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 35 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 one.

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 had largely ignored them, that was true.

So we built a communications plan just for existing donors. It has four key elements, all simple, all inexpensive.

  • We write them a short, chatty note every time we send a financial report
  • We invite them out to lunch once a year
  • We thank them at an annual appreciation event
  • We enroll them automatically in a legacy society if they tell us they’ve written us into their wills.

Today, more than 70 percent of our gifts come from repeat donors, including a $16 million bequest last year, and a $10 million bequest this year.

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

I can’t guarantee that you’ll receive $26 million in the next two years. But I can promise that you’ll learn quickly if you’re ready to make your idea or organization work. 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 the last 13 years I have 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.

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 associated with advertising and direct mail expert Tom Ahern, website developer Embolden.com, graphic designer Greenwood & Associates, and some wonderful local and national consultants. Or if you’d like, we can identify and/or partner with specialists in your neck of the woods.

I hope I can look forward to your call.

Rick Schwartz

P.S. Having just left The Rhode Island Foundation, I’m at that glorious point where I have more time than clients, a situation that won’t last long. Call me now and you’ll get my undivided time and the best rates I’ll ever have!