Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast: Recent Episodes
Andrew Olsen, CFRE and Roy Jones, CFRE
Andrew Olsen, CFRE and Roy Jones, CFRE have 50+ years of combined nonprofit leadership experience and have jointly raised nearly $1 Billion in charitable gifts. In this podcast, Andrew and Roy interview high-level leaders from across the sector to bring you high impact insights and guidance to help you lead successfully and execute effectively.
Tracy Thomas is a rabblerouser. A change leader. A force. She’s also a loving mom, a caring wife, and a committed believer. Tracy and I sat down to have a frank and honest conversation about what it’s like to be a woman in executive leadership in the nonprofit sector. As Senior Vice President of Advancement […]
Over my 25-year fundraising career I’ve often heard it said, “fundraising is like farming — you plant the seed, allow time to take hold, and then eventually reap the harvest.” But as Joel Eaton, Founder of Preface and I discussed, there are a multitude of other ways that fundraising and farming are similar. In this […]
“If we believe so much in our missions and what we’re trying to accomplish, we have a moral obligation to provide the time and space for our employees to get the continuing education necessary to be the best they can at their jobs.” I loved this quote from Andrew McIndoe, Vice President at The Heritage […]
If you’ve spent any time at all in the nonprofit sector, you know there are some subjects that are taboo. Some subjects that are difficult to discuss in public spaces, and others that are purely unpopular. Our guests today refer to those topics collectively as “Nonprofit F-Words.” No, not THAT F-Word. I promise. In this […]
Gift planning and legacy giving conversations don’t just have to be about death and mortality. In fact, they can and should be beautiful conversations about how donors can care for the long-term needs of their families, AND, how they can make significant impact for the causes they care most about. Kristi Brennan, Chartered Advisor in […]
Everyone pretty much everywhere is talking about change right now. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, change seems to be the word of the day. And if you’re not talking about change, you might be talking about transformation. That’s just bigger change, right? What so many of us get wrong about change and transformation efforts […]
What’s the role of social media in today’s nonprofit landscape? Why do you need to think about social media within the broader context of your overall marketing and fundraising strategy, instead of as a stand-alone effort? Should social media replace your other marketing tactics, or should it augment your existing plan? How should your nonprofit […]
Dr. Patton McDowell has spent his entire professional career leading organizations and developing high-performing leaders across the nonprofit sector. You might have caught my conversation with Patton a few weeks ago on his show, Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership. If you didn’t, you should check it out. We had an in-depth conversation on the impact […]
Katie Lord is Vice President of Nonprofit Development at Proof Positioning, a market research company that uses emotional research to better understand donors and motivate them to act for nonprofits. Katie and I talked recently about the disconnect between marketing and fundraising in nonprofits, as well as the impact of behavioral economics and emotional research […]
Jenny Soderholm has invested her entire career in healthcare philanthropy. As Chief Development Officer at Children’s Minnesota and President of Children’s Minnesota Foundation, Jenny is focused on fostering a broad and deep culture of philanthropy that advances her organization’s ability to serve more children and families across Minnesota. As we talked recently, Jenny shared some […]
What does a Bay Area pastor know about nonprofits and charitable giving? Turns out he knows quite a lot. At least if that guy is Vance Roush. Vance is Founder of Overflow.co, a platform created to help unlock generosity across the globe. Overflow is a platform that helps generous individuals give to charities and ministry […]
Do you have a theology of fundraising? This was a fascinating question that Michael Mitchell posited on the show recently, and it led to a great conversation about what’s really important in our craft. Michael is Director of Development and Discipleship at Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO). In our conversation, Michael talked a lot about […]
Rebecca Hendrix is Chief Development Officer at Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas. She joined us on the podcast recently to talk about food bank fundraising, engaging donors throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to deal with the various challenges facing the nonprofit sector today.
Some of the highlights from our conversation include:
- Understanding the complexity and challenges that arise with engaging donors in a purely virtual environment
- Navigating crises at your organization and caring well for your people in the process
- Helping fundraisers balance the desire to remain remote with the need to engage directly and deeply with donors
- Why fundraising is “the highest form of sales”
- The key traits for successful nonprofit leaders
- What your organization can do to meet donors where they are today and engage them well for the future
Kevin Feldman is Director of Development at The Salvation Army, Lake County, Indiana. He also advises small and emerging nonprofits on all things fundraising-related.
Kevin also runs a one-person development shop and has spent years fine-tuning his approach to donor engagement and fundraising.
We sat down recently to discuss the state of fundraising amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and how that’s changing the nonprofit landscape. Kevin had some great insights about the work and how we ought to be thinking about it. Here are some of the key insights we discussed:
- The number one factor in driving success for fundraising in an organization is the leader’s passion for the cause. Being “fearlessly sold out” for the mission is critical. This trait drives everything else, keeps you motivated in challenging times, and helps to define the culture for everyone else in the organization.
- Managing internal expectations around fundraising, donor relationships, revenue and expenses is equally as critical as managing your external donor expectations. In fact, bringing the board and other leaders into your fundraising plan — essentially making it their plan — will help bring shared ownership and greater success than trying to go it alone.
- For the one-person shop, determining where to spend your time and energy is the most important decision-making challenge. Think about that decision from the perspective of, “will this activity help me retain more donors, grow the organization’s relationship with more donors, increase giving, or add more new supporters to our cause?” If yes, then do it. If no, pass on it.
- As COVID-19 and other social issues conti
Anthony Jones is Founder of LinkedInOnePercentClub and formerly led all digital marketing, fundraising and social media strategy at Ducks Unlimited. He’s one of the most prolific digital marketers in our sector, and an all-around great guy.
Recently, Anthony made a HUGE move, leaving a 15-year career at Ducks Unlimited and launching his own company to help people like you and me improve our personal brands on LinkedIn.
In this conversation, Anthony and I talk about the importance of building your personal brand, why LinkedIn is the most important platform for personal branding, and how nonprofits can leverage LinkedIn for growth as well.
Our conversation hit key topics including:
- Why focusing on your personal brand on LinkedIn can put you in the top 1% of users on the platform.
- What content is and isn’t “LinkedIn appropriate”.
- How your nonprofit can gain attention and engagement on LinkedIn.
- Why nonprofits shouldn’t be afraid of their employees building personal brands on LinkedIn.
- Understanding how an employee’s personal brand can help build and grow your organization’s credibility.
- How best to engage donors, potential board members, and future employees on LinkedIn (and how not to).
Don’t forget to check out Anthony’s FREE mini-course on personal branding on LinkedIn.
In our first episode of 2022 we sat down with Andy Carr, Vice President of Development and Marketing at Feed My Starving Children.
Feed My Starving Children is a Christian international hunger relief organization that will provide 370 million meals to people in need across the globe this year. That’s more than 1 million meals per day.
In our conversation with Andy, we covered many topics, including:
- The philanthropic power of an engaging volunteer experience.
- Crafting easily shareable messages.
- Why talking about the “big” problem actually keeps people from acting, and how you can boil the big problem down to a single key point.
- How to use a low-cost, tangible entry point to introduce supporters to your organization in a meaningful way.
- The value of creating blended live/virtual fundraising events.
Andy is a dynamic, engaging speaker who is leading monumental growth at Feed My Starving Children. Take a listen — we’re sure you’ll find value in this conversation!
We recently sat down with Tom Kilgannon, President of Freedom Alliance.
Freedom Alliance is a nonprofit organization founded to support our nation’s combat wounded and deployed troops and their families. One of their greatest contributions to the military community is their scholarship fund for the dependents of military personnel who have been severely wounded or killed in combat. To-date, Freedom Alliance has given out $20 Million in college scholarships to the dependents of America’s fallen and injured heroes.
In our conversation with Tom about Freedom Alliance’s fundraising strategy and how they achieved this huge accomplishment of funding $20 Million in scholarships, here are some of the great insights Tom shared:
- An integrated approach to fundraising allows them to speak to each donor in the way that donor needs to hear the message in order to inspire generosity in their hearts.
- Some fundraising offers / asks for support work better in-person, while others work better at major events, and even still, some messages resonate best when delivered via direct mail or email. You need to activate all viable channels to drive the greatest return for your organization.
- The more you listen to your donors — to truly understand — not just to respond, the more likely you are to secure major investments from your supporters and investors.
- During the pandemic, they were able to activate significant support for the organization and those they support by regularly engaging donors, checking in on their supporters’ needs, and sharing stories of impact.
- Focus on your donors’ needs and desires, and let those items drive how you engage and approach giving opp
Welcome to the 100th episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast! I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to visit with Russell James, J.D., Ph.D., CFP for this milestone episode.
If you know Dr. James, you know this will be a great conversation. If you don’t know him yet, you’re in for a real treat!
Dr. James is Director of graduate studies in charitable planning in the Division of Personal Financial Planning in the College of Human Sciences at Texas Tech University. His research into human behavior and charitable giving has shaped how institutions large and small engage major donors and maximize revenue all across the U.S.
Dr. James recently published a five-book series, the Fundraising Myth and Science Book Series. In our conversation, we talk extensively about one of those books, The Storytelling Fundraiser.
This new book series is also the foundation of a great new training program that Dr. James and Greg Warner at MarketSmart have partnered to bring to market.
We covered so much ground in this conversation. It’s an in-depth review of the book and the foundational thinking that went into it, including:
- The One Big Thing in fundraising, and why it’s something you might not expect.
- The difference between donor-centered and community-centered fundraising, and why organizations that want to secure transformational gifts should double down on donor-centered fundraising.
- The neuroscience behind high-impact philanthropic activity, and how your organization and your donors can benefit from it.
- Why talking to donors about giving from their wealth (assets) vs. their disposable income is critical to your organization’s long-term financial security and growth.
- The exact phrase(s) you should adopt to help your supporters unlock transformational generosity.
- How philanthropy is both altruistic and self-serving at the same time, and what you need to understand to effectively navigate these differences.
- The key decision-making processes that people go through when deciding to give a charitable gift, and how focusing on asset-based giving can help your donors make better decisions (for them and you!).
- Why fundraisers have a difficult time talking with donors about legacy giving, and the exact language and tools to help overcome those difficulties (including his 65 video trainings available for FREE).
- Why wading into math conversations with your donors may not be the best idea, and how to use storytelling to make key financial points that will motivate your donors to act.
- The interconnected role of overhead and restricted giving in philanthropy, and how you can navigate these to unlock significant giving from your
Diana Zhang left a lucrative career as a hedge fund executive in the midst of the pandemic to co-found NeighborShare, a new platform created to support front line heroes in the nonprofit sector, allowing them to match real community needs with donors interested in supporting them.
Discovering that 40% of American families can’t afford even a $400 emergency, Diana and her partners launched an organization designed to help provide this kind of emergency bridge funding to individuals in need, through everyday community heroes like nonprofit case managers, social workers, nurses, etc.
She and her team of 25+ volunteers are on a mission to both disrupt and support the nonprofit sector by thinking differently about solving emerging needs in communities across the U.S.
As a first-time founder of a nonprofit, and career for-profit executive, Diana and her team are applying start-up business principles to NeighborShare while diving deep into community-building, connectivity, and honing their values to deliver the greatest value possible for local nonprofits and the individuals and families they serve.
Every industry has experienced disruption over the last few years. The nonprofit sector wasn’t immune. One area where our sector has seen significant change (not just because of Covid, but even before) is in the way nonprofits engage and are served by agencies.
That’s why I was excited to sit down with Dan Sonners, Vice President at Conrad Direct, Board Member at DMAW, and host of the Dynamic Nonprofits podcast.
We covered a lot of ground in our conversation, including:
- How consultants and agencies that serve nonprofits need to evolve to become more collaborative and supportive of nonprofits
- Why industry collaborations and engagement across service firms could be smart for nonprofits, and how to do this well
- Establishing shared goals and objectives and defining clear swim lanes in collaborative engagements
- The value of multi-channel supporters, and the challenges in building and running multi-channel programs
- Why attribution modeling is difficult, and how best to think about attribution
- Why you need flexibility in your budgeting process
- The role and responsibility of board and executive leaders in healthy nonprofits
If you’ve worked in the nonprofit sector for more than 10 minutes, you know just how incredibly difficult it is to find and keep great people. The staffing challenges in our sector aren’t new, but it seems like the challenges have become more pronounced over the last few years. At least that’s what I keep hearing from clients and friends in our sector.
Recently, my friends at Dickerson Bakker & Associates commissioned a new study on this topic, HELP WANTED: A National Study of Staffing Challenges in Nonprofit Fundraising. We sat down with Derric Bakker, President/CEO to discuss the findings, which I think you’ll find fascinating and helpful in your work (and you just might take comfort in having some hard data that validates what you’ve been feeling too!).
Here are some of the key learnings from this new study:
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Our sector is indeed facing a severe shortage of qualified fundraisers in the marketplace (this most significantly impacts major gift fundraisers)
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The idea of the 18-month turnover cycle is largely a myth (though there’s a small group of habitual job-hoppers that muddy the water on this topic)
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Sadly (and of great concern), only 12% of survey respondents strongly affirmed their Board and executive leadership were actively involved in raising organizational support
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Turnover is a big problem (mostly) for small(er) organizations
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If we want to fix these problems, nonprofit hiring strategy and practices need to change significantly. After all, retaining your best talent starts with making the right hiring decision in the first place (and this is NOT just about the candidates)
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Too few organizations are addressing the key issues that lead to the departure of fun
This conversation with Rev. Jeremy Montgomery, MBA-MA, President/CEO at Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission in Philadelphia, PA, is a deep-dive into change leadership like you’ve never heard before!
When he took the helm at Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission in 2018, the organization was barely surviving. Philadelphia is the 5th largest city in the U.S., and also the poorest large city in the country. The Mission is the city of Philadelphia’s largest provider of men’s shelter services in the city. When he arrived, the Mission was engulfed in gang and drug activity — local gangs were actually dealing drugs right outside their doors.
The challenges they faced at the Mission were significant. From the external environmental risks of gangs and drugs to an internal culture that lacked clear communication, team members who didn’t understand what the goals were, how to achieve success, or how to partner and collaborate together to effectively achieve their mission.
In this podcast episode Jeremy walks us through what it was like to come into an organization like this, how he approached guiding and leading the organization through significant change, and the difficult decisions he had to make to help the organization go from surviving to thriving.
You’ll learn a ton about leading and navigating change in this conversation with Jeremy.
Glenn Cranfield is President and CEO at Nashville Rescue Mission, and Host of the Real Hope podcast.
In this conversation, Glenn talks with me about four key values that guide his work and ministry at Nashville Rescue Mission, including:
- Extravagant Faith – Sometimes we’re forced into situations where all we have is faith. Impossible situations where people think there’s no hope.
- Radical Hospitality – Understanding that the person who is with you in the moment is the most important person in the world, and treating them that way. Focusing on showing others love, dignity, and value.
- Excellence – We can’t ever be perfect, and we know that. But we can strive to be perfect, and in that, practice excellence in all we do.
- Culture of Honor – Imagine how amazing the world would be if we each individually would strive to put others above ourselves, and to show dignity, value, and worth to others.
We also talked about conflict inside organizations. Unlike some leaders in our sector, Glenn’s perspective is that conflict is both good and necessary. In fact, he makes a key point by sharing that the popular scripture verse (Prov 27:17), “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens the wits of another” requires conflict — because it’s only in coming into contact that two pieces of iron can sharpen each other. In the same way, it’s only in conflict that two people can sharpen one another. That’s not to say that every time we experience conflict we’ll come out agreeing. But healthy conflict means we’ll engage directly with one ano
The definition of culture is the distance between who you say you are and how you act.
Ken Brissa became Chief Executive Officer at Phoenix Rescue Mission in February of 2020, just days before the country went into full crisis mode in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the months since Ken began his leadership journey at Phoenix Rescue Mission, much has changed at the mission, throughout Phoenix, and across our nation. But the principles of leadership that helped shape Ken’s career before COVID have remained consistent.
We sat down recently to talk about Ken’s leadership journey and experience in the nonprofit sector. In our conversation we covered critical topics like:
- Why you should empower your team to build culture from the bottom up in your organization instead of pushing culture change from the top down.
- The importance of making communication (quantity AND quality) a key component of your leadership strategy.
- Why collaboration is a critical value for leaders, and how collaboration is more than just “working together”.
- The value of “what if” scenario planning, and how it can help your organization respond more quickly and effectively to crisis situations.
- Why directly addressing conflict in your organization is essential to a grace-based culture.
- The importance of identifying and cultivating a creative outlet, and how that can impact your emotional health.
I’m continuing to explore a series of leadership conversations with nonprofit CEO’s, Executive Directors, and Chief Development Officers across our sector.
In today’s conversation, you’ll hear a discussion with Elaine Streno, Executive Director at Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee.
With more than 20 years of leadership experience in East Tennessee, Elaine shares great wisdom and insights with us, including:
- The importance of humility and how that trait can influence leadership success
- Why working in the nonprofit sector shouldn’t mean personally sacrificing
- Understanding that as a leader, you’re always under the microscope, and why that requires deep integrity
- How to have difficult conversations with employees without destroying relationships
- The importance and value of having strong relationships with your board
- Navigating the political and relational differences between front-line and administrative staff
- The difficulty of parting ways with long-term employees, and how to have those difficult conversations with care and compassion
From entrepreneur to volunteer Board Chair, to nonprofit CEO, Erinn Rowe’s path to leadership at Harvest Hope Food Bank isn’t necessarily common, but neither are the needs of the food bank today.
I sat down with Harvest Hope’s new CEO, Erinn Rowe recently to talk about her journey from board chair to food bank CEO, what she’s learned along the way, and key leadership insights she’s gained throughout her career.
In this conversation we covered topics like:
- How values like empathy, integrity, and honesty are the critical building blocks of leadership and successful organizations
- The challenges of developing and cultivating corporate culture in an environment where some team members have never met face-to-face, and other COVID-related challenges
- How empathetic leadership creates emotional and psychological safety for teams
- The importance of honoring each team member’s humanity, and how an employee’s personal experiences impact their work
- Insights on how to live out your core values daily as a leader
- Why you can train for skills, but not for character — and how to address issues of character in your organization
- What it’s like to transition from volunteer board chair to full-time CEO, and what you can learn from that transition
- The value of clarity, honesty, and direct communication in organizations
This is a great conversation that any nonprofit leader or future leader will gain value from — I hope you enjoy it!
The world of philanthropy is changing by the day right now. From the pandemic to artificial intelligence, to the dramatic increase in giving through Donor Advised Funds (DAF), and even the gamification of giving. So much is changing so quickly.
But one thing is clear…donors continue to dictate the terms.
With so much changing, I was thrilled to sit down with my friend, Paul D’Alessandro, Founder of High Impact Nonprofit Advisors, and author of the brand new book, The Future of Fundraising: How Philanthropy’s Future is Here with Donors Dictating the Terms.
Paul wrote this book after a lengthy and successful career in philanthropy where he’s met with more than 4,000 individual high net worth donors and raised more than $1 Billion for charitable causes!
You’ll want to check out this conversation that covers so many important topics, including:
- How Artificial Intelligence is impacting fundraising, and what that means for the future of the individual fundraiser
- The positives and negatives of donor advised funds, and what this giving vehicle holds for the future of our industry
- How platforms like Twitch and others impacting fundraising, and what that means for donor engagement and nonprofit revenue generation in the future
- The emerging risks to donor privacy and how that could negatively impact giving in the future
- The dirty secrets of fundraiser compensation
Sarah Lee is Chief Operating Officer at New Story, an innovative, growth-focused organization that behaves more like a Silicon Valley start-up than a traditional nonprofit.
New Story is on a mission to solve the global homelessness crisis by creating solutions that are cheaper to develop, higher quality than traditional housing options, and able to get into market faster than typical solutions.
In our conversation we talked about innovation and growth in the nonprofit sector, and how New Story is charging forward to change the way organizations address complex global challenges more effectively.
Highlights from our conversation are:
- Believing that nonprofit organizations should be held to higher (not lower) standards of effectiveness.
- How a 100% donation model and key investment partners help them achieve greater impact.
- The role that talent plays in their ability to deliver effective solutions and to grow and scale their impact.
- The need to balance advances in technology and innovation with mission delivery, and how organizations should think about that balance.
- The value of long-term thinking and how that changes the strategic approach for an organization.
- The importance of hiring people who embrace a "founder" mindset, and how that changes the way an organization operates.
If you want to be a successful major gift fundraiser, one of the most important traits you'll need is courage. Courage to overcome the fear of failure that so many of us face in asking donors to invest in our causes. Fear of not just hearing "no", but failing our organizations and letting down those we're committed to serving.
Julie Ordoñez is the Founder of Courage Lab, a coaching and training program to help fundraisers and nonprofit leaders face their fears and build the skills and resilience necessary to raise significantly more money for mission impact.
But Julie isn't just a coach or teacher of fundraising theory. She's a proven front-line fundraiser. She's done everything from running a one-person fundraising shop to achieving success as a top 1% major gift fundraiser for United Way of Los Angeles.
We connected recently with Julie to learn more about the importance of courage in fundraising, and what holds people and organizations back from achieving success in their fundraising efforts.
Some of the key takeaways you'll enjoy from our conversation are:
- Fundraising problems are actually organizational leadership and culture problems that manifest in revenue challenges.
- The risks of believing that only you and your employees care deeply about your cause (and that your donors don't care as much as you do).
- The importance of empathy for fundraisers and donors alike.
- Why the way we each view money in our personal lives impacts our ability to make significant asks.
- No, COVID-19 hasn't diminished the capacity of major donors (mostly), and why this line of thinking destroys your fundraising potential.
- The importance of asking great questions and listening to donors.
- Why you should stop looking outside your organization for major donors and instead invest in building relationships with your current supporters.
- The value of prioritizing important tasks like actually calling and speaking to your donors, and why that's so difficult for many fundraisers.
This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast is brought to you by my friends at Virtuous.
If you want to create meaningful connection with donors instead of putting distance between your supporters and your cause, you need to know Virtuous.
The responsive fundraising platform created by Virtuous unifies fundraising, marketing, and donor development activities to deliver dynamic campaigns that engage supporters in more meaningful ways.
Download a copy of their Responsive Fundraising Playbook
Matt Hackler is Vice President of Strategic Capacity Building with Feeding America. Like many of us, Matt says he "fell into" fundraising before joining Feeding America. In his current role, Matt leads a team of experts across multiple disciplines to help local member food banks increase their capacity to serve children, families, seniors and individuals experiencing hunger across the U.S.
Matt and I connected recently to talk about COVID-19's impact on fundraising in general, on Feeding America nationally, and on individual member food banks.
We covered a lot of ground, including:
- How food banks learned from the 2008 - 2010 financial crisis and changed their approach to crisis fundraising as a result.
- The spike in giving due to COVID-19, and whether donors who came on file as a result of COVID are "emergency response" donors, or "recession" donors (and what that means for your future fundraising efforts).
- When is the right time to stop talking to donors about COVID-19?
- The role of brand in fundraising, both nationally and in local communities across the U.S.
- How food banks have historically relied on volume-based tactical fundraising efforts instead of relationship-based philanthropy -- and why that needs to evolve for the future.
- Feeding America is seeing that donors who gave in response to COVID-19 are giving more frequently, retaining at higher rates, giving higher average gifts, and converting to monthly ongoing support at higher levels than the average donor -- and what this means for the future of hunger relief funding.
Whether you're working in hunger relief or a completely different kind of nonprofit, you'll want to catch this episode with Matt. His insights are relevant no matter what your organization's focus!
This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast is brought to you by my friends at Virtuous.
If you want to create meaningful connection with donors instead of putting distance between your supporters and your cause, you need to know Virtuous.
The responsive fundraising platform created by Virtuous unifies fundraising, marketing, and donor development activities to deliver dynamic campaigns that engage supporters in more meaningful ways.
Download a copy of their Responsive Fundraising Playbook today!
Brent A. Hafele, M.A., is Senior Vice President of Talent Development at Dickerson Bakker & Associates. Early in his career, Brent held various leadership roles inside nonprofit organizations, including Development Director and Executive Director.
Today, Brent leads talent development efforts for Dickerson Bakker & Associates, and provides executive coaching to fundraisers and nonprofit CEO's and Executive Directors.
Brent and I sat down to discuss how talent development impacts organizational success. In our conversation we hit some big topics, including:
- How does talent impact an organization's capacity for growth?
- Breaking the myth that your nonprofit can't afford to hire top quality talent.
- What it takes to effectively assess a candidate's abilities and qualities during the interview process.
- Effective tools for candidate assessments.
- Why you should hire more slowly, and what the benefits of a longer assessment period is to your nonprofit.
- The value of using a strengths-based framework for talent assessment and coaching in your organization.
- Building a collaborative culture across your team and organization.
- Giving realistic performance feedback to motivate and engage your staff.
If you lead a team or an organization, this conversation is sure to provide you with value!
This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast was brought to you by our friends at Virtuous. We’re so excited to partner with them to promote the upcoming 2021 Responsive Fundraising Summit on April 14th and 15th. You can register for FREE today.
You’ll be front-row with world-class nonprofit and thought leaders, participate in hands-on, discussion-driven workshops, and build lasting connections with like-minded peers.
Sign up today for this FREE event!
https://youtu.be/56RwjgU-q9M
As President & CEO of Oxfam America, Abby Maxman is responsible for leading global social change to alleviate the injustice of poverty across 90 countries.
This fight is not a new one for Maxman, who has made a career of giving a voice to the voiceless, fighting hunger, poverty, disease, and injustice across the globe at leading INGO's and within the U.S. Government.
Abby and I sat down to discuss her leadership experience and what we can all learn from her time working to right the most devastating wrongs the world over.
We tackled some big issues in our discussion, including:
- The importance of boldly charging toward your goals, even when they might feel overwhelming and unachievable.
- How the values of integrity and commitment provide the courage and resilience necessary to allow a leader to book the first flight into post-genocidal Rwanda, to tackle apartheid South Africa, and to take on the global HIV/AIDS crisis.
- The importance of showing up authentically and consistently as our whole selves to build and nurture a healthy culture. Ad the value of creating a safe place for people to try new things, to fail, and to learn from those failures without risk of retribution or career damage.
- The role of leaders in addressing racial, gender, economic, and climate justice, and the challenging of maintaining focus on this important work in the midst of every other priority.
- Developing the 21st century skills of leading with care and compassion to help your people feel safe, engaged, and cared for by their leaders.
This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast was brought to you by our friends at Virtuous. We’re so excited to partner with them to promote the upcoming 2021 Responsive Fundraising Summit on April 14th and 15th. You can register for FREE today.
You’ll be front-row with world-class nonprofit and thought leaders, participate in hands-on, discussion-driven workshops, and build lasting connections with like-minded peers.
Sign up today for this FREE event!
https://youtu.be/56RwjgU-q9M
The fifth child in a family of six, Bill High grew up "dirt poor and on welfare." The son of an alcoholic, Bill describes his childhood as "pretty dysfunctional."
Around age eight or nine, Bill was introduced to the idea of a personal faith by a neighbor, and that began his life-long journey to live differently and to focus on making an eternal impact in our world.
Throughout his lifetime, Bill has had some amazing opportunities to impact the world, including practicing law for 12 years to co-founding iDonate, a leading digital giving software company that helps nonprofits build lasting relationships with their supporters.
In 2000, Bill felt a calling to do something more in our sector, leading him to create The Signatry, a global community and ministry dedicated to creating eternal impact through generosity across generations. They provide a unique approach to donor advised fund giving to empower donors, advisors, and ministries to maximize their impact.
Bill and I met through our mutual relationship with Forbes Business and Nonprofit Councils, and sat down recently to talk about philanthropy and leading generously.
Some of the key insights from our conversation include:
- The impact of the massive increase in Donor Advised Fund adoption over the last decade
- Debunking the myth that Donor Advised Funds are simply a place for the wealthy to "park" money
- How Donor Advised Funds (on average) distribute 10X more than private foundations annually
- How leaders who invest heavily in the people in their care are maximizing impact
- The value of leaders serving others, and how that releases creativity and increases engagement with employees
- Lessons from a reluctant leader
- Why setting vision and inspiring your people is essential to your ability to achieve greater impact
- How the best leaders use storytelling to inspire others
- What 2021 has in store for philanthropy and charitable giving
- Quick tips for nonprofit boards and CEO's to begin effectively planning for leadership succession
This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast was brought to you by our friends at Virtuous. We’re so excited to partner with them to promote the upcoming 2021 Responsive Fundraising Summit on April 14th and 15th. You can register for FREE today.
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Our good friend Brady Josephson at NextAfter joined us for a third episode here on the podcast recently. You might remember Brady from our conversation about COVID fundraising observations, or fundraising Testing.
This week we connected with him to learn about the recent project that NextAfter and Salesforce.org collaborated on, called the Global Online Fundraising Scorecard.
This study explored the front-end user experience of donors and email subscribers across multiple countries.
Here are some of the key findings we cover in this discussion:
- Email sign-up was impossible in 27% of cases in the study, either because organizations didn't offer it, or because it took too many steps to discover where the email sign-up was located
- Very little progress has been made in years around the area of using value proposition to either subscribe for emails or make a giving decision (you'll hear Brady outline what the keys are in a successful value proposition too)
- The dangerous myth that online users don't or won't consume copy -- and address the (surprising) negative impact that video and images have on conversion
- The half dozen (or more!) types of friction that negatively impact decision-making online, AND, the one positive type of friction that can actually help you raise more money online!
- The importance of email cultivation to long-term retention and revenue, and the sad fact that too few organizations are investing in meaningful email relationship building.
- The truth about email deliverability, and what you can do to improve deliverability for your organization.
- What's working best globally in sustainer giving, where the U.S. is falling behind in this key giving area, and what YOU can do to improve your organization's sustainer numbers.
- The trends on email welcome series use, and how one organization tested into a 900% increase in 2nd gift conversion by rethinking their approach to welcome series content.
It's always a blast to have Brady on the show, and I hope you'll learn as much as I did in this conversation!
Don't forget to download the Global Online Fundraising Scorecard today!
This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast was brought to you by our friends at Virtuous. We’re so excited to partner with them to promote the upcoming
You might know him as The Fundraising Coach, the Founder of Concord Leadership Group, the author of Ask Without Fear, Fundraising Kick, or the brand new book, The Surprising Gift of Doubt: Use Uncertainty to Become the Exceptional Leader You Are Meant to Be . Or maybe you've seen and heard him speak at one of hundreds of nonprofit conferences over the last few years.
I was honored and thrilled to sit down last week with Marc A. Pitman, CSP to have an insightful and in-depth conversation on nonprofit leadership.
This is a 48-minute masterclass on leading well and dealing with key challenges our sector faces, including:
- How to live your values authentically as a leader
- What it takes to build and grow a healthy culture in your nonprofit
- Challenging the status quo without damaging key relationships in your workplace
- Addressing toxicity in the workplace and the damaging impact it has on your entire organization
- Traits of high-performing leaders
- Why nonprofits don't do succession planning well, and how to fix that
- The importance of strategic onboarding and training for volunteer board members
If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to check out Marc's newest book too! This episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast was brought to you by our friends at Virtuous. We're so excited to partner with them to promote the upcoming 2021 Responsive Fundraising Summit on April 14th and 15th. You can register for FREE today.
You'll be front-row with world-class nonprofit and thought leaders, participate in hands-on, discussion-driven workshops, and build lasting connections with like-minded peers.
Sign up today for this FREE event!
https://youtu.be/56RwjgU-q9M
Bob Carter is Founder and Chairman at Carter Global, the leading global philanthropic consultancy serving nonprofits, international non-governmental organizations (INGO's), and ultra-high net worth philanthropists. Bob is personally an expert in the development of major and mega gift fundraising campaigns and philanthropic giving strategies for mega givers. Throughout his career, Bob has also served as chairperson of seven different nonprofit boards, giving him an incredibly broad understanding of the inner-workings of our sector.
We recently sat down with Bob to talk about the state of philanthropy in 2021, and his perspective on what the future holds for our sector, including:
- What he's most encouraged and concerned by in our sector for the coming year
- The biggest opportunities on the horizon for nonprofits over the next five years
- How data and technology are changing the philanthropic landscape for the future
- The potential impact of changes to donor privacy laws that are currently under consideration by the Supreme Court
- Bob's thoughts and guidance for new and emerging nonprofit leaders
- What we as fundraisers should know about philanthropic supporters -- particularly the differences between those who have created wealth vs. those who have inherited it
- Challenges to nonprofits of philanthropic investors who are willing and comfortable bypassing the traditional nonprofit ecosystem to create impact for a cause, and what nonprofits need to do to address this challenge
- The role of boards in addressing complicated issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion, and other tough conversations
Bob shares a wealth of valuable insights and perspectives in our brief conversation. Get your pen and notepad out, because this is like a free masterclass in philanthropic planning!
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And how You Can Avoid Them.
Dr. Charles Owubah is the visionary leader currently serving as CEO of Action Against Hunger. He's also a member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council.
We spoke recently about global leadership lessons, and you won't want to miss this conversation!
In our discussion, Dr. Owubah shared key insights that any nonprofit leader or aspiring leader can learn from, including:
- The importance of leading with humility and integrity
- The value of building leadership bench strength and succession capacity by leading by example with your senior team
- How bold vision and action can enhance your organization's impact
- The role of an organization's brand in delivering mission impact and growing revenue -- and the CEO's role in shaping that brand
- How a kidnapping in Darfur shaped his leadership philosophy
I guarantee you'll find value in this inspirational and insightful conversation with Dr. Owubah.
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And how You Can Avoid Them.
Transform your fundraising with Rainmaking: The Fundraiser’s Guide to Landing Big Gifts, the best-selling resource that has been used by more than 2,500 major gift leaders, chief development officers, and executive directors to raise over $150 million in the last decade.
Unless you live under a rock, you'll know that in 2020 the nonprofit sector saw HUGE increases in giving through Donor Advised Fund (DAF) giving accounts. There was an outpouring of generosity across the nation, and many donors with DAF giving accounts stepped up to make sure that organizations received critical funding when they needed it most.
Watching this play out in 2020 got me thinking more and more about the growing importance of donor advised funds, the donors who control them, and how nonprofits can and should engage both with DAF account holders and the financial institutions that manage these accounts.
That's why I was thrilled to recently get the chance to talk with Jennifer Risher. Jen is a retired Microsoft executive, author of We Need to Talk: A Memoir on Wealth, and co-founder of the #HalfMyDAF movement. Jen and her husband David (CEO of Worldreader) founded the #HalfMyDAF movement in 2020 to incentivize donors who have DAF accounts to distribute more money from their giving accounts more quickly to make greater impact right now.
Jen and I sat down to talk about why she and David launched the #HalfMyDAF movement, how nonprofits can and should engage with DAF donors, and what the role of financial institutions is in the DAF giving ecosystem.
We also talk about the growing pool of matching funds that #HalfMyDAF is making available in 2021 to incentivize more DAF giving account holders to spend down at least 50% of their DAF holdings -- you won't want to miss this opportunity!
Every nonprofit needs to be paying attention to donors who are giving through their DAF accounts.
Jen and David Risher will be joining my friend Jack Doyle, President of Amergent (a Moore company) for a FREE webinar called #HalfMyDAF and the future of Donor Advised Funds on March 9 at 12pm Central Time (US and Canada). I invite you to join them for this free webinar that will provide a TON of value!
In this episode I talk with Burt Rosen, President & CEO at Knox Area Rescue Ministries about leading an organization over the long-term, and the most important aspects of leading well, including:
- The importance of taking a stand when you see something broken in your organization
- Every sound of the sail means something to the sailor
- Navigating the fears associated with making difficult calls as a leader
- Why integrity, trust, and transparency are the keys to long-term leadership success
- The keys to successfully developing emerging leaders in your organization
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And how You Can Avoid Them.
Transform your fundraising with Rainmaking: The Fundraiser’s Guide to Landing Big Gifts, the best-selling resource that has been used by more than 2,500 major gift leaders, chief development officers, and executive directors to raise over $150 million in the last decade.
Alan Clayton is Chairman of Philanthropy and Fundraising International, and Director of Philanthropy and Fundraising North America.
He's also a brilliant fundraiser.
I had the absolute pleasure of visiting with Alan this past week to talk about great fundraising organizations...what makes them great, how they think and behave differently than other nonprofits, how they approach their brand differently from other organizations, and what other nonprofits need to do to become great in their own right.
Alan gives us his in-depth assessment on:
- The biggest obstacle to great fundraising and growth for nonprofits (hint: it's probably not what you think)
- The process organizations and leaders need to follow to bring alignment internally that can prepare their organizations for transformational growth
- How to know if your organization is prepared for a great fundraising transformation
- Navigating the complex maze of logic and emotion to bring about meaningful change in your organization
- Why the conflict over investment between fundraising and program budgets is short-sighted, and how you should think differently about it
- How an organization's fundraising returns compare to stock market returns, and why CFO's should fully embrace fundraising investment
- The key decisions that growth-minded, successful nonprofits make that are different from the decisions that average nonprofits don't make
Alan and his team are hosting a fully ONLINE version of The Great Fundraising Masterclass from February 9 - February 12. If you like our podcast conversation and want to go deeper on this subject, sign up for this Masterclass today!
Special thanks to our friends at 7-Figure Fundraising for sponsoring today’s episode! At 7-Figure Fundraising they teach fundraisers and nonprofit leaders how to craft and deliver fundraising pitches that consistently deliver more 6 and 7-figure gifts. Right now, they are offering a 5% discount on their live online training that begins on February 16, 2021. You can register here, and use the code RAINMAKER at check-out to get the discount.
Franklin Guerrero is Vice President of Major Gifts at AARP, and is a highly accomplished fundraiser and leader in the nonprofit sector. He and I recently sat down for a conversation about philanthropy and leadership.
In our discussion, we talk about how personal crisis shapes our work as leaders, the importance of values-based leadership, how the nonprofit sector is addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how fundraisers can address these complex topics with donors.
Grab a cup of coffee and your favorite snack, and settle in for this insightful leadership conversation!
Special thanks to our friends at 7-Figure Fundraising for sponsoring this important conversation with Franklin Guerrero!
At 7-Figure Fundraising they teach fundraisers and nonprofit leaders how to craft and deliver fundraising pitches that consistently deliver more 6 and 7-figure gifts from donors.
Right now they're offering a 5% discount to their next live (video) training program for our podcast listeners. You can register here and use the code RAINMAKER at checkout to get the discount!
Change. Whether you like it or not, it's the topic of the day. 2020 punched all of us in the face with COVID-19, economic turmoil, and racial unrest across the country. And that's just the change that many of us didn't initiate. Countless other change initiatives were launched and undertaken for one reason or another by organizations of all shapes and sizes. But at the end of the day, one thing is crystal clear. Change is now a constant in all of our lives.
So how do we lead well through constant change?
What is the difference between managing change and leading through change?
How can we as leaders use the process of change to bring about positive impact in our organizations and in the lives of those we lead?
What's the right perspective that a leader needs to bring to a change initiative to help our people thrive in the midst of change?
How do we as leaders identify the cultural and institutional roadblocks to change, and what can we do about them?
These are the kinds of questions that we grapple with in this great conversation with Nancy Murphy, Founder and President of CSR Communications.
This is a great discussion for leaders who are struggling to navigate change with their teams, and even for those leaders who are doing well, but simply want to make sure they're focusing their change efforts for maximum impact.
Special thanks to our friends at 7-Figure Fundraising for sponsoring today's episode! At 7-Figure Fundraising they teach fun
We kicked off 2021 with an awesome conversation with Kent Stroman, Principal and Founder of the Institute for Conversational Fundraising, and author of Asking About Asking.
We covered a ton of ground in our conversation, focused primarily on how frontline fundraisers can improve their individual relationship engagement and raise more money for their causes. Here are some of the key points from our conversation:
- Donors don't like to be "pitched", and why authentic conversations deliver better fundraising outcomes.
- How frontline fundraisers -- those who have done this work for decades, and those who are brand new in their role -- can overcome the anxiety and fear of asking.
- The impact that a fundraiser's mindset has on her ability to cultivate meaningful relationships and secure significant gifts.
- How asking the right questions at the right time can help you unlock transformational generosity in your donors.
- The importance of leveraging peer relationships to accelerate major donor relationships.
- The value of listening well, and how it can help you close more gifts in 2021.
Wishing you all a successful 2021 -- and hoping The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast continues to add value to your life and work in the new year!
Andrew
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And how You Can Avoid Them.
Transform your fundraising with
It was an incredible honor to sit down recently with Commissioner Kenneth Hodder, National Commander of The Salvation Army USA, and Joey Zumaya, Public Sector Leader at LinkedIn and national advisory board member at The Salvation Army.
One of the things I love about The Salvation Army is that they are actively serving people in EVERY zip code in the U.S. That is a bold and expansive commitment to caring for people in need all throughout our nation. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their volunteers, supporters, corporate and faith community partners, and employees, The Salvation Army truly allows each supporter to do the most good, right in their home communities.
We had a fascinating conversation on leadership within the context of The Salvation Army. In this episode, you'll hear us cover a lot of ground, including:
- Living and leading from your values
- The importance of deep relationships between a nonprofit CEO and their advisory board members
- The Salvation Army's long-term commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how that shapes decision-making across the organization
- Technology's role in the development of an organization's talent pipeline, program delivery, and fundraising strategy
- How the nation's changing demographics impact the way organizations approach the recruitment of employees, donors, and volunteer leaders
Special Thanks to New Story for sponsoring this podcast episode. They are on the forefront of developing solutions to end the global homelessness crisis. And they’re looking for innovative fundraisers and leaders to join their team. If you’re interested in joining a team that is making a tangible impact on the lives of people in need across the globe, you should connect with New Story today.
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller,
This conversation with Jenny Floria, Founder of Floria Consulting, is focused on the importance of data and how data drives strategy is an essential conversation for all nonprofit leaders and fundraisers.
In our chat, you'll hear Jenny and I talk through a number of important examples of how understanding data and how to deploy data effectively in your marketing and fundraising can drive increased value -- and how not understanding the importance of data can damage your fundraising results.
Regardless of your role or experience in the sector, if you have responsibility for fundraising or marketing outcomes, you'll want to check out this episode!
Special Thanks to New Story for sponsoring this podcast episode. They are on the forefront of developing solutions to end the global homelessness crisis. And they’re looking for innovative fundraisers and leaders to join their team. If you’re interested in joining a team that is making a tangible impact on the lives of people in need across the globe, you should connect with New Story today.
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And how You Can Avoid Them.
Jennifer Diaz is Director of Major Gifts with The Salvation Army. She works out of the Philadelphia area, where she leads a team of five major gift fundraisers, and carries her own portfolio of top-level donor relationships.
I first met Jennifer about five years ago when I was helping to lead a major fundraising change initiative for The Salvation Army's Eastern Territory. I quickly connected with Jennifer because she's a highly skilled, successful, no-nonsense relationship fundraiser.
We sat down just before Thanksgiving to talk about her experience raising major gifts in the Philadelphia area, leading a team of fundraisers during the COVID crisis, and bridging the divide between being an individual contributor and a department leader.
You'll hear us cover topics like:
- 2020 Major Donor Trends
- The growing trend of donors shifting their giving into DAF's, and what that means for your charity
- What you can do to more effectively manage a remote team of fundraisers
- What it takes to engage donors during a pandemic, & how those donors are supporting the organizations they love
If you're in the business of engaging major donors and/or leading fundraising teams, you'll enjoy this conversation.
Special Thanks to New Story for sponsoring this podcast episode. They are on the forefront of developing solutions to end the global homelessness crisis. And they're looking for innovative fundraisers and leaders to join their team. If you're interested in joining a team that is making a tangible impact on the lives of people in need across the globe, you should connect with New Story today.
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller,
As we are quickly approaching the year-end giving season, it's more important than maybe any time in recent history that nonprofits understand how to effectively engage with high net worth donors and members of their communities.
That's why I was so excited to sit down recently my good friend, Kurt Peterson. Kurt is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC), and an Accredited Asset Management Specialist (AAMS). Kurt is First Vice President - Investments at Wells Fargo Advisors in the Woodbury, MN area. He is also a committed family man and accomplished athlete.
In this conversation we spoke with Kurt about:
- Why year-end giving in 2020 might be different from other recent years.
- How nonprofit organizations can create more win-win giving opportunities with donors by engaging financial advisors in the process.
- Why it often makes more sense to ask donors to give from their assets instead of their cash accounts.
- How nonprofits can better engage and connect with financial advisors to benefit both their donors and the organizations they serve.
You can check out this 2020 Year End Planning Guide, which includes great information on year-end charitable giving.
Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:
You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.
The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.
You can use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE personalized talent assessment from Velocity Strategy Solutions today!
Eric Ressler is Founder & Creative Director at Cosmic, a social impact creative agency in the Bay Area.
We sat down recently to discuss how brand and digital engagement can impact a nonprofit's ability to scale revenue.
While some in the nonprofit sector believe brand will always be in conflict with an organization's ability to raise revenue, Eric doesn't share that point of view. In fact, he's got some great insights into how the two can work hand-in-hand (alongside digital engagement) to both increase awareness of your cause AND help you raise significant amounts of money.
Special offer from our episode sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:
You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.
The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.
You can use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE personalized talent assessment from Velocity Strategy Solutions today!
Leadership has zero to do with position or title. It has everything to do with impact. But becoming a leader of impact doesn't just happen by accident. And it doesn't happen over night. It requires focus, intentionality, and a commitment to changing the world for the better.
I sat down recently with Braden Douglas, founder of CREW Marketing Partners and author of Becoming a Leader of Impact to talk with him about this concept of leadership impact and how every leader can increase the level of impact they make in their organization, the lives of those they serve, and their communities.
In our conversation, Braden outlines the 7 key characteristics of a Leader of Impact:
- Driven by fulfilling a purpose focused on the betterment of others
- Confronts & resolves conflicts in relationships with diligence and care
- Displays gentleness and patience in the midst of stress, tension, and frustration
- Is generous with their advice, their time, and their finances
- Disciplined with their personal health, development goals, and activities to ensure they have the energy and capacity for the people and projects that matter
- They are part of a community of like-minded people who hold them accountable, encourage them, and spur them toward greater things
- Intentional about having an impact on others
This is just a small sampling of the great conversation with Braden. Check it out today, and pick up a copy of Becoming a Leader of Impact!
Special Offer from our episode sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:
You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.
The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities e
Tony Martignetti, host of Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, and one of the nation's leading authorities on planned giving just launched a brand new program to help more nonprofit organizations access the transformational impact of planned giving for their organizations.
The program is called Planned Giving Accelerator.
Tony and I sat down recently to talk all things planned giving, and to chat about this awesome new program for organizations of all shapes and sizes.
In our conversation, we covered:
- Planned Giving myths
- Why nonprofits never start planned giving programs, and how you can overcome the challenge
- The truth about what an organization actually needs to have in place to launch a successful planned giving program (Hint: It's NOT an in-house attorney or PG expert!)
- How the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting donor behavior related to estate planning and planned giving
Tony also wanted to share his brand new, FREE Planned Giving How-To Guide with our listeners.
If your organization is thinking about starting or ramping up a planned giving program, you've got to check out this episode!
Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:
You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.
The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.
You can use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE personalized
John Walsh is one of the most innovative digital marketers in the nonprofit sector today. He currently leads email marketing at one of the world's largest Evangelical ministry organizations.
In this episode, you'll hear John and I discuss all things email marketing and fundraising, including:
- Designing and executing an effective email testing strategy
- How to determine whether a variable is worth testing or not
- The impact of change management and innovation on digital marketing and fundraising efforts
- How his organization has created new and unique donor experiences during COVID, and the result of those efforts.
If you're interested in digital marketing and fundraising, you'll want to pay attention to this episode!
A Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:
You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.
The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for better opportunities elsewhere. It’s time to optimize your talent.
You can use the code RAINMAKER to get your FREE personalized talent assessment from Velocity Strategy Solutions today!
If you want to lead your organization more effectively and help your team avoid costly mistakes that drain your organization of time, talent, and revenue, check out my Amazon #1 best-seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them.
Kris Putnam-Walkerly is Founder of Putnam Consulting Group, and author of Confident Giving and The ImpactAssets Handbook for Investors.
Kris has spent her career as an advisor to high net worth individuals, family offices, corporate philanthropy programs and foundations.
She's also the author of the newly released book, Delusional Altruism.
We sat down with Kris recently to talk about her new book, covering topics like:
- How well-meaning philanthropists get in their own way and prevent themselves from achieving the philanthropic impact they hope for.
- Debunking some of the deeply held, incorrect beliefs that often drive delusional altruism.
- Understanding how high net worth donors, foundations, and corporate philanthropies are changing their approach to giving during the COVID crisis.
- Asking better questions, and positioning them differently, to help unleash greater impact through high net worth donors.
- Understanding how nonprofits and fundraisers can better engage wealth managers, advisors, and philanthropists to unleash greater philanthropic impact.
Kris is a highly skilled philanthropy advisor, and shared many of her insightful observations with us in this conversation. I hope you enjoy the discussion!
A Special Offer From Our Episode Sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions.
You have people working in ways they’ve never worked, with people they don’t know, and for managers and leaders they’ve never met around projects they may not understand.
The reality is the only thing your competitor doesn’t have is your team. But if you don’t utilize them well and position them for success, you’ll send them looking for
How has COVID-19 impacted Mid-level and Major Gift fundraising? Are Mid-level and Major donors shifting their giving priorities because of this crisis? Are they holding back on giving? If Mid-level and Major donors did give during the COVID crisis, how is that going to impact year-end giving?
These are the exact kind of questions that my close friends, Derric Bakker and Paul Martin of Dickerson Bakker & Associates were wrestling with in their fundraising consulting practice. To get to the bottom of these questions, they decided to go directly to the source -- to Mid-level and Major donors. In June of 2020 they commissioned and conducted the study, Charitable Giving in the Wake of COVID-19. This survey focused on donors to faith-based organizations, but I believe many of the findings will also hold true for organizations that are not faith-based.
Derric and Paul are two of the smartest and most accomplished major gift fundraisers in our sector, so when they ask questions like this then do the research and offer their insights, I ALWAYS listen.
What their research discovered is something amazing:
- 85% of donors surveyed report that they plan to continue giving through year-end at the same or greater levels than they did last year.
- 64% of donors expect the economy to rebound within one year -- a key consumer confidence indicator.
- Majority of donors reported that their giving during COVID was in addition to what they were already planning to do -- as in, increased generosity.
- Giving priorities remain unchanged, with outreach & evangelism ranking #1, and meeting the needs of vulnerable populations in the U.S. ranking #2.
We sat down to dig deeper into the research findings, and to hear from Derric and Paul about how fundraisers and nonprofits can and should apply these learnings to their fundraising efforts between now and year-end.
You don't want to miss this conversation!
The Dickerson Bakker team is also partnering with our good friend Mike Buwalda at Money for Ministry to share even more about this study in a special webinar on August 25. You can sign up for that webinar here, and when you do, you'll get a FREE copy of the E-book, The Top 3 Ways to Approach Major Donors This Fall.
Special O
Have you ever wondered what your major donors really thought of your work, how you engage with them, and the experience you create at your events? Have you ever struggled to connect deeply with high net worth individuals that support your cause, and wish you had an insider's perspective on how to approach these relationships more effectively?
You're in luck!
Lisa Greer is a serial entrepreneur, a former entertainment industry executive, community leader, founder of the Philanthropy 451 blog, and strategic philanthropist. But Lisa didn't come from money. In her new book, Philanthropy Revolution, Lisa describes how her family became "instantly" wealthy, and how that launched a series of philanthropic experiences that shocked and frustrated her. It was almost as if the nonprofit organizations she and her family wanted to support had no idea how to deal with her or her husband. They didn't fit the preconceived narrative of what "wealthy" donors looked like or how they behaved. They didn't follow the neatly scripted approach that most organizations are used to following in dealing with major donors. And this caused friction for both the organizations, and for Lisa and her husband Josh.
In Philanthropy Revolution, Lisa shares her own challenging giving experiences, along with those of dozens of other donors, nonprofit executives, and leading academics in the sector.
This groundbreaking new book also shares:
- Upfront ways to ask for money
- Effective communication strategies
- How best to be transparent in donor relationships
- Insights for curating meaningful nonprofit events
I got the chance to sit down with Lisa recently and talk about the book, her experiences as a philanthropist, and her recommendations for how nonprofits and high net worth donors can achieve greater alignment and make a bigger impact in our world.
S
On August 3rd, 2020, Bob McCartney authored the article, Nonprofits in trouble: One-third of organizations may not survive pandemic, recession for The Washington Post.
This article is a sobering assessment of the health and sustainability of nonprofit organizations in the Washington, D.C. metro area. But more than that, it's likely a canary in a coal mine for our entire sector on a national scale.
Bob's conversations with nonprofit leaders, institutional funders and other officials in the sector clearly indicate that while many organizations have survived the COVID crisis successfully, thousands of organizations were not prepared for this.
In this episode we delve deeper into Bob's article and talk about the underlying challenges faced by nonprofit organizations right now -- and the risks the sector faces in the near future.
This is a conversation you don't want to miss!
A special offer from our episode sponsor, Velocity Strategy Solutions:Employee performance and productivity is the highest ranked concern for CEO's. This is true in the nonprofit sector just as much as it is in the for profit sector. That's why we're so excited to partner with Velocity Strategy Solutions to offer nonprofit leaders a special opportunity to gain an unfair talent advantage in their organizations. You can sign up for a FREE, confidential assessment and demo today by visiting People Get Results and using the code RAINMAKER.
https://youtu.be/3HTdAsKkrfI
In many respects we're living through a period of time where we've forced a decade of disruption into (at this point) a 12-week period.
Or at least that's what it's felt like between the COVID crisis and the ongoing struggles related to racial inequality, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
This is a lot of change, requiring a lot of emotional investment on all of our parts, and all forced into a very short period of time.
Those of us who lead teams need to recognize just how significantly this level of disruption and change impacts our teams. And we need to recognize that the way we engage with our team, and the way our people engage with one another, and with our supporters and volunteers has a very real impact on our ability to deliver revenue and accomplish our personal and organizational objectives.
This is why I was so excited to have my good friend, Ben Stroup, Founder of Velocity Strategy Solutions and author of Master The Pivot, back on the show today for a second conversation.
Ben has developed a new platform to give organizations an unfair competitive advantage to optimize talent and drive revenue improvements.
This is a great conversation and will challenge the way you think about the link between people and organizational revenue -- it totally changed my perspective!
Stewardship and gratitude are such integral components of successful philanthropy efforts. In my mind, it all comes down to showing appreciation for the people who make our work in the nonprofit sector possible.
That's why I was shocked earlier this summer when I shared the results of a small test where 8 out of 10 organizations that received a contribution never sent a thank you letter or followed up on that gift in any way, either online or offline. Unfortunately, the fact that 80% didn't say thank you isn't the part that shocked me. What shocked me was that there's a subset of fundraisers and nonprofit leaders who came to the defense of that 80% and in some instances even suggested that it's a) wrong for donors to expect to be thanked, and b) that thanking a donor for their giving is akin to begging them for their support.
This was such a crazy conversation that it sparked additional dialogue across the industry. I jumped onto the Responsive Fundraising Podcast and spoke with Noah Barnett, CMO at Virtuous Software about this. And recently my good friend Lisa Greer, author of Philanthropy Revolution and the Philanthropy 451 Blog wrote about this situation even last week.
In the midst of this discussion, I had the opportunity to sit down with my new friend, Karen Paul, CFRE to talk specifically about this. Karen is Director of Development at Science Museum of Oklahoma, and I was particularly interested to hear her on-the-ground perspective on this issue.
What I think you'll find is a very balanced discussion of this issue, that I hope adds value to your work and challenges your thinking in the process.
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It was great to have Brady Josephson back on the podcast today for a second conversation. If you didn't catch our conversation last month on COVID fundraising trends, you should check it out.
But today, Brady and I talk about all things testing. This is one of Brady's favorite things to chat about. That shouldn't be a surprise, given his role as Managing Director at NextAfter's Institute for Online Fundraising.
As a direct response fundraiser, I'm a big fan of testing. We test all the time. Sometimes we test something that makes a dramatic impact on revenue or results for a client. Other times, a test doesn't go the way we think. It "fails", if you will. But in the end, we still learn from it.
To be successful with testing, you have to think differently about the philosophy and execution of tests. That's where Brady and I focused in this conversation. He covered a ton of important ground, like:
- Why testing is important to fundraising success
- What type of tests deliver the most impact and value (and which tests aren't worth your time)
- Creating a testing strategy/plan
- Designing tests for successful learning
- The value of iterative testing
- Low value vs. High value tests
- The importance of tracking, and why this is the first step in your successful testing strategy
I hope you learn a ton from this conversation, and that you take this opportunity to create or refine your own testing plan for the next year!
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Jaimie Trussell, CFRE, is Chief Development Officer and Vice President of Marketing & Communications at Adult & Teen Challenge USA.
She recently sat down with me to talk candidly about nonprofit leadership. In this great conversation, Jaimie provided so much value!
Check out the top 5 insights I took from our conversation:
- True leadership isn't glamorous. It's hard, but highly rewarding.
- Great leaders endeavor to find their tribe and thrive with them rather than being all things to all people.
- If you don't have credibility as a leader, you don't have anything.
- The best leaders focus on developing other leaders -- that's the true measure of leadership success.
- Leadership is a 24/7 game. Finding micro moments to refresh and recharge in the midst of packed work and home schedules is critical to your mental, physical, and emotional health.
Check out the entire conversation for even more great insights!
Trevor Bragdon is a behavioral scientist by training, and is Founder of 7-Figure Fundraising.
He and his team have developed a proprietary training program that helps nonprofit CEO's, fundraisers, and board members hone their fundraising message (i.e., the pitch) to secure more 5, 6, and 7-figure gifts from individual donors, foundations, and corporate partners.
This unique approach to crafting a compelling fundraising pitch has helped organizations raise millions of additional dollars.
Yesterday, Trevor conducting an exclusive training for 70 Newport ONE clients and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In our podcast conversation, Trevor distills some of those same key insights that you can start taking advantage of immediately.
If you want to raise more 5, 6, and 7-figure gifts for your organization, check out this conversation. I promise you'll be glad you did!
Chances are your organization was NOT prepared for COVID-19. Even organizations that work in international relief and development or domestic emergency response weren't fully prepared for all of the impacts of COVID-19, and how it would impact operations, fundraising, internal processes, staff, etc.
That's why I was so excited to sit down with Amy McFeely and Laura Olean from Category One Consulting recently. Their firm helps organizations maximize their effectiveness through human resources support, strategic planning, program evaluation, and needs assessments.
When COVID hit, they jumped into action to create a Crisis Response Toolkit specifically designed to help nonprofits respond to the COVID crisis and succeed throughout the remainder of 2020. And even better, this Toolkit can easily be applied to help nonprofits navigate a crisis of any type and scope.
I hope you enjoy this conversation about preparing for and responding to crises, and take a minute to check out their Crisis Response Toolkit to get your nonprofit ready to respond to a crisis of any kind.
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Brady Josephson, Managing Director of the Institute for Online Fundraising at NextAfter recently sat down with us to share what he's learning about the changing fundraising landscape during the COVID-19 crisis.
This conversation and the learnings that Brady shares are based on observations from more than 157 nonprofits that were and are actively fundraising during the COVID crisis. Brady is learning and seeing some interesting trends that you'll no doubt want to be aware of:
- As COVID took hold in early March, a lot of fundraising slowed or stopped. There was a marked decrease in email volume, as some organizations slowed down and some went entirely dark.
- Starting early in April, organizations began to emerge from the initial shock of COVID, and fundraising (particularly online) saw growth both in April and May (in both email volume and total revenue). This was further supported by the Giving Tuesday NOW initiative.
- Through late May and into early June, we've now started to see a correction (downturn) in email volume again.
- There is absolutely value in achieving first mover status when it comes to responding and communicating in a crisis. The faster an organization can get into market and begin to communicate with constituents, the easier it is to navigate a crisis situation.
- Organizations responding fastest and raising the most money during the COVID situation are those that are NOT focused on perfection, but focused on speed to market. They are willing to move quickly, test, learn, and adapt.
- The more human you can make your digital fundraising and marketing efforts, the better you'll perform.
- The elevated sense of empathy across the globe has resulted in increased giving across many different types of organizations, even those that might not typically receive increased funding during a crisis (i.e., arts, etc.).
- High dollar sustainers may be more apt to opt out of their monthly commitment right now. They are seeing this emerging in the U.S., and we have seen it more significantly in Europe.
- Since people are at home more right now, a lot more of our online consumption is happening on desktop vs mobile. That's good news because desktop experience tends to increase conversion rates. However, this may mean that when the country reopens and people return to work (whenever that is...), online conversion rates my drop again to reflect the shift back to mobile consumption.
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We sat down last week for a leadership conversation with Kishshana Palmer, CFRE, CEO of Kishshana & Co., Founder of The Rooted Collaborative, and Author of Hey, I'm New Here.
We scheduled this conversation months ago, and initially our plan was to talk broadly about leadership trends, insights & learnings across the nonprofit sector.
But...then George Floyd was murdered here in Minneapolis. Cities across the state -- across the nation -- erupted in protest against police brutality and racism.
As any good leaders would do, we assessed our situation and changed our objectives to address the critically important issues of equity and inclusion in the nonprofit sector.
This conversation is a bit more off the cuff, and maybe not as polished as our other episodes. It's a bit raw. A bit more unvarnished. But such a necessary discussion.
I hope you'll give us just a bit of grace if the conversation is a little more meandering than you might be used to. I encourage you to listen all the way through, as we cover a ton of important ground.
I'm so grateful to Kishshana for walking through this conversation with us, shooting straight with us, and not holding back.
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You are going to LOVE this conversation with Mark P. Fisher on Inspiring Growth as a leader!
Mark is host of the Inspiring Growth Podcast, CEO, and Chief Encourager at Inspiring Growth, a firm he founded to help organizations increase revenue, organizational leadership, and overall joy in their work. Check out some of Mark's great offerings here.
If you like The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast, you can thank Mark. He's the person who inspired me to launch this podcast!
I first met Mark when he and his team led the national marketing effort for the Paramount Pictures movie, Same Kind of Different As Me, and we worked together to craft a Red Carpet Event strategy to market this film nationally in support of Gospel Rescue Missions through a partnership with City Gate Network.
In this episode, Mark and I covered a ton of ground in a very candid conversation about his personal leadership journey.
Here are some of the key points we hit in this discussion:
- Mark's personal story of going 100+ miles per hour as a leader until he hit a wall...and it nearly killed him. He talks about how this experience helped him reset his priorities and focus, and create Inspiring Growth, his life's calling.
- The importance of caring for yourself as a leader in order to allow you to truly serve those you lead.
- The power of kindness, and how it helps you lead well.
- The importance of resilient thinking, and how that allows you to pick up the pieces and move on after failure or setbacks.
- As a leader, why you should strive to believe the best about people, and how that can radically change the culture in your organization.
- How to use a post mortem or after action review to overcome failure and create learning that will move your organization forward in a healthy way, even when a major project or initiative doesn't turn out the way you'd hoped.
Dionne M. Rosser-Mims, Ph.D., is Dean of the College of Education at Troy University. She's an educator, author, and successful leader. She's also my longtime friend, and someone I'm incredibly proud of and inspired by.
We recently sat down to discuss leadership, and to get Dr. Rosser-Mims' perspective on what it takes to be a great leader.
Here are :
- Leaders don't sit on the sidelines and complain -- they jump in and focus on finding solutions to the problems of the day.
- The best leaders focus on collaborative engagement, not on being the smartest person in the room.
- Integrity is critical for leadership success.
- Great leaders are consistent communicators, making sure that everyone understands where the organization is headed, how they individually fit into the plan, and what is expected of them.
- Being an authentic leader means modeling what you expect of others. If you aren't willing to do something yourself, you can't expect others to step up and do it either.
It's a great conversation, and I hope you enjoy it!
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Leading well is critical -- especially during the challenging times in which we find ourselves these days. That's why I think my recent conversation with Bobby Lewis, Executive Vice President of Operations at Love Worth Finding is so important.
According to Bobby, great leaders:
- Are lifelong learners who focus on adding knowledge and skills regularly
- Lead THROUGH others rather than trying to do everything themselves
- Invest in mentoring others so that skill-building becomes an ingrained focus across organizations
- Develop deep, meaningful relationships with those they mentor, rather than trying to rush the process
- Lead through collaboration and consensus-building instead of dictating
- Embrace the power of relationships rather than focusing on authority-based leadership
- Get close to people -- staff, donors, and clients -- in times of crisis, rather than pulling away
- Build trust by investing in people and relationships
There's some real leadership gold in this episode. You don't want to miss it!
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Gabe Cooper is CEO at Virtuous Software, Founder of The Modern Nonprofit Fundraiser Podcast, and Author of Responsive Fundraising.
We got together recently to talk about the concept of Responsive Fundraising, and what it means for the future of the nonprofit sector.
What's exciting is that the concept of Responsive Fundraising doesn't require you to throw out everything you're doing and start over completely. You don't have to lose ground in order to improve donor relationships and increase revenue.
Responsive Fundraising is really about applying the hyper-personalization that Americans are accustomed to in their daily life to their charitable giving experience. It's about using data you have at hand (or that you can get your hands on) to develop highly personalized donor experiences that communicate to your donors that you value them, you know them, and you are committed to providing them with a meaningful experience every time they interact with your organization.
Here are Gabe's key points about Responsive Fundraising: 1. It's less about tactics and technology and more about shifting your mindset. 2. The success of Responsive Fundraising requires that you Listen (i.e., collecting more and better data, and understanding how it influences donor behavior), Connect (i.e., how can you use simple marketing automation to deliver relevant messages to your constituents at the exact time they are most likely to want it and engage with it?), and Adjust (i.e., creating a feedback loop so that you are modifying your organizational engagement approach based on what you see and hear from your donors as you deliver them this new experience). 3. Responsive Fundraising doesn't require to stop mass fundraising activities like direct mail, email, and telemarketing. Instead, it gives you a framework for making those interactions more meaningful (and more valuable) to the donor. 4. You don't have to burn your entire program down and start from scratch. You can start small, with just two or three key elements. Once you prove out the value in small ways, use that success to increase the scale of Responsive Fundraising in your charity. 5. Embracing and deploying a Responsive Fundraising philosophy and strategy in your organization doesn't require you to upend everything you're doing and change staff. It does, however, require that everyone be aligned around the goal, and willing to learn and change the way they've worked in the past. 6. Change of any kind -- but especially change like this -- requires a willingness to take risk and embrace failure in the service of creating something better for those you serve.
As Gab
Visionary leaders don't succeed with just great ideas. They succeed because they've built a framework that inspires others and provides their teams with the necessary tools to perform."
I was recently blessed to have a fascinating conversation with Dr. Kent Ingle. In this fast-paced conversation, Dr. Ingle delivered huge leadership wisdom and value -- and I think you'll get a lot from this conversation.
Dr. Ingle is President of Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL. He's also author of multiple books including Framework Leadership, 9 Disciplines of Enduring Leadership, This Adventure Called Life, and The Modern Guide to College. He also hosts The Framework Leadership Podcast.
Here are just six of the key takeaways from our conversation:
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Focus on being self-aware and self-disciplined. Self-awareness allows you to understand who you are, your gifts, your passions, your abilities and experiences. And always knowing that helps you to understand the opportunities before you.
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If you want to succeed as a leader, you need to build habits of discipline. Whether they be physical, emotional, educational, spiritual, or other, your ability to be disciplined in your own life will greatly impact your ability to lead others.
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People long for value and significance. As a leader, your responsibility is to help people understand their value and significance in the world.
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Leadership is all about your relational connectivity and how you interact and influence and have impact.
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One of the most difficult and challenging things for any organization is to be excellent at systems thinking where you see the big picture, understand how the individual parts really interconnect to each other to accomplish the big picture. Especially at times of change, if you aren't growing your systems at the same speed of your overall growth, you're probably going to hit some plateaus.
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To be successful as a leader, when leadership requires you to build a map to a place you've never been before, you need a framework. A successful framework for leadership requires four key elements:
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Listening
Coral Dill is the Founder and Principal at Grant Writer Etc., and a contributing author to the 2019 #1 Best Seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them. Coral is an expert grant writer and regularly helps nonprofits of all shapes and sizes become "grant ready", and has helped those organizations raise millions of dollars over the last decade.
In this episode Coral talks with us about some of the biggest grant seeking mistakes and how to avoid them. According to Coral, the biggest mistakes she sees are:
- Starting with grants: So many organizations - especially start-up nonprofits - assume that the fastest way to significant funding is through grants. But the reality is that most funders want to see a track record of success and fiscal health outside of grants before they'd be willing to consider a funding request.
- Sending unsolicited funding requests: Grant seeking my be functionally different from individual donor fundraising, but there's one major similarity. They're both deeply relationship-based. In the same way that you wouldn't think of calling an individual donor you'd never met before and making an ask on the spot, don't make that mistake with grant funders either.
- Assuming that everyone wants to fund you: Grant funders have specific focuses of their philanthropy. If your approach to grant seeking is to "spray and pray", you could end up sending a million grant requests and get the same result as if you'd sent none at all. Instead, invest the time to research, find funders that are aligned with your mission, and engage them deeply -- that's where you'll find success.
- Making poor revenue assumptions: This isn't unique to grant seeking, but it's critical to avoid. The mistake here is assuming that you're going to get funded by every funder or that they'll fund you at 100% of your request. It's rare that any organization gets funded at 100% by 100% of the funders they solicit. Make sure you're not executing spending plans based on poor assumptions like this.
- Not being prepared to manage the grant: Most organizations are prepared to accept the funds associated with a grant. But as Coral explains, often organizations are ill-prepared to handing the various stipulations, reporting requirements, and other aspects of actually fulfilling on the grant terms. If you're not prepared for those, you're not ready to solicit the grant yet.
This conversation is full of great insights and context around the biggest grant seeking mistakes that organizations make, and what you can do to make sure your nonprofit doesn't make these same mistakes.
You can download the full show notes here.
In this second installment of Leadership Field Notes, I was lucky enough to sit down with Tim Smith, Managing Partner at Nonprofit DNA. Tim has over 30 years of nonprofit and development experience, having served as Chief Development Officer at both Food for the Hungry and the Museum of the Bible.
Tim shares his top leadership insights from over three decades of leading organizations and advising C-level leaders inside other nonprofits.
Here's just a small sampling of the leadership wisdom Tim shares in this episode:
- Becoming a leader may require you to step into uncomfortable spaces that are beyond what you've ever done before. That's ok. That's part of growing.
- At some point in your leadership career, you'll probably think you're not qualified for the job. This is fear talking. Just keep moving forward -- this is what you're made for.
- Great leaders seek out mentors and invest in mentoring others in their growth.
- The most important values that a leader can display come down to the "Two L's"...listening and loyalty (and how you can truly display both).
- The importance of a leader "knowing himself" and the positive impact this has on organizational culture and team cohesion.
- To be a great leader you really have to love people and want to see them succeed more than you want to promote your own success.
Tim's insights on leadership and personal growth are pure gold, and you won't want to miss them!
You can download the full show notes here.
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You're in for a real treat today!
This episode is packed with leadership value for you.
Doug Smith is Director of Development at Light of Life Rescue Mission, and Founder/President at L3 Leadership, and organization that exists to build and develop a community of leaders.
My conversation with Doug is the first in a series of in-depth leadership conversations we'll be having.
Top 10 Leadership Insights from my conversation with Doug Smith
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Leadership is influence.
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Everyone is a leader and everyone has to grow to maximize leadership impact.
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Leadership is about people. If the people aren't better as a result of your presence, you're not leading well.
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Leading is challenging. As John Maxwell says, "If you're a leader, there will never be two easy consecutive days in your live."
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If you wouldn't follow yourself, why would you expect others to follow you?
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The power of "just relaxing" in your leadership.
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Telling people what you think they want to hear isn't leadership. You have to care enough to be candid, even when the feedback might hurt a little.
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In leadership, character trumps skill all day long.
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The most influential leaders love people, but they don't depend on being loved by people.
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If you're going to grow as a leader, you're going to have to take risks. You'll fail sometimes, but that's ok. That's part of the process.
There's so much more in this episode than what I've outlined here. I guarantee you'll get a ton of value out of this conversation today!
You can download the full show notes here.
FREE RESOURCE: In our conversation, Doug mentions that his team at Light of Life uses a resource called The Information Wheel from The Wellock Group. You can get more information about this tool by contacting Rick Wellock (rick@thewellockgroup.com) or Amy Staggs (amy@thewellockgroup.com) .
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What does it take to lead effectively through crisis?
That's the question that I initially posed to Dennis Van Kampen, President/CEO of Mel Trotter Ministries.
This conversation is timely and valuable because Mel Trotter Ministries provides the community social safety net in Grand Rapids, Michigan for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness throughout the community.
The team at Mel Trotter Ministries is literally on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis in Grand Rapids, and Dennis is responsible for leading, inspiring, and caring for the Mel Trotter staff who run their programs every day.
In this conversation we talked about Dennis' personal philosophy and view of leadership, as well as what it takes to lead teams through a crisis situation.
Dennis shares his insights and perspective with us, based on 25+ years of leadership experience, on topics including:
- How to continue leading, day-to-day, during times of crisis.
- In times of crisis, how can you as a leader balance the need to accomplish your organization's mission, with the reality that you must also care for your team and those who work throughout your organization.
- What it takes to care for and motivate your team to continue showing up and doing great work during a crisis situation.
- As a nonprofit leader, how can you lead and influence others in the community (i.e., other organizations, city and county leaders, etc.), without having any statutory authority.
- How you as a leader can recharge physically, mentally, and emotionally while leading through a crisis.
- What's the organizational leader's role in communicating with and engaging the broader community of volunteers, advocates, donors, and the general public during a crisis situation.
The insights Dennis shares are valuable for leaders everywhere, whether you're facing a crisis like we all are today, or not.
DOWNLOAD the full show notes here
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Yesterday I sat down with Seth Perlman, Senior Partner at Perlman & Perlman LLP. Seth is one of the nation’s leading experts on nonprofit and philanthropic law, is an active leader in the philanthropic community, and a great partner to many nonprofit organizations and companies that serve the nonprofit sector.
In our conversation, Seth shared his analysis of CARES Act and how it impacts nonprofit organizations. As a bonus, Seth shared some emerging industry trends and insights that he’s seeing across the sector. It’s an incredibly valuable conversation that you don’t want to miss.
Seth helped us answer questions like:
What are the eligibility requirements for nonprofit organizations to access the benefits of the stimulus package? Can organizations of all sizes access these benefits, or is this only for very small organizations?
Are all nonprofits eligible – for example, can faith-based organizations access these benefits?
Following up on that, I know a lot of faith-based organizations will be concerned about “strings attached” to this money. What can you tell us about those concerns, and whether there would actually be any government strings?
What about advocacy and membership organizations – are they eligible to access the stimulus package benefits?
What kinds of things can the loan funding be used for by nonprofits? Are there any limitations or restrictions?
Can you talk about the loan forgiveness aspect of this stimulus package? Are there specific things that a nonprofit must do or must not do in order for these loans to eventually be forgiven?
Are there any risks to nonprofits in accepting this stimulus help from the federal government?
Can you talk with us about the Charitable Giving Incentive that’s baked into this plan? What’s included in that aspect of the stimulus. Do you see this as something that might be a one-and-done to impact charitable giving just in 2020, or is this something you think could get extended over the longer-term?
Is there anything else about this stimulus package that you think nonprofit organizations should be aware of and/or concerned about?
About Seth Perlman
Seth Perlman has been providing legal counsel to the philanthropic sector for more than thirty years. He works with large public charities, private foundations, fundraising professionals, for-profit businesses engaged in philanthropy, international NGOs and social enterprises.
Seth assists clients to optimize their ability to achieve mission by advising on matters relating to organizational structure, governance, regulatory compliance and nonprofit commercial activities. He advises social entrepreneurs seeking to provide social benefit through non-traditional for profit organizational structures.
Seth has litigated in several state and federal jurisdictions on issues relevant to the philanthropic com
I don't know about you, but when I sat down and thought about the idea of disruption in the context of our current COVID-19 nationwide shutdown, I just had to laugh. I mean, if this isn't disruption, what is!?!?!?
But that's not the kind of disruption I'm talking about here.
On Friday I sat down with my friend, Beth Fisher. She's currently Vice President of Advancement at Mel Trotter Ministries in Grand Rapids, MI. Beth is a highly sought after speaker, life coach, and marketing and sales leader. She's also author of the recently released book, Remorseless: Learning to Lose Labels, Expectations, and Assumptions Without Losing Yourself.
Beth is an expert at leading change management initiatives in large organizations, and is currently using that experience to help reshape the processes and infrastructure to help Mel Trotter Ministries become more efficient and effective at delivering on mission.
Beth helped us tackle big questions like:
- Can business principles used in the for-profit sector bring value to the nonprofit?
- What are the biggest challenges to growth and innovation in the nonprofit sector?
- What are the risks, to any organization, of not growing and changing?
- What are the greatest impediments to innovation and change within organizations?
- How do you keep teams and individuals motivated during large change initiatives?
I hope this episode brings value to your work and helps you lead your team and your organization's change initiatives more effectively!
This week I sat down with Charity Fundraising Expert, Duncan Schieb. Duncan is a highly accomplished charity auctioneer, marketer, and fundraiser. In addition to his work managing live fundraising events for organizations, Duncan also runs a successful video production company that serves both nonprofit and commercial organizations.
Duncan spoke with me from his home in Battery Park City, in New York -- near the nation's epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.
As a charity event fundraising expert, Duncan knows all too well just how much of an impact this global pandemic has had on event fundraising. If your organization relies on event fundraising to fund operations, this is a conversation you won't want to miss!
In our discussion, Duncan helped answer these following important questions that are on the minds of thousands of nonprofit leaders right now:
- How does an organization that is event-heavy in their funding model make the switch from live events to virtual events?
- How can organizations protect the revenue that might have already been committed by individual donors and corporate sponsors if their events are shut down?
- What's the one thing that organizations can do right now to protect your most important donor relationships (Hint: It's super simple, doesn't require any new money, and probably isn't what you think)?
- Is virtual fundraising just a blip on the radar screen because of this crisis, or could this help springboard organizations into an entirely new donor engagement/fundraising model for their organizations?
I so appreciate Duncan's contribution to our sector and this conversation. In our chat, Duncan also shared the very personal story of the recent loss of his beautiful little boy, Lachlan Hugh Schieb. Duncan and his family have created the Lachlan Hugh Schieb Memorial Fund through Charity Water to ensure that Lachlan's life and memory can help bring life-saving water to people in need around the globe.
These are certainly extraordinary times. Nonprofit organizations are facing increased stress and pressure to deliver value across our country, while doing so with reduced staffing, risk of illness to themselves, and for many, significantly greater demand.
Leading in extraordinary times requires a commitment to authenticity, transparency, and a willingness to confront and address behaviors and beliefs that might put your organization's success -- and your people's wellbeing at risk.
Karen Erren is exactly that kind of leader. She and her organization, Palm Beach County Food Bank are on the forefront of the burgeoning hunger crisis in one of the country's emerging COVID-19 hotspots -- Palm Beach County, Florida.
We sat down with Karen on Friday, April 5 to talk with her about what it takes to lead successfully in extraordinary times.
Karen also talked with us about the importance of staying in close communication with key donors, institutional funders, and other partners during a time of crisis. As an example, Karen is sharing a video update through the ViewSpark platform on a weekly basis.
We hope this helps bring you hope, clarity, and a path to leadership success in your own organization.
On Friday, March 27, Roy Jones and I sat down to talk about fundraising in times of crisis. This episode is different than our typical episodes because it's not an interview, but a candid conversation about emergency / crisis fundraising.
In this conversation we address whether nonprofits should stop fundraising because of COVID-19, what the impact of pulling back or delaying will be, and how your organization can be successful in spite of this global crisis.
You'll hear us talk about specific tactics and strategies you can leverage right now to stay top of mind with your donors and make sure that your cause is positioned for success in a crisis.
Our conversation is based on our collective 50 years of experience working for dozens of international and domestic charities through plenty of crisis situations.
We hope this conversation adds value to your daily work. Please leave us a comment or send us an email at podcast[at]newportone[dot]com to continue the discussion.
Podcast intro/outro music was generously provided by Ted Leif.
Mia Hoagberg, President and CEO of Make-A-Wish Minnesota, joins us for an in-depth conversation on leadership and change in the nonprofit sector. Mia started her career in the for-profit sector before shifting into work with nonprofit organizations over the past decade. In our conversation, Mia gives us a look into the challenges of leading, overcoming obstacles, changes in the sector, and diversity as it pertains to Make-A-Wish and the industry as a whole.
Here are some of the key points from our talk with Mia:
- Being in charge means that everything stops with you, but also falls on you. Regardless of the department and if you have an interest in or affinity for it is still left up to the CEO.
- Managing and leading the board of directors is important. By strategically working with board members it becomes a partnership not just a take relationship. Mia’s approach to growing the board is to find someone with a passion for the mission first and foremost then looking at skill sets and company connections.
- Growing in her leadership role, Mia attributes surprises and constant change as the key to evolving and succeeding. There’s always a new challenge walking in the door and when you’re a leader, you have to be able to roll with those, stay calm, lead your team through uncertainty and really be steadfast and solid.
- Big challenges in the nonprofit sector right now that come to mind for Mia include tax line implications and how that effects donors give. Additionally, Mia mentions burnout and specifically how it affects staff and teams who are doing work like Make-A-Wish that can be exceptionally emotional for some staff.
- Mia’s chapter of Make-A-Wish has a task force for diversity and inclusion that works to ensure to focus on an equitable group of children across the state. We want to make sure that a wish is a wish, is a wish, and it does not matter where you live or where you came from or what part of the cities you live in, or what language you speak.
- Most importantly, Mia talks about the Make-A-Wish work and the long term effect it can have on a child’s life. They are working to change the trajectory of a child’s life through granting wishes that have life-changing outcomes.
We recently talked with Tom Hooper, Founder of Nimble Connect, on the organization’s focus on providing a unique approach to donor stewardship. In our discussion, Tom explains how the nonprofit industry's multi-year declines in donor retention and the growing lack of trust among donors, for the institutions to which they donate, led to the creation of Nimble Connect. Tom separated himself from the fundraising space to concentrate on what it takes to build a relationship.
Here are a few of Tom’s key insights:
● His data shows that a well-delivered engagement call can alter donors’ behavior. He found that gifts from donors increased overtime when an engagement call is made within a week of the gift being given.
● Over a 27-month study, he found that 90% of new donors that were called gave a second gift
● 70% of organizations that have come on board have been decisions that women leaders have made. Understanding relationships are important. Intimacy is a key driver in building trust. No surprise, the data shows that women are more trusted and it is largely because they are more skilled at developing intimate relationships
In our most recent episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast we sat down with Larry Johnson, author of The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising, and Founder of the training and consulting firm of the same name.
During our conversation, Larry shared how and why focusing on the underlying principles of fundraising is so important to fundraising success for any organization:
- Being effective in fundraising is 90% how and what you think, and only 10% what you're actually doing
- Understanding the underlying principles of fundraising allows you to adapt tactics and techniques to fit any situation, without sacrificing the core elements of success
- Based on research conducted by Dr. Russell James of Texas Tech, organizations that can tap into asset-based giving (vs. solely cash-based giving) stand to scale revenues much more significantly than those that focus only on cash asks. Using The Eight Principles model allows organizations to successfully expand into asset-based giving opportunities with their donors
- When we change our mindset and how we think about philanthropy, donors, and the relationships that undergird all philanthropic activities, exponential revenue growth is possible
If you want more on The Eight Principles, check out The Oracle League, their high-level online training program.
John Kozyra is Chief Philanthropy Officer at St. Mary Medical Center, which is a member of the Providence Health System. Prior to his role at St. Mary Medical Center, John held senior-level roles at CCS Fundraising, Changing Our World, and St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. John has led and managed capital campaigns for Catholic education, healthcare, and other causes that have raised more than $110 Million over the last decade.
In our conversation with John, we tackle two issues. First, John shares with us about his career progression, and specifically discusses what the biggest challenges and learnings have been for him in transitioning between leading fundraising in two nonprofits and serving nonprofits as a consultant.
We also discuss how to avoid the biggest capital campaign mistakes nonprofits make, from John’s chapter in 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make and How You Can Avoid Them. In this portion of the conversation, John shares with us about these key mistakes and challenges:
- Lack of preparation for a campaign
- The role of volunteer leaders in a campaign
- Preparing for the high level of activity necessary to sustain a campaign
- Not using a campaign to expand your relationships with high net worth members of your community
Download the full transcript here
In our newest episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast we sit down with Adam Morgan, Senior Director of Development at Phi Kappa Psi Foundation. Adam is also a chapter author to Giving USA's 2017-2018 report, and a contributing author to the 2019 best seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make and How You Can Avoid Them.
In our conversation with Adam we discuss some of the biggest leadership mistakes made in the nonprofit sector, why those are dangerous, and how we can navigate leadership challenges more effectively.
You don't want to miss this discussion and the opportunity to learn from Adam's experience and guidance to help you become a better leader.
Download the full transcript here: Adam Morgan Transcript
Jessi Marsh is Senior Director at Changing Our World, a leading global philanthropic consulting firm and member of the ONE HUNDRED consortium. She also happens to be a great friend, and all around smart marketer and fundraiser.
I was lucky enough to get some time on her calendar recently (between her frequent trips to New York and Boston where she's consulting on various capital campaigns) to talk with her about communications and public relations, and how those disciplines can impact a nonprofit's fundraising results.
The best part of this conversation is that Jessi comes at this from the perspective of someone who has done the work inside a nonprofit. Prior to joining Changing Our World she led the communications and development departments at Light of Life Rescue Mission, where she successfully put into practice everything she talks with us about on this episode.
We recently sat down with Lisa Wolf, Vice President of Consulting with Westfall Gold, and a contributor/editor at Giving USA. We love talking with Lisa and other members of the team at Westfall Gold, because they really know their stuff. In fact, they recently crossed a major milestone, having now raised more than $1 Billion charitable dollars for their clients!
Lisa was gracious enough to talk with us about what she and her colleagues are seeing in the market today, and what we need to be thinking about, particularly related to engaging high net worth givers.
Here are some of the key points we gleaned from our conversation with Lisa:
- General donor giving is lower year-over-year (again), and retention is also down year-over-year. In fact, all the key performance indicators are down compared to last year.
- Major donor giving is fairly strong in 2019, lifting what would otherwise be a weaker year of philanthropic giving. We also see that more money is going into Donor Advised Funds, so complex asset-based gifts are now more likely than ever before.
- 90% of all charitable giving in the US happens in cash. This is the inverse of how most Americans hold their wealth, especially as net worth increases. This means fundraisers are focusing on an ever-shrinking pool of resources because they are largely not engaging high net worth donors in conversations about how they can give from their assets instead of from their checkbooks.
- Westfall Gold's research shows that "expert" donors (those who are well educated on the process, etc.) give 3X the level of novice donors. Unfortunately, we also find that fundraisers are reluctant to bring other experts (like financial advisors) into conversations with donors to help educate them about their giving options. Westfall's research indicates this is largely because fundraisers are afraid that doing so will open their donors to other giving options and take money away from them/their organization.
- When we think about High Net Worth donors, we need to shift our thinking around engaging them. They are not "donating" to your organization. They are investing in the cause. This means they're looking for a return on that investment. And your ability to deliver that return, and to tell a compelling story around your impact will dictate how successful you'll be with high net worth donors.
We recently sat down with our good friend Betsy Taylor, President of Accordant Philanthropy and author of Healthcare Philanthropy: Advance Charitable Giving to Your Organization's Mission, for a conversation about leading for philanthropic impact.
It was a fascinating discussion about how C-level executives influence philanthropy throughout organizations, and how we as fundraisers can best engage those executives to advance our critical missions.
Here are just a few of Betsy's key insights:
- Successful philanthropy is about much more than having a great development staff. It demands buy-in and active support from the Chief Executive, governing board, and key program leaders to be highly effective.
- If your chief executive doesn't believe in what you do, good luck to you. It's very hard to push that rock uphill.
- Any donor who is going to give you a significant gift wants to look the chief executive in the eyes. They want a relationship with you, the chief executive. They want to hear your vision, and know that you're trustworthy.
- At the highest levels of giving, donors aren't just investing in organizational mission. They're also investing in the vision of the chief executive -- donors need to know that person has the right vision, the right ambition, and the energy to lead and execute against it.
- If the chief executive is uncomfortable asking for money, that's ok. For the most part (unless you're a one-person organization), the CEO never has to utter the words, "will you consider a gift of $X today." Instead, talk about what you believe in. What you care about. Talk about how you see your organization fulfilling your mission. You have other key leaders and team members who can bring home the actual ask.
Download the show notes here
In our most recent podcast episode, Roy and I got to interview our good friend and leadership mentor, Stacey Girdner. Stacey is the Founder and Managing Partner of The PRAXIS Group, a firm that helps organizations become more effective through leadership development and coaching. We worked closely with Stacey when she was Chief People Officer at Russ Reid (where Roy and I both worked previously). And most recently, Stacey also authored what I think is one of the most impactful (if not the most impactful) chapters in my recent #1 Best Seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them. You can download Stacey's chapter for FREE here.
In our conversation we talked with Stacey about some of the biggest mistakes leaders make. Here are some key insights from that conversation:
Mistake #1: Lacking self-knowledge - If we aren't self aware enough to recognize our own idiosyncracies and how they impact those around us, we stand to do real damage to the people we're entrusted to lead. And to our organizations.
Mistake #2: Abdicating our power to influence our direct reports - As much as we might want our teams and our people to show up on day 1 as the perfect employee, knowing exactly what is needed and how to do it, that never happens. If we aren't mindful of how our approach, and how the things we do/don't do to support our people influence their success, we miss key opportunities to help them grow. Consistently abdicating this power (and responsibility) likely leads to disengaged employees, missed expectations, and eventually turnover.
A key resource Stacey recommends to help leaders in this area is Marshall Goldsmith's book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There.
Mistake #3: Thinking it's noble to burn the candle at both ends - Often leaders think they have to be the first one in the office, the last to leave, and the person who out-works everyone else. Stacey breaks down why this is a terrible way to think, and how it negatively impacts our work, our health, and our relationships at home.
I'm not gonna lie. This is, for me, a bucket list interview. This week Roy Jones and I interviewed Bob Westfall, CEO of Westfall Gold.
Why is this such a big deal for me (it's a big deal for you too, you just don't know it yet!)? Because Bob's firm has raised $950 MILLION in transformational major gifts, and they've developed a phenomenal approach to building relationships and securing philanthropic support. I learned a ton in this interview, and I hope you do too!
Some key points from our conversation:
- To be successful at major gift fundraising you have to have the right people in the room.
- Major and Mega donors follow the principle that "eagles fly with eagles" -- meaning, they want to be together with other high net worth, major/mega donors. And getting these people in the room together on behalf of your charitable cause is not just financially important to you, but valuable to your donors.
- The case (i.e., Case for Support) is critical. It must be emotional, intellectual, and transformational. But the most important of these three is that it's transformational (i.e., that it shows the donor that their philanthropic support can make a HUGE change in the lives of those you serve).
- According to the Bank of America / US Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy, 94% of major donors will give you a gift once you can help them believe in the mission of your organization.
- Further, 93% of major donors say they'll make a major gift once an organization shows them how doing so will make a meaningful impact in the lives of people served by the organization.
- If fundraisers will intentionally deliver a transformational case every time they interact with a donor, their likelihood of securing major gifts will skyrocket! This can be as simple as leaving a voicemail telling the donor a quick impact story, sharing a news article about the impact of your work, or emailing them a quote from someone served by your org .
Get the full show transcript here.
Last week we sat down with Steven Shattuck, Chief Engagement Officer at Bloomerang, a leading CRM provider in the nonprofit sector. Steven is one of the smartest guys in our space, and he leads Bloomerang's thought leadership efforts, including their highly popular blog and webinar programs.
We had a great conversation about how successful nonprofits are harnessing their data -- often one of the most valuable resources they have -- to maximize revenue for their cause.
Steven walks us through some of the most impactful ways nonprofits are using data, and some of the biggest mistakes orgs make with their data.
I hope you find this interview hugely valuable!
And if you are interested in exploring Bloomerang as a CRM option for your organization, you can check them out here.
Download the show transcript here.
There are so many great things I could say about Jeff Rothman. But I'm biased. When I was looking to take the next step in my career two years ago, Jeff helped me find my new work "home" at Newport One. He was a great advocate and trail guide as I explored the opportunity at Newport and ultimately chose to come on board this agency. It was the best career decision I've made in a long time...made possible by Rothman Talent Solutions.
Jeff is Founder & President of Rothman Talent Solutions, an executive search firm that specializes in pairing high-impact talent with data-driven marketing organizations (nonprofits, for-profits, and the agencies that serve their marketing needs).
Jeff is also a contributing author to my recent Amazon #1 Best Seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them.
He joined me on the podcast for a conversation about some of the biggest mistakes nonprofits make in the areas of talent recruitment, engagement, and retention. If you are responsible for hiring or retaining talent in a nonprofit, or for leading people and teams that are, you won't want to miss Jeff's insights and tips.
You might also want download a copy of Jeff's chapter from 101 Biggest Mistakes.
If you want to raise more money for your nonprofit, better engage your donors, and create massive fundraising leverage, you need to listen to what my friend, Erica Waasdorp has to say.
Erica is President of A Direct Solution, and author of Monthly Giving: The Sleeping Giant. She's also a contributing author to my recent Amazon #1 Best Seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them.
I recently sat down with Erica to talk about the biggest mistakes nonprofits make with monthly donors, and to get her insights about some of the most important trends and strategies related to monthly giving.
Her insights are like GOLD! If you follow Erica's recipe for building and scaling a monthly giving program, your donors will have a better experience, and you'll raise a lot more money for your cause!
Erica says one way to kickstart your monthly giving program is to grab a copy of her FREE tool, the Monthly Giving Starter Kit.
Check out her podcast interview for more valuable tips and insights!
Download the show transcript here
I first met Trista Harris a year ago when she spoke at the ALDE Conference in Minneapolis. Her talk was engaging and thought provoking, and I walked away wanting to hear more.
That's why I was so excited when she agreed to be interviewed for the Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast!
In this episode, Trista helps us understand what Philanthropic Futurism is, and how nonprofit organizations can all benefit from futurism. She also gives us some predictions for the future of the nonprofit sector, and what some of the biggest risks and opportunities on the horizon might be.
It's a great episode - you don't want to miss it!
Download the show transcript here.
About Trista
Trista Harris is a passionate advocate for leaders in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. Trista’s work has been covered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, CNN, Forbes, the New York Times, and numerous social sector blogs. She is also the co-author of the book “How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar” and the book “FutureGood”. She speaks internationally about using the tools of futurism in the social sector and is the president of FutureGood, a consultancy that helps visionary leaders build a better future. You'll also want to check out Trista's blog.
In this episode we talk with Sarah Olivieri, Founder of PivotGround about her Impact Method, a business framework designed specifically for nonprofits. We loved this conversation and getting to know Sarah. What's clear to us is that Sarah and her team are moving the needle for nonprofits in one of the most valuable and under-leveraged areas -- planning. Sarah debunks the idea of traditional strategic planning, and also challenges our industry's current focus on "data-driven" decision making. Our heads were spinning as we learned from Sarah and how she's helping nonprofits become more effective in the marketplace. You won't want to miss this episode!
About Sarah
Sarah Olivieri is a nonprofit strategist with a passion for helping organizations thrive in the digital age.
The founder and heart behind PivotGround, Sarah helps human-service nonprofits increase capacity, deliver better programming, attract more funding, and make the world a better place.
She is also the creator of the Impact Method™ - a business framework for nonprofits designed to help them thrive in the digital age.
Sarah received her BA from the University of Chicago with a focus on globalization and its effect on marginalized cultures, studying in Spain, Tanzania, and Cuba, and finally moving to Japan to teach English. In 2009 she completed a master's degree in Humanistic and Multicultural Education at SUNY New Paltz.
When Sarah isn't developing strategies for clients, you can often find her speaking or hosting seminars. Sarah is also a mom and loves spending time with her 6-year-old son Lilo and enjoys cooking, sailing, knitting, and reading in her free time.
Download the show transcript here
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In our most recent episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast I sat down with Amanda Fabrizio-Grzesik, Director of Development at Tennessee Tech University, and author of the Fab Fundraising blog. We had a fascinating conversation about building a culture of collaboration across development and programs (in her case, specifically with academic staff). This is often such a difficult bridge to build between the two camps -- but Amanda has some great real world tips and examples to help you do just that. If you've ever struggled to gain alignment between development and program teams, you'll want to check out this podcast episode. About Amanda Amanda is a native of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania region, Amanda moved to Tennessee from the northeast in 2014.
She is currently the Director of Development for the College of Agriculture & Human Ecology, College of Education, College of Engineering and the Oakley STEM Center at Tennessee Tech University. She also oversees regional fundraising for Kentucky, Virginia, the upper-Midwest and the Northeast.
Amanda graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in Communications from DeSales University and her Master of Education in Educational Leadership from Lehigh University.
Before Tech, she worked in communications at Lehigh's Industrial and Systems Engineering Department and in the university development offices at Immaculata University and Pratt Institute.
Her husband, Danny, works in student affairs and met while they were both working at Lehigh. They have two fur children, Sonic, who is a seven-year-old Pomeranian, and Laney, who is a 3-month old Chiweenie (chihuahua/dachshund mix).
You can connect with Amanda via the following:
Fab Fundraising Blog LinkedIn Download the show transcript here
In this episode we chat with two of the nation's leading experts on nonprofits, Marc Stein and Bob Lipps. Marc and Bob are co-Founders of The Global Center for Nonprofit Excellence. The Center, as they call it, was created to bring together three diverse groups -- Nonprofits, Funders, and Businesses that provide products and services to the nonprofit sector.
What's most interesting to us about The Center is that these two guys, with decades of experience in legal services, finance, operations, leadership, marketing, and development, have designed an organization with the sole purpose of optimizing the work done by nonprofits. Their goal is to help align nonprofit organizations with service providers and funders, and to provide key services that will help an organization enhance and optimize their work, across all aspects of the organization. In this episode you'll hear more about their approach to serving nonprofits, and the distinct value that they provide.
One very interesting tool they shared about on the podcast is their OpX360® product. OpX360®, which stands for Operational Excellence 360, is an assessment tool that nonprofits, boards, funders, or individual leaders can use to gain a clear understanding of how they and their organizations are performing across six key functional areas. This is an incredibly valuable assessment tool that will be available to nonprofits worldwide starting in August. You can be one of the first organizations to take advantage of this new tool by registering on their waitlist today. As a special bonus just for our listeners, The Center is providing a generous $200 discount on OpX360® assessments. All you have to do is input the coupon code RAINMAKER when prompted.
Download the show transcript here
During last month's Citygate Network Conference, Shawn Saunders (Dickerson Bakker & Associates) and I got to sit down with Dan Balena of Atlanta Mission and talk about how he and the team at Atlanta Mission have energized their major gift program.
After a long and successful corporate career at IBM, Dan felt called to the work of ministry, and later discovered that his skills and experience were a great fit for major gift work. In our conversation he talks about the way Atlanta Mission is engaging donors, telling better stories, and working to bring renewed excitement to the relationships they have with their donors -- all in support of changing the lives of people in need throughout the Atlanta area. s
Download the show transcript here
Carlos Baldovinos leads The Mission at Kern County, serving those who are experiencing homeless in Bakersfield, CA and surrounding communities.
I got the chance to interview Carlos at the Citygate Network 2019 conference earlier this month in beautiful Palm Springs, CA. My good friend Shawn Saunders from Dickerson Bakker & Associates was kind enough to guest host this episode with me.
During our conversation with Carlos, we touch on the growing crisis of homelessness in California, and specifically in the Kern County area. He shares with us the approach The Mission is taking to increase capacity to serve more people in need, and how he and his team successfully executed a recent capital campaign to grow their Mission. What's most interesting about this is that Carlos and his team decided not to engage a consultant in the process, and skipped the feasibility study phase of the campaign. Check out this podcast to learn how they did that, and what your organization might be able to learn from their approach.
Download the show transcript here
Have you heard of ViewSpark yet?
They happen to be my favorite digital donor engagement platform, and if you don't know them yet, you should check them out.
I got to sit down with ViewSpark's CEO, Jeff Kliewer, and Vice President of Marketing, Kat Landa, during the recent Citygate Network conference in Palm Springs to talk about how their platform is reshaping the way nonprofits engage with their donors. And the results are pretty stellar.
In fact, in December of 2018 when many other nonprofits saw sharp declines in online giving, ViewSpark's clients actually saw significant increases in online giving! Interestingly, Jeff and Kat share that their average client spends less than 10 minutes per day using their platform -- and it still generates significant returns for them.
Right now they're offering a special 50% discount off their standard set-up cost just for our listeners. All you have to do is mention the Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast when you contact them!
Download the show transcript here.
We were so blessed to sit down with our longtime friend and colleague, Michelle Porter, Founder & CEO at Souls Harbor Rescue Mission in Halifax, Nova Scotia, during the recent Citygate Network 2019 Conference.
Michelle is one of a small (but growing) group of female CEO's within North America's network of Gospel Rescue Missions (homeless shelters). She sat down with me and my guest co-host, Shawn Saunders of Dickerson Bakker & Associates to talk about the importance, value, and challenges of growing the number of women in leadership in the rescue mission community. During our time together she also talked with us about her experience in launching a new ministry organization from the ground up, what some of the challenges were around that, and how she went about engaging the local community to help fund and grow their start-up organization.
Download the show transcript here
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During the recent Citygate Network 2019 Conference in Palm Springs, CA, we got the chance to sit down with our new friend, Richard Newcomb, Vice President of Philanthropy and Social Enterprise at Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles.
During our conversation, Richard shared several key insights with me and my guest co-host, Shawn Saunders of Dickerson Bakker & Associates. Richard talks with us about the challenges of building awareness and raising funds in a heavily crowded market like Los Angeles, and the growing need for innovation and change to address the growing homeless crisis in Los Angeles. He also shares a story of the bold and compassionate leadership of Union Rescue Mission's CEO, Andy Bales. You won't want to miss this episode!
Download the show transcript here.
During the recent Citygate Network 2019 Conference in Palm Springs, CA, I got the chance to meet and get to know Donovan Coley Sr., M.A., President/CEO of The Rescue Mission in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
Donovan was a guest on The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast, and talked with me and my guest co-host, Shawn Saunders of Dickerson Bakker & Associates about the importance of culture and leadership on philanthropy. In our conversation he shares the story of how when he came to The Rescue Mission, he discovered the need for change, and implemented significant changes across the organization's leadership structure and culture. Those changes helped the organization grow from less than $1.5 Million per year, to $6.1 Million today.
Download the show transcript here.
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I got the chance to sit down with my good friend and former client, Paul Spence, who is VP of Development at City Gospel Mission in Cincinnati. Paul was kind enough to visit with me during the Citygate Network 2019 Conference in Palm Springs, and talk with me about the importance of innovation and change in fundraising. This is a topic Paul knows a lot about -- he's led several significant innovations during his time at City Gospel Mission, and helped raise millions of dollars in the process for this ministry.
Download the show transcript here
It was such a joy to meet Dani Bethune recently at the Citygate Network 2019 Conference in Palm Springs! She's a fundraising dynamo who is currently serving as Chief Development Officer at Union Gospel Mission in Dallas, TX.
When Shawn Saunders (my good friend from Dickerson Bakker & Associates, and my podcast guest co-host during the Citygate Conference) and I spoke with Dani she sparked a conversation about how nonprofits view foundation and corporate funders, and some of the biggest mistakes that fundraisers make in engaging those key institutional major donors. In our conversation she shares her experience in developing relationships with institutional funders and inspiring them to support UGM Dallas and other organizations she's served in the past.
Download the show transcript here
At the recent Citygate Network 2019 Conference, I had the opportunity to interview my good friend and former client, Freddy Clayton. Freddy is the President at Orlando Union Rescue Mission. He spent the majority of his career practicing law in Orlando, then nearly five years ago was called to serve as President at the Mission. In our conversation he talks about that transition from the corporate world to the nonprofit sector. He also talks about OURM's recent major capital campaign, and what he's learned as a leader and fundraiser in the last half decade.
Download the show transcript here
In this episode our good friend Amira Barger, Head of Business Development at the Public Health Institute talks with us about one of the most under-addressed topics in the nonprofit sector. Equity and inclusion. She shares her personal perspective on what it means to create equitable environments in the nonprofit workplace, why equity is important and inclusion is essential, and what some of the biggest roadblocks are.
In our conversation, Amira mentions several great resources that listeners can take advantage of to build more equitable workplaces and practice greater inclusion in their daily lives. Links to those are below.
Harvard University Implicit Bias Test
Race To Lead
Building a Race Equity Culture
In this new episode we talk with Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director of California Symphony Orchestra, and creator of the Long Haul Model.
Aubrey shares with us how she and her team applied the Long Haul Model to create five consecutive years of growth at California Symphony Orchestra -- and how you can apply the same techniques to improve outcomes at your organization.
Aubrey is also a contributing author to the new Amazon #1 Best Seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them. As a special bonus for our Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast listeners, you can download Aubrey's chapter here!
Download the show transcript here
Dan Reed is CEO at Seed Fundraisers, a unique training and consulting firm serving fundraisers of all skills and experience levels. In our conversation, Dan shares his passion for the vocation of fundraising, and for training and developing individual fundraisers so that they can thrive in their organizations and careers. Dan takes a fresh look at the importance of training in our sector, and the fact that it creates value for the individual fundraiser, not just for the organizations that employ them. I think you'll enjoy this interview and learn a lot!
In this episode of The Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast I chat with my good friend Greg Warner. Greg is CEO of MarketSmart and author of Engagement Fundraising.
Greg's a natural pot stirrer and loves to challenge the status quo. That led him to create a company that helps nonprofits think and act differently in identifying potential major and legacy giving donors -- and to engage them in ways that are meaningful and valuable to them. You'll learn so much from him in this episode!
Greg is also a contributing author to the new Amazon #1 Best Seller, 101 Biggest Mistakes Nonprofits Make And How You Can Avoid Them. You can download the first 10 chapters FREE.
Over the last six years Lisa Notaro, CFRE (Arizona AFP Fundraiser of the Year for 2018) has led philanthropic efforts to raise over $120 Million for St. Mary's Food Bank, the nation's first ever food bank. Her dynamic style, constant positive attitude, and deep experience are keys to her success. In this episode, she shares various tips from her own experience to help any nonprofit leader raise more money for their cause.
In this episode we talk with our good friend Ben Stroup, Director of Strategic Development at Christian Broadcasting Network. Ben shares with us about the importance of embracing data and analysis, how CBN bested industry fundraising trends in 2018, and what it takes to innovate and drive change in a large and established nonprofit organization. There's a ton of value packed into this episode for you!
In this episode we interview Shawnte Williams, MBA, Chief Development Officer at Panama City Rescue Mission. Shawnte shares her perspective on moving from an individual contributor role into a senior-level fundraising leadership role, how she approaches building major donor relationships, and what it's like to move from a big shop to a smaller shop. You don't want to miss this!
In this interview we talk with our good friend and colleague, Scott Koskoski, Senior Performance Consultant and Partner at BrightDot about the critical role that emotional intelligence plays in a nonprofit's fundraising success. This is an eye-opening topic that is sure to add value to any fundraiser or nonprofit leader's day.
We also take a few minutes at the end of the show to talk with Scott about the state of fundraising after what appears to have been a less than great 2018 year-end fundraising season.
Show Transcript:
Andrew Olsen: Okay, we are recording now.
Andrew Olsen: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Andrew Olsen, co-host of the Rainmaker Fundraising Podcast. I'm here with my good friend and colleague Roy Jones, co-host of the Rainmaking podcast. Roy, how are you?
Roy Jones: Great to be here. It's going to be fun. I love talking to folks that have done university fundraising in the past. This whole subject of emotional intelligence, I like getting into that. So, I'm excited to talk to Scott. I'll let you introduce him.
Andrew Olsen: Yeah, I'm really excited about this as well. I think our listeners are in for a treat. I have gotten to know Scott Koskoski over the last ... Well, Scott, what's it been? Five months, I think?
Scott Koskoski: Yeah. Actually, a little more. Maybe eight or nine months.
Andrew Olsen: Okay, so eight or nine. I can't count. Scott is a great guy. He's the Senior Performance Mentor & Partner at a firm called BrightDot. In Scott's background, before coming to BrightDot, he led all the philanthropic strategy and execution at Morris Animal Foundation, and then he's held major gift roles at University of Denver, Temple University, and UT Chattanooga. So, some great sector experience.
Andrew Olsen: I have just really enjoyed getting to know you, Scott. I mean, you've got a great personal story and temperament in the way you approach fund development. I'm really excited to have you on today to talk to our listeners about how you and your firm approach philanthropy, because I think it's ... A lot of people consult in this space and a lot of people talk about how to fix fundraising, how to coach fundraisers, but so many of them focus on the tactics. And I love that you guys get so far above that and really deal with some of the root issues. I'm excited to talk about that with you. But before I do that, I just want to turn the mic over to you and ask for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Scott Koskoski: Andrew, thanks. Roy, thanks. And Andrew, to your introduction, you wrote down almost everything I said for you to say about me, which is great.
Andrew Olsen: You can pay me later.
Scott Koskoski: The check is in the mail to your favorite charity. But I really do appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I am a fan of yours and I'm a fan of this podcast. It is on my queue. I'm really enjoying learning from you and from the guests that you bring on. And hopefully I'll be able to add a little bit of that today.
Scott Koskoski: As you mentioned, I've got a story that's my own. I grew up in a very, very humble western Pennsylvania background. I needed the grace of God and a lot of help from a lot of people to be even able to access higher education. It was made clear to me at age 13 what my future could look like if I didn't work hard and take on a lot of that onus by myself.
Scott Koskoski: But I was able to earn a scholarship. I was able to squeeze every penny out of that scholarship. And I was able to be a first-generation college graduate. I'm really proud to have blazed a trail now for my family, and my siblings followed.
Scott Koskoski: From that, I was able to start a career in university ... worked at some ... from small, private liberal arts, major research universities. I learned about relationship-based fundraising. I was very lucky to be a part of significant campaigns, significant building projects, and develop significant relationships with presidents, chancellors, boards, dynamic coaches, faculty. And then I had my midlife crisis. I think we all get one.
Roy Jones: Only one?
Scott Koskoski: We all get at least one, how about that?
Roy Jones: I'll give you that.
Scott Koskoski: But I woke up on my 35th birthday and realized that I was burning out. I was asking myself a lot of hard questions about the kind of work that I was doing in a university environment. For all that it had given me, was it now starting to take from me? And I made a list of things I wanted to do if indeed my life was half over. One of those things I wanted to do was transition into the nonprofit sector.
Scott Koskoski: 23 days later, I landed at Morris Animal Foundation as Director of Major & Planned Giving, elevated roles there a couple of times, and had a wonderful ride as essentially the philanthropy director at the world's largest and oldest animal health non-profit. Got to know wonderful trustees, got to work with wonderful folks like Betty White ... Yes, the Betty White ... and others who helped elevate the brand of that organization. And through that experience, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bill Crouch in the basement of the Sheraton in Chicago at a conference where he was-
Andrew Olsen: That sounds swanky.
Scott Koskoski: Yeah. Yeah, not to sound too seedy, but we met in the basement of a hotel where he was representing Jerry Panas's fundraising firm where he was Jerry's COO. And I had just started a boutique consulting firm with my dear friend Dan Reed in Denver called Seed. Bill and I put minds together, hearts together. One thing led to another. I was moving east anyway to be closer to family and relocating back to Pittsburgh, where I live now. Bill and I decided that we were going to leave our firms, respectively, and start what was Crouch & Associates.
Scott Koskoski: Crouch & Associates launched September 13th ... I'm sorry, September 30th, 2015. On January 1st, 2019, we became BrightDot. Crouch & Associates was a firm that told you who we are. BrightDot is a firm that tells us who you are, is at least the way we're putting the spin on it.
Scott Koskoski: But it's been a great ride. I'm learning a ton. And, hopefully, I've got something now to give back. My main motivation from getting out of client-side service and doing consulting and coaching was that I thought it was time to serve the profession and serve the sector, rather than serving one singular organization.
Andrew Olsen: I think that's a really cool mission calling.
Andrew Olsen: The reason why I was really excited to have you on, and why I wanted to get you on the show as quick as possible, goes back to something that you shared with me a few months ago. I can't remember where we were. But, you said that the majority of instances where you're called in to help a non-profit improve their fundraising. So, whether they had a down year, or they're just looking to grow, or whatever it was, that oftentimes they are looking to you to provide whatever the next shiny object is or the set of tactics and tools. But you end up ultimately engaging with them around issues of culture and relationships and leadership more so than anything else.
Andrew Olsen: I'd love for you to tell us about that and just give us a little context for what that means in our sector.
Scott Koskoski: You came up with something that we call the circle of consequences. And the circle of consequences is borne out of the reality that, as you said it, every single time we've been called into a non-profit organization, higher ed, ministry, advocacy-driven, [inaudible 00:07:54], doesn't matter. Every time we brought in, we've heard some version, as have you, Andrew, of, "We've got to raise more money."
Scott Koskoski: That's ultimately one of the deliverables. But what we find is that it's not about the money. We've never found a genuine and true lack of capital to be what's holding back the organization. Rather, it's always something else. It's the messaging. It's the stewardship approach. It is how you tell the fundraising story, how you illustrate the "why" of the organization. We're big Simon Sinek believers and we teach the "why." We're all certified "why" trainers at our firm.
Scott Koskoski: It's never actually about the lack of availability of money. And one of the things that is always prevalent in organizations that struggle, we found, is culture. Specifically, what is the emotional intelligence quotient, or factor, of folks that are touching the fundraising process?
Scott Koskoski: When we started Crouch & Associates, one of the things we promised ourselves was that we were going to go out of business and declare ourselves a failure if we could not stir the culture of organizations we worked with. We decided that every client was going to hear something they haven't heard before, feel something they hadn't felt before, and do something that they haven't done before. And that's culture.
Scott Koskoski: Where fundraisers struggle, and where organizations struggle, is because there is genuinely gaps and a lack of resilience, perseverance, assertiveness, objective judgment, pace, and independence, manageability, and those things that all kind of cobble together to form what we call development wisdom. Others call it emotional intelligence. That's the street name for it. We tried some other kind of variations on that, but we keep coming back to this concept of development wisdom and saying, "You know what? That's the secret sauce. That's the missing ingredient, where organizations and fundraisers are falling down and struggling and not achieving their full purpose."
Scott Koskoski: How could we bring it? The science of development wisdom, rather than thinking that wisdom is something that you wait a long time to acquire, or that when your hair turns gray and white, or becomes gone, you've acquired some modicum of [crosstalk 00:10:24].
Andrew Olsen: Hey now, don't throw barbs at Roy.
Scott Koskoski: You know what? I got to take the ... Ball's on the tee, guys. I'm sorry. But I kid, Roy.
Scott Koskoski: How can we inject through our work this dose of development wisdom into shops rather than just hope and pray and wait for those things to happen? And so, [crosstalk 00:10:50].
Roy Jones: I mean, they have to have the tactics right. They have to have the tactics right, but if you don't layer on this, what you're calling development wisdom, what I've always called emotional intelligence. But, I mean, giving is an emotional act. It's not a transactional act. That has to be learned and taught.
Roy Jones: Sometimes I find fundraisers, maybe they're really good at sensing when to go in for the close or some kind of thing like that, but they're very poor at sensing when a donor is emotionally ready to engage in philanthropy. Talk to me about just how you get there and how teach that. It's very different than the tactics or the techniques that we teach in fundraising most of the time.
Scott Koskoski: We decided we would never be a firm that focused on hard skill development as our front page. And so, while we do plenty of development tactical teaching and kind of authority and influence speaking into these non-profits, we are continually guided by one of the great books out there. You've heard of Harvey Mackay and The Mackay MBA of Selling in the Real World. And Harvey asks in this book, "What makes a super salesperson? The top three traits: hungry fighter, hungry fighter, hungry fighter."
Scott Koskoski: He lists 17 traits in this book of what makes a super salesperson. We've taken the book apart and we've basically rewritten it into a fundraising environment. Out of these 17 traits in this book, only one has to do with hard skills. Content knowledge, you know what you're talking about. The others have to do with integrity, positive attitude, likeability, good first impressions, service mentality, great listener, thirst for self-improvement, things like that.
Scott Koskoski: So how do we teach it? The first thing we did is create a proprietary emotional intelligence assessment for the non-profit world. It's the only one that exists. It's called the Profile XT. The first two hires we made at our firm were development psychologists, gentlemen. We took an existing sales assessment. We recreated it, went through two rounds of beta, thousands of testers, and came out of it with a profile of 1,200 top-performing fundraisers who had closed seven-figure gifts in the last 12 months at a cross-section of 190 institutions in this country.
Scott Koskoski: We looked at the things that this profile group of 1,200 top-performing fundraisers have in common in terms of their resilience, their adaptability, their assertiveness, their pace, their decision making, their thinking and learning styles, their interest patterns, in terms of people orientation, a creative and service mentality versus a technical mentality, or an administrative mentality. And we are the only firm out there that can show you literally a picture of what a top performer's emotional intelligence looks like.
Scott Koskoski: Everyone that we work with, everyone that we hire, goes through this assessment process. And by the way, we've now got different versions of this assessment. So whether you're a major gift performer, whether you're an institutional CEO, whether you're a back line performer, or whether you're a board member or a governor of an organization, there is a version of this assessment for you.
Roy Jones: [inaudible 00:14:40].
Scott Koskoski: And you go through this assessment and you are compared to the profile, in this case, of a major gift performer. And what we do is we have the ability through our curriculum to literally move you through a curriculum closer to top performance. Can we get you all of the way there all of the time? No. Could never, would never, guarantee. But what we can do is give you exercises, repetitions, and practical real world situations and challenges, we call them. So, literally taking your learning into a donor situation to improve your emotional intelligence.
Scott Koskoski: We teach fundraisers how to be more adaptable, how to let things roll off their shoulders in a donor conversation, how to have better pace in donor situations, so on and so forth. That's why 60% of the organizations we worked with have reported that they've earned the single largest gift in their history since they've engaged with us.
Roy Jones: Yeah, it really is a conversation with donors, isn't it? You're listening for those emotive signals.
Scott Koskoski: Every donor, Roy, we're convinced is holding up this invisible piece of paper. It's a job description. They are looking for an organization that can engage with the donor through a conversation, through being not subservient to a donor, not managing a donor, but with, literally with a donor. And being with a donor in conversation, to get to the point where you build the relationship through a venue of trust to the point where you can challenge a donor to sacrificial generosity in a safe way. That's the secret sauce.
Scott Koskoski: 60% of fundraisers are subservient to the donor. 30% of fundraisers think that this business is about managing a donor. But it's the fundraisers who understand how to be truly with a donor, meaning we're walking this donor through this proverbial forest that's dark. We do this all day, every day. We practice this craft of fundraising. Donors don't have that many opportunities to practice being donors and to practice being philanthropic and in relationship with a fundraiser, right? So there's an element of leading a donor through that.
Scott Koskoski: How do you get out six to ten feet in front of a donor and kind of pull them through the forest, but at the same time, give the donor the real impression that your arm is around their shoulder, and that you are with them? You're listening to them. You are vulnerable to them. You allow them to be vulnerable back at you.
Scott Koskoski: Through that process, which requires emotional intelligence, you can get the donor to a place where they feel confident and comfortable letting you honor and serve their "why" in living out their story through philanthropy to your organization. And that's what philanthropy is. It's a response from the heart, not the head.
Roy Jones: Man, that's powerful. That's deep.
Scott Koskoski: It's what we do.
Andrew Olsen: I'm going to drop the grenade question in the room right now. And that is, this sounds to me like a highly introspective process. And what I know about many fundraisers is, and I'll use the term "we" because I fit that category myself, we tend to be people pleasers, right? It's difficult to get people to be that introspective and to really let somebody else pick around what's inside, right? And show them where those challenges are.
Andrew Olsen: Talk to me about how this process helps people, helps fundraisers, allow that level of vulnerability so that they can improve, and what the biggest challenges you guys face when you're dealing with an organization and people who are doing this.
Scott Koskoski: Well, that's a great question. There's a lot of ways to answer that. I'll touch on a couple of them in the interest of time. First is that one of the things we pride ourselves on is increasing the level of vocational conviction. Think about this industry as one in which 98% of those who participate in it fall into it from some other field, from some other crowd.
Scott Koskoski: This is one of the most, in terms of the number of people participating in the fundraising profession. It's probably got the least number of people who came up through a traditional path, right? There's a very scant, gray look at what ... If there even is a path, what that is, what good looks like in this field. And so, that's a difficult enough challenge altogether because you've got for a hundred different fundraisers, a hundred different mindsets of what good fundraising is and could be. That's a really tough baseline in which to start this practice of kind of developing vulnerability, a personal connection.
Scott Koskoski: We remind fundraisers that it really is true that people give to people. It really is true that people don't give to causes. People don't give to institutions. People don't give to movements. People don't give to campaigns or thermometers, but they do give because they're asked. They do give when they develop a sense that a fundraiser, as a representative of the organization, gets them, is listening, is asking the right questions, is showing their cards, is showing empathy, is introspective, doesn't have all the answers, is challenged, confused, and confounded, in sometimes ways that donors are as well. But donor and fundraiser together can solve problems.
Scott Koskoski: And because we know that donors love to operate, generally, in a problem-solution continuum, and while donors can't solve every problem, donors like to solve somebody's problems if they can, if they are indeed philanthropic and charitable in mindset. I mean, it's a process. It is a process that has failure written all over it. I'm not ashamed to say that we, through our assessment and through our teaching process, and through a lot of these hard conversations with fundraisers, now have a ... really glad that we were able to have the process that we did.
Scott Koskoski: You helped me determine that this was not the career for me. You helped me determine that I should not be working in this kind of a job. That I ultimately don't have ... I can't get there. I can't be at a place where I can be with a donor. I was doing this for artificial reasons.
Scott Koskoski: I certainly don't want to say that for as many people as we helped, we have also shown the light to, but there have been folks that have been a part of our teaching that have said, "Thank God I went through this, because I understand I'm not built for this."
Roy Jones: I see so often, we think that there's a misperception that it is the hard sales closer that you're looking for. When I hear you saying things like, "Be vulnerable to see vulnerability and to be able to connect with donors in an emotive way," it's so different than the misperception of the hard charging sales closer, somebody that's just out there pitching.
Roy Jones: But, yeah, I think you're right. It is that the people that can do that are in the top 10% of our industry. I like to say people that get it understand that emotion is the donor's love potion. I mean, if you want a donor to fall in love with you, with your charity, the cause you're supporting, it's the emotion that holds that relationship together.
Scott Koskoski: I'm always reminded of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross in which Alec Baldwin played ... For those of you who don't know, he plays the sales manager. He gives a speech to the sales team and he says, "The only," and I don't want to misquote, but I think he says, "Only one things counts in this world, and it's getting them to sign on the line that which is dotted."
Scott Koskoski: The reality is that when the fundraiser manages the donor, the relationship centers on the fundraiser's goals. The question becomes, "How can I convince the donor to give me an amount that achieves my goal?"
Scott Koskoski: Bad things happen after that. Hurried asks. Relationships that aren't about helping the donor support work that aligns with their passion. It's about the organization's bottom line, right? The old phrase, "You've got to sit next to the cow if you want to milk the cow." Hard to milk the cow by sending the cow a letter or calling the cow on the phone. The other phrase, "You can't just make pickles. You've got to let the cucumber marinate."
Scott Koskoski: And that requires patience. It requires trust, two-way trust. Trust by the donor in the fundraiser's commitment to the relationship. Trust by the fundraiser in that the donor is interested in kind of living this philanthropic story and expressing it through the vessel of the organization as the indispensable fulfiller of the donor's "why." It requires that trust. Genuine trust. That trust brings about vulnerability, the willingness to challenge each other, not just the fundraiser challenging a donor, but a donor challenging the fundraiser towards a heightened level of generosity and conversation.
Scott Koskoski: Vulnerability is really intimidating. Look, it's intimidating to be vulnerable personally, let alone professionally. But when a fundraiser and a donor can stand shoulder to shoulder and see in each other a shared commitment to impacting the world through the organization, that takes time. It doesn't happen on the fiscal cycle timeline. The best time for a major gift is when the donor is ready to make a major gift.
Roy Jones: That's right.
Andrew Olsen: Scott, you said something that I want to go back to. I'm curious. The answer very well may be no. But I'm curious to know if, in your work, you've ever had a client ask you to help them apply this kind of thinking and methodology below their major gift program to their annual fund, and how the techniques and the approach that you guys take ... Has it been tested in that space at all?
Scott Koskoski: It has been tested and implemented to the extent that we do fundraising communications, we do messaging work, marcom work, storytelling, and appeal writing for clients. What we're helping clients to do, and this may or may not answer the question fully, but what were helping clients do is learn to speak the language of the donor rather than the language of the organization.
Scott Koskoski: Organizations are really good about speaking the language of the organization. But there's a different vernacular, even at a, let's call it, core giving level and into mid-level giving. There's a different vernacular that donors can use. For example, we're taking appeals. We just got through the year-end giving season, regardless of when this podcast airs. We're here live on January 8th. We just got through the year-end giving season.
Scott Koskoski: We took a bunch of appeals and kind of flipped them on their heads and say, "Okay, how could we write these in a more emotionally aware way? How could we even, on paper, to the majority of your file, how can we write this in a way that breathes new life, fresh air, and a different perspective in the same, roughly the same, thing? How can we say it from looking over here inward, instead of in here, outward?"
Scott Koskoski: That's where we've, I think, taken some good baby steps in terms of that area of an organization.
Andrew Olsen: Okay. Cool. Thank you. So you brought it up. You've said year-end. I was planning to bring it up.
Scott Koskoski: I knew it was coming.
Andrew Olsen: And you're right. We are recording this on January 8th. It'll air in a week or two. But Roy and I were talking about this before you came on, briefly. Now I've talked to about two dozen non-profits in the last couple of weeks. International relief, domestic, poverty alleviation, health care, kind of the whole spectrum. And what I'm hearing is a lot of concern, some hair-on-fire-type responses. Just about everybody I'm speaking to saying that they had a really tough December.
Andrew Olsen: I'd love to hear what you're hearing, and the conversations you're having, and if you have a point of view on what happened in December.
Scott Koskoski: That's a great question, Andrew and Roy. Somebody asked me today, "How was your holiday break?"
Scott Koskoski: And I said, "What break?"
Scott Koskoski: Because if the phone wasn't ringing with clients asking, "What's going on?" and "Has the postal service stopped working through this government shutdown?" then it was me looking at dashboards and trying very late in the year to manipulate some strategy and to help our client group leverage, to the best that they could, the year-end giving season.
Scott Koskoski: I'm looking here at a dashboard of our clients and their Q4 performance, and it's not all in yet as of this airing on January 8th. We know that stuff continues to trickle in. But I'm looking at a 20 to 30, if not a little bit more, percent year over year downscale from the year prior. It's not just your group of two dozen or so, Andrew, and I don't think it's just my group and our group, as a firm. I think it is probably a sector-wide conversation. I don't know yet whether it's something that is one of those it is what it is things, or whether we can specifically provide the causation to this. But I will share this.
Scott Koskoski: First, we are living in such a political and a social moment in this country. No matter what your politics, we are living in turbulent ... [inaudible 00:30:22]. It's hard to find an area of the non-profit sector in which, politically, socially, civically, and otherwise, that our times have not been affected. And whoever wished that may we live in interesting times, I think we are.
Scott Koskoski: But we are seeing campaign contributions to the 2018 federal midterm elections, even down to a state and municipal level, be as high as a four-year presidential election year. There was, as we all know, a ton of energy put into the midterm elections, a ton of money put into the midterm elections. We've never had congressional races and senatorial and gubernatorial races in a non-presidential election year where they were eight and nine ... eight-figure, yeah, but nine-figure races. We've never had 100 million dollar congressional races in a midterm year. So, we know that donor dollars are going there.
Scott Koskoski: The economy, despite what we hear about jobs numbers and employment figures, we know that the Dow lost it's entire 2018 and finished the year in a very tumultuous position financially, where we are down 5.6% in the Dow and the S&P. The mistake a lot of fundraisers and organizations make is thinking that just because a donor's portfolio is doing is well, there is instant liquidity to follow. That's not the case. Gains don't necessarily mean money. And so, we are seeing skittish donors and hearing from skittish donors who just don't know the state of the market. We've never had Fed chairmen who are providing commentary about the state of the market and their own position like we have before, and that's impacting things.
Scott Koskoski: And then, thirdly, we are, I think, starting to see some of the front pages of the 2017 tax legislation. We now know that donors, particularly in the mid-level segment, which is where we predicted a year ago that the greatest vulnerability was going to occur in terms of tax legislation, we're seeing the bundling happen. Donors are putting the onus on non-profit organizations to try to make two or three years of philanthropy kind of stretch and work.
Scott Koskoski: I just got off the phone with a client in southern California who said, "I've probably had a half a dozen donors, major donors, that I could count on year over year come to me and say that they were going to bundle. And only a couple of them did it this year. And they can't guarantee that they would bundle in the future when it's, quote, unquote, 'our turn' to get the gift. It's their intent, but you never know what's going to happen in the market."
Roy Jones: Right. There's a big difference between holding money back and saving it for next year then actually stroking a bigger check next year. [crosstalk 00:33:32] know.
Scott Koskoski: There's a huge difference. And we've never lived in a time where 12 months feels like 12 years away.
Andrew Olsen: So, I'm going to put you in the hot seat again. What do you tell a non-profit that's facing that, right? That feels to me like seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and hearing the train engine behind it.
Scott Koskoski: That's [inaudible 00:33:59].
Andrew Olsen: What do you say to give some hope and potentially some direction to non-profits that are feeling that way?
Scott Koskoski: Number one, this is for those of you of faith, it's a great time for prayer. And, certainly, I have bowed my head before probably more tables at a Panera Bread than I have over the last five or six months with our group of ministry-based non-profits.
Scott Koskoski: But I would in all seriousness say continue to be consistent. Continue to take the high road, to do the right thing, and to focus on impacting lives through your mission. The mistake or the ... Not mistake. Let me walk that word back. The temptation that a lot of organizations have, particularly in times like this, is to think that program follows money. Boy, if we could only raise some money, we would be able to do this program. We'd be able to impact the live in the way that we dream about doing. The reality is that money follows program.
Scott Koskoski: Back to the circle of consequences I mentioned where the problem's not the money. The problem is everything around the money when it comes to fundraising, its culture, its messaging, its program strategy, and design. This is a great time to make sure the program strategy is tightened and the strategies and the tactics around delivering the program are as efficient and effective as they could be. This is a great time to do a program audit. And from that programmatic success and programmatic impact, and your consistency in talking about and demonstrating the impact of your work, then you have the opportunity to fundraise.
Scott Koskoski: Something tactical that we're talking with a lot of clients about is many clients think that stewardship is when you do something after the gift that demonstrates the impact of that gift, or the impact of the non-profit. What we're telling them, what we're kind of doing a lot of training in these days, is pre-fundraising stewardship. Stewardship that happens pre-investment on kind of the program-side of the money follows program continuum.
Scott Koskoski: And so, how are we demonstrating impacts of the non-profit and impact of the gift prior to fundraising rather than saying, "Great! You gave this thousand dollars or hundred dollars, now let me tell you what we did with it and let me tell you what we were able to do," as if it's some kind of thing that hides behind the curtain until a gift is made. We're talking about kind of the placement and the relationship of stewardship in kind of the relationship continuum.
Scott Koskoski: But other than that, our encouragement is stay consistent. This is a movement. These times are times that won't last. These times are times that eventually correct. It's happened every time before. It'll happen every time again.
Roy Jones: That's interesting, Scott, because I do think that what were are seeing is not so much a downturn, but a correction. Of course, all of ... I shouldn't say ... I won't put you guys in this category, but I do know one vice president of development that took great pride at seeing about a 30% spike a year ago in year-end giving.
Roy Jones: What I have found, my team has met with 187 donors face to face in 2018. I personally have met with 116 donors face to face. What I have found is many people made a larger gift in 2017 year-end, because they wanted to get that gift in before all these tax law changes started happening because they didn't know what impact it was going to have. And so, we got a huge spike before the Trump tax code happened.
Scott Koskoski: We've had a lot [crosstalk 00:38:17].
Roy Jones: And I [crosstalk 00:38:17] think a lot of it is just stabilization.
Scott Koskoski: We got a lot of the same questions at the end of 2017 and our coaching was simply, to a donor, if you are in the position to express philanthropy through a gift, it's better that you would do it in times that are certain than in times that are uncertain.
Roy Jones: Exactly.
Scott Koskoski: So go ahead and do that. I think that correction and normalization are two of the words that we ought to, to your point, Roy, talk more and more about, rather than recession, downturn, coming back. Philanthropy is a process that is always normalizing. It's always evolving.
Scott Koskoski: In terms of, for example, the prevalence of a donor-advised fund ten years ago versus the prioritization and the significance of DAFs today, it's huge, right? We're not necessarily talking about more ... We can help non-profits look. It may mean that giving changes. It doesn't mean that giving stops and it doesn't need to mean that giving stops. We may need to adapt and normalize and evolve, and we will do that.
Andrew Olsen: Very good. Well, I feel a little bit more encouraged after hearing that. I think so many people are still kind of on pins and needles waiting to see how the year fully ends when they've processed all their gifts, but I think those are some great insights, Scott.
Andrew Olsen: Really appreciate you being here today. We're just about at the end of our time. If people want to get in touch with you, if people want to talk with you about the assessment tool and how your BrightDot firm might be able to help them, how do people reach you?
Scott Koskoski: On the web at thebrightdot.com. scott@thebrightdot.com is a great email for me. We'd be happy to help anybody. And Andrew and Roy, I want to thank you for the time. I love being around smarter people than myself, and so this was the highlight of my day.
Andrew Olsen: Well, we'll try to find some for you, thanks.
Roy Jones: I don't know who you're talking to. I sure learned a lot. This was good stuff.
Andrew Olsen: Yeah, this was really good stuff. Thank you again.
Roy Jones: Man, powerful.
Scott Koskoski: Great to be with you.