Philanthropist Backs Effort to Train Fundraisers Like Salespeople

Denny Sanford is known for giving nine-figure donations that transform institutions.

But now the philanthropist is hoping that one of his smaller donations will transform how nonprofit professionals approach fundraising and donors. His $1 million gift to National University in 2013 helped create the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy and the Sanford Education Center, which was launched early this year.

Mr. Sanford says the concept of the institute is to teach charity leaders how to look at fundraising practices through the lens of salesmanship.

“It incorporates basic philanthropic principles with a little bit of Dale Carnegie and Toastmasters,” says Mr. Sanford, who came up with the idea after years of being put off by the way many fundraisers approached him.

All too often, he says, fundraisers do not take the time to investigate a donor’s interests or to find out what causes or programs might attract a potential donor.

“It really goes back to research,” says Mr. Sanford. “Why present something to a donor if you don’t have any clue as to what that donor has in mind?”

Chance Meeting

The genesis for the institute goes back to a conversation that took place in a San Diego parking lot a few years ago. Mr. Sanford and Michael Cunningham, National University’s chancellor, were attending an event to honor another local philanthropist.

Strangers at the time, Mr. Sanford was getting out of his car just as Mr. Cunningham was pulling up. Mr. Sanford asked him for directions, and then introduced himself.

“I said, ‘Are you the Denny Sanford?’ ” recalled Mr. Cunningham.

The chancellor told Mr. Sanford that in his previous post as dean of another university’s business school, he had wanted to approach him about donating, but higher-ups told him not to because another official there was already trying to cultivate him.

The two men joked about the many layers of university fundraising protocol and started talking about how nonprofit professionals seek donations.

That’s when Mr. Sanford piped up about his idea for an institute that could teach the fundamentals of building relationships with donors using the mind-set of someone in sales.

Professional Approach

The institute uses a process it calls “cause selling” to teach fundraising techniques including how to build relationships with potential donors and connect their interests with a nonprofit’s cause.

While some fundraisers might recoil at the idea that they are selling something, Mr. Cunningham says the institute takes a different view.

“With us, ‘sales’ is not a dirty word,” he says. “You’re supplying a service for a need, and as long as you have a great value proposition and you’re doing it for the right reasons, it’s a good word.”

The institute offers a variety of courses, with plans to offer some online later in the year, designed with working professionals’ schedules in mind. There are one- and two-day seminars and night and weekend classes, and students can earn certificates in “cause sales” or “fundraising and educational foundation leadership,” for example, as well as a master-of-arts degree in “cause leadership.”

Rachel Hudson, who started the Olivia Hudson Foundation in 2013 to support pediatric brain-cancer research, says the institute’s classes have been perfect for her needs. A quality-assurance manager for a hotelier and a mother of two young children, Ms. Hudson says she can fit in the institute’s courses around her busy schedule, and they have provided her and her board members, most of whom had no nonprofit experience, with basic fundraising and nonprofit marketing skills and insight into the finer points of donor cultivation.

“For me it’s been incredibly helpful, and it couldn’t have come at a better time,” says Ms. Hudson, who was able to apply some of what she learned to her nonprofit’s second annual charity golf tournament held last month. “The things we learned in the classes we were able to apply to our social-media campaign around the event.”

She also thinks the courses helped her and her board raise around $10,000 more from donors this year than last year and helped her charity attract more volunteers interested in helping out with next year’s tournament.

“As a new foundation, it’s been great because it’s given us a head start,” says Ms. Hudson.

Lasting Impact

The Sanford Institute of Philanthropy and the Sanford Education Center are together a $40-million endeavor, said Mr. Cunningham.

While Mr. Sanford provided the start-up cash for the institute and the education center, which operates programs for children, and the university devoted $10 million to the programs, the philanthropist also acted as a fundraiser, helping to raise $20 million from an anonymous donor last month.

Mr. Sanford says the work of the institute is just as important to him as the roughly $1-billion in donations he has given over the years to health care and children’s welfare and education.

Without well-trained fundraisers capable of attracting the hearts and dollars of philanthropists, nonprofits that operate in those fields and many others won’t survive to help those in need, says the 79-year-old Mr. Sanford. He hopes his philanthropy institute will go a long way to help nonprofit professionals connect with donors like him to meet those needs long after he is gone.

“I’m nearing the end of my runway in life, and I want to make a difference with this,” he said.