Fund Raising Day in New York

This year, like last June, I attended the Fund Raising Day in New York conference at the Marriott Marquis hotel. Like last year, I volunteered at the conference, which enabled me to attend for free. Thursday night I attended the volunteer orientation and cocktail party, and on Friday morning I arrived at the conference a few minutes after 7:30 AM.

Over a tasty continental breakfast, I chatted with a young man who'd come down from Toronto to attend the conference. He told me that he works as a consultant, writing grants and creating videos for nonprofit organizations.

I wasn't on duty until the second lecture, so I walked through the exhibit hall for a while, evoking nervous jokes from men who read my "Room Monitor" volunteer's ribbon. I assured them I would not report them to the principal! Then I was free to attend the first lecture of my choice, so I went to a panel discussion on major gifts.

After that there was some time to check out the exhibit hall, score some candy, and get literature from the exhibitors. The first workshop was so well attended that hotel employees had to come take down the air walls, so that the overflow crowd could sit in the hall. The topic was "Connecting with Your Donors," and the two speakers were Thaler Pekar of Thaler Pekar and Associates, and Barbara Becker of StoryCorps. They both spoke about the importance of finding stories that evoke vivid images in donor's minds, and touching their hearts as they view and hear from people whose lives are improved by the organization.

I counted at least 70 attendees at this workshop. It was hard to tell how many people were sitting out in the hall, but one thing was clear: this was a topic many fundraisers were anxious to hear about.

There was a short break before lunchtime, but I had a phone call from Jason. He wanted to go on a sleepover but had very little money left, so I arranged for him to meet me at the conference at 3:30 and then proceeded to lunch.

Lunch was elegant, a small salad, mozzarella slices and tomato, and tuna. There were tiny confections for dessert, iced tea, and coffee. However, this year I preferred to return to the exhibit hall and chat with the exhibitors while the hall was relatively quiet. So I missed the keynote speech.

One of the printing companies had a handwriting expert on hand to amuse the attendees, and I had a somewhat rushed session with her because I had to get back to my post for the 2 PM workshop. She was right on the money about me, telling me I am unconventional and don't much care what people think, I know I can do the job. She said I am creative also and that I put my creativity into an organization. There was also something she said that was a bit eerie, because she told me I had a negative experience at a certain age, and she was absolutely right. She said it was a "shot in the dark" but I don't believe in coincidences. She certainly brings a high level of intuition to her handwriting analysis.

The second workshop I worked at was on the topic of Branding, and it was run by a woman named Bonnie McEwan from Make Waves Not Noise. Ms. McEwan gave us a few eye-opening facts about nonprofit organizations. For instance, last year over 64,000 new organizations registered as nonprofits. They're all competing for the same donor dollars, and competition is not conducive to social change.

She also pointed out some of the specific challenges that nonprofits face in branding themselves, and suggested that one way to avoid competition is for nonprofit organizations with similar goals to form coalitions and collaborate with each other, sharing a common brand and sharing in the monies raised. She quoted John Nash, whose life was the subject of the movie, "A Beautiful Life." His paradigm was, "All players benefit if information is open to all and mixed strategies are used."

Not only do organizations that collaborate in coalition with others gain more resources, they make more progress toward their common goals.

After a half hour break, during which I met Jason and supplied him with some spending money, and went to the raffle drawing where I didn't win any prizes, I attended the last lecture of the day. This time I chose the career track and attended a panel discussion on interviewing. The panelists were a human resources manager and a high-level recruiter. They had some good suggestions on interviewing and dealing with sticky questions.

One woman told some of her "war stories" about terrible interviewers she has met, and afterwards I approached her and told her I wanted to write an article on "Interviews from Hell." She agreed to be interviewed, so I will be writing up and sending out queries for this article.

I enjoyed the day and always gain a new perspective on the fund raising profession by attending this conference. For anyone in the field or considering entering the field, I recommend it highly.