The Southwest Florida Non-Profit Market
Sue Seiter, Senior Consultant
May 16, 2007

As part of expanding Schultz & Williams’s services to Southwest Florida, I have had the wonderful opportunity to meet with 40 leaders of the Southwest Florida nonprofit community, and I would like to share with you some of the fascinating things I have learned.

• There are an enormous number of nonprofits in SW Florida – more than 1100 in Sarasota County and another 822 in Manatee County, which represents a 100% increase in the last 10 years.
• When you consider that Sarasota County had 369,000 residents and Manatee County had 313,000 residents in 2006 (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), that’s a lot of nonprofits serving the region.
• This proliferation of nonprofits is inspiring -- inspiring because it provides a wide array of opportunities for volunteerism and philanthropy.
• The population growth and large number of retirees in the region provide a large and willing supply of volunteers, to serve on boards and to provide direct service to clients. Many are sophisticated board members who bring significant business and nonprofit experience from their previous lives -- and most have more time and resources now to devote to their favorite charities.
• There is a lot of money in Sarasota and a strong culture of giving. In all of my meetings, I rarely heard an executive director or development officer complain about raising money. That is a marked contrast to many other cities which are losing population and corporate headquarters, but adding organizations raising private dollars.
• The snowbirds are generous givers to Sarasota and Manatee organizations, while continuing to support their favorite charities at home. I have been particularly impressed by the solid participation of boards in giving and, in some cases, getting.
• Social philanthropy is a term I learned here, especially in reference to Sarasota. The number of fundraising events is mind-boggling. They don’t seem to lack for volunteer leadership or guests or intriguing auction items or exotic themes. And, most of them raise a lot of money.
• As I listened to nonprofit leaders share their perceptions of the donor pool, a vision of a lake, fed constantly from the bottom by fresh water springs, came to mind. With the continuing influx of new part-time and permanent residents, many of them people of significant means, the potential for gifts seems almost limitless.
• Many of the nonprofits are small in this region and there appears to be some overlap of services. There are, however, some wonderful collaborations going on such as the partnership of Sarasota Habitat and Goodwill to build 500 new homes in 5 years and the partnership of Forty Carrots Parenting Center with the Sarasota County libraries, to name just two.
• Community foundations are very strong in Southwest Florida – with two community foundations with assets over $175 million in Sarasota County alone. Their willingness to be shoulder-to-shoulder partners in capacity building for the nonprofit sector is impressive. The Selby Foundation is exemplary in its willingness to listen to and support operating and programming needs in the nonprofit sector, rather than dictating the community agenda through its philanthropy. This level of foundation support doesn’t happen everywhere.
• The community foundations and the financial services industry appear to be doing a very good job with encouraging planned gifts, especially bequests, and many area nonprofits have benefited handsomely from these estate plans.
• The picture that is coming into focus from my meetings is very promising – and as someone coming from an older, northern city with declining growth, this is truly encouraging.

But I have also learned some of the down side of the nonprofit scene in southwest Florida.

• The vast number of nonprofits in this region is wonderful – but also very challenging -- challenging because it increases the competition for people power and donations.
• Those sophisticated and generous board members, with lots of time, can also be very “hands on” board members, with a propensity for micro-managing.
• In spite of the significant sums raised at special events and even in capital campaigns in the region, I sense there is a lot of money “left on the table” because most organizations are not focusing their efforts on creating a solid base of annual donors and major gift supporters.
• I’ve learned it is very difficult to attract and keep well-trained fundraising staff. The local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals tells us that the tenure of a development professional in Sarasota County is under one year, as compared with 1 ½ years nationwide. The fund-raising expectations for development professionals in the region are high, the salaries are low and the cost of living in the region is rapidly becoming prohibitive.
• The emphasis on event fundraising drains the time and energy of the staff and they simply don’t have the hours, the training or the resources to convert event participants into annual and then major gift supporters.
• The number of small nonprofits seems to arise from the significant number of passionate philanthropists who move here and create a new organization to fulfill the mission of their dreams, with little business planning of how they will sustain it over the long term and who will succeed them in its leadership. As in most cities, any push toward collaboration and consolidation seems to be coming from the funders.
• There seems to be a palpable competition between the community foundations – two strong and active community foundations in one county is almost too good to be true.

When we think about how Schultz & Williams might be helpful in the Southwest Florida community, three things come to mind.

• We can help organizations create solid business plans so they can translate the passion of their missions into a working roadmap to ensure strong leadership, sound financial health, and good facilities and program planning.
• We can help organizations attract more people to their mission through branding, positioning and direct marketing so their cause is better known and understood.
• We can work with nonprofits of all sizes to move special event participants into annual supporters and, when appropriate, major donors.

Schultz & Williams is pleased to open an office in Southwest Florida and stands ready to work with nonprofit community members to realize their goals.

Schultz & Williams is a national consulting firm based in Philadelphia; providing management, fundraising and marketing consulting for nonprofit organizations, along with full-service direct marketing, database and creative/production services.