Nonprofit Radio for June 17, 2016: Personalized Philanthropy

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Steven Meyers: Personalized Philanthropy

Steven Meyers wants your fundraising to be seriously (really!) donor-centered. What do you need to do internally? What are his 3 killer apps? How will your solicitations change? How do you count the new gifts you’ll get? Steven is author of the book “Personalized Philanthropy.”

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent on your aptly named host, we have a listener of the week from go pin he loves new london, connecticut, boston, cleveland, jacksonville, florida, toronto and lives in israel. He is at fund-raising is fun at fund-raising is fun, and he tweeted, took a long walk had twenty martignetti and amy sample ward as my companions. That’s so sweet. I appreciate that so much of from thank you how thoughtful i’m glad we were with you on your long walk and congratulations on being this week’s non-profit radio listener of the week oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with lago film us if i saw that you missed today’s show steve myers wants your fund-raising to be seriously, really donor-centric and we’re calling the segment personalized philanthropy what do you need to do internally? What are his three killer aps? How will your solicitations change? How do you count the new gift you’ll get. Steve is author of the book personalized philanthropy on tony’s. Take two. What am i doing here? Responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology. Enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com. I’m very pleased that steve myers is here in the studio for the hour. He is vice president of the center for personalized philanthropy at the american committee for the weizmann institute of science and author of the book personalized philanthropy crash, the fund-raising matrix he’s, a frequent and popular speaker, and he’s at stephen meyers. Eight six three s t e v e n o m e y e r s welcome stephen meyers. Welcome to the studio. Hello, tony, glad to have you in person. I love it here. Glad you’re here. Um, let’s, start with the basics with the title. What what is this matrix that you want people to crash? Yes, the book is called, crashed the fund-raising matric because it reflects what my experience wass when i die, i was in the process of writing the book when i realised all along that i’d been living in these two cultures that were completely unaware of each other and the matrix, the movie the matrix is the perfect metaphor for describing these two cultures. If you remember in the movie ah, you have to describe it. I didn’t see the movie in the movie, people were taken over by cybernetic implants, robots, machines that rebelled against humanity, and they existed only in ah, like in a computer matrix, and everybody in the matrix was really unaware of it. They just thought that everything was normal, they were living their normal lives, and they didn’t realize that they were kind of being held prisoners, that they were enslaved in a sense and that’s what the movie is about when this one person that called neo the one wakes up to the fact that he’s living in this synthetic artificial environment you are you are our neo am, and i’m standing in for all the fundraisers who are trying to wake up who feel the same sense of something’s just not right. In my world is the fundraiser, and that was the experience that i had on guy i wanted to write the book to share that with people so they could wake up, help them to wake up, and i kind of escaped the confines of the silos and the channels that they’ve been stuck in for so many years, okay, sometimes without even realize again. Okay, uh, so you’re neo-sage nickname neo-sage steve neo-sage all right. Rob was deconstructing the titles are working a little backwards. Now, what is the the this model? Personalized philanthropy, personalized philanthropy is is the antidote the opposite of what goes on in the matrix? If you think about fund-raising and philanthropy when it translates into the way that we work? It’s really like there’s two cultures there’s an institutional focused culture which is focused almost entirely on trying to make campaign goals and reach objectives within the annual department or the major gift department. And the plan giving department and even the small organizations tend to mimic these the’s, silas and channels. So my first experience wasn’t really working, and maybe a two man organization to people and one of us was assigned this one channel and the other one of us was assigned to the other channel. And how ridiculous is that it’s a counter intuitive? So the institutional focus is set off against this ah personalized focus where instead of trying to service the campaign, you’re trying to serve the interests of donors, you meet the donor where they are instead of where the institution is. So you’re really talking about a whole new, um, definition of what philanthropy is and what fund-raising is for we’ve been talking about donor-centric fund-raising for a dozen years or so, roughly, maybe, maybe more? Sure, i mean, i’ve been in fund-raising from nineteen years, but i don’t think we started out that long ago, but donor-centric fund-raising donor-centric has been around for i’d say, at least a dozen years or so, why is that? How are you nio going toe going to make this different and actually get us to where donor-centric is supposed to have been a cz long as twelve or fifteen years ago? We’ve been talking about donor-centric this and donor-centric that for a really long time, but we really haven’t had much to do about it when some people talk about donor-centric fund-raising they’re talking about recognizing the donor or maybe finding a vehicle that they’re talking about selling a vehicle that they need to sell in order to make to bring that donor in. So really donor-centric fund-raising and that’s really a copyright it’s a trademarked and it it really could have to do with how you thank them, how you write to them, how you called cultivate them, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with what fund-raising and philanthropy is about which under my definition, the deafness that i’ve been working with is trying to mesh the compelling needs of interests off a donor with the compelling needs of the organization, so that changes if you start with that definition where the donor’s needs matter that’s the focus is on them. I really refer to this is stoner focus giving rather than donor-centric e-giving because the shift means that you’re focused on trying to understand the compelling interests and the passions of the donor and how they would connect to your organization. All right, that’s much different than the institutional focus, i hope personalized philanthropy is going toe is not going to take his long tto be. Really? He realized as as donor-centric trademark name. Okay, you’re thank you. You’re the evangelist for for personalized philanthropy. I believe i am, i presume. Okay, very good. We got the right person, then. I mean, you you brought the book. All right. Um, there’s, let’s, make sure that we just have a minute or so before break, but we got plenty time to talk. We’re in. You know, you’re here for the full hour. Let’s. Make sure that small and midsize shops know that they have this is applicable to them. And they probably have advantages in trying to pivot to be personalized philanthropists. Philanthropies sent centers or shops, right? Yes. When i wrote the book, i was thinking of the person like me who was working in a small shop who had a background in annual giving and found themselves working in a major e-giving field. So for me, they were always connected. And i think that this is about empowering and enabling a person in a small shop to make a difference with every donor that they work with, not just the ones that there focus on for annual or planned or major e-giving you meet the donor where they are that’s, the that’s, the magic of this. Okay, excellent. All right, i want that reassurance. I’m very glad to hear it. And, uh, steve and i are going to keep talking about personalized philanthropy. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent let’s get some early live listen love but my my voice just cracked like i’m twelve years old books i don’t want to summerlee live lister love so let’s say hello and send love to san diego, california, oakland, california we’ve got the north and north and south represented, uh, garfield, new jersey. Cool garfield, i’m not familiar with garfield used have relatives living there. You haven’t checked in before. Glad you’re with us. St louis, missouri, new bern, north carolina live listener love to each of you will but there will be more to come. Let’s go abroad has always checking in the big three in asia, south korea, china and japan. Always listeners from each of those in south korea. We got soul and actually have multiple south korea so there’s more than more than one we only see soul anya haserot and in shanghai and shanghai. And also beijing ni hao and yokosuka, japan. Konnichiwa and i learned something else from our intern ho, jon for soul i omitted so let me try this. Teo teo, south korea comes a hum nida all right, i hope i just said, uh, something like hello and welcome good my intern, our intern assures me i did. I’m glad live listener love lots of live listen love going out, okay, steve myers, you talk about in the book you mentioned a few times transformation over transaction flush that out from this two ways to think about fund-raising the usual ways to think about the donor period and have a colleague who was written a book about the donor life side of cycle pyramid and the pyramid you’re thinking about transactions you’re thinking about where a donor falls as a major donor at the top, in the middle or at the bottom and transformational fund-raising you’re really thinking about time, you’re thinking about loyalty, you’re thinking about relationships, and they can take place over time, and the problem with with the pyramid style, the transactional is that each transaction is separate and unrelated to all the others. What personalized philanthropy dozes the cory it’s, a new model where all the transactions are connected to one another so that each gift can count in a way that would never count? Ordinarily, and it could explain, i could give you an example, i love example stories. Just imagine, imagine a rope at one end of the rope is the first gift, and another end of the rope is the last gift. This is the chain of value in plan giving in and fund-raising okay, and if you know all the all the value comes out of the end when the donor dies, implant giving it well, really. And if you think about the lifetime value of a donor, the big gifts come at the end. Yes, okay, andi, you’re looking for bumps and major gifts and special gifts gifts you make frequently gifts you make once in a while during a campaign and gives you make once when you die. So what you have is you have a long rope with a lot of knots in it. What you’re gonna do in personalized philanthropy is you’re going toe move this rope around, and you’re going to connect all of the knots and that’s good means that all of these gifts are going to be connected with what another and they’re going to be united around ah common purpose that the donor has an objective, a goal that not one gift could. Achieve, but altogether they can start to make a big difference during the donor’s lifetime. That’s a radical rethinking of how philanthropy works can we tie the two ends of the rope together and make a circle so that its unending and non never breaks a circle? Or you could make a don’t want teo don’t make a noose you make, you know, make a circle. You’re making really a tapestry like like a persian rug each age lifetime of giving it has a different design and each donor of weaves their own tapestry of giving as they go through their life. Okay, i won’t force you to take the metaphor any further. We’re going to start making cat beds and that’s not okay, okay, now you you run at the weizmann institute, the center for personalized philanthropy. I’m betting that it wasn’t called the center for personalized philanthropy. When you first got there, you had toe make some changes. I was the national director of plan giving that i was the a national vice president for plan giving. Onda then ultimately, we decided to abandon the title of plan giving because sounds very solid and make trixie to me. Well, it what it was we came to realize that playing giving us just a cz much asylum or channel as any of these other poor paint and we weren’t working that way anymore. So we wanted to change that. Actually, what inspired the change from plan giving to personalize philanthropy was when my organization, the weizmann institute, decided to establish a center for personalized medicine that’s, a collaborative, multi disciplinary interdisciplinary program where people are collaborating in all kinds of new ways. And when i heard that phrase personalized medicine, you mean this medicine is designed for one person only and it’s going to work the first time? They’re dna there’s like cubine exited with that with their deanna. Why? You know, that just was a wake up call for me? That that’s what philanthropy and fund-raising auto bay. All right, one of the kind of full spectrum, all the building blocks should be available to you. You bring them to where the donor is, rather than trying to sell them something that you have you been instructed. Really? Basically tto bring to them and ask them, would you make a gift of x for this math building math? And science building, and it doesn’t matter if the person cares about math or science, maybe they were in the art department or they were a into literature or poetry. And why would they? Yeah, but we need based on our needs space three organizations needs. But now that you had to do some cultural and organizational change, teo to create the the the center for personalized philanthropy, what advice do you have for people who want to stay, initiate this in their own organization? How do we start that conversations? I wouldn’t make a lot. I wouldn’t wait a lot for the organization to change its culture or its policies or procedures. Yeah, personalized philanthropy is something that you could begin to think about when you kind of open up your your mind first realize that there is this matrix of silos and channels that all of our fund-raising basically is in right, and you want to try to find a way to connect your current giving in your future e-giving around where your donors are at, and in order to do that you need, like, like in personalized medicine, they have technology. They have they’re using technology in new ways they have computational biology so they could look at all this life science information in a systematic way, and this technology allows them to personalize medicine, so we have to have some tools that allow us to do this. So i developed these things that i called killer aps they are gift designs for bringing together current and future gifts that could be personalized and individually tailored to work with each donor-centric get to the killer aps, but we’re we’re we’re spawning neos throughout the throughout the world, and there are in small most of them listeners there’s, a small and midsize non-profits and they want to start a conversation about making a shift to personalize philanthropy from the matrix that they are now burdened with right kayman we’re on some tips. How did they start? But they’re going to sound like a lunatic the first time they go to their vice president or their ceo executive director, personalized philanthropy, they have rope metaphors, and not since you know, harold, maybe based on your own experience or you know, you’re coaching of others, how do we get this process started in our own? Currently matrix to shop? Well. As i said, the first thing you have to do is wake up to the fact that you’re working in a silo. Oh, and awareness unawareness, and then you need to look outside of yourself outside of your silo. And for instance, if you’re involved in plan giving, you know that one of the things that really makes that correlates with the plan gift is the donor who gives all the time a daughter who gives frequently tends to be the kind of person who wants to remember your organization in their state plans. In fact, they may already have done that, so you would think, wouldn’t it be amazing if we, without changing very much of this donors habit or pattern of giving they could have a much greater impact today instead of waiting until their their death, when they’re bequest, comes in so kind of realizing that it’s possible t to have impact and recognition for a donor that begins right now? Okay, we were so we’re going to look teo methods of current recognition and current value for both the organization and the and the donor, right rather than long term. All right, all right, let’s start. And and you have the killer aps before we get to the killer aps i think i’d like to just explain the spend rate because the aps are largely dependent on an endowment spend rate, and there may very well be organization that don’t even have an endowment yet. So let’s explain, spend re this personalized philanthropy works whether or not you have an endowment or not, right? If you don’t have an endowment, you still need to have cash reserves, and you still need to be able to be financially sound. So that’s an objective that every organization has, even if they’re a food bank or the kind of organization where they believe that they should not have an endowment. So there are a good number of them there’s a lot of them out there, actually smaller ones, right? But the basic principle involved here is what i would call something like like this it’s the grail of fund-raising the question that is not asked very often bye donors to the organization is what’s the best gift that i could give you if i could give you anything that you wanted, most organizations would ask for id like a gift of cash and i like it right now. Thank you very much. Oh, and they would, and they would like to have it for general purposes, but the question that they don’t know to ask is, can we have a gift that will start working right away? Because we need to pay our bills? We have current needs, and we also want to sustain ourselves for the future. So we need a gift that starts now and grows and scales up for the future, and most people in plain giving our only focused on the future and most people in major and annual giving our only focus current president, right? So this grail of fund-raising is the gift that really is the ultimate, the kind of gift that the organization needs the most, but doesn’t even know how to ask for ok and that’s the kind of gift that were talking alright, let’s define spend rate for people, and then we’ll get to your killer aps spend spend rate, please, in an endowment on down when it’s usually thought to be the most important type of gift because a person makes a gift and instead of being expended immediately it goes into a bank account, an investment program, and each year a certain percentage of that fundez is spent on the the project or the program or the program, whatever that might be and usually it’s like five percent. Yeah, i see between like, three and a half and five. Yeah, okay, yeah used to used to be hyre when the with economy tanked a few years ago was spending rates began to drop right? Because this is the amount that you’re spending from your endowment and your endowment is supposed to be perpetual. So when investment returns or low spend rate spend rates come down, this is typically decided by the board or maybe a committee of the board each year, and sometimes they look at the role of the average of the past three years, returns and that’s all financial stuff like if you list the idea that yeah, i’m just one of just feeling a little background. So to spend a rate, you got it. So the spend rate changes from year to year that’s the point, and typically, you see, same like three and a half to five, usually it’s around around five percent and for the purpose of conversation. It’s it’s. Pretty good. So that if someone makes one hundred thousand dollars gift for an endowed scholarship and the scholarship is a proxy for whatever is something that’s really important to the donor into the school or the meshing? Yes. Then that hundred thousand dollars is going to produce, like, five thousand dollars each year we spend each year five thousand five percent of the endowment. Okay, so that’s how that’s, how the spend rate works and the goal of every fundraiser is to go out and get that endowment gift. All right, now we got the basics. Your first killer app is the virtual endowment. What is that? Sounds very jargon. E virtually way. Have jargon jail on tony martignetti non-profit radio. Ok, but i know you’re gonna get yourself out quickly. I’ll try. I’ll try. Well, you take that and down with that. You just talked about the hundred thousand dollars that produces five thousand dollars a year. You turned it upside down. This sounds like the veg a matic. I don’t. Ok. He turned it upside down. It produces the donors, is giving you the five thousand dollars a year every every year say, for five years or ten years, and that is going to be treated as if it were the product of an endowment that is yet to be created. So this donor has you in their will already safe for one hundred thousand dollars, and they’re pretty comfortable giving you five thousand dollars a year, and they’ve been doing that without even being asked for it. And it was maybe for general purpose, but they’re not comfortable giving you the hundred thousand dollars that’s right during their life, or at least to this point in their life. But their pattern of giving is such that an annual give her already, and they care about the organization. So at the end of the rope to the end of the chain of their living and give it is that hundred thousand dollars? So why just come a bit closer to the mike? Okay, thank you. So who is to say that getting that five thousand dollars every year and then getting one hundred thousand dollars later, where the program becomes self sustaining? Who’s to say that that’s, not justice, valuable a cz getting one hundred thousand dollars up front, right? Ok, that’s, a virtual endowment, and then when the donor passes away, the virtual endowment essentially becomes a true and down okay, or if they have a life event that changes their circumstances and they’re able to fund their endowment foully or maybe even half for some, you know, big, big bump while they’re living that’s great, but in the meantime, they’re they’re giving you what you would have spent from the endowment anyway. Brilliant, very simple, not too many organizations do this, though i take it they don’t do that often because they’re focused on having a separate annual campaign, and they’re gonna maintain that base of annual donors and they have a whole maybe, either they have a whole separate division, a department and a department head who focuses on annual giving and another department that focuses on major e-giving in another one that focuses on plan giving, and they just they don’t connect up, and they have a lot of issues about who owns the donor and speak to the donor. So and what do you doing? Speaking to the donor there? Not a plan giving prospect, right thinking, right? So if this this donor that you’re describing doesn’t meet the major gift level because here she can’t afford one hundred thousand dollars outright, then they’ll go to the maybe they’ll drop to the or they’ll be shifted over to the annual e-giving team or something, but they won’t think of it as a virtual endowment. They’ll just think of it is we get five thousand dollars a year from this person, but they’re not thinking longer term and it’s usually without annual fund silo within the matrix that the preferred gift in the matrix and this trick general unrestricted gifts because we know how to spend your money better than you do on dh. We needed to keep our operations go. So they’re not thinking about devoting it to a purpose that might later be endowed fully that’s, right later in the person’s life or at their death. And if if the purpose is central to the organization, if they had that endowment and they could do anything they wanted with it, they would most likely be funding those kind of programmes anyway. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Killer aps o okay, before we get to the killer aps two and three. What? Just make clear why they’re called killer aps, they’re called killer aps because, like with any kind of technology, when new technology comes on, it just sort of wipes out everything that’s come before it the’s when you employ these aps and you work with them with donors, they achieve gifts that are so much greater. The donor you were talking about, who was the five thousand dollars donor-centric thousand dollars on the books, so that could be, you know, a two hundred thousand dollars done, or even a much larger donor. It just changes the way you think about how you, how you work, you really don’t want to go back to living in that silo. Once you’ve been able to span plan major now and annual giving through one of these per highly personalized gifts, they really work amazingly well. Excellent. Okay, we’re going take a little pause, much more. With steve myers coming up, we’re gonna talk about the philanthropic mortgage and step up gift on how your solicitations air going to change first. Pursuant, one of their online tools is prospector. You’ve heard me talk about this before it is ah, help too small and midsize shops because it prioritizes your donordigital base to show you the existing donors that you have already in your data and who among them are the most likely to give more, you might say, you know, jargon e the upgrade their giving, but basically who’s going who has the capacity and the and the willingness to give more it’s therefore, it takes the guesswork out of deciding where you should be spending your time. Of course, you’re cultivating all your donors, but when you are thinking about who the upgrade or who has the potential to give more, it helps too, the prioritized and that’s what this tool prospector will do for you, combining your existing data with marketplace data to show you who’s most likely to increase, and as a result, you’ll raise more money and you’ll do it efficiently. The tool is prospector and it’s at pursuant dot com now for tony’s take two. What am i doing here? I was having a very good conversation this morning with robert penna who’s going to be guest next week, and a part of what we were talking about was a disconnect between what a lot of thought leaders talking heads talk about in the non-profit sector and that’s good for non-profits and what the reality is among small and midsize. Non-profits and so that was a little i was it caused me to be introspective, are we? Ah, we when i don’t want to say we i mean, it does take a team to produce this show and you hear me thank them at the end, but i am the one responsible. So am i providing value for you in this small and midsize non-profit and robert and i talked, and then i hung up with him and did some thinking on my own, and i i want to make sure that that i am i feel like i am because we have we’d do a mix of what is coming and cutting edge, and you might not be ready for in your shop right now, like outcomes, outcomes and impact reporting and analysis and gathering and reporting, but we’re also talking about things that i think have a lot of practical application today, like events on dh like what steve and i are talking about right now, you know that maybe that’s midterm, but i feel like we the eye provide what’s valuable. To you today and tomorrow and where the sector is headed, where hopefully you will be five years from now three to five years from now. So of course, interested in your feedback? I’m not too but that’s that’s what i’m feeling and whether you agree or disagree, i’m interested in your opinion you can always get me tony at tony martignetti dot com and also twitter is a good way to get to get me talking. I’m at tony martignetti that is tony’s take two. Steve myers never went anywhere took a couple sips of water. Thank you for your indulgence, let’s talk about another killer app. The philanthropic mortgage. What you got going on there? I did. The philanthropic mortgage seems so intuitive, but it’s something that we would never be able to think about in a highly silent and channeled environment that they call the fund-raising matrix. Yeah, philanthropic mortgage when you when you buy a house, you don’t have to pay for it in full before you move into it, you’re not you create a mortgage, this mortgage you are paying, you’re making like one payment and the payment goes partly for interests and the other. Part of it goes who build equity in your in your home bill’s equity principle. Yeah, yeah. Building building princessa build equity, but basically the idea here is that your it’s just same ideas. Thie the virtual endowment a person can make a gift of that spending rate for the for the scholarship that they’d like to have. And so the scholarship khun start up right away, and then in the virtual endemic, they’re going to make slight, sort of like a balloon payment at the end of their life. They’re going to pay it off through there bequest. But in a idea of a philanthropic mortgage, you can pay more than just the quote unquote interest. You could also pay a little more than the spending write thie operating annual cost of that on that little bit extra goes to creating and building equity in your endowment fund. Beautiful so over years, over time, you can build the equity in your fund and your program can begin right away. So if you’re talking about a scholarship or a professorial chair, you get to meet that incumbent. You get to get the letters from them, you get to go and play an active part and have a relationship with the organization of the people that you’re supporting. So going back to our hypothetical before maybe that donor is giving ten thousand dollars a year or seventy, five hundred years, five thousand is the spend rate, and then the surplus goes to start building up that endowment, which will be fully funded at some balloon payment with some balloon payment in future that’s exactly what it is that there’s an even more interesting example that relates us up to a donor who’s maybe a little bit older, and they’re going to have to and heaven, ira ira, now that that thie permanent charitable rollover is in effect, right, we know that it’s going to happen all the time. We want to wait to the end of the year and guests on wait to the last minute so we could make these gifts whenever we want to. So that means if you’re working with the donor who is going to be seventy and a half in the next couple of years, they’re going to start taking money out on a regular basis, right? That required minimum distribution wire to do that and let’s say that they don’t need it toe lived, and they could become part of the, you know, both part of the virtual endowment, and it can also be part of the little extra that they might have. So working with a donor who for the first couple of years is just paying the spending right to create a post doctor old chair in computer science because he loves that. But towards the end of the schedule, he’s going to reach the age of seventeen and a half he’s going to get a huge for him at least required minimum distribution arm that’s going to be his balloon payment. So he’s going to pay the regular amount, and then the last year he’s going to receive a much larger amount from his ira, and he’s going to add that complete his thie endowment that he writes for the post doctoral fellowship in his parent’s names. I’d like to think of the the ira now, especially because the rollover is, well, it’s actually a qualified charitable distribution. But everybody knows there’s a rollover because that’s, now permanent, we might start to see, you know, ira’s sort of become i got many. Foundation, you can do your charitable giving through your i r a have a count toward this required minimum distribution, which for a lot of people is more than they want or need, and then you’re not, you know, text on it. You avoid the federal income tax on that, that distribution or that gift teo to the charity, so not only doesn’t have a value as a transaction, because each time, as you pointed out, you don’t have to pay a tax on the money that you’re giving away, you’ll never taxed on it. Essentially, you can use it strategically to grow. You’re on pay, the spending rate and the operating costs for your program so you could begin right away. Transformational and transaction sorted. It’s okay, we agree, it’s, not a hostile environment didn’t think you’re walking into a house down. Okay, um, your your final killer app is a step up gifts, sort of a hybrid talk about talk about to step up it’s a hybrid that person might be able. Tio buy-in this is one of those gifts that people wouldn’t think about because they would think that i could never have a professorial chair at least not during my lifetime because the professorial chair cost of million or two million dollars and that’s going to be more than likely that i’ll be in my state, but i can’t really find a way to access that money. Now, however i can. I do have that five thousand dollars that i’ve been giving every year for general purposes on dh i could continue to do that for a number of years, so i could start off by funding that scholarship. We talked about earlier that hundred thousand dollars scholarship that costs five thousand dollars a year, so during my lifetime with simon older donor, i could have that masters or other scholarship that could begin right now and then upon my death, the funds from my estate bequest for my estate could step up that endowment to the million or two million dollar level. So basically my gift would step up from a master scholarship or a doctoral scholarship or a postdoctoral scholarship all the way up to a professorial chair through my estate, okay? And my plan would be put together s so that the totality of my plane would be understood by both myself and by the charity that i’m working with from the very beginning, right, this is a comprehensive that truly is. A transformation will get. It transforms from an annual gift to a major scholarship gift than to really a very substantial st gift. And they’re all tied together around the same purpose, even though there are separate gifts that function for different purposes along the way. And then, ultimately, they all go for the same purpose. How do the killer aps and the smashing of the matrix and the creation of the personalized philanthropy? How do these all come together, too? Change our solicitations. It’s really a good question. I think it changes the way. First of all, it it changes the way that you think if you go back to the back to the movie the matrix, when people see the matrix, they sort of acquire these magical powers that could kind of see around corners and they can fly, they can defy the laws of physics because they understand the world in a in a way that was different in the way they understood it before. So if you are, if your practice becomes one of personalized philanthropy, you’re kind of working as an enlightened generalised you have all the gifts, all the building blocks of philanthropy that you could bring to bear on each person, wherever they are and that’s going to change the nature of your work. You’re going to be basically sitting on the same side of the table as the donor, really an ally, a force to help them achieve what they want to and realize what’s what’s possible that they never would have thought was possible before by connecting all these small, modest gifts that they could make during their lifetime with the larger gifts that they could make through their estate essentially changed the whole value change, so the value can come out when they want it to come out and achieve that impact on dh begin to change society now. So that means that instead of just kind of being a hit and run kind of fundraiser like the annual fundez people come in, i’d like to get the same thing i got last year, maybe a little bit more, you know, and then move on to something else. Instead, you’re connected with the stoner through time, you’re not just looking at them at a point on the donor pyramid, you’re looking at their whole lifetime value as a donor and that that changes everything, the changes, the process for developing a personalized gift is much different. I think the solicitation of a typical asking for a regular don’t write your soul stations is going to be more questioning and what’s important to you. And what what brings you joy around the work that we do, and right and more of a process than a discreet sit down? And the loser is the one who talks first after the ask is made and then in four days there’s a follow up phone call. What are your thoughts about what we pitched? Right? Very different. It’s it’s really completely utter lead. So what are some of the things that you ask about in your solicitation meetings? Well, it’s not that i ask any pursuit, different questions than other fundraisers would just when i’m when i’m huh we’re thinking is different, i’m listening, i’m listening in a different way, and so what are you doing? Let us into that neo brain. Okay, well, what you’re doing when i’m trying to do is some trying to discover what what matters to them and what i have that other fundraisers i don’t have is that i have these killer aps that khun connect to where the donor is, so that if a donor has a habit of giving annually, i couldn’t begin to think about how might they have a greater impact by connecting all those gifts that they’re doing if they gave for the last ten years, five thousand dollars a year, chances are pretty good that they won’t be offended if we talk about if you continue your pattern of giving, you could have a whole different kind of impact then you then you were having the fair. So it’s it’s a different different tools and technology that i can use. I don’t have to sell them the math building when they’re really more interested in the arts and music program i can start with where with where they with where they’re at. Ok, so that that makes all the difference. All right, thanks for letting us into that head. We wantto when i want to be there explicitly, even though we’re there for the hour. But it’s a good head today because you, you know, you’re not just talking about donor-centric donor focused e-giving when you get this information, you can use it so that if a donor is if they may already have included you in their estate plans that’s a lot of donors they will they will do that without even being asked that’s that’s where they began. So you know that there’s going to be endowment possible att tthe. Now you could begin to talk with them about connecting the current giving so that the impact of that future gift can start now. We have just about two minutes before break and in those couple minutes, i want you to flesh out something. You talk in the book about the four children from the passover seder? Yeah, just a couple minutes. How do they figure into this? The four children? Who are they and what is in there in the past? Over on the passover services. This is part of the service that gets recited every year, so people know these names might be familiar with him. So you could well, they think that they were going to passover seders. I’ve only been to one in my life and i don’t remember the four children. So the four children, the seder are the wise, the wicked, the simple and the one who doesn’t know how to ask. So just imagine that these people have grown up and become donors and each one of them in the past, over service. The idea is to try to reach each individual, each type of children of child where they are, and begin with what they are, who they are, and to relate to them as individuals on then you build out, you build out from that. So the four children who begin to think about them a stoners you begin to focus on where they’re at. If they’re wise, they might give it they might be the kind of person who gives every year without being asked if they’re wicked, they might. Wicked is not it’s, not a bad term in this case, it’s a kind of a positive thing because the person would be discerning very smart, they might have an interest in taking care of their loved ones as well. The donor, who is simple just might begin with a bequest because as the seeds were planted before them, they will continue to plant the seeds for the future. And the donor who doesn’t have to know how to ask is the one who has a charitable inclination but doesn’t know how to scratch that itch so that they’re the most fun to work with the ball. Beautiful that’s, great story. I kind of wish we’d ended with that, but we’re not ending, but we have. We’ll have a good ending anyway. Let’s, go out for a break when we come back. Steven, i’m gonna keep talking talking a little about counting all these new gifts that you’re gonna be getting. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup comedy, tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth godin. Craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger, do something that worked neo-sage levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard. You can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Duitz if you have big ideas but an average budget, tune into tony martignetti non-profit radio for ideas you can use. I do. I’m dr. Robert penna, author of the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Oppcoll i was just talking to robert planet this morning, as i was saying that’s, a pure coincidence. I did not choose that drop, teo, be put in he’s going to be guest next week. Got more live listen, love rego park, new york. Welcome that’s queens, of course, and augusta, georgia, thea, was that the masters that always in the u s open no usopen rotates the masters in augusta, isn’t it? Live listener love to rego park in augusta, we also give ah, sweden and kazakhstan with us live. Listen, love to you wonderful, thank you for being with us now, affiliate affections. Did you think i forgot the affiliate affections? How could you think that i forgot affiliate affections and podcast pleasantries? Our many affiliate stations am and fm stations throughout the country, whatever we fit into your time block throughout the week, whether it’s a sunday or a tuesday very grateful that you are with us affiliate stations throughout the country, affiliate listeners on those am and fm stations and the podcast pleasantries have to go out to our over ten thousand listeners. Podcast wise, so glad that you were with us. Most ofyou come through itunes, although there’s, others a stitcher and there’s ah podcast site in delaware, delaware it’s d d, which is germany in germany, that we get a lot of listeners from whatever site you’re catching us from. Thank you pleasantries to the over ten thousand podcast listeners. Okay, steve myers, we’re going to have lots of new gifts coming in, and you’re pretty. You’re pretty generous about counting you don’t say very generous don’t say that in the book, but it’s between between the lines you want, you want to give as much credit as possible. Not not surprising. Really. Yes, yes, you do let’s talk about, say, i’m non-cash we break this down, we look at the killer aps and how they would be counted. Or what’s your what’s your counting philosophy generally let’s start there. Okay, the prime directive for me and counting is don’t just count one number. Yes, you said that explicitly. The book? Yeah, playing everything in our lives. It’s the sort of damage cleese hanging over the head of every fundez razor, its financial resource development and metoo how much did you raise? You have to how much did you raise what didyou raise? And if you don’t have an answer for that, someone else will. It’ll be on accounting formula financial formula tells what the present value is of all the gifts that came in and of course, the president value doesn’t include bequests or request expect expectancies. It doesn’t include the kind of cultivation in the activities that you dio, it reduces everything that comes out of the system that doesn’t not have a present value. And as fundraisers know thiss a lot of things that we do that that would be considered us fund-raising achievements that normally don’t count. So we wanna have a way of describing what it is that we do that goes along with how we feel about what fund-raising achievement actually is so when i say, don’t count just one number, what we’re really saying is there is one number that you have to be aware of it everybody has to know that, but there’s a complement of that one number and it’s, a multi dimensional set of numbers that can help us to measure our own effectiveness and convey to the people that we are working with. And four what all this fund-raising has been about and really there are three kinds of gifts that we we like to count outright gifts that count one hundred percent gifts that there would be, like category one, gifts, cash and cash equivalents call those the category one cash cash equivalents that would include pledges better like payable over a couple of years. Legally binding, i get legally binding place it’s legally binding pledges on a legally binding pledges couldn’t include pledges that air payable over one, two or three years, but also pledges for older donors that are going to be they’re considered is bookable or irrevocable from their estates. That’s another type of ah gift that would count in this cash or cash equivalents. The second category is thie irrevocable gifts that way. We raised a charitable remainder trust and gift annuities, and part of the value of them would count in that one number, and the rest of the wood would not count until they were later received, and the third category is revocable gifts or or bequests that are expected but that have not yet been received and they’re not legally binding and they’re not, and they’re not legally because there are ways of making a bequest legally binding if the person signed a contract to bind their state testamentary contract. Okay, so this, uh, this journey towards personalized philanthropy really began for me with this question of what am i doing here? What? I just asked that question about a half an hour, you’re just asking that’s a really good question that you should always be asking, what am i doing here? And if you’re on task, you’re doing something that relates to one of those kinds of gifts you’re cultivating a donor for a future gift your culture, get cultivating them for a gift that can provide income to them now and a gift to you later, and you’re also cultivating a formal gift that they could make now. And that you can have now that could be both cash or khun b assets other other than cash and that’s, how you would evaluate what you’re doing in kind of a multi disciplinary way. How do you like toe, give credit to fundraisers for activities that aren’t quantifiable, you know, advancements in a relationship, but the person didn’t increase. They’re giving this year or pledged to in the future, you know, all those activities that meaningful but nonqualified oppcoll yeah, you want to how do we help fundraisers be recognised? Well, you know, we develop metrics out of these out of these out of activities, and you try to figure out the ones that are going to be important for you, and you embrace the ones that are important for you. Now, sometimes back-up people go way overboard on this. There was one fundraiser that i know who travels around a lot to meet with donors, and his super bowl advisor wanted to him to quantify how much. Money per per mile. He was raising. He said, oh, no, no, i won’t do that on. He was senior enough that he was able to avoid that in another system they want to know. What is this fundraiser doing every fifteen minutes, it’s? Almost like a that’s like law firms like a lot of booking for way. I used to book six minute increments. All right, we just have about a minute left. We don’t want to do right. We do it right, that’s what not to do. We have about a minute left. Leave us with some things that we should be measuring to give credit to fundraisers sametz samples of what you measure, you liketo measure well, when you when you do these blended gifts with blended gifts come from a combination of current and future gifts. So you want to measure the gifts all of their dimensionality so that you could compare them to the single present value along with all the value that they’re going to bring to the organization beginning right now. So if you’re going back to the person that we’re speaking of before, go ahead, you have to wrap it up, okay? Well, their gift just going to have an immediate impact and it’s going to grow and scale up over time and that’s what you want to try to achieve that’s, the grail of fund-raising and that’s how you want to track. Okay, we have to leave it there. Steve myers, vice president at the center for personalized philanthropy at the american committee for the weizmann institute of science. You’ll find him on twitter at stephen meyers eight six three the book get the book it’s personalized philanthropy crashed the fund-raising metrics it’s at amazon and it’s also a charity channel, which is the publisher. Thank you again, steve. You’re welcome next week, robert panel, we talked about it, but i’m tired of talking about robert penn of this show. He’s going back. We’re going to talk about the history of our sector and jean takagi are legal contributor on the new overtime rules that you need to know if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. I received the guidance, i received guidance and i was shown the path. The song is gone never again will i be singing where? In the world else would you go? Thank you for your indulgence while i found the way forward, responsive by pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, pursuing dot com, our creative producers claire meyerhoff, sam liebowitz is the line producer. Gavin dollars are am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez. Our music is by scots. Dine in brooklyn, be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. Dahna what’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine am or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to heal. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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