An Exchange Regarding a Capital Campaign

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on February 1, 2010 by Gary

I’m doing some guest blogging over at Colorado Libraries and a colleague contacted me after she read my last post.

My colleague asked me if I had any sample capital campaign RFPs. I didn’t, but this is what I suggested:

I didn’t find any actual RFP samples, but I have a short list of resources that may be of help:

Conducting a Successful Capital Campaign, by Kent E. Dove
Capital Campaigns: Strategies that Work, by Andrea Kihlstedt

Both of the above books come highly recommended from a fundraising resource I have.

In addition, there are two nonprofits here in the Denver area that I know are/were going through a capital campaign. The first is the Table Mountain Animal Center (see details about the campaign here). I know one of the board members there, but she’s not directly involved in the campaign. If I can ask her to make a contact for you, just let me know.

The Gathering Place is an organization that recently completed a capital campaign for a new 28,000 square foot facility (you can see some information about that facility at the bottom of this page. I learned about The Gathering Place’s campaign through a colleague, so I don’t know anyone there. However, Leslie Foster is the CEO/President and you can find her contact info here.

My experience with working with nonprofits is that they’re very willing to share information and collaborate (just like librarians), so I might suggest calling these two organizations and asking them if they have suggestions and/or other information.

Finally, I found a template you can use for writing a capital campaign RFP. You can find it here.

It wasn’t much, but I hope what I suggested was of some help to my colleague. I enjoy doing this kind of research for my brothers and sisters in the world of cultural resources.

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Build Your Donor Base

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on January 25, 2010 by Gary

In preparation for our upcoming annual library appeal, I happened across some interesting research. Relatively small organizations that have an established donor base will likely get the most for their fundraising buck if they leverage their existing donors to find new ones.

Rather than simply asking your donors for money, also ask your donors if they would be willing to make four phone calls to their peers on your organization’s behalf. Research shows that about one in four of those phone calls will result in a donation that’s similar in size to the one your original donor will make.

This tactic can have important ramifications to your major donor base. Major donors, besides their ability to give larger amounts of money, give the amount they do because they feel a powerful attachment to your organization’s cause. Therefore, it’s likely that most of your existing major donors will be willing to do this extra work for you.

This tactic also demonstrates the power of relationships. Your donors already have an “in” with their peers. If some of your existing donors can’t or are unwilling to make those phone calls, ask them if you can make those phone calls and mention their name.

Learn more about this simple strategy here, here, and here.

I’ll write more about this and other fundraising strategies as we enter our appeal season this spring.

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A Comment About Collection Management

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on January 6, 2010 by Gary

Allow me to say first that I love the public library. At any given time, I probably have at least twenty books checked out between the two public library systems I use.  There is just no way I could read as widely as I do without this marvelous public service. It rocks.

But I’ve witnessed a disappointing trend in these institutions. As someone who cares about the preservation of cultural heritage, my one general complaint about public libraries is that they have a terrible penchant for getting rid of anything that doesn’t see a certain level of usage.  As Don Borchert observed in his Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library, if you want anything removed from the library’s shelves for good, simply encourage others to ignore it. If you’re successful, the item will disappear from the library’s catalog within a year or so.

My fear is that public libraries have a primary goal of being edutainment purveyors. When I walk into my library, there’s no shortage of the latest and (dubiously) greatest of what the publishing industry has to offer. But when I walk to the back of the library, the places where the old stuff resides – even materials that were published five years ago – I’ve noticed that section getting smaller and smaller. The banality I complained about in my last post is partly inspired by the current state of what I see in the public libraries I frequent.

As the director of a small special collection library, I am proud to say we don’t get rid of anything. Anything new we pick up is placed right alongside the old. And it’s the most beautiful sight in the world. It is true we don’t work on a scale of most public libraries, but having worked in public libraries before, I can say it’s possible to keep at least some copies of everything.

Sure, you won’t always need 300 copies of The Da Vinci Code, but you’d better always keep at least a few.  My own view is that public libraries can easily step up their rightful role as research libraries by making this one simple change.  Rent storage if you have to. PASCAL was a great idea.

The Denver Public Library has an interesting system of managing the lesser-used parts of its children’s collection. Older, less-popular books are stored in the basement of the Burnham Hoyt building (one of Denver’s great international-style architectural examples, incidentally) located at the Central Library. Called “the lowers”, books stored in the basement show up as such in the library’s catalog. That way the staff knows which books are stored on the main level and which are stored in the basement, making retrieval relatively easy. Having “the lowers” is one part of proper librarianship, in my own humble opinion.

Now that I’ve been in the biz for a while now, I understand perfectly the need to keep new stuff on the shelves. There’s no doubt that a continuous shiny and new look keeps people coming back. But that doesn’t mean you have to get rid of some materials entirely just because they haven’t seen any action for a while. If this taxpayer found it there once, he wants to find it there again 30 years from now.

Document your community’s interests. Don’t wipe them out.  It matters.

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2010

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on December 26, 2009 by Gary
I’m fortunate enough to have all of next week off from work, and I’m going to use that time to do some goal setting. I’ve been feeling a little too complacent for a while and ennui is beginning to creep in.

I think that most of this next year will be focused on broadening my career. A few days ago, I happened across this website for a management and development of cultural heritage doctoral program. As I reviewed the program, I realized again that this is the kind of work I want to do – finding business models that are geared toward the preservation and cultivation of unique aspects of culture. Special collections libraries (such as mine), literature, architecture and landscapes, neighborhoods, museums, cultural activities and programming, visual arts of all types, and urban planning all fall under my areas of interest.

I’m interested in these areas of the human experience because they make life, well…interesting. But only if their applications are thoughtful and deliberate. Maybe it’s my own cynicism and perhaps I should only speak for myself, but so much of what is fed to us through our senses in this country has a kind of banality attached to it. We just consume all the tangible and intangible stuff that comes our way without ever giving it much thought. And that’s because it isn’t worth thinking about. As a result, I feel a strong pull to find those aspects of life that have genuine purpose - to find the elements that give life its texture and richness. That’s what having culture, real culture, means to me.

So, I’m going to begin 2010 by studying along with my peers in that Italian doctoral program. I’ll be reading a book that covers an introduction to art philosophy, another that’s an introduction to environmental aesthetics, and a book about the economics of art and culture. I want to discover what parts of our culture really matter, and to find what business opportunities surround their preservation and promotion. I’ll be sure to write about what I learn. I’m looking forward to a year well spent.

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Differences in Online Communities

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on December 15, 2009 by Gary

To this point, I’ve tended to side with the idea that social media facilitates a sense of community for small cultural institutions, but that things like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. aren’t communities unto themselves (as they affect cultural heritage institutions, that is). My thinking is changing, but it comes with conditions.

For example, I follow a few fan pages on Facebook. Mostly what I find on these pages is a pushing of content from the page creator, but I see little true engagement with other fans of the page. This seems to be true of most institutions that have Facebook fan pages and Twitter identities. Lots of content being pushed, but little engagement with the fans and followers.

On the other hand, I see relatively more engagement with fans and followers in cases where an original physical place of gathering (e.g. an actual museum) did not previously exist. From the American Association of Museums, for example, content tends to come in the form of exchanging ideas. Individual institutions, on the other hand, tend to use their blogs, Facebook fan pages, and Twitter identities to push news of events and activities that are taking place at their respective physical locations.

Why the difference? Perhaps it is because people join associations and other ”non-physical” gathering places to do just that, exchange ideas. By comparison, social media has been a boon for libraries and museums. Social media provides a free and effective way to spread news of events.

Has anyone else noticed these trends? I’m especially interested in the exceptions to and disagreements with what I’ve described here.

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The Internet of Things

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on December 6, 2009 by Gary

I hate the grocery store.

Maybe I would like grocery shopping more if I was a foodie and I enjoyed browsing, but I find the whole experience of going in, finding what I need, and getting out of there a little exasperating. Matters are made somewhat worse by Erin’s penchant for unusual ingredients. I find myself searching the same aisle three or four times for certain items (please don’t ask why I don’t just get help from a store employee. Everyone knows that’s a problem all males have).

The grocery store makes me look forward to the emergence of the internet of things. The internet of things consists of a greatly increased number of inanimate objects that are connected to the web. Refrigerators are an oft cited example of how the internet of things work – your fridge keeps track of how much milk, beer, or whatever you’re using and automatically produces a grocery list when you’re ready to go to the store. Or better yet, the fridge sends an email to your local grocery store saying you need a quart of milk and the grocery store delivers it to your front door. 

Perhaps saying that I hate the grocery store isn’t quite accurate. I actually like walking around in them. It’s the not-finding-what-I-need part that makes me nuts. The way I understand it, the internet of things would have the capability to produce a map of the grocery store and guide me through the aisles via the shortest route and tell me exactly where everything is via RFID and GPS tagging. I could enjoy my walk and find what I came for right away. That, my friends, would rock.

I know many people feel the same way about libraries as I do about grocery stores. I’m curious how the internet of things will affect libraries and museums. Many libraries already employ RFID tagging, but I believe their use is restricted mainly to inventory and anti-theft purposes. I hope this new extension of the internet will facilitate browsing and provide tools for researchers, too.

Does anyone know of any cultural institutions that are really flexing the muscles of this technology? I would love to hear about them.

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Wilderness as Something to Save

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on December 1, 2009 by Gary

My brother and I went on a short backpacking trip in October, and it got me thinking about why I like wilderness. As much outdoor stuff as I do, I’m really a city boy at heart. I like being comfortable and I like having my stuff around me all the time.

In some way, my natural inclination toward the city demonstrates the spiritual power of wilderness. Wilderness is where the din and static of everyday life melts away. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t appreciate the beauty, quiet, and solitude nature affords. Which, of course, doesn’t necessarily mean you like swarms of mosquitoes at dusk without your Deet.

The more I venture into designated wilderness areas, the more my gratitude for the folks who made the effort to make these areas so grows. In Colorado, designated wilderness means no machinery is allowed. That means cars, trucks, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, chainsaws, and mountain bikes, to name a few. These places are set aside purely for the preservation of their respective ecosystems and to enjoy them on foot.  Campsites are spread far apart, and because you have to pack everything in, it’s unlikely your neighbor dragged in his 2,000-watt home stereo for your listening (dis)pleasure. 

As profoundly as I feel it, I’m not really sure how to express the importance of saving wilderness. As I said earlier, I’m a city boy. I like my stuff and I am uncomfortably aware of the exploited resources and displaced wildlife that stuff costs. So I look for a balance.

I encourage you to visit a designated wilderness in your area. Just walk in far enough to close out the outside world. Take your kids. I don’t think you’ll walk back out as quite the same person.

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Getting Things Done

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on November 11, 2009 by Gary

I have a project list for the library that is seven pages long.

Seven pages.

In most ways, having such a list is quite helpful. Beth and I use it to track everything that needs to get done. For each project, we list all the tasks that need to be addressed so we can complete each project. Beth and I get together once per month to go over the list to check in and see how we’re doing. Lots of tasks get crossed off and many more get added to the project list. I then update the project list in a Word document, send it to Beth for her review, and then to my boss so he knows what’s going on as well. It’s a system that works pretty well and tasks generally get done in a timely manner.

The one problem with this kind of list is that it encourages me to look only at the details. The big picture has a tendency to get lost. I realized this today when I met with my boss to go over the list. Seven pages of projects and their corresponding tasks is really too much to be working on. All we can ever do with a list that size is jump from one project to another. As a result, actually completing any one project becomes hard.

So, I’ve made a monthly appointment with myself to look at the library’s project from a strategic viewpoint. To only look only at the projects and compare them with the organization’s overall plan. The trick will be to not look at the actual tasks to complete each project. It also means deferring some entire projects to a later date.

How do you keep your eye on the big picture?

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Fundraising in Five Minutes

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , on November 4, 2009 by Gary

Over the last several months, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been asked to participate in a number of panel discussions at the University of Denver. Each time the topic has been on some aspect of nonprofit fundraising. I just wanted to pass along two points I found interesting in those discussions.

1. All of the panelists (including me) agreed that cultivating new donors is a process. Those relationships are about getting to know the donor as an individual and finding if/how the donor is connected to your organization’s mission. The point is to find out if there is something about your organization that makes the donor feel good.

It is quite possible that a year or more will go by before you ask a new donor for financial support. And it may be that you won’t even have to ask the donor for money – if you’ve taken the time to build a genuine relationship, s/he may offer to fund a special project before you even ask.  Raising money without ever overtly asking for it is what I’ve found to be the most fun and interesting part about fundraising. It is certainly among the most artful ways to build support.

2. Keep your donor database updated. I cannot stress enough the importance of having a good piece of software and implementing processes with your staff to ensure the database stays updated. Record all of your interactions with donors with the greatest possible detail.

I knew a development officer at one organization who took a donor out to a nice restaurant. Turned out that the donor didn’t like nice restaurants at all. He was a pizza and beer kind of guy (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, too). If the development officer had read the database notes left by the previous development manager about that donor, she would have avoided making an embarrassing mistake. Don’t assume anything about your donors.

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Loomings

Posted in Uncategorized with tags on August 3, 2009 by Gary

I caught part of a story today on NPR about the Amazon Kindle and the effects the device is having on the publishing industry. The main thrust of the story was on a different topic related to the Kindle, but what I found especially interesting was the discussion about how the most dyed-in-the-wool lovers of the printed page are increasingly turning to the Kindle as their preferred choice of reading medium.

I don’t yet own a Kindle, but I’m certainly intrigued by it both as a consumer and as someone who is trying to bring a library into the “21st century.” In fact, I’m intrigued in the same way I’m interested in MP3 technology.  These technologies allow for a portability of information never before possible, and their potential to mash up content breathes new life into books and music that I previously thought I would never return to again in my life.

Part of the apparent magic of the Kindle is its so-called “electronic paper.” One interviewee on the NPR story claimed that the Kindle perfectly mimics printed paper. That combined with the book-like size and heft of the Kindle so emulates the experience of traditional reading that the same interviewee said she keeps reaching up to the right-hand corner of the device to turn the page.

Much of the rest of the story was about the Kindle’s obvious effects on the publishing industry. The “will people still be reading printed books in 50 years”-type of discussion was a central theme.

I love technology and I would like to see the Kindle truly revolutionize the book industry. I have to admit that some of that enthusiasm stems from my being a bit of a tree hugger, and I hate contemplating the natural resources that are destroyed every year to create traditional books, newspapers, magazines, and other types of printed material.

But I also love books and I always will. I like that you can mark them up, and well-used copies sometimes give me a sense of companionship that I find missing in other inanimate objects. After all, I found books compelling enough to spend a lot of money on for a library degree and a lot of headache to change careers for.

And that’s where I found the slant of the story to be just a bit of a turn-off. I would like to hear more about how the publishing industry is seeking to increase the popularity and marketability of both the Kindle AND the printed book. In this particular case, squashing one technology to pump up another seems less dynamic and interesting than does leveraging the strengths of both to create a better-than-ever world of reading and of readers.  But perhaps that slant doesn’t really exist, in which case I’m disappointed.

I see the Kindle and the traditional book as tools with distinct aims of purpose. I, for one, prefer having more tools at my disposal without being forced to choose one piece of gear over another. That became clear to me again the other day when I had to use a screwdriver handle for a hammer. It kind of worked, but not really.

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