Jason Saul, author of The End of Fundraising, was featured at Donors Forum’s inaugural Author Series event on October 11.  Saul emphasized the importance of nonprofits raising money by showing how the outcomes they achieve relate to the goals of the businesses and consumers from whom they seek support. Non-financial returns of “doing good” do not give nonprofits much leverage, but it doesn’t need to be this way if we realize that social change has economic value.

Touching on concepts and techniques covered in more depth in his book, Saul offered several starting points for opening up a new dialogue about corporate-nonprofit partnerships:

• Capture, market, and sell your impact. We need effective methodology to measure and value outcomes.
• "It's not about you, it's about them." We in the independent sector need to understand who the stakeholders are that benefit from our impact.
• We can strengthen the sector by focusing on impact while providing economic value to businesses at the same time.

The talk was thought provoking and well received by an audience more than 120 nonprofit and foundation leaders. During a substantive question and answer segment, Saul offered additional specific examples and insights into connecting nonprofit outcomes to for-profit needs.

The event, sponsored in part by Kraft Foods, took in a space generously donated by the law firm Mayer Brown.  All attendees received a copy of The End of Fundraising. See event pictures on Donors Forum's Facebook page. Watch Donors Forum’s event page for future author events.

~Mary Penn, Communications and Development Consultant