A Former Minister Learns the Power of Asking for Donations

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned about running a nonprofit organization came from my experience in the for-profit world.

That lesson? Put simply — make sure you ask for money. I’ve found that for many in the nonprofit world that proves to be a difficult task. However, I believe it’s an essential skill to master if you want your organization to grow, thrive, and do the good works it’s designed to do.

I honed my skills of asking for money during the several years I spent in the mid-1990s working as a personal financial

KEITH WOLTER Age: 49 First professional job: Pastor, American Lutheran Church, Harlowton, Mont. Current job: Executive director, Maui AIDS Foundation, Wailuku, Hawaii

adviser. In that role, I’d manage clients’ money with the goal of getting the largest return possible on their investment. Yet, before I started managing their portfolio I had to ask for an upfront fee that, in my view, often seemed like an obscene amount of money. To my surprise, however, most of the clients readily parted with the cash. All I had to do was ask — and of course provide clear direction on the services that money was buying.

Today, as executive director of the Maui AIDS Foundation, I apply that same principle: Don’t be afraid to ask for money, and don’t be afraid to ask often. But when you do, ask with sincerity and make sure people fully understand how their money will be used.

Actually, being a financial adviser wasn’t the only work experience that helped lay the groundwork for me to lead a nonprofit organization. I began my career as a parish pastor in a mainstream Protestant church in 1984. I had always dreamed of ministering to families and helping people deal with life’s challenges. I figured I’d spend my career in the church.

But not long into my second assignment, I faced my own challenge. For years, I had been coming to grips with the realization I was gay. As I came out of the closet, I started to get resistance from my parishioners. There was a lot of tension. I went on leave for study for several months. When I returned, I learned I was no longer welcome.

Realizing my future wasn’t in the ministry, in the early 1990s I enrolled in a master’s program in organizational leadership at Gonzaga University, in Spokane, Wash. I also became more involved in human-rights issues, particularly those touching the gay and lesbian community. For a time, I ran a gay and lesbian newspaper. Of course, much of the paper’s coverage involved HIV/AIDS. It was a subject I knew a great deal about.

I had lived through the most devastating era of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. For years, I had helped friends and acquaintances who were suffering from AIDS. Sadly, I attended far too many funerals. Those experiences convinced me that my life’s work should somehow involve helping people dealing with HIV/AIDS.

I was still heavily involved in the issue when I took the job as financial adviser in the mid-1990s. I needed a good-paying job — and I also wanted to learn how to run a business. While I valued the experience — and the living it provided — after about three years I realized that I wanted to go in another direction.

As fate would have it, a friend of mine who was running the North Idaho AIDS Coalition, in Coeur d’Alene, was moving on to become a flight attendant. She asked if I wanted her job. I jumped at the opportunity. Of course, at that time it wasn’t much of an opportunity. It was a half-time job working out of a small cubicle in the corner of a hospice facility.

I started writing grant proposals and figuring out how the organization could expand the services offered to people dealing with HIV/AIDS. The first grant request I wrote was for $1,500. When I submitted it, I was convinced that was the last I’d hear about it.

To my surprise, I got the grant. Then I got another. And another. Soon I had grown adept at raising money and scoring grants for the organization.

Before long, I was working full time with two full-time staffers. More importantly, we were able to offer a broadening range of services and care to people infected or affected by HIV/AIDS in northern Idaho.

In the late 1990s, federal grant money was still flowing, but I sensed that funding bonanza would come to an end. So we stepped up our fund-raising activities, running special events and developing a database that grew to 1,500 people, which we mined for direct-mail campaigns. I left in late 2004 to do independent consulting, confident that I left that organization in good fiscal health.

I wasn’t actively seeking a full-time job, but I saw the Maui executive- director position advertised on Monster.com and, at the urging of a friend, applied for the job. I think my experience, in addition to the fact that my focus was on the job — rather than just wanting to live in a tropical paradise — worked to my advantage.

Now, as executive director of Maui AIDS Foundation, I oversee a $1.6-million budget and a staff of 18 people who serve 150 clients. In addition, we focus heavily on outreach and prevention.

During my years working on the HIV/AIDS issue, I’ve witnessed a dramatic shift. Put bluntly, we’ve gone from helping people die well to helping them live well. Remarkable drug advancements have moved HIV/AIDS from an acute terminal illness to a chronic disease that can be managed. Yet there is still so much to be done. Our job is to accelerate the prevention efforts and provide assistance for those already infected about how to manage the disease.

Doing that takes money. So it is with that same goal-setting and fund-raising discipline that I developed in Idaho that I approach my job here. Since I started here last November, I’ve worked to create clear-cut targets and an integrated fund-raising plan that links together events, direct mail, annual campaigns, and other activities. I’m confident my efforts are starting to show early success. At our largest fund raiser, in March, we raised $60,000, up from $42,000 the previous year.

Moving forward, I plan on keeping it simple. The way I look at it — no money, no margin. And no margin, no mission. We’ll connect with our donor base, and we won’t be afraid to ask for money — and ask often.

The importance of that was driven home for me again recently when I met with a donor. At one point during our conversation, he set down his cup of coffee and said, “You know, I would have given your organization more money through the years if you had just asked.”

I let him know I’d be in touch.

And when he or any other donor gives money, we’ll remember one other simple step — to say thank you. Or as we say here in Hawaii, “Mahalo.”