Helping Non-profits Help Others
If you are a regular reader of this blog or have read Lead With Your Heart, you know that I believe business represents the best chance we have to change the world and people's lives for the better. My reasoning is supported by the fact that business holds both wealth and power to make change, good or bad.
To honor those businesses and business people (active or retired) who do good, we created the All Heart Award. Today's recipient is a business person who lives in West Hartford, CT. Following is a recently conducted interview with Allan Williams.
Q. What is the name of your business and where is it located?
A. Presently it is simply Allan Williams, Fundraising Strategist, but that name will be gone by February
as the services I am offering are expanding and the new name will reflect that. The new name will be that of the website, but that will remain a secret for a few more days.
Q. What is your business purpose and mission?
A. There are limitless good ideas to improve the lives of all, and thousands of people who wish to make that happen. There are billions of dollars annually given to charity and billions more in the coffers of charitable foundations. The challenge is to hook up those who dream and want to do, with those who have and want to help. That is part one of my job.
There are 1.8 million charities in the United States. Some have CEOs with salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and with them hundreds if not thousands of employees. Others have few staff, some none, and often these are just the groups that keep society from collapsing. These are the groups that feed and cloth the hungry, provide help for those in poverty, and assist those most in need, and protect the environment in their community. They are part two of my job, the groups I most wish to help.
There are individuals who have resources they wish to provide to the right charity. They look at the sea of organizations, the flotilla of requests coming from them and wonder which of them are the right groups with which to invest their charitable resources. Which groups address the issues these donors are interested in, and which groups are using funds wisely. These individuals also might ask about the best way to donate or the about monitoring an organization after the donation. Part three of my job is to help those donors find the right organizations in which to invest, the right process and means of investing in them, and the security of knowing that someone will monitor the donation to see how wisely it was used.
Q. Why did you decide to start up this business?
A. I had been a volunteer fundraiser for at least 25 years, and in the process learned how to conduct an array of successful fundraising projects. When the opportunity arose for a golden handshake, my avocation became my profession.
Q. Were you able to just step right in to fundraising or was there more of it to that?
A. Much More. I realized that as successful as I had been, there had to be more to the profession than met the eye. I determined that I needed to study with some of the best in the business. So I enrolled at the Heyman School of Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University. After two years and many classes (with homework, papers, presentations and grades), all taught by upper-tier successful practitioners in the field, I received a Certificate in Fundraising Strategies and another in Grantmaking and Foundations.
Q. How do you finance your business?
A. Initially, I invested my personal savings into my new profession. Now it is funded through receipts.
Q. Who are you helping with your business?
A. As noted above, mostly non-profits that are too small to have highly paid professionals and financial resources in their employ.
Q. What is your experience in helping those businesses?
A. It is great. I am able to help organizations stay afloat and even grow, organizations that in turn keep society afloat. These organizations appreciate the help, they appreciate someone who believes in them. And each has its own challenges that make my work always different.
Q. What are the biggest challenges in your field?
A. Community-based groups are struggling and fighting over a shrinking slice of the pie. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are now almost 2 million non-profits in society. Larger non-profit charities have the funds and staff to claim increasingly larger pieces of the financial pie. Then, too, many large foundations continue to give out just 5% of assets in any given year (for private foundations it's the minimum requirement of federal tax laws), even when assets grow by tens of millions.
Q. What are the biggest positives in the field?
A. There are many really dedicated people trying to make life better for all, and it is fun to work with them.
If you are a regular reader of this blog or have read Lead With Your Heart, you know that I believe business represents the best chance we have to change the world and people's lives for the better. In short, my reasoning is supported by the knowledge that business represents both the wealth and the power to make change, good or bad. Making peoples Lives better is good for the planet and for business. Making lives worse is bad for the planet and for business. So putting profit ahead of people is bad business and a stupid premise if we are in business to achieve success.
Solutions presents the All Heart Award. This time we recognize IBM for its wellness incentive programs, which were launched in 2004 in an effort to help its workforce become healthier. And healthier employees are happier, they live longer on average and enjoy more productive lives. Everybody wins.
When we created the All Heart Award this past summer, we determined that it would be given infrequently and only to those businesses or business people who do something beyond the ordinary. The Award is grounded in the concepts as defined in the book "Lead With Your Heart," which calls for business to work from a model that makes the world a happier and better place to live, work and do business. The Procter & Gamble Company's new five-year sustainability goals deserve to be recognized based on that criteria.
environmental profile of P&G products. P&G plans to generate at least $20 billion in cumulative sales of products with reduced environmental impact over the next five years.
communications/marketing firm, made up of extremely bright and caring communications and marketing experts, of which our friend 
my brand and my forthcoming book, Lead With Your Heart. Being another great idea from CK and totally like her to share herself and her thinking with others, I took her advice and launched the award.
