Fund-Raising Friction

National charities clash with their affiliates over how best to solicit donations locally

Second Harvest, the nationwide network of more than 185 food banks, devotes most of its time to fighting hunger. But lately the national office and its affiliates have also been spending time bickering over fund-raising approaches.

In January, officials at the national headquarters, in Chicago, expanded their efforts to solicit cash gifts from donors nationwide. That angered some of Second Harvest’s affiliates, which feared that some donors would be annoyed — and that fund raising over all would suffer — if too many people got solicitations from both the national and the local groups.

Second Harvest’s national officials took steps to limit the number of people who would get solicitations from both the national group and the affiliates, but that did not satisfy all of the local food-bank leaders. David Sandretto, executive director of Second Harvest’s San Jose food bank, says he regrets that the dispute has consumed so much time.

“We have a very simple mission here, and that’s to feed the hungry,” he says. “We’re a food bank, and we shouldn’t be dealing with this stuff.”

Clashes like the one at Second Harvest are becoming increasingly common nationwide. Some national charities have angered affiliates by trying to centralize fund raising and by suggesting ideas that local leaders fear will backfire with their donors. In other cases, national leaders have grown annoyed with local leaders who resist new ideas or fund-raising skills training.

Sometimes the controversies have been so bitter that affiliates have wound up in lawsuits with their headquarters (The Chronicle, May 7).

One reason conflicts have intensified, say experts, is that some affiliates have done a lot to improve fund raising on their own and resent being put under pressure to conform to a national standard.

“There have always been tensions between chapters and the national office, whatever the organization is,” says Brigitte Savage, director of member services at Independent Sector, a Washington coalition of major national charities and foundations.

But they have deepened in recent years, Ms. Savage says, because affiliates are “forcefully coming out of the backwaters.”

She adds: “As the affiliates develop a relationship with donors in their areas, they become possessive of them and no longer want to share them with the national organization.”

Ms. Savage says divisions between affiliates and national headquarters have become so frequent that Independent Sector will devote one of the sessions at its annual meeting in Denver this month to the topic.

In many cases, the reason affiliates and headquarters butt heads is that they disagree over the most-effective way to increase contributions. In recent years, more and more national charities have tried to enhance giving at the local level by hiring an expert who travels from chapter to chapter offering fund-raising advice and guidance. But results have been mixed.

One national health organization, whose chapters raise contributions primarily through special events and direct mail, hired a fund raiser to help the affiliates concentrate on big gifts from individuals. Most of his advice, however, is falling on deaf ears.

“They’re used to special events,” says the fund raiser, who asked not to be identified. “Events are easy. It’s like a recipe. You can run special events with low-paid employees and it’s predictable money.” But the affiliates, he says, are missing out on big gifts that bring in far more resources for much less effort.

“We have chapters in tremendously wealthy areas where they’ve never called to thank people who sent in $1,000 checks unsolicited,” the fund raiser says. “Our affiliates don’t view that as a worthwhile use of their time, because they’ve got all these logistical things to do for their events.”

He worries that, by refusing to become more sophisticated in raising money, his local colleagues are jeopardizing the charity’s future. “It’s a competitive world out there, and if we don’t have good strong affiliates, we aren’t going to move forward,” he says. “You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and we have not been as effective as we could be.”

Other national fund raisers have had better luck working with local chapters.

Girl Scouts of the USA hired Linda Radovic Reilly four years ago to encourage its 319 councils to diversify their income and not rely so heavily on cookie sales. Her job was to help them develop other fund-raising skills, particularly asking individuals for large gifts.

Initially, Ms. Reilly’s recommendation to ask for outright gifts was greeted with shock. “When I first started advocating this, you would have thought I’d asked people to remove their clothes,” she says.

But since making her case, Ms. Reilly has won over many councils. They have started “family campaigns” to solicit parents and other relatives of Girl Scouts and are seeking gifts from other individuals, as well as from corporations and foundations.

All told, the councils’ private donations have grown from $35.8-million in 1993 to $47.8-million in 1996.

Ms. Reilly recalls working with one executive director to help her map out three weeks’ worth of breakfasts, lunch dates, and other visits to potential donors that the executive had already identified. Then Ms. Reilly coached her on how to talk to the prospects.

“People just want to hear what you do,” Ms. Reilly told the executive. “And if you can tell anecdotes and stories, that’s what’s really going to drive people to be responsive to you.” One week later, the executive called Ms. Reilly to say that she had landed a $150,000 gift.

The American Red Cross also has hired a vice-president for development, Jennifer Dunlap, who travels the country to help chapters improve their fund-raising skills. But it has gone a step fur ther by organizing a special event to help chapters thank their most-generous donors — and encourage them to continue their support.

Red Cross chapters are offered an opportunity each year to invite key donors to a special weekend in Washington with the charity’s president, Elizabeth Dole, serving as their host. Last year’s program included a keynote address by the talk-show host Larry King, and speakers with powerful stories of how the Red Cross had affected their lives, as well as evening entertainment and tours of the Clara Barton House, the White House, and the Pentagon.

The donors bought tickets for the event for $375 apiece and paid for their own transportation and lodging. Corporate sponsorships and in-kind donations helped cover the costs of running the event, says Ms. Dunlap.

Last year, 77 chapters submitted names of donors to the national office, which extended the invitations, and 60 contributors from 23 chapters came. This year, 125 chapters have submitted names for the event, which will take place next month.

Ms. Dunlap says that the local officials are allowed to do whatever they want to follow up. She says the event has proven to be a useful tool in cementing relations with donors.

In addition to offering such help to affiliates, many national organizations have tried to make their special fund-raising events more effective by asking all the affiliates to hold a certain event in their area — and to do it precisely the same way, right down to the kickoff party.

Charities that insist on uniform events cite cost savings and image as two important reasons. The national group can buy supplies in bulk and can save on other expenses such as printing, while also drumming up support with national advertising. And if donors move from one city to another, they will recognize the event they have supported in the past.

Even though the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation stressed those advantages when it promoted its nationwide walkathon, many chapters still wanted to vary event activities: Orlando wanted the kickoff to be a breakfast instead of a lunch; Chicago wanted to give away T-shirts for $25 instead of $50; and Cincinnati did not want to send donors weekly progress reports.

It took officials three years to get 90 per cent of the local chapters to run the event according to the national prescription. What helped most, officials say, was getting the chapters that had already tried it to convince others that the national model worked best. The collaboration is paying off: Walkathons netted $26-million for the chapters nationwide this year.

Officials at the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation say that a uniform walkathon was worth fighting for, even though some local chapters resisted the idea at first. Once the chapters start making changes, says one national official who asked not to be named, “the power of the model may break down.” By doing the event the same way every time, he says, “we may not get the perfect event, but it will be a consistently high-quality event. There’s safety in the system.”

The American Cancer Society also tries to make its annual run, called Relay for Life, as consistent as possible in each location where it is held. However, it does allow a little flexibility to give the chapters some creative license, says Becky Burkett, national vice-president for income development.

Not all charity leaders think a uniform event is worth the trouble. Susan Houchin, director of services at Girls Incorporated, says that attempts to get all of its affiliates to agree on a fund-raising project would be like “herding cats.”

Girls Incorporated does have a national special event, a Celebration Luncheon, and has produced guidebooks for the affiliates on how to organize it, but the event is strictly voluntary, Ms. Houchin says. Affiliates can vary it as they wish.

As affiliates have increased their fund-raising efforts, some have found themselves competing with the national office for corporate and foundation dollars.

At the Red Cross, Ms. Dunlap has taken steps to prevent clashes. She says chapters are encouraged to send proposals to local grant makers any time. But if the national group decides to solicit a gift from a corporation or foundation, it must first contact the chapter in that geographic area, and the request must include some money for the local organization.

“The local chapter becomes the liaison,” says Ms. Dunlap. The same holds true if a chapter outside the jurisdiction wants to make a solicitation.

“In the past — and this is typical of many organizations — a foundation or corporation could hear from every single part of the organization trying to take its little bite out of them,” Ms. Dunlap says. “I call this the piranha approach.”

Working closely with its national office made a big difference to the Monterey, Cal., affiliate of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. When it wanted to begin a program to teach young adolescent girls to make wise choices early in life, it decided to turn to the national office to help it organize a regional appeal.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation was already supporting another of the affiliate’s proj ects, so executive director Martin Barrett knew it would be unlikely to finance another at the same time. But he figured that the foundation might be willing to support a program through the national office that would benefit Monterey — and eight other affiliates.

Mr. Barrett was right. The national office made the pitch to Packard, and the $200,000 grant came through in September. The result: The charity’s national office has a new relationship with one of the nation’s wealthiest foundations, the affiliates got $200,000 for their programs, and Packard will get recognition for a project that is likely to make more of a difference than it would have made if only one chapter had received money.

Peggy Meill, senior vice-president for resource development at the national office of Boys and Girls Clubs, says she recognizes that national groups and their affiliates may always have their difference. But in the past two years she has worked on several lucrative arrangements with affiliates and she believes that collaborative fund raising is the wave of the future for her organization. “The spirit of collaboration is getting stronger and stronger,” she says. “The affiliates realize there are tremendous benefits of working together.”