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Nonprofit Radio for February 26, 2024: Your Partnerships With FGWs

 

Esther Choy: Your Partnerships With FGWs

First Generation Wealth creators have different values and mindsets than those who inherited their wealth. And FGWs far outnumber the inheritors. Esther Choy’s research helps you understand these folks and how to build valuable relationships with them. She’s president of Leadership Story Lab. (This originally aired May 17, 2021.)

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be thrown into lateral epicondylitis if you gave me the elbow and told me that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with the highlights. Hey, Tony, this week, it’s your partnerships with F GWS first generation wealth creators have different values and mindsets than those who inherited their wealth. And FGWS far outnumber the inheritors. Ester Choi’s research helps you understand these folks and how to build valuable relationships with them. She’s president of leadership story Lab. This originally aired May 17th 2021 on Tony’s. Take two. Please review we’re sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporter generosity. Donor box. Fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org and by virtuous, virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow. Giving. Virtuous.org. Welcome again, virtuous. So grateful for your sponsorship. Here is your partnerships with FGWS. It’s a pleasure to welcome to nonprofit radio, Esther Choi. She is president and chief story facilitator at leadership story lab, teaching storytelling to institutional and individual clients who are searching for more meaningful ways to connect with their audiences. She’s a contributor for Forbes Leadership Strategy Group and you may have seen her quoted in leading media outlets like the New York Times and entrepreneur.com. Her practice is at leader story lab and leadership story lab.com E Choi. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a real pleasure. Welcome. Um You, you have uh you have some new research out that we need to, we need to talk about transforming partnerships with major donors. What are uh let’s, let’s just jump right in and why don’t you explain what FGW folks are and uh tell us a little about your, the research that you did with these FGW folks. FGW folks. Well, I recently published this research report um and lucky enough to have a really, really good exposure such as the one you mentioned in the New York Times. And there are a lot of surprises about the folks that we generally in the broader society, just, just overly sort of broad and call them the rich people or the wealthy folks or the high net worth individual or the ultra high net worth individuals as if they all belonged in this monolithic group that they all think a belief in the same way. And So I got curious about them after I’ve taught uh in this major Gift strategy program at Kellogg for a while wondering why are these people so hard to get? What uh because so many nonprofits are doing amazing and moving and important and urgent work that no one else is doing. So why is it so hard to reach them? So I dug further in and did a lot of homework and I interviewed 20 very um they were ultra high or folks and I just ask some questions about how did they get to their wealth? What is it like? Um Are there any downsides to wealth, having wealth and so on and so forth and focusing on philanthropy? Um So this report, I can talk about any one number of ways. So you tell me, what do you, what do you want to most learn about these first generation wealth creators? Well, let’s uh let’s start with how big a proportion they are of the, of the wealthy. Wow. I am glad you start. That’s the starting point. Um That’s one of the biggest surprises that I’ve learned because they are at least 68% of the, the, the this massive group that we call wealthy ultra high net worth. They are at least 68% of them earn their wealth instead of inherited. Now, that’s a big, big difference between inherited wealth versus earned wealth. And that means they’ve traveled a entire social economic class that they did not grow up with. And so some of them, um, very few of them really make the majority of their wealth in their thirties or even forties. Most of them are in their fifties and sixties. So we’re talking about full on grown adults with Children and maybe even grandchildren by the time they become, um, this wealthy. So it’s a very interesting transformation of your life, your community, your social circles, the things that you worry about or not worry about all happen around starting from the point of fifties and sixties, right? So, so there are at least two thirds, maybe even a little more than two thirds of all the, all the wealthy folks. The way we would describe, as you’re saying, high net worth, ultra high net worth. These are, these are two thirds of those folks, at least you said 68 68%. I picked the most conservative number, but I’ve read elsewhere to and put that to um somewhere 80 80%. OK? And everybody you interviewed is first generation wealth. That’s, that’s where your research was correct on those folks. OK. So let’s get to know them a little bit. Um Your research has uh AAA nice chart. Um I like, I like pictures. The first thing I look for in books and pictures. Uh Simple, simple mind. You, you’re burdened with the host with a simple mind. Um But you do have these, these pillars of wealth generation that. So let’s describe these folks. Not, not, not all three, I mean, people are just gonna have to get the research, you know, I don’t, I’m not gonna quiz you. I’m not quizzing you on block number four in line three on the No, we’re not doing that. I don’t want to go like word by word because people got to get the research which, which is at Leadership story lab.com, right? That’s the way that you can download. Yeah, there’s an executive summary and you can download the full report as well, right? So Leadership story lab.com for the full thing for the full, for the full study. Um But let’s get to know these folks a little bit, these, these first generation wealth creators. Um you, you start by saying they’re, they’re understated. They’re, they’re maybe even humble. Are they, are they, are they to the point of being humble and modest, humble and modest? And they have a hard time, they have a hard time with the, with the word wealthy, they understand the size of their assets. Um They understand what they are capable of affording, which is basically anything but they have a hard time with the label wealthy. And um they oftentimes think of and regard and never really left their middle class roots and that’s majority of them come from very middle class. You know, they don’t want to be flashy nor do they enjoy flashy things that attract attention So, um, you know, make no mistake. They are a part of things that are very, um, you know, shiny and, and sophisticated and, and, and high quality, but it’s not who they are inside. So that’s one thing to keep in mind is that they are very understated themselves and they often appreciate other people as well as other things that are understated. You, you make the point a couple of times of saying that they don’t, they don’t identify themselves as wealthy even though they know that they fit into that category, correct? Ok. Um So you sat down and you, you met these folks, you, well, maybe not face to face but you, you spoke with these people or couples or how did, how did that all work? Yeah. So I did all the interviews uh with in partnership with the research firm and it’s all done virtually because it was done in 2020. Um There was one noted exception um where I was invited to her home. Uh and uh I met all her kids and her husband and, you know, it’s just like the whole family in the background and it’s kind of funny to talk about her family while her family was around, but for the most part, it was done through Zoom. Uh one through calls and, and um there are four people, so two couples, um I interview them at the same time together and the lengths just got doubled. Um you know, it’s usually 50 50 minutes to an hour and with a couple, um we talked for over an hour and a half. How do you, I’m interested in some of the details. How do you reach out to these folks? How do you, how do you get their attention? It’s really hard. So, the first thing we mentioned in one of the four pillars is they’re understated, right? They don’t identify with the word wealthy. They certainly don’t make big advertisement to the world that they are wealthy. And so to find them and to get them to agree, to speak on record, although it’s anonymous um and to get them to open up and talk about money and wealth, it’s really hard. So I have to rely on a couple of key relationships. Um One is through one of my alma mater, um Texas A and M University and my friend and colleague, uh the CEO of Texas A and M Foundation helped me recruit a few, quite a few of these interviewees. Um my business partner who also happens to be a um uh trustee at the University of Cincinnati Cincinnati Foundations and um through a couple of my own uh resources as well as my research firms. So 20 for qualitative studies is, you know, sufficient. It’s definitely not a lot, 20 people doesn’t sound like a lot but 20 of these type of people and get them to talk about very sensitive topic. Um, was, it took quite a bit just to get them to agree to talk to me. Well, thank you. Um, absolutely. Um, and what was the median income for these 20 folks families? So, um, at this point I don’t think their income is very meaningful any anymore. So, we’re, I, I’m, um, by median, I would refer to their, um, uh, their, their net worth. So the net worth the median range is 50 to 80 million. Um, although, um, the low, I would put it in the low teens, the highs, I would put them in 100 and 50. So just give you, give, you, give our listeners a sense as well of what we’re talking about. Like by, well, you know, millions is like a lot of zeros, you know, at some point it’s just like my mind can’t keep them all in one place. Um, according to the fed in 2020 the top 1% of the US, um, folks have 11 million. So these are all, um, uh, you know, sort of the top one percenter and, um, for the 1% even mid teens to 50 or so was the, was roughly the median net worth. Exactly. Exactly. But then if you think about the 1% of 300 million people in the US, that’s 3 million, 3 million people. And that is about the size. If you put them all in one city, all in one location, they’re just below New York City, just below New York, uh just below Los Angeles, but just above the city of Chicago. So 3 million people, that’s a lot of people. Ok. And, and you estimate conservatively that of those 3 million 68%. Uh our first generation, they earn their wealth versus inherited. It’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations. Anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Plus your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your cause. Try Donor Box Live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024. Visit donor box.org to learn more. Now, back to your partnerships with FGWS. Let’s go back to get to know these folks a little bit. Um um They’re entrepreneurial. No surprise but tell us what, what does that mean for the way they think about themselves and the way they might think about uh their philanthropy. Yeah. So in the most literal sense, they are were entrepreneurs. That’s how they created most of them, created their wealth and with a few um less than 20% of them uh had a very lucrative corporate careers and entrepreneurial also means that is the mindset. It’s the lenses in which they apply all things through. Um, so it could be the way that they would like their Children or grandchildren to approach. Um, you know, if I wanted to study abroad even, um, and, you know, I need additional funding. Well, how much you think about it as what untapped opportunities might there be out there for you in this country that you want to study? But it is not currently fully leveraged. Um But entrepreneurial could also means to, as they think about nonprofit, as they really think about how they want to leave their social impact and how they want to fully make sure that their philanthropic dollar is put to good use that also applied and um compatible with their middle class values. So, uh it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s up and downside, right? Um Sometimes something just can’t be measured. Sometimes nonprofits are run by people who are philanthropically minded and socially minded and they don’t necessarily have the same sort of business acumen as, as well as um fear competitiveness um that these donors tend to have and embody. And so the, the downside of having that entrepreneurial mindset is that sometimes it creates um clashes and if you know, at the very least disagreements on is this really the best use of the, the, the, the precious dollars that your organizations have? Um Sometimes there’s no straight black and white answer. Yes and no. Um So um, that’s what I mean by entrepreneurial and, and, and what else, what, what comes next in those four pillars? So, the third is free and I truly, it seems like a very simple, no nonsense. And, and, and we’re like, oh, we live in a free society. Uh, but I think the truth of the matter is that a lot of people aren’t not free, they’re not free to pursue whatever they want. They are under certain professional career obligations or financial pressures and they are a lot of options. Yeah, exactly. And that’s why a lot of career counselors asked mid to even late career folks, you know, what would you do if money is not an issue? Right. Uh, I’ve heard that question asked a lot in care counseling because a lot of people are under that, uh, pressure. But these FGWS they are not and for them it’s oftentimes for the first time is, wow, now it’s not a theoretical questions anymore. I really don’t have to worry about money. Ok. So now what, what do we do? And so, um, a lot of them pursue experiences. A lot of them want the same thing for the Children and grandchildren. Um, they, uh, pursued 3rd, 4th, 5th careers that they’ve always are interested, intrigued by, know that they are not very good at and know that they probably may not, may or may not be able to make a ton of money with. Um, but they do it anyway. So it’s that sense of freedom. Um that I think a lot of people, as long as they have to still worry about saving for retirement saving, for making sure you can pay your mortgage and things like that. It’s, it’s really hard to wrap your mind about. And then these folks are just sort of fully embracing, they want their Children to understand that having a, a wealth of options doesn’t just come, it comes from hard work and, and devotion, which is what they devoted their decades to. So they, they, they want their Children to understand that that doesn’t just happen for everyone. Yeah. I’m glad you bring up Children, um, across all 20 of them, even though the ages ranges from late forties to a few eighties. Um, they all worry about their kids even though their kids have all grown up or they have worried about their kids or have regrets about the way that they raised the ways that they passed on their assets, uh, to their kids. And the, the funny thing is that they did not tell me. Oh, I have so. And so, um, I really can confide in or I know these, uh, uh, professional resources, uh, that I can go to and, um, all of them are just kind of like, I hope I’m doing the right thing. In fact, I know I haven’t done the right thing but then talking to peers surprisingly was not an option across any of them. And so although they’re free, but this taboo topic of money and wealth have prevented them from really searching for the right answers at the time when decisions had to be made. So Children, it’s a constant universal worries, especially for people with wealth. Um We’ve seen from studies after studies that for example, substance abuse tend to affect um Children from families with means disproportionately higher than those who are not from uh family with means. I wonder if there’s some tension for them because they’re not comfortable talking to those who inherited their wealth or, or even just other wealthy people because they don’t, they don’t identify that way, but then they’re not comfortable talking to those folks that they knew when they were struggling in their careers. And before their, their great success, their great financial success would qualify that because success can take lots of d have lots of different levels to it. But before their great financial success, because they, they, they like, they don’t wanna, they don’t want to appear uh overbearing to their non wealthy friends who they know from high school and college and, you know, maybe professional school or, you know, whatever. Uh So they’re, they like caught in the middle, like, they don’t have valuable personal relationships to, to leverage and count on in, in, in times like when they’re questioning what, what to do with Children and, you know, sort of existential questions like that. Yeah. So this is another downside of being entrepreneurial. Um Another way to call someone very entrepreneurial is what you know, he’s, he has a can do spirit, she has a can do spirit. So if you can do, you can do it yourself. You don’t need to count on other people, people to help you, you can pull yourself up by the bootstrap. So uh that’s one and two is again the, the subject of wealth, it tends to be taboo. Um In fact, the Brooking Institute economist Isabel saw Hill made this really apt observation and she said that people rather talked about sex than money and money than class. So first generation wealth creators have travel across classes. And so that makes it really hard for them to say, you know, I don’t know what’s the right way if we do if we travel, is it wrong for us to buy business class or first class? And what are your middle class friends going to say? Oh, poor Tony, poor Esther, you’re struggling with questions like should you trust travel in business versus first class? And it’s not something that a lot of people, first of all empathize with and second of all have the right context to give sound counsels. And what about professional coaches and counselors and whatnot? I didn’t actually cover in a report. I chose to exclude it and just in the in favor of focusing on nonprofit and fundraising. But their experience with uh wealth management advisors are very mixed because it’s an industry that has a lot of conflict of interest. There are some really, really good let us in on something that uh that didn’t make the report. This is great, not proper radio. You gotta let us in on the, on the, on the back story. What uh say a little more about these, the trouble they’ve had the mixed results, mixed results. I’m sure some have been, some results were fine and some relationships are fine but say you a little more about uh what didn’t make the final report there. Um I cut a whole section off just because I think it, it might be detrimental to getting people to read it when it’s beyond a certain length. So this whole section that I cut off was on um how they view advisors, um counselors and, and things like that. And indeed, you know, uh two words to describe the entire section is that it’s very mixed. Um some um have great experience, some on the other end of the extreme is, um they thought the people they interacted with is just uh the advice weren’t very good or too obvious or that again, they can do it themselves. Why do I need to pay you so much money to tell me something I know already. And um, and by the way, that is somewhat parallel to their experience with uh fundraisers. So I don’t want to just put the hammer on um wild advisors and, and, and um tax advisors and whatnot. Um Because this idea that, oh, we know you’re wealthy, we know what you can do with your money, either for the benefit of yourself as well as for me or my organizations that really changed the dynamic of the conversations as well as the services, how services rendered and this to their relative to their expectations. Um So that’s why it’s not very helpful. I think just to come off and um list a bunch of things that they’re not happy with without being able to say what would be helpful. So I just removed the whole section and also in favor of keeping it at readable length. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. I’d be grateful if you would rate and review the show on whatever podcast app you’re using. Uh, we’re a little, a little low on reviews, recent, recent reviews, uh and ratings. So I hope you would give it a five stars. Uh Certainly nothing below four, I would think, but five is best five is best. And if you could do a little review, I know it takes a little time, you know, it takes a few minutes. I understand that I’d be grateful if you could rate and review the show wherever fine podcasts are heard, wherever you’re listening, please do. Thank you very much. And that’s Tony’s take two. Don’t forget to rate and review. Now, look at the little jingle, Tony’s take two rate and review Kate. That was a very beautiful jingle. But yeah, don’t be afraid to rate and review and let us know what you’re thinking of the show. Not only, don’t be afraid, please go ahead and do it. Absolutely. Take the next step, go do it, do it. We’ve got book who but loads more time. So let’s return to your partnerships with FGWS, with Esther Choi. All right. Finally, these folks are lone Rangers. What does that mean? Um We touch upon it a little bit where we, um, you know, they are part of this new class of wealth. They’re like immigrants in some way, by the way, I really wanted to recommend a few books. Um Not just mine. Um, that really helped me round out my understanding. So this whole idea of, um, think of first generation wealth creators as immigrants. Um They have migrated from a different class altogether and enter into this world where the beliefs, um the values and oftentimes even language um are foreign to them. And although it’s great, this is paradise, um, they often find that there are uh tricky conditions, some even would say, um because their native born Children and grandchildren, um, don’t understand the privileged privileges that they were born and then they’ve gotten accustomed to. Um, and the, the cliche or the adage or however you want to want to call it, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves, rice paddies to rice paddies, wealth does not last past three generations and they know that. And so when you think about this special land of paradise again, um by the way, this is a uh I learned it through the book called um uh Strangers In Paradise by James Grutman. Um their native born Children and grandchildren, statistically speaking will be deported back to harsher land where the first generation have migrated from. And um and here’s the kick Tony, I just, I just found it fascinating and this is why I can talk about this, you know, forever and ever mismanagement of their wealth, taxes and inflations and bad investments. All of those are more of and just the natural delusions from, you know, the couple to Children to grandchildren, right? All of those reasons are reasons for wealth not being able to last past three generations, but you will probably, I’ve never found any one cases or example or family where the story basically is. Well, grandpa and grandma gave it all the way to charity and left nothing to us. That’s why we’re poor again. You know, that just doesn’t happen. And so what my II I think what I really want to focus on, I think the opportunities for nonprofit is that what might there be an um different way to think about the conversations that you have with these donors where you help them solve a problem or maybe many problems and then you also help yourself um solve a problem. By the way, I’m getting like, way, way, way. This is a problem when we have no script. I’m getting like way away from the Lone Ranger questions. I bring you back. But that’s all right. But I think I’m getting to the whole thing. No, radio. No, no, you’re not. What you’re saying is still valuable. Don’t, don’t second guess yourself. What I, what I’m getting at is that it’s lonely to be first. It can be lonely to be first generation immigrant. Except that most immigrants have somehow found other immigrants. And they talk, they share notes, they commiserate, they help each other out. But um first generation wealth creators are particular type of immigrants where for all the reasons that we’ve talked about, they don’t actively look for help nor was real quality help. Um Readily available. Interesting, really fascinating analogy analogizing to, to immigrants. Um Did you, did you put any of them together? Uh uh uh since you met 20 of them and got to know them. So these folks that are uh feeling, lone, feeling, lone, I don’t know, lonely. I’m, I’m just using a word. I’m not saying they’re lonely in their lives. Maybe they are, but they’re lone rangers. Did you, did you uh put any of these folks together and say, look, you know, I met, I met so and so like 22 or three weeks ago and she was saying the same thing that you’re saying, you know, why don’t the two of you talk or would you be interested? You know, did you put any folks together to help them, uh, commiserate, at least help, maybe at best, help each other. I, I, I think I would, I would if I were asked but with these 20 because of the promise of confidentiality, um I don’t share their names or contacts with anyone. But um I have done uh webinars since then where I was asked. So how do you find these people? And then if, if they ask me, then I will help? OK. OK. Well, I’m like a connector. So I was thinking, you know, if I could get her permission, would you like to talk to her? Because the two of you are saying things that are really identical and maybe together you could help each other as well as having very similar questions. And this is where I was getting at the opportunity part. Um because they have asked questions like how much and when should I pass my asset to my kids and grandkids? It’s dealt with by um with wealth advisors on a very case, by case basis. And I think that should be, that’s the way it should be done. But what’s really sorely missing is, well, how do other families handle this right to your questions of? Well, there are other people like me, what do they do because they’re in my boat. Um So as well as questions like, how do I get in sync with my spouse? Um And then they also have questions on like, how do you truly vet um a non, a non for profit, you know, and how do you help? Not my, you know, the nonprofits that you support, uh become more efficient and they are aware that not coming off as because I’m a donor, I give money and um you should do what I tell you to do um Things like that, you know, that productive relationship with nonprofits. So there are endless questions like this that they can talk about, not just commiserate, although commiserating is, is great too. All right. I don’t know. I think you could be a connector, a major connector. Um And I notice uh I’ll leave that there. That’s, but, you know, the title of your research is transforming partnerships with major donors. So, so let’s, let’s let’s transition to some of those opportunities you talked about problem solving that could be mutually beneficial. How, how do, how would a fundraiser ceo uh uh approach someone with that with, with that kind of opportunity? Yeah. Yeah. So I want to break it down to um three steps. Um I want 123, a three step process. OK. Yeah. Well, yeah. OK. You can call it a three step process, but I didn’t invent it. You made it up. I think the first thing is you have to really think about the questions you asked them. And uh oftentimes how curious, how respectful for how informed you are, are all sussed out by the kind of questions you asked? Are your questions mostly really at the end of the day self serving? Um Or are you only focusing on a very narrow aspects of the donors? Um or are you really broadly interested in problem solving? Now, here’s another thing that entrepreneurs like to do, they like to solve problems. And oftentimes they take the same mindset towards nonprofit, am I really giving to an organization that are going to solve real major problems in the system uh system for way? Um So that’s the first thing is the questions that you ask and then two is reading once you really find out about uh uh you know, what you could learn from the donors is that really being able to pair what your nonprofits have to offer and that structure in a way as well as well as frame it in a way that um fits the mindset of. Um Well, oftentimes the folks are very busy, they know they need to do something but they’re very busy. So, um how is it, uh how do you make it easy for them, in other words? And then um the last thing I would say is um it would um how do you acknowledge them? Right. Um It sounds really obvious, right? You know, their stewardship program, there are people were involved in, uh, thanking donors. But what I’ve found is that people, uh, people thought there’s not enough. Thank you, or there’s too much. Thank you. And they’re not thank through the right medium. And so, uh, we’re not talking about, you know, $10.20 dollars where there are maybe hundreds and thousands of them and you can’t manage them one by one and customized it. But with major donors, it’s absolutely worth it to make sure that it’s customized to their preference and needs. So questions the way that you frame as well as the acknowledgment part. It’s time for a break. Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Responsive fundraising puts the donor at the center of fundraising and grows giving through personalized donor journeys that respond to the needs of each individual. Virtuous is the only responsive nonprofit CRM designed to help you build deeper relationships with each donor at scale. Virtuous. Gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer marketing and automation tools. You need to create responsive experiences that build trust and grow, impact virtuous.org. Now, back to your partnerships with FGWS and the, the acknowledgment of the stewardship is interesting um you say somewhere that uh the the they these folks have a hard time understanding uh the name on a building, you know, why that, why people find that appealing, why some donors find that appealing? So, so a brick and mortar in fundraising, you know, was a brick and mortar recognition would not necessarily be appealing to them, but, but finding out what is appealing comes from, you know, maybe this, this three steps is sort of iterative, right? And if you’re starting to get near uh near something promising, you wanna, you wanna be finding out too about what they would like in terms of acknowledgment. Yeah. Yeah. How would you like to be recognized? What’s important to you? So, I have a friend of mine who advised nonprofits with operations like this and um she helped one of them, she said, you know, what, why don’t you just, why don’t you just ask? So he did, he created a survey through Survey Monkey and, you know, they, they have more than a handful so they can’t just call them up and ask them individually. So he created AAA survey and he got over 70% response rate, which is really, really good, right? If you work for, for survey and um so the the survey basically center around 33 things. Um How would you like to be thanked? How often would you like to be thanked? And through which medium do you most prefer to be thanked. And it’s not only do they have really good feedback, but it’s such a positive gesture from the nonprofit to the donors saying, hey, we actually admit we don’t know, but we care and we should, we know what we don’t know and we care. And now we really would like to learn more from our donors. And that truly is a practical helpful informative donor centric step to take. And by the way, her name is Lisa Greer. She also has a incredibly helpful book called Philanthropy Um Revolutions. So it’s a mix of um it’s a mix of memoir. It’s a mix of uh research because she told her story, but she also has interviewed over 100 principal gift level donors and um and uh and the last mix of how tos so super helpful. How does Lisa spell her last name? GRE er Lisa Greer? What else? What else can you tell us Esther uh that uh in terms of approaching these folks? Um Ho how might you get? Uh I have a question for, I have a little more specific question. How about you get their attention? Oh, yeah, I know um getting the first meeting, it’s like 50 or 60 or I don’t know, 70% of the work just being able to get in the call. Um I, I think everything matters in the smallest amount of space, which is if you have no other ways to reach them. What do. Most people do emails and so make sure that your subject line is the most attention grabbing as well as intriguing possible. Um way to, to get people’s attention, by the way I have um I don’t know if I can memorize uh the, the, the four persona um off the top of my head. Oh, actually I do. I have it right in front of me. Um, my uh colleague, Scott Mord. Um, he is the longest serving CEO of YPO Global young president’s organizations. So these are a lot of the highly concentrated um first generation wealth um around the world, 30,000 of them around the world. Um He actually put the, their philanthropic tendencies in four ways. Um The idealist is the first one. Those are the ones that who want to make a true impact, uh long lasting impact, solve societal problem. Another one is called the legacy leader. Those are the one who really loves to leave, make sure their name last generations and generations that they are getting credit for the big impact that they made. The third one is called the model citizens. And those are the ones that look around and understand what is the highest and highest of highest level of service and they want to be there. And the philanthropic effort reflects that. And then the fourth one is called the Busy Big Week. That’s the ones who are busy, extremely busy and yet they know they should do something but they don’t know what and how and so back to your questions of how do you get their attention? I think you should first by starting with having a point of view of, of these four possibilities, which one is this person most likely going to be? And then once you have a persona in mind, then is a lot easier for you to craft a message with a subject line that is most intriguing and attention grabbing for you. I, I get, despite what my clients and friends and colleagues know about me, I still get these extremely bland and generic um email messages that are, you know, if you just replace the logo of the nonprofits that would fit anybody at all. And so, uh that would be the first thing I think about is have a persona in mind, even if you’re wrong, it’s ok, even if you’re wrong, at least you have a point of view about that person. But the upside is that even if you’re not 100% right? Just having the personal, that persona is going to help you speak to that person as if you know a lot about them already. Are you really only gonna get to them through an introduction or like if somebody has to give you their email or, I mean, there’s not a directory of first generation wealth creators. Is there now, I know yours was yours was anonymous but is there I don’t know. Is there a directory or something? And that’s a really interesting question is what I major in a really, really interesting question. I love the way you think about things Tony. Um, not only is, isn’t there one? Um, they really know how to, how to hide their wealth. You know, they believe in stealth wealth, not only because of the way they live their lives, but they know how to put things in all things and trust. And so everything comes through a different name and um data can help um the right kind of data and data enriching as well as data matching. Um It, I I don’t know a ton about it, but I know enough because there’s another company that I co-founded that like that’s all we do because in the old ways, how do you get names of donors? Right? You ask, you’re bored, that’s how you start a small organization starts. But um but then now, I mean, now we have social media and you can have a campaign and see who gives to that. And then you, then you do some research on those folks to see who, who might be uh have the capacity to do more and then you expand your relationship even with the others who may not have capacity but a willingness. But see, I I think there’s a lot in your current database that is not being fully utilized. That may be for some folks. Yeah, and, uh, well, because we’re talking about stealth wealth. I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s certainly possible. I mean, these, these folks live modest, live, modest means. I mean, uh, uh, at least outward. Um, I mean, what, 20 years ago there was the book The Millionaire next door. I mean, that’s essentially what we’re talking about. This is, there are more zeros now and there are more of them and we’re, we’re in a more financially mobile society now than we were 20 years ago. But the, the, the concept is the same that there are these hidden families of wealth that, uh, that are may very well be in your database. You know, then it was the, the millionaire next door. Now the millionaire in your, it’s the ultra high net worth in your database. Yeah. Yeah. And, and when you, you know, go back to the questions, the way that you ask questions of when you have an opportunity to talk to a donor directly, as well as the way that you ask questions about your databases that can really help you look for hidden millionaires billionaires right in front of you, right in front of your eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised that there are already, uh, but you aren’t, you, you’re not even aware that you’re pretty close when Lisa and I, um because of our share passion about this topic and she’s really doing it full time. I’m doing this. This is because this is my baby. Uh you know, the first time she wanted to make a principal gift um to um her local hospital. Um she budgeted for $2 million for um her hospital and it took the hospital seven months to pay attention to her and $2 million isn’t a small amount for that hospital. It is definitely a major amount, latent unconscious sexism. I’ve, I’ve heard this from women. I do plan to giving fundraising, but I’ve heard this many times from women just ignored when they, they made explicit overtures, not just subtle hints but explicit overtures. You know, I want to do this. I wanna remember the organization in my estate plan and, you know, ignored, repeatedly ignored. So, unfortunately, what you’re describing your friend Lisa’s uh I, I don’t think it’s so uncommon. I think it’s, I think there’s some, I think there’s just unconscious latent sexual uh um not sexuality. Uh sexism in uh yeah, in uh in, in, in, in fundraising. It’s, and money is left on the table as a result. I mean, aside from the morality of the uh of the, of that, that misunderstanding. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it’s, I haven’t seen quantitative research on just how frequently that happened, but that’s leases from her research from her personal experience from your experience. So I think there are actually plenty of money within reach of nonprofits that they probably have missed, but they didn’t know they have, we’re gonna leave it there. It’s perfect. Now you have opportunities and uh I know that our conversation has uh stimulated thinking about how to find these folks and how to transform your partnership with them. Esther Choi the, the research is transforming partnerships with major donors. I’ll give you the full title. Aligning the key values of first generation wealth creators and fundraisers in the age of winner takes all you get the research at leadership story lab.com. That’s where Esther’s company is. Leadership story lab and also at Leader Story lab, Ether Troy. I want to thank you very much. Thank you. This is such an invading conversation. Thank you for the opportunity and thanks for saying you were glad that I asked a question. You were one of the generous, generous guests. I’m glad you asked that. Oh, I got, I got chills. Thank you, Esther. Next week, publish your book, Thought Leader and you can blame me here. I thought that was gonna be this week’s show. I blundered just had it wrong. You, you, you’d think more attention would go into these things, but uh made a mistake. Definitely, it will be next week’s show uh short of uh natural disaster or illness or death. Uh It’ll be next week’s show if you missed any part of this week’s show, I do beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Love that alliteration. Love it. Pass flexible, friendly fundraising forms. All right. Sorry, I just had to get that in and by virtuous, virtuous gives you the nonprofit CRM fundraising, volunteer and marketing tools. You need to create more responsive donor experiences and grow giving. Virtuous.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show Social Media is by Susan Chavez and Park Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for February 5, 2024: Zombie Loyalists

 

Peter ShankmanZombie Loyalists

Peter Shankman is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book “Zombie Loyalists” focuses on customer service; creating rabid fans who do your social media, marketing and PR for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired 12/19/14.

 

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And welcome to Tony Martignetti nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d suffer the effects of brom hydros if I had to walk through the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate to introduce this week’s show. Hey, Tony now I’m on it. It’s zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a five time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker. His book, Zombie Loyalists focuses on customer service creating rabid fans who dear social media marketing and pr for you. Peter’s book isn’t new, but his strategies and tactics are timeless. This originally aired December 19th 2014 on Tony’s Take Two. How’s your endowment were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org here is zombie loyalists. Peter Shankman is a well known and often quoted social media marketing and public relations strategist. His latest book is zombie loyalists. He wants you to create rabid fans who do your social media marketing and pr for you. He’s got super ideas and very valuable stories. I’m very glad Peter Shankman is with me in the studio. He’s the founder of Harrow, help a reporter out connecting journalists with sources in under two years from starting it in his apartment, Harrow was sending out 1500 media queries a week to more than 200,000 sources worldwide. It was acquired by Vocus in 2010. He’s the founder and CEO of the geek factory, a boutique social media marketing and pr strategy firm in New York City. Peter is on nasa’s civilian advisory council. You’ll find him at shankman.com and he’s at Peter Shankman on Twitter. His latest book is Zombie Loyalists using great service to create rabid fans. I’m very glad his book brings him to nonprofit radio and the studio. Welcome Peter. Good to be here, honey. Thanks. Pleasure you um live on the uh on the west side of Manhattan. I do. And you, there’s a, there’s a pretty well known five star steakhouse. Uh I’ll get Wolfgang’s not far from you, but you pass it to go to a different steakhouse. Morton’s correct. Why is that? I am a zombie loyalist to Morton’s. What does that mean? I uh love the service, the attention to detail, the quality, the, the sort of where everyone knows my name mentality. When I walk into that Mortons or any Mortons around the world, they have a tremendous uh custom relationship management system uh when I call one number uh in New York or anywhere in the world, it, it, they know who I am by my cell phone and uh I’m treated with uh just, you know, phenomenal uh uh happiness to, to hear from me and, and my wishes are granted as it were. I, we have a happy hour uh holiday party coming up at Morton’s next couple of days. And uh you know, as always, I forgot to call and make a reservation and, you know, I called yesterday and said, hey, I need a, uh, any chance I get a reservation for seven people, um, you know, Thursday night at, uh, 7 p.m. which is, you know, the, the week of the holiday party. And, uh, they looked and they said, oh, well, and then I guess their computer system kicked in, of course, Mr Shankman. Not a problem at all. We’ll get that for you right away. You know, we’ll have, we’ll have a great booth for you. Um, you know, and we’ll, we’ll, uh, tell us the names of the people attending, you know, you know, you know, they’re gonna have specialized menus for them and with their names on them. So they really, they have a really high level of service that, uh, that they provide. Not just to me that’s the beauty of it. I mean, you know, it’s one thing, yeah, it’s one thing if they just provide it to me, but they they do that for everyone. And, um, that is huge because, you know, being able to call when a normal person makes a reservation and, and not that I’m special, I’m actually rather abnormal. But, um, when a normal person makes a reservation and says, uh, you know, Morton says, ok, great. Are you celebrating anything? Oh, yeah, it’s my wife’s birthday. They always ask anyone who calls. I said, oh, you know what, it’s my wife’s birthday. Great. What’s her name? Her name is Megan or whatever. And you go in and they um and you sit down on the, on the, on the uh menu, it says Happy Birthday, Megan and then Megan, whoever she happens to be will spend the next 45 minutes, you know, taking 50 selfies with her menu and, and, and that’ll go online and then when her friends, you know, want that same experience, they’re gonna go Morton’s. You say uh in, in the book you get the customers you want by being beyond awesome to the customers you have. And that’s why I want to start with that Morton story which is in the middle of the book, but they do it for everybody and then they have the VIP S as well. And there’s the terrific story of you tweeting. Go tell that story. That’s a good story. It’s a good story. I love stories. I, I was flying home from a day trip to Florida and was exhausted and starving and, um, day trip mean you’re flying down, I flew down at 6 a.m. at a lunch meeting, flew back the same day. You know, one of those, one of those days. And, uh, I jokingly said the tweet, hey Mortons, why don’t you meet me at Newark Airport when I land with a poer house in two hours? Ha ha ha, ha, ha. Um, you know, I said it the same way you’d say, hey, winter, please stop snowing things like that. And I landed, uh, find my driver and sit next to my driver is a, uh, is a, a waiter in a tuxedo with a Morton’s bag. Uh, they saw my Tweet, they, they put it together, they managed to bring me a, uh, a, uh, steak and, and, you know, as great of a story as it is. That’s, that’s, it’s a great stunt and it’s a great story and it wasn’t a stage and it was completely amazing. But, you know, that’s not what they’re about. They’re not about delivering steaks to airports. They’re about making a great meal for you and treating you like royalty when you come in. And, you know, I, I, if they just did that, if they just delivered the steak at the airport, but their quality and service sucked. You know, it wouldn’t be a story. He said, oh, you know, look what they did for Peter, but I, you know, my steaks cold, you know, so what it really comes down to is the fact they do treat everyone like kings and that’s, that’s really, really important because what winds up happening is you have a great experience at Morton’s and then you tell the world, you know. Oh, yeah, great dinner last night. That was amazing. I would totally eat there again. And as we move to this new world where, you know, review sites are going away and I don’t, I don’t need to go to Yelp to read reviews from people. I don’t know, you know, if they’re shills or whatever the case may be, I don’t know, or tripadvisor, same thing. I want people in my network who I trust and, and people in their network who they trust and then by default I trust. So that’s gonna be, that’s already happening automatically. You know, when I, when I land in L A and I type in steakhouse, uh, you know, not me. I know, I know where the steakhouse are in L A but if someone types into Google Maps or Facebook steakhouse in Los Angeles, you know, they’ll see all the steakhouses on a Google map. But if any of their friends have been to any of them, they’ll see those first. And if they had a good experience, only if the sentiment was positive, will they see those first? And that’s pretty amazing because if you think about that, the simple act of tweeting out a photo. Oh, my God. Thanks so much, Mortons love this. That’s positive sentiment. The network knows that. And so if you’re looking for a steakhouse, you know, and your friend six months ago had that experience. Oh my God, amazing steak. This is a great place there. The sentiment is gonna be there and, and, and the network will know that the network will show you that steakhouse because you trust your friend. And this is where we start to cultivate zombie loyalists through this, through this awesome customer service of the customers. You, you have, uh say more about zombies. I mean, you have so many companies out there who are trying to get the next greatest customer. You know, you see all the ads, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the Facebook post, you know, we’re at 990 followers, our 10, our 1/1000 follower gets a free gift. Well, that’s kind of saying screw you to the original 990 followers who you had, who were there since the beginning? We don’t care about you. We want that 1000. You know, that’s not cool. Um, the, the, the companies who see their numbers rise and who see their fans increase and their, their, um, um, revenues go up are the ones who are nice to the customers. They have, hey, you know, customer 852 it was really nice of you to join us a couple of months ago. How, you know how are you, we, we noticed that you posted on something about a, uh, you know, your car broke down. Well, you know, we’re not in the car business but, you know, you’re, you’re two blocks from our, our closest, uh, outlet or whatever and, you know, once you, if you, if you need to come in, have a free cup of coffee, we’ll use the phone, whatever. You know, those little things that you can do that, that, that really focus on the customers you have and make the customers, you have the ones who are the zombies who tell other customers how great you are. And this all applies to nonprofits certainly as well. I mean, the, the, but even more so, I mean, if you, you know, nonprofits are constantly worried about how to, how to make the most value out of their dollar and how to keep the dollar stretching further and further. And, uh, you know, you have this massive audience who, who has come to you, who’s a nonprofit and who said to you, you know, we wanna help here, we are volunteering our help and just simply treating them with the thanks that they deserve. Not just a simple, hey, thanks for joining car, but actually reaching out asking what they want, asking how they like to get their information, things like that will greatly increase, um, your donations as well as, um, making them go out and tell everyone how awesome you are. And letting them do your pr for you. And that’s what a zombie loyalist does. And, and this is for, this could be, donors could be volunteers to the organization who aren’t able to give a lot. But giving time is enormous. And if, you know, if they have such a great time doing it, they’ll bring friends as, as zombies. Do you know, zombies have one purpose in life. Real zombies have one purpose in life that’s to feed. It doesn’t matter how the Mets are doing. It doesn’t matter, you know, because a chance that they lost anyway. But it doesn’t matter how, uh how anyone’s doing, you know, or what’s going on in the world economy. It doesn’t matter what matters with a zombie. Where are they gonna get their next meal? Because they feed and they have to infect more people otherwise they will die. Zombie loyalists are the same thing. All they have to do is make sure that their custom, they, they tell the world and we all have that friend who does it. You know, that one friend who eats, eats nothing but the Olive Garden because, oh my God, it’s greatest breadsticks everywhere. You know, and they will drag your ass to the Olive Garden every single time they get that chance. That’s a zombie loyalist. And you want them to do that for your nonprofit. And there’s, there’s a big advantage to being a smaller, a smaller organization. You could be so much more high touch and we’re gonna talk about all that. We got the full hour with Peter Shankman. We gotta go away for a couple of minutes. Stay with us. It’s time for a break. Open up new cashless in person donation opportunities with donor box live kiosk. The smart way to accept cashless donations anywhere, anytime picture this a cash free on site giving solution that effortlessly collects donations from credit cards, debit cards and digital wallets. No team member required. Thus, your donation data is automatically synced with your donor box account. No manual data entry or errors make giving a breeze and focus on what matters your costs. Try donor box live kiosk and revolutionize the way you collect donations in 2024 visit donor box.org to learn more. Now back to zombie loyalists, Peter, it doesn’t take much to uh stand out in the customer service world does it, it really doesn’t, you know, and the reason for that is because we expect to be treated like crap. You know, if you think that III I love this example. Whenever I give speeches, I ask, I ask everyone in the audience, I’m like, who here has had a great flight recently? At least one person will raise their hand. I’m like, ok, what made it great? And without fail, their answer said, well, we took off on time and, and I had the seat I was assigned and we landed on time and like, so you paid for a service, they delivered that service and you’re over the freaking moon about it. Like, that’s the state that we’ve become. You know, that’s how bad customer service has been that you are just beyond thrilled that they did exactly what they said they were gonna do with nothing more, less than 20 minutes in the post office line. And I’m ecstatic. Exactly. You know, it’s, it’s so, we really are at a point where we only have to be one level above crap. I, I’m not even asking my clients to be good. Just one level of crap. You know, if everyone else is crap and you’re one level above that, you’re gonna win. It’s my favorite, one of my favorite jokes. Um, the, uh, the two guys are out in the woods, hunting out in the woods and the, or just jogging out in the woods. The first one sees a, a bear and they see this bear and the bear is raised up and he’s about to strike. And the first one, you know, reaches down and tightens up his, his laces on his running shoes. And the second one says, dude, don’t be, don’t be, don’t be an idiot. You can’t run a bear. And he says, I don’t need to, I just need to outrun you. You know, I love that joke because it’s, it’s so true. That’s the concept. You know, all you have to do is be just a little bit better than everyone else and, and you’ll win the whole ball game. Now, we have to set some things up internally in order to have the, the structure in place to create these, the zombie loyalists. Yeah. I mean, you have a, you have a company where the majority of people in your company are afraid to do anything outside the norm. You know, I mean, look at, look at a cell phone company, you know, they, you call them because you have a problem right AT&T or T Mobile, you call them, you have a problem. They are actually the customer service people that handle your call are actually judged and rewarded based on how quickly they can get you off the phone. You know, not on whether or not they fix your problem, but how fast they can get you off the phone, which means how many more calls they get. I remember I worked, uh, when I worked in America online, we all had to do a day of customer service every month just to see what it was like, which I thought was a brilliant idea. But, you know, again, it’s this, it’s, it was a system called V I where you’d sign on and as soon as you signed on, if you weren’t in a call, you know, that was tacked against you. And if you were in a call and, and it went over a certain amount of time, that was tacked against you. So the decks were stacked not in the favor of the customer. There are some companies out there who allow their customer service employees to simply be smarter about what they do and do whatever it is they need to do to fix the problem. Um You know, my favorite story about this is Verizon Wireless. I, I went overseas, I was in Dubai and I landed in Dubai and I turned on my phone, I had gotten global roaming on my phone which, you know, 20 bucks for every 100 megabytes. Ok. So I land and I turn on my phone and it says, um, uh, like before I’m even off the plane, I get a text that you’ve used $200 in roaming charges. I’m like, what the hell, you know, $300 by the time I get off the plane, I’m like, something’s up here. So I call Verizon and a nice guy answered the phone and, oh, yes, I mean, you know, the first thing is it was, yes. So you do have global roaming but it, it doesn’t work in Dubai. So I’m like, ok, well, that’s not really global, that’s more hemispherical roaming I think is, is the issue. And um, so he, uh I said, well, look, I’m gonna be here for a week. I said, you know what? You have my credit card on file bill me like, I don’t know. Can you bill me like 1000 bucks and just let me have the phone for like the week and you know, that, you know, or 500 bucks, I won’t go over two gigs. Well, just do something for me. Sorry, sir. I’m not authorized to do that. Um, you can, I’m like, so what do I have? He’s like, well, you can pay, uh, $20.48 a megabyte. I’m like, I’m sorry, seriously, which equates essentially to, I would be charged $20.48 seconds, $20.48 for every, I think at the time for every four seconds of the video, Gangnam style if I decided to watch it on my phone, like this is pretty ridiculous. So I simply hung up, hung up on Verizon. I went down the street to the Dubai, the mall of the Emirates, which is the largest mall in the world. Has a freaking ski slope in it. And I’m not joking. It has a ski slope in this mall and uh went to one of like the 86 different electronic stores in this mall. Uh bought an international unlocked version of the same exact cellphone. I have went next door to the local uh SIM card store, bought a SIM card that gave me 20 gigabytes of data and 1000 minutes of talk for $40. I then put that in my phone because it’s an Android phone. I simply typed in my user name. And password for Google and everything imported. And Verizon did not get a penny on that trip. Um, how easy would have been for Verizon to say, ok, you know what, we’ll cut your break. Uh, they’d still make a lot of money off me and I would tell the world how great Verizon was to work with and how wonderful they, how helpful they were. Instead, they guaranteed that I will never, that they will never make a penny for me on any international trip. And I take what, 15 of them a year because now my cell phone, um my international cell phone that I bought, all I do is pop out the SIM card and I land wherever I am put in a new SIM card. So, and you’re speaking and writing and telling bad stories and every time I tell the story about Verizon, I make it a little worse. Apparently, Verizon uh tests out the durability of their phone by throwing them at kittens. I read this on the internet. It must be true, but, you know, not necessarily, but you know, the concept that, that all they had to do, all they had to do was empower Mark customer service and it wasn’t Mark’s fault. Mark was a really nice guy, but he was not allowed to do that. He would have gotten fired if he tried to do a deal like that for me. And so it’s this concept, you know, and the funny thing is, is it comes down to, if you really wanna go, go down the road in terms of a public company like Verizon of, of, of where the issue is, you could even trace it to fiduciary responsibility because the fiduciary responsibility of any company CEO all the way down to the employee is to make money for the shareholders. Ok. That’s what fiti responsibility means by not allowing me by not allowing mark the customer service agent to, to help me and, and take a different tack. He’s actually losing money too many CEO S think about the next quarter. Oh, we have to make our numbers next quarter. I’m fired. Companies in other countries tend to think about the next quarter century and they make a much bigger difference because they think, ok, what can we do now that will have impact in the next 5, 1015 years, you know, and really implement the revenue that we have and, and augment and companies in America. Don’t, don’t tend to think about that and that’s a big problem. Um, I, I buy a product line, uh, that has a lot of natural and recycled materials in the seventh generation. And their, um, their tagline is that in, in, in our every decision, we must consider the impact on the next seven generations. It comes from an American Indian. It’s a great, it’s a great line. I mean, just think about how much money Verizon would have made for me in the past three years. Just, just in my overseas, you’d be telling a story about like them, about Morton’s like the one about MS, you know, look, a lot of people listen to me and they went for a time when you googled roaming charges. When you Google Verizon roaming charges. My story about how I saved all this money came up first because I did the math. And if I had not called Mark and bought my own cell phone and done this, I would have come home to a $31,000 cell phone bill and you know, damn well, Verizon wouldn’t know anything about that. They’d be like, oh, too bad, sorry about the fine print. And plus the, the employee who sold you the international plan. I’m sure you told her where you going, I’m going to Canada and I’m going to Dubai. I’m assuming she didn’t know where Dubai was. She probably thought it was near Canada. But uh long story short, I couldn’t use it. All right. So employees have to be empowered. There has to be, we have to be but changing AAA thinking too. I mean, the customer has to come first. The donor of the volunteer donor, the teer you get at the end of the day. Where’s your money coming from? I don’t care if you’re a nonprofit or fortune 100. Where’s your money coming from? You know, and if you, we see it happening over and over again. We see it. Right. You’re seeing it right now. Play out every single day with the company, Uber. Um, and Uber, it’s so funny because Uber makes, uh, you know, they’re valued at $40 billion right now. But that doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t mean anything if people are running away in droves which people are, there’s a whole delete your Uber app movement. Oh God. Yeah, people are leaving. Uh Well, it’s several. Number one that Uber is run by a bunch of guys who honor the bro code. The company was actually started by a guy who on business in business insider said he started the company to get laid. Um His goal was to always have a black car when he was leaving a restaurant uh to impress the girl he was with. That’s he came out and said that and you see that culture run rampant throughout Uber um from their God mode where they can see they actually created. There was a uh uh I don’t know where I read this. It might have been Business Insider as well. There was a, they created a hookup page that showed or, or, or, or a walk of shame page that showed where uh women were leaving certain apartments like on weekends and going or leaving certain place on weekends, going back to their home. Um It was obvious that they, you know, met some guy and they did that and then, of course, just their, their whole surge pricing mentality, which is, you know, two days ago there was a, uh, a couple of days ago there was a, uh, the terrorist, uh, I think it was a terrorist attack in Sydney, uh, at that, at that bakery and Sydney, uh, Uber in Sydney instituted surge pricing for people trying to get out of harm’s way. You know? And, and they, they later refunded it. Oh, it was a computer glitch. I’m like, you know, I’m sorry, you, you have a stop button and you can, when you see something happening like that, there has to be someone in the office who can say, you know what? Not cool. We’re gonna take care of that and then hit the stop button and it was, yeah, bad, tons and tons and tons of bad publicity. And, you know, I was having an argument with someone on my Facebook page at facebook.com/peter Shankman because they said, oh, you know, um, so what they don’t, they don’t turn on surge pricing. They don’t have enough cabs there and, you know, people can’t get home. I said I’m pretty sure that the only company I’m sure that no one had cab companies there. I’m sure that there wasn’t anyone who had enough cars there, private cabs, Ubers, whatever yet. The only stories I read about companies screwing up during that event were Uber, not Joe’s Sydney cab company. You know, I didn’t see him screwing it up because he didn’t turn on surge pricing. You gotta, you gotta respect your customer. You have to, as we’re uh training for that, then not only uh trying to change that mindset, well, in, in trying to change that mindset rewards for, for customer, for employees that, that do take go do go the extra mile. Well, first of all, if you give the employees the ability to do it to go the extra mile and understand they won’t get fired. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I I always tell, tell every one of my employees, you’re never gonna get in trouble for spending a little extra money to try and keep a customer happy. You’ll get fired for not doing it. You know, you get fired for not for seeing an opportunity to fix someone and not taking it, not doing everything that you know, Ritz Carlton is famous for that. Ritz Carlton hires people not because whether they could fold the bed sheet but for how well they understand people because in Ritz Carlton’s mind, it’s much more important to be a people person and be able to be empathetic and that is such a key word. Empathy is just so so sorely lacking. You know how many you’ve called customer service? Yeah. You know, I have to, I have to change my flight. My, my, my aunt just died. I really need to get home. Ok, great. That’s $300. I just wanna go an hour earlier, you know, you show up at the airport, your bag is overweight by half a pound. That’s $75. I just, I can, you can, you just cut me some slack. Nope, you know, so empathy and giving the cust, giving the employee the ability to understand that the customer that sometimes you can make exceptions and it is ok to make changes and, and this is where a smaller organization has huge advantage and it’s easier to change. That’s what kills me. You know, I go to these, I, I try to frequent small businesses when I can, I go to some of these small businesses and they won’t, they, they act like large businesses, you know, in the respect that, that they don’t have a, like, they wanna be respected almost. They don’t have like a six, a 6000 page code that they have to adhere to. They can simply, uh, do something on the fly and yet for whatever reason they won’t do it. And, and it’s the most frustrating thing is like, guys, you, you’re acting like a big, you’re acting like mega Laar here, you know, and you’re not Mega Lamar and you’re just Joe’s House of stationery, whatever it is and, you know, not being able to help me, you’re pretty much killing yourself because you don’t have 85 billion customers that have come through the door after me, you know. But I have a pretty big network and for a small business to get killed socially as social becomes more and more what, how we communicate. You know, it’s just craziness. It’s, you know, we’re, we’re pretty much in a world, I think where something almost hasn’t happened to you. Unless, unless you share it. I joked that, uh, you know, if I can’t take a selfie was I really there. Um, but it’s true, you know, we, we do live in a world where, you know, I, I remember God 10 years ago, maybe not even, not even 10 years ago. I was one of the first people to have a phone in my camera, you know, and it was like a new phone. That’s what I said, yeah, camera in my phone, right? And it was like a uh I think it was like a 0.8 megapixel. You know, it looked like I was taking a picture with a potato but it was, um it was this, I remember it was 2002 and I was in Chase Bank and there was a woman arguing with the teller and I pulled out my video, you know, it was, I mean, it was the crappiest video you’ve ever seen. But I pulled it out and I said, you know, II I started recording and the, the woman behind the woman behind the counter was going, the woman behind the counter was talking to the customer saying you do not speak to me that way. You get out of this bank right now. And the customer was saying I just wanted my balance and you and the manager comes over and I get this whole thing on my little crappy three G uh Motorola phone phone. And I, I remember I posted online and gawker picks it up and II I gave him, I, I emailed it, you know, I, my, the headline I put on my blog was, you know, Chase where the right relationship is at. Go after yourself, you know, and it was, and it just got tons of play and then gawker picked it up. It went everywhere, totally viral. So it’s one of those things you’re just like, you know, this is in 2002. It’s 12 years later. How the hell can you assume that nothing is being that you’re not being recorded? You know, I, I, I remember blowing, I, I sneezed a couple of weeks ago and, and, uh, uh not to get too graphic here, but it was, I, I needed a tissue big time after I was done sneezing. And I remember going through my pockets looking for desperately looking for tissue and like looking around making sure I wasn’t on camera somewhere that someone didn’t grab that and it was give me the next viral sensation, you know, I mean, I wait, God, I went to high school with eight blocks from here, right? If the amount of cameras that are in Lincoln Center today. Were there in 1989 1990. I’d be having this conversation entirely. I’d be having this conversation behind bulletproof for myself. And you’d be, yeah. So, you know, you’d be, you’d be talking to me, you’d have to get special clearance to visit me. Probably be at the, the Super Max in Colorado or something. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s one of those things that you’re just like my kid who’s, who’s almost two years old now is gonna grow up with absolutely no expectation of privacy the same way that we grew up with an expectation of privacy. And I’m thankful for that because she will make a lot less stupid moves. You know, I mean, God, the things that I thought, you know, in, in, in, in high school, I thought the stupidest thing in the world. Thank God. There wasn’t a way for me to broadcast that to the world in real time. Jeez. Thank God creating these uh zombie loyalists. And you know, we’ve got to change some, we’ve got to change culture and thinking and reward systems. Let’s go back to the, the cost of all this. Why is this a better investment than trying to just focus on new donors? I, I love, I love this analogy and I’ll give you a fun analogy. Let’s, I’m in a bar and there’s a very cute girl across the, across the bar and she catches my eye catch her, I go up to her and I go, you know, you don’t know me. I am amazing in bed. You should finish your drink right now. Come home. Let’s get it on. I’m, I’m gonna impress I’m that good chances are she’s gonna throw a drink in my face. Go back talking to her friends. I’ve done a lot of research on this. That’s probably something I was gonna do now. Let’s assume, let’s assume an alternate world. I’m sitting there on my phone, I’m just playing like, you know, some, you know, words with friends or something like that. And, uh, she’s over there talking to her friends and one of her friends look up said, holy crap. That’s Peter. I think that’s Peter Shankman. I’ve heard him speak. I, he’s in this fantasy world. I’m single too today. He, I think he’s single and he’s having this amazing guy. I, I know he has a cat. You have a cat. You should totally go talk to him at the very least. I’m getting this girl’s number. That’s pr ok. And what do we trust more? Me with my, you know, fancy suit collar going over there in my seventies, leisure suit. Hi. I’m amazing. Or the girl saying, hey, we’ve been friends since third grade. I’m recommending that guy. You should trust me on this. You know, obviously that, that’s where, uh, good customer service comes into play and that’s where corporate culture comes into play because if I have a great experience with you and at your company, I’m gonna tell my friend when they’re looking and I will stake my personal reputation on it and there’s nothing stronger than that. And these are the people who want to breed as Zz Willis that’s stronger than advertising, stronger than marketing. And they’re gonna share, people wanna share that. Think about the, the internet runs on two things. It runs on drama, drama, and bragging or bragging and drama. And if you, if you need uh any proof of that, you know, go and look at all the hashtags with crap that’s happened, you know, bad customer service, bad whatever. But then look at all the good hashtags you know it when our flights delayed for three hours and we lose our seat. Oh my God, I hate this airline, you know, worst airline ever but when we get upgraded, right? Hashtag first class bitches or whatever it is, you know, something stupid like that and the whole because we love to share. It’s, it’s only a great experience if we could tell the world and it’s only a bad experience if we can make everyone else miserable about it as well. Its time for Tonys take two. Thank you, Kate. How’s your endowment endowment? That savings account that your nonprofit has that you only spend the interest of each year and maybe sometimes you don’t even spend that much from year to year planned giving. Can help you either launch your endowment if you don’t have one or grow your endowment if it needs to be bigger. And I don’t know many nonprofits that think uh we have enough, our endowment is big enough. We don’t need any more and giving accelerator. I will help you in the accelerator to launch planned giving so that you can start your endowment or grow your endowment throughout the three months of the course, We go March to May done by Memorial Day. So there’s no impinging on your summer plans. We’ll spend an hour a week together on Zoom over those 12 weeks and I will guide you step by step. Had a launch Planned Giving at your nonprofit. I set those weekly meetings up as meetings in Zoom. So there’s lots of cross talk between the members. People are helping each other. There’s a lot of peer support. Uh Aside from the teaching that I’m doing uh each week, if thats of interest to you, please check out Planned Giving accelerator.com promoting the course in uh the rest of this month. And then it starts in early March. That is Tony’s take two Kate. It sounds like a very valuable course. We hope people join. Yes, we do. You’re right about that. We’ve got Buku but loads more time. Let’s go back to zombie loyalists with Peter Shankman. Peter. You have a uh golden rule of social media that a good number of customers like to share and people are gonna keep doing it. People will always share. Um, again, it goes back to the concept that if you create great stuff, people wanna share it because people like to be associated with good things. If you create bad stuff and by stuff, I can mean, I mean, anything from like a bad experience to bad content, people not only won’t share that, but we go out of their way to tell people how terrible you are. Um, you know, how many times have you seen companies fail horribly, uh, you know, after major disasters when companies are tweeting, um, you know, completely unrelated things. Uh, uh, after, after a random school shooting. Uh, no, it was after the, uh, the, the shooting at the, the theater in Aurora, Colorado at the Dark Knight. Um, the Nr A tweets, hey, shooters, what’s your plans for this weekend? You know, and I’m just sitting there going really, you know, but, and of course, the thing was, the thing was retweeted millions of times, you know, with a sort of shame on the NR A. So we, we’re a society like I said earlier that loves to share when, when great things happen to us, but loves to tell the world when we’re miserable because we’re only truly miserable when we make everyone else miserable around us. Um, it’s funny you mentioned, uh, um, the Generosity series, uh, the, one of my favorite stories which goes to sort of a uh a bigger picture of culture and um somehow when you’re just doing your job because that’s what you’re, you’re supposed to do your job. But you don’t realize there are ways to get around that. I, I listen to your podcast among others uh when I’m running through Central Park. Um and more like if you know, my body type, more like lumbering through Central Park. But I, I get there, I’m an iron man. I have, I have that and um so I go through Central Park and it’s super early in the morning because I usually have meetings and I don’t run fast. Um I run like, I really don’t run fast but, but as I’m running, but let’s give you the credit. You have done a bunch of iron man. I do, I do it. You know, my mother tells me that I just have very poor judgment in terms of what sports I should do. But um on the flip side, I’m also a skydiver, which is with my weight is awesome. I fall better than anyone. Um But uh so I’m running through Central Park last year. It was February, uh February 13 and 14. It was of this year. And um it was probably around 445 in the morning because I had a uh I had an 8 a.m. meeting and I had to do 10 miles. So 445 in the morning, I’m running at around 90 79th 80th street on the east side in the park. And a cop pulls me over and he says, what are you doing? And I look at him, you know, I’m wearing black spandex. I have a hat. It’s five degrees and I’m like, what, what playing checkers? You know what, you know, I’m like, I’m running and he, he’s like, ok, can you stop running? I’m like, ok, he’s like the park’s closed. I’m like, no, it’s not like I’m in it. Look around, there are other people. No park doesn’t open until 6 a.m. I’m like, he’s like, uh, do you have any idea on you? I’m like, no, I’m running. He goes, what’s your name? I’m like, seriously. He said, I’m writing you a summons. I’m like, you’re writing me a summons for exercising for I for ex, I just wanna clarify this. You’re writing music and sure enough, the guy wrote me a summons for exercising in Central Park before it opened. The, the charge was breaking the violating curfew. You know, I’m like, I get the concept of the curfew. It’s to keep people out after 2 a.m. It’s not to prevent them from going in early to exercise, to be healthy. I’m like, I’m not carrying, you know, a six pack. I’m not drinking a big gulp. I’m not smoking. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m doing something healthy and you’re writing me a summons for it. Um, and I said, you know, I’m gonna have a field day with this. I said iii I kinda have some followers. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I’m not, you know, I know you’re just doing your job, sir, even though you have the discretion not to. But ok, so I go back home, I take a picture of my ticket. I email it to a friend of mine of the New York Post, you know, front page, New York Post next day. No, running from this ticket, you know, front page, of course, that’s great. New York Times covered it. Uh Runners world covered it. I mean, I went everywhere, gawker covered it, you know, and, and my whole thing was, it’s just like, dude, you have discretion. Look at me, you know, I’m not, I’m not even going super fast for God’s sake. I’m just, I’m just trying to exercise here, you know, and of course I went to court and I, I beat it. But how much money did it cost the city for me to go to court? Fight this thing. You know, every employee you have to give your employees the power of discretion, the power of empathy to make their own decisions. If you go by the book, bad things will happen. And again, small shops so much easier to do flat line flat organizations. I, I work with a nonprofit um animal rescue, no profit. Um A friend of mine was a skydiver and uh shout him out. What’s the, I can’t, there’s a reason I can. But, but there’s a friend of mine was a skydiver and she was killed in a base jump several years ago. And her husband asked to donate in her memory to this nonprofit. So I sent him a check. And about three months later I get a coffee table book in the mail. And I was living by myself at the time I didn’t own a coffee table. It was, you know, more money to spend on my flat screen. And um I uh I remember I call, I, I look at this coffee table, I throw, I throw it in the corner, I look at it over the next couple of days. It pisses me off about how much, how much of my donation did it cost to print mail and produce this book to me. And so I, I called them up. Well, sir, we believe most of our donors are older and probably prefer to get a print version as opposed to like digital, you know, where they’d throw it away and like, you don’t throw digital away, but ok. Um I’m like, so, so you’ve asked your, you’ve done surveys and you’ve asked all, no, we just assume that most of them are older. I’m like, ok, so I opened my mouth wound up joining their board and I spent the next year interviewing uh customers interviewing every current and past donor about how they like to get their information and shock of shock, 94% said online. And so over the following year, we launched Facebook page, Twitter page, uh um uh Flickr account, uh youtube everything PS The following year for that donations went up 37% in one year. In that economy. It was right around 0809 donations went up 37% in one year and they saved over $500,000 in printing, mailing and reproduction. Imagine going to your boss, hey, boss, revenue is up 37% and we saved a half million dollars. Your boss is gonna buy you a really good beer. You know, all they had to do was listen to their audience be relevant to the audience you have and they will tell you what they want. We have tons of tools for segmentation. You gotta listen to what segment you wanna, people wanna be in. You know, someone, someone asked me the other day. So what, what’s the best? I, I knew nothing about their company. What’s the best uh social media I left for me to be on, should I be on Twitter or should I be on Facebook? I said, I’ll answer that question if you can answer this, this question, I’m gonna ask you is my favorite type of cheese Gouda or the number six. And they say, I don’t understand. That’s not a real question. I’m like, neither is yours. Like I can’t tell you where the best place to be your audience? Can I said, go ask your audience, believe me, they will tell you there’s a gas station in the Midwest. Come and go. Um, I, I just love the name Kum and go, come and go and you can read more about the, their tagline is always something extra. I mean, come on the jokes, just write them for god’s sake. But, um, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. I love that and knowing the name of the company gas station. And, um, you know, I, I like, I remember they were in Iowa and I went up to visit a friend in Iowa and I was like, you gotta get a photo of me in front of the come and go sign, you know, and, um, the beauty of this is that some of their employees actually look at their customers when they’re on their phones in the stores and go, oh, you know, what do you use Twitter more? Or Facebook? And they say, oh, I use that and they record that information and they know it. God customers will give you so much info if you just ask them because then they feel invested, they feel invested in your company. They feel like they, that you took the time to listen to their nonprofit request or their, their, their questions and they feel like they’re, I did it for Harrow every month. We’d have a one question. Harrow survey, you know, Harrow one question survey. And it was, we get like 1000 people respond and I’d spend the entire weekend emailing everyone who responded and thanking them personally, took my entire weekend. But it was great because what would wind up happening is that, you know, if we took their advice and launched it on Monday with the new thing? They go, oh my God. How did this for me? They took my advice. Well, yeah, it was your advice to 800 other people’s advice. But we took it and they’d be like, oh my God, it’s a good thing. And, and it just, it just made them so much more loyal and they’d tell hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people we’d get, I mean, there were days my God, there were days I remember I was in temple one morning, the garment center synagogue and my phone, I feel my phone getting really hot in my pocket, which is not normal and I was starting to hurt and I look at it, I, it’s, it’s almost on fire. It had frozen because we were mentioned in Seth Godin’s morning blog. And at that time I was getting uh emails every time we get a new subscriber and the phone is actually frozen and was locked and, and was like overheating. I take out the battery and like reset the entire phone because we just got so many new, like 14,000 subscribers in like three hours. It’s obscene, it’s obscene. You say, excuse me, you say uh that customer service is the new advertising. Marketing. N pr It really is. Well, again, you know, if we’re moving into that world where, so imagine a lava lamp. And I love that. I can use this analogy. Imagine a lava lamp. A lava lamp has water, oil and a heat source, right? The heat source heats the oil, the oil flows through the water. It makes pretty colors. I’ve heard it looks really good when you’re high. Now, I’ve heard. Now, imagine if, oh, crystals. Imagine if you’re, uh, everyone you meet in your network. Ok. Is a drop of oil? The water is your network and the water is your world. Everyone you meet in your network. Uh, from, from the guy you’re sitting doing the radio interview with, to the guy who serves you ice cream with local deli to the guy who does your dry cleaning to your girlfriend, to your wife. To not at the same time to your kid’s second grade teacher, to your second grade teacher years ago. Everyone you meet is in your network. You know, right now when Facebook first started, I would see the same weight from a kid. I went to junior high school with, he, his post would have the same weight as like my current girlfriend. Which is ridiculous. I don’t need to know about everything. My friend from junior high school is doing. I haven’t talked to the kid in 15 years. Facebook’s gotten a lot smarter as has Google. Now, I see the people I communicate with the most. Ok. And if I, if I reach out and communicate with new people, they start rising in my feet in my stream. If I don’t they fall, it’s just like a lava lamp. Every person you connect with is a drop of oil. That heat source at the bottom that’s rising, raising or lowering. Those drops of oil is relevance. So if you imagine the heat source is relevance and the more I interact with someone, the more the higher they go in my network and the more I see of them, the more trust level there is when I’m at a bar and I meet someone or at a restaurant or conference, I meet someone. I don’t need to um connect them. I don’t need to go on Facebook and friend request them. You know how awkward friend requesting is when you stop and think that last time my friend requested someone in the real world was second grade. Will you be my friend? My daughter’s doing that now she goes, you know, she goes, it’s like the cat. Will you be my friend? I’m like, honey, the cat doesn’t wanna be your friend. But you know, it’s this awkward thing who the hell friend requests someone anymore. If I’m, if I’m hanging out with you at a bar and we connect again and we talk and we go out to dinner and we’re having a good time. We’re friends. I don’t need to first request that you, you know, so that’s going away. Friending following liking and fanning is all going away. What will interact is the actual connection. So, if I meet with you and I have a good time with you and we talk again if I use your business. If I go to your nonprofit, if I donate, if I volunteer, whatever the network knows that the more I do that, the more I interact with you, the more you have the right to market to me and the more you will be at the top of my stream and the more I will see information about you, the less I will have to uh uh search for you. But if you do something stupid or we’re no longer friends see you, you’re gonna fade. I don’t have to unfriend you. You just disappear. Unfriending is also awkward. I dated a woman. We broke up, but it was nine months after we broke up, either of us wanted to unfriend the other one because it was just awkward. So I, I woke up in front of me anyway. But you know, the concept of not having to, to do that of just, you know, OK, I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t see your posts anymore. It’s the real world. That’s how it should be, and if you’re not feeding zombie loyalists, they can start to defect. So I, I want to spend a little time on if you’re not talking to them, giving them what they want, talking about their information, helping them out, they will gladly go somewhere else to someone who is, you know, if I have a great experience with the restaurant, uh, every week for three years and then all of a sudden over time, I’m noticing less and less that restaurant’s doing less and less to uh take care of me, you know, and maybe management’s changed and I don’t feel that uh you know, I’m ripe for being infected by another company. I’m ripe for someone else to come and say, you know, Peter. Uh cause if I tweet something like, wow, I can’t believe I have to wait 40 minutes for a table. It didn’t used to be like that. If I, if someone else is a smart restaurant, they’re following me and they’re gonna be great. You know what, Peter? There’s no way, no way over here. Why don’t you come two blocks north and we’ll give you a free drink, you know. Oh, you know, and that right there, that’s the first sign of infection and I might become infected by, by another company, become a zombie loyalist for them. And so let’s, let’s take, you have a lot of good examples. Let’s take a one on one situation. How can we start to cure that. The simple act of realizing following your customer’s understanding when they’re not happy and fixing the situation before it escalates. Um you know, you can contain a small outbreak, a small outbreak, small viral outbreak. You can contain that by getting the right people finding out what the problem is, getting them into one room, fixing their problem, healing them. You have a good uh united story right back when it was Continental, I was uh a frequent flyer and booked a trip to Paris and uh I was very angry because they charged me like $400 in, in booking fees or something like that. I don’t remember what it was. And, uh, I called the CEO, I just, just for the hell of it. I’m like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I wrote, I wrote an email, this was before social and I wrote an email to the CEO and I’m like, this is ridiculous. I’m a frequent da da da da and like 30 minutes later my phone rings like, hello Peter Jman, please hold for Larry Kellner CEO of cotton lines. I’m like, oh crap. You know, and the guy gets on the phone, he’s like Peter, how you doing, Mr Jman? How are you doing? Sorry, listen, these fees, they’re new. Um, we sent them a note, I’m guessing you didn’t see it. We’re gonna waive them for you. But, uh, if you have any more problems, you know, feel free to call me and I hang up the phone for the next 40 minutes just sort of staring at it like, holy crap. Larry Kellner, the CEO of United Airlines just called me and, uh, talk to me and I mean, it was like, it was like God coming down and say you now have the power to levitate your cat. It was just ridiculous. And, um, so, you know, I have been faithful to Continental and now United ever since and, and they continue to treat me with respect and, and do great things and they’re, they’re improving. They, they were getting a lot of crap over the past several years and they really are starting to improve. It’s nice to see and not only, of course, your own loyalty but you’re a loyal guy. You’re a zombie loyalist for them. And how many times how, how much it’s unquantifiable. It’s un, I, I dragged so many friends to United. I’ve, I’ve made so many friends. Uh, I mean, my father, you know, uh, he only flies United now, which means he only drag, he drags my mom only on United. I only dragged my wife on United. There’s a lot of, a lot of work that way. Yeah, we gotta go away for a couple of minutes when we come back. Of course, Peter and I are gonna keep talking about his book comes out in January, zombie loyalists. You have some examples of zombie loyalist leaving en masse like Dominoes, Netflix. They’re both, they’re both in the book. So, so one leaving, if you don’t, if you’re not starting to cure one leaving and then that’s the thing, you know, the beat will be the internet with the hashtags and everything like that, you know, it doesn’t take a long time um for those things to sort of blow up in your face. And, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everyone say, oh, you know, Twitter’s responsible for, for us losing money. No, they’re not. You’re responsible for you losing money. You know, and, and if your product isn’t great and you, your actions don’t speak well of who you are, then there’s no reason your customers should stay with you, you know, and it was, oh, social media is really hurting us because no, you’re hurting yourself. The only difference is that social media makes it easier for the world to know about. They’re just telling the story. Dominos and Netflix are, are good examples because they, they bounced back. They took responsibility and they both owned the Dominoes came out and said, you know what? You’re right. Our pizza, we do have a problem. We’re gonna fix this and they spent millions fixing it. And sure enough, they’re back with a vengeance. Now, I’m, I may or may not even have ordered them every once in a while. And I live in New York City. That’s, that’s a, that’s a sacrilege. But, um, you know, I have the app on my phone for when I’m over, you know, traveling somewhere. I’ll be in shea, whatever. And, and you know, what are you gonna get at 1130 at night when your flight’s delayed and you land? It’s Domino. Um, which reminds me I should probably go exercise on the flip side, you know, something like Netflix. They, uh, they also were screwing up, you know, they were losing, they tried to switch between the two. They came up with a new name and it was like gross in public. And so, and again, you’re watching the same thing happen with Uber right now. So it’ll be really interesting to see if they were able to repair themselves. Listening is important. Both, both those, both, those two examples, they listen to their customers. I think there’s a problem with listening because everyone’s been saying, listen, listen, listen for months and years and years and years now. But, you know, no one ever says that you have to do more than just listen. You have to listen, actually follow up. It’s one thing to listen. You know, I, I use the example of my wife, I could sit there and listen to her for hours, you know, but if I don’t actually say anything back, she’s gonna smack me, you know, and go to the other room. And so you really have to, it’s a two way street, you know, listening is great, but you gotta respond and uh look, I’ll take it a step further. I was like, oh, Twitter’s so great because someone was complaining on Twitter and we went online and we, we saw the complaint and then we fix their problem and yeah, how about if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? You know, because the great thing about Twitter is that, yeah, people complain on Twitter. The bad thing about it is they’re complaining about on you’re on Twitter. So it’s like, what if the problem didn’t exist in the first place? What if, what if you empowered your front desk clerk to fix the problem so that I didn’t have to tweet. Uh Hertz is my favorite story of all this. Uh I used to rent from Hertz religiously. Um And then I went to uh Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport this past April and I gave it, I was giving a speech and I, I go and I, my name is supposed to be on the board, you know, so I can go right to my car and it wasn’t, it was ok. That happens. I got upstairs, I wait 40 minutes on the VIP line. Um After 40 minutes they finally say, you know, there’s a uh only one guy here, a lot of people might have a better chance if we go up to the regular line. Like, ok, you probably could have told us that a little earlier, go up to the regular line. Spend 45 minutes waiting in the regular line. It’s now been. Are you tweeting while this is happening? Well, I had, I was actually not only tweeting, I had enough time to create a meme that should give you some idea of how long I was online with my cell phone. I was enough time to have a meme. I get it to the counter. Hi, can I help you? Yeah. Um I, I was downstairs at the VIP desk and they told me that oh your VIP reservation you have to go downstairs like yeah. Ok, let’s let’s put a pin in that. Um they just sent me up here like uh right. They have to help you. Well, it’s not really, they, you guys are the same company. I mean I could see the reservation on the screen. You, you, you, you can help me. Sorry sir, I can’t help. You have to go to the VIP next. I’m like you just next to me. Ok. So if you know anything about Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, um all of the rental car company, they’re all in the same place. So I walked 50 feet. It’s a bus takes you to the big to the big pavilion where they’re all next to each. I walked 50 ft from the cesspool of filth and depravity that was hurt to the, the wonderful Zen Garden of tranquility. That was Avis. And in four minutes I had a nicer cheaper, more or a nicer less expensive car given to me, a woman named Phyllis who was 66 and moved to Phoenix from Detroit with her husband for his asthma. I knew this because she told me, um, she smiled at me. She brought her manager out and said, ah, it’s another refugee from, uh, Hertz. And I said, so this happens a lot. They’re like, yeah, I’m like, wow, you’d think they’d have done something about that. And so on the way out in Avis. Um I, I thank them, I walk past hers. I shoot them this, you know, sort of look at the look of the beast. I get my Avis car and I drive to my hotel. Once I get to my hotel, I write a wonderful blog post about my experience called Peter and Hertz and the terrible, horrible, no good, really bad customer experience. Once you have a kid, you find up rewriting titles about your blog posts that have to do with kids books. Um I do not like Hertz Sam. I am and things like that. And um I included in this blog post, the five things I’d rather do than ever. Uh ran from Herz again, I think number three was um was uh ride a razor blade bus through a lemon juice waterfall um with just, you know, and, and so, but, but of course, the next day Hertz reaches out to me. Oh Mr Jman, this is the head of North American customer service. That’s all you’re about. I’m like, they’re like, you know, we’d love to let Nick know like you, you’re not gonna fix the problem. Number one because I’m gonna Nas Car. I’m never going back to Hertz. Number two. There were five people yesterday, five people I interacted with all of whom had the chance to save me and keep me as a customer for life. A, a customer who had been so happy and I would have loved you. Five people blew it. So don’t waste your time trying to convert me back. You’re not going to what you wanna do is spend some of that energy, retraining your staff to have empathy and to give them the ability and the empowerment to fix my problem when it happens because five people it it takes every single employee to keep your company running, it takes one to kill it. Yeah. PS Avis reached out um to thank me personally and uh I am now just this ridiculously huge loyal fan of Avis and always will be you have a pretty touching story about uh when you worked in a yogurt shop, you were really young. Um We have a couple of minutes tell that, tell that good story. That was on the east side, which again is another reason why I live on the west side. Nothing good ever happens in Manhattan’s East side. So I was uh I was working and I can’t believe it’s yogurt, uh, which was a store that I think back in the eighties IC by. No, no. TCBY was the country’s best yoga. IC biy was a poor, I can’t believe it’s yo, I can’t believe it’s not yoga. I can’t believe it. Yogurt. It was a poor attempt to capitalize on. That was TCB. And I’m working at this store and, um, I go in every day and make the yogurt to clean the floors. I do. You know, it’s a typical high school job and, uh, it was during the summer and thousands of people walking by, I think it was like Second Avenue or something. And there were these brass poles that hung from, you know, it was the, the, the, there was an awning, right? That’s a, that there and there were the brass poles that held the awning up and they were dirty as hell. Right. I’m sure they’d never been polished ever. And I found some, I found some brass polish in the back like, oh, they buried in the back. And one afternoon I went outside and IP started polishing the poles. My logic was if the poles were shiny and people saw them, maybe they come into the store, maybe they’d wanna, you know, buy more nice clean place. And the manager came out. What the hell are you doing? I said, I told him what I thought, I don’t pay you to think, get inside. You know, I’m like, there’s no customers in there. I’m like, ok, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make sure the yogurt’s still pumping it full blast. And I quit, I just quit that job. Like, I mean, I, I couldn’t even begin to understand why someone would invest, I mean, to own a franchise for 50 grand, to at least to buy that franchise. Why wouldn’t he invest in the two seconds? It took little elbow grease to make the poll clean That might bring in more customers. What the hell? You know, but you’re not paid to think. You’re not paid to think. My favorite line. Yeah. Um, I, I just, I, I encourage if any kids are listening to this teenagers. If you, if your boss says that to you quit, quit, I will hire, you just quit. It’s, it’s, it’s probably the worst thing in the world that you could possibly do because you have customers who you have customers who every day can be helped by people who are paid to think. And that’s the ones you wanna hire. We gotta wrap up. Tell me what you love about the work you do. I get paid to talk. I mean, my God, this is the same stuff. I used to get in trouble for in high school, but on a bigger picture, what I really love about it is being able to open someone’s eyes and have them come back to me. Um, I run a series of masterminds called Shank Minds Business. Masterminds. It’s shank minds.com. They’re day long seminars all around the country. And, uh I had someone come to me and say, you know, I took your advice about XYZ and I, I started listening a little more and I just got, uh, the largest, um, retainer client I’ve ever had in my life by a factor of four. And she goes, and I just can’t even thank you and I send me like a gorgeous bottle of tequila. She’s like, I can’t even thank you enough. Oh my God. Being able to help people, you know, at the end of the day, we’re, we’re, I, I have yet to find another planet suitable for life. I’m looking so we’re all in this together. And if that’s the case, you know, why wouldn’t we want to help people just a little bit more? You know, there really isn’t a need to be as douche as we are as a society. We could probably all be a little nicer to each other and you’d be surprised how that will help. The book is Zombie Loyalists. It’s published by Palgrave macmillan comes out in January. You’ll find Peter at shankman.com and on Twitter at Peter Shankman, Peter. Thank you so much. Pleasure is Amanda. Oh, thank you. Next week. That’s an open question. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking the supporter generosity donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martti. The show 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 be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great.

Nonprofit Radio for November 13, 2023: Fundraising 401

 

Laurence PagnoniFundraising 401

That’s Laurence Pagnoni’s latest book. When this first aired, it was his new book, but Laurence’s strategies and tactics are timeless. It’s a series of masterclasses for all levels and a collection of revelations he gained over 35 years in nonprofit management and fundraising. (This originally aired May 29, 2020.)

 

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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.

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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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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[00:00:47.44] 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 September 11, 2023: Donor Retention

 

Dennis Fois: Donor Retention

The challenges are real and widespread: Aging donors; smaller gifts; and abysmal retention rates. Dennis Fois brings strategies and tactics to raise your consciousness and turn things around. Let’s talk about emotional connections, multithreading, and multichannel, just for starters. He’s CEO of Bloomerang.

 

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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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[00:00:35.77] spk_0:
And welcome to tony-martignetti Nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I am your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with Bera France if you lit me up with the idea that you missed this week’s show, Kate, our associate producer. What is up this week?

[00:01:10.67] spk_1:
Hey, tony, it’s donor retention. The challenges are real and widespread aging donors, smaller gifts and abysmal retention rates. Dennis Fo brings strategies and tactics to raise their consciousness and turn things around. Let’s talk about emotional connections, multi threading and being multichannel just for starters. He is CEO of Boomerang on Tony’s take two.

[00:01:13.14] spk_0:
It’s September 11th

[00:01:46.46] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org and by Kila grow revenue, engage donors and increase efficiency with Kila. The fundraiser CRM visit Kila dot co to join the thousands of fundraisers using Kila to exceed their goals. Here is donor retention.

[00:02:14.42] spk_0:
It’s a genuine pleasure to welcome Dennis Fo to nonprofit radio. He is CEO of Blue Marang. He’s had a broad international career spanning more than 25 years developing and leading high performing multicultural teams in the technology, customer experience, relationship management and financial services sectors. He’s on linkedin and the company is at Boomerang dot Co, Dennis Fois. Welcome to nonprofit radio.

[00:02:23.67] spk_2:
Thanks very much for having me on tony.

[00:02:25.64] spk_0:
Pleasure. Pleasure. And uh where are you uh speaking

[00:02:28.54] spk_2:
from? I’m speaking from Carmel in California.

[00:02:35.88] spk_0:
Carmel, California. All right. Uh And the, the, the business is in Indianapolis, is that right?

[00:02:58.75] spk_2:
Originally started in Indie? And um as I think a lot of uh technology companies post pandemic has ended up all over the place. So we are very much scattered around the US. We are remote. So most of our employees work from home and then we, we work together, uh when we meet, we have events around that. But uh I want to mention about 30% of our employees in India and the rest outside of India nowadays. Ok.

[00:03:08.92] spk_0:
Ok. And it sounds like you’re intentional about getting the team together in person. Is that you, you find that, uh we, we’re, we’re digressing from our main topic. But, uh I’m, I’m, I’m interested and I think listeners are too. You, you, you find that important for uh for a uh a virtual team,

[00:05:30.12] spk_2:
super important. And I think um you have to be very intentional, deliberate about it. I, I mean, I’m one of those people that um as we all went into the pandemic and we had to do certain things that were just basically necessary. I did want to take some learning side of it because we did learn a lot. I, you know, I, I was an office rat before the pandemic or first in, first, last out and I sort of noticed a few things during the pandemic. They were actually very pleasurable and I think it doesn’t work for every company. But if you take, take hours, for instance, we work for small to midsize nonprofit organizations all around the US, what’s really cool is is that if you have your employees all around the US, you can actually give some time for employees to do something locally and that opens doors so you can create a better connection. We now have employees everywhere. So if there’s a customer, you know, I’ve, I’ve got customers here in Carmel. I did, I didn’t know that. So now we can connect, we can meet for a coffee. I can do. So I’m actually volunteering some with a local dog rescue. So it creates this sort of more emotional connections. Folks can pick up their Children from school. It’s a, it’s a, it adds an interesting layer to your company that in my opinion, can create a deeper connection with employees and potentially higher retention rate. So I’m not, you know, there is a, there is a shrewd business side to this too, right? Um And that is that employee, we talk about donor attention to the employee retention is a topic too. And um uh embracing some of the learnings that we’ve taken away rather than going back to an old model. Seems to me, uh it feels like the right thing to do. So we, we’re, we’re making it work. But yes, you absolutely have to be very intense about uh when you get together and what, then you shouldn’t be staring at presentations that you need to make it about human connection. And uh and that requires a lot of thinking. Um So it’s not because we don’t really have a good model uh where we, where we can learn from each other. So we, we’re figuring it out. Yeah,

[00:05:34.13] spk_0:
we’re working it out and you’re, I, I understand intentional and it’s worth investing in clearly,

[00:05:39.39] spk_2:
for sure. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[00:06:20.36] spk_0:
All right. All right. So, thank you a little digression. Uh But as you said, yeah, we’re, we’re here to talk about uh donor retention. Uh What? Uh Well, II, I think it’s pretty widely known that we’re doing quite poorly as a sector in donor retention. Uh It’s 75% or so of one first time donors are, are lost after, after that first gift, which is abysmal. I mean, it’s un it’s, to me it’s unsustainable and unless, unless you have an enormous acquisition pipeline which you’re spending a lot of money on, which is quite a bit more expensive than retaining, uh, it, it seems unsustainable but, but it, but our, I, I’ll call it, our donor mortality rate continues to be very bad.

[00:10:01.84] spk_2:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, um, if this was a business, we would be out of business. Right. Um, I agree with you entirely. The statistics are a little paralyzing at times I feel and, um, I would say, and sometimes there’s a lot of uh sort of negative communication around it. Some folks getting, getting very stressful about it, I would say in part, it’s also down to uh execution, right? Uh So what I mean is if you see uh your organization in 11 half of the organization about is about heart is what you care about what you’re passionate about. But the other part of it is the the brain part is where you do need to run it as an organization and what we are seeing a fair amount of in the small to mid size, say from 250 K to 25 up to 25 million. That is, it’s, it’s, it’s really not really approached and run like a business, you know, as a business, the moment you’ve acquired your first customer, this is the first donation, you, you be Fighting Tooth for Nail to retain that customer. We all, we all know that it’s much cheaper to retain existing customers. So, so it’s, it’s bizarre to see but, but then I started sort of digging in because, uh, you know, you get, you get to, uh, you get to ask why, well, why, why is it? It’s not that it’s been 30% that it’s 70% now, it’s been structurally like this for a very, very long time, you know, that better than I do even. And so why, why is that? And we don’t really have great answers. But for me, it comes down to a lack of establishment of emotional connection. I think that ultimately why most of us give is because there’s a level of feeling associated to it. It’s not a transaction for most people to donate. Whether it’s a small donation, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a feeling whether it’s a feeling to make yourself feel good or whether it’s a uh altruistic Phil philanthropy, what whatever the feeling is, it’s about feeling. And when you think about that, you and then you ask yourself and say, ok, what am I doing to, to help that person get more connected to my organization? That’s where it starts to unravel real quick. So, capital campaigns are about transactions and numbers. Um when we, and, and it’s very knee jerky. You know, when we, when the numbers are low low, we’ll run a big campaign and it feels a little bit like a transactional approach. Well, thanks very much. Our course was to raise so many thousands. We did it, we did the sele, but we’re forgetting the basics. Let me give you one which I found shocking statistic you and I experience this. You’d think that saying thank you when somebody’s donated would be pretty common practice, right? So I’ve just donated in whatever form I’m receiving some form of. Thank you. I’m not even talking about the most impactful way of doing it. I’m just talking about. Thank you in a way, an email, whatever it, when you look at it, the statistics are pretty bad. So we, we, we, we look at this because we, we work with our prospects and customers about how, where can we improve some things if I give you sort of an aggregate number saying thank you within say the first two weeks of a donation happens in less than 13% of cases. No, 13

[00:10:07.11] spk_0:
what two weeks? It’s supposed to be 24 hours, 24 hours for a perfunctory and then maybe there’s a follow up, you know, I like to see a follow up call or a handwritten note or something, but the perfunctory should be 24 hours and you’re saying two weeks and it’s 2 13%

[00:11:15.01] spk_2:
13, 13. And then if we lengthen the time to 30 days, at which point, I don’t even remember what I’ve done to be honest with you, but then that number goes up to 18% 18. So it’s, it’s a crazy number if you think about if you set that number up against 75% 1st time donor retention rate issues, right? And you say, say, but we never say thank you to me, rather than looking at really structural societal, economic reasons for why things are the way they are, we should really start to look at, are we doing absolutely everything we can to establish an emotional connection? And frankly, if you miss a thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It sort of feels like you’re, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve got a, you had a false start, right? Yeah. Now

[00:11:35.34] spk_0:
you’ve, you’ve, you’ve blown the, you’ve blown the opportunity if, if, if you’re responding with a, a even a perfunctory. Thank you. As I said, I’d like to see 24 hours but within 48 hours that you’re going out to two weeks and it’s only 13%. Uh, and what, what is, what is that? I’ve never heard it that low. That awful, what, what is that based on that? That’s boomerang clients. Yeah,

[00:12:48.42] spk_2:
we look at and prospects. So we, we, we, um, uh, I, I’ll give, I gave you sort of an aggregate number. Some folks are much better, better at it than others, but you’d be surprised. It’s certainly not in the, it’s never in the high 80% or something like that you’d be. And there’s always a reason why people say I didn’t have whatever address or there’s always some reason, but there’s also no reason because if you and I would be running a business, there’s always a way to say thank you to someone. Right. So, so it, it feels to me, uh, there’s plenty of, you know, hurdles that we can keep up with. I didn’t have the right email address, didn’t have the right phone number or something happened. I didn’t do it, whatever, but it’s structurally super bad and it’s always in the low single digit percentage across the board. In fact, we often, um, engage with prospects like that when we look at sort of, uh, they might have other systems or other tactics and as they’re looking for another system, they want to also improve the processes. Right? And we often do these sort of assessments where we, um, uh, that’s what we do. We actually make small donations on behalf of us and we should see we track what, what happens and that’s, that’s how we get that information. And, uh,

[00:13:14.60] spk_0:
if you, if you’re not responding within 24 hours, I think it looks like you just don’t care. Right. Talk about grabbing someone from the heart first, you know, to, to give them a feeling, AAA warm feeling anything more than 24 hours. Looks like your gift doesn’t really mean too much to us. In 30 days. 30 you may as well not, I don’t know. To me after two weeks, you might not even bother it. You’ve already, you’ve already blown the relationship unless I don’t know unless you call with, uh, uh, some kind of catastrophic story, uh you know, which is not, not likely, uh you’ve blown it, you’ve blown the opportunity.

[00:15:41.99] spk_2:
Yeah, completely. And, and, and we often get uh a little bit of setback when you sort of look at and say, hey, am I supposed to say thank you? Like do I, what, what does it matter if I say automated email, for instance, as a thank you to everyone that’s not very personal, it’s not very emotional. And I agree. But if you start by saying thank you to your first time donors and have different means to engage with your retained donors, that would be a good start. You can’t tell me that you, you have so many first time donors that you can’t deal with the volume like that. That seems, that seems like a that’s a very high bar to achieve. That’s not what we are seeing, right? So I think if you just narrow it down and say just hit the notes I had um I wasn’t, I had a, a charity rally where we had sort of a thing with old cars and this was to support a local dog rescue. And uh we did a bunch of things like auctions and stuff like that and we made a donation and it was so amazing that the following day um I got a voice mail so they didn’t get with me, but that voicemail was fantastic. It was just a voice mail from the executive director and it was just like, it was just a, a very nice warm, I heard the voice. It made me feel super good. I thought I did the right thing and, um, and now there was a, you know, a typical newsletter that follows. So I actually read that newsletter now. Right, because I’m, I’ve got something there. Actually, I love that lady. I love how passionate she is about making sure that these dogs end up in the right homes and how deliberate she is about all of that. Um And she’s, she’s got me like they’ve got me, I want to do more and, and I thought it was as simple as just dropping me in a a voicemail. She didn’t even try to call me. It was just a voicemail straight into my inbox, but because it was a voicemail and not an email, it was much more personal and I’m pretty sure that day maybe from that event, let’s just be generous. Say that she had five or six new donors, right? New first I done this. Is it really that hard to to send five? Thank you. Um I don’t know, seems like it seems like it’s doable.

[00:15:45.98] spk_0:
Now. You, you’ve mentioned this dog rescue uh a couple of times now. So why don’t you shout them out properly? No, I

[00:15:50.85] spk_2:
can’t. I can’t because this built a pool. They,

[00:15:57.27] spk_0:
they, they all right, you’re a big, you’re such a big dog lover. You can’t shout out to you. All right. All right. All right. Well, we know we

[00:16:03.26] spk_2:
have the opportunity though, tony, but I think I’m gonna get it. Um I’m gonna get it wrong somewhere with someone. It’s a very

[00:16:10.28] spk_0:
small town, right? We know we have a dog

[00:16:46.14] spk_1:
lover. It’s time for a break. Donor box, quote, donor box text to give led to one of our more successful fundraising events, a concert sharing the keyword short code and scannable QR code made giving easy for our supporters. And they did give that’s from Josh Young executive director of hydrating Humanity Donor Boxx, helping you help others donor Boxx dot org. Now back to donor retention.

[00:17:09.28] spk_0:
So in with automation, I mean, this, you give a gift, you have to provide an email address and and or a phone number so you can send them an email or a text again, this perfunctory, you know, within 24 hours. I I just don’t see any reason why with, with automation that are pretty standard, right? And you should be able to send an immediate

[00:20:01.36] spk_2:
technology problem. It’s not a technology problem. There are no technological hurdles here. I mean, systems might be difficult to use and what have you but you can, it’s not rocket science. Once you’ve done it, once you can, you can figure it out that I think the, you know what it’s the way I think about it, which is fascinating. I think we have three big challenges that we need to think through. They’re gonna be pretty structural. We’ve got aging donors, we’ve got declining small donations. So from uh gifts up to $100 and from 100 to $500 are down across the board and we have a very hard time retaining first time donors. Those are the three like big uh themes if you can call them that or headwinds, whatever you wanna call them that we need to think through. Ok, these are gonna be here for a while. How, how do I, how do I respond to those? Right. And the bizarre thing is that because we have aging donors, we need to think about our uh our donors as a whole. We need to think about. Ok, how do I tap into younger donors? How do I tap into, how do I broaden my connection to household and not have a singular donor within a household? So you need to think about that. And it’s remarkable then that when we’re presented an opportunity to have a first time donor that we would, we wouldn’t be obsessed about retaining these donors in some way either by and if and if the friction is around the donation, I’d rather take a small recurring donation over a haphazard first time donation. There’s a, a strategy too. So we have all the tools in place. It’s just that it’s almost like we are applying principles that we have. We, we, we’ve applied for years to today. But today things are really starting to accelerate. So when we think of don, you know, frankly dying donors uh and not being part of estate planning and such, we really need to think about tapping into different generationals. And now that generation uh you have then you have other questions which is, is email, the best medium, et cetera, et cetera. But um uh there is an amazing opportunity there in my opinion, to, to, to tap into because we are getting the first time donors in, we are getting them. So it’s not like the next generation is nonn generous. It’s quite the opposite. Actually, the generation that we all love to hate the Gen Z and the millennials are extraordinarily driven by impact and doing good for the world. They are probably one of the most in tune generation. We’re just not connecting with them and uh and their rotation rates will continue to show what they’re showing if applying these type of uh methods here. So it’s a, it’s a challenge.

[00:22:16.22] spk_0:
I, I wonder if some of the problem with connecting with the millennials and Gen Z is that the leadership are baby boomers and they’re not listening to their own millennial and Gen Z employees or the or they’re not even seeking the advice of those younger folks about how to, how to connect the younger donors again. Emotionally. I, I think, I think if you start with the heart the brain follows. So you had that heartfelt genuine sincere voicemail, just a voicemail and it, it, and it’s drawn you in and that’s so that’s an example. Um They’re so they’re not, they’re not taking the advice. And I think these boomers of which I’m one, a young one, a very, a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very young boomer, but I am just barely a baby boomer. You know, uh the generation is not taking the advice of younger folks, seeking the advice of younger folks, but how to connect with younger folks and that and that they are your future planned giving donors. Planned giving is what I do, fundraising consulting and strictly in planned giving. So if you wanna have that pipeline of long term, you know, the the ultimate, the ultimate gift for a lot of people is in their estate plan. If you want to benefit from that ultimate giving, you need to be treating these folks well from the, from the jump from that 1st 24 hours that we’re talking about and, and then beyond and you know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve broadened beyond the, the the initial thank you. But um you know, that’s, I mean, that’s a again back to a business, I mean, that’s how a business maintains a, a pipeline of customers. But you know, you have, we have to have a pipeline of prospects right throughout the, throughout the age spectrum, throughout on all the different ways of giving monthly sustainer and major and people give just once uh once a year or, or give just to a particular program, just give around the gala. If, if we’re suffering an event like that, I don’t want to get into the difficulties of event, major event fundraising. But you know, we’re, we’re just not, we’re not, you’re right, we’re not creating like think of it like a business and we’re not, we’re not treating our pipeline of prospects and donors appropriately.

[00:25:47.71] spk_2:
So, you know, what strikes me is, um, a a because it, I, I can imagine that it’s, listen, it’s hard. There’s a million things to do your research constraint. Um uh it’s, there’s a, there’s high stress involved with fundraising, but there seemed to be some opportunities to rather than try and figure it all out on your own. There’s a, a dozens and dozens of millennials that want to do volunteer work and instead of doing, letting them do volunteer work on your core nonprofit course, why don’t enlist them to help you with the communication using social media? And just the, there’s so many of these, of that generation is so in tune with it. But what I’m seeing over and over again is we are recruiting them for helping them with the local dog rescue. I had that conversation with them. I said, I noticed that one here. This is why I, um I, I’ve been a very long time. Uh, uh donor of and they, what I noticed is, hey, I get all these lovely updates about dogs that need a home and placement. But I hardly ever see what happens after and the real reason why, like, what I care is I wanna make sure that those dogs go to the right place and I believe in your ability to do that. And that’s why I, I, I’m prepared to sort of help out. But the story that I really want to see is a happy dog in a happy household. But I never see those stories. Yeah, occasionally there’s one in the newsletter but you’re placing like so many dogs and, and then the penny drops, as we would say is, um, why don’t we get some of the, there was a volunteer, like there was a, there was a girl that was sort of helping with the shelter and, you know, helping to take care of the dogs and getting them ready, you know, making them look good for, uh for these, uh for the visits. And she was very, very skilled at social media. She was on Instagram. She was all this book and it, and she saw them well, now why don’t we just get these new families to record a little short video on their iphone uh after, you know, a couple of days in the home, like the first week, you know, the first week with Fluffy and it needs to be a very like badly shot video not produced. It is what it is. And then they said, what do we do with the video? You just give that video to me. I’ll take care of it. She said, and it was wonderful. And within a honestly, within a week, I think it turned into this whole thing that now they basically say, hey, as part of the placement of the doc, we need you to give us an update on how it’s going. And that update is a simple little video. They send it to it that now goes on the social base that gets connected to the newsletter, goes on the website. And now there’s a whole different audience that they’re tapping into and these dog stories are starting to do their rounds. Now, what did that cost? Not very much. Uh would a ba baby boomer be very good at executing that? Probably not. But you don’t have to like, you can use volunteers in different ways that you can use volunteers to help you with reach. And in fact, might actually be more helpful because we, that generation probably connects better to their own. Then sort of a grumpy, old boomer or young boomer uh grumpy.

[00:25:52.68] spk_0:
Now you added grumpy. That was not, it

[00:25:54.84] spk_2:
was affecting to myself.

[00:27:08.24] spk_0:
All right. Well, you take that on yourself. Fine. I take about grumpiness. You, you threw that in, you tried. All right. Yeah, it uh it just, you use the, that you have, whether it’s volunteer, it’s on your team. Uh Maybe it’s a consultant. You know, what you’re describing is, it sounds precious. The, the production value is meaningless. It’s, it’s the, it’s the substance and, and, you know, they, they probably now, you know, or they, they will soon have courses of these videos videos that they can repurpose on Instagram, tiktok, Mastodon, youtube, uh their, their own site, of course, uh uh links in newsletters, you know, uh 30 a AAA compilation of uh you know, 32nd videos or something. It’s, and, and that, and that’s the impact that, that, that’s the impact that a lot of people want to see and, and especially well, donors really, I think across the age spectrum are much more cognizant of impact, much more interested in impact. But I, I think younger folks are even more so um Dennis, let, let’s talk some more about some tactics of drawing in making that emotional connection, getting the heart and, and letting the brain follow.

[00:32:02.04] spk_2:
Yeah. Um um a, a couple of things um on that. I think we, we as an industry rely very heavily on email and I’m not so sure that’s a great idea. Um I think email is useful and helpful, but I don’t know about your inbox what that looks like. Um Mine looks pretty challenging. I’ve got a work one and I’ve got a private one and I take a deep sigh in the morning. When I have to sort of make weed my way through whatever, you know, irrelevant stuff, it starts with deleting a whole bunch of stuff and then hopefully I haven’t deleted it too much. So, email is challenging to get attention. Number one and two, it’s actually not easy to make email, uh, create a sort of reinforce of establish an emotional connection because you have to be actually quite good, quite good with, with words. And that’s a high bar, I think um that to, to there are some science out there about how you should write. I mean, the dr is always right about these stories. So the more of these stories you have to your point on impact, the more you should do it. But relying on email alone and then thinking that you have done it, I think is a pretty big mistake. Um I think you have a I like email as a uh uh you mentioned a couple of idea of uh of things like a newsletter or an update. So something that we basically uh is periodic. Uh So, hey, we’re here, this is what we’ve done. That’s great. That’s wonderful. Um But I much prefer that folks and we start to see that experiment with different media and voice, for instance, is still very much underutilized. So people don’t really use Zoom voice. I I there was actually an email that came in for someone that just recorded um a blurp like they had like a, it was like a zoom like we’re doing now today and they included that zoom into it, but there was no video, it was just voice and they were just telling, uh, there was an update of the month but they said we’re gonna try something different. We’re gonna, I’m gonna, so the executive director spoke on the zoom. I thought that was nice. So it was, so that was unusual. So I had a voice, I had him talk. There was a bit of a, a funny moment so you can hear them laugh as they said that I, I had it plugged it in my airpods as I was walking so easy. I don’t have to really uh you know, be concentrated on my, on my desk to read it all. So I thought it was a great, great way to use it. Video is still very underutilized. We all like, you know how it is, it’s not that difficult anymore to uh to have the video. You can still use your email to send it. Um And so I think when it comes to tactics that we have to be careful not to rely on one and just set it and forget it, right? So you basically say, oh yeah, I’m I am communicating with my donors. I’m sending an email. I send a, an um a newsletter every month. Uh Yeah, you know, is that the bar like is the, what is the latest. What is the late, what have you tried? What other things have you tried? Do you know whether they open it and read it? Do you do? Do you have that? Because nowadays we know? Right. We have a pretty good idea of, uh, whether folks read it or not and then what do you do with that information? You just continue sending stuff the other question I have. So that’s one thing it is about the tactics is don’t rely on a single attack. They just set some sort of a goal that every year or every quarter of it, whatever it is feasible, you try something new and see if it sticks, just stick it and stay with it for a few months but just try it, try it. Um, the other thing I would say is as much as there’s a reliance on, uh, the medium, email, phone video, whatever, there’s also a reliance on, uh, the recipient, which is who we’re sending it to. What I find. There’s a concept in business that’s called single threading, um, which is, uh, never referred to as a positive thing. It’s a bad thing. The single, single threading. So what we, what, what it means is that you’re basically when you’re trying to, uh, connect with an account with a prospect, it’s usually a business. And when your single thread in the account, it means that you’re only speaking with one contact in the, in that organization and you know, that a decision usually has to make with multiple people. And very often, even if there’s a CEO CEO would want to make sure that her team is consulted, et cetera, et cetera. So whether these folks are making, whether others are making the decision or influences is irrelevant. It’s very rare that one person calls all the shots. It’s much more common that multiple people have to be engaged, consulted and informed.

[00:32:50.86] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Kila increase donations and foster collaborative teamwork with Kela. The fundraiser, Crm maximize your team’s productivity and spend more time building strong connections with your 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.

[00:34:17.23] spk_0:
Thanks Kate. This week’s show gets published on September 11th, the anniversary of the day that changed our country changed the world profoundly. We all remember where we were, I was uh an employee. It was the dark days of uh employment for me at Saint John’s University in Queens, New York and Saint John’s is up on a hill and we could see downtown Manhattan. So it was in a distance but we could see it happening live. We were going between watching, live and, uh, for real and watching on TV, you know, more close up, of course, but everybody’s got their story of September 11th. And, uh, I think we should just, um, use the anniversary as a, a time to remember to keep in mind the victims, the immediate victims, uh, this week, uh, and also, uh, not only the ones who died that day, but those who are still dying from their service there and from exposures, let’s just remember those folks this week that is Tony’s take two. OK.

[00:34:23.98] spk_1:
You reminded me of a saying I once heard they’re gone but never forgotten.

[00:34:27.55] spk_0:
Yes. Yes.

[00:34:30.29] spk_1:
Let’s go back to donor retention with Dennis Fois.

[00:35:31.20] spk_2:
So you want to become multithreaded to increase your alt of success, in my opinion, the same is true for a household. If you solely rely on the first contact that you ever had, that is the the donor that has actually made the donation. But you know that they’re part or you might not even know that they’re part of a household and you’re not making any efforts to deeper connect and create more contacts in that household organization. You’re missing a big, big, big trick and a big opportunity because I think that the more we can establish an emotional connection at the household level, the higher, higher the chances that things make sense as part of a state planning this is a long drawn process but being simply relying and only communicated to a single donor, in my opinion, is a risky affair. And so doing events where my partners or Children are involved, do whatever you can. You obviously can’t ask who else is in your household. Give me their email addresses, understand. But there’s not, but you could make events deliberately and purposeful, designed to bring the family together, to bring them all in and then start to collect data as part of that event, right? Uh I don’t see a lot of that. Yeah.

[00:37:28.92] spk_0:
Yeah, it’s consistent with your first ideas, not be singular channel, you know, be multichannel, uh be multi thread within the, within the household. Exactly. Yeah. Iii I see that play out a lot uh in events where the there might be a couple there. Again, I do planned giving. So the events I’m going to are usually for older folks. Uh not necessarily plan giving age, but plan giving prospect age. And there are a lot of couples uh whether they’re married or partnered and I see a lot of conversations with one person in, in the couple and it’s, it’s usually, it’s usually the male in, in a, in a, in a traditional hetero couple. Um And, and the, the female is, you know, largely ignored but, you know, but whatever the couple dynamics, I i it’s a mistake to just be talking to the one person because you, you you want the support, you want the buy in, of, of, of the couple. Um, just, it just, it just makes things so much smoother. Uh, you, you reduce any contention around giving that might be playing out in, in the, in, in the home that you have no idea about. You know, so don’t, don’t talk to one person to the exclusion of the other person in, in the couple. Right. Iii, I see that a lot and I bet in person events, right. That, that’s a mistake.

[00:40:20.01] spk_2:
That’s a big mistake. And I bet tony that it’s if you were to go back, even if they’ve spoken or connected in some way, I bet that if you go back and look at the database and say, let’s say the household and we had a nice conversation with me and my wife that when you look back at the database, my wife’s contact information is not in that database. Right? So, because it’s again, none of these things happen with one conversation that like it’s, it’s very rare. I mean, as a magical when it happened, it’s wonderful, but it’s usually it takes time, it takes repeated connections, interactions over a long period of time. And so the best chance we have is if we broaden our reach, but not just broaden our reach, we’re constantly trying to find new people all the time. To your point, this big funnel machine. But if we can expand within our existing donors, we absolutely improve our retention rates. In reality, if you improve your retention rate by about sort of 10% or so, you triple the lifetime value over time over your, over your donor base. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it behooves upon all of us. How do you improve retention rates? Well, it’s not just constantly talking to the same person and sending them more stuff. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s, you know, that, that has a diminishing return. So, and I feel that we probably need to talk more in the industry about it and share ideas or how others are doing it and talk more about these tactics because I feel that some of the uh some of the nonprofit organization that we talk to want to do it, they, they, they, they’re not afraid of experimenting but sometimes sort of lack the applicable ideas because the industry has started to become quite academic and we talk about things, you know, theoretical concepts and big numbers and scary numbers and frankly paralyzing numbers at the time, it like doesn’t inspire me to act, right? And I think we should maybe need to do a slightly better job as an industry. And I think you do that with your things like your, your podcast where you get deeper into the things and just ideas that I can sort of, you know, walk away but give me one or two ideas that I can do tomorrow then and I can at least I can sort of figure out whether it works or it might work for some, it won’t work for others. But if you don’t try you don’t know. And the reality is there’s no one approach that will work for everyone but relying on email alone and only talking to your donor is a guaranteed, guaranteed, uh, path that sets you to become part of the statistics. Yeah. That’s basically how they’ve been built

[00:41:00.80] spk_0:
on the wrong end. Yeah. Yeah. It, it’s shallow. It’s, it’s not a, it’s not a hard, uh, it’s not a heart to heart connection. Um, you know, as you were, as you were speaking, I was thinking, you know, when, when you call, if, if the, if the non, the non primary donor answers, do you just ask for the donor or do you say? Oh, hello. You know, and wouldn’t it be great if you could hearken back to the, to when you had the conversation at the last event with that other, the, the other person? Oh, it was such a pleasure to meet you, you know, or, or do you just say, you know, can I, oh, hi. Can I speak to Dennis? You know, that, that, that’s, that, that’s, that’s a, uh, it’s a turn off. It’s perceived by, by both people in the couple. Uh, it, it may not ever be spoken about or, or even worse. It might be, but it, it’s detrimental in either, in, in either case. Um, it’s just a, you know, it’s, it’s fundamental respect for, for people.

[00:42:38.17] spk_2:
Well, I agree in respect but also, um, sound business mind. Right. If you want to, like, if, if it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a good business practice. So there’s, there’s the head and the heart that comes together if you were to think that any time that you connect with someone, the donor, but you get somebody else on the phone as a prospecting opportunity, that might be the right mindset. You know, because you, that’s how you treat a new event. When you, when you with this new families and new folks coming be all overdose, right? To tell the story and why you started the uh the organization. Uh the same is true for this prospect with the big benefit that it’s a warm prospect. It’s not a cold prospect, right? Because there’s no connection. So if you think about how do I increase donation sizes, how do I become maybe part of recurring giving? Those are, those are the situations where that happens where both both partners have an emotional connection with the cause and stimulate one another and say, hey, this is something we want, really want to support as a family now that always leads to more sustained and higher donations. Um First, as being one of the two partners that supported because this is their uh their charity of choice.

[00:42:48.49] spk_0:
Other, other thoughts Dennis about tactics that folks can at least experiment with.

[00:45:17.14] spk_2:
Um, yeah, well, so what is, what it has been pretty successful? This might be, um, a little sort of personal but what has been successful here locally? Um, II, I, it was actually quite interesting. So we, um, there are these groups of, uh, people that get together for hobbies, in our case, I’m part of a club that likes old cars. So old people and old cars come together once in a while and they, they do, they take whatever excuse on the wrist to sort of drive these things. And, uh, but we wanted to add a little bit of more depth to it. So we started to, um, to seek out whether there were uh interesting nonprofit organizations around us that we could support somehow. So to make the, so we would basically say, hey, as part of this drive, there is a cost to the drive and that this, this cost was basically fundraising. So we would raise through these drivers a donation and we would then have a, um, have that money go to a, uh a charity of choice, right? One that we would say, hey, this month we’re gonna be supporting this. What I found remarkable is that very few nonprofit organization had identified that a lot of these events were happening. I’ve got a local tennis club, there’s a local, there’s a very, very big car community here in Carmel and Monterey. It’s just a thing. So everybody that lives here knows that. But what I found staggering is that it was actually hard work for us to find. We actually had to seek out nonprofit organizations and explain that we wanted to do some events. And then once we had that people were very generous and said, oh, we come over and speak, we can say a few things about what we we will do and we would attach an auction, little auction, something around to just make sure that these are affluent people. So, you know, making donations is, is a, is, is not a high friction situation. Um But what I found remarkable and a missed opportunity which we’re now making more available is tap into these um communities. So, you know, there are in Indie, it’s the same in Indianapolis. There’s a lot of communities that have certain themes that folks that get together, a lot of them would be very happy, supported co courses. And so what I’m seeing, but

[00:45:34.49] spk_0:
pardon me? But these are essentially giving circles. They are. And I, I had the, I had the evangelist for giving circle Sarah on the show just within the past six weeks or so. Um So, you know, whether it’s a car club or a bunch of folks who meet once a month in someone’s in rotating homes or, you know, or it’s some other, some other uh organization that’s willing to do fundraising and, and granting you’re, you’re essentially, you’re talking about giving circles in, in your community.

[00:49:25.30] spk_2:
100%. That’s a wonderful way of, of uh putting it and uh talk about building a funnel and building connection into, into your community. Uh And they very often become repeat themes, especially if there is an emotive connection with the individual. If the executive director does a good job at presenting, being there, telling the story of the organization, you know, you, I would say it’s almost guaranteed, there’ll be some sort of successful. So it’s really worth doing. But again, it’s about being proactive and seeking those out, making an effort to actually find out what, what is around me. Uh That seems to me, I was blown away. Uh It’s now become a thing with us or every month. There’s something that sometimes there’s twice a month or something. Um But what is also interesting is that most of us end up giving to the ones that we are really connected with, right? So there is the, the event itself that produces us, but some of us actually get, we had a, we had a lady that um had a very traumatic situation with her husband and a child and a child had a disease that was very difficult to cure. And it sort of inspired her to create a, a organization or profit organization to help folks with, um with a, in a similar situation. And she, when she told her story, I most most of us couldn’t keep it together to be honest. So it just becomes like a different level of connectivity and accountability. And so, so I I, no, no, I wanna help you. This is crazy. There is no support from um uh health care that this is sort of under recognized. These people are out, out, out, out, all out on their own. Actually with a little bit of money, a lot can be done. So you start to connect the dots to say what I can actually have a real impact here and help to make a situation better. I can fund. If I can fund this lady, people’s life will change. And when you get to that sort of level of this is where my money or time can go and this is the impact I can achieve I want. II I mean, I’ve had a reluctant to say donor for life because we know that that’s a difficult thing, but that’s a level of connection that no email in the world, no phone in the world can be, can hope to achieve. And so if you’re not out there connecting with an audience like that new circles, um you’re making it yourself very hard, I think to find these people that are, that are then spreading the word because I didn’t talk to all this about it. So we know how that all works, right? So I would say those are still very underutilized idea. So this the this idea of using multiple channels of communications expanding within the families, sort of the multi threading thing that we’re talking about and exploring the circles rather than treating individuals of transactions. We have a lot of room for improvement when it comes about executing and doing good, better, best on those. And so in a way, the statistics that we talked about are not that surprising because frankly, if you’d run a business in the way we are running as an industry nonprofit, these are the statistics that you would get. It’s like fast in, fast out. Yeah, it’s, it’s a classic bad business model like,

[00:49:30.53] spk_0:
yeah, uh Boomerang wouldn’t survive that way. No, no,

[00:49:33.29] spk_2:
no, no. My board would swap me out real quick. You had

[00:50:47.46] spk_0:
clients, you had clients for a year and, and 77% of them uh stayed only that long. Um Yeah, loyalty, you know, it’s, it’s all, it’s all the heart, loyalty, connections. Um speaking from the heart, respecting people. And then, yeah, you know, and, and so I, I speak kind of altruistically or, or maybe not academically but altruistic. Uh and uh and lofty and, you know, you remind us that it’s also all good business. It’s all good business to, to think of the partner as a, as a, as a prospect uh to, to have folks telling their own story in a, in a simple iphone video with low production value from the home with dim lighting and, and the sound is cutting out and the Children are in the background but the, you know, but the, but the newly placed dog, uh, pet is, is, is, is barking wildly and, and that’s the, you know, that’s the impact. That’s perfect. So, it’s, it’s, it’s, that’s the, those are the moments that are sincere and genuine, connect with our hearts and end up being good business.

[00:53:29.50] spk_2:
Yeah, I could not agree with you more. And, um, that head and heart thing, we, I think when we, when our organizations get la get larger, nonprofit organizations get larger, you, you, it’s ok to think of a part of it as a business. It’s ok actually because the more effective the organization becomes the greater the impact you can achieve at our company at Bloomer. We, we have often sort of struggle with that balance where you sort of say, well, do, is it all about growing revenues? Is that basically the, the mark of a success for us or how do we measure impact? But the reality is you should not put pit those two things against each other because if you could see uh fundraising volume or revenue, you could see that as fuel and you need fuel. We need fuel. So you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t shortchange yourself or making sure like you feel really good, you’ve done this wonderful thing, but it doesn, doesn’t scale because it requires you to do it over and over. It can scale. But now you’re not putting fuel in a tank and we, we have to have few because the more fuel we have the greater the impact that we can choose the more resource. So the problem is that we have in this, in this industry, it’s difficult for us to attract and retain talent. So as much as we have a donor retention problem, look at the employee retention problem that we have in this industry. And if you become more successful at creating scalable and repeatable initiatives, which you’re experimenting, you’re trying things, you’re making these emotional connections, we can attract high quality people into the organization that can sort of sustain and increase that momentum. So I, I often, when we talk about this, it feels like, yeah, but you can’t run a nonprofit organization like a business. And I said, well, why not? Um why not? Um You, you know, if you, I, at some point, I’d like to work in an organization like this, but you better believe it that I be, I’m gonna be very intense in the work. I’m not gonna sort of be relaxed because I work in a nonprofit because I’m gonna be super intense if we’re wasting money or if we are not following up on things or something goes out, that is a little bit half baked. That is not a high standard. Like why, why wouldn’t those things apply? Isn’t that what makes things better, like striving to better standards doing something, trying something different growing as an organization. So I think we have to be destigmatize the, the brain part uh in this industry and say that it’s OK to pursue growing as an organization because that growth allows to achieve far greater impact than the individual to start. The organization ever thought was imaginable. So we growth has to be part of an obe of the objective of the organization.

[00:54:20.17] spk_0:
Dennis. I’d like to leave it there. Thank you, tony and II I unical agree with you about perceiving our organizations as businesses. Uh III I, I’d take a step further and say, I think it’s essential. We, we don’t, we don’t lose our heart. We don’t lose our mission that the two are not mutually exclusive. We, we can, we can pursue our missions and our values as well as think of ourselves as a business. That’s, that’s not the zero

[00:54:25.96] spk_2:
sum, 100% 100%

[00:54:36.40] spk_0:
Denis Fo Fois. He’s CEO of Boomerang. You’ll find Dennis on linkedin. You’ll find the company at Boomerang dot co, Dennis. Thank you very much for sharing your thinking. I appreciate it.

[00:54:43.89] spk_2:
Huge. Thanks for the opportunity, tony. Really enjoyed it. Thank you. My

[00:54:47.07] spk_0:
pleasure. Thank you.

[00:54:57.22] spk_1:
Next week, donor dominance with Ian mcquillan. If you missed any part of this week’s show,

[00:55:00.36] spk_0:
I’d be you find it at Tomm martignetti dot com

[00:55:11.98] spk_1:
were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters, generosity. Donor box fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor Boxx dot org.

[00:55:20.32] spk_0:
I love that alliteration

[00:55:38.38] spk_1:
and Bikila 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 Meyer. I’m your associate producer, Kate Marett. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein.

[00:56:06.34] spk_0:
Thank you for that affirmation. Scottie be with us next week for nonprofit radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be.