Nonprofit Spotlight: JMT Consulting Group

Happy couple in love working together on computer.

When JMT CEO & Founder Jacqueline M. Tiso experienced a particularly painful accounting software implementation while working at a nonprofit, she was inspired to disrupt the industry and create a firm that was able to understand and respond to the unique challenges mission-driven organizations face.

Since 1991, JMT Consulting Group has worked exclusively with nonprofits to deliver the finance, development, and productivity solutions required to meet their unique goals of sustainability and mission effectiveness through the implementation and support of best-in-class technology solutions. Our experts use their decades of nonprofit experience to mitigate risk, anticipate needs and make holistic recommendations based on the broad range of projects we have successfully delivered to over 2,000 clients across the US.

Here are a few ways we can help your organization:

Free Online Resources

  • Webinar Series: Hear from industry guest speakers in our Expert Speaker Series or learn more about the technology solutions we support and how they can benefit your organization in one of our solution sessions.
  • Resource Center: Browse videos, educational downloads, blog posts, and more – all created with nonprofit financial professional education in mind.

Consulting Services

  • ERP Solution Implementation
  • Financial Planning & Analysis Solution Implementation
  • Nonprofit Financial Reporting
  • Budget Management
  • Grant Management
  • Systems Integration
  • Business Intelligence & Management Reporting
  • Business Process & Workflow Improvement

You can learn more about them here.

If you are facing efficiency challenges related to your technology processes are would like to learn how we can support your organization, book a free consultation here.

Ways To Grow Your Nonprofits

As a nonprofit organization, you have a worthwhile mission and a big heart, but you also need to have additional funds to be able to continue to do what you do best. Fundraising efforts, especially during this pandemic, continue to present challenges. Asking the same donors year after year is not an easy task. Now is the time to think outside that box to create a stream of revenue. 

To grow your nonprofit, you can:  

  • Collaborate
  • Charge a fee for a service or product
  • Expand programs
  • Create a Partnership

Collaboration offers many benefits. Think of another nonprofit that will highlight or compliment your own mission statement and work together to benefit you both:

  • More efficient outreach: Two organizations will be able to cover more territory in order to reach out to more communities.
  • Additional revenue: You can apply for additional grants that require the skill set of the combined entities.
  • Enhanced programs: Both organizations can bring a complimentary service to expand programs to additional communities.
  • Expands the value proposition: Both organizations would be able to expand their offerings without increasing their budget.
  • Increased leadership skills: You may be able to increase your leadership by merging the staff so that you can maximize both skill sets.

Nonprofit Success: How to Surpass Fundraising Campaign Goals During a Pandemic

Target with arrows in it

By Erica Marks

Down and Dirty Guide to Wrapping Up Your Campaign During a Pandemic:

Have the ingredients ready:  a terrific president and great staff; a highly respected university with excellent rankings and strong social mobility index placement.

  • Have the wind at your back:  lots of prior fundraising momentum doesn’t hurt.
  • Set up conditions that make it easy to pivot:
    • Hire top-notch IT staff to train and help the move to remote work
    • Equip staff to work remotely
  • Take advantage of a rising stock market. Many individuals got richer while others suffered.
  • Help those who wish to, give back:
    • Give people a place to make a difference – the Student Crisis Fund was ours. This was already in place and we were able to promote it before donor “fatigue” came to pass. 
    • Share moving stories about the plight of students/your beneficiaries. These are real stories about real people (identities masked, of course). Donors will respond.
    • Give donors a home, a place where they know they are appreciated and needed.
  • Launch one or two matching gifts to inspire and organize giving around a clear goal.
  • Repurpose facilities to help others. Our 3D printing – Hudson Valley Additive Manufacturing Center was converted into 24/7 manufacturing center for face shields to go with PPEs. We got lots of press and rode that wave to raise funds to support the center’s operations.
  • Reconnect with former supporters and provide an ear for quiet reflecting.

Just one year ago…

March 2020: The development and alumni relations team finished planning for the final year of Soaring Higher—the very first campaign in SUNY New Paltz’s history. But by mid-March the College’s leadership team was meeting three hours daily to determine how to keep everyone safe. In July my team revised our fiscal year 2021 goal downwards by $1 million, dropping below $3 million for the first time in seven years. Even that seemed like a lot as we faced our computer screens with the prospect of no travel and no meetings. We still had a shot at completing our $23 million campaign by June 2021, but it was going to be tough.

March 2021:  We’re closing in on $24.5 million with two months to go—105% of our goal. How did this come about? It has less to do with pandemic challenges, and more to do with the metaphorical soil we’d tilled, seedlings we’d planted, and plants we’d nurtured.

So – how did we do it?

Leadership and a great product

At the top is our extraordinary President Donald Christian, an ethical, collaborative, and kind leader. SUNY New Paltz has a highly competitive admissions process while serving a large minority, first generation, and under-resourced population. We’re known for high graduation and completion rates, far above national averages, and rank in the top 3% nation-wide social mobility indexes. Diversity and inclusion work has been prioritized for several years; the ethos of caring seeps through all we do.

We have an engaged 22-member Foundation Board, built over time to better reflect the population we serve. We aggressively recruited diverse members (and thanked others for their service) during our campaign period, holding folks to high standards of commitment. Their minimum giving level is $5,000 a year, which each person achieves and/or surpasses.

Our groundbreaking Hudson Valley Additive Manufacturing Center (3D printing), launched thanks to funds donated during the campaign, grew out of a collaboration between Engineering and Fine Art.

Our endowment fund totaled $14 million a decade ago; today it’s over $34 million. Today graduating seniors give $20.21 to honor their graduation year – a new tradition of giving for the future. 

Excellence is predicated on great leadership; I’ve been fortunate to experience that firsthand.

It continued with a great team

Our small but highly motivated team is characterized by caring and a ton of hard work—we’ve got two major gift officers, staff to manage database operations, stewardship, and annual fund, and an accounting office. With an outstanding deputy director and a talented CFO we’re also able to run the SUNY New Paltz Foundation—a stand-alone 501(c)(3)—with the mission of supporting the university. Our newly formed alumni council and director are based in-house, helping to build a base of loyal alumni supporters.

Practical matters—technology, preparedness, flexibility

We continually evaluate our processes. What’s the goal of this post card, event, or meeting? How can we make our technology, flawed as it often is, work best for us? Do our policies enhance the donor relationship? We removed all fees from our endowed and annual gifts, for example, and can truly say 100% of your gift goes directly to students or the program.

We were one step ahead—well before the pandemic

Our work was never about sitting in the office – we (gift officers, stewardship, and alumni relations staff) participated in events and helped on the road. We replaced desk top computers with laptops. Our donors and prospects are engaged based on their areas of expertise. They speak with students, join our Women’s Leadership Summit, Hudson Valley Future Summit, 100 Days Until Graduation festivities for students, and participate in President’s Roundtables with a dozen students to share their lived experiences and answer questions. Most activities were reimagined and transformed to a virtual format this year.

“Regular” relationships matter

Naturally we also engage philanthropic alumni and individuals of great means, but many of our most affluent alumni were ignored for years and have become engaged elsewhere; it has been a challenge to bring them back to New Paltz. Some do return and have found great joy interacting with students and faculty alike.

However, we are proud to note that among our most generous donors are faculty and retired faculty, individuals who have been “cultivated” their entire lives. They know the student story, the challenges of the single mom who cannot pay for books, the delight of an exceptionally engaged learner, the benefit of having extra money to bring students on a field trip. 

We received a surprise bequest during the campaign that helped transform our Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art and Sojourner Truth Library at a time of need. The donor, a retired faculty member, had been quietly enjoying those venues for decades and wanted to say thank you.

Haves and have-nots

The pandemic brought the story of “haves and have-nots” into sharper relief. Many of our donors became aware of what others lacked. They came to understand how students were suffering both psychologically, but also financially. They read about families experiencing loss and considered what that would mean for young people struggling to complete school. We helped them understand the economic realities of life without a college education. 

A year before the pandemic made this divide even clearer, we instituted the Student Crisis Fund in response to students suffering from food insecurity, economic inequality, and a high cost of living with few jobs. Once the pandemic hit, we promoted this fund, raising well over $100,000 and giving away as much too.

Black Lives Matter, not as an afterthought

SUNY New Paltz has taken care to consider and work hard to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion long before the murder of George Floyd and others took place before our eyes. A few years earlier our president led a conversation about renaming several buildings on campus named for families who enslaved others. This ultimately led to the buildings renaming and engaged all of campus in a profound and meaningful discussion about racism and its many manifestations.

We continue to have a great deal of work to do, and that work will never be done. We have not yet fully engaged philanthropic leaders of color, so we have begun to forge deep friendships and identify partners and leaders to guide us. It is exciting to contemplate the long-overdue change of having our philanthropic partners more strongly reflect the composition of our student body.

Finding a home for our donors’ philanthropy

During the pandemic our work became more donor-centric than ever before. We listened to our donors, many of whom shifted their priorities to providing direct student support, supporting programs for student mental health, and supporting meaningful diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. We also launched the free on-line platform FreeWill to support our donors interested in estate planning, and have signed up nearly 30 individuals in just a few months to our legacy society, the Tower Society.

Hard, hard work

The year was and continues to be exhausting. I’d shared this with my boss, the president, last fall. He in turn, shared my worries with one of our devoted donors. To relieve our anxiety, she made a $100,000 cash and $300,000 bequest gift—the final $400,000 needed to make our campaign goal in December 2020. This generous gift allowed my team to joyfully and without pressure engage our supporters for the final six months of Soaring Higher. I had coffee with her recently, outside, for the first time since the pandemic began, and was able to finally thank her in person.

In Summary

Partnership with New Paltz’s donors has been forged by strong leadership, the courage to address important issues such as student financial crises and mental health, racism and inequality, and donors’ interest in making sound investments in a trusted institution. The pandemic shone a spotlight on what we’d done well to date and where we need more work.

We look forward to announcing our final campaign total on July 1, 2021, and at our in-person campus-wide celebration in September. In the words of retired Professor and Board Director Giancarlo Traverso, 

“I give, in this loving lengthy process, as many give, people we call philanthropists, whose meaning from the Greek is “a lover of others” where love is shown by giving to others, no matter the amount, whether one million, or one thousand or one dollar. For each amount contributes to the student’s fuller realization of self. And that is one hell of a return on investment, better than anything Wall Street can offer!”

Erica Marks lives and works in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York, serving as Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations at SUNY New Paltz and Executive Director of the SUNY New Paltz Foundation.

What a Nonprofit Development Staffer Does… and why it’s smart to hire one!

by Betsy Steward

Years ago, as Director of Development for a small nonprofit, I was always taken aback when, after a big gift came in, my organization’s board chair would cheerfully announce to the board that “Betsy’s magic” had done it again. Although I know she genuinely meant it as a compliment, I always wanted to yell, “Magic? MAGIC? There’s nothing magic about it! It’s know-how, organization and elbow grease, and did I mention know-how, organization and elbow grease???!!!”

Indeed, neither I nor any other development professional has any magical powers. But the myth persists. So, I thought it might be helpful to my readers to share exactly what a development officer does, and why it’s smart to hire one.

Juggler

If I had to describe the development staffer’s activity in one word, it would be juggling. There are really only six ways to raise money, and all six methods should be active, no matter how big or small the nonprofit. Each method involves multiple activities that must also be juggled. That means that the development office has a lot of balls in the air at every moment. 

All methods of soliciting charitable donations fall into one of these six categories, each of which must be managed and maintained:

  • Direct Appeals (end-of-year appeal letter, newsletters)
  • Events (galas, golf outings, virtual or in-person house parties)
  • Grants (from Corporations, Private Foundations, Government)
  • Online Fundraising (website, Giving Tuesday, email blasts)
  • Major Gift Solicitations (personally asking for 5-6-7-figure gifts) 
  • Bequests (aka Planned Giving – asking a donor to put the nonprofit in their estate plans)

Storyteller

The first thing a development officer must do is learn about the nonprofit: why it’s needed, who it serves, its history and its impact. Deeply understanding the problem being addressed and the solution the organization provides affects everything, from appeal letters to grant writing to major gift solicitations and more. A development officer must be able to describe your mission and your methods compellingly, compassionately, and concisely, in person and in writing. Even for a mission that seems straightforward—curing cancer, for example—a development officer needs to do a deep dive on the organization’s specific story, so she can answer a donor whose question—sometimes stated but most often implicit—is, “why should I support you and not some other organization [trying to cure cancer]?”.

Organizer in Chief

If all the income streams are going to work effectively, it means planning, strategizing, adjusting plans and being disciplined about keeping all the details in order. Lack of organization means you’ll fall down on the follow-up—which is the kiss of death for some of the best laid plans. Consider these:

  • You say you’ve written a compelling grant proposal? Oops, looks like the deadline was last week. 
  • Your end-of-year appeal brought in a lot this year, good for you! What? No time to write thank-you notes?! There go your chances for repeat or increased gifts from those donors next year.
  • Your annual fundraising gala is in two months, and you don’t have any sponsors yet? Uh-oh. Too bad you didn’t follow the best practice of beginning work on an annual event the very next day after the last one.

Fundraising Bus Driver

Some of my clients have utterly fantastic boards, who enthusiastically participate in fundraising. But without a bus driver, the fundraising bus can go off the road and over the cliff. An effective development officer will guide board members who are excited to cultivate or solicit—making sure they don’t conflict or overlap with each other, or with strategies already determined by the staff.

Other nonprofits have boards that are just learning about their role in fundraising. In that case, it’s the job of the development officer to educate and inspire board members about fundraising—how it works, their role in it, and how rewarding it can be.

Mother Hen

We know in fundraising that people give to people they trust. A development officer’s job is to build that trust and strengthen the relationship with each donor. A fundraiser must listen and learn to find out a donor’s interests and passions, keep track of that information, and then figure out and execute a strategy for growing each individual donor relationship. Like a mother hen watching her chicks, a good development professional is always aware of her donors—each one’s reasons for being involved, what motivates them to give, and what could engage and inspire them to continue and increase their gifts.

Why You’ll Be Glad You Hired a Development Professional

If you’ve read this far, I hope you’ve gotten the message that magic has nothing to do with professional fundraising. Rather, it’s a combination of intense attention to detail and strategic, big-picture thinking. Without someone focused on it and nothing else, it’s hard to imagine the funds you need coming in.

I often think of fundraising like a tennis match: a donor expresses interest, the fundraiser responds, the donor expresses more interest, and the game goes on. It may start with a simple online donation or an introduction—but if there’s no one in your organization to return the volley, how can your nonprofit possibly win the game?

Successful fundraising requires time, focus, knowledge, energy and compassion. Hiring a professional to give fundraising the attention it needs and deserves is a no-brainer. If you don’t, how can your nonprofit possibly thrive? And remember, if your organization isn’t thriving, the people you serve won’t get what THEY need. Do it for THEM.

Betsy Steward is Senior Consultant at the Heller Fundraising Group. She advises clients on capital campaigns as well as major donor cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. betsy@hellerfundraisinggroup.com