“Here's why we can't Fundraise at our International School”
A collection of Frequently Used Excuses.
Several years ago, I began keeping track of what I call, “FUE” (pronounced, “Phooey”… how catchy): Frequently Used Excuses, or reasons that some international schools use to not fundraise.
As I wrote in this post, I know that not all international schools can become Fundraising schools. However, for those schools that could be fundraising but aren’t, I present to you the FUEs that I have heard over the years that hold the schools back, and my responses to these excuses.
Only Americans give. Our school is mostly not American, therefore fundraising won’t work here.
Americans have a well deserved reputation for being philanthropic, but they’re certainly not alone in giving. More to the point, Americans don’t spring from the womb predisposed to give their money away; it’s simply a matter of culture, of education. When you hear Advancement people talking about, “creating a culture of philanthropy,” that’s what we mean: by the time someone joins our community, we want them to be fully aware that we are a Fundraising school that expects all our community members to give to the best of their ability, and to be excited by the idea of supporting the mission of the school. People adapt to the culture around them, and that culture starts at the top. If those closest to the school (its Trustees) demonstrate through action and words that our aspirations are worth supporting financially, then others will follow their lead. If some school leaders don’t give, then that tells the community that that is an acceptable option. For what it’s worth, my experience has shown that the highest percentage of donors of any demographic is the local, long-term population, regardless of their nationality.
We’re already “wealthy”... there are other charities more deserving of support.
If a strange law appeared that limited us to only supporting one charitable organization, then we would have to have the debate about which charity is most deserving (a debate where I think I could still make a rather persuasive argument for supporting our school).
Happily, however, giving to one charity does not preclude giving to another. What this excuse really is trying to say is, “I understand why we would like to have more money, but I don’t yet see why anyone would donate to our school.” In other words, the Case for Support has not been clearly established. Until we have understood not only that we need money, but why our mission is worth supporting, it will be a simple task for potential donors to find other charities more deserving of their support.
How can we ask for money when we’re already asking them to pay so much?
This excuse presupposes that current parents are the only potential donors, which is not the case. But even if we go along with this scenario, readers of my other posts will already know the answer to this FUE: the amount we expect to raise from our community for our Annual Fund is predicted, just like income from tuition and summer programs (and interest from our Endowment, if we have one). Based on that prediction, we make a budget to provide the best education we can provide, reaching for every possible aspiration. So, tuition alone does not cover the cost of education… it’s the generosity of our past and current community that makes up the difference. To those who then ask why we don’t just charge what it costs, our answer is that while we believe that we could charge more for the education we provide, we know that some current families are already making sacrifices to send their child to our school. If we raise tuition in order to become an elite institution, we are also likely to become an elitist institution… and there is a world of difference between those two words. When everyone gives to the best of their ability, we become the school that we want it to be.
It costs money to fundraise; money we should use to hire more teachers.
This is a particularly pervasive argument when a school is in the process of launching an Advancement program, when a case can perhaps be made that it’s not yet “paying for itself.” Even if an Advancement program is well established and raising significant funds, it may be tempting for people to ponder the possibilities of other things we could do if we could just downsize that Advancement Office a little bit. However, if we decide to not launch an Advancement program, starve it of resources, or remove resources, all for the sake of appeasing those who are (understandably) crying out for more student-facing support, we are sacrificing the future for the present; it is a “here and now” argument that we should expect from certain quarters, and one that can be easily defended by those who are tasked with ensuring the future of the school.
We tried it before and it didn’t work. Or, I know other international schools that have tried and failed to start a fundraising program.
I think we’re all aware of international schools whose fundraising program didn’t launch, or lost steam and faded away. But without knowing the details, it’s difficult to say whether it was ever possible for those schools to become Fundraising schools. The truth is, to become a Fundraising school is not easy. Numerous planets must align: having a competent Advancement Director and a passionate, involved Board is an excellent start, but launching a fundraising program requires change management, where administrators, teachers, parents, students, and alumni are asked to do things differently than they have in the past. Just because a fundraising program failed in the past, or failed at a peer school, does not mean that the potential to succeed isn’t there when managed correctly.
There are other ways for us to raise money (summer programs, facility rental, debentures, etc).
This is very true, and schools should definitely examine how to maximize their net income. However, these other ideas also have their investment costs, and no matter how well they perform, there is a maximum revenue that can be achieved. Fundraising is the only revenue source with literally unlimited potential. So while we should absolutely consider other revenue options, doing so is not an excuse for avoiding fundraising.
Donors only give once; after that, you have to find new donors.
I was surprised by this FUE when I first heard it; it can be refuted with hard data. Donor retention varies by cause, but the average retention rate for first time donors to any charity is about 19%, while the retention rate for those who give twice increases to over 60%. The retention rate at my international school is over 70%. This does, however, remind me of a somewhat related story I heard regarding one international school that had a growing Fundraising program: they had a donor leave them an unexpected gift of millions of US$. I’m not exactly sure what the thinking was behind their next actions, but rather than this event launching the fundraising program into a future of unbridled growth, the school stopped fundraising. Maybe they thought they were done. Maybe, given that it was an “unexpected” gift, they just figured they didn’t need an Advancement program to attract major gifts.
Asking for money is distasteful.
Not that everyone has to ask (although, the Six R’s!), but this last FUE is, I think, really at the heart of all the other FUEs. It’s the root cause of the inability of most schools to launch a Fundraising program (or, if they do fundraise, why it ends up being transactional in nature). Asking for money is distasteful if you yourself aren’t passionate about the Case for Support. Because for me, when I am passionate about it, and I can see that someone shares my passion, my feeling is that I am just showing the donor how to do something that they want to do, and they just don’t know how. I’ve had many people say, “I could never ask someone to donate money.” I ask them to tell me about something that they do (or would) financially support, and why they’re so passionate about it. Being able to tell that story is everything; when you’re able to speak clearly and passionately about a cause in which you believe, asking someone to join you is the easiest part of fundraising. Make sure that your Case for Support is something that inspires you, and you will be able to inspire others.
I think some of these are also self-fulfilling prophesies, if we keep saying “international” families won’t give, guess what, our actions will reflect that and sure enough, they won’t!