Rick Schwartz Straight Talk

A Special Note for Nonprofits

You can take your organization from 'good' to 'great'.
Read on to see how.

Dear Colleague,

I’d like to share with you the most startling fact I’ve learned in 37 years as a journalist, a human services politico, a small business owner, a consultant to nonprofits of all sizes, and a longtime grantmaker.

Next to having creative and hardworking staff, the key difference between ‘okay’ results and rousing success – of a single project or an entire organization – is a Communications Plan.

The formula is simple — what are you trying to achieve, who are the people essential to your success, and how do you get them fully engaged? 

Yet many nonprofit leaders run their organizations — or begin long-term, expensive, well-intentioned efforts — without a Communications Plan.

It’s a shame, too, because designing the plan can be so easy.

This is where I come in.

In my dozen years as the vice president of a charitable foundation, I counted dozens of ‘audiences’. Each was essential to our success. Consider this short list:

  • propective donors
  • financial advisors who brought us donors
  • grantees
  • unhappy non-grantees
  • advocates and activists
  • current donors
  • our staff and board
  • prospective grantees
  • political leaders
  • partnering national foundations

Trust me, the list goes on and on.

We tackled them one by one, and that’s how we built The Rhode Island Foundation into one of the nation’s dominant "community foundations" today, with assets of a half billion dollars and a thousand separate endowments.

Take "current donors," for example. At one time, we foolishly believed that once a donor gave us a large gift, he or she would never give another. And because we largely ignored them, that proved true.

So we built a communications plan just to reconnect with past donors. It had four key elements, all simple, all inexpensive.

  • We wrote them a short, chatty note every time we sent a financial report
  • We invited them out to lunch once a year (they usually insisted on paying the bill)
  • We thanked them at an annual appreciation event
  • We enrolled them automatically in a legacy society if they told us they had written us into their wills.

Within five years, more than 70 percent of the organization's gifts came from repeat donors, including multi-million dollar bequests every couple years.

You can go from 'good' to 'great'.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll receive millions of dollars in donations. But I can promise that we’ll learn quickly if you’re ready to try. If you’re not, you’ll save hours of effort and lots of money that would otherwise be wasted.

Who am I to help? See my full résumé and testimonials.

For 13 years I devoted most of my energies to one nonprofit. I built The Rhode Island Foundation’s first communications department and helped design its first development department. As vice president, I was part of a team that tripled the foundation’s assets, to a half billion dollars. We attracted more than 500 new permanent endowments. I initiated a new statewide grantmakers association. I helped design the charitable response to one of the state’s worst tragedies, the Station Nightclub fire.

I had a life before The Rhode Island Foundation. I was a journalist with two local newspapers, a national magazine, and a political newsletter monitoring issues affecting low-income people. I was the staff director for the Massachusetts Senate’s Human Services Committee, where I led the campaign to get children off the adult wards of mental hospitals, broke the story on mistreatment of disabled persons on SSDI, and helped research the Poor People’s Budget. I was a frequent lecturer on the legislative process, and the committee’s liaison to the political media.

For five years, I was senior staff with the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, then — at $20 million annually -- the second-largest statewide arts grantmaker in the nation, and one of the most innovative. We pioneered support to individual artists, funded new artistic works that broke boundaries, encouraged a rich tradition of folklife, and exposed thousands of schoolchildren to the arts and humanities.

And I consulted with local and national nonprofits, such as the National Association of Social Workers, RESOLVE (a national infertility support group), FairTest (which opposes inequitable standardized testing), the Haymarket People’s Fund, the Boston Association for the Education of Young Children, and others. I was a regular instructor at the Tufts University summer program for nonprofits, and the MIT winter mini-semester.

I've had a wonderful career since The Rhode Island Foundation. My latest years have been filled with what I love best: working one-on-one with nonprofits and foundations across the country and around the world. I led workshops for the Greater Danbury (CT) Nonprofit Resource Center and facilitated a board retreat for the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature. I've had short-term projects like analyzing the development efforts of a 175-year-old children's agency, and long-term consultations with a Memphis foundation planning its next five years. I was allowed to write a case statement for an LGBT fund for Greater Detroit and an end-of-the-year appeal for a statewide nonprofit serving individuals with Down Syndrome.

I learn something every day. It's the best time of my professional life (so far)!.

Who do you get at Rick Schwartz/StraightTalk?

Me. You can be certain that if you choose Rick Schwartz/StraightTalk, I’ll always be just a phone call or an e-mail away. I’m also proud to be friends with experts like advertising guru Tom Ahern, the amazing website developer Embolden.com, and imaginative graphic designers Greenwood & Associates. But we use who you choose, including your favorite partners in your neck of the woods.

I hope we'll meet soon!

Rick Schwartz

P.S. Don't be afraid to call or write. I'm always up for some free conversation. Most of my clients tell me I give too much time away!