Tag Archives: Brian Saber

Nonprofit Radio for October 2, 2023: Fundraising For Introverts

 

Brian SaberFundraising For Introverts

That’s the title of Brian Saber’s new book. He returns with uplifting news for those who prefer quiet time over party time: You can be a great fundraiser! Brian knows. He’s been a successful introverted fundraiser for nearly 40 years. He’s also president of Asking Matters.

 

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[00:00:47.44] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of and the pod father almost forgot that of your favorite heb doin podcast. I can’t quite bring the usual energy today. I will explain in Tony’s take two. Nonetheless, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be stricken with depopulation if I had to speak the words you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with What’s up this week?

[00:01:54.37] spk_1:
Hey, tony, it’s fundraising for Introverts. That’s the title of Brian Saber’s new book. He returns with uplifting news for those who prefer quiet time over party time. You can be a great fundraiser. Brian knows he’s been a successful introverted fundraiser for nearly 40 years. He’s also president of asking matters on Tony’s take too. Got the COVID we sponsored by donor Boxx, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org and buy Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals here is fundraising for introverts.

[00:02:30.82] spk_0:
It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome back, Brian Saber to nonprofit radio. He is President of Asking Matters and author of the brand new book. Fundraising for Introverts Harnessing our powers for what matters. Brian has nearly 40 years of professional experience as a frontline fundraiser, soliciting major capital and planned gifts. The company is at asking mats dot com. Brian and Brian’s book are at fundraising for introverts dot com. Welcome back, Brian. It’s a pleasure to see you.

[00:02:44.99] spk_2:
I am delighted to be back, tony.

[00:02:48.16] spk_0:
Welcome from Palm Springs, California where you are just recently located to from New

[00:02:55.15] spk_2:
Jersey. From New Jersey. Yes. Uh, I have made this my base. Yes, it’s very hot in September here. Uh, but it is beautiful and, uh, I guess it’s one step towards retirement. Who knows

[00:03:14.68] spk_0:
Palm Springs, California is a very different culture than, uh, no Jersey.

[00:03:16.20] spk_2:
It is. Everyone says hello and I don’t wanna say New Jersey, its aren’t friendly or New Yorkers aren’t friendly.

[00:03:25.58] spk_0:
We don’t, we don’t have time. We’re in, we got somewhere to be. There’s too many. I, I can even in small town, New Jersey, I mean, you might get a smile, you might in a small

[00:03:41.53] spk_2:
town here, many people have no place to be a lot of retirees. The pa is slower and it’s sort of

[00:03:43.19] spk_0:
nice. All right, you’re bringing down the average age then

[00:03:46.53] spk_2:
I have, you know, I went from feeling like the oldest person in Jersey City. I might have been the oldest person in my building by 20 years to feeling like, uh, younger than spring time and Palm Springs.

[00:04:25.41] spk_0:
Right. I, I think I better also disclose that Brian and I are both on drugs. Me for my COVID, he had some surgery very recently. So, let’s see what unfolds. Let’s make sure I can keep straight the difference between intuitive and introverts. That’s the first thing since the book is about introverts, we wanna make sure we keep things straight that way. Um, I saw you just, you, um, you were just on Jay Frost Mastermind series

[00:04:31.38] spk_2:
actually, that is this afternoon.

[00:04:41.86] spk_0:
Oh, it’s coming up. Oh, it has. Oh, well, I don’t like being the warm up for Jay Frost at Hack. I wouldn’t, uh, II, I was, I, I was gonna say that he was the warm up for me. Now, I’m the opening act for Jay

[00:04:50.75] spk_2:
Frost. Well, actually, by the time this, this airs Jay’s will have happened. So he will be your warm up act, in fact. Oh, good. Oh, ok,

[00:05:10.20] spk_0:
good. All right. Then we can proceed because otherwise we’re, we’re gonna do this at six o’clock Eastern, uh, at, at three o’clock your time because I’m not warming up for Jay Frost Hack. All right. So let’s, let’s, let’s get some terms. Uh, introvert. We’re celebrating introverts. We’re celebrating introverts, right? You’re an in, you’re a proud introvert. Welcome. Proud introvert.

[00:05:38.51] spk_2:
Thank you. Yes, I am a proud introvert and it took a long time to become a proud introvert for most of my life. I thought it was something I had to compensate for something that would hold me back, something to hide. Something that makes me less of a fundraiser than others.

[00:05:44.45] spk_0:
Your own mom, Elaine Saber was, was confused.

[00:06:39.29] spk_2:
She was confused. You’re right. You read the book closely. Yes. My mother, uh, I, I was very shy when I was young and she thought at a certain point I got past it that I became this confident and outgoing person. Well, she wasn’t seeing what was underneath, which was, and still is a somewhat shy introverted person who wants to move through the world in a certain way. Command respect, uh uh, and be seen as confident and able because, uh, there is some bias, there are lots of biases in the world, of course, and there’s a bias towards people who are more articulate and uh forward and, uh social.

[00:06:41.56] spk_0:
Yeah. Well, they

[00:06:42.33] spk_2:
suck up all the oxygen thing

[00:06:44.41] spk_0:
up, all they suck up all the oxygen and, and so there’s no choice but to pay attention to them because you can’t get a word

[00:07:05.20] spk_2:
in. Well, this is true. This is one of the challenges for introverts that we can’t get a word in unless we jump in ahead of when we really want to participate. And this is one of the great dichotomies between introverts and extroverts. Is that rhythm in a conversation?

[00:07:20.06] spk_0:
All right. So let’s, so let’s talk. Let’s get some of our terms. Uh settle, settled down. So, so introvert, extrovert, uh let, let, let’s, let’s uh uh contrast the, the introvert extrovert for us,

[00:08:03.18] spk_2:
please. Well, in fact, it, it all comes from science and uh introverts are introverts and extroverts are extroverts because of how we’re wired and because of our neural pathways and our transmitters and our enzymes. So which is actually great news to be able to say we are who we are as, as we want to in so many parts of our life and say this is simply how, who I am, who I was born to be. And uh there are a few points here. The first is that introverts have longer neural pathways, brain pathways that they use in thinking through an idea coming up with an idea, coming up with a response to a question, introverts have a longer pathway and dig deeper into their memories into their pasts, into their knowledge base to come up with an answer. Yes.

[00:08:33.40] spk_0:
You say you say introverts rely more on long term memory. Extroverts rely more on short term memory.

[00:09:29.87] spk_2:
Correct? So it’s much easier for an extrovert to grab it that short term memory or what’s coming through their mind right at that moment and to then spit it out and feel it’s a complete thought. Whereas the introvert really wants to stop and think before, before responding. And I, I ask people if they have this same challenge I’ve always had when I’m in a situation where I have to talk quickly. I repeat myself because the first time I say something, it doesn’t sound complete to me, it came out too fast before I could put it together. And I’ve had to watch and try to keep myself if I’ve had to talk quickly from repeating myself. It’s a bit of a mind thing there. Uh You might get too much into your mind, but I, I watch that now so that I’m not repetitive. And you

[00:09:37.83] spk_0:
said you asked other people are uh did you find

[00:12:58.28] spk_2:
and other people find the psycho with you? Yes. Yes. Yes, they are. Simpatico with me. They get it. So that’s the first difference. The second difference has to do with dopamine and Acetic Cole. And I’m not a big science guy, but I dug into the science for this book because I really wanted people to understand who they are and what’s making them tick. Everyone’s heard of dopamine. We hear it all the time. We hear about it in terms of sports and that rush and everything who’s heard of coli very few people. Well, they are complementary uh neural transmitters. Dopamine is called the feel good uh uh transmitter or enzyme. And when dopamine is activated people, well, pe dopamine is activated, I should say by external rewards and excitements and things. Aesthetic cole is the internal, feel good that’s activated by going inside by what’s what, what you’re feeling inside yourself. It’s a more of a self-satisfaction and it’s been proven that dopamine is more active in extroverts, anesthetic coline and introverts. So, extroverts are motivated for that to get that excitement, to get that rush in the moment that might come from meeting with people, meeting new people at a bar, going to an exciting concert and feeling the the mood of the crowd. Whereas introverts aren’t as reactive, their dopamine isn’t as reactive and so are less drawn to that type of activity and get less pleasure out of it. They get more pleasure out of quieter activities and often more solitary activities where they’re actually thinking deeply. And I’ve noticed only very recently, I’m not a big joiner. That’s an understatement. Actually, I don’t like to join things, but I’m into groups. One is uh yoga. I’m a big yoga guy and I realize what I like about yoga is we’re together, but we’re not really interacting. I’m feeling the energy of the room without having to be social the whole time. I’ve also been in a chorus for the last two years as you know, tony, I started singing now, I’m in a chorus. And what’s nice about the chorus is we chat a little bit beforehand and during the break, but most of our time together is spent making music where the interaction with each other is, is not a social interaction and it’s much more comfortable for me. I hear of these meet up groups all the time and for a million dollars, I wouldn’t go to one of those events. So, so, you know, I’m very aware of where I’m getting my energy, people think because I do have many friends and because I do well in social circumstances that that must mean an extroverted. But in fact, I’m using a tremendous amount of energy that wears me out. So those are the two big differences and sometimes people to simplify it. Think of extroverts as those who talk to think and introverts as those who think to talk, right. Extroverts process out loud, introverts like to think, process internally and then talk,

[00:13:24.15] spk_0:
you make this clear in the book, let’s uh distinguish between being introverted and shy. Uh

[00:14:27.87] spk_2:
Yes. So often they’re conflated because they often result in the same thing. Someone who’s a little reticent to be in groups, maybe a little awkward uh off to the side, want to spend time alone. Uh Shy has to do with fear of being judged and the opposite of shyness is an introversion. It’s outgoing ness if you will. Um So you can be shy or introverted or both. So, um there are shy extroverts which might seem odd but uh it an extrovert can be drawn to the shiny object into the, the uh the big social circumstance and still be shy in that situation, uh for fear of being judged. They’re, they’re two different pieces of the pie. OK.

[00:14:29.95] spk_0:
And then, and then you throw in, uh, Ambivert,

[00:14:33.81] spk_2:
which I

[00:14:34.58] spk_0:
thought, I, I thought of, I thought of her Metro but you don’t, you don’t call it her Metro.

[00:14:41.08] spk_2:
That’s a big scientific term.

[00:14:52.28] spk_0:
And it’s a nice, uh, that was a good prefix for, uh, for, it could be either one, her Metro but um uh Amber, Amber, right? Adex, we can balance both. Yeah. You think they exist? So

[00:16:42.93] spk_2:
yes, I think the ambivert exists. There’s been a lot of discussion about Ambivert lately. I think it’s helpful, but it can also keep you from understanding yourself because basically if you’re gonna say, well, I’m everything. OK. Well, what drives you, what, what you, you need to have some way forward and I, I think ambivert to me implies an equal amount of everything. Whereas I think we are most of us more of one thing than another. So you’ve had me on before and some of your listeners probably know the asking styles that we created at asking matters. And those really were the kernel even for this book. And uh there are four different styles, but we also have a secondary style for each because no one fits cleanly in one box. And when people take the quiz or they look at the graphic, they, they, they sometimes say, well, I feel like I’m a little bit of each of those. And I say, well, you know, you could be closer to what you’d call the origin of the various axis in this, right? Some of us are Uber, this or Uber that we’re all on a spectrum. We all have more or less of various things, whether it’s uh um in testosterone or it’s introversion, right? Dopamine reaction to dopamine reaction to a subtle and the idea through all of this discussion, I think, and through all of these different uh personality assessments and the work I do specifically related to fundraising is help people get a better sense of who they are, feel comfortable with that, understand they can succeed, given who they are and that they don’t have to be the other.

[00:17:26.62] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Donor box quote. We’ve seen incredible results with Donor Box. In the last year. We’ve boosted our donations by 70% and launched new programs in literacy, health, child care and tailoring for our girls. That’s Jennings W founder and executive director of Uganda 10 18. If you’re looking for a fast, flexible and donor friendly fundraising platform for your organization, check out donor box, donor box dot org. Now back to fundraising for introverts

[00:17:50.99] spk_0:
since you, you raised the asking styles. Well, this seems like a good place to acquaint folks, but I was gonna bring it up later, but we may as well just remind folks, you know, first of all the quiz that uh you referred to is at asking uh asking mats dot com and it’s AAA three minute quiz you ask about th there are about 30 questions. You don’t, you don’t overthink them three minutes. You’ll, you’ll get your asking style. But so what are we talking about if you can give us the 2 to 3 minute version of what the asking styles are? No point in my trying. You’ve been talking about this for decades, you can do it much more succinctly.

[00:18:12.19] spk_2:
Ok? I I had a feeling you might be asking about the asking styles later, but it just felt like the segway. So you,

[00:18:30.73] spk_0:
yeah, so you know, you run amok. Uh The guest guest takes advantage and has his own agenda. That’s fine. But I, I, so I yielded to it. Uh but I’ll just make it uh explicit with my consent. We will move into the asking matter, the asking stylist and

[00:18:39.70] spk_2:
for the record, one of the things I just adore about you is your sense of humor. And I think that’s why we get along. So

[00:18:46.55] spk_0:
please do proceed with my consent.

[00:22:16.09] spk_2:
Why? Thank you, sir. Kind sir. So the asking styles were developed by me and actually by Andrea Kilted, she was my co-founder. I always give her credit for this. Um And we, we came up with them because we wanted to help people in the field understand their strengths as askers, fundraisers and in, in particular askers because asking for money. That moment where you ask is such a difficult thing for so many people. And most people say I can’t do that. Especially volunteers and board members, we were both dealing with lots of boards and board members would come on and say I’ll do anything but fundraise. I’m not a fundraiser and so forth and we wanted people to understand that there isn’t just one type of fundraiser. There’s this stereotype which truly is just that uh fundraising and the fundraising, you and I do a lot of the major gifts, the plan gifts, capital gifts, they’re all based on relationships. We all have relationships in our life with a variety of people who have different personalities and we make it work and we bring different parts of our personality to the table depending we acknowledge uh who others uh are in, in, in terms of their personalities. I just saw a new book came out something about get people how to get people understand people. We wanted people in this nonprofit sector to understand who they were as askers. And we based it on two characteristics. First, how you interact this extroversion, introversion spectrum and then how you think uh the analytic intuitive spectrum and came up with a grid, not dissimilar to a Myers Briggs or a disc grid or any of the personality assessments people are familiar with, but we did develop it ourselves from scratch. Uh uh And, and the result is these four major uh asking styles. Rainmaker go Getter, Kindred Spirit emission controller, either the analytic extrovert, the intuitive extrovert, the intuitive introvert or the analytic introvert. And based on that there are skills and a style that predominate for you. Whether it’s the analytic extrovert. The rainmaker who is sort of driven strategic competitive, keeps their eye on the prize very objective or the intuitive expert. The go-getter who’s, who’s a big picture thinker and makes friends easily quick on their feet, engaging important skills for fundraising. The intuitive introvert, the kindred spirit, feelings oriented that is who I am. We our hearts and our sleeves, very personal relationships. And we tend to be attentive and caring and thoughtful towards other people, not to say rainmaker and go getters can’t be caring, but we excel at thinking about others and making them feel good. And then the mission controllers, the analytic introverts who are very planful and systematic and detailed and observant the best listeners, those most likely to sit back and watch what’s happening. And for those of us in fundraising, we know the number one skill really is listening and learning from your donor. It’s not telling them everything about your organization and trying to convince them of something, but learning from them and understanding who they are so that you can relate them to your organization and vice versa. So those are the four styles and um

[00:23:40.35] spk_0:
each of them, each of them has value in fundraising. Uh each of them could partner with others to enhance their own skills. Each of them could identify potential prospect and donor relationships based on their own styles as well as the prospect styles as, as best as you can suss those out. So, and you and I have talked about the styles on the show. I, I we’ve, we’ve done a show devoted to the styles, the styles and all and the, and the quiz to find out what your style, primary and secondary is again, is that uh asking matters, not asking styles. That would have been too simple. I don’t know why they didn’t choose asking styles but they didn’t. So uh they, he Brian, I don’t know why he didn’t, but it’s asking matters. Go to asking matters dot com. That’s why um that, that’s where the quiz is and that’s where all the info is. And uh I am, I am a uh uh I’m a Go Getter, Kindred Spirit. Yes. My, my one and two. And you’re a Kindred mission controller,

[00:24:35.43] spk_2:
right? OK. So your intuitive really dominates and you’re um you’re strong intuitive, strong from the gut. Yeah. And my uh and, and you have, you might say about more of a balance between introvert, extrovert, you’re not Uber, extroverted necessarily, right? My, I am uh being a, a Kindred Spirit mission controller. I am primarily an introvert and I have a balance of the intuitive and the analytic. In fact, you know, II I have an economics degree. I have a business degree. I have an architecture degree. I have all of these degrees that do depend a lot on quantitative measurement analysis, things like that. And I’m a good organizer. I don’t care to do it. I’m a kindred spirit. I’ll go along with whatever anyone wants to do because I want everyone to be happy. But people put me in charge because I can do it because I can organize something I can put on a special event if I have to and it’ll work well. So that’s how I define

[00:25:00.09] spk_0:
myself. In fact, you were CEO at uh Hudson Guild in New York City for years, six

[00:25:10.63] spk_2:
years, I was at Hudson Gill for eight years in, in total as deputy and as Ed and yeah, and I, I was pretty good at running the place coming up with budgets keeping to budgets. Uh

[00:26:09.27] spk_0:
Yeah, it would not have had eight years of, of uh lackluster performance. No. So certainly it was uh it was a successful run. All right, let’s talk about one of the opening chapters. Introverts are great fundraisers. We’re here to celebrate introverts because we, you know, we don’t want people to feel that they have to be something that they’re not right that you have to appear. You have to make a, make a AAA presentation or uh put up a facade of something that you aren’t to meet some fundraiser stereotype that is uh uh lacking and phony and we, you know, if you’re an introvert, we want you to show up as you are wherever you are, what we want you to show up as you are. But we’re celebrating today. Introverts. So, uh, like I said, early chapter introverts are great fundraisers. Why is that?

[00:28:31.44] spk_2:
Yes. Well, to pick up on something, we said a little earlier, the, the number one point is definitely the listening skills in a conversation. You’re either talking or you’re listening. Hopefully, if you’re not talking, you’re listening to the person who’s talking, I guess you could be zoned out. And in fundraising, we want the donor to do more of the talking. Well, it’s much easier for the introvert to sit back and let the donor do more of the talking to have more of the focus on the donor to keep asking questions and having the donor answer them. It’s a good skill overall, but it’s one that comes more easily to introverts and sometimes extroverts have to work at it. We, we talk about how we want our donors to talk more than half the time. Ideally more like 65% of the time if we can get above that. Amazing, not always so easy but important. So this listening is key and, and another reason listening is important is that it’s been proven that we remember the least of what we have heard. We remember much more of what we ourselves say and do, and we remember the most about how we feel or felt. And if, if, if, if I’m a fundraiser and I’m talking nonstop about my organization and not really including my donor in the conversation. My donors not gonna feel that great may might feel. Oh, ok. It sounds like a great organization. But isn’t going to feel any attachment, isn’t going to feel involved? Isn’t going to feel like there’s any stake and further may not even remember the important points you’re making because you’ve made so many points your donor might remember them all might remember the least important might phase out. So listening is extreme ordinarily important and it’s something that introverts do really well. We also tend to go deep rather than broad, right? That’s how our minds work. So we like deeper friendships, deeper, more meaningful conversations and it’s not that extroverts don’t like meeting people aren’t intrigued by people and such. But introverts do dig deeper and develop uh uh deeper relationships.

[00:28:39.35] spk_0:
Curiosity. II, I call it, I uh you refer to it in the book too, a curiosity about people.

[00:28:56.20] spk_2:
Yes. And I, I’m not saying extroverts don’t have a curiosity. Andrea and I were talking recently and she’s very curious about people, but she isn’t gonna dig deep, right? She’s as deep as I will for instance. Um And that there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s, it’s different, right? You, you, you can spread the net, right? Until,

[00:29:08.66] spk_0:
until the conversation gets awkward but you don’t

[00:29:43.37] spk_2:
maybe. Um but I, I do think you extroverts help spread the net wide if I want looking at it in a different way than I’ve spoken about it. You know, you make lots of friends and have lots of relationships and I think the introverts deep can deepen those. Uh So that is the non, so listening and, and being attentive because attentive is related to listening, right? So they go together and tho those are key

[00:29:47.11] spk_0:
also sharing our own stories.

[00:30:06.38] spk_2:
Yes. And introverts in particular, Kindred spirits are more likely to share their own stories. Intuitive come from the story side where analytics often come from the facts and figures and outcome side. Now you can put those outcomes and uh uh uh statistics in a story of course, and I teach that, right? You want to tell your story, but that touchy feely warm story often comes from an introvert and most often from an intuitive introvert, it’s just how we roll and those are proven to be rather effective.

[00:30:33.77] spk_0:
Sharing your own story also reveals that your understanding, you’re processing, you’re empathizing with what the person has just said because you’re, you’re relating it to your own experience, what you’re relating, what they had just said to your own experience and then you can convey that. So I, so as you, I, I think that reveals to the person you’re speaking with that uh that you understand and, and empathize and you’ve seen it in your own life and here’s how, so I fully understand what you’re saying because the, the same happened to me sort of.

[00:31:50.00] spk_2:
Yes. Yes. And of course, in fundraising, we teach everyone to do that. It’s just what comes most naturally. And at the end of the day, there are some fundraisers who are super duper stars with tons of experience who have closed gazillions of gifts and can and can figure all this out. But for most people in the field, we’re trying our best where we’ve had very little uh training. We’re board members, let’s say who have had virtually no training. Um And, and at the end of the day, we need to just rely on who we are and as introverted fundraisers, board member, other volunteers, staff member can rely on that listening, that empathy, that attentiveness to, to be very successful.

[00:32:44.12] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Kila increase donations and foster collaborative team work with Kila. The fundraisers, CRM maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with donors through features that were built specifically for fundraisers. A fundraiser. Crm goes beyond data management platform. It’s designed with the unique needs of fundraisers in mind and aims to unify fundraising, communications and donor management tools into one single source of truth visit, Kila dot co to sign up for a coming group demo and explore how to exceed your fundraising goals like never before. It’s time for Tony’s take two.

[00:34:39.11] spk_0:
Thanks, Kate. I got the COVID. Uh, I was, uh, very proud that I hadn’t gotten it all these years, but it hit me, I don’t know whether it was, uh, a restaurant or might have been my local food store or a little, uh, home goods store that I go to a local, little, not home goods, the big shop but, uh, a little, a little houseware store. I go to, uh, I, I think it was one of those places which, uh, just leads me to the lesson that consumerism kills because the I was spending money. I was spending money somewhere and I got sick. I certainly didn’t get COVID on the beach. Uh I didn’t get COVID pulling weeds in my garden, my flowers, keeping my flowers clear. I didn’t get COVID doing those things. So spending is harmful to your health, don’t spend and stay healthy. That’s the lesson that we pick. Take. That’s the takeaway. That’s the takeaway consumerism kills. Um, no, so, so it’s actually a, uh, AAA pretty mild case. No, you know, certainly no hospitalization just, uh, so my case was pretty mild, didn’t feel mild for a couple of days. But, uh, overall in the big scheme of COVID, it, it’s a mild case. So that’s that. So I can’t quite bring it all today. And, uh, you can hear that I’m a little nasally talking to Brian because we recorded just today while I’m also you know, so, not, not quite over this, like, probably 80% recovered. 80% of my charm is, has, has, uh, has recovered. So that’s the explanation. Everything’s gonna be fine next couple of days it’ll all be over and that’s Tony’s stake too. Consumerism kills. Don’t spend money and stay healthy.

[00:34:47.57] spk_1:
Kate. Yeah, you do. Sound a little funny, but we’re glad that you’re feeling better, tony. All

[00:34:52.65] spk_0:
right. Don’t spend money.

[00:34:55.42] spk_1:
We’ve got, but loads more time. Let’s go back to fundraising for introverts with Brian Saber.

[00:35:49.79] spk_0:
I have AAA personal downside that I have experienced to this. I do a lot of meals, uh meetings over meals and when you’re doing a lot of listening, you’re eating because the, the person is talking and there’s a meal in front of you and I have to pace myself so that my plate isn’t empty because I’m, I’m, when I say I’m, I’m allowing the other person to speak. I want the other person to be talking. I probably do meetings more like 80 20 them talking and me talking. Uh So at least that’s the way it feels. So you have to, I have to pace myself. So I don’t finish my, my meal before the other, the other person’s plate is still full because they’re, they’re doing all the talking, which I’m encouraging. So you have to, you have to pace yourself. If you go to the bathroom, that’s I find bathroom breaks. Good opportunity. Give somebody, five minutes to catch up. You know, they can, they can eat, they can eat while, while I’m in the, in the bathroom. That’s a good strategy. Um, also when the check comes, that’s another good time to go to the, go to the bathroom. Let them, let them ponder the, or when you know the check is coming,

[00:36:09.98] spk_2:
uh, you’ve only got five seconds on that one. Yeah. No, I

[00:36:18.45] spk_0:
know. Yeah. You say five seconds in the book. I, I let it sit there. I, I let it sit. You too. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I’m representing a charity for pizza,

[00:36:23.82] spk_2:
but my hope is that I will then go for it and the donor will say, oh, no, please let me get that. I don’t want the charity to get it. Some donors don’t realize that I think some donors feel we pay all our own expenses as well. That shouldn’t

[00:36:39.42] spk_0:
be right either. That’s

[00:37:09.65] spk_2:
not right either. That wouldn’t be right. But we assume that our donors understand so much more about how the nonprofit sector works than they do the most sophisticated ones. Do those who have sat on a number of boards. They get it. They make sure not to put us in an uncomfortable position when the check comes and such. But most people are at, at the beginning of that journey. You know, we, we, we have to remember in this nonprofit world that most people have less information than more whether they are volunteers, donors or staff.

[00:37:16.12] spk_0:
Yeah, they do.

[00:37:17.76] spk_2:
We really want to help. Honestly. Not that we don’t want to help a little bit the, the, the big guys as they call them, but they have tons of professional, super experienced staff and board members. Most of our nonprofit world doesn’t have that. And that’s who I really want to help. That’s who needs the most help.

[00:37:35.78] spk_0:
That’s why you’re on nonprofit radio. We’re, we’re big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. You’re speaking, you’re speaking to that other 95%. Yes. Yes, with my consent. Um

[00:37:48.37] spk_2:
Sir.

[00:38:03.69] spk_0:
All right. Um, no, host is good enough, you know, sir, is not necessary. Just host. Um I, I wanted to be sure to thank you for putting me in the index. I have a, I have a quote. You asked a plan to you, you asked my reaction to uh, or my explanation of how planned giving could be, uh a little easier, maybe a little less taxing for introverts and I was happy to do it. And then you put me in the index. So I’ve never been indexed before. So thank you.

[00:38:37.57] spk_2:
Haven’t been indexed. Ok. Well, you’re great. You’re quoted. We brought um, a, a good perspective to plan giving because we talk about all the different roles in fundraising, not just the major gifts. And uh, and your expert perspective on plan gifts was uh really helpful and maybe we should say and, and to find out exactly what he said, they need to read the book.

[00:38:44.80] spk_0:
Well, what I would do when you get the book is, uh, I would jump to page 89. 89. Yeah, read my quote because if you die while you’re reading the book and you miss out, you know, 89 is kind of far away if you don’t get to 88. So if you don’t make it through the book for some reason, so jump to 89 read the important part and then, you know, jump then, then go back to the beginning and read, uh read about every, all the rest

[00:39:09.09] spk_2:
and advice. I think we’ll have to put that in social media somehow and make fun of it. All recommendations start on page 89.

[00:40:24.20] spk_0:
Uh But since we are talking about planned giving, everything you and I have just said about what makes uh in introverts are great fundraisers that all applies directly to planned giving. It’s just that you’re doing it with folks who are 60 to 70 plus. I mean, I, I uh I worked with a donor, I worked with a donor who was 99. She just very sadly, she just died on her 1/100 birthday. Exactly the day she died as on exactly her 1/100 birthday just last, just last week. Uh oldest donor I ever had worked with many uh shout her out Marion. Um many lovely lunches with her Um But you, so you’re just doing it with older folks. That’s all you’re listening. You’re curious and what rich stories they have to tell about the Great Depression World War Two Vietnam era for the younger, for the younger plan giving donors, Vietnam, uh Korea for some of them. Um You know, so there’s just a, a AAA glorious wealth of history that you can learn when you listen to folks. You are 70 or over.

[00:40:32.40] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think planned gifts are great area for introverts.

[00:40:34.08] spk_0:
Absolutely. But all of fundraising is all. That’s the point. All right. Um We got some more time. What uh what would you like to, what would you like to talk about that? We haven’t, we haven’t yet. You’re the author,

[00:43:38.40] spk_2:
I’m the author. You’re, you’re the host, but I’m the author. You are. I would love to talk about board members. Yeah, I do a ton of work with boards as you know, um I train boards all the time. So I’m in these situations where I’m facilitating and one of the things I’ve learned from those trainings and even more so from the virtual trainings. We’ve been doing the last couple of years with Zoom and now we’ll be doing tons of going forward. Uh Is the impact of this introversion, extroversion dichotomy on how boards function. If I use as an example after everyone has chatted at a board meeting and given their two cents and the chair says, does anyone else have something to say? And someone actually raises their hand and waits to be called on a often that is, that person has something really smart to say that has not been said before. And two, it’s often an introvert saying it and this has become even more so on. Zoom. I was doing a training a few months back and we asked people to raise their hand that little yellow hand if they wanted to speak. And people just kept speaking. Some people kept speaking without being called on. And finally someone called on this woman and she said, yes, I have been waiting politely with my hands up to speak. She wasn’t going to cut anyone else off. She was an introvert, right? Her and she was, she was also polite. You know, there could be a dichotomy between polite and impolite that has nothing to do with anything. But uh I say this all because if you are not as the chair in particular, if you are not aware of this and finding ways to get feedback from all of your board members, you will be missing out on the introverts. Uh Who II I and this is this shocks people. I never give my opinion in a large group. If someone asks for an opinion, I never raise my hand and offer it. I don’t ask questions when I go to con, if I go to a conference or I’m sitting in some talk, I generally don’t. Uh, because if I raise my hand, someone calls on me, I will actually then be a little embarrassed that everyone’s turned around to look at me and I have to say something. So if you want my opinion, you’re gonna have to ask for it in a different format. Uh, you might ask for it beforehand and try and get a group consensus before the meeting. You might go around the room so that everyone has their moment or follow up if you haven’t heard from certain board members, don’t assume just because someone isn’t talking a lot in a board meeting that they don’t have something to say. Now, does that,

[00:44:04.82] spk_0:
does that include saying Brian, we’ve, we, we’ve been on the topic for a while? You haven’t, you haven’t said anything. Is there anything? I mean, you’re basically calling them out.

[00:46:47.25] spk_2:
You are and they can say no, I’m fine and that, that might be a little embarrassing, but I think they’ll also feel you have respected them by noting that, right? Whether they want to speak or not, uh, they want to feel they’re part of the group and that can get a little tricky as in any group. You know, how much do you acknowledge someone? How much do you leave them alone? Uh, but it’s critically important in boards to, to be watching for this and making sure everyone has been able to participate and have their views heard and validated. Um If we look at the asking styles where we break people up even further, we need to make sure on our boards that all the styles are represented, including the kindred spirit, mission control or introverted styles because of what we bring to the table in terms of process, in terms of making important decisions. If everyone on your board is a rainmaker or go getter, you’re going to come to certain decisions that could be rather biased. Uh When you’re trying to build a strategic plan, decide on next year’s budget. Uh as an executive committee review, you know, in, in reviewing the executive director, when you have all four quadrants, you’ve got the strategy of the rainmaker, you have the opportunity, vision, really forward thinking nature of the go-getter. You’ve got the heart, the the interpersonal of the kindred spirit, really looking at the person as a person or looking at your programs through people who are impacted. And then you have your mission controller who’s looking at the plan and the system and whether it can get done and you need all four. So appreciating, introverts is important to getting the work done and having the strongest plan. And I will use as an example. It might, I think it might be in the book. I, I’ve been working with an organization for a couple of years. They did a strategic plan when I read it. I didn’t think it was particularly strategic I thought it, it felt like a business plan for the next year. Uh The growth wasn’t significant. The new program development wasn’t significant and this is a very strong, solid organization on solid financial ground doing incredible work, an organization that could take the next leap. And when we uh had everyone take the asking sales quiz, we found that most of the board was mission controllers. And so I, what I think happened is the board’s discussions quickly went to, can we do this or how do we do this? And there wasn’t enough time spent on aspirational goals and strategies and what was possible, which are what extroverts sooner bring to the table. Bigger

[00:47:08.45] spk_0:
vision, bigger visions were missing.

[00:47:10.89] spk_2:
I’m sorry, the bigger

[00:47:12.05] spk_0:
vision was missing.

[00:48:10.77] spk_2:
Yes, it was. And, and that can sometimes be a challenge with introverts uh who who may not push far enough, have a have that bigger vision but immediately are going inside internally, which could create some complications for them actually. So we, we just need to be aware of this in all all settings and, and we need introverts on our boards, right? We, we need everyone who is passionate about an organization to feel they belong and want to be a part of it and fundraise for it. OK? And that’s where the asking styles and this book in particular come in making sure everyone’s validated you. And I know we can’t find enough board members, we can’t find enough board chairs for the million and a half nonprofits, executive directors, development officers. And it’s actually going to get worse before it gets better. They say, because the whole baby boomer generation is retiring. And, and so either we validate everyone now and bring everyone to the table and we’re talking about it in many ways. We talk about DE I in many ways. But another, this is actually another lens for that to make sure everyone’s at the table.

[00:48:29.50] spk_0:
You’re talking. Uh As long as we’re talking about boards should uh just give a little mention to our, our uh deceased friend Michael Davidson. Just uh just a little, just a little mention for David Michael. Your uh your book together was uh engaged. Boards will fundraise with an exclamation mark. Uh And I had the two of you on talking about that. So just a little uh little remembrance of uh Michael Davidson. Yeah.

[00:49:35.16] spk_2:
He was an extraordinary member of our community um without ever drawing attention to himself. Modest as could be and knowledgeable and extraordinary and being able to understand boards and bring people around, help strengthen them. And he, it turned out to be my, which I didn’t realize at the time, my greatest mentor uh for almost 20 years I learned from him so much of what I know today about boards and, and miss him terribly in which he were here on our conversation uh with us. It would be a delight So thank you for bringing him up. Oh,

[00:49:51.16] spk_0:
it’s a pleasure. I always think of him when I think about boards. Yes. So why don’t you leave us with something? Uh You know, we can only scratch the surface of the book, which I say every time there’s an author, you, the place to get this book is uh fundraising for introverts dot com. But uh leave us, leave us with some inspiration. I think we’ve been inspirational for, for introverts. But we’re, we’re all, we’re celebrating introverts today. So leave us with even more good news for

[00:53:47.84] spk_2:
introverts. Ok. Well, and before doing that, let me just say from a sales point of view at fundraising for introverts dot com, you can find out to tons of information about the book. We have blog posts. Um We’re starting to put up some videos on different smaller thoughts, individual thoughts and all sorts of resources to buy the book, you buy it wherever you buy books. So we’re not self fulfilling uh um books uh book orders. Uh Amazon, of course, Barnes and Noble bookshop dot Was it bookshop dot com? Is it called? Which actually uh Andrea talked about it. It feeds money back to bookstores um or through your local bookstore. So I just want to say that that um and if you can buy through your local bookstore, amazing because they’re so important still and, and, and any bookstore can order this and get it for you in a matter of days to leave with an inspirational thought. Well, first I’ll say because so so many of us in the field knew Jerry Panis or knew of him, right? For those of us uh in the field for at least a while, he was the Pantheon wrote 21 books, including the book asking many of us have read one or more of his books and Jerry was an introvert. So the person we look at as one of our greatest fundraisers ever and someone who’s taught so much of us so much, uh who taught so much, uh for decades and still does through his books and through the institute and everything. He was an introvert. Um So to me that’s inspirational and, uh, and I guess here’s some inspiration. Um, you know, fundraising is a long game. I think it’s long game, you know, that it’s building relationships over time for the 25 years. I was a frontline fundraiser, executive director. I always thought I was less then I, I hate special events. I don’t like meeting new people. I never go up to someone and introduce myself if I can help it. That’s the shy. I don’t like the phone at all. Uh, very difficult. Um, and I kept thinking someone else can do this, you know, and someone else is a better fundraiser and, but all along, I just did the work, I did the work, I did the work and, uh there was a um AAA an older lady I was cultivating when I worked for BRANDEIS University. I was in charge of fundraising in the Midwest. She was in uh her name is Rosalyn Co I can share that. Uh she lived in Chicago. I met with her many times. The president met with her. We really developed that relationship and it was almost all one on one and she would come to events. But I we had lunch many times and I brought her to the campus in Boston and such and she passed away only a few years ago and left her almost her entire estate to BRANDEIS. I mean, it was $50 million or more the largest gift the university had ever gotten. And that’s not all credit to me because people continued to cultivate her and such. But I certainly was the person who opened that door and really involved her for many years doing my one on one work, right? And that’s um and there are many stories like that, that a decade, two decades, three decades later, uh come to fruition by, by doing the work that introverts do so well, which is building these deep relationships.

[00:54:20.65] spk_0:
Brian Saber info about Brian and his book, You’ll find at fundraising for introverts dot com. Brian. Great to see you. Thank you for sharing. Congratulations on the brand new book. Number one in Amazon in the nonprofit sector when it came out, right? Number one number one in the, in the, in that category. Congratulations. Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Thank

[00:54:33.08] spk_2:
you. As always, tony. Next week,

[00:54:43.82] spk_0:
I’m sick. Give me a break. I will get somebody good. Plus we’ve got 659 shows to choose from. I’m not gonna let you down

[00:54:45.84] spk_1:
if you missed any part of this week’s show.

[00:54:48.72] spk_0:
I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com.

[00:55:24.33] spk_1:
We’re sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor Boxx, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org and buy Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraisers CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff and your associate producer, Kate martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:55:53.07] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scottie be with us next week for nonprofit radio and I will be feeling much better, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for January 24, 2022: Tribute To Michael Davidson

Michael Davidson & Brian Saber: Tribute To Michael Davidson

Michael Davidson died last week. The show is a replay of his last guest appearance, from October 18, 2021. Michael was on with his co-author, Brian Saber, and we talked about their book, “Engaged Boards Will Fundraise.”

If you’d like to make a contribution in his memory, Michael has asked that all memorial gifts go to SAJ, his beloved synagogue in NYC.

If you’d like to share your thoughts about Michael, you can email them to tributestomike@briansaber.com. Brian will send them to Michael’s family.

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:02:44.84] spk_0:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast. Yeah, this is a tribute show. Michael Davidson died last week. He’ll be remembered as a smart, funny, humble giving gentleman. His decades working with boards and his time as chair of governance matters gave him clarity around building healthy, efficient fundraising nonprofit boards. Michael shared his wisdom so generously including with non profit radio listeners. My tribute to Michael is a replay of his last time as a guest he was on with his co author and colleague brian Saber. If you’d like to make a contribution in his memory, Michael has asked that memorial gifts go to S A. J. His beloved synagogue in new york city. They’re at the S AJ dot org. If you’d like to share your thoughts about Michael, you can email them to tributes to mike at brian saber dot com, brian will send them to Michael’s family From October 18, 2021 here is engaged boards will fundraise. Okay, it’s my pleasure to welcome back Michael Davidson and brian Saber, Michael is a consultant specializing in nonprofit board, development management, support, leadership, transition and executive coaching for nonprofit managers. He has over 30 years experience in nonprofit board and managerial leadership. Michael’s at board coach dot com brian Saber is a co founder of asking matters and one of the field’s preeminent experts on the art and science of asking for charitable gifts face to face. He’s been working with boards for more than 35 years to help unlock their fundraising potential. Brian’s company is at asking matters dot com and he’s at brian Saber together, Michael and bryan co authored the book, engaged boards will fundraise how good governance inspires them. Their book brings both of them and back to nonprofit radio Michael and BRian welcome back to the show. What a

[00:02:48.14] spk_1:
pleasure. Great to be back. Great to be back.

[00:02:50.00] spk_2:
Very happy to be here.

[00:02:51.16] spk_0:
Glad to have you. Yes, congratulations on the book.

[00:02:54.35] spk_1:
Thank you

[00:03:00.04] spk_0:
Michael, Your book title is emphatic, there’s no hedging, no

[00:03:01.25] spk_1:
qualifications. How can

[00:03:04.52] spk_0:
you be so sure, engaged boards will fundraise?

[00:04:17.44] spk_1:
Well, it’s a, it’s a great, great question, tony and it really is the answer to that is in the title If if you’ve got a board that really does care about what the mission and the vision is of the organization, that’s why they’re there. If they have that personal motivation to be involved in your organization and to care about the impact that you’re having in the, in the world and are engaged in the ownership of that impact in managing it, they care enough to do this. Where are our whole premises? We can teach board members how to fundraise, brian has been doing that forever. Our job is to figure out how do we make board members want to fundraise and making them want to fundraise is engaging them, engaging them with their fellow board members, connecting them with their fellow board members and deeply connecting them with the vision and the passion that brought them to your board in the first place. That’s the simple, really, the simple answer for this. If they’re engaged, they’re gonna want to, they’re gonna want to make this organization happen, which includes raising the money for it.

[00:04:32.74] spk_0:
And much of the book is getting that engagement doing it properly. We go from details like the board meeting, which we’re going to talk about two to broader engagement you want? Yes. In fact, you say fundraising must be fully integrated with the active engagement of the board in its fiduciary and leadership

[00:04:55.14] spk_1:
roles. Ryan

[00:04:55.92] spk_0:
Ryan flush that out for us a little bit, uh, we, you know, we got plenty of time together. We don’t have to, you don’t have to pack it all into one answer, but why are we starting to get into their fiduciary and leadership roles and, and they’re that relationship with fundraising?

[00:05:51.34] spk_2:
Well, let’s look at the budget for example, and often a budget is presented to the board. The staff puts together a budget and if it seems like it adds up, the board approves it often, it’s maybe just slightly incremental from the last one, not a lot of explanation, sometimes a lot of detail without higher level explanation. And so the board is basically just, I hate to say rubber stamping it and that, that’s just, that’s very passive if the board is involved in developing the budget and is really given a sense of what can be accomplished with a larger budget

[00:06:01.54] spk_1:
and gets to choose

[00:07:03.64] spk_2:
and say yes, we’d like to do more. And we understand our role in that, that we can’t just tell the staff to raise more. Here’s where the money comes from. Here is our roll. This is how we develop larger donors. It does take the board unless wear a university with a big major gift staff were it for most organizations, the board is the major gift staff. We get that. We want our organization to do more. We’re going to agree to this budget knowing all of that, then they’re in it together. Everyone around the table is a knowing a willing participant that’s very different and we don’t see a lot of that happening. And yes, it’s hard on, especially smaller organizations to get all of this done, but it’s critical. It’s critical not to shortchange the process. If we short change the process, we can’t expect the board to enthusiastically go out and fundraise.

[00:07:31.24] spk_0:
This reminds me of the old conventional wisdom, you know, ask for if you want money, asked for an opinion your if you want to, if you want an opinion to ask for money, you’re you’re you’re saying you’re getting the board’s opinion, you’re you’re calling an engagement. But it’s it’s it’s bringing in the board’s opinions about what the organization should be doing, what should be paring back where it should be heading, is that is that, is that essentially what you’re doing is getting bored getting bored opinions

[00:09:27.04] spk_1:
and ownership because it’s not just their opinion on the budget. They put their opinion into this budget, they work with staff on developing it, but at the end of the day they raise their hand and they say, I approve this budget with these particular fundraising goals included in it. I agree to this, they make that decision. You know, one of the things that’s interesting in connection with this, this puts a lot more work on staff. They got to spend more time on the budget. And very often staff said, oh my God, leave the board, we’ll do the budget. Don’t bother them. It’s going to take too much time to explain all of this to them. They may disagree with us on our priorities. They may think other things are important. I don’t want to get involved in that. Let’s just give him a budget a quick five minute vote and done, right? So it requires staff executive director to say, you know, if you want a board that’s going to fundraise, you’ve got to spend the time listening to them explaining to them, engaging with them and they may come out somewhat differently than you do, you gotta live with that. You gotta live with that. It’s not your organization, it’s your joint organization. That’s, you know, that’s a lot of work. So, you know what we’re saying may sound simple, you know, as for advice, you get money, but the reality is, there’s a commitment involved, Both on the part of board members and on the part of staff to make this, you know, staff comes to us all the time. But Brian, and I hear this 10 times a day, my board won’t fundraise, oh, well, what are you doing to get them to do that?

[00:09:29.74] spk_2:
Right. Another piece of it, which we’ll get to is having them do the right fundraising. So that’s the other half of the equation, which didn’t cover because it is a double edged sword there. Okay,

[00:10:00.14] spk_0:
Michael, can we at at points then push back when, when it comes time for, for board commitments around fundraising and say, you know, you all agreed to the, to this budget, you took ownership of the budget, You held your hands up and voted well, now it’s time to fund what you all agreed to. Can you, can you sort of give it back to them that

[00:10:11.74] spk_1:
way? Absolute. And it requires one on 1 work with each board member. And for me, that’s the role of the resource development committee. So let’s talk about it. We’ll get to brian’s magic number of floor, you know, what are you going to do? And

[00:10:25.14] spk_0:
uh, yeah, well, before we get to the fundraising part, I wanna, I wanna spend time on the engagement

[00:10:28.84] spk_1:
part. Let’s

[00:10:44.14] spk_0:
not go anarchy economy. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna get this, you talk about a, a culture that creates full engagement, uh who, who’s best for, I don’t know who to call on, you know, I’m a Socratic method from law school, I don’t know, but I don’t want to go like ping pong either, brian Michael, brian Michael, that’s that’s too monotonous. So, you know, who’s who’s best for talking about creating this culture of engagement at on

[00:10:59.10] spk_2:
the board. We’ll let Michael

[00:12:51.14] spk_1:
okay for me, you know, this came out of, I did a workshop with a number of consultants on helping them learn how to do what I do, and one of the consultants whose brilliant, actually, we’ve got a quote from her and what Catherine devoid. Catherine said, you know what you’re talking about, Michael is aboard culture and Peter Drucker, the management guru says, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. What we want to do when I talk about a culture is a culture, is a team for me aboard, culture is a team, We see ourselves as a team, we understand, we know each other, we’ve spent time with each other and we jointly want to do something, we jointly believe in this in this mission, okay, And we encourage and support one another. So the culture at base has a system where board members know each other and work together on various kinds of things. Then you have the motivation and then board members can encourage and hold one another accountable for what they’re doing. So the culture starts with, making sure that board members know one another personally, personally know who they are, who they are and from that you can begin to build a sense of a team. We’re in this together, we’re not separate. It’s a very, it’s a very different notion of what the board is. You know, you and I tony were lawyers. Right? So we start, okay, this is the fiduciary responsibility. This is the board, this is what they’re supposed to do brian and I are asking the question yes, we know what they’re supposed to do. How do we make them want to do it? And part of it is the mission, but part of it is their sense of responsibility to each other. Think about a sports team, right? What makes a good sports team? Not a collection of stars, right? It’s a collection of individuals who don’t want to let one another down. I want to do my best because I’m with you, we’re doing this together. And if you get the matter,

[00:13:16.84] spk_0:
you used to use the metaphor Michael of the rowing because you’re a rower and you had the coach boat and rowers have to be working in unison,

[00:14:17.94] spk_1:
right? In in unison. And there’s a great quote which I used in the book from the boys in the boat, in which the coach tells this row, right? You know, you’re a good rower. But let me tell you what you need to do to be a great rower to be a great rower. You need to trust every other guy in the boat when you trust everybody else, you will be great. That’s an interesting notion, right? Because I know if I know Tony, I know you’re pulling as hard as you can, I’m gonna pull as hard as I can. If I’m not so sure about you, why do I kill myself? Right? But I know you tony you’re gonna pull with everything you’ve got. And so I’m gonna pull with everything I got. It’s a very simple kind of notion, but to us, it’s very, very important. It’s creating the board as a group, not as a collection of separate individuals as a team and they hold one another accountable and they don’t want to let one another down. It’s the experience we’ve all had.

[00:14:20.94] spk_0:
Right? How do we start building this trust among board members?

[00:16:33.84] spk_2:
Well, first we look at the time we, they spend together and how we’re using it. So I always say to people, it’s amazing the percentage of a board member’s time that is spent in board meetings and the percentage of the board meeting time that is not spent. Well, so if you’re going to have A two hour meeting every other month, Uh that’s 12 hours and and maybe there in the committee meeting once every two months or once every month or something. But almost all the time is spent together in these meetings. And the meetings have so much, uh, um, reporting, There’s so much happening there. That doesn’t have to happen, uh, there. And, and, and so the meetings don’t allow for this team building where the, where the board members are grappling with the big issues and wrestling with the future of the organization, uh, how the organization is presented, where it fits in a big, big, important issues. And they should be wrestling with those because they’re the board and they have the responsibility for moving this organization ahead, keeping it safe, making sure it’s doing the right thing. And uh, so many board meetings have very little discussion of program presentation of program reporting back from board members of what they’ve seen in the program. And lots of board members rarely even see the program in action. So the board meetings are very report central centric, no one wants to give up their their chairman’s report, their executive director’s report, this report, that report. And we try to move people towards these consent agendas where all the reports go out in advance and are simply approved and you have to read them. You have to read them in advance because you can’t just come to the meeting and expect to have a conversation about them even and even the action steps should be discussed.

[00:17:02.64] spk_0:
You even suggest in the book that questions about what’s in the consent agenda have to be submitted in advance of the meeting? You can’t come to the meeting with your questions about the previous, the previous minutes or or everything or the reports that are in the consent agenda, you got to submit your questions in advance. So we know you’ve read them, How many of us have been in board meetings where people, you can see, you see people for the first time, they get there 10 minutes early and they’re pouring over their board notebook and you’re just sure that that’s the first time they cracked it open 10 minutes before the meeting and what’s really they’re wasting their time at that point.

[00:17:47.24] spk_2:
And then you get one or two board members who hijacked the meeting with questions and they shouldn’t be allowed to. No one gets to hijack a meeting. And if you have this, this structure in place which is much more about discussion and moving the organization forward, building the team and such, then there isn’t that time for these small questions. I mean, I I get driven crazy when budgets are presented and someone goes to one small line item and ask the question, it’s it’s it’s it’s so bad in many ways, we’re trying to move people away from that.

[00:19:07.14] spk_1:
But tony there’s another side to this and that’s the role of the executive director in this Because what we’re urging is that there’ll be substantive questions, for example, on such and such a program. What is the impact of that program and how do we measure that impact? Right. That’s an important engaged board discussion. Executive directors many say, wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t want them getting into program. That’s my job. If they start talking about programs, it means they’re trying to manage how I do my my implementation work. Right? And we say we want we want boards to be faced with the real issues, as we say in the book, the good, the bad and the ugly. Well, executive directors don’t like to do that. They just want to give the board good news, put out their report and go home and hope that they don’t bother them. So this partnership takes too right. You’ve got to have an executive director who is willing to engage with the board in these substantive discussions about the future of the organization, about the problems that the organization is having about its challenges, not just the good news. So it takes, it’s two sided. You can’t do

[00:19:08.11] spk_0:
this. What is the appropriate role for a board member, board members around program, Michael,

[00:21:23.84] spk_1:
for me, it’s about impact. It’s not about how you do your program, it’s about what your program is designed to accomplish. And how do you measure? What’s the vision? What are you trying to do? How do you measure that impact? I’ve got, you know, I’m on the selection committee for the Awards of Excellence and nonprofit management. And one of the things that we look at is program impact. So let me give you one of my favorite examples. And this is the board involved, an impact, Right? Um you know, I’m a roller. So this is, it’s a rolling story. Okay, So wonderful organization in new york city called Rome new york. No new york works with local high school kids, makes them into competitive rowers, which is really good for their college applications. Works with them on college prep stuff and stuff. They were off the wall about the results of their program, 98% of their kids were getting into college. Fantastic. Right. Fantastic. Well, but they had also been collecting data on their kids. And one of the things that they saw in their data is that their kids were not doing so great in college. And so the executive director and the board started to look at this data and said, you know, we’re we’re focusing on the wrong input. Our endpoint should not be college acceptance. Our endpoint. Our impact point should be college graduation. So now what do we have to do programmatically to reach that. And we have to put resources into different kinds of programs that the programs to keep track of the kids once they’re in school, bring them back. So and it’s over. But it was the board and the executive director looking at the data and looking at the question, what is our goal, what is the impact we’re trying to make? And by doing that, they jointly changed where they were directing resources, some of the staff that they were doing and stuff like that. So that’s an example for me of the board being involved in programs, but at the right level at the level of impact and the level of data, not how do you teach? And that’s what executive directors tend to be afraid of. Once you start talking about program, then they’re gonna start talking about how do I teach and how do I run my classroom and so on and so forth. And that’s the board job

[00:22:06.14] spk_0:
brian, let’s talk a little more about nuts and bolts of meetings. If the, if this is the primary time that the board is spending together, whether it’s committee meetings or bored or full board meetings. Um, in fact I’m imagining you two would advocate for social time for the board as well. But so we can, you know, we’ll get to the social part. Let’s let’s talk more about some nuts and bolts meetings. Were trying to build a team, we’re trying to build trust. We want to focus on the right things. What, what more advice you have around meeting structure.

[00:24:04.24] spk_2:
Well, first of all, the agenda needs to be developed jointly by the executive director and board leadership. Sometimes that’s just the chair, sometimes that’s the entire executive committee and it needs to be developed in advance and everyone needs to know their role and be prepared, not just wing it. Uh so that’s that’s the first piece. I often hear boards talking about one hour meetings. Now. This idea of making meetings very efficient and it reminds me of this issue with government and people want small government, it’s really better government that you want, right? You don’t want to waste the time. It’s not that you’ve got to make it smaller, but it needs to work, right? And I think an hour is not enough time. I think an hour and a half to two hours gives you uh, the flexibility to dig into a topic. Uh you have to have some sort of program presentation every time. There’s there’s no substitute for that. The more we connect board members program and give them an opportunity to ask questions about it to learn about it, the stronger their connection will be. So there needs to be programmed presentation, Michael and I prefer that board members are out there, uh seeing program and are bringing back their own recollections and sharing those with the board. Um, so those those are important. Uh the, you know, we should not have a long Executive Director’s report. We should be asking the executive director just as we ask all the committee chairs to submit their reports in advance. Uh the the chair’s report should be very short at the very beginning, very high level Michael, Would you add to that?

[00:24:06.32] spk_1:
Yes, I didn’t do that. Exactly one is I love to time my agenda’s

[00:24:13.14] spk_0:
Yeah,

[00:24:35.44] spk_1:
I lay out, you know, we we lay out what’s gonna be and then I put this is gonna be five minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is and that does a couple of things. No one, it focuses the board, it makes us think about where we want big discussion and where we don’t want big discussion and it also gives the chair of the power to cut things off. So if someone’s going off on a on a rabbit or you know, at the meeting, no, no, no, no. We’ve only got five minutes for this. We have to end discussion now because otherwise we’re not going to get to the other. So timing the agenda is a big deal. You know, Michael, I’ve

[00:24:58.64] spk_0:
even seen where uh aboard and I’ve seen this in other meetings as well outside the board setting, where there’s a timekeeper appointed. So so the chair can keep the conversation flowing and relevant. And the timekeeper is the one who says, we only have three minutes left for this topic. You know, like mr mr and mrs board chair, there are only three minutes left on this topic. You know, it’s up to you to decide what you want to do, but I’m the timekeeper and I’m letting you know there’s only three minutes left. But just another,

[00:26:41.64] spk_1:
it’s an interesting notion I actually kinda like it goes back to as you know, I spent a good part of my legal career as a prosecutor and you know, and the notion of good cop, bad cop, right? So so the board chair is a good cop. No, no, I’m not controlling this, right? Someone else is telling us we have to stop, but I’d love to let you talk forever. Right? Yeah, good. You know, so it’s a good thing. The other thing too is there’s a framework for board discussions which rob Acton is used in in in his in his writings and he’s, you know, and he says there are three kinds of questions that boards need to be looking at generative strategic and fiduciary, okay, generative is where are we going, why are we doing this? What’s our purpose? Right? Strategic is how do we do it? And fiduciary other details and you know, and part of what happens is so much of board meetings tend to be taken up with fiduciary matters and not enough time on generative and strategic matters. So again, as the, as the leadership team is thinking about the agenda, they should be asking, you know, are there questions of that nature, generative and strategic that we need to be thinking about, you know, so it’s good paradigm.

[00:26:43.44] spk_0:
Yeah, brian’s got his hand

[00:27:34.14] spk_2:
out and I want to add to that, that when we talk about developing these board meetings, a lot of boards meet if not every month every other month and I’ve always felt the more often you meet and it’s not something we talked talked about in the book, but it’s something I Michael and I have talked about, the more often you meet, the, the more likely it is you’re going to get into more details because less has happened in the two months you get out of the meeting. Everyone has one committee meeting perhaps than your back. And, and I don’t think boards have to meet as a board every two months. I think if they meet quarterly as a board, there’s, it’s easier to see the big picture. It gives more time for committee work in between and and that alone could help lessen the focus on minutia.

[00:27:43.54] spk_1:
It’s an interesting question. Um, I, I go both ways depending upon the organization and, and the size of the board. But one of the things that’s interesting about another question about board meetings is how do we use board meetings to connect board members with one another?

[00:27:58.64] spk_0:
I was gonna get to this. I wanted to get to the social side of this too.

[00:28:01.73] spk_1:
Great. Okay. Okay.

[00:28:03.09] spk_0:
Yeah. So how do we,

[00:29:40.14] spk_1:
Well, it’s very, it’s really interesting because I think, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot as we emerge from Covid, hopefully emerge from Covid. Right? And, you know, very often would say, okay, you know, what we’ll do is we’ll have a cocktail party before the board meeting, have some wine and cheese, maybe after the board meeting. It’s interesting, but it’s a pretty it’s problematic because what’s likely to happen, what’s likely to happen is that board members will talk to people that they know the people that they usually talk to, right? And they’re going to talk with them about the things that they usually talk about, right? Your your your golf game, your your your your your other involvements, whatever things that they have in common, they talk about. And what I’ve been trying to think about it, we mentioned in the book is how do we create a how do we structure the interpersonal connection so that it’s deeper. Um I just did this yesterday. So whatever the most recent thing in my mind always helps, right? So I retreated. I facilitated a board retreat yesterday, which actually was in person. Um and but what we did was before the, before the meeting, and this can be done. We assigned pairs of board members. Everybody was in a pair of two and they had an assignment. What they had to do was to interview the other person, find out about them, what they like, what they do, what their passions are, what they care about, what they read, what kind of music they’re kids, they’re this, they’re not find out about who they are as a person, and then each one had to then introduce the other at the board meeting. Okay, so this is something that takes some time and you can’t do it all the time, but it’s a very interesting way. And I asked him, I said, what was this like? You said, this was great. These are really interesting people. I want to work with these people

[00:29:58.64] spk_0:
going back to your team, Team building.

[00:30:12.14] spk_1:
Team, go back, yep. So if, if we’re, if we’re going to try to create opportunity, social opportunities, we need to think about what’s the best way to do that to achieve our goals.

[00:30:14.44] spk_0:
I’m skeptical. I’m a little concerned about wine. Before the

[00:30:18.04] spk_2:
meeting, you were getting a little too uh,

[00:30:21.86] spk_0:
a little too loose lipped maybe. But but but I love the idea of the introducing, introducing someone you don’t know, you get to talk to somebody that’s outside your comfort zone, but ought not be because their fellow board member. Right. Right. Right.

[00:31:13.94] spk_2:
Yeah. I had a program at one organization where I was where we, we had board members go out after the meeting together and we assigned the groups so that we had a good mix and people would, would meet each other and and they were, the goal was for them to do that twice a year. It’s all about time. Right? But we thought that was important time to spend so that they’d at least go out to dinner with half the board and some of it depends on the size of your board, what you can accomplish, Right? But we didn’t want groups of more than six because we wanted people to be able to talk with each other. So, but we might send two groups of six out in different directions.

[00:32:13.34] spk_1:
Yeah. You know, and it’s interesting, I’ve seen people do very simple things at the beginning of a board meeting, a consultant I’ve worked with, she always starts out every board meeting with a question. So, tell me about the kind of music you like. Alright, two seconds. Tell me about the most interesting book you’ve read recently and why? It was interesting to you. Right? I mean, two seconds we can do that at a board meeting. It loosens everybody up. It enables people who are introverts to have to say something to get out there and talk. It puts a limit for the extroverts on how much they can talk. Right. But it’s a, you know, so you can do devices like this recognizing because it’s important, it’s important to recognize the importance of the board culture that unless we have that sense of connection between people, none of this stuff is gonna work.

[00:32:19.84] spk_2:
Okay. And now let’s bring it

[00:32:21.11] spk_0:
to the to the book title.

[00:32:22.62] spk_1:
Okay. Will

[00:32:24.45] spk_0:
will fundraise Shall shall engage board shall fundraise.

[00:32:28.32] spk_1:
How is No, no, no, no, no. We didn’t use the word shall. Now I I added shall because that’s pretty that’s pretty perspective prescriptive, prescriptive. I

[00:32:58.54] spk_0:
know, yes, contract, contract, your shall versus will um no. The book title is engaged. Boards will fundraise. So how does having better board meetings and board members knowing each other better through these simple social devices? Social methods improve our fundraising

[00:35:18.54] spk_2:
Right. Well, as Michael has talked about a fair amount, it creates a team and a sense of joint responsibility. You’d think that it exists just because they have all joined this same organization. But you can’t just accept that as fact, you have to work on it. So by building this team, this camaraderie by, by helping people understand each other. Uh, there is a shared sense of, of, of responsibility. Second, by really engaging the board in these discussions and having the board understand the organization at a more nuanced and important level. It is easier for them to talk about the organization to feel comfortable doing it to represent it properly and to do it passionately, which is key to fundraising right? Being an ambassador for the organization. So many board members uh, say I, I don’t know enough about the organization to go out and talk about it. I’m afraid I’m gonna say the wrong thing. I don’t know the organization like the executive director does. And one of the steps here is to get board members more comfortable as ambassadors talking about it. Uh, and it’s funny because I always say to board members, you don’t need to know all the details. You don’t have to know every little thing and all the numbers and such. You just have to be passionate and authentic to tell a good story and get people excited about the organization and its incense goes hand in hand with the board meetings. Right? And if we’re concentrating on Mnuchin the board meetings, then the board members think they need to know the minutia. If we stay out of the minutia in the board meetings, then the board members can feel okay, this bigger picture is what’s important. So, so we build a sense of responsibility and we build, uh, more of a comfort in talking about the organization. We also build an understanding of why the funds are needed and what they will do, right? It’s not just we need money. Uh, will you give me money? I love this charity, but this is the impact we’re going to, how they can talk about that. So, okay, so that gives them a basis for going on fundraising.

[00:36:05.03] spk_0:
And that’s sort of a perfect transition to getting now to the discussion of engaging the board in the right kind of funding in fundraising. So, you know, listeners, you just get, you gotta get the book to, to learn more about how to engage your board. Um, they talk about the different duties of care and loyalty and obedience that board members have than governance. There’s, there’s good talk about governance, uh, that, you know, belonging in in one place and management, belonging by the other managements, by staff, governance, by the board. You gotta, you know, you got to read the book to get more of that detail about engaging. So now let’s talk about engaging the boards, you know, specifically in fundraising. You to have, Well, I think six different six things, you know, like make the case identify the resistance. Is that the best way to talk through the engaging the boarding fundraising? Or is there a better

[00:39:01.82] spk_1:
way for me? There’s, there’s another way to start it. And that is what brian has been talking about right now is giving the board members the basic tools, right? Thank you. They know how to tell a story, but they’ve got a story to tell. But one of the things that we look at is the fact that there is discomfort, resistance about fundraising. It is not something we do in our normal lives, right? We we do our jobs, we’re professionals, we don’t go out trying to engage other people in the things that we’re engaged in, Right? So they need help doing that as part of the team. Thing is they want to feel I want them to feel responsible to one another. But in addition, there has to be some guidance from, even from fellow board members or from staff into how to do this. So board member says, okay, I, I know I know these, I know these people, I, you know, I’m comfortable with them, I’m willing to talk about it. I’m a little, I’m uncomfortable asking them for something. They were gonna tell me, no, it’s going to harm the relationship and stuff like that. So time needs to be spent. Either one on one with board members and within a member of the Resource Development Committee or as they remember to go through, Okay, let’s figure out how you do this one with respect to the resistance that you have about it. How do you overcome that resistance? You know, what do you do? So for example, one of the techniques I told board members is you never want the first conversation you have with somebody about your organization to be a conversation. We’re asking for money. That’s the kiss of death. So what you’ve got to get to do is, okay, here’s what you gotta do over the next two weeks. You’re gonna are you gonna talk to any friends? Yes, I’m gonna talk to some friends. Okay. Here’s what I want you to do in those conversations. Find something that they’re interested in that allows you to bring up your experience with this organization. You’re not asking for money. You’re not asking to do anything. You’re just bringing this organization into the conversation. That’s your job. Alright, okay. Now, after you do this, let’s come back and talk about it and tell us what your experience is. Now you can do this with the entire board, right? We’re at a board meeting. Okay, everybody next week or between now and the next board meeting has to have one of these conversations with a friend come back and report at the next board meeting. Let’s see what we learned? What was difficult? What worked did they ask you questions? What would be the next steps? So they’ve got to birth, feel responsible for one another. But it also at the same time gets support from one another for doing this incrementally, because this is new to all of us. It’s new to us. You

[00:39:17.32] spk_0:
have an exercise in the book. Seems ideal for a board meeting where you you asked for board members to list their objections to fundraising and then list their personal experience of either having asked or being asked in the past. And the two don’t do don’t align like, the reality canceled out the objections. Like, whose idea is that, is that yours, Michael,

[00:40:53.31] spk_1:
or that’s that’s me. Yeah, Okay. It’s a very simple exercise. You know, I I like to draw upon personal personal experience. I believe that board members got the answers to all these things I’m concerned about. They just haven’t talked about it. My job is to get him to talk about it. So yeah, they’re gonna tell me about I don’t want to fundraise, that’s going to be this is gonna be that they’re gonna hate me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Fine. Okay, now, let’s talk about what actually happened in your life? Have you ever given money? Did anybody why? What was there about that circumstance that made you comfortable and want to do that? So we take their experience and bring it back. I just, I’m gonna intercept here and you can cut this out if you want. One of my later readings is I’ve gone back to the Socratic dialogues, Plato’s writings about Socrates because what Socrates believed was that everybody had the answers to all these important questions in their head and his job was just a problem and ask the questions to get it out. And I believe, I believe this about boards, our job is to use their experience, not tell them what they’re doing wrong, take what they’ve done and learn from it and help them learn from it.

[00:40:59.51] spk_0:
You’re right. That that’s worthless. I’m gonna cut that

[00:41:01.53] spk_1:
out.

[00:41:04.13] spk_0:
Um, yeah, brian,

[00:42:07.90] spk_2:
but yeah, so you know, adding to what Michael said, one of the, one of the kickers here is board members having to ask all their friends only to be asked to give gifts in return to the other organizations that you know, with pro quo. And I’ve been talking about this for a decade at nauseam because it is horrible short term, a transactional fundraising. And it’s gotten really bad in our field to our detriment. And everyone gets sort of, uh, the organizations get stuck on this. It’s like a Like cocaine, right? And, and, and, and can’t move away from it. Well, we need the $50,000. The board raises and it’s like, Okay, well your board is going to hate doing this type of fundraising. They’re not going to be inspired when they leave, all those gifts are going to leave with them and so forth. So you’ve got a short term gain, you’re getting some money in the door. But everything else is wrong. We don’t, I always have people

[00:42:10.40] spk_0:
good point about just the last one you said, I want to just amplify when the board members leave. Those gifts are going with that. When I just, I just wanted to amplify that.

[00:43:21.30] spk_2:
When I say that to board, the lightbulb goes off, I say who I’m not? If I’m on the board and I leave the board, I’m not going to keep asking just if I could give gifts to all my friends and what what happens when you have me as a board member, uh, do this is I end up giving money away two organizations I don’t care about just to be nice. And whereas it would be better if I gave all that money into my organization that I love and tell people you give it where you love where, where you where you’re excited because then I’ve made a bigger investment in my own organization, have a bigger stake. I’m more of an investor. And if if I think I first wrote about this 10 years ago that if I had one wish in the nonprofit world, it would be to stop the quid pro quo fundraising today because it’s a sisyphean task. It’s just not getting anyone anywhere. It’s keeping them from anything strategic and it and it is burning out the board members. And when board members come to the board, often they’re on their first board. They assume that this is the type of fundraising we’re going to ask them to do, which is why they have such resistance.

[00:43:32.80] spk_0:
What do you want to see in in its place?

[00:44:19.29] spk_2:
What I want to see is the board members to serve as ambassadors and what I call many major gift officers. So let’s look, people look at the big shots, they look at the hospitals and the universities and these massive organizations because they raise so much money and they’re very visible and they all have what we call major gift staffs. They have, Uh, staff whose sole responsibility is to take 150 200 prospects donors and cultivate and solicit them and steward them along. Right. And, and those staff for year after year have these people have this portfolio if we want to call it that. Yeah. And that’s great. But most organizations have a budget under $1 million. Most organizations are lucky if they have one development officer who’s doing everything. Special events, direct mail, grant writing,

[00:44:34.29] spk_1:
crowdfunding

[00:46:35.38] spk_2:
You name it and maybe has 5% of their time to actually go out and talk to significant individual donors. So what I want rather than this transactional fundraising is for every board member To be a mini major gift officer with four prospects slash donors on their radar screen, who they stick with And those may or may not be their own contacts. Many organizations have people who need more attention than they’re getting and they don’t get it because the executive director and our director of development don’t have the time. I’d sooner see the board members taking donors out to coffee, calling them and thanking them for gifts, attending cultivation events with them and asking them what they think than being worried about soliciting the gift. I’m much less concerned about board members asking for a gift. They don’t have to ask for a gift as a matter of fact, and I only was thinking of this this past week. Major gift officers don’t always ask for the gift. So I was a major gift officer from my alma mater. I was in charge of solicitations in the midwest big gifts. And you know, there were times I asked many and there were times when someone else asked the president, the senior vice president, um, volunteer this idea that just because you’re cultivating and stewarding someone means you’re the Askar. It actually doesn’t even add up with professionals. So I want the board concentrated on this other work, which most of them are willing to do. Oh, I’ll happily call for people and thank them for their gifts. So I’d be happy to take people out and thank them and get to know them better. Ask them if they’ll come with me or or send them a personalized update. And this is incredibly important work. If we’re going to build relationships. And the other point I put out the three of us know the numbers that most, Most of the money, most of the charitable gifts come from individuals, 85, everything you had

[00:46:42.59] spk_0:
When you had requests. It’s like 88 or so. But yesterday that request is 77 or something like

[00:48:00.07] spk_2:
that. The largest gifts come from people. We know if you look at your own giving right and where the and individuals are really loyal. I ask people all the time on boards. This is part of breaking down that resistance. What’s the longest number of consecutive years you’ve contributed to an organization Now for many, it’s our alma mater, right? So I graduated in 84. I’ve been giving to them for 37 years and I’ll give them till I die. And many people do. That could be your church there. We give for decades. So we don’t, it’s not about the short term win. It’s about what I call an annuity of gifts over what could be decades. If you bring someone in and they get excited most of our organizations or institutions that are going going to be doing our work forever. Some are meant to put themselves out of business and result some problems. But most nonprofits will be here for 100 200 years assuming the planet is and you know helping people with medical needs, helping seniors, helping kids get educated, whatever it is, building community. And we want people to have a state for a long time. So let’s have board members help build that state with these individuals

[00:48:24.87] spk_0:
and that that also relieves board members of the, the fear and anxiety of having to be the solicitor. You know, some board members will step up to that, some will with training, but it’s not necessary. You’re saying board members can be building the relationships in all these different ways. Maybe hosting something in your home with four or six couples or something, all these different ways. You know that you mentioned the thank you, notes the acting as the ambassador all these ways and then maybe you’re you’re cultivating them for someone else to do the solicitation, maybe maybe the board member is involved in it or maybe not, you know, it doesn’t have to be

[00:49:04.17] spk_2:
right. It goes back to the good cop bad cop, you know, the board members, the good cop and then brings the Executive Director and Director of Development and to ask for the gift that’s perfectly legit perfectly legitimate. I played that role many times as an Executive Director Director of Development where I asked um, yeah, where the board member cued it up right

[00:49:27.37] spk_0:
and you’re collaborating in the relationship, the board members reporting back, letting the ceo no. You know, this is this is how it went with her. But you know, the ceo is asking, you know, do you feel like it’s maybe it’s the right time for me to ask or for us to ask or is it still too early? Or look, she expressed interest in this particular program. And you know, the board was just talking about expanding that, putting putting more resources to that. This could be a very timely topic for me to bring up at a, at a meeting with her or the or the three of us. You know, you’re you’re you’re collaborating around the relationship, you’re strategizing about when the best time is to actually do the

[00:50:19.96] spk_1:
solicitation, right? And going back to board meetings for a second. One of the things you want to do with the board meeting is acknowledge the people that have done this. You know, wow, let me, let me tell you, the executive director said, let me tell you that. You know brian and I brian introduced me to so and so and we had a meeting and you know, we walked away with a check for $5000. Thank you brian. That’s what you gotta do, right, celebrate. It builds it celebrate the winds and it builds it into the culture. You don’t want to be the only one who never gets it. Thank you. Right? Let’s

[00:50:30.36] spk_0:
talk about the expectations, establishing expectations around giving and fundraising for

[00:50:32.75] spk_2:
board members. Yes.

[00:50:34.60] spk_0:
Who wants to kick that off? Let’s spend a little time with that. Yeah, brian,

[00:53:22.35] spk_2:
can I? Because I’m, I have, I’m rabbit about this one actually to, um, I cannot stand minimums and given gaps, give or gets excuse me. I believe that everyone should do their best on both. Besides everyone should give a personally significant gift as an investor in this organization and do their best at fundraising. And, uh, without going into great detail. What I see time and again as a minimum gift ends up being a ceiling, not the floor. You think everyone’s gonna, okay, everyone’s gonna give at least this. But most people then give that, it feels like do is you set the, the amount low so that most people can reach it. You still have some who can’t. And, and it’s been proven again and again, that that minimum gifts do not generate the largest gifts, minimum gift requirements don’t help. And people say, well, how do board members know what to do? And I said, well from the very beginning, and we talk about a job prospectus in the job description, You tell prospective board members, here’s the range of gifts we have. Board members giving anywhere from $500 to $5000 depending on their capacity. We ask people to do something very significant, given the who they are and what they can do generally, right, we want everyone to feel that they’ve made a gift. They thought about that’s important to them. Some people said ask for that. One of the top three gifts you give anywhere, which is a very concrete way to put it and, and, and works. So on the gift front, you give people guidelines. And here’s, here’s an interesting thing. You actually asked board members for a gift. I’m amazed. We’ve never in good best fundraising or best practice fundraising. We ask our major gift donors for an exact amount, you know, Tony. Would you consider a gift of $10,000 etcetera? And yet we let our board members just give whatever they want to give. Why would we do that? I really push asking every board member for a specific amount that, that, that is personally significant to them, makes them think about what’s significant And on the get side, I really believe it should be the best of your ability because if we say you’ve got to give or get 5000, a board member with a lot of capacity can just give the whole thing and not do any work or swap gifts with friends. And, and yet, and the board member with less capacity is left, um, doing the hard work and that doesn’t make for a team. Everyone needs to do the hard work together.

[00:54:44.54] spk_1:
There’s a couple of, I mean, I, I’ve learned this from brian and that’s my become my mantra with working with, working with boards about personally significant gifts. And there’s a couple of there’s another consideration now, especially with with our desire to diversify our boards, don’t, we may be reaching into populations that don’t have access to resource, but they’re important in terms of perspectives that they bring to our deliberations. And so having this as the standard personally significant gift for everybody. It’s equal, we’re all equal. We’re all giving the best we can. Another part of that. And I really like what brian says about, you know, asking our board members, it’s a negotiation, Right? It’s not a no, I need $1,000 from you and that’s what you gotta do because you’re a board member. It’s what I, you know, let let me let me tell you what I give. Okay. And now here’s what I think might be reasonable for you. Let’s talk about it. Okay. Is it really is is that a reasonable gift for you? It’s not demanding its opening a conversation as as the possibilities. So, you know, I mean, I’ve done some capital fundraising and very often we ended up in a negotiation. You know, I asked, I went in asking for a certain amount which I thought that person could give or we thought that that person could give when I put that number on the table and kept my mouth shut for a few minutes, you know, so they came back and they said, well, you know, that’s a little okay, let’s talk about it then,

[00:55:06.14] spk_0:
Support support training? It could be training, could be staff, support for the, for the, the board that the, that the, the, the employees, the staff are, are obligated to give either their own or through a consultant. What kind of, what kind of board, what kind of support do we need to give? Our board members around fundraising?

[00:58:29.12] spk_2:
There are 22 pieces here. The first gets back to something, Michael said a long time ago about staff and the need for staff support in terms of the board meetings and the board members being involved, board members will only help with the fundraising to the extent they have staff support. They’re always gonna need staff guidance materials, someone to bounce ideas off of and and such staff need to be managing this, reminding board members of their next action step with a certain donor, um, providing materials and so forth. So staff have to keep the tracker, as I call it this, even if it’s an Excel spreadsheet with a list of everyone and who does what and, and, and, and constantly move the process forward. But probably the most important thing is training because, as Michael noted, board members come with very little experience and a lot of trepidation and the more training they can get, the more comfortable, they will be the more comfortable and effective. I always ask when I do a training, how many of you have ever been asked for a gift the way we’re talking about it. How many times has someone said, Michael, would you consider sitting down with me so I can ask you for a special gift to our organization. The truth of the matter is with all the asking out there with all the fundraising in every form. Very few people end up in these conversations. It’s the big, big, big, big donors, Right? And, and so many board members have never been on the other side of the equation and really have no idea what one of these meetings about. They assume you just go in and you ask for money, you just say, you know, will you give this? They don’t, there’s no way for them to know because they haven’t experienced it themselves. So we need to teach them what it is. Uh, and, and that it’s all about the relationship, which definitely takes some of the pressure off. It’s always about the relationship and it is never about the gift to me. That is the number one rule in fundraising. And I will leave money on the table time and again, I just, I just coach someone an hour before this conversation who’s the head fundraiser for a program within the school because a donor um, offered up an amount before being asked for an amount and it’s a significant amount and a big step forward. And the question becomes, do I go back, do I negotiate? And some of this is happening by email and I said in knowing the stoner, I said, you take the win. It’s about the relationship, This is much, this is big for you. There’s always next year, the year after and so forth. So teaching board members, it’s about the relationship, not the gift, whatever happens this year, that’s okay. We’re building the relationship helps them feel more comfortable because they think they’ve got to go in and come out with whatever you all were hoping for. You know, it’s a, it’s a it’s um, and we’re guilty of building this mindset. We as a culture.

[01:00:50.81] spk_1:
The other side of it is that there are some very for me very simple things that boards can learn how to do to build a relationship. For example, one of one of the things I very often do with a board retreat, simple exercise or on fundraising. I tell people, look, you’re now going to somebody, you’re sitting in somebody else’s fundraising dinner and there’s somebody sitting next to you. Okay, So you want to have a conversation with the person sitting next to you, get to know them. So here’s your job. You’ve got to ask that person questions about what they’re interested in their lives and zones of fourth and you’re looking for someplace in them that connects with your organization. Then when you find that place, then you can introduce your organization, but that’s your job and we, you know, we pair up and people around, you know, around the room, sit down and try to have these conversations and realize that they can because these the way in which we want to build relationships is a technique and it’s something we need to practice and become comfortable with. You know, people are not used to really interestingly asking questions. We all tell people things about ourselves, but we don’t ask them questions about themselves. So, I mean that’s one of the pieces of support, right? Doing those kinds of things, telling stories quick. You all went to visit the program, tell me something that happened in that program that you saw that really was important to you. That inspired you. That made you think about the value of this organization. Tell me the story. Well, people don’t know how to tell stories. They have to learn how to tell stories. It’s it’s but it’s a very simple, you know, these are not complicated techniques, but it’s all part of becoming comfortable in what brian is talking about in this ambassador role relationship relationship relationship.

[01:01:14.41] spk_0:
I love the relationship, not the gift like that brian. All right, we’re gonna leave it. We’re gonna leave it there with the with the support idea. You gotta support your board members, Michael Davidson, consultant and coach. He’s at board coach dot com. Ryan Saber asking matters, asking matters dot com and he’s at brian Saber, Michael brian thanks very much. Terrific.

[01:01:18.66] spk_1:
Thank you. It was a pleasure tony great questions. Thank you. My pleasure.

[01:01:31.31] spk_0:
I’m just, I’m just trying to keep things going. Look book and the book the book, it’s Michael and bryan, who cares about Michael and bryan is the book you want? The book is, the

[01:01:33.13] spk_1:
book is

[01:01:35.71] spk_0:
the book is engaged, boards will fundraise how good governance inspires them. It comes out this week, this week of october

[01:01:44.63] spk_1:
18th yes,

[01:02:17.91] spk_0:
it’s not a long book, but it is long on value as you can tell from this outstanding conversation, lots of value in the book. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The shows, social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein, thank you for that. Affirmation scotty Be with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great

Nonprofit Radio for October 18, 2021: Engaged Boards Will Fundraise

My Guests:

Michael Davidson & Brian Saber: Engaged Boards Will Fundraise

Michael Davidson, the board coach, and Brian Saber from Asking Matters, have teamed up to write the book that reveals how to get your board to fundraise: Engage them.

 

 

 

 

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[00:00:10.94] spk_3:
Hello and

[00:00:12.12] spk_5:
welcome to tony-martignetti

[00:00:20.54] spk_2:
Non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast.

[00:00:27.74] spk_5:
Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure the pain of

[00:00:29.56] spk_2:
cellulitis if you inflamed and

[00:00:31.81] spk_5:
irritated me with the idea that you missed this week’s show

[00:00:35.74] spk_2:
engaged boards

[00:00:37.14] spk_5:
will fundraise

[00:00:39.24] spk_2:
Michael Davidson, the board coach and brian Saber from asking matters have teamed up to write the book

[00:00:49.54] spk_5:
that reveals how to get your board to fundraise engage them

[00:00:52.04] spk_2:
and tony state too

[00:00:55.94] spk_5:
podcast pleasantries. We’re sponsored by turning to communications

[00:00:58.19] spk_2:
pr and content for nonprofits.

[00:01:03.14] spk_5:
Your story is their mission turn hyphen two

[00:01:11.44] spk_2:
dot c o. It’s my pleasure to welcome back Michael Davidson and brian Saber, Michael is a consultant specializing in nonprofit board development management, support,

[00:01:22.34] spk_5:
leadership, transition and executive coaching for nonprofit managers. He has over 30 years experience in nonprofit board and managerial leadership.

[00:01:29.04] spk_2:
Michael’s at board coach

[00:01:31.11] spk_5:
dot com.

[00:01:32.94] spk_2:
Brian Saber is a co founder of asking matters

[00:01:43.34] spk_5:
and one of the fields preeminent experts on the art and science of asking for charitable gifts face to face. He’s been working with boards for more than

[00:01:45.38] spk_2:
35 years

[00:01:46.66] spk_5:
to help unlock their fundraising potential

[00:01:49.94] spk_2:
brian’s company is at asking

[00:01:51.78] spk_5:
matters dot com and he’s

[00:02:00.24] spk_2:
at brian Saber together. Michael and bryan co authored the book engaged boards will fundraise

[00:02:03.64] spk_5:
how good governance inspires them.

[00:02:06.44] spk_2:
Their book

[00:02:07.32] spk_5:
brings both of them and back to nonprofit radio

[00:02:12.24] spk_2:
Michael and brian welcome back to

[00:02:15.54] spk_0:
the show what a pleasure great to be back very.

[00:02:17.85] spk_1:
Happy to be here

[00:02:18.61] spk_0:
Glad to have you.

[00:02:21.84] spk_2:
Yes, congratulations on the book. Thank

[00:02:22.12] spk_0:
you,

[00:02:27.44] spk_2:
Michael, your book title is emphatic. There’s no hedging no qualifications.

[00:02:31.34] spk_0:
Absolutely. How can you be

[00:02:32.40] spk_5:
so sure engaged boards will

[00:03:44.94] spk_0:
fundraise? Well, it’s a it’s a great, great question, tony and it really is the answer to that is in the title if if you’ve got a board that really does care about what the mission and the vision is of the organization, that’s why they’re there. If they have that personal motivation to be involved in your organization and to care about the impact that you’re having in the, in the world and are engaged in the ownership of that impact, in managing it. They care enough to do this. What are our whole premises? We can teach board members how to fundraise, brian has been doing that forever. Our job is to figure out how do we make board members want to fundraise and making them want to fundraise is engaging them, engaging them with their fellow board members, connecting them with their fellow board members and deeply connecting them with the vision and the passion that brought them to your board in the first place. That’s the simple, really the simple answer for this. If they’re engaged, they’re gonna want to, they’re gonna want to make this organization happen, which includes raising the money for it

[00:04:00.24] spk_2:
and much of the book is getting that engagement doing it properly. We go from details like the board meeting, which we’re gonna talk about two to broader engagement. You want

[00:04:10.41] spk_0:
Yes. In fact, you say

[00:04:13.04] spk_3:
fundraising must be

[00:04:14.15] spk_5:
fully integrated

[00:04:15.98] spk_2:
with the active engagement

[00:04:17.71] spk_5:
of the board

[00:04:18.72] spk_2:
in its, uh, fiduciary and leadership roles.

[00:04:22.78] spk_0:
Right

[00:04:34.24] spk_2:
flush that out for us a little bit. Uh, you know, we got plenty of time together. You don’t have to, you don’t have to pack it all into one answer. But why are we starting to get into their fiduciary in leadership roles? And, and there that relationship with fundraising?

[00:05:18.84] spk_1:
Well, let’s look at the budget for example, and often a budget is presented to the board. The staff puts together a budget and if it seems like it adds up the board approves it often it’s maybe just slightly incremental from the last one. Not a lot of explanation, sometimes a lot of detail without higher level explanation. And so the board is basically just, I hate to say rubber stamping it and that, that’s just that’s very passive if the board is involved in developing the budget and has really given a sense of what can be accomplished with a larger budget

[00:05:29.04] spk_0:
and get to choose

[00:06:34.24] spk_1:
and say yes, we’d like to do more. And we understand our role in that, that we can’t just tell the staff to raise more here is where the money comes from, here is our role. This is how we develop larger donors. It does take the board unless where university with a big major gift staff were it for most organizations. The board is the major gift staff. We get that we want our organization to do more. We’re going to agree to this budget, knowing all of that, then they’re in it together. Everyone around the table is a knowing, a willing participant very different. And we don’t see a lot of that happening. And yes, it’s hard on, especially smaller organizations to get all of this done. But it’s critical. It’s critical not to shortchange the process. If we short change the process, we can’t expect the board too enthusiastically go out and fundraise. This reminds me

[00:06:34.96] spk_2:
of that

[00:06:36.04] spk_0:
old conventional

[00:06:56.04] spk_2:
wisdom, you know, ask for if you want money asked for an opinion, your, if you want to, if you want an opinion, ask for money, you’re, you’re, you’re saying you’re getting the board’s opinion, you’re calling an engagement. But it’s bringing in the board’s opinions about what the organization should be doing. What should be paring back where it should be heading. Is that, is that, is that essentially what you’re doing is getting bored getting bored opinions

[00:08:57.24] spk_0:
an ownership because it’s not just their opinion on the budget. They put their opinion into this budget, They work with staff on developing it. But at the end of the day they raise their hand and they say, I approve this budget with these particular fundraising goals included. It. I agree to this. They make that decision. You know, one of the things that’s interesting in connection with this, this puts a lot more work on staff. They got to spend more time on the budget. And very often stand said, oh my God, leave the board, we’ll do the budget. Don’t bother them, it’s going to take too much time to explain all of this to them. They may disagree with us on our priorities, they may think other things are important. I don’t want to get involved in that. Let’s just give them a budget a quick five minute vote and done right. So it requires staff executive director to say, you know, if you want a board that’s going to fundraise, you’ve got to spend the time listening to them explaining to them engaging with them and they may come out somewhat differently than you do. You’ve got to live with that. You got to live with that. It’s not your organization, it’s your joint organization. That’s, you know, that’s a lot of work. So, you know what we’re saying may sound simple, you know, has for advice. You get money. But the reality is, there’s a commitment involved, Both on the part of board members and on the part of staff to make this, you know, staff comes to us all the time, but Brian and I’m here this 10 times a day. My board won’t fundraise. Oh, well, what are you doing to get them to do that right, just another

[00:09:00.48] spk_1:
piece of it, which we’ll get to it, having them do the right fundraising. So that’s the other half of the equation, which cover because it is a double edged sword there. Okay.

[00:09:10.54] spk_0:
Uh,

[00:09:20.04] spk_2:
Michael, can we at points then push back when, when it comes time for, for board commitments around fundraising and say, you know, you all agreed to the, to this budget, You took ownership of the budget, You held your hands up and voted well, now it’s time to fund what you all agreed to. Can you, can you sort of give it back to them that way?

[00:09:39.24] spk_0:
Absolute. And it requires one on 1 work with each board member. And for me, that’s the role of the Resource Development Committee. So let’s talk about it. We’ll get to brian’s magic number of, you know, what are you going to do? Well, And uh, yeah,

[00:09:52.62] spk_2:
well, before we get to the fundraising part, I want to, I want to spend time on the engagement part.

[00:09:56.85] spk_0:
Sure.

[00:10:08.64] spk_2:
Let’s not go anarchy economy. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna get this. You talk about a, a culture that creates full engagement. Uh, who’s best for uh, I don’t know who to call on a Socratic method from law school, I don’t know. Uh, but I don’t want to go like ping pong either brian Michael, brian, Michael, death too monotonous. So, you know, who’s, who’s best for talking about creating this culture of engagement at, on

[00:10:26.55] spk_1:
the board. We love

[00:12:29.04] spk_0:
Michael. okay for me, you know, this came out of it, I did a workshop with a number of consultants on helping them learn how to do what I do. And one of the consultants brilliant actually, we’ve got a quote from her and Catherine devoid. Catherine said, you know what you’re talking about, Michael is a board culture and peter Drucker, the management bureau says, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast. What we want to do when I talk about a culture is a culture is a team for me aboard, culture is a team. We see ourselves as a team. We understand we know each other, we’ve spent time with each other and we jointly want to do something. We jointly believe in this in this mission. Okay. And we encourage and support one another. So the culture at base has a system where board members know each other and work together on various kinds of things. Then you have the motivation and then board members can encourage and hold one another accountable for what they’re doing. So the culture starts with making sure that board members know one another personally personally know who they are, who they are and from that you can begin to build a sense of a team, we’re in this together, we’re not separate. It’s a very, it’s a very different notion of what the board is. You know, you and I tony were lawyers, right? So we start okay, this is the fiduciary responsibility. This is the board. This is what they’re supposed to do brian and I are asking the question, yes, we know what they’re supposed to do. How do we make them want to do it? And part of it is the mission, but part of it is their sense of responsibility to each other. Think about a sports team, right? What makes a good sports team? Not a collection of stars, Right? It’s a collection of individuals who don’t want to let one another down. I want to do my best because I’m with you were doing this together. You get the matter

[00:12:45.94] spk_2:
used to the metaphor, Michael of the rowing because you’re a rower and you had the coach boat and rowers have to be working in unison,

[00:13:48.34] spk_0:
right in unison. And there’s a great quote which I use in the book from the boys in the boat, in which the coach tells this roller, right? You know, you’re a good rower. Let me tell you what you need to do to be a great rower to be a great rower, you need to trust every other guy in the boat when you trust everybody else. You will be great. That’s interesting notion, right? Because I know if I know Tony, I know you’re pulling as hard as you can, I’m gonna pull as hard as I can. If I’m not so sure about you, Why do I kill myself. Right? But I know you tony You’re gonna pull with everything you got. And so I’m gonna pull with everything I got. It’s a very simple kind of notion, but to us it’s very, very important. It’s creating the board as a group, not as a collection of separate individuals as a team and they hold one another accountable and they don’t want to let one another down. It’s the experience we’ve all had brian. How do we start

[00:13:49.60] spk_2:
building this trust among board members?

[00:13:59.14] spk_1:
Friend? Well, first we look at the time we, they spend together and how we’re using it. So I always say to people, it’s amazing the percentage of a board members time that is spent in board meetings and the percentage of the board meeting time that is not spent well.

[00:14:15.34] spk_0:
So

[00:16:10.84] spk_1:
if you’re going to have a two hour meeting every other month, that’s 12 hours and, and maybe they’re in a committee meeting once every two months or once every month or something. But almost all the time is spent together in these meetings. And the meetings have so much, uh, reporting, there’s so much happening there, that doesn’t have to happen. Uh, and, and, and so the meetings don’t allow for this team building where, where the board members are grappling with the big issues and wrestling with the future of the organization, uh, how the organization is presented where it fits in a big, important issues and they should be wrestling with those because they’re the board and they have the responsibility for moving this organization ahead, keeping it safe, making sure it’s doing the right thing. And uh, so many board meetings have very little discussion of program presentation of program reporting back from board members of what they’ve seen in the program. And lots of board members rarely even see the program in action. So the board meetings are very report central centric. No one wants to give up their their chairman’s report, their executive directors report this report, that report. And we try to move people towards these consent agendas where all the reports go out in advance are simply approved and you have to read them. You have to read them in advance because you can’t just come to the meeting and expect to have a conversation about them even. And even the action steps should be discussed. You

[00:16:18.84] spk_2:
even suggest in the book that questions about what’s in the consent agenda have to be submitted in advance of the meeting. You can’t come to the meeting with your questions about the previous the previous minutes or or everything or the reports that are in the consent agenda. You got to submit your questions in advance. So we know you’ve read them.

[00:16:30.54] spk_5:
It’s time for a

[00:16:37.44] spk_3:
break turn to communications. You want relationships with journalists than hire former journalists

[00:16:39.92] spk_0:
who know how

[00:17:10.14] spk_3:
to build those relationships, including one of them. One of the partners worked as an editor at the Chronicle of philanthropy. But both partners, our former journalists. So they know how to build those relationships. They know when it’s the right time to contact journalists. They know how deadlines work and they can coach you on talking to the journalists once they get you those relationships. So you want the relationships higher folks who used to

[00:17:11.64] spk_5:
do that work,

[00:17:44.54] spk_3:
turn to communications, they’ll get you set up. They have existing relationships that can help you build new relationships with journalists. And where are those existing ones? You’ve heard me regale you with the the litany of media outlets were turned to has relationships. So figure turned to communications, talk to them, turn hyphen two dot c o Your story is their mission

[00:17:48.64] spk_5:
now back to

[00:17:49.72] spk_3:
engaged boards

[00:17:51.11] spk_5:
will fundraise

[00:17:53.94] spk_2:
how many of us has been in board meetings where people, you can see, you see, you see people for the first time, they get there 10 minutes early and they’re poring over their board notebook and you’re just sure that that’s the first time they cracked it open 10 minutes before the meeting. And what’s really, they’re wasting

[00:18:10.46] spk_5:
their time at that point.

[00:18:38.54] spk_1:
And then you get one or two board members who hijack a meeting with questions and they shouldn’t be allowed to, no one gets to hijack a meeting. And if you have this, this structure in place, which is much more about discussion and moving the organization forward, building the team and such, Then there isn’t that time for the small questions. I mean I get driven crazy when budgets are presented and someone goes to one small line item and ask the question. It’s so bad. In many ways. We’re trying to move people away from

[00:19:58.44] spk_0:
that tony There’s another side to this and that’s the role of the executive director in this. Because what we’re urging is that there’ll be substantive questions, for example, on such and such a program. What is the impact of that program and how do we measure that impact? Right. That’s an important engaged, more discussion. Executive directors many say, wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t want them getting into program. That’s my job. If they start talking about programs, it means they’re trying to manage how I do my my implementation work. Right? And we say we want we want boys to be faced with the real issues, as we say in the book, the good, the bad and the ugly well, executive directors don’t like to do that. They just want to give the board good news put out their report and go home and hope that they don’t bother them. So this partnership takes too right. You’ve got to have an executive director who is willing to engage with the board in these substantive discussions about the future of the organization about the problems that the organization is having about its challenges, not just a good news. So it takes it’s two sided. You can’t do this.

[00:19:59.87] spk_2:
What is the appropriate role for a board member? Board members

[00:22:15.14] spk_0:
around program Michael, for me it’s about impact, it’s not about how you do your program, it’s about what your program is designed to accomplish. And how do you measure what’s the vision, what are you trying to do? How do you measure that impact? I’ve got, you know, I’m on the selection committee for the Awards of Excellence and nonprofit management and one of the things that would look at his program impact. Let me give you one of my favorite examples and that’s the board involved in impact. Right? Um you know, I’m a rower. So this is it’s a rolling story. Okay, so wonderful organization, new york city koro new york no new york works with local high school kids, makes them into competitive rowers, which is really good for their college applications, works with them on college prep stuff and stuff. They were off the wall about the results of their program, 98% of their kids were getting into college. Fantastic. Right. Fantastic. Well. But they had also been collecting data on their kids and one of the things that they saw in their data is that their kids were not doing so great in college. And so the executive director and the board started to look at this data and said, you know, we’re focusing on the wrong end point. Our endpoint should not be college acceptance. Our endpoint, our impact point should be college graduation. So now what do we have to do programmatically to reach that? And we have to put resources, the different kinds of programs and the program to keep track of the kids once they’re in school, bring them back so on and so forth. But it was the board and the executive director looking at the data and looking at the question, what is our goal? What is the impact we’re trying to make? And by doing that, they jointly changed where they were directing resources, some of the staff that they were doing and stuff like that. So that’s an example for me of the board being involved in program, but at the right level at the level of impact and the level of data, not how do you teach? And that’s what executive directors tend to be afraid of. Once they start talking about program then they’re going to start talking about how do I teach you, How do I run my classroom and so on and so forth. And then to the board job

[00:22:26.84] spk_2:
brian, let’s talk a little more about nuts and bolts of

[00:22:29.27] spk_5:
meetings.

[00:22:57.44] spk_2:
If if this is the primary time that the board is spending together, whether it’s committee meetings or or full board meetings. Uh in fact, I’m imagining you two would advocate for social time for the board as well. But so we can, you know, we’ll get to the social part, let’s let’s talk more about some nuts and bolts meetings were trying to build a team, we’re trying to build trust. We want to focus on the right things. What, what more advice they have around meeting structure.

[00:24:32.74] spk_1:
Well, first of all, the agenda needs to be developed jointly by the executive director and board leadership. Sometimes that’s just the chair, sometimes that’s the entire executive committee and it needs to be developed in advance and everyone needs to know their role and be prepared, not just wing it. Uh, so that’s, that’s the first piece. I often hear boards talking about one hour meetings. Now this idea of making meetings very efficient and it reminds me of this issue with government and people want small government. It’s really better government that you want, right? You don’t want to waste the time. It’s not that you’ve got to make it smaller, but it needs to work. Right? And I think an hour is not enough time. I think an hour and a half to two hours gives you uh, the flexibility to dig into a topic. Uh, you have to have some sort of program presentation every time there’s, there’s no substitute for that. The more we connect board members program and give them an opportunity to ask questions about it to learn about it, the stronger their connection will be. So there needs to be programmed presentation, Michael and I prefer that board members are out there, uh, seeing program and are bringing back their own recollections and sharing those with the board. Uh so those those are important. Uh

[00:24:34.34] spk_0:
the

[00:24:55.54] spk_1:
uh we should not have a long executive directors report. We should be asking the executive director just as we ask all the committee chairs to submit their reports in advance. Uh The chair’s report should be very short at the very beginning, very high level, Michael, would you add to that?

[00:25:17.34] spk_0:
Yes, I didn’t do exactly. One is I love to time my agendas. I lay out, you know, we we lay out what’s gonna be and then I put five minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is and that does a couple of things. No one, it focused the board, it makes us think about where we want big discussion and where we don’t want big discussion. And it also gives the chair of the power to cut things off. So if someone’s going off on a on a rabbit out, you know, at the minute, I know we’ve only got five minutes for this, we have to end discussion now because otherwise they’re not going to get to the I think so, timing the agenda is a big deal. You know, Michael, I’ve

[00:25:41.58] spk_2:
even seen where a board and I’ve seen this in other meetings as

[00:25:45.58] spk_5:
well outside the board

[00:25:46.67] spk_2:
setting, where

[00:25:47.80] spk_5:
there’s a timekeeper

[00:26:09.34] spk_2:
appointed so that the chair can keep the conversation flowing and relevant. And the timekeeper is the one who says, we only have three minutes left for this topic. you know, like mr mr and mrs board chair, there are only three minutes left on this topic, you know, it’s up to you to decide what you want to do, but I’m the timekeeper and I’m letting you know there’s only three minutes left, just another another

[00:27:34.74] spk_0:
enforcer. And it’s an interesting notion, I actually kind of like it he goes back to as you know, I spent a good part of my legal career as a prosecutor, you know, and the notion of good cop, bad cop, right? So so the board chairs the good cop or oh no, I’m not controlling this, right? Someone else is telling us we have to stop, I’d love to let you talk forever, right? Yeah, good. You know, so it’s a good thing. The other thing too is there’s a framework for board discussions which rob Acton is used in his uh in his writings and he’s you know, and he says there are three kinds of questions that boards need to be looking at generative strategic and fiduciary, Okay, generative is where are we going? Why are we doing this? What’s on purpose? Right. Strategic is how do we do it? And fiduciary other details. And you know, part of what happens is so much of board meetings tend to be taken up with fiduciary matters and not enough time on generative and strategic matters. So again, as the as the leadership team is thinking about the agenda, they should be asking, you know, are there questions of that nature, generative and strategic that we need to be thinking about, you know, so it’s the paradigm. Yeah, brian’s got his

[00:28:25.44] spk_1:
hand out and I want to add to that, that when we talk about developing these board meetings, a lot of boards meet, if not every month every other month. And I’ve always felt the more often you meet and it’s not something we talked talked about in the book, but it’s something Michael and I have talked about, the more often you meet, the the more likely it is you’re going to get into more details because less has happened in the two months you get out of the meeting. Everyone has one committee meeting perhaps than your back. And, and I don’t think boards have to meet as a board every two months. I think if they meet quarterly as a board, there’s it’s easier to see the big picture. It gives more time for committee work in between and and that alone could help lessen the focus on the new sha

[00:28:34.84] spk_0:
it’s an interesting question. Um I I go both ways, depending upon the organization and and the size of the board. But one of the things that’s interesting about another question about board meetings is how do we use board meetings to connect board members with one another?

[00:28:49.84] spk_2:
It was going to get to this. I wanted to get to the social side

[00:30:31.44] spk_0:
of this. Great. okay, okay. Yeah. So how do we, well, it’s very it’s really interesting because I think, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot as we emerge from covid, hopefully emerge from covid. Right? And, you know, very often would say, okay, you know, what we’ll do is we’ll have a cocktail party before the board meeting, have some wine and cheese, maybe after the board. Me, it’s interesting, but it’s surprise problematic because what’s likely to happen, what’s likely to happen is that board members will talk to people that they know people that they usually talk to write and they’re going to talk with them about the things that they usually talk about, right, your your your golf game, your your your your your other involvements, whatever things that they have in common they talk about. And what I’ve been trying to think about it, we mentioned in the book is how do we create, how do we structure the interpersonal connection so that it’s deeper. Um, I just did this yesterday. So whatever the most recent thing in my mind always helps. Right? So I retreated, I facilitated a board retreat yesterday, which actually was in person. Um, and but what we did was before the, before the meeting, and this can be done, we assigned pairs of board members. Everybody was in a pair of two and they had an assignment, what they had to do was to interview the other person, find out about them, what they like, what they do, what their passions are, what they care about, what they read, what kind of music they’re kids. They’re this they’re that find out about who they are as a person, and then each one had to then introduce the other at the board meeting. Okay, so this is something to take some time and you can’t do it all the time. But it’s a very interesting way. And I asked him, I said, what was this like you said, this was great. These are really interesting people. I want to work with these people.

[00:30:50.34] spk_2:
There’s no going back to your team. Team building.

[00:31:05.74] spk_0:
Team, yep. So if if we’re if we’re going to try to create opportunity social opportunities, we need to think about what’s the best way to do that to achieve our goals. I’m skeptical.

[00:31:06.89] spk_2:
I’m a little concerned about wine before the

[00:31:09.34] spk_0:
meeting. I get a little too uh a

[00:31:14.07] spk_2:
little too loose lipped maybe. But but I love the idea of introducing someone you don’t know, get you to talk to somebody that’s outside your comfort zone, but ought not be because their fellow board

[00:31:27.74] spk_0:
member. Yeah,

[00:31:53.14] spk_1:
I had a program at one organization where I was uh, where we, we had board members go out after the meeting together and we assigned the groups so that we had a good mix and people would, would meet each other and and they were, the goal was for them to do that twice a year. Uh It’s all about time. Right? But we thought that was important time to spend so that they’d at least go out to dinner with half the board. Some of it depends on the size of your board and what you can accomplish, right? But we didn’t want groups of more than six because we wanted people to be able to talk with each other. So what we might send two groups of six out in different directions.

[00:33:04.64] spk_0:
Yeah. You know, and it’s interesting. I’ve seen people do very simple things at the beginning of a board meeting uh consultant I worked with, she always starts out every board meeting with a question. So tell me about the kind of music you like. Right, two seconds. Tell me about the most interesting book you’ve read recently and why? It was interesting to you. Right? I mean, two seconds we can do that at a board meeting. It loosens everybody up. It enables people who are introverts to have to say something to get out there and talk. It puts a limit for the extroverts on how much they can talk, Right? But it’s a, you know, so you can do devices like this, recognize it because it’s important, it’s important to recognize the importance of the board culture that unless we have that sense of connection between people, none of this stuff is going to work.

[00:33:11.14] spk_2:
Okay. And now let’s bring it to the, to the book title,

[00:33:13.90] spk_0:
Okay, Will Will fundraise,

[00:33:16.58] spk_2:
shall shall engage board shall fundraise.

[00:33:19.58] spk_0:
How is No, no, no, no. We didn’t use the word shall know. I, I added shall because that’s probably that’s perspective. Okay. Prescriptive, prescriptive, I know,

[00:33:41.74] spk_2:
yes, contract, contract you shall versus well, um, no, the book title is engaged. Boards will fundraise. So how does having better board meetings and board members knowing each other better through these simple social devices? Social methods

[00:33:49.74] spk_5:
improve our fundraising?

[00:36:09.83] spk_1:
Right. Well, as Michael has talked about a fair amount, it creates a team and a sense of joint responsibility. You think that it exists just because they have all joined this same organization, but you can’t just accept that in fact you have to work on it. So, by building this team, this camaraderie by by helping people understand each other. Uh, there is a shared sense of of, of responsibility. Second, by really engaging the board in these discussions and having the board understand the organization at a more nuanced and important level. It is easier for them to talk about the organization to feel comfortable doing it to represent it properly and to do it passionately, which is key to fundraising right? Being an ambassador for the organization. So many board members, uh, say I I don’t know enough about the organization to go out and talk about it. I’m afraid I’m going to say the wrong thing. I don’t know the organization like the executive director does. And one of the steps here is to get board members more comfortable as ambassadors talking about it. Uh, and it’s funny because I always say to board members, you don’t need to know all the details. You don’t have to know every little thing and all the numbers and such. You just have to be passionate and authentic to tell a good story and get people excited about the organization. And it incense goes hand in hand with the board meetings, Right? And if we’re concentrating on Mnuchin the board meetings, then the board members think they need to know the menu. Sha if we stay out of the Mnuchin the board meetings, then the board members can feel okay, this bigger picture is what’s important. So, so we build a sense of responsibility and we build, uh, more of a comfort in talking about the organization. We also build an understanding of why the funds are needed and what they will do, right? It’s not just, we need money. Uh, will you give me money? I love this charity, but this is the impact we’re going to have. They can talk about that. So, okay, so that gives them a basis for going on fundraising

[00:36:48.23] spk_2:
and that’s sort of a perfect transition to getting now to the discussion of engaging the board in the right kind of funding in fundraising. So, you know, listen, you just get, you got to get the book to, to learn more about how to engage your board. Um, they talk about the different duties of care and loyalty and obedience that board members have an, uh, governance. There’s, there’s good talk about governance uh, that you know, belonging in in one place and management, belonging by the other management, by staff, governance by the word. You gotta, you gotta be the book to get more of that detail about engaging.

[00:36:50.13] spk_5:
It’s time for Tony Take two.

[00:37:02.03] spk_3:
Oh, can I tell you how much I love sending podcast pleasantries. Thank you. I’m just grateful that you are a

[00:37:02.21] spk_5:
supporter of the show

[00:37:03.67] spk_3:
listening, whether you sample or you

[00:37:08.63] spk_5:
subscribe however you do it. listen all at once to 12 shows or you are the first one

[00:38:03.82] spk_3:
after the shows get published each monday. The first one clicking Thank you pleasantries to you are over 13,000 podcast listeners in aggregate, but you, you’re the person I’m talking to, I’m talking to you right now. I’m thanking. I thank you and I’m thanking you. That’s passive, isn’t it? I’m thanking you. I thank you. I know that’s active. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I’m glad you’re with us. Glad you’re supporting the show. I’m glad the show brings you value. Otherwise you wouldn’t be hearing me hearing me right now. You want to shut me off years ago. So thanks, thanks for being with me. Thanks for being with nonprofit radio That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo, but loads more

[00:38:06.37] spk_5:
time for

[00:38:07.82] spk_3:
engaged boards will

[00:38:10.41] spk_5:
fundraise.

[00:38:15.32] spk_2:
So now let’s talk about engaging the boards, you know, specifically in fundraising. Um, you two

[00:38:18.11] spk_5:
have

[00:38:19.12] spk_2:
was, I think six different six things, you know, like make the case identify the resistance. Is that the best way to talk through the engaging the boarding fundraising? Or is there a better

[00:41:15.91] spk_0:
way for me? There’s another way to start it. And that is what brian has been talking about right now is giving the board members the basic tools, Right? Thank you. They know how to tell a story or they’ve got a story to tell them. But one of the things that we look at is the fact that there is discomfort resistance about fundraising. It is not something we do in our normal lives, right? We, we do our jobs, we’re professionals, we don’t go out trying to engage other people in the things that we’re engaged in. Right? So they need help doing that. It’s part of the team. Thing is they want to feel, I want them to feel responsible to one another. But in addition, there has to be some guidance from either from fellow board members are from staff into how to do this. So board member says, okay, I, I know I know these, I know these people, you know, I’m comfortable with and I’m willing to talk about it. I’m a little, I’m uncomfortable asking them for something. They were gonna tell me, no, it’s gonna harm the relationship and stuff like that. So time needs to be spent. Either one on one with board members and within a member of the resource development Committee or is there a member to go through? Okay. Let’s figure out how you do this one with respect to the resistance that you have about it. How do you overcome that resistance? You know, what do you do? So, for example, one of the techniques I told board members is you never want the first conversation you have with somebody about your organization to be a conversation we’re asking for money. That’s the kiss of death. So what you’ve got to get to do is OK, here’s what you got to do over the next few weeks. You are you gonna talk to any friends? Yes, I’m gonna talk to some women. Okay. Here’s what I want you to do in those conversations. Find something that they’re interested in. That allows you to bring up your experience with this organization. You’re not asking for money. You’re not ask them to do anything. You’re just bringing this organization into the conversation. That’s your job. Okay. Now, after you do this, let’s come back and talk about it and tell us what your experience is. Now you can do this with the entire board, right? We’re at a board meeting. Okay, Everybody next week or between now and the next board meeting has to have one of these conversations with a friend come back and report at the next board meeting. Let’s see what we learned? What was difficult? What worked did they ask you questions? What would be the next steps? So they’ve got to both feel responsible for one another. But it also at the same time gets support from one another for doing this incrementally, because this is new to all of us. It’s new because you have

[00:41:31.41] spk_2:
an exercise in the book seemed ideal for a board meeting where you uh, you ask for board members to list their objections to fundraising and then list there a personal experience of either having asked or being asked in the past. And the two don’t do don’t align like the reality cancels out the objections exactly whose idea is that. Is that yours, Michael?

[00:43:10.90] spk_0:
Or that’s that’s me. Yeah, it’s a very simple exercise. You know, I I like to draw upon personal personal experience. I believe that board members got the answers to all these things I’m concerned about. They just haven’t talked about it. My job is to get them to talk about it. So, yeah, they’re going to tell me about I don’t want to fundraise. That’s going to be, this is gonna be that they’re going to hate me, bah bah bah bah bah fine. Okay. Now, let’s talk about what actually happened in your life? Have you ever given money to anybody? Why? What was there about that circumstance that made you comfortable and want to do that? So we take their experience and bring it back work. I just, I’m gonna intercept here and you can cut this out if you want. One of my later readings is I’ve gone back to the Socratic dialogues, Plato’s writings about Socrates because what Socrates believed was that everybody had the answers to all these important questions in their head and his job was just the program and ask the questions to get it out. And I believe, I believe this about boards. Our job is to use their experience, not tell them what they’re doing wrong. Take what they’ve done and learn from it and help them learn from it simple.

[00:43:13.70] spk_2:
You’re right. That that’s worthless. I’m gonna cut that

[00:43:15.63] spk_0:
out. Yeah.

[00:43:19.08] spk_2:
Right.

[00:43:19.58] spk_0:
But yeah. So

[00:44:21.99] spk_1:
you adding to what Michael said, one of the, one of the kickers here is board members having to ask all their friends only to be asked to give gifts in return to the other organizations that you know with pro quo. And I’ve been talking about this for a decade ad nauseam because it is horrible short term transactional fundraising. All transactional. And it’s gotten really bad in our field to our detriment. And everyone gets sort of, uh, the organizations get stuck on this. It’s like, uh, like cocaine, right? And, and, and and can’t move away from it. Well, we need the $50,000. The board raises and like, Okay, well your board is going to hate doing this type of fundraising, they’re not going to be inspired when they leave, all those gifts are going to leave with them and so forth. So you’ve got a short term gain, you’re getting some money in the door. But everything else is wrong. We don’t, I always had people good point

[00:44:25.11] spk_2:
about just the last one you said, I want to just amplify when the board members leave. Those kids are going with them. When I just, I just wanted to amplify that.

[00:44:33.85] spk_1:
When I say that to boards, a light bulb goes off, I say,

[00:44:38.03] spk_0:
I’m not,

[00:45:35.39] spk_1:
if I’m on the board and I leave the board, I’m not going to keep asking just if I could give gifts to all my friends. And what what happens when you have me as a board member, uh, do this is I end up giving money away to organizations I don’t care about just to be nice. And whereas it would be better if I gave all that money into my organization that I love and tell people you give it where you love where you, where you’re excited because then I’ve made a bigger investment in my own organization, have a bigger stake, more of an investor. And if I think I first wrote about this 10 years ago that if I had one wish in the nonprofit world, it would be to stop the quid pro quo fundraising today because it’s a Sisyphean task. It’s just not getting anyone anywhere. It’s keeping them from anything strategic and it and it is burning out the board members. And when board members come to the board often they’re on their first board. They assume that this is the type of fundraising we’re going to ask them to do, which is why they have such resistance.

[00:45:46.89] spk_0:
What do you

[00:45:47.39] spk_2:
want to see in in its place?

[00:48:49.57] spk_1:
What I want to see is the board members to serve as ambassadors and what I call many major gift officers. So let’s look, people look at the big shots, they look at the hospitals in the universities and these massive organizations Because they raise so much money and they’re very visible and they all have what we call major gift staffs. They have a staff whose sole responsibility is to take 150 200 prospects donors and cultivate and solicit them and steward them along. Right. And and those staff For year after year have these people have this portfolio if we want to call it that. And that’s great. But most organizations have a budget under $1 million. Most organizations are lucky if they have one development officer who’s doing everything. Special events, direct mail, grant writing, crowdfunding You name it and maybe has 5% of their time to actually go out and talk to significant individual donors. So what I want rather than this transactional fundraising is for every board member To be a mini major gift officer with four prospects slash donors on their radar screen who they stick with and those may or may not be their own contacts. Many organizations have people who need more attention than they’re getting and they don’t get it because the executive director and our director of development don’t have the time. I’d sooner see the board members taking donors out to coffee calling them and thanking them for gifts, attending cultivation events with them and asking them what they think than being worried about soliciting the gift. I’m much less concerned about board members asking for a gift. They don’t have to ask for a gift as a matter of fact and I only was thinking of this this past week. Major gift officers don’t always ask for the gift. So I was a major gift officer from my alma mater. I was in charge of solicitations in the midwest big gifts. And you know, there were times I asked many and there were times when someone else asked the president, the senior vice president, a volunteer. This idea that just because you’re cultivating and Stewart and someone means you are the Askar, it actually doesn’t even add up with professionals. So I want the board concentrated on this other work, which most of them are willing to do. Oh, I’ll happily call for people and thank them for their gifts. So I’d be happy to take people out and thank them and get to know them better. Ask them if they’ll come with me or send them a personalized update. And this is incredibly important work. If we’re going to build relationships. And the other point I put out, the three of us know the numbers that most, Most of the money, most of the charitable gifts come from individuals, 85, everything. Yeah.

[00:48:56.82] spk_2:
When you had requests, it’s like 88 or so, but it had requested 77 or something like

[00:49:39.47] spk_1:
that. The largest gifts come from people, we know if you look at your own given right and where them and individuals are really loyal. I ask people all the time on boards. This is part of breaking down that resistance. What’s the longest number of consecutive years you’ve contributed to an organization Now for many, it’s our alma mater, right? So I graduated in 84. I’ve been giving to them for 37 years and I’ll give them till I die. And many people do. That could be your church. We give for decades. So we don’t, it’s not about the short term win. It’s about what I call an annuity of gifts over what could be decades. If you bring someone in them, they get excited most of our organizations or institutions that are going going to be doing our work forever. Some are meant to put themselves out of business and resolve some problems. But most nonprofits will be here for 100 200 years assuming the planet is and helping people with medical needs, helping seniors, helping kids get educated, whatever it is, building community and we want people to have a state for a long time. So let’s have board members helped build that state with these individuals

[00:50:38.96] spk_2:
and that that also relieves board members of the, the fear and anxiety of having to be the solicitor. You know, some board members will step up to that. Uh, some will with training but it’s not necessary. You’re saying board members can be building the relationships in all these different ways. May be hosting something in your home with four or 6 couples or something. All these different ways. You

[00:50:42.79] spk_5:
mentioned the thank you,

[00:50:43.66] spk_2:
notes the acting as the ambassador all these ways and then maybe you’re cultivating them for someone else to do

[00:50:50.59] spk_5:
the solicitation.

[00:50:54.56] spk_2:
Maybe maybe the board member is involved in it or maybe not. You know, it doesn’t have to be

[00:51:18.26] spk_1:
right. It goes back to the good cop bad cop, the board members, the good cop and then brings the executive Director of director development and to ask for the gift that’s perfectly legit perfectly legit. I played that role many times as an executive Director Director of Development. Where I asked uh, yeah, where the board member cued it up. But I was the Oscar

[00:51:48.36] spk_2:
right and you’re collaborating in the relationship, the board members reporting back, letting the Ceo no, you know, this is, this is how it went with her baba. You know the ceo is asking, you know, do you feel like it’s maybe it’s the right time for me to ask or for us to ask or is it still too early? Or look, she expressed interest in this particular program. And you know, the board was just talking about expanding that, putting putting more resources to that. This could be a very timely topic for me to bring up at a meeting with her or or the three of us know you’re collaborating around the relationship strategizing about when the best time is to actually do the

[00:52:34.05] spk_0:
solicitation, right? And going back to board meetings for a second. One of the things you want to do with the board meeting is acknowledged. The people that have done this. You know, wow, let me, let me tell you, the executive director says, let me tell you that. You know brian and I brian introduced me to so and so and we had a meeting and you know, we walked away with a check for $5000. Thank you brian, do you do right, celebrate it builds it celebrate the winds and it builds it into the culture. You don’t want to be the only one who never gets thank you. Right.

[00:52:38.45] spk_2:
Let’s talk about the expectations, establishing

[00:52:42.07] spk_5:
expectations around

[00:52:44.45] spk_2:
giving and fundraising for board

[00:52:47.21] spk_1:
minimums. Yes, who wants

[00:52:49.37] spk_2:
to kick that off. Let’s spend a little time with that. Yeah brian

[00:55:36.44] spk_1:
can I? Because I’m, I have, I’m rabbit about this one actually to, um, I cannot stand minimums and given gats I give or gets Excuse me. I believe that everyone should do their best on both. Besides everyone should give a personally significant gift as an investor in this organization and do their best at fundraising. And uh, without going into great detail, what I see time and again, there’s a minimum gift ends up being a ceiling out of floor. You think everyone’s going, ok, everyone’s gonna give at least this. But most people then give that, it feels like dues. You set the, the amount low so that most people can reach it, you still have some who can’t. And, and it’s been proven again and again, that, uh, that minimum gifts do not generate the largest gifts, minimum gift requirements don’t help. And people say, well, how do board members know what to do? And I said, well from the very beginning, and we talk about a job prospectus in the job description, You tell prospective board members, here’s the range of gifts we have board members giving anywhere from $500 to $5000 depending on their capacity. We ask people to do something very significant given the who they are and what they can do generally right. We want everyone to feel that they’ve made a gift they thought about that’s important to them. Some people ask for one of the top three gifts you give anywhere, which is a very concrete way to put it in and, and works. So on the gift front, you give people guidelines. And here’s, here’s an interesting thing you actually asked board members for a gift. I’m amazed. We’ve never best fundraising, best practice fundraising. We ask our major gift donors for an exact amount, Tony would you consider a gift of $10,000, etc? And yet we let our board members just give whatever they want to give. Why would we do that? I really push asking every board member for a specific amount that, that, that is personally significant to them. Makes them think about what’s significant And on the get side, I really believe it should be the best of your ability because if we say you’ve got to give or get 5000 a board member with a lot of capacity can just give the whole thing and not do any work or swap gifts with friends. And yet and the board member with less capacity is left, um, doing the hard work and that doesn’t make for a team. Everyone needs to do the hard work together.

[00:56:58.63] spk_0:
There’s a couple of, I mean I’ve learned this from brian’s and that’s my, become my mantra, working with working with boards about personally significant gifts and there’s a couple of, there’s another consideration now, especially with, with our desire to diversify our boards, polls, we may be reaching into populations that don’t have access to resource, but they’re important in terms of perspectives that they bring to our deliberations. And so having this as the standard personally significant gift for everybody. It’s equal. We’re all equal. We’re all giving the best we can. Another part of that. And I really like what brian says about, you know, asking our board members, it’s a negotiation, right? It’s not a no, I I need $1000 from you. And that’s what you gotta do because you’re a board member. It’s what I, you know, let me, let me tell you what I give. Okay, Okay. And now here’s what I think might be reasonable for you. Let’s talk about it. Okay. Is it is that a reasonable gift for you? It’s not demanding its opening a conversation as, as the possibilities. So, you know, I mean, I’ve done some capital fundraising and very often we ended up in a negotiation. You know, I asked, I went in asking for a certain amount, which I thought that person could give or we thought that that person could give when I put that number on the table and kept my mouth shut for a few minutes. You know, so they came back and they said, well, you know, that’s a little, okay. Let’s talk about it then.

[00:57:20.23] spk_2:
Support. Support training. It could be training could be staff, support for the, for the board that the, that the, uh, the employees, the staff are, are obligated to give either their own or through a consultant. What kind of, what kind of board, what kind of support do we need to give our board members around fundraising?

[00:57:41.83] spk_0:
Yeah, there are two,

[01:00:39.01] spk_1:
two pieces here. The first gets back to something, Michael said a long time ago about staff and the need for staff support in terms of the board meetings and the board members being involved, board members will only help with the fundraising. To the extent they have staff support. They’re always gonna need staff guidance materials, someone to bounce ideas off of and, and such staff need to be managing this, reminding board members of, uh, their next action step with a certain donor, um, providing materials and so forth. So, staff have to keep the tracker, as I call it this, even if it’s an Excel spreadsheet with a list of everyone and who does what and, and, and, and constantly move the process forward. But probably the most important thing is training because as Michael noted, board members come with very little experience and a lot of trepidation and the more training they can get, the more comfortable, they will be the more comfortable and effective. I always ask when I do a training, how many of you have ever been asked for a gift, The way we’re talking about it. How many times has someone said, Michael would you consider sitting down with me so I can ask you for a special gift, our organization. The truth of the matter is with all the asking out there with all the fundraising in every form. Very few people end up in these conversations. It’s the big, big, big, big donors. Right? And, and so many board members have never been on the other side of the equation and really have no idea what one of these meetings about. They assume you just go in and you ask for money. You just say, you know, will you give this? They, there’s no way for them to know because they haven’t experienced it themselves. So we need to teach them what it is. Uh, and that it’s all about the relationship, which definitely takes some of the pressure off. It’s always about the relationship and it is never about the gift to me. That is the number one rule in fundraising and I will leave money on the table time and again. I just, I just coach someone an hour before this conversation who’s the head fund raiser for a program within the school because a donor um, offered up an amount before being asked for an amount and it’s a significant amount and a big step forward. And the question becomes, do I go back, do I negotiate? And some of this is happening by email and I said in knowing the stoner, I said, you take the wind, it’s about the relationship. This is much, this is big for you. There’s always next year, the year after and so forth. So teaching board members, it’s about the relationship, not the gift, whatever happens this year, that’s okay. We’re building the relationship helps them feel more comfortable because they think they’ve got to go in and come out with whatever you all were hoping for. You know, it’s a, it’s a, it’s uh, and we’re guilty of building this mindset. We as a culture.

[01:03:05.00] spk_0:
The other side of it is that there are some very, for me very simple things that boards can learn how to do to build a relationship. For example, one of one of the things I very often do with a board retreat, simple exercise or on fundraising, I told people, look, you’re now going to somebody, you’re sitting in somebody else’s fundraising dinner and there’s somebody sitting next to you. Okay, So you want to have a conversation with the person sitting next to you, get to know them. So here’s your job. You’ve got to ask that person questions about what they’re interested in their lives and so on and so forth. And you’re looking for some place in them that connects with your organization. Then when you find that place, then you can introduce your organization, but that’s your job and we, you know, we pair up and people around, you know, around the room, sit down and try to have these conversations and realize that they can, because these the way in which we want to build relationships is a technique and it’s something we need to practice and become comfortable with. You know, people are not used to really interestingly asking questions. We all tell people things about ourselves, but we don’t ask them questions about themselves. So I mean that’s one of the pieces of support, right? Doing those kinds of things, telling stories quick, you all went to visit a program, tell me something that happened in that program that you saw that really was important to you that inspired you. That made you think about the value of this organization. Tell me the story. Well, people don’t know how to tell stories. They have to learn how to tell stories. It’s it’s but it’s a very simple, you know, these are not complicated techniques, but it’s all part of becoming comfortable in what brian is talking about in this ambassador role, relationship building a relationship relationship. I love the relationship,

[01:03:13.80] spk_2:
not the gift. Like that, brian. All right, we’re gonna leave it, we’re gonna leave it there with the, with the support

[01:03:14.55] spk_5:
idea. You

[01:03:28.60] spk_2:
got to support your board members, Michael Davidson, consultant and coach. He’s at board coach dot com. Ryan saber asking matters, asking matters dot com And he’s at brian Saber, Michael brian thanks very much. Terrific.

[01:03:32.80] spk_0:
Thank you. It was a pleasure tony great questions. Thank you. My

[01:03:36.34] spk_2:
pleasure. I’m just, I’m just trying to keep things going. Look book and

[01:03:40.96] spk_0:
the book, the book, I’m it’s

[01:03:42.61] spk_2:
Michael and bryan, who cares about Michael, Bryant’s the book you want? The book is,

[01:03:46.72] spk_0:
the

[01:03:49.80] spk_2:
book is the book is engaged, boards will fundraise how good governance inspires them. It comes out this week, this week of october

[01:03:58.74] spk_0:
18th. Yes,

[01:04:00.34] spk_2:
it’s not a long book, but it is long on value as you can tell from this outstanding conversation, lots of value in the book

[01:04:08.69] spk_5:
next week.

[01:04:09.65] spk_3:
Deborah Kaplan pa

[01:04:13.29] spk_5:
loves new book. The time for

[01:04:14.99] spk_3:
endowment building is

[01:04:17.45] spk_0:
now

[01:04:19.49] spk_5:
also very emphatic,

[01:04:20.77] spk_3:
just like uh just

[01:04:22.23] spk_5:
like engaged boards will fundraise

[01:04:39.79] spk_2:
if you missed any part of this week’s show. I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two

[01:04:40.92] spk_5:
dot c o

[01:04:42.89] spk_2:
Our creative producer

[01:05:13.09] spk_4:
is Claire Amirov shows social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by scott stein, thank you for that information scotty You with me next week for nonprofit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. Mhm

Nonprofit Radio for November 2, 2020: Boards And Asking Styles

My Guest:

Brian Saber: Boards And Asking Styles

Brian Saber returns with his new book, “Boards And Asking Styles.” Your board’s Rainmakers, Go-Getters, Kindred Spirits and Mission Controllers all need to work with each other, your CEO and your staff. Brian shepherds you through how to make that happen. He’s president of Asking Matters.

 

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Board relations. Fundraising. Volunteer management. Prospect research. Legal compliance. Accounting. Finance. Investments. Donor relations. Public relations. Marketing. Technology. Social media.

Every nonprofit struggles with these issues. Big nonprofits hire experts. The other 95% listen to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Trusted experts and leading thinkers join me each week to tackle the tough issues. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio.
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[00:02:12.84] spk_1:
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio. Big non profit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host is non profit radio your favorite abdominal podcast? I certainly hope so. You know there are seven days in a head, Ahmad, Of course, that’s the noun form. I’m so proud of myself. When I discover a new word that I have to open with this on. I want to thank Miriam Webster for sending it to me that I can discover it and be so proud. Oh, I’m glad you’re with me. Id Bear the pain of leishmaniasis If you bit me with the idea that you missed today’s show boards and asking styles, Ryan Saber returns with his new book, That’s It. That’s the title boards and asking styles. Very straightforward. No fluff in the title reserved all the fluff for the book. We explore how the asking matters work that he pioneered will help strengthen your board responsive by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money changed more lives. Tony dot m a slash dot for a free demo and a free month non tony steak to a November webinar. I’m very pleased to welcome Brian Saber back to non profit radio. He’s president of asking matters home to the asking styles which help people understand and embrace their unique strengths. As fundraisers, he’s spent his entire career asking for money for nonprofits. I’m gonna telethon, Caller. I made your gift officer and executive director and now as a consultant. His first book was asking Styles Revolutionize your fundraising. His latest book We’re Here to Talk About Today is boards and asking styles. A roadmap to success. Asking matters is that asking matters calm and he’s at Brian Saber. Brian. Welcome back to the show. Congratulations on the new book.

[00:02:21.54] spk_0:
Thank you, tony. Thanks for having me back. I’m glad to see that Cove. It has indulged your wit at all.

[00:02:28.16] spk_1:
Thank you for recognizing that I haven’t undoubtable wit. I’m, uh I’m floored by that s oh, what a way to launch. Tony is wit. Uh, it’s not dull. It’s definitely not dull. No,

[00:02:40.64] spk_0:
it is not. We can use all of it that we could get these days.

[00:03:24.74] spk_1:
Yeah, we could use even even my just barely a Ndlela wit. Thank you. Uh, no, you gotta have fun. It’s my show, you know, whatever the hell I want to do, I mean, I just, you know, we’re gonna We’re gonna learn. But if we’re not gonna have fun, I’m not gonna bother personally personal. So lets you Mm. Let’s start out with the asking styles. We gotta lay the groundwork for the for. The handful of listeners don’t know aren’t well acquainted with the asking styles. Let’s lay that framework for folks. Then we’ll see how it helps your board. What’s his asking styles thing? Great.

[00:04:30.64] spk_0:
So the asking styles were developed a decade ago. Now by my co founder, Andre kills dead and myself. We develop them because everywhere we looked in the field, we saw people who said I’m not a fundraiser. I’m not this. I’m not that in particular. We saw it with the boards. Most board members have come onto boards. Will say I’ll do anything but fundraise. I’m not a fundraiser. I hate fundraising. I can’t ask my friends for money and so forth. And we knew how critical boards were to fundraising and that the type of fundraising. We were talking about the more significant gifts that come from developing relationships one on one, that that fundraising was all based on personality and relationship. It was much more art than science, and we had to help people understand where they fit in it so they could be comfortable. So we went about figuring out what makes someone’s asking style. We felt two characteristics. How one interacts and how one thinks were most important, how one acts on the extrovert introvert spectrum, how one thinks on the analytic, intuitive spectrum, and based on that there would be four basic styles and that you fall into one quadrant or another, but with a little bit of another style that no one felt cleanly in one box. There were some people who were uber this or uber that so such analytic introverts, the type of people who sit behind a computer writing code all day and such intuitive extroverts that, you know, creative just floating all over the place. You could never pin him down with massive ideas, but that most of us were somewhere in between had a little bit of this and that and we wanted people understand that. So we created this rubric for the field for the field of non profit to help everyone feel more comfortable and understand how to fundraise more successfully. How to tell their story in their own way from their own strengths. Not to worry about an elevator pitch, not to worry about reciting lots of outcomes measurements if they want to speak from the heart and a different, passionate, visionary way not to worry about that piece of what really sold them was outcomes and goals and plans that they had to speak in the language that was authentic to them. And that would be compelling, uh, to the donor, Teoh, a prospect or a current donor. So that’s that’s what we developed and meeting

[00:06:25.34] spk_1:
meeting board members. I realize this is not only for board members, but that’s our conversation today, and that’s you’re saying that’s where you found it. Most relevant, and then where they where they are, what worked with what you are type of person that you are in the quadrant will identify the quadrants and versus trying to make you something that you’re not, makes you uncomfortable

[00:06:29.20] spk_0:
right, and we started with boards than spent a number of years, much more focused on staff, developing a lot of materials in depth courses in a membership in such a brother. I bought Andreae now seven years ago, which is hard to believe. So I

[00:06:44.65] spk_1:
was going to say Now this started with you and Andrea Kill Stead, who’s been on the show. And then what? You pushed her out. You took her expertise on, then pushed her out for a nominal buyout.

[00:09:47.96] spk_0:
I broke her kneecaps and said, That’s it. Off you go. Um, you know, Andre is a She is a huge go get her. She’s a big ideas person and she has brought a tremendous amount of the field. But it was at her instigation because she said, You know what, Brian? I like really building these things. I have these big ideas. They’re running. It’s not really me, and I can see where you because my secondaries mission controller and I could do this plan full stuff where you would be better at running it and and and Andrea is significantly older than I am. I don’t think she would be bothered by my saying that. So she within a different point in her life and she said, Let’s let’s do this So I took it over. And as you may know, she went on to then build capital campaign, uh, toolkit with Amy Eisenstein. That’s been another great thing in the field. Yeah, so I took it over in, uh, 2013 and have spent the last seven years really developing the styles. Everything from the iconography you see now Thio the application of the styles in many ways, and I’ve got done trainings across the country and lots of conferences that are mostly for staff. And interestingly, I’m now circling back to board. And I’m doing a lot of board work, a lot of board trainings. And out of that came this idea that my second book should really be focused on board. When I started, it was pre now with this and and the the additional complications of being the board member and of running a non profit in many ways, they asking styles or even more important, because boards have to be at their best. In order for the organizations to survive, everyone has to be at the table. Helping to build resource is and everyone has to work together in a collegial way that create some synergy and makes everyone feel like they’re part of a team. And it’s hard to get to know board members anyway, when all you do is meet every two months for two hours and maybe you’re in a committee or two and that those meet once in a while. Now it’s all by zoom. Everyone’s overwhelmed zoomed out, and yet it’s more important than ever for people who feel their team and you have new board members I’ve seen. I’ve been delighted to see a number of announcements lately of organizations that have brought on new board members during this time, which is, you can imagine is challenging. You think of a board member coming thio their first board meeting, sitting in a room and getting to meet and experience other people and see how things really work. And now it’s all by zoom, which is much harder in a very different dynamic. So so, understanding the styles and how everyone interacts is even more important for on boarding a new board member. Look, you work, you get

[00:09:50.28] spk_1:
to recruit when we talk about recruitment to exactly but so Let Tze identify the styles. So you have things to spectrum. You got the analytic, intuitive spectrum, and you have the extrovert introvert spectrum. So if you know, put the extrovert introvert on the vertical and the analytic intuitive on the horizontal, you get four quadrants. So what are those? What are those for?

[00:10:14.26] spk_0:
Eso top left. You get the analytic extroverts. The rainmaker always goal oriented. Uh, driven, competitive. Keep their eye on the prize. Knows they’re succeeding based on the numbers, right? Did I reach this goal? Did I bring this money? Gets to to raise as much money. Then you have the intuitive extrovert top, right? The go getter, big vision thinker. Lots of energy brings people along with their enthusiasm on always sees the opportunities. So is bringing that big passion and excitement about the future. Anything’s possible. Then you have your intuitive introvert, your kindred spirit. Feelings oriented. I am primarily kindred spirit were our hearts on our sleeves. Everything is personal for us. No matter how hard we try to make it otherwise. And because we have that, uh, sense of sensitivity, we are sensitive to others. We tend to be very accommodating. We want other people to be heard and feel good and such. Also good skills for fundraising, different from the core rainmaker skills. And not to say a kindred spirit can’t be goal oriented. And a rainmaker can’t be compassionate and attentive on then mission controller. The analytic introvert bottom left. The Eagle Scout who always gets the job done. Very methodical, systematic plan ful and best at sitting back and listening and absorbing what’s happening. Great listener and observer, which, as we know, is so key to fundraising. So those the styles and they all complement each other and work well together can sometimes frustrate each other. But, um, but those are the styles,

[00:12:01.78] spk_1:
okay? And we each way each most likely have ah, primary and a secondary correct. So you’re you are kindred spirit and mission controller.

[00:12:13.21] spk_0:
Yeah, I am pure introvert. They which surprises people since I do so much public speaking and training. So people who know about the acting profession of lots of actors actually are shy or introverted, and you get in front of an audience and you do your thing.

[00:13:37.94] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications. They help you build relationships with journalists because of a relationship built by turn to the New York community. Trust got to features in The Wall Street Journal. That’s what happens when you have the existing relationship. And then when you want to be heard, the newspapers, the outlets, they take your calls. But you gotta have the relationship set up ahead of time. That’s what turn to is gonna help you do build those relationships. They specialize in working with nonprofits. One of the partners, Peter Pan A. Pento, was an editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The right turn hyphen two dot c o. Now back to boards and asking styles. Perfect example of that. Aside from Brian Saber, uh, I’m seeing a lot of interviews with Sasha Baron Cohen because he has a Borat sequel out, and he has said, I’ve read it in online and I saw an interview with him. Eso he said a couple times. He’s primarily a shy, shy guy, but you know, he has characters who are obviously grandstanding. No, it alls, you know, it’s off, but s Oh, absolutely, And I and you people can go to asking matters dot com and you could find out which one of these you are right. You right. You could just do three minute little three minute quiz or so right?

[00:14:03.18] spk_0:
Exactly. Thank you. Yeah. You want it to be true. False questions. True. False? Yes. No, you know.

[00:14:10.12] spk_1:
And you The site admonishes us. Don’t spend a lot of time e I already did it. I didn’t just do it last night knowing we’re gonna prepare. I already know that. I’m, uh I’m primarily a kindred spirit as well. By birth. I’m a kindred spirit by birth but a go getter by practice and

[00:14:28.55] spk_0:
teach your primarily kindred spirits secondarily. Go getter.

[00:14:31.79] spk_1:
Yeah, secondary. Go get e No. Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:34.64] spk_0:
Pure, pure. Intuitive is what it’s saying. Massive, intuitive. Yeah, a lot of gut on the idea. Not a lot of planning percent. That’s a problem. A problem you got a plan ful person to about right? Yeah,

[00:14:49.44] spk_1:
I know. Now we need all four. But that’s why that’s why I’m not on any boards. Just do it. We’ll look back in six months.

[00:14:57.59] spk_0:
I’m not on any boards either. As a matter of fact, it seems it feels like a busman’s holiday to me. And I’m going when they’re gonna want me to fundraise. Andi. I’m not a big process person. Like go getters are much more into process. So Andre and I, over the years had to figure this out because she was pure process. Idi ated out loud, you know, lots of ideas. She could sit for hours and my eyes would plays over like I can be very cut to the chase. The Mission Control. Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s just lay it out. Let’s just get to the details and do it. And we finally realized that our meetings could only be a certain length of time. And I say all that because that been a challenge for me, with boards and any groups at all where I’m sitting there and I’m a little impatient, like Okay, let’s I just want to move to the next thing. I don’t want everyone talking and processing. I’m happy to go with someone else’s idea. Let’s just move it along. Three.

[00:15:52.31] spk_1:
Our brainstorm session is such a three hour brainstorm session is such a bore?

[00:15:57.24] spk_0:
E identified something in the 1st 10 minutes way Had something in the 1st 10 minutes. What? What did you say? Say it again the idea seemed pretty good to me exactly three

[00:16:11.09] spk_1:
hours ago. We could’ve had lunch and dinner by now.

[00:16:13.21] spk_0:
Exactly. Caught a good movie and come back just for the conclusion. First

[00:16:27.74] spk_1:
it sounded pretty good to me. Oh, right. Exactly. Contrary. Thio Brainstorming ideation session. All right, so, um all right, so let’s apply this to the board. So, as you had said, it helps if we know who is what. What is who on the board. What do we have? Do we have a imbalance of rainmakers and no process people to back them up, you know? Right. So we need tohave way. Need to have a balance,

[00:19:11.44] spk_0:
right? I mean, think of any planning session. Let’s let’s say you’ve got right now. There’s so many issues nonprofits, air facing. So let’s say it’s an issue of Well, what programming do we go forward with knowing that the current conditions are going to probably last into next summer? Okay, let’s make that assumption is aboard. Here we are. What are we going to do? Is an organization so the rainmaker is going to say Okay, well, what’s the goal? Right? What’s the goal of all of this? What outcomes. Do we want what we want to? Um, you know, we want to maintain We want Thio, serve our clients as well as we can. We want to stay fiscally responsible that then you have the go getter. Who’s saying the visionary who saying, Well, this could be the opportunity to pivot right opportunities, not problems, solutions, not problems. Let’s think out of the box. This could be the chance. We were looking for the kindred spirit. The very heart oriented person is saying, Well, we can’t forget the clients. We can’t forget the staff, you know, we need to you know, it’s really important that we come through for everyone, whether it makes the most financial sense or long term sense or not. And the Mission Control is saying Okay, great. I agree that we have that goal. I agree. You know, we could be something different. I agree. We have to care about people. But how are we going to get it done? It has to be realistic. And you can see where If you have an entire board of one or the other, you’re you can’t get the work done, right? Right. You need someone to check what you’re doing. We all need checks and balances and we need different voices. So once you look at the style so that you can see where if you’re going to do strategic planning, you need to have the four styles around the table to come out with a strong plan. Otherwise, you’re gonna have a plan that’s missing either the goal and outcomes or the big picture or the heart or the structure. And then and then you’ve got to fund. Then you’ve gotta work your way back into it Too late. Okay, way made a plan. But now Wow. Turns out we don’t know how toe executed because we didn’t have any mission controllers in the group or, you know, we didn’t think big enough. We went right into the weeds because we didn’t have our visionary in the group and so forth. So

[00:19:39.34] spk_1:
let’s talk about recruitment. If we’re, uh we’re gonna bring folks onto the board. Uh, you want this to be one of the factors I mean, there, there, obviously, you know, we need accountants. Maybe, you know, whatever. Whatever skill sets, you have gaps. And of course, those those really are predominant in your board selection. But you’d love for folks to find out what these potential board members asking styles are. Yes. So send them toe asking matters dot com as your recruiting them.

[00:19:44.29] spk_0:
Yeah, right. Wait three

[00:19:46.87] spk_1:
minutes. They print the report. Okay,

[00:20:13.04] spk_0:
Sorry. We don’t want you any go getters by you know, the reality for almost every night fucking is. We don’t get to pick and choose that much when we’re looking for board members. So some organizations really can. Others, at the very least, though, can say, Okay, we’re looking at our board, and we really seem to be missing kindred spirits. That’s bad. So lets

[00:20:15.89] spk_1:
you gotta have your You gotta have your kindred spirits. That’s

[00:20:18.26] spk_0:
bad. Absolutely. Eso eso when we go out, let’s keep that in mind, right, Because we might have more candidates and way might have more candidates, and we could put on in any one point. We might be bringing people on in classes, and we might want this first class to include another kindred spirit or two, and we might put off other people for a year. So it’s another factor. It’s not just a factor in who to choose, but how to understand who you’re choose, right? How to understand maybe what they’re saying and where they’re coming from. And to be ableto envision how that person would interact on the board, given that person style and the style of the board to get a sense of whether the person fits in or how the person would fit in. So it it not only helps you choose but helps you understand what you’re

[00:21:20.83] spk_1:
and you may not have. As you said, you may not have the luxury of selecting from half a dozen, you know, potential board members. So at least the one person that is before you know what his or her style is. And, as you said, how they’ll how they’ll work with the rest of the board. Right? Okay, okay. And and this applies for the for the CEO to write mean CEO board chair relationship. Don’t we want to know where those were? Those two folks stand

[00:21:40.34] spk_0:
right? I mean, you’re not going to choose one based on their style, but based on their style that they’re going to have different strengths and challenges and in their in their roles as the two leaders and in terms of how they work together. Because you, if you’ve gotto generally, the CEO is reporting to the board share most regularly. If the relationships going well, they’re meeting regularly. The chair is, in a way, guiding the CEO. The CEO is guiding the chair, Um, and so if you’ve got a chair, who’s a go getter and you have a CEO who’s a mission controller, especially when you have people who are diagonal to each other on the grid? Okay, who are you might call them polar opposites. There could be a challenge working together. One wants all this detail, the others flying by the seat of their pants. Ones, you know, very sensitive to criticism. The others just throwing it out there, vice.

[00:22:50.24] spk_1:
Because because if there if there, uh, diagonal diagonal to each other, then you’ve got You’ve got an intuitive extrovert. Uh, no. An intuitive introvert working with an analytical extrovert,

[00:23:15.24] spk_0:
right? I know. As a kindred spirit, intuitive introvert, that rainmakers, thes analytic extroverts can challenge me. I can get a little anxious because they’re very assertive. And for may I read assertive sometimes to personally, they’re not doing anything wrong, right? They’re just they’re being themselves. They’re bringing certain traits to the table, and I’m reading them a certain ways of kindred spirits. So now if I know, uh, this is why we might be having that challenge. We could talk it through and and at least understand each other better, like in any relationship. Um, in any personal friend relationship, any relationship, understanding the other person helps you depersonalize what’s happening.

[00:25:34.41] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Tony is take two. I’ve got a webinar coming up It is. Start your plan. Giving in 2021. It’s a quick shot is gonna be just 50 minutes in and out. We’re gonna talk about what plan giving is how to identify your best prospects, where to start your plan giving program, how to market and promote your new program. And then I’m gonna leave plenty of time to answer your questions, which actually is my favorite and arguably the most important thing. Getting your questions answered. So there’s plenty of time for that. That’s it. Join me. It’s Thursday, November 19th, three o’clock Eastern time, which means two o’clock central, which means one o’clock mountain, which means noontime Pacific. No discrimination here by time zone. I do not discriminate against time zones. Everybody’s everybody’s. Everybody’s got a time. That’s the way it is. So, uh, quick shot. How to start your plan? Giving or start your plan giving start your plan to giving in 2021. You sign up for the webinar at planned giving accelerator dot com slash webinar. I hope you’ll be with me. That is, tony is take two. We’ve got plenty of more time for boards and asking styles You have, ah, formula. I don’t want to scare. People were math, math phobic, but very simple formula. You say teamwork plus camaraderie equals synergy. Yes, what’s behind that involved? There’s no there’s no regression analysis. You don’t have to know absolutely sine or cosine or tangent or or anything

[00:25:34.89] spk_0:
like that. Absolutely nothing. I was thinking. I was trying to think through as I was developing this book, what I wanted to say and why. And I came up with that, that that having the best board a board that really is on fire, if you will to me involved, uh, involves two things or is dependent on two things one teamwork, the ability teamwork is respecting everyone being able to hear other voices, uh, respecting decisions that come out of committee and so forth, respecting everyone sitting around the table and having an equal voice and things like that. That’s teamwork. And, um uh, Michael Davidson who? I do a lot of work with his quote in the book. He’s

[00:26:25.70] spk_1:
He’s been on the show

[00:26:26.81] spk_0:
e adore Michael and I’ve learned so much about governance from him over the last two decades. I’ve known him actually about almost 20 years because we met at Hudson Guilt. He was doing work for them, and I was working for them. Uh, and he talks about teamwork a lot because he’s a rower, as you know, and you have to be a strong team, you’re not gonna get anywhere.

[00:26:52.84] spk_1:
His company logo is is a right right,

[00:27:25.04] spk_0:
the board coach and it’s rowing and he talks about so he talks about teamwork. He talks about how you can do your job. If you don’t know what it is, you won’t do it. If you don’t think everyone else is doing it right, you have to be a team. It’s one of the reasons why I think everyone has to fundraise on the board because that’s what makes the strongest fundraising team. Not having a fundraising committee and saying over those five people are responsible for all the fundraising board is going to dio, so teamwork is very important and camaraderie. You also have to like each other not to be friends, but to you need to find it worth being in someone else’s company. And even if someone is very different from U. S. O. U. And that comes from getting to know people, not Onley sitting around the board table. But in a more familial way, it’s That’s the reason why some of these social engagements just before, after a board meeting, having board members go out to dinner together. All of that is really important. That’s why they do it in the corporate world, right? That’s why there are all these team building events. They build camaraderie, not just on the camaraderie helps the team work. But

[00:28:08.93] spk_1:
I don’t have Thio build the comrade. I don’t have to walk across hot coals barefoot

[00:29:29.74] spk_0:
E No, I wouldn’t do that either way. Okay? Yeah, No way could just have dinner together. We can have dinner together at one organization. I I had. I had board members in rotating groups of 4 to 6 go to dinner after a board meeting. So there were six board meetings during the year and twice a year each board member went out with a different group of people. So everyone got to have dinner with everyone during the year and such. It helped, Um, so when so looking at the asking styles, you can understand better how to work as a team. And you can also understand what, what types of activities would help build camaraderie? Because we’re all not going to like the same things. I, as a kindred spirit, don’t want to go to a big party with the whole board. I’d much rather go to a small dinner or just have a one on one coffee, right? If I could do that with a few board members, over time, I’m golden. I build that relationship if you send me Thio. The board president’s house to schmooze with all the other board members doesn’t work as well for me. Given my style, it doesn’t mean you don’t do it, but just a ZX with training and other things, you have to have a variety of activities to appeal to everyone. Just like you have to let people have a variety of stories to tell their own stories because everyone’s gonna go to tell the different ones. So eso building camaraderie, um, you do have to proactively work it. It part of that it overlaps both is making sure everyone has a voice right that everyone feels they are part of this group, that they’re integral to it, that people hear them see them. And so it goes back and forth, the teamwork and the Senate and the camaraderie. And that’s what gives you the synergy. So that’s how I came up with that concept. Okay? Yes. Okay.

[00:30:38.54] spk_1:
You you talk about Well, actually, before we talk about some process for meetings like making sure voices get heard, you have some concrete ideas. How about a story? Can you, uh, can you share something? In the 20 years of asking styles where you’ve seen a team, whether board or not, I mean, board would be ideal improve their outcomes because they became asking styles aware they became they were red pilled and finally e saw the saw the wisdom of asking styles.

[00:32:40.04] spk_0:
Wow, we’re going there. You? Mm. Well, I constantly hear stories. There’s someone on the website I often hear from from executive director slash CEOs who have these ah ha moments about their board chairs for sure who have these Ah ha moment about their boards, Whose then see the challenge, why their board is so challenged in some way and can address that. Who? Who realized g. I’m providing staff often say I’ve given the board all this information. I don’t know what why they why they keep asking the truth of matter is have they read it all? And if they’ve read it, have they interpreted it all and stuff? And the truth that matter is that we’re not necessarily giving every board member the information they need. So I constantly hear these ah ha moments from staff who say, Now I know what this board member needs. If I’m going to engage this board member effectively in fundraising, this is what I have to give this board member. I’m giving them the wrong information. So I hear that a lot that that has really helped. I did some work with Esperanza Academy, which is a private 100% tuition free and privately funded girl school north of Boston. Um, it might be in Lowell. I’m trying to remember where they are now. On. I worked with their head of development and then did a training herself and said it was extraordinary how how the asking styles moved her board ahead. There was a fundraising in terms of working with each other. It just took it, took them to, Ah, a whole new level. And I think I’ve always felt the beauty of the styles is that she point before you don’t have to know any big logarithms. There’s no jargon or anything. It’s very simply put, e don’t use fund these words and and all of this stuff e talk very plainly about it in the styles are very plain. I don’t try to make this scene like, uh, you know, like the you know, what is it? The theory of relativity, The theory of relativity.

[00:33:20.95] spk_1:
That’s where you get into cosign on C can’t

[00:33:23.16] spk_0:
exactly or pie or whatever Very straight

[00:33:27.13] spk_1:
first, unjust non jargon.

[00:33:29.54] spk_0:
Yeah. And so yes, so tons of ah ha moments. Um uh, respecting people to work with each other differently, working harder to make sure all voices are heard. Um uh,

[00:33:43.66] spk_1:
let’s pick up on that. Voices are heard. You have some. As I was saying, you have some concrete ideas about board meetings, making sure some folks you gotta check with them in advance, etcetera. So what? Her voices get heard at board meetings,

[00:34:04.24] spk_0:
Right? Well, I, for one, virtually never talk in a large group as a kindred spirit of mission controllers Air similar. I don’t often give my opinion in front of a large group. I don’t often ask a question. I don’t take up a lot of time in a group like that. Um, so I might have a very valid and important point that the group needs to hear that the chair wants everyone to hear. And I’m simply not going to express it in the group. And you see the people I trigger. I train all the time. You have guests all the time. You know which guests you have thio work harder, thio, or give the or wait longer to allow them to pull their thoughts together. That’s happening around the board table. And it’s happening even more so now with the video that with Zoom because everyone does tend to talk over each other. It’s hard to know when to stop. It’s harder than it was in person. Looking around the room where you feel it, you feel who’s going to talk next, Right here. You’re not sure. And then two or three people blurt out at the same time. So someone like me is going to be even less likely to participate because that blurting out and talking over someone is more awkward for me. Yeah, so

[00:35:20.44] spk_1:
you get into that rhythm where everybody stops on, then you beats and everybody talks. Everybody stops to more beats everybody, you go ahead. So then they all go ahead to beats later, right? Yeah.

[00:35:31.89] spk_0:
Dance, right. It’s a and I’m not going to do that dance. Necessarily. A lot of people won’t. So So if

[00:35:42.34] spk_1:
I promise that I won’t be, uh, talking over you, I’m just being a smart ass.

[00:35:46.35] spk_0:
Me to s o a chair. A smart chair who really wants everyone’s voice heard and taken into account needs to either reach out to those board members in advance and solicit their opinion or specifically call on them, make time for them right When I train, I look around that room and we’ll actually in advance of training. I will ask the CEO or whoever engaged me. Who should I be watching out for in one way or another who’s going to talk too much? And I’ve got to make sure that person doesn’t monopolize, are training who’s not going to talk because And regardless of what I’m told in advance, I see who’s not participating and I make sure everyone’s participating. It’s not that they don’t want to, or that they don’t have anything to say. It’s just that this is a tough venue for them. Be in a room with 25 other people and all the noise and people talking over each other. So you either have to solicited in advance or solicited in the room or solicited afterwards or send out a questionnaire, asked people by email to tell you in advance, you have to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard,

[00:37:12.83] spk_1:
and that’s a part of teamwork and camaraderie to ZX respect. Yes, yeah, that you’ve become aware. Now you’re red pilled. You know, some people are not gonna speak at the meeting or being very. It’s gonna be uncomfortable for them to do it. You have to make allowance for that. And that s so that builds up your That builds up teamwork and camaraderie. People feel respected there, literally being heard

[00:37:51.73] spk_0:
right now. Some people just, you know, talk a lot and don’t mean to cut anyone else off and want to hear the voice. And then there’s some people who just want to hear their own voice. And actually, one of the pieces of board membership is it’s not for everyone. You have to believe in teamwork. You have to believe that the team comes first. I’m not saying that the styles in any way can identify who would want to be on a team or not, because it’s much more complicated than that. But but there are challenges to group work, and those challenges impact certain styles more than others,

[00:38:12.92] spk_1:
Right? So yeah. All right, let’s talk about fundraising. How does this out of the styles impact board? Fundraising? Yes.

[00:40:53.41] spk_0:
So that we’re working on the whole decade, obviously. Uh, yes. Since they asking style started from a fundraising bend. It’s a very critical ways. The first one which we talked about earlier which is the number one way, is in terms of the story that each board member is going to tell. What is a board member going to stay in the in the most? In the simplest format, you run into someone, and the person said, Well, tell me about X y Z organization. What is it? You is a board member going to say to try to excite that person? What’s your story that is going to be impacted by your style? Whether, as we talked about it, whether it’s very goal on, strategy oriented, visionary oriented, hard oriented plan oriented? Okay, then you have Well, how is each of you going to go about this process of identifying and cultivating and maybe asking for money? And I say, maybe asking because the most important roles Board member, the most important role of board member can have in fundraising in my mind is the identifying, cultivating, thanking, recognizing piece everything but the ask. When it comes to the ask, some board members will ask on their own or with other board members. But in most organizations, you could bring the executive director and head of fundraising or someone else, to sit there in the room with you and actually say, tony, would you consider a gift of $10,000 for X y Z? Um, it’s all the other work that’s so important Thio for board members to help with. And that’s where style really matters. How are you going about going to go about cultivating as a board member? What’s comfortable for you? You have to take into account to some extent what what works for the donor? We don’t know. We usually don’t know the donor style, but if we don’t ask board members to do things they’re comfortable with, they’re going to be reticent about doing them. And they may not do them well, right? Well, I don’t want I don’t want to send my board members out out to slaughter, basically, by sending them out to do things they won’t do well and it doesn’t serve the organization well, so eso I will would think through if I have ah, big special event. My extroverted board members ago ended be better ambassadors of those events than the introverts who don’t tend to go up to people they don’t know and engage them in such. They’re going to be better at one on one effort. Uhh. Some people are going to be better at communication written communication, writing lovely emails with lots of great information in them. Some are going to be better at picking up the phone and having a quick chat on dhe. People will partner in different ways based on their styles.

[00:41:41.91] spk_1:
Time for our last break dot drives that drives engagement dot drives relationships. Dot drives is the simplest donor pipeline fundraising tool. It’s customizable, collaborative, intuitive. If you want to move the needle on your prospect and donor relationships, get the free demo for listeners is also a three month. You know that you go to the listener landing page at tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant. We’ve got but loads more time for boards and asking styles.

[00:43:06.10] spk_0:
So if I would like, um uh, I have a donor in mind and I bring something. The table is the CEO or the chief fundraiser, a za kindred spirit. I may look around to see who compliments me on the board, right? Or if I’m let’s say I someone has a relationship, OK, Soo is a go getter, and Sue has a relationship to this donor, so I want to go with Sue? Well, I’m a kindred spirit and Susan go getter and whoa! It turns out that our donor is a mission controller. So now how am I going to engage? So what is the best role for Sue? Is the go getter to play? And what might we have to watch out for? Right? How would we wanna make sure Sue doesn’t trip over herself? A za go getter going with me to see a mission controller? So it gives me a road map as the staff member, or certainly is the board members to how I could be effective, what my challenges might be. Even in the initial contact, we talked about this all the time of asking matters that from kindred spirits and mission controllers are much less likely to just pick up the phone and call someone out of the blue, even if it’s just calling to make an appointment. I don’t I never liked the phone, and I feel lucky that most of my career has been in the age of email. I will almost always email first if I know. I don’t know. Well, and I know the donor just wants me to call It is different, but most of the time we don’t know who. Uh, we don’t We don’t know people that well and I’m going to I’m going to write first by email. And if I know a board members that way, I’m not gonna push my board member to pick up the phone. I’m going to say, Do what’s comfortable for you If it’s comfortable to send an email, Do that. If you know the person well enough to send a text and the text. If calling and trying to catch that person is what works for you do that, so I help the asking styles help bring fundraising to the board member in a way that’s palatable.

[00:44:01.99] spk_1:
Got some ideas about you. Caption it. Under keeping board members committed, exposing board members to program Share your ideas there.

[00:44:57.99] spk_0:
Most board members do not experience or or view programming often enough. Board members come to organization excited by what you’re doing. They have a lot of passion. Yeah, I’m on the board now. I’m so committed. I love what you do and then end up spending almost all their time in board meetings that are mostly about procedure and budget and can be very dry the most organizations today or bringing program staff for program participants to board meetings on a regular basis. I hope everyone listening today is doing that, and so board members get some exposure the 10 or 15 minutes every two months. But that’s minimal. Board members have to C programming ideally, in person right now. That’s really hard. Maybe through zoom through video, maybe through a Q and A with various program directors and such. And again, the asking styles will impact what type of interaction will keep board members committed. So if I want to keep my mission controller board member committed, I need to keep focusing on the plans and making sure the board that board member feels good that we’re going about our work in a very methodical, systematic, well thought out way. That’s what and to share all the information about plans because the Michigan that that is the material that the Mission controller board member can absorb and appreciate. I’m not gonna do that for the go getter. The go getter isn’t gonna look at those plans, right? The go getter is gonna wanna have a telephone call with the program director with a or Or meet lots of participants and engage those participants and maybe participate in programs, whereas some people might feel it a little awkward to do that, the go getter will jump right in. So for my go get a board member, I might do that for my rainmaker. You know, a ZX. You can see the same themes keep coming up with this idea of strategy, vision, heart and plan strategy, vision hardened plan. So you got it. You have to bring that to each board member and then bring that into the It’s the meeting.

[00:46:43.30] spk_1:
I would rather you say the heart first. Uh, that’s the kindred spirits. I’ll fix it in post production. I’ll move.

[00:46:55.26] spk_0:
You do that. You do that. The only way I can always keep everything straight is to always go go clockwise. Yeah, no matter what I do, I’m always saying Rainmaker, go Gator. Kindred spirit, Mission Control and using my hands to remind me now that everything is vision is Elektronik. I’ve actually the vision. The image is reversed on the screen. And now that ever you could see my hands, I’ve had to learn like yoga, teachers and others. Yes, you gotta be. Oh, right. Yeah, exactly. So it’s a new skill I’ve learned the last seven months

[00:47:23.99] spk_1:
you’ve got. You’ve got the benefit of no video here. Yeah,

[00:47:26.58] spk_0:
exactly. Like my hands doing anything.

[00:47:34.08] spk_1:
Audio podcast. Yes. Mm. Alright, What else? What else do you wanna? You wanna talk about that? We haven’t talked about around asking styles in the board

[00:47:39.82] spk_0:
asking styles. And

[00:47:41.33] spk_1:
you wrote a whole book, for God’s sake.

[00:47:42.97] spk_0:
Yeah, I can imagine

[00:47:43.91] spk_1:
more. There’s more than what I asked you what

[00:47:48.45] spk_0:
it is, though, you know, though, I don’t want to scare people off either. And as you know, tony, it’s not a big book, and it’s purposely not a big look. It’s actually only 16,000 words. If people know anything about books, it’s only 100 pages because there are lots of beautiful full color photos and graphs and things like that. It’s a book you can read in a two sitting,

[00:48:06.04] spk_1:
which I appreciate. I like all the photos, something the pictures I sometimes have authors on. I’ll say, you know, there’s no pictures or there’s not enough

[00:48:13.77] spk_0:
well in my books. The only book in full color. I want to say that cause I’m really proud of it. It costs a lot more to make it, but, uh, but the styles Aaron color right? The graphics are so so. It’s actually very pleasurable book. And the reason for that It’s really important for every board member to read it right.

[00:48:29.73] spk_1:
Easy read. Do it over a weekend easily. You could do it in a day if you had to, but yes, so we hope

[00:48:52.16] spk_0:
to say, you know, today we covered a lot of the major points in it, about about recruiting, camaraderie, teamwork, telling her story, leadership and such. Those are the major piece in the book. The one thing I’ll say is that you’re pushing the book, I guess, is that it has a bunch of exercises and questions to ask yourself is Well, and the important thing is not is not to believe that G if I if I’m going to address the challenges on my board, it’s got to be some big project I need to bring in a consultant or boy, this is gonna be a lot of hard work. There are lots of small steps you can take.

[00:49:15.92] spk_1:
Yes, you finished the book with the next steps?

[00:50:03.86] spk_0:
Yes and yes. And all along the way there are some exercises the next time you have zoomed called do a breakout room and just ask. People spend five minutes saying, Okay, my style is this. What does that mean for how I work with you or something? You’re going to build teamwork and camaraderie. And so I want people to take away that that make improvements toe how your board operates, which is so vital to how your organization gets through this and thrives in the future. Uh, does not have to be a big, overwhelming project through the asking styles and lots of other means. You can take small steps and get there. The

[00:50:08.46] spk_1:
book is a pleasure. It’s a pleasurable pleasure to read. It’s an easy read. You want to know your style. You goto asking matters dot com. Do the three minute survey. Send your board members as a little fun exercise chat about it. That’s you know, that could be a next step, but

[00:50:18.71] spk_0:
absolutely that

[00:50:24.46] spk_1:
a whole chapter of next steps and, like you said questions throughout. Okay, Brian Saber, Thank you very much. Uh, have you. Actually, Absolutely. So the book. Get the book. There is more depth. There is more depth in those 16,000 words than than a lackluster host can cover with, even with an exemplary guest. Eso. The book is boards and asking styles. A roadmap to success matters that asking matters dot com and Brian is at Brian Saber and Brian. Thank you again. Real pleasure. Thank

[00:50:52.97] spk_0:
you. Don’t have a great day. Good luck to everyone.

[00:51:31.56] spk_1:
Thank you Next week next week. I got it here right next week is Oh yes, next week is low cost fundraising software and what’s really happening with non profit revenue. If you missed any part of today’s show, I beseech you, find it on tony-martignetti dot com. Responsive by turn to communications, PR and content for nonprofits, your story is their mission. Turn hyphen two dot c o and by dot drives, raise more money, changed more lives tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant for a free demo and a free month for listeners. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff shows Social Media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our Web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty, you with me next week for non profit radio big non profit ideas for the other 95%. Remember, it’s your favorite abdominal podcast. Go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for November 16, 2018: Asking Styles

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Brian Saber: Asking Styles
In fundraising solicitations, one size does not fit all. There are different styles and personalities. Brian Saber sorts them out to make you a comfortable, confident and effective fundraiser, based on what you bring to the process. He’s the author of the book, “Asking Styles.”

 

 

 

 

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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, feels so good to be back in the studio after six seven weeks away and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure buba analgesia if you paint me with the idea that you missed today’s show asking styles in fund-raising solicitations, one size does not fit all. There were different styles and personalities. Brian sabers sorts them out to make you a comfortable, confident and effective fundraiser based on what you bring to the process. He’s the author of the book asking styles i’m tony. Take to my farewell. We’re sponsored by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dahna slash pursuant by wagner. Sepa is guiding you beyond the numbers. Regular cps dot com by tell us turning credit card processing into your passive revenue stream. Tony dahna slash tony tell us on by text to give mobile donations made easy text. Npr to four four four nine nine nine what a pleasure to welcome brian sabre to the studio he has personally solicited thousands of donors as a director of development executive director and consultant over thirty years. Working with non-profits, he needs training programs and speaks nationally about asking styles to help people understand and embrace their unique strengths. As fundraisers. You’ll find him at asking matters dot com and he’s at brian saber. He’s a kindred spirit. We’re going to find out what that’s all about. His book is asking styles revolutionize your fund-raising. And i’m so glad to welcome him. Brian. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you, tony, for having onto the studio my pleasure. A little closer to the mike, the internet. Intimate with that thing. Okay. All right. Now, back in two thousand eleven, almost almost to the day was the november of two thousand eleven. Seven years ago, i had andrea kill stayed on. We talked about asking stiles. Um what? What? What’s happened? What’s evolved since then? Seven. In these seven years. Seven years? A lot. When andrea was on in twenty eleven, we had been quote live for about a year and meaning the asking matters site had been up and we had been promoting the asking styles. And so now we’ve had another seven years to delve into all of this material and what the first thing that changed probably about twenty thirteen, i think, is we change the results a little bit. So you might recall from twenty eleven tony that there were something like thirteen results, you could be one style. You could be two styles. You could be three adjacent styles, or you could be all four. And one of the things we found was that it wasn’t giving the staff and volunteers enough direction in terms of what to do, we found that too scattered, too scattered to say you’re all four or guo your these three didn’t give people a framework or a roadmap forward. And so we we actually tinkered with the assessment, and we narrowed it down to eight results. So everyone has a primary style and a secondary style. Okay, so the primary style is really what you lied from in the secondary gives you a sense of which of these two characteristics on the asking style graph is your dominant characteristic, whether it’s your introversion or extra version or your analytic or your intuitive side. And so having that as a guide gives people more to go on, right? So they’re still not locked into a narrow. Did you narrow your focus is that you focus it without saying you’re in this box or you’re in that box. We wanted people to have a little leeway there, because sometimes when you tell people this is exactly what you are, they say, no, that’s not what i am. And we didn’t want that right now. Andrea is no longer with asking styles and asking matters. Well, yes and no. We are no longer partners. I bought her out in twenty thirteen, but she is now. You bought her out. This was not a force. Was this jeff sessions? A kind of buyout? Are you trump out of session? In fact, andrea, i’m your request. I give my resignation and by and let you buy me out cause i get her on the phone. Yeah, i get it. I’ll get to that available. Did she say she’d be waiting by the phone today? Now she’s actually booked, but but all i did inquire are i know no, it’s graphic. She killing to me and said, i know what i think you should take it over. Andrea is one of the foremost creators of incredibly creative, sorry to use that twice ideas and products. She has brought so much terror field and she loves developing new stuff and constantly is doing so. She has endless undertaken to do it. But she said, you know what brian and andrea not go get? She’s a go getter, right? Talk about all the things we’re gonna talk about. All these right? Kindred spirit. Go get it and show you she’s gone. She’s gone and she is no getting rid of years older than me not to say anything to you what a chunk of your mother she is. And she said, you know what, brian? You can run with this for a long time. I’m not going to want to run this business for a long time. I like creating the ideas. I’ve got places to go. Exactly. And she has. She’s created more new things. It’s incredible. So and it actually inmate sent. So yes. So i took it over. And and but andrea is one of the four experts at asking matters. So she is actually still providing content, doing webinars on dh and such. I have a couple of people who have particular expertise is entree is one of them. So we’re still involved ethan and dear friends, ok, yes, i know. I do know, you never ask a question. You don’t know the answer. But now i do that all the time. Lots of questions, i don’t know answers to, um all right, so we’re going to get to all these, uh, all these different personalities, all these different asking styles, all the different styles, but we got a lead into it. So what a premise of the book is that there is no ideal way toe ass. And we’re talking about fund-raising solicitations. They asked the solicitation, that’s what prism. Everybody knows that. But make it explicit. But there’s no one way to do it. There’s no ideal way everybody brings something different we’re going to capitalize on. There’s no set way. That’s the best. There are best practices in the field. Yeah, but so much of it is about personality and relationships, and that means every one of those is going to be different, and you need to bring your true self and you. And that’s another theme throughout the book, all right. Authenticity and want us to be authentic. In our ask absolutely every step of the way. Because otherwise you can’t form a true relationship of the donor. And if you don’t do that, then the gifts they’re just transactional what we want his donors who really care and believe and want to be involved for the long haul. And that’s only gonna happen if they believe they’re having an authentic relationship with with the fundraiser in the organization. And can’t they tell us they tell him? Absolutely, mister, um is corporate, and it’s not your true self right talking to them, i say all the time. If you if you give your board an elevator pitch and expect them all to go out and give that same exact pitch, unless some of them are amazing actors, almost all of them will sound phony, right? You want everyone to talk from his zoho nick’s own experience in his or her own words. And why is this better done in person than any other method? When we’re in person, a level of empathy develops between us that just doesn’t develop some other way. When we’re sitting across from each other and looking in each other’s eyes, we care more about each other. We’re more vested. We want to come through for the other person. So there’s this bond that you just don’t get when you get a letter in the mail or an email or even a phone call. Because that voice khun b disembodied the reason i prefer to have guests in studio that, you know, body language is another one inflexion, you know, so special, you know, like i’m giving you the finger right now. So you know that, you know that it’s not going well. Okay, so we wait. We take a first break. Very good. That’s the figure i’m giving you. This is the one i didn’t say that. Did i say middle fingers that i say hold it. Maybe i’ll forget it. All right. I’m going up. The index finger pursuing they’re e book is fast non-profit growth stealing from the start ups. They take the secrets from the fastest growing startups and applied those startup growth strategies to your non-profit. It’s free as all their resources are. You’re accustomed to that? It’s on the listener landing page. You know where the listener landing pages? You’ve heard me say it repeatedly. Repeatedly. It’s tony dot m a slash pursuant. Remember the capital p for please. Now back to asking styles. All right. S o much better done in person. All the reasons that i prefer to have guests in studio. I mean, i’m happy to have call, but i’m very glad that you were able to make it in from moline, illinois. Att for am or so what demanded it for am work airport? Because we have this huge storm. Yesterday, it was crazy. And i was lucky to get in because when i landed at newark, there were thousands of people sleeping on the floor i couldn’t believe it was doing here. And people still trying to get onto planes at three. Fifteen. And then when we came through chicago, i did, which was its own madness. Yeah. Ok, that’s not a good way. Okay, so, midway, i mean oh, here must have been a madhouse. Also, it wass everything was a madhouse. Yes, everything fell apart. Transportation was yesterday not surprising. I’m glad you made it. Thank you. Checked in to do it by phone, but i considered renting a car. If i couldn’t get out and driving from davenport, iowa, it was it was fourteen hours, and it turns out i would have gotten home about the same time. Really, you could’ve made it a job if you could have got if you couldn’t write. So asking in person is better. But it’s hard. Yes, it is. It is. It is hard. Just feel better about why it’s worth the difficulty that we’re putting in. No one makes their biggest gift by direct mail by phone accufund by special events. If you want someone’s biggest gift, you have to develop a relationship with them. Over time, no one gives their biggest gift right off the bat. It usually comes over time as they get closer to the organization, as they understand the organization better. And and especially in this day and age where i think we’re starved for in person, right, so much is happening electronically. It makes the in person even more special. But it’s virtually none of those names you see at the top of the donor roster or on a building or a room. None of those gifts came from a phone, a thon or direct mail appeal. They came from building these relationships, so and eighty seven percent of all charitable gifts come from individuals, so almost told to give a compliment of it. You include family foundation’s yes, family foundations in there, as well as the individual gifts and the bequests there. And those total up the eighty seven percent. Wow, you did your homework. I read this book, i think. Very good. I’m disappointed that you’re impressed. That here is shocked. I’m disappointed that you’re surprised that she always put together, for god’s sake, i’ve been at the studio for six weeks. Of course, lycan youth rallied for one show. Excellent. It’s all downhill from here for next two months so well and and your subscription on itunes going going down after this week? Yes. So eighty seven percent of all the gifts come from individuals, and the biggest gifts come from asking in person. So if you want to fulfill the vision of your organization, if you want to have the biggest impact your organization can have, you have to go out. But ask individuals in person. But there’s a risk of you might take personal when there’s a rejection. You know how important it is to the organization or you over you over perceive how important it is. It’s life or death. You know, there’s a lot of personal risk in doing it. Face-to-face there certainly is, and depending on our style, more risk than not. Yeah, and i know we’re going to get into that in in a bit. I will share. And i i share with everyone. People think because i have been in thousands of meetings and i’ve raised tons of money and all my organizations have been very successful with the results that i am this stereotype of a fund raiser that i’m something most people can’t be, that i’m slick and confident, and i get in those meetings and i ask for big gifts. And if people push back, i push back. And i i don’t take rejection personally in all of this stuff and and there are might be a few people like that in the field. But i’m not like that. I’ve had all my own issues to grapple with all these years, and i like most people fund-raising not because we think fund-raising is the most exciting, wonderful thing we could ever do in our lives. But because it makes a difference, none of us grow up saying i want to be a fundraiser. I i asked this question every time i train, virtually no one raises their hand. We we we get the bug for doing something good in the world. We care about the arts, education, religion, a medical cause, whatever it is. And then we’re not a doctor or a musician or whatever, but we realize there’s a way that we can help. And that’s by fund-raising, too, so that our organizations have the resource and help musicians and doctors exactly. And social services, social workers. So we most of us come to it in a circuitous fashion. Not because we have some stereotypical skill set that people think of fundraiser has tohave. What we really need to have is the ability to form a relationship which almost all of us do have right. There are some people who’d rather antisocial let’s go about it at different in different ways. Exactly. Think pacers ways different levels of anxiety, etcetera. All right, let’s get i want just one more point. That is that after thousands of solicitations, i still confined it daunting. I can still be anxious. I can still fun for in a meeting and i still take rejection personally, even though i know i’m not supposed to thank you for opening up. I admire that. Thank you. Alright, let’s get into the styles. Now there are two acts. Do you know the plural of access? Because you worked at a c actually. Exactly right. Axes. Now axes. X s has the distinction of being the on ly word in the english language. That is a plural. For three words is the plural for acts a x axe axe e and it’s also the plural for access. Ex maxis, according to read its bona fide. I read it online. So it has to be true. It must be true. Must be true. All right, so let’s get to the axes. All right, listeners, i’m encouraging you, teo. I mean, you could you can go to asking matters dot com and isn’t there? Isn’t the chart there you’ll see? Right? You’ll see the chart. Okay. Don’t go asking matters dot com. You’d go there. But if you if your podcast listening with the vast majority do, uh, just you need a pencil on paper? It helps. It helps. I mean, you can try to visualize it if you insist, but it helps to have a piss peple a piece paper and pencil draw. Draw a vertical drop vertical axis and what we put on the vertical axis we put you. Look, don’t you guys to look? He’s looking at my teaching e. I wrote the book is look at my sheet people less. Well, where you bonem five. Well, where’s andrea? Didn’t you get her in? Get her bath started here. I think you made it. I think you made a blood thing is a big opportunity to buy you out. It’s funny. I was listening to her podcast and she was so articulate about how you lay this out when i need her to come here today and say that i was safe. She is our first date, so you have to drop both axes. Okay. Did you need the x and a y? Ay, right. One’s vertical once horizontal when they intersect. And they do the middle in the middle. Middle. Not like i wouldn’t make a bar chart from the origin that’s called the origins and mental virgin, so above ha sergeant must sign ok on on that y axis is in is extra version and blow the x axis. Is the introvert okay? That’s the vertical estonian. Why access and accept. Right? But, yes, the vertical line has introvert on top and no extra vert extra proton from atop an introvert. You right on the bottom, karaca. And they have the look you’re not okay. And on the horizontal, i’m a visual learner. I think it’s a link in my own material. Looking my own book. Damegreene goodcompany i didn’t bring your book. My copy. Your book. I guess that was a mistake for you. I have one. Okay. If i have to take it out and then on the x axis landing to the left and right of the vertical line, you have thie, analytic and the intuitive. So analytical is on the left. Correct and intuitive goes on the run. Right. Okay. Can i have your two lines and your four words? Right? You do? Okay. S so we know that you were in a couple of spectrum’s now. So which is which? Is this the style that you like that you seem to always start with? Go get her. You seem to know a mission control’s sorry. No, no, no. I’m sorry, rainmaker. I go from top left and i go claim make right, you stop. Rain, right. Go get our kindred spirit control. So in the tommy off here, tony top lefty, i wish you we gotta get gets to know their material. I’m in diamond barrister. You never know. I live in breach of it every single day. No, we wouldn’t. We wouldn’t. Quite right about that. Thank you. Ah, andrea was articulate. E missed that sometime we’ll have parents, so in the upper left, you right, rainmaker, correct on then in the upper right, you write go gets the go getter, correct. And then in the lower right, you write kindred spirit. Yes, you do. That’s you. That is me and you. We think we’ll come back to that. We’ll come back to that. I have an announcement about that. Okay. And in the lower left, your writing mission controller. Correct. Mission controller. Ok, um what is it? Just give us the overview of these. These four, like sure. How do they relate to each other before we get into the individuals? And how do they relate? How are they different? How are they different? Yeah, well, the key difference. The easiest way to think of the difference is through the core question. Each of these styles asks very good when trying to figure out what’s important to me. What’s going to drive me? The rainmaker top left, the analytic extroverted says. What’s the goal? It’s very quantitative. It’s something you can calculate. You know, when you’ve reached it, i’m going to raise a million dollars. I’m going to close ten gifts. I’m going to do glorious golden lorien. Did the ring make goal oriented? Top right? Go get her, go get her asks. What’s the opportunity? Like the rainmaker, the go getter is looking in the future. But the the go getter is looking more globally, less specifically. What is the vision? What is possible? Reduce poverty in right moline, illinois. This khun b so excellently provoc eliminate poverty, eliminate hunger, save the whales. It’s that type of looking vision for the future picture opportunity wise, right? The kindred spirit bottom, right? The intuitive introvert is saying, what moves my heart? What am i feeling? Because the kindred spirits decisions are all personal, they come from the heart and what they’re feeling inside and the mission controller says, and that’s the bottom left. The analytic introvert says, well, what’s the plan, guys? Because it’s okay to have goals and opportunities and a vision and to feel something. But if we don’t have a plan, we’re not going to get there. It needs to make sense. You need to see how you’re going to get from a to b. This is your detail person. Mission controller. What’s our plan for getting as you just said. Okay. Okay. I love that. All right, um, so let’s talk about then. Let’s let’s make it a little personal before we get into the more abstract, you know, planning your your asks, etcetera, etcetera. Dahna. So you’re you’re you’re an avowed kindred spirit. Yes, i now what’s your secondary mission controller? Mission controller. Ok, you went the other way for me. Okay. Okay. Ah, so so it’s a little more, in essence, that’s you since your kindred spirit. And we would you share that dahna say a little more about the kindred spirit. What? Sure. What do you love about it? And what? What? What makes it a challenge for you? Well, i what i love about it well, i’m embracing myself for who i am. Hard right? We all should embrace ourselves for who we are. I think developed developing this stiles has allowed me to embrace myself and be comfortable with who i am is a fundraiser and a person, and to say, you know what? I am feelings oriented. I take things very personally. I have a big heart. I want to help everyone. I want everyone to feel good. I want to be heard. I want to be seen. All of that is very important to me, those relationships and those feelings and on, and that’s what i lead with. And when i developed relationships with donors, they’re very much based on that there, very personal, and they’re very warm. And that’s that has been my avenue to success over the years as much as anything. Building those relationships very personally. Having a mission controller secondary, however, even helpful talking about the one what you have to overcome as way. We have to need to overcome his kindred spirit. What are our challenges? Well, no one loves rejection, and we do face a fair amount of it in fund-raising, or at least the there’s that fear that it will happen. And for kindred spirits, it’s personal, right for others. Okay, i got rejected, but it was about the donor or it was about the system or they didn’t believe in the vision or whatever. When we put ourselves out there and someone and we really believe we do it because we believe our heart is in it and then someone doesn’t want to support it doesn’t agree. It’s very hard for us. Did we do something wrong? That’s so upsetting? They don’t they don’t want to support what i believe in, and i believe in it so much. How can they not believe in it? It’s it. And i was telling this, ah, this room of fundraisers yesterday in davenport, iowa, that no, that yeah, i’m never going to get that past that you’re never going to get past that feeling, right, and you just have to you just have to embrace it. And no matter how hard i try not to make things personal, they are personal. So i have to just say their personal. What can you do that they’re going to be personal? Said earlier. Even though you know that’s not the way to feel about it, right? It still happens, right? And hopefully, just by knowing it. And some would say under overstaffed ing it being ableto look outside myself and say, okay, i can see you’re that way except it and we’ll figure out howto work with that, that it’s much better tham thinking i’m lesser because i take yeah, don’t write not lesser, just it’s fact based. We were not making judgment value judgments here. But you know, there are value judgments in society about that, and i do think kindred spirits are often judged. Introverts are judged to be inferior to extroverts, though there’s so much talk about this recently, and susan kane has this amazing book on it on the power of the introvert rights called quiets. A fantastic book. Quiet, quiet! Yes, the power of the introvert. I think it’s in a world that can’t stop, can’t stop talking something like that. But in fact, introverts or not is highly regarded, right. And i don’t think intuitive czar as highly regarded as is analytics, which is why everyone keeps thinking of the rainmaker, the analytic, extroverted, as something special and better. I think there is a bias in some ways towards and away from various people of different personalities. But we don’t have to take that bias to ourselves. We’re the person we don’t have to well, judge ourselves. Correct. Based on what society probably is judging, we have to block out the noise and believe in ourselves. Let’s move over to the left and you’re the your secondary style is the mission controller. That’s ah s o. That’s the plan that you’re the planner? Yes. How do we get there? So it’s funny. I details. I make lots of lists, and i always think they need to be better organized. And i’m always taking pieces of paper and trying to put them together and make cleaner lists. But i do have lists, and a lot of people don’t have those lists you have. Do you keep a list of all the lists that you have? More or less your deep into? You sure. You sure? Mission control. Your secondary secondary is definitely secondary. It is myself. Yes, but when people need someone to plan something, they often asked me to do it. I end up in charge. I don’t really want to be in charge. The kindred spirit doesn’t want to be in charge, but i know i can do what i have those skills and people need me to do it, and i want to come through for them. So i do it. But i’d be very happy if someone else would do it. What do you need to overcome as the mission controller? One of the challenges for for that? Well, the big challenge is giving up control, being able to go with the flow and not being thrown off when things veer off course, which can often happen in a meeting with a donor, you go in your you’ve got everything planned out. You’ve done your research, you’re going to hit these topics. You’re going to ask the turn to these questions and five minutes in, they take the conversation in a different direction. There could be a curveball or they ask a question you weren’t considering or you find out they have less time than you thought they had or whatever it is. And for the mission controller who’s planned everything out so carefully and meticulously, it’s difficult to tack in another direction. A lot of what you said about, uh, the relationship building and and the personal solicitation comes through in the work i do in planned e-giving. I mean, if those relationships aren’t so, if the donor relationships aren’t solid through the years, then there isn’t going to be a gift in their estate plan. Or there were times that land if you’re if you’re purely transactional in all in all respects, as people are giving to you through the years, and i don’t care whether it’s fifteen dollars a month or five thousand dollars a month or so are five hundred five hundred thousand dollar gift. If you’re treating it as a transaction through the years, then the likelihood of a plan to give being successful plan give scylla station big. Successful is much, much lower. Absolutely plan gifts do sometimes come by non personal asks. I’ve closed lots of charitable gift annuities all through email, so stations and mail and phone calls. But that’s where the relationship was rock solid, exact and the person was never treated transactional, e or if they were, it was rectified and they felt like they had a relationship. It was relational with with the charity. So that’s the big spectrum of, you know, from your monthly sustainers through toe plan gift. The ultimate, the ultimate gift hyre. So i was seven years ago. I was, ah, kindred spirit and a mission. A mission controller. Yes, seven years. November two thousand seven. I took the assessment on, but you gotta go to just take the assessment, asking matters dot com. It was thirty thirty. Questions. Yes, thirty very simple questions like eight eight eight ten words per question. Mean brief questions. Yes, no boom. It only takes a few minutes asking matters dot com not asking styles dot coms don’t go asking style dot com. That’s a point site. No, i don’t know what’s there, but actually that will do. Redirected our site to oh, good. So you do own asking sound. I thought, all right, all right, but just go directly. Sure we do. So you don’t have to go through pornhub goto asking matters dot com. Take the assessment. Thirty questions. It’s really fun, even if you’re not a fundraiser if you’re not a fundraiser. But but i have said in that interview with andrea that i aspired to be a kindred spirit and go get her so i was disappointed in my outcome. Come on. I want to be now taking it very recently this morning i wanted i wanted to be. I wanted the results to be fresh. Um, i’m still a kindred spirit primary, but now i’m a secondary go getter. You are. I evolved or i just answered the questions to the desired outcome. No, but i didn’t do that way. No, i did it honestly. So i have evolved. So we just have, like, thirty seconds before a break. But you can evolve, right? You know, i didn’t know you knew. Didn’t you answer the question differently because she just thought about it a bit differently today than you did seven years. We don’t evolve. No. We learn how to live in the world. On we learn we learn how to embrace our strengths and deal with their challenges. But we are who we are. I think we’re wired a certain way, but we weigh, manage our lives. We manage all sorts of relationships with all sorts of people. And and and certain skills are become more important in certain parts. And in our lives, we take leadership roles. And so we we need teo, focus on the differences of skills. And so we’re using different parts of our toolbox. But we are still who we are, right? Maybe i pulled the top. Maybe i pulled the top shelf off the toolbox. It’s dangerous for me to make two references on, because the first time i used a phillips head screwdriver, i had to go to the emergency room like, all right, we got to take another break. Regular cps. Are you not satisfied with your cpa firm? They’re not paying enough attention to you. Are you thinking about a change in twenty nineteen? Look at wagner. Check them out. You know where to go. Wagner cps dot com. You’ve heard that. Then talk to you. Coach tomb. Their partner. He’s been a guest twice. I trust him. He will be honest about whether wagner can help you. You gotta weinger cpas dot com now time to tony’s. Take two. I need to say farewell to our affiliates. This is the last show for our affiliate stations throughout the country. The affiliate family just hasn’t grown. The affiliate stations are not procreating, if you will, at the rate that i need to make the investment of time and money worthwhile. In that program, i’m enormously grateful to the affiliate stations and listeners that we have. Thank you. Thank you for being with us stations and listeners. I thank you. I just wish you had more siblings. I needed you to procreate more. I tried to get more siblings, but it takes a lot of time. And they’re just not it’s not coming through. So for our affiliate listeners, of course not. Proper media is always with you. Always available to you. Um, on itunes on google podcasts on stitcher andi. Lots of smaller wraps that you probably have never heard of. So we’re still with you. We’re still available to you. Stay with us. You don’t have to leave. I don’t want you to. I just need you to listen differently. And i’m going to do the men of the affiliate affections first, because i i do have affection for our affiliate listeners and stations. And i regret that this has to be the last show. But affections to our affiliate station family and to our affiliate listeners. Thank you, live listener love. It’s got to go out. It goes out to jacksonville, florida lake worth, florida russia were going abroad how that happened so fast. Ok, well, we’ll do. We’ll do. We’ll combine it all, um, delhi, delhi, india, russia. We can’t see your city, but live. Listen, love goes out to the coast to the whole country. Why not? Um, it’s leadership that a little concerned about. But to the people the life goes out. The love goes out another tampa, florida we got tampa lakeworth and jacksonville. Wallington, new jersey, new york, new york, new bern, new bern, north carolina live love out to new bern, korea. Can’t see your city gets anything. Cities, korea, netherlands live! Love goes out doesn’t matter. And seattle, washington and connecticut live love to each of our listeners. Thank you for being with us and the podcast pleasantries toe are over thirteen thousand listeners podcast each and every week. I’m telling you, it makes it so much easier to get good guests like andrea kill state. I mean, like brian saber, when i can tell them that there are thirteen thousand listeners. Alright, people put up with this. I wouldn’t i would walk out. I’d walk out. I’m getting my amusement for the day when they know that there are over thirteen thousand listeners each week. It helps with sponsorship too. So i thank you. The pleasantries to our podcast listeners. I thank you for being with us. All right, all right. So i learned a lesson. We’re not evolving. You were pretty much pretty much born into born into our asking styles quadrant and and that’s it. And we just apply different skills as needed, right? We’ll have a least a little bit of all of thes, and we call on it when we need it. We do it right, right. It’s not as if the rainmaker can’t be carrying insensitive and the kindred spirit can’t be strategic and goal oriented. It’s a matter of what we lead with, right? What? What’s court of us that dictates the styles. But there’s a bit of all of this and all of us. Let’s apply this to our donors, because where we know that we now have a style. And if we don’t know what, we’re going to go toe asking matters dot com and find out what it is. And then we’ll get the book to asking stiles. Just get the book. You could find the book asking matters dot com and then, oh, so but our donors have styles absolute. So if, if our donor happens to be in the same of the same style is us or at least on the same end of one of the axes you know next to, because the next twos they tend to work well with each other, don’t they? The next, the next two’s work well, and the well, they can tell you have a certain commonality. Commonality. I think the analytic intuitive pieces is particularly important, their meaning. If you’re an analytic, a rain maker or a mission controller and your donor is a a rainmaker or mission controller, you’re talking more of the same language. And if you’re both intuitive, sze go getters or kindred spirits, you’re talking the same language. Right, or whether it’s facts and figures or it’s a heartfelt story. There’s just there’s a bit of commonality there, and to me, that’s actually the mohr important parallel than the extra version introversion. Ok, right, ok, i think an introvert extrovert can establish a rhythm. Each has to watch out for the other. The extroverts has to slow down a little bit. Thie introvert may have to speed up a little bit in there in his air, thinking and speaking, but they they evolved a rhythm, and we’re used to doing that in society. I think the analytic into it is intuitive is a bit different, though, where i think we tend to associate with people who think like us right, whether where facts and figures, people’s people and we’re looking at outcomes, measurements and things, or where sharing heartfelt stories. So all right, so let’s start. Let’s apply this to our donors now, because if we can figure out where they are, if not if not a style than certainly what end of maybe maybe what end of different the two different axes on ly word in the english language? And as is the plural for three for three cingular’s. Then we can anticipate what they’re questions might be, what their objections might be, how they’re thinking about what we’re talking about. So how can we give us some strategies figuring this out for donors that where you have a relationship with now or someone were thinking we’re going to be soliciting? Well, we would have a relationship. Now, how can we apply? This? Could be suss this out. So there are a number of ways to figure this out. If you don’t know a donor well, and you’re going to set out to meet with this donor. You asking events, would you like me to send you any materials? Is there anything you’d like to know about before we meet and the analytics in particular? The mission controllers are going to be the most like. Please say yes. I’d love some material. Mission controllers will review as much material as you give them. They wanted to know all the facts and figures the rainmakers, the more strategic ones. But the mission controllers, everything you give them go getters are go. Getters of the most likely say, i just come talk to me now. That’s ok. Just come talk to me. We’ll figure it out so somewhat. Based on the material, whether people asked for material or not now much they asked for it. You can figure it out. Okay. God, you can figure it out. By which of your donors go to your special events o r. Or at least have a good time when they go. You hate events. Hate events. Yes. I hate gatherings of more than about six people actually. Which which is very funny, since i spend most of my life now doing workshops. First, i had two hundred people in this room sitting in the studio right now which would give a seventh in here to make you want that i’d have to leave, and then you could bring entree. And because she really likes these big total, not that’s why you’re here. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Ah, close. But it’s but it’s ironic. People would not expect that. But you’re very open about it in the book. Yes, i avoid events at all. Counterintuitive. I should say it is because i have learned to adapt. Right? I regardless of what you may think of the moment, people generally think i’m articulate and and i, i come off with a certain amount of presence and such, and i’ve learned how to do that to operate in the world. But it’s not my comfort zone, right? I mean, i was speaking to this room of people. Yesterday was not my comfort zone. Did i like the fact that i was sharing information that i thought was helpful to them? I like teaching. I like helping people be better. But i had no desire to be in front of that room or even in the room. And as a matter of fact, as soon as all the speeches were done, people hung around in the room to schmooze a network, and i made a beeline for the door. Even though i was the keynote speaker, i actually i must say i went out into the hallway because i had i have had enough. Can you share a start? My voices crack you fourteen, fourteen years old. Can you share a story when dahna thinking about a donors style helped you buy-in ah, solicitation. Anything coming to mine and put in the apse? No, i know immediately. I can think of a very significant donor at hudson guilt, one of the old settlement houses here in new york city, where i worked for many years and everything for her was about the children in the daycare and kindergarten programs, and for her it was about being in the classroom and hearing these stories about the kids. Even though she had a finance background, she never once asked about outcomes measurements. It didn’t matter how many kids exactly were being served what our goals were. She knew these kids were there, that their lives were being impacted. And and so it was all about sharing those stories and getting her into the kindergarten and the head start center clear as day. So that’s that’s an example. Yeah. All right, we gotta take a break. Tell us for pete’s sake, think of the companies. You can refer and ask them. Will they switch their credit card processing to tell us so that you can claim your long stream of passive revenue? Month after month, it’s coming to you. Fifty percent of the processing fees tello’s earns go to you every month. Start with the video at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us, then get asking the companies. Now back to brian saber and asking styles. Uh, our listeners like stories. That’s why i put you on the spot for our first story. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, this has great application that when you’ve done these thousands of sea pulsations when when? In the course of your thousands did you and andrea start start this work? Unfortunately towards the end couple weeks ago? Yeah. No, no, no. It was from two thousand ten, and so right. Well, i had i had been a fundraiser my entire career. So at the point andre and i met, that was more than twenty five years. I’ve gone through a number of campaigns, and i was always the frontline fundraiser. The person who cultivated and solicited major gifts in person who worked with the board. I did the work that had to be done. I never actually wanted to do it per se. I did it because i wanted to make a difference right now. So i did tons of that work forever. Now, since starting asking matters, i have worked on campaigns. There’s a an organization very dear to me in chicago called northwestern settlement house. It’s a it is a settlement, just like hudson guild in new york. I’m a massive fan of that model of cradle to grave service, and i’ve done a number of campaigns with them. Ron, who i talk about in the book and who even talks about his experience in the book. Ron, matt, man anderson and a shine. Yes, amanda shaw. Yeah, he’s a twenty five year buddy of mine. You guys get a lot of asks together partners, we believe i’ve been in a thousand meetings together in all this time. So the good news is the last big chunk of them came after we started this because the settlement finished a campaign now, probably about two years ago, and ron and i again were really the leads to listeners. They’re so we spent a lot of time together asking for gifts, cultivating toners and asking them. And i could see us through this prism of the asking styles, and it was really enlightening. It was enlightening because ron is a go getter. So it became so much clearer as to what he was bringing to the table what i was and the fact that we’re both intuitive and neither one of us was a leading with the analytic peace, even with our analytic donors. And you know what? That was fine. So we didn’t change anything. We did. But we embraced what we did more fully once we had this. This asking styles rupert to deal with were teasing the idea of partnering. And i’m goingto tell listeners that for insiders, brian and i are going to talk about partnering. So if you want to be a non-profit. Radio insider, go to tony martignetti dot com, get the insider alerts, then you’ll have access to the that the insider content. And in this for this interview, it’s going to be about partnering with a ko solicitor, basically, ah, and and using the styles, of course. Um, all right. How about well, s o? I feel like i’m jumping around, but going back to assessing your donors, i mean, certainly if you have a relationship, if you know the person through the years, um, that will obviously in form you’re figuring out what style they are. Absolutely. You learn their rhythm. You see whether they pause before answering questions way often talk about this the moment when you ask for the gift. And then what happens after? Well, a mission controller is most likely to pause for longer after you’ve asked to think about it. Where is the go getter is probably going to jump in very quickly with some gut response. So so as you spend more time with your donors, you you pick up on their traits such as this, right? What? The rhythm in the conversation, the questions they ask you. How many questions they ask you? Yes, right. Kindred spirits are less likely to ask questions right in the room. When i train, you’re the introverts are less likely to speak up, which means you. You have to sort of anticipate you have to try to anticipate their questions because the introverts aren’t going to be asking. And if you’re not fulfilling what they need to be favorable to your solicitation, they’re going to leave the meeting unfulfilled, and you will to write. And i don’t know for jumping ahead or whether you plan to cover this. But this is important for boards of directors as well. Latto understand the interactions of the board members. That’s the dynamic of the board, right? Because in a board meeting, the introverts are less likely to express their opinions. So if you want your entire board expressing its opinion, if you want all the voices at the table, you have to be particularly sensitive to your kindred spirits in your mission controllers, who in that large group are less likely to speak up? Okay, we may. We may come to the boy, us. If we don’t come to the board, then just by the book, for god sakes, goto asking matters dot com. Get the book. You know, we could get these brilliant authors. Well, we get these authors, and, uh, you know, semi are starting the catskill semi articulate on and, uh, and we can’t cover everything. It’s impossible. So everything so just get the book. But i will try to have time for the board because boards are big challenge. Yes, i do want to talk about preparing how preparing for your solicitation. And, of course, you know, solicitation that could be over a solicitation. I mean, there’s a meeting, but the course of the the course of that phase of our relationship could go over months, sometimes in back and forth and not this program or this program, but not that way. Or, you know, etcetera, att least implant e-giving. That’s certainly the case, and it’s got to be the case in major e-giving. Sometimes, too. Yes, well, you know, major giving to me there are two ways to look at major gifts. I think of a major gift as any gift worth the time to cultivate and solicit in some shops. There, they’re going to put a cut off, and it’s going to be those very large gifts for new programs for buildings or for plan gifts. But i to me, a major gift program is made up of all of the donors and hopeful donors prospects who have the ability to make a gift of a certain level that’s worth your time because everything needs to be customized and personalized. And that takes some time. So so major gifts could be twenty five hundred dollars gift to the annual fund, right? Your hundred thousand dollar a year organization. You’re going to go out and solicit a number of these to me. Those are major gifts and some of those gifts. So some of those gifts will happen fairly quickly with one meeting or two meetings. The bigger meet the bigger gifts. Those transformational gifts often take months and multiple proposals and bringing in various programs, staff and such donors. Advisers correct. All right, so so it’s it’s a process, yes, but so in terms of preparing for the meeting or the process, um, how do you ah, how tow us. Ah, how do we kindred spirits? Best prepare. How do we prepare? The best thing we can do is go visit the program and re acquaint ourselves with the program. It’s particularly important for fund-raising professionals because we can get very caught up in our day to day work, and sometimes we’re not near the program. Physically, we might be in a satellite office or something like that, and and and we don’t touch the program for a long time. We don’t see it in action. We don’t meet the participants, and that is critical to us because everything so personal. So the number one thing you can do to prepare is to go visit the program and get revved up again about it, because at the end of the day, all of us have to break. We’re all making our own case for support, telling our own story about why the organization’s important to us. That’s a very important piece of of the preparation for the kindred spirit. It’s it’s all going to be a personal story about a participant or their own journey. And and and so visiting the program enforces that. Okay, let’s go to your secondary. The mission controllers. How do they best prepare? They plant? They do a lot of research, much more research than the intuitive to go getters in the kindred spirits. Much more research on the donor that they will. I’ll plan out the meeting very, very specifically, even planned a meeting planned the meeting out. And how do we think the meeting will unfold? They’re more likely to have, ah, complete list of questions that they’d like to ask. They they’re gut will be to send information in advance because that’s what works for them. One of the exercises that asking matters is we asked people if someone were going to come ask you for a gift, how would you like them to do it? And how does your style impact that? Right? Well, mission controllers will often say, i want you to send me a lot of material in advance, so i can see it. And i can be prepared when we meet. So if your mission controller development officer your gut right, your natural inclination is to send a lot of material because that’s what you’d like. Now, once you get to know your donor, you might know your donordigital appreciate that you’d have to pull back on it, but often we don’t know our donors that well, so the number one thing to do is go with our own gut and our own style. So that’s how the mission controller would come here. We’re going to take our last break, and then we’re gonna come back and talk about how my secondary the go getters should best prepare. Okay, hoexter give. They haven’t email many course. Five myths of text giving debunked they’ll give you info so you can decide if this is a fit for you. The the the idea of text giving and then whether text to give fitz specifically, you hear all the hype about mobile e-giving get through that. Get the five part many course comes to you by email. Learn what you need to know. How do you get that? You text n pr november papa romeo to four, four, four, nine, nine, nine. Okay, we’ve got several more minutes for asking styles. Gladly. Uh, so the go getters, how would they best prepare for this solicitation meeting or process? Well, it’s funny that you say that because they’re the least likely to prepare. They winging it? Yeah, they’re very comfortable revolution. They’re very sure of themselves. And they are very good at being thrown into a situation and thriving whatever it isthe relating to various people keeping a conversation going, keeping the energy up so they tend to prepare less. What i do say to go getters is okay. I get that you’re going to prepare less than you’re comfortable. That’s fine. But everyone can benefit from from practicing their story their case for support because you don’t want to take a lot of time to tell it you wanted to be concise because of you share a lot with the donor. The donor is not going to hear what you’re saying. They’re not going to remember what you’re saying. And go getters tend to talk a lot too much. They can talk to much as a matter fact. Ron and i joke about how he can go long. He could go long, and it’s my job to rein him in and cutem uncovering the table, right? So go getters. Don’t prepare that personal story, which should only be a couple of minutes. Their tendency will be to go on and the story will lose it. So that’s the number one thing they should do. Ok, and how about finally the mission controllers? Preparation of the rainmaker? The rainmakers range, right? They’re going to want to review the outcomes, measurements and the goals of the organization because they’re going to tell the story their story through those because that’s what drives them right? The that we’re accomplishing x, y and z where sure, we’re making a difference because we reach this point and we made this difference with this many people and so forth. So they’re going to want to review that. They’re the most strategic, so they’re going to want to think a lot about where do we meet? What questions do i ask you? How do i how do i elicit certain information and a certain reaction and so forth so they’ll be rather strategic. Maybe without getting into the details the mission controller gets into. We just have a few minutes left. So i do want to talk about the board because that’s a that’s an important topic. Brian likes to ah, do his asked to the beverage. You will have to get the book to figure out why. Find out why he loves why it’s important to him to have a beverage in his ass just by the book, for god’s sake. All right, the board. So you would you would like us to. We just have a few minutes left. You would like us to have to have the board take the assessment. Absolutely right. It’s so effective. Lots of boards. What comes out of this? Tell us. Tell us due illustrated with a story. Well, i will give you a story from when andre and i were first testing the assessment. Okay? We had a small university in upstate new york. Take the assessment. The vp for advancement had his board take it. And and andrei and i looked at the results and we said, oh, no, it doesn’t work. Something’s wrong with the way the person i designed the test for us calibrated and so forth and so on. So with are did you think something was wrong because everyone on the board was a mission controller and we thought, well, statistically, that’s impossible, right? We may be there were twenty responses. So with our tail between our legs, we went back to the vp and said, we’re really sorry we’re gonna have to do more work. It doesn’t seem as if the assessment is correct. Everyone showed up is a mystery controller, and the v p said, that’s exactly our problem. Everyone is a mission control. You’re right. That is it. The dynamic is all off. We don’t have the go getters with the vision. We don’t have the rainmakers to keep us focused on accomplishing goals. And we don’t have the kindred spirits to remind us that this is about helping people and we have to have heart. So on a board, you want a mix of the styles for a variety of reasons. Committees, leadership. Well, right? I mean, aligning people to work together, deciding who, maybe who the leadership should be absolutely, and who ever every one of these organizations does. Special events, unfortunately, but you want to mission control are organizing them so the details or set right and you also want to go get her at the event. Who’s going to be really wonderful in the moment? So in some cases you might design board members to the work based on their style. But at the very least understand the dynamic of the board based on everyone style, just as you would in any behavioral analysis of staff for people in general. Ok, how about for the c suite? You see value there. We don’t talk about that. I don’t think it’s in the book. That’s interesting. I don’t. And that is interesting because i speak too many development directors who are aware of their executive director’s style and how that impacts them one way or another. And each executive director brings something different to this fund-raising equation based on his or her style. So the rainmaker is going to be rather driven right for their organization on. They’re going to like the big gifts because they want to make big impacts. The go getters will be happy to meet anyone. The development office wants them to meet and we’ll be charming. But it will be up to the development office to be strategic about that behind the scenes. When you have introverted executive directors, that could be a little more challenging to get them out. But, of course, the kindred spirit, you know, cells with the heart, and people usually really admire that. Executive director. But sometimes the kindred spirit executive director doesn’t want to make the hard decisions that need to be made in leadership on mission controllers when their executive directors can need to watch out that they don’t get into the weeds, that they don’t micromanage. So there’s value for the for the people working for the what of the c suite to know what you’re boss’s style is a way, i guess we need to encourage the c suite itself to recognize where it stands and ah, what it’s opportunities are and what it’s what it’s potential. The pitfalls are and to appreciate all its staff for who they are. Yeah, all right. We have about a minute or so left, and i want to enter the same place where we started. But authentic. You know, your authentic self. Remind us why that is so important. Using all these styles fund-raising good fund-raising the fund-raising that that leads to gifts year in and year out and larger gifts over time. And donors who really care about organisation. Though this is all based on relationships. If if you’re not authentic with your donor, your donor will smell it and your donor want to build that relationship. Who wants to have a relationship with someone you think is phony? So if we’re looking for longtime donors, we need to be our authentic cells and not worry about anyone else. Brian saber goto asking matters dot com take the assessment. Get the book which is asking styles. Thank you so much, brian. Thank you so much, tony. We planning to be here next week? There’s no show. Happy thanksgiving. You’ll be with family and friends. I’m sure i urge you make time for yourself. North. I didn’t say fine time for yourself. You never find it. You’ve gotta make time for yourself alone. Time. It’s important, even if you’re not a kindred spirit. Um, so and i have a thanksgiving. Thanks. Video. Which you’ll find forget to promote my own stuff. Go to tony martignetti dot com. I have a video e-giving my thanks to you for your support of non-profit radio. I don’t know if i say thank you too often, but enjoy your thanksgiving. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you. Find it on tony martignetti dot com were sponsored by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled. Tony dahna slash pursuing by wagner cps guiding you beyond the numbers wagner cps dot com by telus credit card and payment processing you’re passive revenue stream tony dahna slash tony tell us, and by text to give mobile donations made easy text. Npr to four four four nine nine nine our creative producers. Claire meyerhoff sama liebowitz is the line producer show social media is by susan chavez. Mark silverman is our web guy, and this great music is by scott stein of brooklyn, new york thank you for that information, scotty. 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