I was in a local sporting goods store last weekend and a crafty salesclerk sold me a golf club that, he promised, would take 3 shots off my game.  He told me that the head of the driver was made from a lunar based alloy that enabled the ball, once hit, to defy the law of gravity.

I took out a home equity loan and bought the club.

The following day, by the third hole, I figured out that Newtonian physics still applied to my golf game and I regarded my newly acquired club with utter contempt.

I expected a return on my investment.

So do your annual fund donors.

Last night, on Sixty Minutes, there was an excellent treatment on “venture philanthropy.”

People who engage in venture philanthropy usually make gifts, big gifts, no, really big gifts, to a charitable cause and focus upon the outcome of their generosity.  If the charitable venture can not demonstrate those outcomes in a reasonable amount of time, then the giving simply, well,  stops.

In a recent issue of US News and World Report, there was an article on how donors, and not the Sixty Minutes kind, regular donors, are paying close attention to the outcomes of the agencies that they are choosing to support.

In order for charitiable agencies to demononstrate how funds are being used, in a way that may be clearly seen and measured by current and prospective donors, the agency must be transparent in how it makes those program outcomes known.

And such transparency has to be more than a simple pie chart that we place on the back of an annual fund brochure.

Oh, and if some guy named Tom tries to sell you a golf club that looks real pretty, run like the wind.

Ever since I got back from that mountain in Africa, I made a promised that I would live a more “disciplined” life.

I eat better.

I maintain a regular and rigourous workout schedule.

“Discipline.”

In his Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Jim Collings maintains that:

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance … it is largely a matter of … discipline.”

Discipline.

Great diocesan development offices, and I know several, all share one common characteristic: they are “disciplined” in their development operations.

They:

1. Make data driven decisions before they embark upon a new program – even their yearly annual campaign. They spend a great deal of time reviewing the performance metrics of the past annual fund and change practice accordingly. They do not maintain the same practice because “we have always done it that way.”

2. They evaluate each and every campaign and make changes where performance shortfalls are evident.

3. The are outwardly directed. Look, diocesan development offices are often thinly staffed and those staff that are present often feel overwhelmed with managing the daily details of their program. If diocesan development directors are to be truely successful in raising those funds necessary to support core diocesan ministries and programs, they need to spend time benchmarking and implementing best practice. Than means, in a nutshell, that they need to be current on those programs that can enhance their development efforts. Read studies. Talk to development personnel in peer dioceses. Join the ICSC (shameless plug alert).

Oh, and eat your vegetables…. they are swell.

I like well directed mob movies from the 1970′s.

I like them a lot.

I would take one “Godfather” over a slew of Soprano episodes.

My favorite line from the Godfather:

It aint personal, it is just business

Mob hits in the movies may be all about business, but annual appeal mailings must be personal.

There is a direct relationship between the degree to which a direct mail development piece is personalized and the chance that it will be opened.

Personalization:  it is a lot more than making sure that the salutation in the solicitation letter is correct.

In the last several years, many non profit organizations, specifically institutions of higher education, have been using personalized uniform resource locators (PURLS) to enhance the personalization of their direct mail programs.

I will not discuss what a purl is, as I have done so earlier, but I will give you three pearls (yuck, yuck, yuck) of wisdom regarding implementation of such a program:

1.  Make sure the url address is simple and easy to type into the web browser

2. Make sure, if the campaign contains multiple pages, that the landing page is hyper personalized to ensure interest

3. If you are using a url program to solicit contributions to your annual program, make sure that it is easy to navigate the contribution page or link.

Enjoy and, if asked, remember, it’s always personal.