The Napa Group and Plus Delta Partners
announce strategic alliance
Professional Advancement Development (PAD), the first program of its kind, leverages The Napa Group’s experience in institutional advancement and fundraising and Plus Delta Partners’ results-oriented approach to organizational growth and personal achievement. It incorporates successful techniques from the private sector into a unique professional development program for university fundraisers that increases yields, reduces costs, and shortens gift solicitation cycle times.Unlike traditional fundraising methods, PAD engages participants in thought-provoking skill-building exercises drawn from real-world scenarios and then expands their capacity to use these new skills consistently to generate measurable results.
The program’s central theme -- that advancement organizations will benefit from fundraisers focusing their efforts on the right tasks with the right donors -- is pervasive throughout the training. Through individual coaching and a series of classroom sessions and experiential exercises customized to each organization’s fundraising practices, participants learn to more efficiently discover, qualify, cultivate, and solicit. PAD’s disciplined approach equips fundraisers with the knowledge and the tools to effectively spend more time with the right prospects executing a strategic approach to solicitation.
Overview
PAD is a structured approach directed at three core measurable outcomes -- increased yields, reduced costs, and shorter gift solicitation cycle times. When mapped to the institution’s unique practices and efforts, PAD ensures fundraising outcomes that are highly focused on agreed-upon objectives and targets.
The program is not a quick-fix, one-time training, or “silver bullet” for overnight success. Nor is it merely a motivational, “feel-good” seminar. Instead, we partner with our clients to develop and enable their professionals with the following critical foundational tools:
- Personal and professional awareness – How our own beliefs, assumptions, predispositions, and expectations drive our behavior.
- Reliable, scalable process – A customized step-by-step framework to consistently manage prospects and donors efficiently and effectively.
- Greater qualification skills – Understanding and gaining practical experience with the thinking, language, and process activities involved in screening prospects and dealing with lingering gifts.
- Consistency in messages – including a “30-second commercial” to use in prospect and donor interactions and a vocabulary to manage interactions most successfully.
PAD not only drives fundraisers to work on more focused tasks with the right donors, but also to close more gifts sooner. Individuals completing the program can expect positive results within 90 days and sustainable results within 180 days.
Workshops
Participants will step through a series of modules in a small group setting – Foundation Building, Advancement Process and Discipline, and Strategic Fundraising. Each module reinforces and builds upon the previous one. Guiding principles include reinforcement, role playing, practical application, and real-time support. This process ensures that the concepts and tools demonstrated in workshops are applied in a real-world context.
Coaching
Building on the workshop interactions, individual coaching is provided throughout the engagement in the skills of self-awareness, mental discipline, and definition of and adherence to process. This coaching surrounds and compliments the individual work plans and objectives that are driven by the institutional advancement strategies and fundraising goals. Our focus is on performance.
Strategic themes
- Focus on mental discipline and awareness vs. simply taking action
- Connect bottom-line results to self-awareness and interpersonal communication
- Clearly understand, believe in, and effectively communicate the institution’s unique value to prospects and donors
- Implement a simple and flexible process to solicit prospect and donor motives and links to longer term engagement
Related Article
Is there a cost of doing nothing?
Part of our up-front process with every client is to ensure that engaging in the Professional Advancement Development (PAD) program produces meaningful and measurable results. Our premise is that there is a cost to doing nothing. When determining the potential value of implementing a PAD program, we evaluate two areas: Resource Costs and Foregone Gifts. The following illustrations provide the basic framework and a sample format for the front-end assessment and analysis that occur with each client prior to launching the PAD modules.Resource Costs – These are operating costs (salaries and benefits) calculated based on a Director of Development’s (DoD) time spent working on the wrong tasks with the wrong prospects.
Assumptions:
1. DoDs spend 7.5hours a week (90 minutes per day, ~20% 0f their time) on the wrong tasks:
- Calling inappropriate prospects or waiting for a return call or email
- Maintaining regular contact with prospects who lack the appropriate capability or inclination
- Submitting “compliant” (but generic) requests/proposals with the wrong focus
- Scheduling meetings and planning travel without first qualifying prospects appropriately
- Allowing gifts to linger, waiting and hoping
- Courting prospects with no clear next step in mind to move them along
a. Assuming an average DoD salary of $85,000/yr and adding in a typical loaded cost for benefits of 40% (this will vary by institution, seniority, and role) make the annual loaded cost of that DoD ($85,000x1.4) = $120,000/yr.
b. $120,000 divided by 2,080 working hours per year = $60 per hour.
b. $120,000 divided by 2,080 working hours per year = $60 per hour.
3. DoD staff of 10 professionals
The operating cost of “wasted” time needs to be calculated and factored into any assessment of individual and group effectiveness:
7.5 hrs/wk x $60/hr = $450/wk, $1800/month, $21,000/yr per DoD.
Thus, the annual cost of misspent time in salaries, wages and benefits (OR potential savings gained) across a team of this size = $210,000/yr
Foregone Gifts – These are gifts that can be closed if DoDs are focused on the right things, execute their process rigorously and consistently, and avoid getting caught up in their own assumptions and expectations. Gift aspects that can be affected include the average size per gift and the number of gifts closed in a given period of time.
Assumptions:
1. DoDs will have different average gift sizes depending on their focus, the institution’s goals, and its strategic plan.
2. The target is 25% improvement in gift size and the number of gifts by type.
3. The average number of gifts by type based on sample data from mid-size higher educational institution:
| DoD Focus | Average Gift | Average # of gifts closed/yr | Annual gift totals | % Improve- ment | Potential Effect | Incremental Financial Impact |
| Annual | $40 | 9,000 | $360,000 | 25% | Average gift increases to $50 and # of gifts increases to 11,250 | $202,500 |
| Major | $12,500 | 35 | $450,000 | 25% | Average gift increases to $15,500 and # of gifts increases to 44 | $230,000 |
| Principal | $1,750,000 | 6 | $10 million | 25% | Average gift increases to $2,200,000 and # of gifts increases to 8 | $7.6 million |
| Corporation & Foundation | $500,000 | 6 | $3 million | 25% | Average gift increases to $625,000 and # of gifts increases to 8 | $2 million |
Thus, the potential annual benefit from increased yield based on these assumptions is $10 million.
1. Potential annual savings $210,000
2. Potential additional annual yield $10,000,000
Total potential annual benefit: $10,210,000
If we focus on the impact of a 20%-25% improvement in individual and overall group performance, we can affect significantly higher yields and greater effectiveness. Doing nothing clearly has a cost.
Guy Hart, Plus Delta Partners, and RJ Valentino, The Napa Group
March 2006
