Huh? I hear you say. What sort of hippy-dippy mumbo-jumbo are we talking about here? 

Intentional fundraising is a phrase that we at Words that Count, a South African fundraising consultancy, have coined to describe a new approach to corporate funding.

For many years, the South African non-profit sector has benefited from a legislated imperative for companies to support organisations with a charitable or developmental mission. And during this time, the legislation has begun to change, steadily becoming more focused on projects that enable work-readiness, job creation and entrepreneurship. While being of great benefit to some, many non-profits have been largely left out in the cold by these most recent and dramatic changes, which were announced in May 2015.

We knew that we had to do things differently if Words that Count, and the organisations we serve, were to evolve and continue to meet our clients’ funding needs. So we started to explore ways to do things differently. It is important to explain that past non-profit/corporate relationships were, in the main, seen as ‘hands-off’. We communicated primarily by email (and sometimes even by post) and provided we reported regularly and transparently, our organisations continued to receive funding with little or no face-time with our corporate donors. In fact, we were positively discouraged from making contact outside the parameters of requesting or reporting on funding. But times have changed and we have had to change with them.

Our first massive shift has come in the form of prospect research. Instead of segmenting our prospects into broad categories (e.g. youth – forgetting that in South Africa, the term ‘youth’ may be applied to a person up to the age of 35, and within this cohort, there are literally dozens of sub-cohorts that may apply!) and just sending proposals willy-nilly, we have begun to sit with our clients and strategically review companies that they would like to be associated with.

This has ranged from the prospect having the same operational values as those of our clients, to offering products or services that align with their missions and visions. Once we knew why WE wanted to partner with a company, we have had to start looking at the WIIFM factor for our prospective corporate funders: the ‘what’s in it for me?’.

Interestingly, in South Africa, a significant consequence of legislated philanthropic giving has been two separate funding streams – corporate social investment (or responsibility) and marketing. For various reasons, including tax benefits to the corporates, the former comes with little pomp and ceremony around recognition and publicity, and the latter, as it has no such restrictions, comes with a strong emphasis on return on investment.

As a result of the large corporate social responsibility funding ‘pot’, most non-profits have eschewed engaging on a marketing level with companies, perhaps seeing it as a bit ‘mercenary’.  However, it is important to note that there is usually more money available through the marketing budget than that of corporate social investment, making it a potentially lucrative source of income.

We have only just begun to grapple with the concept of WIIFM, after a long history of simply providing a receipt for taxation purposes and ensuring that we report timeously and we are discovering that each organisation that we work with has something different to offer.

South African non-profits have also shied away from placing a monetary value on their impact on beneficiaries and communities – this has to change if we are to make intentional fundraising work for us. We are tasked with finding the value in shared partnerships with corporates, and we welcome the advice and input of our fellow fundraisers around the globe.

It is a brave new world for us – and we are up for the challenge!

Melanie Jackson is the Director of Words that Count, a fundraising consultancy based in Cape Town, South Africa. With a passionate commitment to spreading the power of philanthropy as a transformative force for good in the country, she is an enthusiastic champion of a range of non-profit organisations with with interests as diverse as the saving seabirds and promoting literacy. Connect with her on https://za.linkedin.com/pub/melanie-jackson/13/3aa/909 or on Twitter: @MeljSA