An Interview with Mike Prentice - Transcript

What are your thoughts about fundraising today?

Well, as somebody who came to Artez with a previous life as a fundraiser I worked for about 8 years doing fundraising, business development, corporate partnerships for non-profit organizations, so the whole idea of fundraising and trends in fundraising and what's happening in fundraising is something that is close to me and interesting to me. The thing about fundraising is I think now there are some really exciting and new and diverse ways for fundraisers to get involved and to get new donors and to engage their existing donors. So the idea of all these concepts of online tools and social networking applications and the idea of building communities online is really exciting and really powerful for fundraisers and is something that everyone should be taking advantage of. The thing about engaging people online is that traditional fundraising I think says to the donor here's how we want you to get involved and when, and it is like here is our annual campaign, we want you to send a cheque on this date or we want you to get involved in our walkathon, which is all great and it works, but it's once or twice or three or four times a year asking donors to get involved in a specific way. And the thing about online fundraising, specifically peer-to-peer fundraising, is that you essentially extend the parameters of how donors can get involved and when they can get involved. So, the how they can get involved is kind of any way they want and the when is kind of any time they want through the course of the year, so it is not just about saying "we're going to call you in the spring to get involved in our walkathon," it's about saying "get online, create a personal fundraising page, start engaging your friends and family and colleagues to support this charity or cause you really believe in." The whole idea about creating those communities and allowing people to get involved in ways they want to get involved as opposed to you always telling them how they have to be involved is really exciting and very powerful stuff.

How has your perception changed since you joined Artez?      

Well, I have worked as a fundraiser for a number of organizations; most of my background is international development organizations, human rights organizations and youth engagement with some fundraising in these types of organizations. Since coming to work at Artez, I have gained a completely new experience and sense of what works and what doesn't, and how fundraising operates with a diversity of clients and organizations that work with Artez, which is very new to me. So, clients vary at Artez and are as wide-ranging as the huge organization that is doing its 15^th annual national walkathon that raises $3 million down to organizations we work with that are a 2 person operation raising $25,000 as their first crack out of the gate and everything in between. This has been a real learning experience for me, to see that there are so many different issues that organizations deal with when it comes to fundraising but at the same time they are all kind of dealing with the same issues and the same barriers and the same hurdles they have to get over. And that's what we try to do here, we try to draw out those lessons and try to draw that knowledge and best practices and lessons learned from so many different types of organizations and integrate that into the knowledgebase inside of Artez. We feel that it is our job to not only work with clients individually to achieve their fundraising goals but also to bring all these lessons and all this knowledge and information together so that we can then disseminate it out to all of our clients and just to the sector in general. And what's fairly new to me is that I have worked with Canadian organizations and Artez is becoming very international, so now we're working with organizations in the UK, Australia, US, and of course a number in Canada, and again taking all those best practices, and everyone does things in a little bit of a different way but also kind of the same too, and putting that all together and pushing it back out to our clients. What our knowledgebase and solution is really based on, because of this diverse experience, is not we assume is happening in the charitable sector but we see and experience is in fact happening in the charitable sector and adapting that as it evolves as well.

What trend(s) do you see emerging in fundraising?

Something that I've noticed as a recent trend in fundraising is that there are a lot of organizations that I'm talking to on the phone, whether they're clients or non-clients,that are really focusing on trying to engage younger donors and diversify their donor base, which is really important and very smart. What I find is that, I think it is smart and wise for organizations to be thinking that way but for them to get there is often a bit of a leap of faith, and I'll explain what that means. When I talk to organizations, a lot of them will say when we're talking about online fundraising and diversifying what they do is that their concern or what they're reluctant about is the fact that a lot of their donors are older, they don't have computers, they're not online, which is completely legitimate and justifiable, and then in the same conversation they'll say but we're also trying to attract younger donors and we want to diversify who our donors are and our donor base. So, it turns into a chicken or the egg discussion because which comes first, the options are do you kind of sit back and do what you have always traditionally done and hope that new, younger donors will come to you and once they come to you then you go online and then start giving them the tools that they tend to want in order to engage with you organization is option 1 or option 2 is do you proactively provide the tools first and provide those engagement strategies that younger donors tend to gravitate towards, establish that first and then those people will come to you. And I will say that 99 or 100% of the cases the better option is the latter, which is that instead of waiting for the donors to come to you before you take action on how you should adjust your fundraising strategy is to adjust it first. Decide who are the donors you want, what kind of donors you want to engage and then by providing with them with the tools that they need to become engaged and a little bit of smart marketing you can attract those donors, diversify your funding base and I can't think of any organization that doesn't want to do that.