Hungry for Change

Tell us about Action Against Hunger. Where is most of your work focused?

A: We’re a global humanitarian aid organization. We don’t have work in the U.S., because we go where the need is greatest. And right now while there is tremendous need in the U.S. and everywhere, the hunger hotspots of the world aren’t in the U.S. at this moment. We’re working mostly in East Africa, Haiti, Latin America, Asia etc.

The fundraising landscape has shifted substantially over the last few years. What kind of changes are you seeing?

What I’m seeing at Action Against Hunger is definitely a change toward more narrative storytelling with reporting, and the importance of that. Being a planned giving officer means reporting is a huge part of my job and making sure all the donors who are in our planned giving donor base — we call them the Legacy Society — feel connected to the work we’re doing. So it’s really making donors feel connected to what’s going on so they feel like they actually have a sense of where their planned gift or major gift is going towards. We’re telling stories about our different programs and why they’re effective; the short-term solutions and long-term solutions that are incorporated into the programs; and then sharing quotes and stories from specific people in those programs to make it feel more personal. … You can tell someone that we’re saving 22 million people, and that’s great, but when you tell them a specific story of one of those people it’s more meaningful.

So narrative storytelling is definitely a focus, along with life-saving right now, but we’re also trying to answer the question “What you doing about the future?” because there is this huge gap in aid which I’m sure we’re all familiar, and it’s not just the U.S. but different governments pulling back on funding, so there is this a large gap that needs to be filled and we can’t really fill that with just dollars alone — we need to innovate to find ways to do more with less, so there’s a big focus on innovation.

Can you give me an example of what that looks like?

We’re partnering to find ways to treat hunger and malnutrition — mostly in children — with less funds. Together with RUTF manufacturers, we’re working on conceptualizing and developing something called Novel RUTF, or Ready to Use Therapeutic Food. [RUTF is a high-energy, high-calorie paste created with peanuts, oil, sugar, milk powder, and supplements that provides the nutrients required for recovery from acute malnutrition.]

Novel RUTF aims to take peanuts and dairy out of the equation, the two most expensive ingredients in RUTF, and insert new plant-based ingredients. Should trials prove effective, costs could be cut by 25% while maintaining our 90% cure rate. By enabling local production, this breakthrough would allow us to treat 1.3 million additional children annually with existing resources, bringing life-saving treatment to more families.

We’re working to see a future where progress can continue to be made at greater scale, even if public funding remains up in the air, which in a sense it always will be because as governments change, funding from governments will change. We want to find real solutions like this that we can implement on our own as a nonprofit humanitarian community — it wouldn’t just be us, it would be other organizations of our likeness — working together.

And that’s just one example among many others that we’re working on. We just had an innovation showcase that we invited donors and other partners to, that showcased a few of these examples and the people partnering with us got up and gave a speech on what the innovation is; what are the effects; what is needed to implement the innovation, and then everyone at the event essentially “Shark Tanked” it and voted on which might be the best to invest in, or which would they invest in most.

What do you find is the most effective approach to fundraising?

I’m definitely an on-the-phone, go-and-visit kind of person. Yes, emails are great; mailings are great; but there is nothing that replaces one-on-one connection, especially when it comes to major gifts and planned gifts. With planned gifts, you typically don’t receive those for many years, until a donor has passed on, so your job is to keep them engaged to feel connected and feel valued, for 20, 30, 40 years.

That’s a real deep relationship, and a lot of times these givers have been giving for many years prior to deciding to make a planned gift, so they’re really generous people who really want to make a lasting impact. It is a part of who they are, and they obviously really dig your work if they’ve been supporting you for so long and are planning to leave you in their future plans. For that, especially, there’s nothing like getting on the phone or — even better — going in person and having talks with people about why they give, what’s important to them, and hearing their advice. There’s a quote, “Ask for money, and you’ll get advice. Ask for advice, and you’ll get money twice.” [Michael Colt, How to Start a Company]. Those two things go quite hand-in-hand.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as a fundraiser for a large, global organization?

With something like a global aid organization it becomes difficult to do volunteer activities in the way people might want to do them. People like to volunteer sometimes before getting involved with donations, which makes sense, but with an organization like Action Against Hunger, making a sandwich and shipping it thousands of miles might not be realistic … so it can be a challenge finding ways to get people engaged in a more hands-on way.

For instance, volunteers like to pack hygiene kits or dignity kits for people to use, and while that’s a great idea for certain organizations and absolutely a wonderful way to give back, it doesn’t work for us. If we make a kit here and send it somewhere else, it’s about $300 a kit versus if we make them and distribute them with our own very effective processes, that’s going to be about $25 a kit. So we came up with other ways to get people engaged, like writing thank-you notes to the humanitarian workers who are putting their lives on the line in these very high-risk emergency environments; and finding ways to engage and inform people through more educational materials so they can go and be advocates on behalf of the work we do.

Let’s talk about planned gifts. What types do you see most often?

It’s mostly bequests; a percent of assets or a specific amount left in a will. But a lot of times we’ll also be beneficiaries of some sort of account … a life insurance plan or an IRA account or a certain bank account. Stocks are huge, and becoming even bigger … it’s not only helping the organization, but donors are avoiding any capital gains on those stocks, so there’s just a lot of tax-incentivized ways to give that I think people are starting to really latch onto. QCDs are big as well … that can be a really great way to engage donors who aren’t necessarily taking from their current pool of funds.

What do you enjoy about working with planned gifts?

What I love about planned gifts is that the donors form such a deep, meaningful relationship with the organization, and it is also such an inclusive way to give. You don’t have to have thousands of discretionary dollars at this moment to make a larger contribution; it’s an inclusive way for people to really be philanthropists because not everyone who is a millionaire or billionaire is generous. Regular people are sometimes the most generous; they care the most deeply. They’ve been giving $5 every month for 10 years … what a beautiful commitment!

What approach are you taking to marketing planned gifts?

I develop a planned giving calendar every year, and there’s two sides of that. One is for people who have told us, “you’re in my plans,” or “I’m considering putting you in my plans” … they have a very curated calendar that surrounds different holidays, different webinars, events that we’re having in person, personal phone calls … I want to meet with them and thank them in person. And then there’s our other half of the planned giving calendar, which is really more marketing outreach, where we’re looking at our database to see who has a penchant for this; who has been giving a really long time, who has shown a desire to engage more, who’s giving non-cash gifts — because if you’re giving a non-cash gift you’re more likely to give a planned gift — and then sending them outreach around Make-a-Will Month and World Hunger Day; sending them postcards with quotes from people from the field, or quotes from donors in our Legacy Society about why they decided to leave us in their will … the idea is it’s a curated pool of people who have shown a desire to engage that we’re sending this to.

And we’re also really trying to get larger donors to think of gifts like they’re an investment in the mission that will grow with time. You’re not reaping the returns of that investment, to be clear, it is absolutely the nonprofit … but the people who you’re supporting, it’s not just a one-and-done gift; not just one sandwich … it’s investing in local economies and local nutrition and local education.

Because in the climate we’re in, that’s the hope for the future: Putting things in place that grow with time so that we can end hunger for everyone, for good. That’s our official mission at Action Against Hunger, and it’s quite ambitious, but as we always say it’s not a matter of having enough food in the world, it’s a matter of access. We have enough to feed everybody in the world, so finding ways to create that access in a short-term and long-term situation is the way forward.