Philanthropy 101 by Liza Gofen-Yordanoff, CFRE, Chief Development Officer and Executive Director, Development Office at the Nanyang Technological University. Liza leads Nanyang Technological University's development team as the Chief Development Officer and Executive Director of the Development Office in support of the university's drive for excellence in education, research, and innovation. She joined NTU in September 2018 from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, IITB, where she was the first Chief Development Officer and CEO of the IITB Development and Relations Foundation in Mumbai. Her two-decade-plus career includes leadership roles in various education institutions in the U.S., Singapore, and Switzerland. Liza was also the president of the AFP Singapore Chapter. She is also a Certified Fundraising Executive, CFRE, and an AFP Master Teacher. I am incredibly excited to be here to talk to you all about Philanthropy 101. My name is Liza Gofen-Yordanoff and I am the Chief Development Officer at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, NTU Singapore. I am incredibly excited to talk to you because I've been in this profession for about going into my 23rd year. I love talking to people who are new to the profession or are second-career folks to really talk you through what it means and why I've been doing this my entire professional career. Let's jump right into it. I wanted to go from the big to the local. A lot of people talk about American giving and how American givers are such an incredible wealth pool. It's true. I think we all know. There are significant tax implications that across the globe impact how people give. I put this slide up here just so that you can get a figure in your mind when people talk about how Americans give. I am American, so I wanted to add a different dimension to maybe some of the pieces that you'll hear in different modules. Americans in 2018, which is the GivingUSA 2019 study, gave $427.7 billion in philanthropic funds to a range of nonprofits. The number one place that Americans give is to religion, which I think for a lot of people outside of the United States, that's really surprising. But Americans still are very, very generous to our churches, to our temples, to any other religious sects that really talk to us. And number two is education. What I've learned in 22, 23 years of working in educational institutions and educational philanthropy. So, again, GivingUSA 2019 is the most recent report. 2020, GivingUSA 2020 will probably come out in June or July this year. I think it'll be a pretty good indicator of what we can expect for 2020 and 2021 around the world. So I'm looking forward to seeing what the trends are there, but this kind of gives you an idea of looking at foundations, bequests, which is planned giving, given by corporations and individuals, which individuals obviously make up the bulk of all philanthropic giving around the world. So this is Giving Singapore, which sounds really similar to GivingUSA, Giving Singapore, which actually came out of a report also in 2019, but these are 2018 numbers. So I think they're not surprising because Singapore is a relatively small country, just over 6 million tax residents. And what this shows us is, again, social and welfare organizations essentially get beat out by religion. So religion, again, occupies a really strong place in philanthropic giving across the world. So for those of you who might work in a divinity school or work at a university that has a religious aspect, never ever forget those places. It's something that particularly at NTU, we've put a lot of effort toward in the last year, working with our temples and our churches and our other religious associations. So never forget those as we're talking about some of the things that will come up in different slides. So I talked a little bit about NTU, but I don't know how familiar everybody is. We're one of seven autonomous universities in Singapore. We are the number 11th best school, and we're a town in and of itself. So we have 33,000 undergrads and postgrads on campus. There's around 65,000 people at our Jurong West campus any day, obviously not during COVID, but at a given normal day. So we are a little town in and of itself, and we are the largest actual landmass outside of any military areas in Singapore. So we have a very, very significantly large campus as well. We have over 100 nationalities amongst our students and 300 global academic partners. These are just a few other of our claims to fame. And I think one of the things that this highlights to all of the folks who are listening is make sure you know what your stories are. Make sure you know what are the things that your academics are talking about to their partners, what are the things that your alumni are most proud of, and what are the things that you as a fundraiser, as a philanthropic person can talk about in terms of your mission. With that in mind, let's talk about preparing yourself for this new job in philanthropy. One of the best pieces of advice I got early in my career was actually to join CASE. So I've been a member of a CASE university since 1998. I was lucky. I had great mentors who really understood what a professional organization can do for you in helping you build your own network. So I think all of you who are new to fundraising, feel free to use LinkedIn, to use CASE resources, to reach out to those of us who are ready, willing, and able to either mentor or give advice or just have a chat. I think, you know, when we talk about learning the basics, there's a lot of webinars, there's great CASE programming, there's amazing AFP programming, there's a lot of different resources out there where you can kind of learn all the acronyms, which you'll hear some of during this presentation. So again, the key piece that I wanted to talk a little bit more specifically about is what's the mission that best fits for you? So what is the place that's really speaks to you in your heart that you're going to be able to tell the story of? And I think that's been key to where I've been most successful in my career is I found places where I've been able to have an impact, but I've been able to really tell the story in a unique way that brings in my own personal experience that gives people that personal input that too often we kind of gloss over when we're relationship building with people, but it's incredibly important. Okay, so what's your first step? How do you start building your engagement with the organization where you find yourself? This can be really easy, or it can be very difficult. And I think when you kind of hit the median there, that's when you know you're doing it right. The very first thing you need to do is review the records. Who are your donors? Where do they come from? What segments of your population do they represent? These are all incredibly important metrics. How many people gave last year? How many people had given the year before? What's your rate of retention year on year of those donors? Because we know retaining a donor from year to year is an incredibly powerful metric that tells us that we're doing a good job telling our story. And if our retention rates are bad, which I think we all have some retention rates that we're not going to crow about, but if your retention rates are bad, you really need to start looking at what your story is. If you're having to get donors every year, it's a challenge to kind of make sure that your storytelling is on point. In addition to looking at the records, making sure you understand who your beneficiaries are. Who are your students? Who are the academics who are actually getting support from the funds that you're raising or that you're supposed to be raising for? I think looking at the population who will benefit is incredibly important. Sometimes we gassed over that fax, right? We're just too quick to start up and start raising money, that we don't take enough time to look at who our students are, who our faculty are, who our postgrads are. I mean, some of these stories are so incredibly compelling that we learn about them a year or 18 months or two years down the road when if we had taken a few time in the first part of our time on campus to really talk with lots of different populations, I think we would learn different stories and different reasons why people find themselves on your campus because it's not always immediately apparent. Bear out those stories, really figure out why people are where they are and why they're on your campus. All right, so the bigger question, who gives now? What do your current donor pool look like? Who gave before? Why are they giving? What is their personal motivation? Really looking hard into your demographics, and I'm going to go through NTU's demographics with you in a little bit because I think this is an incredibly important piece to understand as a fundraiser. They're incredibly important for you in your 30-second elevator pitch to really talk about how many students are you're supporting, how many students are in need, what's the student's compelling story. Really understanding the numbers, understanding the story is an important way to spend your first either 60 days, 90 days, or six months, depending on what your level of commitment is to the organization you're joining. All right, so I think you probably have heard about the case statement, the case for support. I wanted to not gloss over this, but it is an important piece that you need to work across campus with your partners and communications to really understand what the needs are. So again, this isn't about the university itself. It's about the people who are doing the work, right? We want to be aspirational in the story and in the case statement. So what is it about the people who are actually doing the work at the university that is aspirational in nature? Those are some of the things that we need to really kind of reframe the conversation when we're talking about case for support because it used to be very different. We used to have a very different approach to a case statement. We need to do X. Give us money because we need to do Y. And I think we're reframing that to help people grow with us so that their gift really is more aspirational. So help the students so that they can do Y, right? It's not about what they currently need. It's what they can do with your support. And I think that's been a general shift in how we talk about case for support and how we talk about the mission statements for a lot of organizations. So take some time, really understand if your organization does have a case for support, what are the pieces that speak to you individually that you're able to really quickly incorporate into your 30-second elevator pitch? So is it the philosophy? Is it the history? Is it the mission and vision that you see? Or is it the programs and services that you're currently providing and that the faculty and students are seeing? So I think these are things to consider in building your case and what's personally relevant to you. Again, we're individuals, right? My way of fundraising is going to be different than the person sitting at the desk next to me. The way that we approach donors and the way that we converse with them is very different. So how does your case tell a story? I hope I sounded pretty self-confident in talking about how NTU builds its case. I think the challenge is most of us work within a very decentralized university system, but we come from a centralized development office. So how does that lend itself to creating different case statements for the different colleges and units that you support? So again, it's taking it and making it personal. What sings to you? What makes sense to you as you're talking to your donors and your prospects? I think that's one key that all successful fundraisers have. They've found something, they've found a storyline that they can latch onto and make their own. So I challenge you to really look through and write down, honestly, two or three paragraphs about what your personal reason to support the university where you are now, the college or the school where you are now. What is it that sings to you about why this place is important and deserves support? All right, let's talk about the actual way that we do philanthropy. So I think this is where we're going to talk about some acronyms and we're going to talk a little in the weeds about what the actual work is that we do as fundraisers. So I was lucky. I started as an alumni relations professional very early in my career. I quickly went into annual giving and then major gifts and worked my way into a campaign. So I think those are all steps in a career that gives you kind of a broad-based understanding of what all these different vehicles are. And so let's talk a little bit about annual giving itself. So annual giving is your broad-based appeal for a mission and vision for a particular thing. It could be bursaries. For us at NTU, that's our number one need. Getting undergraduate students through NTU without a huge financial burden is our number one reason for support. So through our annual giving program, which I'll share some of our highlights, is actually how we interact with our 11,000-plus donors who are alumni almost every year. So the vast majority of them give between $50 and $1,000 in terms of a gift. And we work with them through EDM, so electronic direct mail, through actual postage pieces, so actual physical mail. We also have a very successful phone-a-thon that we work with 60-plus student volunteers, but they're actually paid, who actually call alumni and call donors to say thank you and to ask for gifts. Again, what are pieces of the annual giving puzzle that work for your institution? Annual giving is either the top of the funnel or the bottom of the pyramid. So I think you'll probably hear both ways of describing philanthropy during the course of these modules, and I like to think of it as a funnel. So our annual giving are the folks who are putting the stuff into the funnel. Our annual giving team are the ones who do our graduation giving, they're the ones who do our alumni giving, they're the ones who do our faculty and staff giving. They're feeding the funnel. They're getting people into the funnel who are donors, who then filter through the rest of these vehicles. So your top layer of your filter is always going to be your annual giving donors. The second layer is going to be your leadership giving and then your major gifts. Major gifts really are dependent on each institution's definition of what a major gift is. So I've worked at institutions where a major gift was $10,000, I've also worked at institutions where a major gift was $250,000. At NTU, our definition of a major gift is a $100,000 thing. So we have pegged that because when we looked at, again, knowing your demographics, understanding who your donors are, that really was a key line for us. So it showed us who the folks were below that $100,000 line, which donors were above that $100,000 line. Getting donors to cross that $100,000 line was seen as a really important metric. And so that's why we tagged $100,000 as our major gift figure. Let's talk a little bit about deferred gifts. So deferred gifts can be anything from planned gifts, so in an estate or an annuity. So these are all gift vehicles that usually require an attorney. So when somebody comes to you with a great suggestion to give you the retirement fund, it's usually not as simple as just signing a form because they always think it's just signing a form. What do you do with that form when you get it back? How do you start cultivating that person so that this isn't seen as one gift and done? So when somebody signs over their life insurance to you, how do you then create a stewardship plan for that donor so that they continue with their annual gifts so it's not a one and done? So deferred gifts, planned gifts, state gifts, those are all kinds of vehicles that you can think about and have more training in because they almost all require specialized knowledge. All of you who have grants in your bucket of what you're going to be in charge of are probably going to need, again, some specialized training. All grants are different. All grant programs are different. There are no grant programs that are the same, and there should be no grant applications that are the same. You might have the same mission statement that appears on different grants, but your actual appeal and your actual need statement on a grant application must be different. Really understanding where the organization is that you're applying to a grant, applying for a grant from, is incredibly important. They get a lot of copy and paste, and it's apparent. If you're in charge of grants for your organization or institution, please take that very seriously. Even if it's a $1,000 grant that you're appealing for, that needs to get the same amount of attention as a $10,000 or $100,000 grant. Okay. A well-balanced calendar. I think for large organizations, I've been in very, very large organizations, and I've been in very, very small organizations, i.e. me and one other person. So how do you create a calendar that really gives you the feeling that you're hitting all of the benchmarks? You're hitting all of the segments of your population? This is where planning comes in, and this is a great way for you to get all of those boxes checked. So make sure that as you're planning out your year or 18 months, whichever you decide, you look through what other folks are doing. You never know when you're going to hit on something that's like, oh yeah, I forgot. I need to do a plan giving appeal every single year. I need to do an XYZ appeal every single year. And you want to make sure that those are all incorporated in your calendar, so that, again, As you're building out your course of work, you're understanding where your segments are. Adequate budget is always an issue. I think there is no organization in the world that has the budget that they want, need, or plan for. So really understanding what your actual needs are and what your wish list is, is really, really important. Making sure you understand what your budget that you're in charge of or what budget you have access to is really, really important. All right. Qualitative, not quantitative measurement. I think this is, again, another issue that many of us in fundraising are trying to figure out how we can move past quantitative measurement and really look at a more holistic approach to fundraising and metrics, quite honestly, of fundraisers and particularly major gift fundraisers. So how much does it cost to raise a dollar in your organization? How much is each person in your development office worth? So these are all metrics that I do every year and that are actually presented to our board of trustees. And it's hard sometimes to look at those numbers because development is expensive. But how do you actually show that your fundraisers through whether or not they're 250 moves management every year or they're 200 prospect pool, how do you use those metrics to really show that the development office is making strides? So that it's not just the number of face-to-face visits, it's not just the number of proposals you've written or the money that you've raised, that this really is a holistic view of what fundraisers do and how we can actually be measured. All right, for those of us who do report to a board, I think it's incredibly important for you to have an individual, a personal relationship with your board members. So NTU, we've just gone through a board assignment. So basically we've assigned every single board of trustees member a fundraiser. So somebody who will work with them to cultivate their donors and their inner circle. These are opportunities that NTU had never really fully dived into before. And we're really looking at ways that we can increase that individual relationship with board members and philanthropy and make sure that they understand what your role is. And they might be hard to implement, but you should be taking steps to make those happen. Policies and procedures. I hope that most universities or institutions have guidelines or policy manuals for seeking gifts. This is a legally binding transaction. So please take this seriously. It's not just going out and asking for money and then putting it in the bank. We have a little bit more ethical responsibility than just that. So guidelines for seeking gifts, guidelines for accepting gifts, guidelines for acknowledging gifts and then guidelines for recognizing donors, i.e. stewardship. Make sure you have them. And if you don't, raise your hand and say, hey, why don't we have this? And you can find lots of examples of these on the case website too. All right. So using volunteers. So I talked a little bit about how NTU has really focused on our board and has assigned fundraisers to each of our board members. Working really closely with my alumni and development committee chair, I was lucky enough to travel with him and with three of our other board members to our China convocation earlier or late last year and really had the opportunity to spend some very close time with them. Building that personal relationship so that they understood who I was, what I was trying to do in building out our development team. So any chance you have to build that personal relationship with your board members or with your development committee in particular, take it. We have a very exciting program called BCP, our business and community partners program. Our BCP are around 150 SME, small and medium enterprises who employ around about a thousand people or less. And these corporate partners are really keen to understand and aspire with NTU as we build out capacity. So they want to be affiliated with a great global university, but they're also keen to understand the technology and some of the key engineering pieces that we're working on. So it's really been a great opportunity for us to go beyond just the big banks or the big marine companies or oil and gas to really get down to the people who are making things happen in Singapore. And I would encourage all of you to really look beyond your major donor segments. All right. So those of us who have worked for any significant amount of time with volunteers know and love job descriptions for volunteers. So we actually instituted this year a job description for our BCP president because we were actually transitioning to a new president, a new volunteer head of the program. So again, when you can use those opportunities of transition to really have a positive effect and bring in some job descriptions, it makes your job so much easier. So I would just let you know, again, CASE has lots of resources on working with volunteers, lots of job descriptions that are available, lots of policies and procedures and training that you can take your volunteers through. All right. I think we've kind of talked through most of these throughout the presentation, but as a fundraiser, when you're visiting a donor, you want to be able to pull out some stuff. And so what does that stuff usually mean? So for an annual giving person, it's a little bit different than those of us who are major gift officers. So you always want to make sure that your case statement or your strategic planning documents are something that are easily accessible, either on your iPad, something that's on your phone in a file that you can kind of flip through. Again, if you're in campaign or if you're running a campaign, making sure that you have brochures. Again, we have all longed for the days when we don't have to kill trees anymore. We're not there yet. People love to get stuff. We need to leave something behind when we go and visit. And that should be a campaign brochure. It should be an appeal letter. It should be a thank you note from a student. Whatever it is, you should always leave something behind with your folks when you visit. So about pre-testing your brochure and letter copy, making sure that you don't go with one straight ask because what makes sense to you might not make sense to people in other segments in your community. So making sure that you're being as open as possible and having as many eyeballs on a particular brochure or letter copy as possible is really going to help you in the long run. All right. And then obviously good business practice to make sure you get bids. Raising the money. So how do we actually raise the money? So again, we talked about the calendar. We talked about getting your case statement, understanding what the personal appeal has to be and what you bring to this as an individual. You actually got to start making the appointments. You need to start sending the letters. You need to really make sure that this isn't just something that's on paper. You spent time working through it. You spent time talking to people. You spent time building the story. Now get down to the work of it, whether it's 60 days, 90 days, six months. Take the time to be able to get your plan together, to be able to get your story together so that you're able to be successful. So make sure that you're not wedded to your calendar, that it really is just a guide. So adjust as necessary. As somebody who's been doing this for 20 plus years, enjoy your job. Make sure you enjoy what you're doing. Make sure you enjoy the stories you're telling. If you don't enjoy the stories, make up new ones, go out and talk to other folks. So let's walk into some of the examples from NTU. So I'm lucky. I have a very engaged annual giving team. So these are four samples or examples from the last six months of work that we did for different populations. So this is across our faculty and staff. This is across our alumni giving and our graduation giving program. You'll notice that these all look relatively similar. So we do have a template. I would tell you that almost all successful university development offices have a look to their appeals. So it gives that legitimacy so that when your alumni or your faculty member opens up the email, they know, oh, yeah, this is a legit appeal. So again, making sure that when you're piggybacking on an email or when you're piggybacking on a print piece, they look the same, maybe not identical, but very, very similar. So people know, hey, yeah, I got that email. Well, yeah, and here it is in the mail. So the other thing I wanted to share with you are just some of the ways that we look at the success factors for annual giving. And that's the chart here on the bottom of this page. For alumni giving, which is our biggest metric for the annual giving team, we are very, very lucky to have 6.71% from a base of around 150,000 contactable alumni. From 150,000, we're batting pretty well at 6.71%. That puts us in about the top 1% or 2% of all universities in the world for alumni giving statistics. Obviously, COVID is definitely narrowing down our appeal cycle, but I'm pleased to say we're at almost 2% already this year, which is pretty exciting compared to 1.3% last year. So again, I think understanding where you are, even if you're a major gift officer, being able to tell this story to major gift donors is incredibly important. The second line here is about total alumni donors, and alumni donors is a portion of our total donor population. Close to 70% of our donors were alumni. To date, about 57-58% of our total donor population is alumni. So I think this is driven by the success of our faculty and staff giving. So we made a big push last year to get most of our faculty and staff on recurring gifts, and it was successful. With EDMs, we do roadshows, we do pop-up events. We do a huge faculty and staff kickoff event. So the last thing that I wanted to touch on on this page was our graduation giving program. For most institutions, whether you're a secondary school or a university or a college, those students who are matriculating, they're finishing, that's our graduation giving program. So we have between 5,000 to 7,000 graduates every year at NTU. We do appeals to them from the very first day that they walk on campus as a senior. So as a final year student, they get an appeal from us that first week. So we are diligent in creating a connection with them in that final year so that they understand that those who came before them have built the university and that we are building a culture of philanthropy together with them. The median gift was actually $5.60. So it doesn't sound like a big gift, but it's all about participation. It's all about building that culture of philanthropy. Now look at your retention rates. For those of us who have successful graduation giving programs, what's your retention rate year on year? What does that mean when you're a brand new baby alumnus? What are the things that are going to get you to make a gift back to help your juniors? So this has been a big conversation for us at NTU this year, and it will continue. So here are some ways that we do short descriptions about gifts. These are descriptors that are found on our website. These are also descriptors that we push out through social media. Making sure that you have these ready to go before you sign the gift agreement is incredibly important. You want to make sure that all of your back-end work is done before you sign the gift agreement so that when that is signed, when that is essentially banked, you're ready to hit out with social media, you're ready to hit with the stories. So we work very, very closely with our central comms team to make sure that our stories, as philanthropic stories at NTU, get the same amount of coverage as our research stories do. And then we have just two more. So again, making sure that you understand foundation support versus alumni support for bursaries for students or for programs. All right. This shows kind of year-on-year growth for our BCP program. And this is our outgoing president, Simon Lee, with our outgoing president on the left. And then this is actually one of our members of parliament on the right and our chairman of our board of trustees. The guy in the orange shirt and his wife next to him, they were our biggest donors to the BCP program in 2019. So we implemented event-based fundraising. For some segments of your population, it really, really works. And for our BCP program, it really, really works. All right. Think about the summary of what we've talked about through the course of this presentation. There are a lot of different ways that you can raise money. What are the ways that make sense for you as an individual? What are the ways that make sense for you as an institution? And how do you best present your story within those different vehicles? So I think that's what I really wanted to leave you with, is to make sure this is as individual as you can get it. So what makes sense for you, what makes sense for your institution? All right. And then use as many as you can. Your Facebook, your LinkedIn, your WeChat, WhatsApp, TikTok, and print is not dead. So those of you who have newsletters, those of you who do print appeals, so do not rule anything out until you beta test it, you A-B test it, and use as many vehicles as it makes sense for you to use for your institution. So I am happy for you to find me on Twitter, on LinkedIn. Definitely connect with me. I'm happy to answer any questions.

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