This story is about nonprofits working on their pitches to attract donors and was recently published in the Boston Globe:

Bottom-line philanthropy
Nonprofits find help developing pitches aimed at donors used to seeing results
By Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff | April 30, 2008

In a sleek conference room in a downtown Boston office tower, Matthew Kochka, a bearded 27-year-old farmer in flannel and khakis, stood before two dozen crisply dressed business executives, investors, and other white-collar types.

He braced himself.

“I think your presentation was almost 100 percent wrong,” said Dale Bearden, a managing director at Babson Capital Management, an investment management firm. “It didn’t compel me to support your organization.”

Kochka nodded. But the verbal beating wasn’t over.

“You’re going to hate me for this,” continued Bearden, 49, “but you’ve got to listen to yourself on tape. In your initial presentation you said ‘um’ 33 times.”

For the next 15 minutes, Kochka - the manager of ReVision Urban Farm, a Dorchester nonprofit that provides fresh produce and job training for homeless young mothers - fielded a battery of similarly blunt feedback. The scene was a bit like “American Idol,” with PowerPoint presentations subbing for musical performances and executives like Bearden offering the brutally frank critiques.

Kochka’s appearance was a test run for a funding pitch that a half-dozen nonprofits will make tonight to a group of potential donors, including investors, government officials, and foundation executives. Emotional appeals will fall on largely deaf ears, because many of the audience members - some of them relatively young, newly wealthy, and financially sophisticated - pick their charities the way they pick stocks: using facts and data.

Modeled after the financing pitches that start-up companies make to venture capital firms, tonight’s event illustrates a push in the philanthropic community to help nonprofits become more businesslike, understand the language of the private sector, and win the backing of influential, deep-pocketed donors.

“We’re helping them figure out how to better present their work so that people understand the social need they’re trying to solve and how the work they’re doing is doing that effectively,” said Susan Musinsky, codirector of the Social Innovation Forum, the Cambridge program running the event, which will be held at the MIT Faculty Club. “Because the next time they make their presentations to people like this, if their stories are really good, those people might be ready to write them a check.”

Many prospective donors are turned off by pitches that try to tug at their heartstrings. Instead, they want to know if an organization is well-run, financially sound, innovative, and poised to truly make a difference - unlike an older generation of donors who often automatically gave charitable gifts to large, established institutions like museums and universities.

“I know it’s a little cold, but when I make a decision to support a nonprofit, it’s just like an investment for me,” said Bearden. “I know they’re all going to help people, so I want to give my money to someone who will help people three times as efficiently.”

Many philanthropically minded business executives, however, have little time to research worthy charities. The Social Innovation Forum, part of the nonprofit organization Root Cause, which creates partnerships between the nonprofit and private sectors, does that research for them.

Through a competitive selection process, it identifies promising Boston-area nonprofits, gives them free services like management consulting and executive coaching, and introduces them to potential donors.

Each year, six of those nonprofits, dubbed “social innovators,” make a formal, 15-minute funding appeal, complete with PowerPoint presentation and prospectus, to a large group of prospective funders.

Funders can attend only two presentations, so the nonprofits must first give a three-minute pitch aimed at persuading donors to pick their presentation.

Besides ReVision Urban Farm, the nonprofit organizations showcased at this year’s event are CitySprouts, which develops and maintains school gardens; Cradles to Crayons, which collects clothes, toys, and other items for homeless children; Girls’ LEAP, which offers programs and role models for high-risk girls ages 8 to 18; True Colors: Out Youth Theater, an acting troupe for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youths; and United Teen Equality Center, an agency for at-risk youth in Lowell.

Bearden’s evaluation of Kochka, the farmer at ReVision Urban Farm, came earlier this month during a practice run in front of a panel of business professionals who judged the presentations on clarity, substance, content, and professional appearance, among other factors.

Afterward, Kochka confided that he “felt nervous the whole time.” But he was grateful for the straight talk, he said.

“In the nonprofit world, we’re very supportive of each other, so we try and make people feel good about the things they do, and criticism is usually said with a dose of sugar,” Kochka said. “So it was really refreshing to have somebody be fully honest with me, especially a person who’s coming from a very professional and effective background.”

Several judges told Kochka that his presentation, which focused on the nutritional virtues of the farm’s vegetables, was off-point. Instead, they advised, it should address the program’s long-term benefits, such as how many people received job training and how that training helped them.

They also pointed out that he had never explicitly asked for their financial support, the main goal of the exercise. And, noting his tendency to fill silences with frequent “ums,” they urged him to break that habit, since silence can drive home critical points.

Jennifer White of Cradles to Crayons fared better with her practice presentation.

The judges praised her ease answering questions, but urged her to be louder and more concise. They recommended mentioning that Bain Consulting advises the group, since the prestigious firm’s name lends credibility. They also suggested she better differentiate Cradles to Crayons from nonprofits that do similar work, like Toys for Tots.

All of that, White said, was welcome feedback.

“It’s really great networking exposure, and the opportunity to tell our story to an audience such as that was huge,” she said. The input, she added, “helps us make sure that we’re making our case clearly.”

Sacha Pfeiffer can be reached at pfeiffer@globe.com.

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