Feature Stories - October 2005

Industry Focus: Non-Profits

Communication, Cooperation Keys to Success

by Kathleen Foley

In its monthly Industry Outlook series, Nevada Business Journal invites leaders in all segments of Nevada business to discuss the challenges and opportunities in their fields. Non-profit groups, although they are different in many ways from other types of organizations, face issues that most companies would find familiar, including publicizing what they do and keeping a close watch on the bottom line. Like other Nevada companies, they are dealing with the state’s tremendous growth and the resulting upswing in demands for their services. Connie Brennan, publisher of Nevada Business Journal, served as moderator for the roundtable discussion, which was held at The Stirling Club in Las Vegas. Following is a condensed version of the discussion, which began with introductions. Participants were asked to describe the biggest challenges faced by their organizations.

Dale Andreason: For the past 20 years, I have been the state director for Nevada March of Dimes. The most difficult challenge we are facing today is public awareness of what we do. We have name recognition, but people still think we are the "polio people" and do not realize what we do today. We also cooperate with other organizations in order to strengthen the approach to our mission, attempting to eliminate the duplication of services.

Fred Schultz: I started the non-profit organization Positively Kids five years ago, for the purpose of caring for kids who are medically dependent or have long-term chronic illnesses. We currently have three programs in place: a therapist program, a licensed home-health agency that provides skilled care in the home and skilled respite. There is not a lot of respite within the community, like taking care of kids who are on ventilators. Boards are always a challenge. We live with our challenges every day, yet our board does not deal with problems until you come to them. We are a local non-profit, so getting the word out about who we are is not always easy. Keeping, getting and directing the volunteers is always a challenge. Raising money is a struggle. We cannot go to a national organization or anyone else, so we are forced to go to the same people in town whom everyone else approaches.

Dan Goulet: I have been president and CEO of United Way of Southern Nevada for the past three years. When I look at the challenges we face, I refer back to a community-wide needs assessment we performed two years ago. We identified three main areas of need: health, self-sufficiency and the need for quality education. The challenge we are facing now is how to transition from funding traditional services to funding in the areas of need, all the while keeping our existing programs in place and also funded. Anytime you make a change, the challenge is communicating to the donor what you are moving towards and why. We are further challenged with the coordination of programs in this community, which is currently non-existent. How do we coordinate with service providers who have done similar things and convince them to come together, talk in a collaborative way and focus their attention on what they need to do together? By cooperating, we could have a greater impact on the public, stretch the donated dollars further and reach out to many more people in need.

Brenda Dizon: I am the executive director of The Shade Tree Shelter. Over the last five years, it has grown to become the largest shelter of its kind in the entire state. Our mission is two-fold: first and foremost, we provide safe shelter to homeless and abused women and children in crisis; and secondly, we offer life-changing services promoting stability, dignity and self-reliance. Our greatest challenge, being a service provider for homeless, is NIMBY-ism, or "not in my back yard." No one wants services for the homeless close to where they live or work. We are a homegrown grass-roots organization without national affiliation and certainly with no alumni association to offer support. Our government funding is down to 34 percent this year. We strive in our mission statement to be self-sufficient, and yet, being a non-profit, the overall mindset is that you are not supposed to operate like a business, so to create any kind of operational endowment or the like, is a bad thing. There is a constant battle to do more with less, and the expectation is to try to be all to everyone. We are not an assisted-living facility, and we are not a mental health facility, yet we are expected to house those kinds of clients. We truly value our partnerships. We filled over 80,000 beds last year and served another 14,000 through our day shelter, so we have a genuine interest and focus on taking down the barriers that exist within this community and bringing more people to the table just like this and saying, "Let’s work together." 

 Linder: I am the executive director of the American Heart Association in Las Vegas. Our mission is to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke by 25 percent by the year 2010, and also to create awareness and educate people about heart disease. Many do not realize that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of both men and women, more than every single cancer combined. The biggest challenge is philanthropy in the Las Vegas area. I think, because we are such a young city, philanthropy is different here than in other cities.

Angela Quinn: I am president of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Las Vegas, and have been with the organization for 18 months. I do not think anyone at this table could ever have enough money or strong enough partnerships. However, specific to the Boys and Girls Clubs, what we need to do is move from being just a before-and-after school program, to finding the kids who have special needs or are at risk, and bringing them into the club and showing them good experiences. My challenge is convincing the community that this is the role of the Boys and Girls Club. Convincing my board was a challenge, and we have overcome that problem. Once people see us in that new role, I think some of the funding streams that come along with partnerships and working together will follow.  

Phil Bevins:  I am the executive director of the Boy Scouts of America for the Las Vegas Area Council. We are a volunteer-driven and staff-supported organization, serving about 32,000 children in Clark and Nye Counties, with about 6,000 volunteers. We also collaborate with 12 community organizations, such as churches, schools and civic organizations. The challenge we have is building an infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the needs of the community. We are blessed with a very broad-based financial support. But, if you would double the dollars available to us, the needs of the public would still not be met. Developing a community with visionary leaders is a challenge I see, not just as a non-profit executive, but also as a citizen of our community.

Ken Richardson: I am the executive director of the Nevada Donor Network. It is not just about dollars; we also want your organs. We do have somewhat of a unique position in the community in that we are a Medicare provider on the side of our operations involving healthcare, organ donation and transplantation, and on the other side we are also involved very much with helping provide patient services and patient education throughout the community. Last year we created a separate organization called the "Second Chance Foundation." That side of our operation is focused on raising funds to provide public education programs and short-term financial assistance directly to patients in need of transplantation, handling the professional education and the actual organ donation throughout our community. The challenge for us is two-fold, not just to get you to open your wallets, but to get you to consider your own mortality in the fact that once you are gone, there is some good you can leave behind in addition to your dollars: your organs.

Patricia Miller:  I am the executive director of Girl Scouts of Frontier Council. One of our biggest challenges is publicity, and from that we are able to generate many donors. Most people, when they think of Girl Scouts, think of little girls going door-to-door selling cookies.

Andreason: Please, don’t stop selling cookies!

Miller:  We can’t afford to. The public also stereotypes us as little girls who meet weekly for a troop meeting. However, one of our best-kept secrets is that 41 percent of our current membership does not meet in troops at all. They are at-risk kids who are meeting in neighborhoods and housing authority units. We operate drop-in centers, open every day, for kids to have a safe environment with adult supervision, so they do not become involved in gangs, drugs and victimization. Our challenge is trying to get the word out so people know that there is a safe place for the kids in this community to go.

Susan Drongowski: I am the president and CEO of Nathan Adelson Hospice. Our two components are our hospice foundation, which is our fundraising arm, and our "Center for Compassionate Care." The center offers counseling services related to grief, loss and critical stress issues, both on an individual basis and throughout our community. For the past 27 years, we have been Southern Nevada’s only non-profit hospice organization out of the 10 in our community, serving both Clark and Nye Counties. We believe that no one should ever die alone, afraid or in pain. We take care of people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and whose life expectancy is somewhere between six months and 12 months. The whole notion of awareness of the wide breadth of services that a hospice can provide, not only for the patient, but for the family members as well, is therefore one of our challenges. The fact that we are a direct healthcare provider creates the same challenges other hospitals are experiencing in terms of recruitment of nursing staff and other healthcare providers. Getting the Word Out

Connie Brennan (Nevada Business Journal):  Publicity, public awareness and education seem to be problems you all share. What are you doing to educate the public about what is going on in your non-profit? Beyond the standard publicity that you send to the press, what are you doing to educate your market about who you are?

Richardson: We send out routine inquiries and do a lot of health fairs. The state also has a taskforce on organ and tissue donation, chaired by Frankie Sue Del Papa and funded by the popular donor license plates. The challenge for the taskforce is to educate people at the DMV, as an educational program.

Brennan:  Dale, I know that your national organization does a pretty good job for you, but beyond that, what do you do?

Andreason:  We have achieved the best effect this last year by integrating education with our fundraising. For example, if somebody has already agreed to donate, we still educate that donor as to what we are trying to accomplish. Then, as donors talk to others, we hope they spread the word. It’s a small thing, but every little bit helps. We have had some success in PSAs through television and radio stations.

Schultz:  When we do a fundraiser, we incorporate a lot of education. For instance, some of you probably know we do the Duck Derby every year, which has become a signature fundraiser for us. This year it is on October 15th. It raises between $25,000 and $30,000. We also cooperate with Vanguard Media Group, a national public relations firm that provides us with a lot of press and informational pieces. We have to expand our horizons about the kind of ways we can keep our face "in your face." We want to have something there all the time: cell phone donation programs, clothing donation boxes. By the end of the year we should have 50 of those clothing donation "homes." That can generate as much as $10,000 a month, and they all have our name and logo on them, so they’re a form of advertising.

Brennan:  Do you create public service announcements for the media to run at no cost?

Richardson: A significant change in FCC rules a couple of years ago eliminated the requirement for electronic media to do PSAs.

Drongowski: PSAs are pretty successful. But, just to digress for a minute, one of the things we do to influence awareness in our community is going to another level. We have six different types of student rotations through our organization, such as certified nursing assistants, pharmacy students, medical students and LCSW internships. While that is time- and labor-intensive, we like the ability to give first-hand experiences and education to healthcare providers. They may decide to come back and work for us, but even if they do not, they know what a hospice is about and can help spread the word.

Schultz:  We signed fieldwork agreements with UNLV, the community college and with Touro University. The fieldwork contracts and agreements are really important to continue getting the word out; students get out in the field and see what it’s really like to be dealing with kids on ventilators, feeding tubes and IVs.

Quinn:  In our case, it is not about sending the message that the Boys and Girls Clubs of America is the best youth-based organization in the United States, but about sending the right kind of message. People have a tendency to look upon the Boys and Girls Clubs as a wealth-based organization that does not need community support, which is not true. It might have more of an impact to talk about what we do with our community partners like the Girl Scouts to help at-risk kids, and change the way we strategize our messages.

 A Unique Climate for Philanthropy

Brennan: Is philanthropy different in Nevada than in other places, and how so?

Linder: Because Las Vegas is transient, people do not necessarily view this as their home. Because we are a young city, that mindset will change. In communities that are much older, people have raised their families and stayed in that community, so they have a more philanthropic attitude.

Bevins: I had the privilege of serving the Boy Scouts in seven different communities, and like people, they grow in many ways. I think Las Vegas is a community in adolescence. We are struggling for our independence and for our maturity, but time is on our side. We, too, suffer the stigma of people assuming the Boy Scouts do not need money. However, we have had tremendous success sitting eyeball-to-eyeball with individuals, sharing our vision and asking for their help.

Brennan:  Are the people who live here generous to non-profits?

Bevins:   They are willing to give, but many just do not recognize the need. Just a simple case in point: we have a very high net-worth individual in our community who for years was a $500-a-year donor. But when we sat and shared this vision with him, he became a $25,000-a-year donor. It was not because he had reluctance in the past, he just did not recognize the need was there and that he could make such a difference.

Quinn:  Donors are asking for greater accountability. Certainly corporations demand a huge amount of accountability, but individuals who are giving $25,000 or $100,000 are also asking questions like, "What are you doing with this money?" You can talk about how it is a young community, but the onus is on our industry and us to show a return on their investment.

Miller: Today’s donors are more sophisticated and looking for that "best bang for their buck," and where it will make the best impact. They are looking to see organizations step up to show what we do with their money and if it makes a difference, changes lives or has a significant impact. If we do not demonstrate that, there is no reason for them to give. You have to show them the outcomes, with tangible results. You need to validate those statistics and show the donor it does make a difference. For example, when you help kids at an early age, you change a lot of those statistics down the road that cost us a lot more money.

Bevins: There are benefits at the larger national organizations in critical mass, as there are some benefits in the smaller organizations in that you may be more agile and reactive. Boy Scouts of America has an international research and survey firm, Harris Interactive, which is just befuddled and intrigued by why the Boys Scouts of America succeed. They have spent the last 12 years dissecting the Boy Scouts, and when we see a Harris study in reference to scouting, those statistics are valid for Las Vegas because we were part of their survey, so we can use their numbers to show potential donors.

Andreason:   We have a two-pronged approach: part of our money goes to the national organization and is used to fund research grants to find the answers to premature birth, birth defects and infant mortality. The part that interacts with the local businesses and the local community is the other half of our approach, and those programs we choose to fund here in Nevada are doing some good.

Goulet:   We talk about outcomes as a way to validate what we do for the donor, as an opportunity to market what we do to the public. That is our advertising opportunity. Because we do not have advertising budgets, we cannot afford to be buying space and running television ads. None of us have that ability, financially. If we create press releases or become involved in other opportunities to talk about our operation and the clients we touch and the differences we make in their lives, those stories ultimately will increase the fundraising opportunities for us. Five years ago, we were at the bottom of rankings for community giving, but I think the situation really is different today. UNLV, Nevada Cancer Institute and the Performing Arts Center have all launched capital campaigns that have already achieved success. The downfall we have as a community is a limited number of donors and lack of communication with the public. We are reaching a very small part of this population because we all approach the same high-income CEO and forget about the middle-income people of the rest of this community. If we were better at telling people what we did and how effective we were with their contributions, we would see a lot of them giving more.

Brennan:  How does Nevada rank in terms of per-capita giving? 

Goulet:  We are in the bottom percentile when compared to other communities, because we are young. People who come here are not as engaged yet as they are in communities in other cities. Philanthropy might be in its tenth generation there, whereas we are just now hitting the second generation of this community and starting to understand giving. When looking at the actual gift per donor, we are very high, because we have huge contributions coming from successful individuals and companies. However, we are not reaching, on a per-capita basis, enough of the dollars in the community. People would give if we reached out to them. We see growth in small local businesses here that none of us are really reaching out to – businesses that are looking to create philanthropy in the community based upon their employees’ interests or what their corporate philosophies might be. We have yet to effectively reach out to this part of the community. Hopefully, businesses will soon become a major part of our giving factor.

Kathleen Foley
Kathleen Foley is a freelance writer based in Southern Nevada.