Two years ago on this page I looked back at the first annual Valley Gives Day, a 24-hour fundraising event for area nonprofits, organized by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The intention was to provide a common platform for local organizations working in the arts, education, social services, and the environment to raise their profiles and donor bases as well as money. The results were impressive: Over 260 organizations netted over $1 million. But I wondered whether, on balance, the day was more competitive than cooperative, with an online “leader board” tracking each organization’s totals and extra prizes given to the top-ranked finishers.

I wondered the same thing this year, when 463 organizations participated. After the dust settled, I contacted some of the participants for their thoughts. Was the time and effort necessary for success in the one-day extravaganza worth it? Did they view it as a welcome opportunity, or a competitive imperative to join in what one participant called the “feeding frenzy”?

The answer, I learned, was yes and no. One artistic director reported that while her organization raised “a great chunk of money, for us,” the sheer volume of the company’s promotional e-blasts turned some longtime supporters off. Another objected that while “the concept is brilliant,” it pits “very small organizations like ours [against] large groups who have development staff.”

That last complaint, concedes Kristin Leutz of the Community Foundation, has been heard since the beginning. “The first year, people hated Dakin [Humane Society] because, ‘They have puppies! How can we compete with puppies?’ This year it was New England Public Radio,” which ran an on-air fund drive on the day and ended up in the number one position among large nonprofits.

Leutz says such complaints are listened to, and the program is tweaked each year based on feedback from participants and donors. This year, for example, organizations were divided into three categories according to their size; training workshops were offered on solicitation and donor stewardship for year-round capacity-building; first-time participants got special treatment; and the prizes were spread more evenly among participating organizations.

The emphasis also shifted from dollar amounts to numbers of donors. “We saw from the data that when new donors come to Valley Gives, they most often make multiple donations, thereby spreading the wealth around.” The central question, Leutz says, is “Are we taking a pie that’s a finite size and carving it up into crumbs, or baking a bigger pie?” This year, with over 14,000 donors making nearly 29,000 donations totaling more than $2.7 million, Leutz is convinced that “we are increasing the pie.”

But not everyone is persuaded. One participant told me, “We have not seen the Valley Gives donors turn into regular donors, and we are getting $10 donations from people who would normally give $50 or more.”

This year marked the end of a three-year pilot program and the beginning of a thoroughgoing review. There won’t be a Valley Gives next year, and for 2016 the Community Foundation is exploring another time of year that’s not December, when many groups are also running separate campaigns.

Valley Gives has undoubtedly changed the area’s fundraising landscape. One small arts organization has focused its annual solicitations around the event and found it “a good thing, as long as we understand our goals and objectives and don’t get caught up in the competition.” Another small group sees the event as a positive “motivator,” and another applauds it as “a way of showcasing all the huge variety of great work being done in the Valley.”•

 

Chris Rohmann is at StageStruck@crocker.com and his StageStruck blog is at valleyadvocate.com/blogs/stagestruck.