Spark's Shannon Farley beats the recession. Her secret - everyone can be a philanthropist.

Shannon Farley saw the downturn coming early last year.  When Spark, the organization she runs, lost foundation grants that totaled 30% of her budget she quickly hunkered down and laid out an innovative strategy that allowed her to meet her fundraising goals while other social entrepreneurs were cutting budgets and staff.

How did this diminutive, high powered social entrepreneur in charge of a fast moving organization giving grants to women's organizations from South Africa to San Francisco do what so many social entrepreneurs could not do in the "lost year" of 2009?  She figured out how to get her members to give more than once and to give more than they ever had.  It took smarts, hard work and the highest order of social entrepreneurism and community building to do it.  There are lessons here for social entrepreneurs around the world. (full disclaimer:  I am a Spark supporter and donor).

So what is her secret?

She deepened the connection to her members – bringing them into more committed relationship than most organizations achieve. Her members are for the most part young professional women (and a few guys like me),  Many had never been involved in a NPO as a major donor or a regular donor before.  But they were just ATM machines – they grew up on Facebook and Myspace and LinkedIn.  Relationships mattered.  So Shannon built deep, strong, close relationships.  She did this by:

·        Face to face meetings with all members- from the newest non donors to the long time major donors.

·        Used the 250 volunteers she had recruited during the previous 2 years to multiply her efforts

·        Drilled down on the open rate information on her campaign emails to precisely construct small contact groups of similar donors

·        Created hyper-personal online communication with hthese groups addressing them precisely

·        Started the Spark Champions – 25 people who had not yet found a home in the organization and ask them how they could give at a higher level;  the result was a strongly engaged group of new donors and fund raising volunteers

·        Mobilized a base of unlikely donors, convincing them to become philanthropists for the first time in their young lives

·        Engaged a group of young people who had not been involved in other organizations and convinced them to think about philanthropy as a political voice.

Shannon says Spark was able to prosper during the recession while other NPOs and social entrepreneurs sank because Spark spent time and energy surveying members and getting feedback on what they needed to feel like a community – a community that understood what it was like to be a woman in a sometimes very unfriendly world. By doing so, she created opportunities for her members and their friends to buy in – to be involved in all levels of leadership in Spark.  Members appreciated that – it is a network, not a top-down hierarchy.

Spark's member network is comprised of approximately 60% women, 40% men and 40% ethnic minorities.  It is a community of young people who are largely untapped by other philanthropic organizations.  Through its signature engagement model - Engaging the Next Generation of Philanthropists -  Spark trains and cultivates a pipeline of Millennial donors to understand the issues that impact women around the world and know how to exert their influence to change patterns inequality.  Over the past 2+ years, Farley has focused her efforts on mobilizing a generation of social-justice-minded young professionals who believe in the power of women-led solutions.  Spark membership begins at only $75, making it easy for people of varying levels of income to support the organization through member-only fundraising events, volunteer opportunities and grant making for women’s organizations around the world. Her efforts paid off.

It also helps that Spark's work is tremendously compelling -  supporting organizations like Asylum Access, which  trains Colombian women refugees to lobby the Ecuadorian National Assembly for recognition of employment rights and protection from sexual violence for refugees, Amai House in South Africa which provides shelter, medical care and job training for HIV-infected pregnant Zimbabwean women refugees who are victims of politically motivated sexual violence, and  The Light Project in Vietnam which  provides health care, HIV/AIDS treatment, education, job training and housing for migrant and refugee women living in Hanoi, and its END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE campaign. To purchase surveillance system for Mati's transition house for South Asian women who have been victims of domestic violence.

Next week, Dr. O talks to CitizenGlobal, which is rolling out the first broadcast-to-broadband portal on the planet, a revolutionary new tool that enables NPO's to post video, audio and solicitations easily, cheaply and simultaneously on multiple platforms from cell phones to websites.

Listen to Dr. O's radio program, The Fairness Doctrine, on Livestream at www.wdisam.com every day from 3-5 pm EST or download it from iTunes.