Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

In my role as a foundation officer, I spend a good deal of time visiting nonprofit organizations on site visits, where I ask lots of questions and try to determine if the nonprofit is a good match to apply for a grant from Mission Increase Foundation.  In this post, I’d like to take a brief detour from Transformational Giving to highlight the Pacific Rim Foundation, who hosted me recently on an excellent site visit. 

Let’s look together at a few of the elements that went into my visit with PRF.  Much of this will sound like common sense, because, well, it is, but it’s surprising how often nonprofits show they’ve yet to master the basics. 

So here’s what PRF did to impress me:

• They were ready for me.  I showed up on time and they were ready to begin.  No shuffling of papers looking for the MIF file, no wrapping up a phone call or one last email, no searching their brain for any recollection of who I was or why I was in their office—they were ready to begin from the moment I entered.
• Their audio/visual elements worked perfectly.  PRF had prepared a powerpoint presentation, certainly not a requirement, but a nice touch.  Most impressively, they had worked all the bugs out and exorcised all the ghosts from the machine, so that projector, computer, software, power cords, etc., all worked perfectly.  Nothing drains the energy from a room like equipment malfunctions and the resultant hemming and hawing while you desperately try to fix the problem.
• They asked ahead of time how much time I had, and honored that request to the minute.  I told them that I had 90 minutes to meet, of which they could have half, as I needed 45 minutes to ask all my questions.  So they took 45 minutes.  Not 47.  Not 46.  45.  And they covered all the material they had prepared in the time allotted.
• They tailored the presentation to our foundation’s particular interests.  PRF had researched MIF (an easy thing to do, as we put so much information on our website)—our funding priorities and interests—and demonstrated in their presentation why they believed them to be a good fit with us.  They communicated why a grant to them would help accomplish our charitable intentions.
• It wasn’t over the top.  Sometimes nonprofits think that they need to line up the dancing elephants when a foundation officer comes to visit, but over the top displays can ring hollow, and suggest that the nonprofit isn’t a good steward of resources.  PRF displayed content over flash.
• They were passionate about their cause.  The two gentlemen I met with had reflected on their own personal journeys which led them to a place of participating so actively in this cause.  They shared these stories with me, which complemented nicely the statistics and other objective data they had shared. 

Well done Pacific Rim Foundation!  Go and do likewise!