Get Big But Don’t Lose Your Small
This past week I was fortunate to present on Opportunity International, specifically our agricultural finance program, along with Jocelyn Ling from Vancouver for Acumen, Sean Peters from Globaly Catalyst Initiative and Bonnie Wong from Van City at the Canadian Global Impact Investing Group. It was great to learn more and see the interest in impact investing, very neat. As I met more folks from the Global Agents for Change group I had a realization; there is value in being “small”.
Not that they are doing “small things” by any means (they are actually doing great big things), but compared to the size of some organizations they are quite small. Having been part of a start-up non-profit organization working in Zambia, called Spark Ventures, I saw the benefits of being small and its impact with allowing supporters feel connected to our work and that “grassroots” feel everyone (seemingly) wants. But I also wanted us to be bigger; to not have to use volunteers, to be able to spend on marketing and advertising, to have bigger events, and so on. What I’ve seen lately with Opportunity is many people are turned off by the fact we have 12,000 employees and 3 million clients and a loan portfolio of $320 million. They think “if you are so big, why do you need my help”. Quite a damaging thought when it comes to fundraising.
Therefore the challenge is, how can you grow and be “big” while still feeling “small” to your supporters? I’m not sure I have the answers but here’s 5 thoughts/ideas:
1. Never lose relationship. As you grow you can’t service all supporters the same way and often leads to climbing up the “donor pyramid” and neglecting those at the bottom. If you must go this route, and there are many reasons why you may, think about how you can “grandfather” your lower level supporters in. They may go from highly valued $100 donors to not even hearing from you overnight and the downgrade in attention is more damaging than not giving attention in the first place.
2. Get creative with stewardship/thanking. When you start out, you are eternally grateful for all the support you receive and effuse praise and thanks to everyone. They are after all helping you execute your vision, make an impact in the world (and pay your salary…). Don’t lose that. Spend time, energy and money in thanking your supporters. Use video, use works from the people you serve, use your CEO, use that nice new marketing budget you have to thank the people who helped you get it.
3. Find ways to use volunteers (even if you don’t have to). See if there are designers, social media lovers, mailing stuffers, administrative helpers, connectors, party hosters, presenters/communicators around and find ways to put them to work. Engagement leads to positive returns so find tangible ways to engage, even if it is easier to pay for service or just not deal with the headaches.
4. Ask questions. Use survey’s, random emails, phone calls, etc. to continue to seek the guidance and advice of those actually supporting you. There is a temptation to just go with the “I know what is best” mentality and in doing so you can be at risk of de-valuing the people you are trying to continue to reach.
5. Don’t make everything so polished. Some of the best videos are hand held shots at an event with your CEO, post pictures of your staff eating lunch or your CEO in casual clothes, have your accountant write a blog post about why she likes your organization or your administrative assistant share why she wanted to work for your organization. Just because you can afford to do things “professionally” doesn’t mean that you always should or have to.
Those are just five of many. What do you think? Other tips? Is there value in small? Do we not want to give to “big”?
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