Feasibility Studies: What, Why & How

Tony MartignettiHello and welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I'm your aptly named host of your favorite hebdomadal podcast. I'm still traveling without my studio mic. So my sound won't be up to par. It'll be back to normal next week. And I'm introducing my niece Carmela as our sponsor announcer this week. Oh, I'm glad you're with me. I'd be thrown into trypanosomiasis if you infected me with the idea that you missed this week's show. Feasibility studies: what, why, and how. If a capital endowment or other campaign may be in your nonprofit's future, you'll want to consider a feasibility study beforehand. Brian Abernathy from Convergent Nonprofit Solutions explains what they're all about on Tony's Take Two, Classy Digs Nonprofit Radio.

Kate MartignettiWe're sponsored by DonorBox. With intuitive fundraising software from DonorBox, Your donors give 4 times faster. Helping you help others. DonorBox.org.

Tony MartignettiHere is Feasibility Studies: What, Why, and How. It's a pleasure to welcome Brian Abernathy to Nonprofit Radio. He is general manager at Convergent Nonprofit Solutions, where he has supervised and managed capital campaigns that have raised more than $125 million. The company is at convergentnonprofit.com, and Brian is on LinkedIn. Brian Abernathy, welcome to Nonprofit Radio. Thanks, Tony. Great to have the opportunity to join you today. I'm glad you can. Thank you. Let's talk about feasibility studies. Let's, uh, before we get into the how and the why, uh, which actually we'll do the why and the how, but before we even do the why and the how, Let's talk about the what. What are we talking about? Feasibility studies?

Brian AbernathyYeah. So a feasibility study, Tony, you could boil it down very simply to a strategic due diligence before a major funding initiative and capital campaign. That's the context of feasibility study that Convergent manages and works with our clients on. It's not a, will this new building attract the right market of folks? That's a different type of study, research and utility. What we're talking about here is, can this program of work raise the necessary amount of money? And are we confident that we've got the right dynamics to go out and execute a successful capital campaign to secure that funding?

Tony MartignettiDo we need to know what our goal is going into the feasibility study or have a working goal or? I mean, surely the study is going to refine that, but do we need to have a ballpark of what we're, what we're looking for?

Brian AbernathyYeah, within reason. We always say it's good to think big in a feasibility study. When we go into this process, the, uh, the proposed program of work that we're going to take out and use in confidential interviews, uh, we refer to that as a draft prospectus. So it is a working document, primarily because we want everyone we meet with to know that their feedback can still shape that plan. But it also gives us the opportunity to test different aspects of the goal amount and the utility of that funding. So we know we might need to do a building campaign, for instance, but do we want to also test the prospect of some endowment To underwrite the long-term maintenance of that building. Now that's obviously going to bring the funding goal up. We can test all of those things in the study. We will come back and recommend a specific goal range for a campaign, but it's always easier to bring that number in a little bit after a study than to realize, oh, we should have, we should have tested the endowment for the building, but we didn't think about it in advance. So we want to think with a what Could we possibly need to execute this plan, uh, and, and reference that number as our, our proposed goal during the feasibility process?

Tony MartignettiOkay, so, so a part of it is getting feedback on the proposed goal.

Brian AbernathyThat's right, that's right. Do people get sticker shock? If, if most of the folks that we talk to see a number and their eyes get really wide and they start to sweat in the interview, that tells us it may be a little bit ambitious. And sometimes there are really easy ways to resolve that. Maybe there's a piece of the program like an endowment that we can just quietly approach in the appropriate individual conversations. But sometimes it is a recommendation of you might want to look at phasing how you go about this so that you can get the necessary funding and just look at a longer horizon of time and potentially a couple of campaigns or more to bring that funding in.

Tony MartignettiOkay, okay, all valuable info. All right, um, and, and how many folks are we, are we talking to typically? How, how does that work?

Brian AbernathySo, excuse me, on average we're going to interview between 55 and 65, uh, participants in a feasibility study process. We typically are going to do 3 weeks of in-person Interviews. That number obviously varies a little bit depending on the specific client, the geographic scope. If you've got a statewide campaign, it's hard to get to all the right folks maybe in a three-week period. But we want to talk to the highest capacity, most influential stakeholders for whatever the nonprofit is that we're working with, and get their bearings on where this proposed. Does

Tony Martignettiit have to be a capital campaign? Can it, can it be a programmatic campaign that we're doing a feasibility study for, or strictly an endowment campaign?

Brian AbernathyYeah, that's a great question. And a lot of folks hear the words capital campaign and think, oh, we don't need a new building, so we don't need a capital campaign. When we talk about a capital campaign, we're talking about a capital campaign that's going to be a capital campaign for the organization. We speak more about the funding strategy and infrastructure. So it's a focused initiative to fund a multi-year program of work. It may be 100% programmatic, it may be 100% building capital. We've got a couple in process right now that are 100% endowment-focused. Mm-hmm. We worked with the Boys and Girls Club in Kentucky last year that was all of the above. It was Retrofitting a building that had been provided to them, funding the operation and utility of that building and its staff for a 5-year period of time, and also putting into place an endowment to fund the maintenance and upkeep of that building. So a little bit of both, but when we say capital campaign, we certainly are not exclusively talking building capital.

Tony MartignettiOkay, cool. All right, so Let's move to the why. What's the value of doing a feasibility study? What are you going to get out of it?

Brian AbernathyYeah, so the old adage of counting the cost before you start to build a tower plays in perfectly here. We're going to approach this study, and there's a few key factors that we're looking to validate. We need to know that there is a sense of urgency for whatever the need is that this program of work is going to address. We need to know that it's being conveyed in a compelling way, that those who hear about the need and then hear about the solution to that need are gonna be compelled to step in and be involved. And we wanna know that the right leadership is ready to step up for that campaign. And this comes in 2 factors, Tony. One is just the right influence. Fundraising is a game of relationship. Strategy goes a long way, but if you don't know anyone in a community and have all the best strategy, you're probably not gonna get the right doors open. So we wanna vet out who would the best possible leaders be from a volunteer influence standpoint in a campaign. And the second piece of leadership is funding leadership. Are we able to identify Viable prospects ready to step in and play significant roles in terms of their investment in whatever this campaign will be implementing, knowing that we're able to set the right perspective for the top of that donor pyramid, or what we call an investment range table. We're specifically looking for a way to identify the top-level potential donors. Okay. potential supporters for a campaign, knowing that that's gonna set the peak where everybody's gonna look to. So,

Tony Martignettiuh, let me just flesh out, uh, some of these. So, so you can identify, uh, top potential campaign leadership and also top potential donors through a feasibility study?

Brian AbernathyThat's right. So every single interview that we're in, we're gonna ask a number of questions focused on these 2 factors. And we're gonna come out with a recommended list of key campaign cabinet and volunteer leaders for each campaign that we conduct a feasibility study on. In most cases, we're actually gonna have a drafted organization chart of different prospect divisions and leaders that we believe are gonna have influence with those different pools of individuals, organizations, foundations, whoever it may be. What that tells us is we're gonna have somebody with the right set of keys to open the doors that we need to get to. And then getting a little bit further down the road into a campaign, we're able to make the strategic highest and best use of each volunteer's time, because we know volunteers in fundraising efforts generally have day jobs and a lot of other things drawing on their time. So that's critical intelligence for any nonprofit going into a funding initiative, especially a major funding initiative like a capital campaign. Because you just don't want to churn and wear out your volunteers on a campaign that runs, you know, 18 months, 2 years, 3 years. Folks just really start to get exhausted. So we, we map all of that out to inform a leadership strategy for the campaign.

Tony MartignettiOkay. Uh, so, so, so far we talked about, uh, a need and a compelling purpose that's going to move people. Um, you know, the, the value you get out of this, the leadership. The volunteer leadership for the campaign structure, the donor leadership. What else? Why else do these— do the study?

Brian AbernathyYeah, so in that donor leadership reference point, we do reverse analytics on every campaign that we complete. So when we look at nonprofit sectors or whatever the case may be, we've got a general idea of we need to find a top pledge of X percent of the overall campaign goal, and our top 5 need to be the next percentage, and the top 10, and so on and so forth. So we're strategically modeling out a highly, highly reliable perspective on this is the funding mix that needs to be in place so that a campaign can be successful.

Tony MartignettiAnd so in these interviews, you're— are you coming right out and asking folks what What, what do you see your participation as in this campaign that, that we're talking about? Or do you— are you proposing, are you proposing dollar amounts for each interviewee? Or—

Brian AbernathyWe've got a— How

Tony Martignettiare you getting at this, this potential campaign contribution?

Brian AbernathyYeah, we'll take the test goal and break it down into a funding chart just to, to show a visual of— we'll use round numbers. If we've got a $10 million campaign goal, Go ahead. We need a 15% lead pledge. That would be $1.5 million. And so we do a couple of things. We ask every interviewee, who do you think could be up here potentially at the top ranges of this pyramid? So who might be that $1.5 million lead or a couple of folks at half a million below that? And in these candid, confidential conversations, folks will say, oh, so-and-so would be great, or this foundation or that family. You should try to talk to them. The other thing that we do after that is we ask each interviewee, if the right leaders were engaged in this campaign, and if you had the right confidence in the case for investment, where do you think, from a low to high range, your organization or family or whoever it is might land in terms of a potential investment? So it's all very hypothetical. Based on the variables of the conversation, we're very clear it's not a commitment to funding. But the majority of the time, because we're the third-party outside person who is not putting a pledge card in front of them asking them to sign it in this conversation, they'll give us that range. And sometimes it's pretty broad within appropriate reason based on questions the interviewee may still have. But it helps us to know both for those individuals and also for some industry and community subsets of peers where we might expect to be able to find the funding for the campaign.

Tony MartignettiWhen you ask who might be at this, this top level, the 15% of the goal, do people ever say, oh, I could do that?

Brian AbernathyIn some cases, yes.

Tony MartignettiDoes that happen?

Brian AbernathyYeah. A great way to identify a potential—

Tony MartignettiYeah. I mean, If they self-identify, yeah, I say there's no better way. But that, that happens. People say, oh, I, I could do that. Yeah.

Brian AbernathyYeah. And especially when you're talking buildings and you're talking about naming opportunities, which we would of course address in a feasibility study if there is a building in play, you get to have a whole nother set of conversation to follow down of what might be most appealing in terms of naming this facility to honor the memory of your mother or whoever the case may be. Now, those are confidential conversations, so we're using that to inform strategy moving on down the line in a campaign. But we do not share that information, so we assure them that they're never going to see a report that says Bob and Susie really want to be the lead pledge and name the whole facility. We, we still work through the process, honor the reality that they may have other things they need to vet out and validate before they're ready to finalize that commitment. But we've got a pretty good idea from that conversation how we would want to approach them, when in the campaign timeline we might want to approach them, and even what leaders would be most influential to garnering their pledge, because we also asked them who they think would be the best leaders.

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Tony MartignettiNow back to feasibility studies. What, why, and how. Okay, very interesting. So if you're, if your client, the nonprofit, asks Well, who is it that stepped up? What makes you so confident, uh, that we can get this? We have the— a very good prospect for this 15% leadership gift, and who are they? You, you, you can't say it's Bob and Susie?

Brian AbernathyUh, we don't, no. Uh, we, we probably could. We choose not to, um, uh, because it, it is one of those factors that helps ensure that we're getting the most candid and direct feedback out of those interviews. What we do provide is a perspective of we're highly confident that these folks should be considered in this range of potential investment, or we believe based on prior conversations, this family could be a great naming target. Most of the time, Tony, with a nonprofit that's highly connected and engaged with their constituents, they've already got a pretty good idea. of who those folks are. So it's not common that we get a complete surprise out of that. And more often than not, we're going into those interviews sort of ferreting out— we think this person could have interest in naming a facility or, or stepping up and taking a key leadership role. So prior to even getting into interviews, we've gone back and forth several rounds with the list of interviewees. getting all the background information, all the perspective from our client, what's their past giving history look like, and so forth. So we've got a pretty good starting point that we're, we're strategically approaching those conversations. And when we find that potential lead pledge that we weren't expecting, we're thrilled. But, but most of the time, we've got a pretty good idea where those need to come from before we even start the interviews.

Tony MartignettiThis sounds very much like an art. I mean, these, these face-to-face interviews or whatever, Zoom or, you know, however they're done, but these interviews, it sounds like you get like one shot to have a serious conversation with a donor or an individual donor or foundation, or maybe it's a couple. You know, it's got to be— it just sounds like an art. I mean, you got to be organized. You have to have the story complete. It— yeah, I think he's— I don't know, it looks bad. I think if you come back and— well, you might say we have some follow-up questions. I guess I could see that, but it seems to me you get one shot to do it really well.

Brian AbernathyYeah, and, and you're exactly right, Tony. Most of these folks don't have hours and hours of time that they want to give over a number of weeks or months to have follow-up conversations. So we're very strategic. We develop a questionnaire that we use for each client, and some of those questions are, are standard. Some of those are obviously very unique to the client situation. But we've also got a team of consultants, most of whom are former C-level nonprofit executives. And so there's a lot of intuition that comes into play here of if somebody says something about one initiative in a program of work that tweaks some interest, we may chase that thought a little bit more. We may push a little bit harder for what we would call the financial indication in some interviews, and other places we may back off. Um, so there's a lot of nuance in how those conversations play out.

Tony MartignettiAll right, so let's keep pulling on this thread about what you're going to get out of it, the value. Why, why do it?

Brian AbernathySo the— if you want to think about value in terms of a simple deliverable We're gonna prepare what we call an opportunity analysis report and recommendations, and that's gonna give the objective responses that we collected, some quantitative, some qualitative. We're gonna analyze those. We're gonna give you perspective on the trends and the feedback that we got, and then it's gonna give specific recommendations on Next steps. Very, very rarely, Tony, is that next step a cold and hard no-go on a campaign. Sometimes it is a bad time for an organization to step into a campaign. Most of the time, there is specific work to be done to prepare for a campaign, or we're going into a campaign pretty swiftly. Some of that is the shelf life on these reports. We think of it about a 90 to 120-day time span. We know from the past few years a lot can change in 3 months. So sitting and waiting and considering, should we go forward, should we not, on the side of a nonprofit can be risky in some cases.

Tony MartignettiLet me ask you, what might some of that work be that has to be done first if it's not a hard let's go, we're 100%, or you can never be 100%, 95% confident. But if you're not at that point, what might some of that work be that needs to be done first?

Brian AbernathySo generally it's going to fall into one of 3 specific subsets that we focus on. And we've got a principle we talk about at Convergent called asking rights. And asking rights is the intersection of your nonprofit's credibility, the clarity of the outcomes that it delivers, through the work that it does, not the outputs or the activity, but the true bottom-line impact. And then fundraising skill. And so we're gonna look at those 3 dynamics through the interviews, and we may come out of a feasibility study process and say your credibility is not quite where it needs to be. And so we need to take some focused time to cultivate messaging, to engage your constituency, get the right leaders. Committed, maybe do some board work to get them ready to step in and be active. Sometimes this can take place in the foundational phase of a capital campaign. Sometimes it takes a little bit more time. On the outcome side, generally we're gonna address this through something we call program refinement early in a campaign engagement, where we're taking that draft plan from the study. We're sharpening it up. We're answering the questions that we heard. Adding some specificity and really, really working on developing what we call an organizational value proposition, which is how we would convey the true outcomes and economic value that whatever the nonprofit is we're working with is delivering in their community.

Tony MartignettiOkay.

Brian AbernathyAnd then the last piece is the fundraising skill. So in some cases, we've got a great plan, we've got the right outcomes, but the fundraising infrastructure to go out And execute on a campaign is just not there. And so one of the common engagements that we work with clients on in that space is a multi-month resource development strategy engagement where we're addressing and building out some of those fundraising infrastructure points so that when the time does get there to turn on a capital campaign, the organization is ready to move forward smoothly.

Tony MartignettiMeanwhile, though, the, the clock is ticking on the value of the The, the study, you said what you said, 90 to 120 days. Is that— I don't mean to put words in your mouth. Is that right? Is that— Yeah,

Brian Abernathythat, that's our typical that we try to, uh—

Tony MartignettiSo 3 to— so 3 to 4 months, you see, uh, after that, the, the landscape could have changed from the conversations that you had.

Brian AbernathyThat's right. And if

Tony Martignettithat time is ticking while you're trying to do this sort of fundraising infrastructure work,

Brian AbernathyThat's right. So if we end up with a longer-term engagement that we're involved in, what we're gonna do is maintain the reference points to know what factors we need to see shift to be prepared for moving into a campaign. If we get beyond that horizon, we've got the perspective from the critical interviews that we conducted in the study, and we would just roll what we call some re-interviews into the early stages of the capital campaign. Okay. To get some revalidation and affirmation that none of those findings adjusted. And that's usually somewhere in the neighborhood of, you know, 6 to 10, maybe 12 key conversations. And once we validate, yet we still got the right leaders, we still have the firm support of some of those lead prospective donors or investors, then we're confident to move forward with the rest of the recommendations as we had previously identified.

Tony MartignettiOkay. Okay. Anything else on the, uh, the value proposition part? What, what we're gonna get out of this study, why we're doing it?

Brian AbernathyYeah, the, uh, the last big piece is that campaign strategy and timeline. So we're gonna give specific recommendations on, uh, the scope of campaign, what we believe a high to low feasible goal range is gonna be, uh, the number of months that we believe it's gonna take you to manage a campaign. And then if that client is interested in working with us, we're also recommending the level of campaign management or counsel from our side that we believe would be most conducive to their success, given their community size, size of their organization and staff, and so forth.

Tony MartignettiSo now we have this, we have this report. I guess it's, it's also typically a presentation to the board. Yep. And the C-suite leadership, I imagine, but also written report. Now then, folks can take that report and go off and, I don't know, try— they can try to try the campaign on their own. I'm sure they're free to engage Convergent, which you would love. You'd love to do that work. Or they can do— they could hire some other firm, I guess, right?

Brian AbernathyYep, that's right. So every now and then we will do a campaign where another firm did a study. It's not all that common, and vice versa, it's not all that common that we would do a study and another firm would come in and manage a campaign, just because you can imagine there's such a depth of institutional knowledge and connectivity that comes out.

Tony MartignettiConnection you had to— somebody else did the interviews and now you're executing, uh, you're going back and Getting serious about soliciting volunteers, the leadership soliciting gifts, but you don't have the— you don't have the connection.

Brian AbernathyThat's right.

Tony MartignettiRight. All right.

Brian AbernathyYou do get engaged periodically with an organization that's got a strong development staff. We've got a few repeat clients in this boat. They, they are prepared to and understand what is involved in going out and raising the money, but they always want third-party objective feedback out of the feasibility study. So they're getting perspective on how did we do over the past X number of years in communicating with our constituents? How was our leadership seen in the community? Who would be the right leaders? Is the goal feasible? Now, again, we're not divulging the specific feedback from interviewees in these engagements, but we still say, hey, yes, we, we believe this goal range is appropriate for you to pursue. And so on and so forth. But they're doing that based on aggregate data, whereas if we're retained to manage a campaign, we have the benefit of all of that very specific and nuanced feedback from interviews that our team members would draw on throughout the campaign to, to guide strategy and next steps with, with the different prospects that we may have interviewed.

Tony MartignettiOkay. Okay. So let's, let's stick with, you know, I want to— the, the nuts and bolts of this, of this, uh, feasibility study. Um, how do we— well, who schedules the— who schedules the meetings? Is that, is that the nonprofit's responsibility? Now we've got this list of, you said typically, I think, 50 to 65 interviews. Um, you know, who's— who— what's the mechanics of moving forward?

Brian AbernathyYeah, so we will have on average between 55 and 65 interviews.

Tony MartignettiOkay,

Brian Abernathythat's gonna come from a list of normally around 120 or so interviewees. We know we're not gonna schedule everybody we wanna meet with, but we wanna get critical mass of feedback. So we start with a list expecting some folks won't be available. What we have found over time, and time continues to affirm, a scheduler from the nonprofit organization is far more successful in securing these interviews, especially with your higher influence, higher capacity interviewees, just because it's a name and a number or an email address that they recognize. The, the email from Convergent Nonprofit Solutions is not incredibly likely to get a response when asking for a meeting. If any, if anyone's like me, they get a number of those emails every day from somebody. selling wares or offering something. And so we want to build from a place of strength in the scheduling. So we start with a representative of the organization. Usually we give about a 2-week lead time for scheduling, and then our average feasibility study is going to conduct interviews over a 3-week period. That person may have a little bit of scheduling work to do over the first couple of weeks, just filling in the gaps. But typically That, that scheduler is, uh, 2.5, 3 weeks-ish of their time, uh, making some phone calls and following up on emails.

Tony MartignettiAnd what are they asking folks to participate in? Uh, you— we're— the insiders are calling it a feasibility study, uh, or you even have a different phrase that you call it. Uh, yeah, so we talk about opportunity, opportunity analysis. But what are we using for our, our interviewees, our potential interviewees? What are we calling it? What are we— what are we saying we're asking them to

Brian AbernathyYep. We send a letter over the signatures of a few key leaders that are affiliated with the organization explaining why we are there, that we are absolutely not asking for funding. We're seeking candid, confidential feedback on the proposed plan that is attached to that letter. So we're giving them an opportunity to see what we wanna talk about before the meeting, partly so they know, but also so they've had an opportunity to digest it and come up with questions before we walk into the room. And we tell them it's a feasibility study. It's a vetting of a potential campaign that it would be unwise for the organization to go forward apart from the feedback of these key valued stakeholders and constituents. And so that information goes out to everyone on the interview list. We have some cases where, for sensitive information in the program of work, The client that we would work with might not send out the full plan until someone actually schedules an interview. We have an online cloud-based scheduling system that we use, so all of that is automated and simple. So not a lot of extra work there. But we want, we want the interviewees to have perspective well before we walk in the room, because it's gonna help us get the strongest feedback.

Tony MartignettiIt's time for Tony's Take Two. Thank you, Classy. Their blog post is 17 Podcasts for Nonprofits You Need on Your Radar. Nonprofit Radio, that's this show, is their number 5. It would be my pleasure to name the others, but there are 16 of them. You wouldn't remember them all, and that wouldn't be fair to the ones that you don't retain. Right. Imagine that. I'm not going to let that happen to my fellow podcasters. Well, I'm not going to allow it. So there's really only one show you need to know. This one, Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. The post with the full list is on the blog at classy.org. Classy, thank you very, very much. That is Tony's Take Two. We've got beaucoup, buttloads more time for feasibility studies. What, why, and how with Brian Abernathy. They're being asked to meet with someone outside the organization, right? That you— they're being asked to meet with someone from Convergent.

Brian AbernathyThat's correct. And, uh, we identify that person even in that letter. Of you will be getting a call from so-and-so at the nonprofit organization to schedule a time for you to meet with Brian from Convergent for 45 minutes to an hour at a time of your convenience. So pretty, pretty clear all the way through. So they don't think the executive director of the nonprofit is coming to meet with them, and then it's this outside consultant and they're caught off guard or what have you.

Tony MartignettiYou prefer to do these in person, or is Zoom a suitable Substitute? What?

Brian AbernathyWell, Zoom has become a suitable substitute for a lot of things.

Tony MartignettiWell, out of necessity, right? But

Brian Abernathyyeah, we still do the vast majority of our interviews in person, uh, and most of that is the opportunity to cultivate relationship when we meet with someone in their home or in their office or wherever it may be. You know, just the, the fundraising experience of walking in and seeing things in their office to be able to to draw some personal connections. If that's someone that we're interviewing is 3, 4 months later being sat down with by the same consultant to solicit a pledge, we walk in with that much more relational credibility and equity that we can leverage on behalf of our clients. So we love to do in-person. That's always our recommendation, but we, we absolutely are still doing some Zoom interviews. And in some cases, that's just the most functional. We've, we've worked with some higher ed clients that have donors all over the country. And so in-person is just not realistic. And Zoom allows us to do that. And what we sacrifice in terms of not getting that in-person sit-down sort of warm fuzzy feel is certainly not detrimental to the results that we get. And the final—

Tony Martignettibut you prefer the in-person? I always I always prefer in-person meetings with, you know, for me, I'm talking to planned giving prospects or planned giving donors doing stewardship. But, you know, there's just nothing like seeing pictures of grandchildren, a picture of a sailboat, awards from their business, whatever other photographs there might be. I mean, there's just a wealth of questions and, you know, you can ask folks about to try to Build a foundation with people, and some of it you know may end up you know see pictures of yachts in the Caribbean or a yacht in the Caribbean. You know that that may be indicative of some some potential potential giving that you maybe didn't know about.

Brian AbernathyAbsolutely.

Tony MartignettiThere's just there's so much in someone's home or office, but even just drawing just like I said just drawing a foundation for a relationship. Asking about the pictures, those children, grandchildren, you know, etc. So

Brian Abernathyyeah. And these days the in-person meetings are the ones that stand out in our memories, right? Where if you're like me, at least you're all the time, but the, uh, so-and-so came by, sat in my office or my living room, we spent time together. Those are now very much inflection points in terms of our interpersonal reactions or our interpersonal interactions. And so that helps sort of entrench that conversation in the mind of the interviewee as well, which is a benefit when we get to a campaign because we want to come back and build on that prior conversation.

Tony MartignettiYeah, you have to just have a warmer foundation to the relationship if it's, if it's not virtual, if it's in person. What about meals? You like— I like to, I like to, but I'm— I have a different purpose. I'm not doing feasibility studies, but I happen to like to meet prospects and donors over meals. Is that, is that maybe not so suitable for a feasibility study?

Brian AbernathyYeah, we specifically tried to avoid meals and public places for these conversations. And some of it is we want to hear really candid feedback and we want to hear it about the organization we're working with. We want to hear it about, as I mentioned a few moments ago, who do you think could be that?

Tony MartignettiOh, right. Yeah. Other people. Right, right. The other person might be sitting 2 tables away or yeah. Right.

Brian AbernathyThat's right. That's right. So it makes it a little bit easier to get the type of feedback we want when we're in a quiet, private setting. We've had clients who have said, hey, we've got a conference room right here in the office. We can do all the interviews in the office. And certainly that's, that's not the worst scenario. But what we don't want is somebody worried, well, gosh, the executive director's office is on the other side of this wall. I don't want them to hear some of my true thoughts, so I'll— I just won't share those things. So we, we try to always go to the interviewee, uh, so that we're sitting down, uh, in, in their turf, so to say.

Tony MartignettiOkay, okay. And then, uh, you have a conversation, right? You're, you're building that foundational relationship because hopefully you'll, you'll be embarking on a campaign with, with this nonprofit. Any bad story, like any, uh, war story? Uh, you ever get thrown out of someone's home or office? Um, I hope not, but if you did, I wanna— if you did, I wanna hear about it. If you guys got thrown out.

Brian AbernathySo you always get folks that have, uh, some sort of other unique local agenda or organization that they've got a stronger affinity for, and you hear, uh, well, this is, this is good, but this other organization is is really getting great work done. So those are pretty commonplace. I had one that is sort of my favorite feasibility study war story that, that really undergirds the importance of that fundraising skill that I talked about earlier. I walked into a feasibility interview. The gentleman that I was going to interview was ready. He was right there as I walked in. He had the draft program of work in front of him. So I'm thinking, great, he read it, he's ready to go. And he pulls out another piece of paper and he says, I'm really glad that you're here because 5 years ago I supported this organization in a prior campaign. And this is the invoice for my last payment, which I'll be sending off later this week. And then he held up that program of work and he said, this is the only other information I've received in 5 years is this proposed program of work. So I'll be sitting this one out. But I appreciate your coming by to hear my thoughts. And I didn't get my questionnaire out. I said, thank you. I'll be sure to convey your thoughts appropriately. And, and that was the end of the interview. It was pretty quick. But that just goes to undergird, Tony, that all that we're doing in nonprofits is setting the stage for a next opportunity. So you may not have a capital campaign In the next 2 years. But the things that an organization is doing today are laying the foundational building blocks so that they can be successful whenever that capital campaign or major funding initiative or an annual campaign year-end— you can swap out, uh, the, the avenue, but that, that communication and relationship cultivation is absolutely critical.

Tony MartignettiAnd the stewardship that follows.

Brian AbernathyThat's right.

Tony MartignettiHe sounds like he made a 5-year, uh, a 5-year pledge. He was just about to send his 5th pledge payment, happy to do it, but the stewardship was awful and all he got was the next funding plan. But he, he set you up.

Brian AbernathyVery, very valid reasons for that in the life cycle of an organization and its leadership. But, but that, that individual didn't care if there was a valid reason. His perception was the reality that he was working from, uh, and, and learning those things is Good. Sometimes it's painful to learn those things, but again, I would say that's a value of a feasibility study, is you get some of that inside perspective. Oh, you otherwise might not have.

Tony MartignettiOh, absolutely. Now, you know, you can't count on that guy. He's not, he's not going to be your volunteer. He's not going to be your honorary chair.

Brian AbernathyThat's right.

Tony MartignettiHe's not going to be any kind of volunteer, and he's not going to give. So that is valuable to know because they probably thought exactly the opposite. Because he made a 5-year pledge to the previous campaign. So they probably thought he was a very, very good prospect for this campaign, but they did not do a good job at stewardship. So he's sitting it out. I do note, though, that he set you up. He wanted to tell you this face to face. He didn't want to do it by email. He didn't say, have Mr. Abernathy call me in anticipation before he arranges the meeting. Before we meet, have Mr. Abernathy call me. Didn't, didn't offer that. He, he wanted to tell it to you face to face.

Brian AbernathyThat's right. He was going to schedule the meeting,

Tony Martignettiright?

Brian AbernathyAnd, you know, I can't even— it's probably not fair to presume intent or motive, but there's a little bit of, uh, giving you the level of interaction that I didn't get, right? Nobody came by to talk to me, but you're here now, and so I'm going to tell you face to face. In my perspective, it conveyed the seriousness of his thoughts. It's really easy to ignore an email. It's really easy to just say, no thanks, don't have time to meet with you. But, uh, it appropriately conveyed how, how significant it was to him that he had not been communicated with.

Tony MartignettiStewardship, stewardship. There's no chance of trying to resurrect that relationship, and then maybe in the midst of the campaign? I mean, the, the CEO would have to Be very humble and

Brian Abernathyapologetic,

Tony Martignettiuh, but maybe it's worth exploring.

Brian AbernathyYeah, and that's one of those spots where you look at, okay, presuming you have the information available, who connected with this individual last time? What was the process by which they were cultivated and solicited? What's their prior other engagement with the organization? And sometimes, uh, Tony, I've had, uh, feasibility interviewees Tell me, ah, we might give a very nominal amount to this, and I would have no interest in a leadership role because I've got my business to run and I've got these other things going on. But then you go back to them with the right person, and they're your campaign chair, right? I've literally seen that in or that specific instance play out in a campaign. And so it goes to show that just because someone says. Yes or no in one of these conversations does not mean that's their final answer. And again, some of that is in the feasibility study. The value of an outside consultant is nobody's afraid to tell them the truth. They don't know them. They don't have any local affinity affiliation, and so they're just talking objectively about a program of work and collecting information. When you get into a campaign. What you want is the exact opposite. You want relationship, you want influence, and you pair the strategy and the perspective of a consultant with someone with local relationship and influence, and you go back and you can change the response that you get very readily in many cases.

Tony MartignettiSo I'm not so naive. I mean, it's possible.

Brian AbernathyIt is, yeah.

Tony MartignettiResurrect even the guy who says—

Brian AbernathyEvery case is different. That one case held pretty true, but—

Tony MartignettiHe held firm. But I would try. If I were the CEO, I would try. And then if he's not going to meet me, or, you know, he's dismissive of the, you know, then of course you can't go any further. I'm not suggesting go any further, but it's worth a try. I think he, you know, I'm of the mind that if he didn't care— I know we're pulling on this one thread, but you picked a very valuable— that's a really valuable outlier in your experience. He did care enough to tell you why. He didn't, he didn't just do the things that you suggested would have been much easier. ignore the phone call, ignore the email, just, you know, and then, and just blow the whole thing off. He did take the time to tell the organization that they messed up the relationship with him. Yes. In so many, in so many words. So my belief is if people are willing to tell you that you've messed up, they, they, they still love you, just not as much as they did when they made the 5-year pledge from the previous campaign. They don't love you as much, but they do still have an affinity. They want you to know that you screwed it up, So I, I see some, I see some potential. But, and you're saying I'm not 100% naive in at least trying to explore it?

Brian AbernathyThat's right.

Tony MartignettiOkay, I'm optimistic. Uh, half glass is half full. What else can you tell us about the mechanics of— all right, now you've got these 55 to 65 interviews. You said you do them over like 3 weeks. Obviously you need some time to prepare your report. Do all— you have multiple, I guess you have multiple interviewers, and how do you, how do you sort of coalesce the opinions of multiple interviewers?

Brian AbernathyYeah, so we've got some data collection and analysis tools that we use internally, uh, that we come at from a couple of angles. So typically, uh, we would have one dedicated consultant who is running through the entire feasibility study process, and in a lot of cases, another of our senior team members is going to come on site for 2, 3 days to join some interviews. What we want is a couple of different sets of eyes on things, and then we come back out of those. Our team member who's been face-to-face with folks is telling us sort of the, the nuance of, I heard these trends in conversation, and these things don't bear out in the numbers, which are readily evolving day by day as we complete interviews. So we're watching those trends as things move forward. But we're able to say this, this number ticks here, but there's, there's a factor over here that's meaningful that's not gonna show up in the numbers. And so our, our on-the-ground consultant is looking at that. Then a member of our client services leadership team is just blinders on looking at the data, right? Did we see a high enough level of interest in filling a leadership role? If we didn't, we know there's a hurdle we're gonna have to address. Do the completely objective numbers of number of potential high-level investors— we say investors, not donors— does the number of potential high-level prospects match with what we would want to see to know that we could go out there and hit, you know, the .300 Hall of Fame batting average and still have a suitable pool of lead investments? Do the numbers of financial indications match up to what history has shown us we need to see to validate a campaign goal. And then we come together as a team internally and compare all of those things and triangulate in on the positive factors, the challenging factors. We identify what we call X factors that are outside variables that no one can control, but we heard enough about this that if X, Y, and Z breaks this direction, it could have an adverse impact on the campaign. And again, we can't do anything about it, but we need to always be aware of it so that we're not surprised if something happens to shift, whether that's local economy. I mean, who knows what those things could be, but they pretty often will reveal themselves through our interviews.

Tony MartignettiAnd then it's a delivery to the, to the board. I don't know, do the board leaders get an advance copy of the report? And then it's a delivery to the full board, or everybody gets it released to them at the same time? How does— what's the best way there?

Brian AbernathySo generally, within about a week of completing our interviews, we're going to jump on a call with the executive and maybe executive team for our client, depending on their preference, and share our preliminary findings. So this is, yes, we believe a campaign is feasible or not. Here's the goal amount that we believe is, is feasible, low to high range. And here are any other unique variables that we want to get planted in your mind so that you can think through how would be best to present those to your board and other key leaders. That meeting's typically about 3 weeks or so after we complete the interviews, because it does take us a couple of 2, 2 and a half weeks to get that report together and polished up and presentable. And then we would send it to our client executive and give them discretion as to how they would want to distribute it. In some cases, they just want to share an executive summary, and so we've got that ready. In others, they want us to present and then they want to share the report. So we're pretty flexible on that, and that's really because every organization is different. And so we don't— that's one of those spots that we don't try to prescribe. You've got to send the whole report to the whole board before. Some boards would read it and then check out of the conversation in person. And, you know, there's all kinds of variables out there that We don't try to overprescribe a method for, for how we would present, but we would step in, show them the details of the findings, give them some of the candid feedback at a, again, aggregate level, and share whatever our recommendations would be for next steps.

Tony MartignettiThat's, that's a feasibility study. And then they've got their 90 to 120 days to Yeah, and

Brian Abernathymost of the time it's, uh, it's quick. There's a campaign, uh, or follow-on work, I should say. Most of the time it's a much quicker, uh, transition. We had a client recently, uh, that, um, is sort of still in this process, so, but they had a very specific piece of, uh, X-factor outside variable that needed to have a clear decision before they would be well positioned to move into a campaign. But That happened to involve some public sector decisions that has played out over the course of about 9 months. And it looks like now they're going to be ready to move towards that campaign.

Tony MartignettiOkay. But now they're— but now they're 9 months past the feasibility study. So there might need to be some follow-up interviews.

Brian AbernathyThat's right. We'll schedule over the first month or so of the campaign, a handful of those re-interviews, just rechecking bearings, knowing that there's no new surprises that may have crept up or identifying any new surprises. And course correcting for how we would want to navigate those moving forward.

Tony MartignettiYou had mentioned foundations as interviewees. Foundation staff are willing to, to take these kinds of meetings and make a, a broad— I mean, they can't commit, they can't commit because every decision is a decision of the board, but foundation staff, or I guess it's program staff, are willing to take this?

Brian AbernathyIn varying cases. And so you hit a very specific point that we always monitor when there are foundations on our interview list is 99% of the time that foundation staff person is gonna say, a grant is a decision of the board. Our grant guidelines are on the internet or invitation only, or whatever the variables. But we typically can be pretty strategic in using an interview if we get it as a cultivation approach. So less of a tell us what the foundation would do, and more of a how would we best position this for success given your focus areas as a foundation? And would your foundation rather lead the way and help us get out of the starting blocks strong, or put us over the goal line at the other end of the campaign? And as you probably know very well, there are foundations that have very specific spots that they want to play in that process, and we need to know that in a campaign so that we're not starting out banking on a meaningful grant from a foundation when that foundation's board would rather be making that grant, you know, when we're 80, 90% of the way to the goal already.

Tony MartignettiAnd it could be a funder that's funded the nonprofit in the past.

Brian AbernathyThat's right.

Tony MartignettiOh, and they're still not going to commit to something, they're still going to defer to their board, but Uh, they— you can deepen the relationship in, in that case.

Brian AbernathyAbsolutely.

Tony MartignettiOkay. All right, Brian, why don't you, uh, just leave us with a little, uh, a little motivation about, uh, feasibility studies?

Brian AbernathyThe important thing with a feasibility study is, uh, I would say is getting it right. It's not one of those things that you want to rush through. I would say to a nonprofit, it's not something you really want to do on your own. Because you're gonna miss some of that objective third-party perspective. And that is such a valuable due diligence. A campaign, a capital campaign of a large scale, and we're typically testing multimillion-dollar projects. It's not one of those things that you want to risk swinging and missing. Knowing exactly what is out there in terms of the fundability of a plan, the amount of funding that's there. can save a lot of relational equity, and as we talked about before, credibility for an organization. So like I said, we will do feasibility studies where there is no interest in our doing a campaign and offer that perspective and that guidance. But it also— where an organization recognizes they don't have the capacity for a campaign in terms of their internal staff— is a just invaluable first step of Counting the cost before you go out and start to build that tower. So we're no surprise big proponents of feasibility studies. We've talked a lot internally. Is there a is there a way to get the same information out of a different process? This is one of those things we've tried every thought of innovation and how how could we move faster? But the reality is, from our experience, there is just not a better way to get the level of intelligence that a feasibility study provides. And then be able to go into a capital campaign from a position of success.

Tony MartignettiAnd, and plus there's that relational foundation.

Brian AbernathyYeah,

Tony Martignettithat, that, that's so much, that's so much value to it as well, building that, building that relationship. All right, thank you, Brian. Brian Abernathy, general manager at Convergent Nonprofit Solutions. The company is at convergentnonprofit.com. And you'll find Brian on LinkedIn. Brian, thank you very much.

Brian AbernathyThanks so much, Tony.

Tony MartignettiMy pleasure. Thanks for sharing. Next week, data-driven storytelling with Julia Campbell. If you missed any part of this week's show, I beseech you, find it at tonymartignetti.com.

Kate MartignettiWe're sponsored by DonorBox. With intuitive fundraising software from DonorBox, Your donors give 4 times faster, helping you help others. DonorBox.org.

Tony MartignettiOur creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. The show's social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with me next week for Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 99%. The other 95%. Go out and be great.