(Part One of the Sustainable Funding Message from Terry)

As I've been traveling a great deal over the last few months around the United States, Canada, and Europe, including the United Kingdom, I have been seeing glimmers of our real message about sustainable funding finally catching on. I see people beginning to realize there is more to what we have been saying and teaching than a new-fangled fundraising event that threatens to "saturate" their town, displacing the golf tournament or gala trend of the day.

In Madrid, one of the largest-ever gatherings of nonprofit leaders came together to hear our message. As a result, we are excited to be partnering with the top Spanish consulting firm to bring our sustainable funding program to Spain this year. In Toronto, Edmonton, and Calgary, we had national Canadian nonprofits attend our sessions in search of a long-term solution. In January, we held our first-ever Benevon 101 training in London and have launched a wonderful relationship with Amnesty International UK. And in a small room in Denver, I had two remarkable nonprofits come up and ask how soon they could join our Five-Year Sustainable Funding Program^™. Admittedly these are small indicators, but they are very telling to me.

The success of the groups in our Five-Year Program has been noteworthy. The final 2006 results are in: our groups raised over $80 million (in gifts and pledges) which they "attribute" to their use of the Benevon Model. Groups in our Five-Year Sustainable Funding Program raised three times more than our non-five-year groups. Those groups that completed their fifth year asked us how they could sign on for five more years! They see the return on their investment paying off even more so in the later years as they build their major gifts program and, for many, endowment. Our goal is for each group to attain their definition of sustainable funding. For most, simply stated, that means an endowment fund large enough to generate in income or interest enough money to cover their operating "gap" every year.

I feel that we are finally getting to do the work that our model is designed to do—the deeper work of building lifelong donors for each of our groups. More and more we get phone calls from people saying, "We bought the books, we've been trying this on our own, but we just aren't raising the kind of money you talk about. We think we are finally ready to come to one of your workshops."

People are realizing that this isn't a quick fix. It is about the longer-term transformation in the culture of an organization, and that isn't going to happen overnight. Nor is it going to happen through the valiant efforts of one expert fundraiser. It takes a team of passionate people and a systematic approach, customized to an organization and then implemented over time, gradually working its way into the fabric of the organization.

These accomplishments are very heartening to me. My time is now spent with our "Five-Year Groups" doing everything I can to ensure their success in attaining sustainable funding and learning from every success and every mistake so we can refine the process for groups that come next. One of the lessons learned, which should have been no surprise, is the power of the five-year commitment. Groups that join this program and let us coach them rigorously have made a huge investment, and there is no turning back.

As such, effective this year, we will accept groups into our Five-Year Program before they have even attended our two-day 101 Workshop and we will be encouraging new 101 teams to attend only if they have a serious interest in working with us long-term. If you are just looking for a quick fix or an alternative to the golf outing or candy sale, you shouldn't try this. It will be too confusing to people, and you run the risk of alienating good people who love your work. In other words, you shouldn't even embark on this approach unless you are seriously interested in long-term sustainable funding.

This year we will continue to offer our 101 and 201 programs to groups on a year-by-year basis. But after coming to our 201 Workshop, if organizations want to continue on with us, they will need to be a part of our Five-Year Program.

Thank you for your ongoing support for the real conversation we are committed to bringing forth in the world—the possibility of sustainable funding for any group that is willing to do the work to make it happen. Over the course of the next few issues of our E-New$, we will be shifting our focus to address this conversation head-on.

Read part two of the sustainable funding message from Terry:
Sustainable Funding for Your Mission

Read part three of the sustainable funding message from Terry:
Sustainability—It's Not About You