Doug Jansson's Insights | Milwaukee, the Virus & Fundraising
Recently, my partner Marybeth Budisch and I asked ourselves a question: If we were raising funds for or leading a nonprofit and were faced with our current crisis, who would we turn to and ask for advice?
So we put together a list of individuals who have been there and overcame the odds and asked this question: What strategies would you suggest to a nonprofit leader or fundraiser going through a situation like this, based on your past experiences? This is another in the series and highlights Doug Jansson, former CEO of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.
Here’s what Doug shared:
“I was CEO of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation during the deep recession in 2008. Unlike many nonprofits, the Foundation did not conduct annual fund-raising drives but rather relied on endowment income to cover operating expenses and grant-making. Most of our development program focused on cultivating prospective donors to establish named endowment funds tailored to support the causes they cared about the most. Many of the funds we managed were donor advised funds.
“With the precipitous drop in the market value of the endowment the first step we took was to eliminate from the operating budget virtually every discretionary expense such as conferences, travel, advertising and the like. By doing so we were able to avoid laying off any of our staff while also maximizing our grant making budget.
“It was also clear to all of us that the recession would be deep and prolonged. And it came at the worst possible time for many nonprofits -- the fourth quarter of the year. We knew that the most vulnerable were those who relied on homeless shelters and food pantries. We launched the Fund for Basic Human Needs to provide immediate operating support to such programs while also encouraging our donors to support the Fund with outright gifts or with grants from their donor advised funds within the Foundation.
“We also wanted to find ways to help our donors and the public at large to better understand the impact of the recession. To do so we partnered with local public radio to do interviews and tell stories every week about people most impacted by the recession. We also contracted with a professor at UWM to maintain on our website a monthly graph of the number of people in our four county service area who were receiving unemployment compensation, food stamps (FoodShare), and emergency shelter.
“What strikes me the most in retrospect is how many of our donors were very willing to help when we gave them a simple way to do so and they understood the urgency of the need. And we also had staff in our donor services department who had developed close relationships and trust with our donors so they were more than willing help when encouraged to do so.
“Their support for the emergency food and shelter programs through our Fund for Basic Human Needs was amazing. I also think that knowing and publicizing the facts of the recession was helpful. As an example, the growth in the number of people relying on food stamps in Waukesha County was as much a surprise to us as to our donors. That knowledge led us to fund a number of emergency food programs in that County.
“I know that the Foundation's challenges were very different than many nonprofits but I would still say that the old maxim to "never waste a good crisis" applies to many nonprofits. If we can find ways to educate our donors about the crisis we face, we may be able to find support we never thought possible.”
Doug’s Bio:
Doug served as President of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation from 1993 until his retirement in 2010. Before joining the Foundation, he served as Executive Director of the Rhode Island Foundation for 12 years and worked for the Chicago Community Trust prior to that. He also directed a village rehabilitation program operated by the AFSC in Nigeria immediately following that country’s civil war. Doug graduated from Oberlin College in 1966 and received his Master's Degree from the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 1967. He served as a board member of CFLeads and of the Wisconsin Community Foundation Division of the Donors’ Forum of Wisconsin. He also was a member of the Transatlantic Community Foundation Network and, with the support of the Mott Foundation, served as a consultant for community foundations in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Mexico.
Since retiring he has continued consulting with community foundations in the U.S. and Europe, volunteered to dig water wells in Cameroon, and completed a variety of photographic projects.