Fundraising Update

Welcome to Fundraising Update. This week, a San Francisco couple urges other donors to give more now. Plus, how nonprofits weigh ethical concerns about Facebook against the practical need to reach donors and audiences where they are.

I’m Eden Stiffman, senior editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. If you have ideas, comments, or questions about this newsletter, please write me.

Fundraising Update will take a break the last two weeks of the year. We’ll publish our list of the top donors of the year at the end of December and will continue to update our website with any breaking news over the holidays. Wishing you all the best in your last weeks of year-end fundraising. And here’s to a brighter New Year. See you in 2022!

‘You Learn by Giving’

San Francisco philanthropists Jennifer and David Risher have contributed about $14 million to charity in their two decades of giving. The couple support education in underserved places, racial-justice groups, climate and environmental efforts, and reproductive health care, among other causes.

If their names sound familiar, it may be because of a challenge they launched early in the pandemic to encourage donor-advised fund holders to distribute more of their assets more quickly.

Courtesy of Jennifer and David Risher

In May 2020, moved by the suffering caused by the pandemic, the Rishers publicly offered to give $1 million to other donors’ favorite charities if those donors promised to give at least half of the money sitting in their DAFs to charity by September 30 of that year. They called it the #HalfMyDAF challenge.

The response was swift. By October 2020, about 50 people had given a total of $8.6 million to 753 nonprofits, with the Rishers kicking in $1 million of that in matching gifts through their own DAF, and tracking the grants online so the public could see where the money went. That success prompted the couple to issue another challenge to donors with DAF accounts this year.

My colleague Maria Di Mento profiled the couple and explored what motivates their giving in our latest issue.

As the couple grew more confident in their giving, they developed the philanthropic philosophy that the best time for wealthy people to give is as soon as possible.

“A lot of people think that philanthropy is something they are going to do later,” Jennifer says. “They’re in their 30s or 40s, and they think philanthropy is for old people, but as we’ve experienced, you learn by giving. So our message to people who say they’re too busy is it doesn’t take that much. Give $5,000 to an organization you care about — and do it now.”

In their conversation with Maria, the couple shared their tips for how fundraisers can build lasting relationships with big donors.

They mentioned a nonprofit leader who once asked them for a gift. He was struggling to find a compelling story about how the group’s work helped people. He kept telling the Rishers, whom he had known for years, how hard it was to raise money.

They made a donation but attached a stipulation: The director needed to come up with a simpler message and a clear story to tell donors.“ He was making it so complicated and getting in his own way, and we’re like, ‘Dude, simplify,’” David Risher says. “Get to the point so we can say yes or no.”

Fundraisers need to keep that advice top of mind when asking donors for money, the Rishers say,: Clarify your message.

Among their other suggestions: Be straightforward when approaching a donor for a gift, David Risher says. Explain what your organization needs and how you think the donor can help.

Donors want to be treated like something other than an ATM machine, Jennifer Risher says. “I don’t have a problem saying no to people, but I much prefer to say yes. When people approach me like a human being, that’s when I step forward.”

Donors want to do good in the world, so fundraisers should think of them as partners in doing good together, Jennifer says. “When fundraisers approach donors with the idea that they’re going to help the donor do what the donor wants to do, that’s what works.”

Read the full story to learn more about the Rishers and their giving.

Nonprofits Weigh Ethical Concerns About Facebook

The Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” series detailed repeated incidents in which the social-media company’s researchers and leaders identified the platform’s ill effects — such as Instagram’s negative impact on teen mental health and a Facebook algorithm change that elevated divisive and false content — but didn’t take meaningful steps to fix them.

In the months since, mission-oriented organizations are once again weighing ethical concerns against the practical need to engage their audiences on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which are both owned by the parent company recently rebranded as Meta.

With its unparalleled reach of more than 2.89 billion active users, Facebook remains the most popular social-media platform for nonprofits. Some groups bring in a lot of money on the platform, while others say the company’s products are vital tools to reach and organize supporters. The latest scandal hasn’t led charities to leave all that behind.

In early October, officials at the Latino civil-rights advocacy group UnidosUS announced they would sever ties with Facebook.

This meant that the organization, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza, returned or refused $277,272 in grants from the social-media behemoth’s corporate office. UnidosUS was already aware of the harms Latinos face as a result of the platform’s policies and products, says Claudia Ruiz, a civil-rights analyst at the nonprofit, but the revelations from Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower, were the “line in the sand.”

“It really underscored the level of impunity with which the platform and, frankly, its leadership is willing to go in terms of prioritizing growth and their bottom line over the well-being, safety, and health of its users,” Ruiz told me.

But UnidosUS isn’t pulling back from Meta’s platforms entirely. After all, it still wants to be able to reach people where they are.

The organization wants to take on the proliferation of misinformation and hate on the platform, and officials recognize that Facebook is where a lot of people get their news, Ruiz says. “We really can’t address the onslaught of misinformation without also providing positive and accurate information as well.”

Read more about how other nonprofits are grappling with their criticisms the social-media giant.

Do You Give at Work?

As year-end approaches, many organizations ask employees to donate to the nonprofits that employ them. Does your group do this? What do you think of the practice? Do you give? Why or why not? Let me know, and we may share your thoughts and ideas in a future newsletter or article.

Opinion & Advice

• To Reach Donors of Color, Fundraisers Should Focus on Faith, Family, and Community: Attracting Latino and Black donors requires recognizing cultural giving patterns that differentiate them from most white donors. Nonprofits that take a thoughtful approach to this process have the chance to significantly expand their pool of donors.
• Many Global Charities Refrain From ‘Poverty Porn’ Imagery to Raise Money, but Stereotypes Still Distort Their Pictures: Charities often use photos that distort the everyday realities of the people in low-income countries they seek to help despite decades of pressure to stop doing that.
• How to Launch a Campaign When Everyone’s Launching a Campaign: Time the announcement right, consider new approaches to volunteer leadership, and more.

What We’re Reading

Last week the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would remove the Sackler name from some of its wings, creating distance between it and the family whose former drug company has been sued and prosecuted for fueling the opioid crisis.

Although other institutions have already taken down the Sackler name, the Met’s move is noteworthy because it is the largest museum in the world, and “institutions have been kind of watching the Met,” according to Patrick Radden Keefe, who wrote Empire of Pain, a book about the Sacklers and the opioid crisis. It’s also novel because it results from an agreement between the Sacklers and the institution, not a court order.

Dan Weiss, the museum’s chief executive, called the Sacklers’ cooperation “a gracious gesture.” The family’s name will remain over two exhibition spaces that are “associated with” the family of an early Sackler who died before the family’s Purdue Pharma produced the powerfully addictive OxyContin opioid. Arthur Sackler’s heirs sold their shares in the company after he died in 1987. (New York Times)

Talks between the Met’s leaders and representatives of the Sackler family have been ongoing for months. Behind the scenes, the museum was also under pressure from a constituency it could not ignore: artists.

Photographer Nan Goldin — whose advocacy group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now has sought to shame museums into ending any association with the Sackler name — sent a letter to the Met’s Board of Trustees. She was able to assemble a list of many of the most prominent living artists to sign on, urging the museum to shed the name. Artists Richard Serra, Kara Walker, and Ai Weiwei were among a group of more than 70 who quietly pressured the museum to end its association with the Sackler family. (New Yorker)

Plus, a columnist argues that museums should keep the Sackler name. “Just add a prominent plaque explaining exactly how the family earned the money it donated,” she writes. “Let everyone who sees the name leave with the realisation that greed is a hell of a drug.” (Guardian)