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Interview with Joe
Barbato
A native New Yorker, Barbato worked for more than 10 years as a writer, editor, and communications director at New York University. He has also been a public information director at the City University of New York and an editorial director at The Nature Conservancy. He was a founder and editor of The Remington Review, he is a contributing editor of Publishers Weekly, and he has written for publications from Smithsonian and The Progressive to The New York Times and Washington Post Book World. How did you get into the fundraising field? I fell into fundraising. I had studied journalism in college and
planned to become a newspaper reporter. Instead, I went into college
public relations work and eventually made my way into the NYU Development
Office. I didn't know what a development office was! It's the office
that raises money for a nonprofit, and it needs a lot of writing. It's a great way for writers to earn their bread and butter. Most
development offices hire people "who can write" (which can mean any
number of things) and who have an interest in their cause. A professional
writer is a real asset to such an office, especially one who can write
persuasively. Command of the language and an interest in the nonprofit's
field are the major requirements. When I managed development writing
staffs, I always looked for someone with a few years of journalistic writing
experience (newspaper, magazine, whatever) and a polished style. The fundraising writer is like a short order cook. He or she often has
standing responsibilities-- editing a regular newsletter for donors, writing
website copy, managing brochure projects, or whatever. But the work of a
development office-- where the organization often wants to move quickly to go
after a major gift from a wealthy individual, for instance-- is such that a
writer may have to drop everything and devote a week to writing a major proposal
out of the blue. So there are regular duties, which vary depending on the
institution and its needs, and then the nutty times. A nonprofit cultivating a donor is like a man or woman wooing a partner.
You have to put your best foot forward. You want to attract the
other person-- not scare him or her away. You must write out of strength.
The negative stuff about your organization is not going to win money. The heart-strings human interest story can work as an anecdote underscoring
the impact your organization makes. But it must be used carefully, and
never overdone. Surely, it must not call attention to itself as ridiculous
or soppy. A proposal is as long as it takes to get the money. Seriously. Money
has been raised by writing a couple of notes on a napkin at lunch. The
more formal proposal, written by a writer back at the office, spells out the
details of what the organization intends to do (the project), how, when, how
results will be measured, etc., and most certainly, how this will meet all of
the donor's needs. The main trick is to let you donor see that this
project will meet HIS needs (ie., goals, vision for society, etc). This
generally takes 6 to 10 double-spaced pages, but it might take 150 and need an
index and sturdy binding. What will work with THIS donor should be the
operating question in determining proposal length. We are talking about
tailored work. One size does not fit all! No, you do not want your charitable group to sound needy. Would you
give one million dollars to a place that is having trouble meeting its payroll?
Donors are asked for what the market (their wallets) will bear. Ask for
too much, and a donor will be very annoyed. Ask for too little, and he
will be insulted. You must know your donor. A proposal is
generally-- certainly ought to be-- a last step in a long cultivation process
where your group has been courting the prospect and getting to know his needs
and his worth. You ask for the amount you think you can get, building in a
bit of "stretch" so that the donor feels he or she is really stepping
up to the plate. A case statement is an expression of why you should make a major gift to a
university, museum, hospice, or whatever the nonprofit. It is the
"case" for giving. It tells precisely what the strengths and
purpose and ambitions of the place are. It is traditionally the major
piece-- the bible-- of a capital campaign. Most often it winds up being a
4-color printed piece done in a small run. Copies are sent ahead or left
behind when an executive from your nonprofit visits prospective major gifts
donors. The best part of the job is being able to write with passion about a cause
you believe in-- and seeing money flow in as a result. The worst is
putting up with pointy-headed bureaucrats whose nit-picking can dilute the power
of your words. How to deal with the pointy-headed bureaucrats. We offer a lot of
pointers in Writing for a Good Cause. A staff writer in a nonprofit development office can earn anywhere from
$25,000 to $50,000 or more. The more comes when you supervise a staff of
writers, and that will be in major nonprofits. As a freelancer, how much
you charge will depend on the market-- i.e., the going rate in your region of
the country and the size (and therefore budget) of the nonprofit. Freelancers
who write for corporate (for-profit) clients generally charge a bit less for
nonprofits. The better your are, the more experienced you are, the better
your reputation... the more you can charge. I would simply add that this is an odd kind of writing. Nobody studies to do it. It is most similar to writing newspaper editorials or advertising copy, I suppose. Yet experience in news and feature writing helps a lot too. In a word, any good writer can learn to do development writing. It's simply writing from a different vantage and under different conditions. It's a perfectly honorable way for a writer to earn a living (in a time that offers many dishonorable ways). Learn more and order Writing for a Good Cause at www.writingforagoodcause.com. |
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