How to Avoid Donor Fatigue at International Schools
"I already gave to the school by buying a cookie at a bake sale."
It may sound surprising in a blog about fundraising, but I’m going to say that the purpose of this post is first and foremost to suggest that all non-profit international schools should have a modern, professional, Service Learning program. For many reasons, we have an obligation to ensure that our students are leaving our schools with the tools necessary to be able to effect change throughout their lives. But bear with me, because a secondary (but very important) side benefit to this is that we will also avoid burnout of the donor pool that should be financially supporting the school.
I have worked for a long time now at non-profit international schools where my colleagues, every day, are passionately engaged in improving the learning of our students. Schools that are tuition driven, and where over 75% of the operating budget goes towards salaries, are not only limited in their ability to achieve their aspirations (because aspirations cost money), but they’re also at the mercy of the vagaries of the economy: any downturn in tuition revenue means that their hard-gained improvements can disappear overnight. A primary way to avoid this scenario is to work towards an impregnable Endowment, built up over decades, through becoming a Fundraising School.
The role of the Advancement Director is to help us get there. To be succinct, we do this by helping to create the environment where potential donors can fulfill their wishes to help the school achieve its mission. Being a Fundraising school means that everyone (not just those with extreme wealth) is encouraged to support the school at a level that is meaningful to them. At schools that have not yet established an Alumni program, “everyone” refers mostly to current parents; we need to be very careful about how often, and how, they are being asked for money.
Quite often at our schools (at any school), Service Learning can be summed up as one community member (student, teacher, parent, or group thereof) collecting something (money, clothing, whatever) from other community members, and donating it to a cause. Or selling something (bake sale, anyone?) and giving the proceeds to a charity. One issue here is that the pool of donors is always the same group of people: captive teachers and parents. But the other, more important issue, is that our schools are meant to be institutions of learning; we talk about “authentic” learning, yet where in this scenario are we adding skills to the “Service” toolbox of these students that they will be able to utilize throughout their lives?
Now, let me take a step back and say that of course this is not Service Learning at all schools; more and more schools are establishing guidelines to ensure that Service Learning is meaningful and age appropriate. These schools have adopted a Service Learning framework (such as that proposed by Cathy Berger Kaye) that teaches students to take informed, purposeful action in four ways (preferably all four, not just one of the four!):
Direct Service: where students directly interact with their service partners in a reciprocal way to meet a clearly defined community need.
Indirect Service: where students do not directly see or interact with their service partners, however, their actions (including fundraising) have a positive impact and meet a clearly defined community need.
Advocacy: where students raise awareness and inspire others to advocate and take action for a cause directly connected to the needs of their service partner.
Research: where students perform research, interviews, information gathering and data collection to inform themselves and others about their service partner’s cause and community need.
You’ll notice that in #2, above, I mention fundraising as a form of Indirect Service. So, yes, fundraising is part of Service, but it should not be considered Service in and of itself. Even then, if we are serious about authentic learning, let’s ensure that students gain an understanding of how best to raise money. Assuming we’ve moved past me giving you $1 for a cookie that your parents gave you, and you’ve actually convinced me that I should be supporting this local animal shelter, what’s the best way for me to financially support the shelter? Certainly not by giving money directly to you: you can’t give me a tax deduction, or set me up with a monthly charge to my credit card. Maybe you could show me the website you created for the shelter that allows me to donate to them directly. Think about the learning that took place for the student to do that! Another learning opportunity is for the student to try to raise money not from parents but from people who have nothing to do with the school… what are the legalities of setting up an information table at the local train station for a few hours? How hard do I have to try to raise money from people who don’t know me, as opposed to those who are basically obligated to support me?
One final note on the importance of a having a real Service Learning program (before I get to the benefit of all this on fundraising for the school): in case this isn’t already a decided issue at your school, I don’t believe that the school’s infrastructure should be used to encourage cash donations to any external cause. By that, I mean that the school shouldn’t be using its database to send out community-wide appeals for cash donations to an external charity. Who is the arbiter of what’s worthy? But what if its an emergency, and members of the community are asking how they can donate? Well, it’s actually another opportunity for authentic learning for the students: we all know that in moments of emotional upheaval, fraudulent “charities” spring up. Now is a great time to teach students how to research which charity is best placed and qualified to provide help; the school can then send a list of those charities to the community with an explanation from the students about how they did their research, and how donors can directly support those charities.
You’ll notice that I emphasized cash donations above. Ongoing or emergency collections of unwanted clothing or household goods for an established service partner does not definitively add to donor fatigue, with one caveat: don’t let this turn into a sale of the collected goods (whose proceeds will be given to a charity), which is just a glorified bake sale.
OK, so I hope I’ve adequately established that even without other benefits, having a modern Service Learning program is the right thing to do for our schools. From a Fundraising School’s perspective, however, there is another important (if not key) benefit.
For those schools that allow everyone at any time to hold bake sales, put out collection jars, and otherwise directly collect cash for their favorite cause, donors do not distinguish between having supported the school and having supported something else: in their mind, that cookie they bought at the bake sale supported something to do with the school. The appeal to support the Annual Fund merges with the endless appeals to buy raffle tickets and whatever else for a cause that donors can’t even remember (if it was ever mentioned). This is donor fatigue. If you couple these appeals with the very real additional ongoing costs of sending your kid to the school (sports and academic trips, commemorative t-shirts and books, gifts for teachers and coaches, sports kit, etc), it all becomes one endless background noise of money being demanded at all times.
The imposition of clear guidelines for Service not only better ensures authentic learning in an important subject, it allows the school the opportunity to make its Case for Support without being drowned in a cacophony of competing requests for financial support.
This is a good thing, of course, because having a real Service Learning program means having a real Director of Service Learning: a professional who coordinates all of this and acts as an in-house consultant who helps teachers learn how to incorporate service into their subject.* Rather than looking at this as yet another FTE (which, yes, it is), let’s also look at it as yet another of those aspirations that differentiates our school from others, and another excellent reason why our community should support the Annual Fund.
*I’ve tried carefully in this blog to insist that the primary reason for instituting a modern Service Learning program is because it is a valuable part of a child’s education… not simply because it’ll make it easier for the school to raise money for its operations. This distinction is important: what I’m suggesting is very often a change in the current status quo, many people don’t like change, and even if the rationale is academically sound, the fact that the fundraising guy is suggesting it allows people (who haven’t yet grasped the importance of fundraising to the entire school… not just the Advancement Director) to dismiss it as somehow self-serving. These guidelines need to come from someone with the academic credibility to effect the change, and to manage and add value to the process.
Good food for thoughts