major gifts’. I refer to these types of gifts as investments but let’s go with the more commonly accepted term of major gifts.

Consider the following: 1) quite often, something that can be adjusted fairly easily can be the difference between mediocre and excellent, below average and above average, good and great; 2) we have less and less time to deliver results; 3) execution is the key to success; 4) we all have a very limited attention span.

Those realities, as they relate to institutional advancement, have led to the creation of the Advancement Minute, a series of one minute video information clips we have created that will be available for you (free) on the Advancement Partners website.

Come by our booth, #747, at the NCEA conference in Minneapolis April 6-8, 2010. It would be great to meet you and hear about your institutional advancement challenges! I will be there most of the week and will be “manning the booth”.

We specialize in institutional advancement for Catholic secondary schools and have been working in this important market segment for over twenty years. Over that period of time, we have gained invaluable experience and have compiled some statistics.

We also make certain to stay current with market data. In that regard, I highly recommend that you read and become familiar with the findings in Dollars and Sense – Catholic High Schools and their Finances. It is an excellent compilation of market data and statistics relating to Catholic high schools. It was done by the Secondary Schools Dept. of the NCEA.

Last year’s theme, ‘Philanthropy in Challenging Economic Times‘, was appropriate since we were witnessing the most severe recession in most of our lifetimes. Raising money for our schools was challenging, to say the least!

This year we have chosen the theme, ‘Responding to the Challenge‘, because it is important that we react directly and assertively to the challenges we are encountering in our advancement efforts. There is a new reality settling in and we must, therefore, be aware of what will be required of us in order to secure the critically important philanthropic funding our schools need to fulfill their missions.

We are nearing the end of the calendar year and by now you should be well on your way to achieving your advancement objectives for this school year. A few benchmarks for you to consider: By now -

• You should have mailed two annual fund solicitation letters and should be receiving responses.
• You should be finishing up your top annual fund prospect personal solicitation calls.
• You should have conducted your first major special event of the school year.
• You should be preparing for your third annual fund mailing.
• You should have conducted at least eight major gift solicitation calls (in addition to the annual fund personal solicitation calls).
• You should have had at least four major gift cultivation meetings.
• You should have involved your Principal/President in key solicitation and cultivation meetings.

These are just some suggested guidelines for you to consider.

The advancement clock began ticking on July 1- is your plan complete? Do you know what your objectives are for this year? Is you first annual fund piece ready to go? Have you made your first major gift solicitation call? Have you made your first cultivation visit? If you answered ‘no’ to any of those questions, you’re behind schedule – and there are no timeouts! You can’t stop the clock in this game.

Step one is to get your plan together: annual fund, major gifts, special events, cultivation visits. The annual fund should have four personalized mailings – two in the fall, two in the spring; specific asks (“you did $100 last year, would you consider $150 this year?”); segmented (alumni are different than parents); and you must do personal solicitation of the top annual fund prospects ($500+).