Coaching Rookie Pitchers

A Bay Area foundation teaches new charities to make their cases

One afternoon last summer, Joshua Boshnack and Allyson Wyenn headed to a cafe for lunch after delivering food to San Francisco homeless families for the pair’s all-volunteer organization, Fill Up America. As they walked, they discussed their need for management skills that would help them expand their effort from an operation that relied heavily on five or six volunteers to something bigger and more organized. Perhaps, they thought, something that could serve more needy people in the Bay Area, or fight hunger in other cities around the nation.

So the flier they spied announcing a “Nonprofit Boot Camp” seemed destined for them.

The one-day event, sponsored by San Francisco’s Craigslist Foundation last October and aimed at young charities like Fill Up America — groups with minimal budgets and staff and little experience with the philanthropic world — included standard conference fare, such as workshops on fund raising and budget management. But it also featured an unusual brainchild of the operating foundation’s leaders: a “pitchathon,” in which eight charities chosen randomly from the pool of registrants would receive speech coaching and make their “pitches” to an audience of their peers. Most tantalizing for the presenters, 10 judges representing local grant makers, including private foundations, corporations, and government agencies, would choose the winner.

Fate continued to favor Fill Up America. The group was selected for the pitchathon, and Mr. Boshnack’s winning presentation resulted in a $1,000 cash prize, plus other goodies — including free training, Web-site hosting, and tickets to a local circus, some of which the group gave to volunteers or sold to benefit the charity. The cash proved most useful for Fill Up America, which has no budget.

“That money was spent before we got the check,” Mr. Boshnack says with a laugh, citing insurance, repairs, and gasoline for the cars volunteers make available each week for food pickup and delivery.

More important, perhaps, Mr. Boshnack perfected a polished pitch he can use to encourage donors and volunteers to support his organization.

Crash Course

For novice charity leaders, the Craigslist Foundation event provided a crash course in marketing themselves and their organizations, as well as an opportunity to meet people who could become their supporters or collaborators.

“Over all it was a tremendous opportunity to get all that coaching and focus and publicity. It might have taken me a year to get that kind of feedback,” says Allison Quaid, executive director of Creative Community Catalysts, an all-volunteer organization founded a year ago to find new ways to communicate environmental messages.

By getting feedback early, fledgling nonprofit leaders can avoid mistakes and receive praise for what they are doing right, says Pamela H. David, a pitchathon judge and executive director of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, in San Francisco. “Anything I can do to encourage people to be involved in social change is worth investing an afternoon,” she says.

Craigslist Foundation was founded in 2000 by a San Francisco Internet company that runs the popular Craigslist classified-ads Web site, to assist new nonprofit organizations. The foundation has easy access to charity newcomers because of its affiliation with Craigslist, says Darian Heyman, the group’s executive director. Though a number of organizations in the San Francisco area specialize in providing training, technology support, and information to charities, Mr. Heyman says, groups and individuals new to the nonprofit world may not know such services exist. “But they’ve all heard of Craigslist,” he says.

“Craigslist Foundation is still defining its role,” says Ms. David. “But they’re reaching a whole different set of folks and generation than traditional philanthropists.”

‘American Idol’

The pitchathon idea evolved from a series of events held under the auspices of Craigslist a few years ago, recalls William Ryan, a corporate consultant and trustee of the Craigslist Foundation. Called the Nonprofit Venture Forum, the evening events were meant to give nonprofit groups the kind of access to grant makers that technology companies had to venture capitalists. Each forum, Mr. Ryan says, had a focus, such as “youth” or “the environment.” From proposals submitted by charities, the foundation selected five organizations that pitched to a small audience of grant makers and philanthropists with expertise in the evening’s theme.

Mr. Ryan and other foundation leaders wanted to make the event more in-depth and inclusive. They also wanted to have an impact on more than just a handful of organizations. The idea of a daylong boot camp emerged, with an all-day pitching session open to all registrants and a complementary series of more traditional workshops.

The foundation billed the pitchathon as “‘American Idol’ for nonprofits,” a reference to the television show in which record-industry insiders judge, sometimes with shocking honesty, amateur singers who dream of becoming pop stars. Mr. Heyman says, “It’s a chance for aspiring organizations and their leaders to get in front of an audience of judges and get some feedback on their model, strategy, and ability to present.”

Grooming for the Big Day

As he helped design the pitching session’s format, Daniel Oppenheim, a consultant to the Craigslist Foundation, knew that both presenters and judges needed to have guidance. “I insisted that this be a positive experience, not an embarrassing experience, for the pitchers,” he says.

Presenters would speak for five minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience, five minutes of positive feedback from judges, and five minutes of constructive criticism. Scoring included how well presenters handled questioning and feedback, the clarity of their mission, and their enthusiasm.

Organizations selected to present received two free coaching sessions before the Nonprofit Boot Camp, the first a seven-hour group presentation-skills workshop run by Mr. Oppenheim and the second a one-on-one exercise in developing a message. “We didn’t want to just throw them to the wolves,” Mr. Heyman says.

Speech trainers gave the presenters pointers on speaking skills, body language, and content. Mr. Ryan, who coached several presenters, spent four hours with each person. “I spent a lot of time getting them to tell me, ‘What is the core vision of this organization?’” he says.

“I wouldn’t have believed in the value of a coach unless I’d had one,” says Ms. Quaid, of Creative Community Catalysts.

She says she wanted to craft a concise explanation of the work her organization does. Having a coach helped her do that, she says: “When you’re very close to an issue, sometimes you forget that other people aren’t as close. You need feedback from other people.”

In the group session, Ms. Quaid learned to use her graceful, animated style to woo an audience of potential supporters.

The group session taught Mr. Boshnack, who studied theater in college, what makes a good speaker and a good speech — elements such as eye contact and the use of vocal pitch, tone, and pauses. “Basically, you don’t want to bore them out of their minds,” he says.

Sarah Smalls, executive director and founder of Sisterz of the Underground, a four-year-old group that teaches the skills of hip-hop artists, such as emceeing, deejaying, breakdancing, and graffiti art to schoolchildren from needy families, was unable to attend the group session, and received only one hour of coaching the day before the event, though she and her group’s program director worked on their presentation with a volunteer who drafts the organization’s grant proposals.

“Our order was sort of boring, and [the coach] helped us make it more enticing with the placement and order of things,” she says.

Similarly, Mr. Boshnack’s personal coach helped him tighten up a windy speech. Still, he found the group interaction more useful than his one-on-one coaching session.

“You could watch everyone’s capacity for giving a good speech improve as the hours went by,” he says. When another participant’s turn went well, he says, “basically you steal what would work for them and make it work for you.”

Making the Pitch

Mr. Boshnack spent the morning before his presentation repeatedly rehearsing his lines. “I was still trying to memorize that thing five minutes before I went on,” he says. But remembering every word was not necessarily the key to his success.

“When you’re doing a pitch, you’re not really selling the organization, you’re selling yourself,” he says. “Are you a trustworthy person? Are you a person who can get the job done? Are you a person who can inspire?”

Mr. Oppenheim says Mr. Boshnack appeared very nervous during the presentation-skills workshop, but in the pitching session, the young charity leader approached the podium letting out whoops of excitement. That passion for Fill Up America’s work helped him make an impression on the audience and judges, Mr. Oppenheim says.

Mr. Boshnack won despite criticism from some judges that his organization trivializes hunger and homelessness by viewing charity work as a selfish endeavor that benefits volunteers as much as it helps the recipients.

Though presenters told their stories eagerly and enthusiastically, many needed to focus their messages, several of the judges say.

“I was impressed with the work they were doing, but where they really need help was in presenting the work of their organization” and conveying what sets them apart, says Holly Friedman, vice president and market-development manager at the San Francisco office of Bank of America, a financial company with headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. Leaders of nonprofit start-ups often think no one else does what they do, while grant makers might have five similar requests on their desks, Ms. Friedman says.

Ms. David felt presenters should have received more coaching on content, rather than on presentation style.

“There’s a rigor we bring to grant making that in this format was difficult to get exactly,” Ms. David says. Grant makers, she says, need more information than can be gleaned in five minutes before they can gauge the viability of a charity.

In addition, not every idea had potential to fuel a successful charity endeavor, says Ms. David. “There were some folks with some great ideas, and there were some folks with some screwy ideas,” she says. “We were quite frank in our feedback.” Ms. David says she also was honest with presenters about the fierce competition for money, particularly in the Bay Area, and advised them that they might piggyback onto an existing organization instead of starting a new one.

Acknowledging that grant makers tend to receive requests for aid from more-mature organizations than those that took part in the pitchathon, Ms. David says, “There wasn’t one [presentation] where I went, ‘Whoa, I would want to work with these guys.’”

Learning From Experience

Mr. Boshnack has not had occasion to try out his fund-raising pitch since Craigslist Foundation’s boot camp, though Fill Up America aims to include fund raising in its slow move toward expansion. “It’s strictly a matter of time and being able to find it,” he says, as well as pinpointing the most likely potential donors.

But he did get many chances to make his charity’s case on the day of the boot camp, immediately after winning the pitching contest. His listeners included a student from a local university’s Rotary Club; she offered to send students from her club to volunteer with Fill Up America once a semester. He also spoke with other nonprofit leaders, some with more experience who are willing to give him advice. “These are people I never would have met if I hadn’t been at Craigslist Foundation and been the winner,” he says.

Making a public pitch in front of an audience of several hundred people had benefits even for presenters who did not emerge triumphant. “The public speaking and focusing the message — those were probably the two biggest things that I got out of it,” Ms. Quaid says.

She has used her pitch since the Craigslist Foundation event, with good results: an executive at an investment company offered her a meeting with the firm’s board, and Honest Tea, a Bethesda, Md., beverage company, has agreed to donate drinks to an event Community Catalyst is holding on World Environment Day in June.

Though she has not received any money as a direct result of the pitchathon, she says, she has refined the message on her group’s Web site. And judges’ questions regarding her plans for the coming year helped her develop a longer view, which she has used to craft fund-raising letters.

Ms. Smalls also says that judges’ comments gave her a nudge to make organizational changes. Judges told the Sisterz of the Underground presenters that they needed to improve the way they evaluate their work with schools, and advised them to work with fewer people. The group serves 1,000 young people at 17 sites.

“It was everything we knew but sort of needed to hear again,” Ms. Smalls says. Since the pitchathon, a consultant has helped the group fine-tune its evaluation system, postponing billing until the organization receives grant money that can help pay for the service. The charity also has decided to enhance its existing programs instead of expanding to new sites.

Even audience members reaped some gains from watching the pitches and hearing judges’ feedback. Grant makers “have to have a reason to want to give to you rather than anyone else,” says the Rev. Toni Dunbar, director of the Center for Social Ministry, a charity in Berkeley, Calif., that runs a spirituality center for San Francisco’s Juvenile Probation Department. “The next time I have to go ask for money or the next time I sit across the table from a funder, I’m going to do everything I heard I need to do.”

Others, both judges and audience members, thought the event, though successful, did not reflect how grant making works in the “real world,” Mr. Heyman says.

So next October, he says, the Nonprofit Boot Camp will not include a pitchathon. Instead, Craigslist Foundation will develop separate workshops on such topics as telling an organization’s story, working a room, giving a 30-second “elevator pitch,” and grant-proposal writing.

The revised format will have to satisfy new nonprofit leaders — who, like would-be pop stars or novelists, work hard at their dreams while secretly hoping for that big break. Come to think of it, a nice prize for the pitchathon winner, Mr. Boshnack says, would have been a private appointment to pitch to a grant-making organization. “That would have been brilliant,” he says.