The Product Matters

October 21, 2011      Admin

I’m both an opera fan and a commentator on fundraising, so I eagerly read the NY Times article a week or so back on the spectacular recent fundraising success of NewYork’s Metropolitan Opera.

The headline flagged that the Met had raised $182 million in donations. This amount was fully 50% more than it had raised just the year before.

Now there’s a success story for you!

Unfortunately the article delivered no specifics into how the Met pulled this off. The only additional details were that about half the amount was in pledges, and that the contributions came from 49,100 donors.

Obviously the Met has one hell of a high-dollar fundraising program, benefiting from a proximate audience overflowing with wealth even in weak economic times.

By the way, the math works out to an average gift of $3,707. Eat your heart out! That means a heap of six and seven figure gifts.

The article did however convey some key background points.

First, the Met director, Peter Gelb, had embarked on a strategy based on spending money to make money. A risky call in view of the Met’s overall fiscal condition.

Second, that money went into improving the product and expanding its reach (via High Def theater distribution), implementing an ambitious vision.

Perhaps three fundraising insights here.

1. To grow revenue you do need to invest more … sometimes risky, but no way around that law of nature.

2. The quality of the product matters.

3. Vision matters … and big visions (credibly grounded) score the most points.

Tom

3 responses to “The Product Matters”

  1. Lorri Greif, CFRE says:
    October 21, 2011 at 10:01 am

    I’ll bet the largest gifts came from people and not corporations. Probably some big bequests thrown in that number as well. All still great fundraising!

  2. Tony Poderis says:
    October 23, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    Tom: You well cited 3 key points to fund-raising success. Allow me to amplify with my thoughts:

    1. We need to demonstrate constantly improving efficiency in areas of our operations. For a non-profit, being perceived as a lean, mean fighting machine is critical to optimizing the results of a fund-raising campaign. But budget cuts must not come at the expense of maintaining and improving service to the community and program quality. A non-profit that cuts back on the quality of its services, or does not spend money to install new and needed services, will diminish its fund-raising appeal.

    2. No matter what an organization’s good works, it must prove to those who support it the value of those works to the community and the efficiency with which the organization delivers them. The primary key to fund-raising success is to have a first-class organization in every sense. There are no entitlements in the nonprofit world.

    3. Big vision springs from fulfilled mission. We can only excite with our vision, when we are well carrying out our mission to its fullest so we can justify the cost of, and the commitment to, the new vision initiatives.

    Thanks for the opportunity.
    Tony Poderis

  3. Kathy Swayze says:
    October 23, 2011 at 10:49 pm

    Your “quality of the product matters” resonates. But how many fundraisers are stuck trying to put lipstick on a pig because the mission, focus and actions of their organization are muddled?

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