An Interview with William Lutz

Encouragement in the high-risk world of nonprofits

(The Follies are later than usual this morning, but I have a good reason that I’ll share in a future Folly. Sorry to keep you waiting for today’s interview!)

I met William through our wonderful, random world, drawn together by many shared values in philanthropy. He commented on a few Funder Follies and we connected. I was especially interested in his work with so many public agencies – I loathe government grants and knew his perspective would open my eyes to new ways of seeing things. I’m excited to share William’s optimism, and hope you’ll enjoy it too.

What is your philanthropy role and how long have you done this work?

I really have three roles focused on Doing Good: my day job running a nonprofit that provides critical social services in a mostly rural area; serving on my city council; and consulting through Pinnacle Strategies.

I started consulting because I kept running into bootstrapping nonprofit leaders who did not find fundraising or management easy. I had to learn the nitty gritty on these issues as part of my Masters in Public Administration, but they ended up in these roles by luck or happenstance, and often say they feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. These executive directors are so talented! My work with them is really 90% encouragement and 10% skills.

I’m often helping nonprofit directors take steps to get their organizations to the next level. One common conversation goes like this.

“You don’t need a $10,000 donor. You need a $100 donor that you turn into a $10,000 donor.” I scale it down to a place where they feel more comfortable and can make progress.

People shake with fear when you tell them to find a $10,000 gift. But anyone can get a $100 gift.

Tell us about something funny, crazy or unexpected that happened in your world of doing good.

There are so many unexpected things that happen. Before this job, I was the grantwriter for a local government. We were applying for a very competitive grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and, for 5 years, submitted applications that were declined. Fortunately, the EPA offered a window where you could talk to reviewers and get feedback, and I was able to set up a call. It turns out that proposals were randomly distributed across regions for review: our reviewers did not live in an industrial region and weren’t familiar with projects to revitalize brownfields, like ours.

I took this feedback to heart. It helped me to understand that I needed to tell more of a story, rather than submitting answers to the checklist of what the funder said they wanted to hear. So we developed a compelling narrative of our small, down and out, former industrial town that just needed a little help dealing with the health consequences of abandoned manufacturing properties.

You don’t know who’s going to be reviewing your proposal, and what their expertise is. They may not know anything about your work, so the process isn’t always fair.

If you could change one thing in the process of fundraising, what would it be?

I want funders to actually read and understand the information we’re giving to them. It seems like grantmakers decide that they need to ask for a lot of information, yet it’s unclear what the decision-making process is. This is a partnership: the grant meets the foundation’s need as well as the nonprofit’s, but it can feel very one-sided. Funders could save nonprofit staff time – which is a such a scarce resource – by defining with a high level of specificity what they’re going to fund. If you don’t see your own nonprofit’s work in that definition, you can assume you’re out outside of their funding scope and move on to a better grant prospect.

Think of your favorite funder or donor. What makes them great?

I love community foundations. In general, there’s no idea too crazy for them not to consider. Back when I was working for the small local government, the engineering department needed $100,000 for a boat to cut weeds – the city water supply was from a lake that was regularly overgrown. I couldn’t think of any funders, but I decided to ask my contact at the local community foundation, since I had worked so closely with her. Six months later, we got the check for the boat and named her the SS Cheryl, after our champion at our community foundation.

In smaller communities it’s not uncommon for a foundation to call when they have a question. That is so great! If your application is a mostly good fit, they’re likely to reach out so you can clarify what may be missing, instead of rejecting your ask outright and leaving you guessing as to why.

What is one thing you’d like all donors to know about a nonprofit’s world?

The hardest part of running a nonprofit is that we have to do everything correctly and on the cheap. If things go wrong in our world, we could end up being front page news. We operate without a risk safety net.

People need credit for making things work as well as they do. In the private sector, you have a one-on-one relationship: you buy something from the company and connect with them directly. But with a nonprofit, I’m always managing multiple stakeholders with different perspectives and tolerance for risk in their community impact. It’s not easy.