Welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the podfather of your favorite hebdominal podcast. And oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d be hit with gastroenteroptosis if you brought me down with the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer Kate to tell us what’s up this week. Hey, Tony, this week it’s your grantmaker relationships. Shoshana Grossman-Christ leads you through the pathway of relationships with institutional funders. She reveals her advice on how to build and maintain relationships before you apply for a grant, while your proposal is under review, after you’ve been funded, and while you’re doing the work. Also, what if the foundation denies your proposal? Her company is Social Impact Compass. On Tony’s take 2. For our listeners whose funding was uncertain last week. We’re sponsored by DonorBox, outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. Donor box, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Here is your grant maker relationships. It’s a pleasure to welcome Shoshana Grossman Crest through her company Social Impact Compass. She helps NGO grant teams exceed their annual fundraising goals. She leverages her extensive experience working on both sides of the funding process to yield client results that range from growing grant funding from $15,000 to $300,000 over two years. To 10Xing their donations from individuals. Shoshana is on LinkedIn and her practice is at socialimpact compass.com. Shoshanana Grossman Kris, welcome to nonprofit radio. Thank you so much, Tony. And welcome from Mexico City. Yes, it is great to be connecting with you from the other side of the border. You just moved there a couple of months ago. What, what is it that draws you to Mexico City from, uh, from Vermont? Great question. I fell in love with Latin America quite a few years ago actually I took a gap year before college and I realized that Latin America chills me out. I’m very type A and I’m a happier person when I’m living in Latin America and my career has always been focused on community development and nonprofits and NGOs and so this is where I started that path. Have you lived in other countries, Central, South America? I have, so, oh gosh, um, started out that gap year and half of it in Costa Rica and then Ecuador and then I spent some time in Argentina with an internship with the government ended up in Kenya, um, studying abroad and then I have lived in Mexico City on and off since 2007. There have been some other places sprinkled in there too. We lived in Guatemala 2 years ago, and I’ve also spent extensive time in India. I’m probably forgetting a place or two, but in a nutshell, that’s about it. That’s very impressive a global, a global, a global resident outstanding. What what is it about Latin America? So you’ve been to lots of places you’ve been to Africa as well as Asia. What is it that that makes you less type A? What is it about Latin America draws you in specifically? You know, I could never put my finger on it other than that people enjoy life and they work to live rather than living to work. And then a number of years ago I saw a graph that charts out GDP for countries and happiness. And basically more money correlates with more happiness until a certain point at which you’re pretty good on money and then it doesn’t really impact your happiness. Latin America is an outlier in that graph and so it’s significantly happier people are significantly happier than you would expect for the GDP. So maybe that shed some light on it too. It’s admirable, yeah. All right, very interesting. Thank you. All right. Well, congratulations on uh just having moved to Mexico City. You said, uh, you told me off mic, uh, 2 year lease, right? You’re there for 2 years? That is exactly right. Outstanding. And what time zone is Mexico City? So it depends what time of year it is because Mexico, uh, like much of the global South, does not go through daylight time. So right now we are 1 hour behind East Coast time, but sometimes we are 2 hours behind East Coast time. OK, so central or mountain or from North America, right, right, right. We’re talking about grant maker relationships. Uh, let’s, let’s just a threshold question, make sure that these are even, uh, I hope the answer is yes, otherwise it’s gonna be a very short, uh, short episode, like, like 5 minutes. Um, these are, these are possible. We don’t just, we don’t just apply. I mean, we can, we can actually get to know people behind the institutions. This is all feasible and doable. They are possible, not always, but often. And You don’t have to have a connection to be able to make a relationship. You don’t need someone to introduce you. There are other ways. OK, all right, we don’t need an insider. We don’t need a board member who, we don’t need to know a board member in the foundation, but, OK, we can come cold and try some, right, some, some folks are not gonna, some foundations, I guess, are not gonna respond or respond coldly, I suppose, but we can, we can make the effort, we can make the outreach. Uh, without knowing an insider, lots of people come to me and they say, hey, I’m looking for contacts. Can you, you know, introduce me to people? Can you introduce me to people and foundations? And I say there were 86,000 foundations in the US alone. There’s no way that I know someone at every foundation that’s gonna be right for you, or even at a handful of foundations that are gonna be right for your organization. And and we can get into that question later of of of right for your organization and where you should be trying to build relationships but at the end of the day that’s something I want people to walk away with is knowing that you can build that relationship you can open the door and create the relationship. It takes work, um. It takes finesse, but it’s definitely possible. All right, good. Then, then we can spend more than 5 minutes. That’s that’s good. I’m glad. So these are not essential though, right? If we’re, if we’re not able to build a relationship, we still can go ahead and uh make the application that we think we’re, we’re suited for the, the, the work of the foundation. In most cases you have to look at what the foundation is open to. So if it’s an open call for proposals, absolutely submit your proposal if you don’t have a relationship. If it’s a you submit a a general expression of interest on the form on the website, absolutely. It may even be an email that you can send along with a couple liner on the kinds of work you do and where you see alignment. Um, so most of the time you can still submit something. There are places that say no, and then we have to respect that. OK, I just don’t want folks to get discouraged in their relationship attempts. If, uh, if, if an organization isn’t forthcoming, there’s still a good likelihood that we can, we can proceed. Um. Absolutely. I usually tell organizations always try first to create a relationship, to build a relationship, and if that doesn’t work, then just send something along. OK. Yeah, very concise. Uh, you have some principles of building relationships. So what I guess let’s sort of take it chronologically. What, what is our first outreach look like? We, well, we’ve done our research, we, we’ve, we’ve identified that we believe our work aligns with the funding priorities of this hypothetical foundation, which, which should we make it a, should we make it a. A private uh uh private family foundation or should we make it a public foundation, which is right, that, that seems a little more intimidating too. I, I, I just, uh, to me it sounds like it would be harder to, uh, it sounds like a little more closed, uh, institution. Maybe, maybe I’m wrong, but all right, let’s, let’s go with it anyway. private, it’s a private, it’s a family foundation, um, midsize, you know, it’s not, uh, it’s not, it’s not enormous. Uh, multi-billion dollar endowment, but, uh, you know, they’ve got a couple $100 million endowment, something like that, maybe, uh, a couple $100 yeah, a couple $100 million dollar endowments. So, We’ve identified, we, we’ve done our research proper. Let’s just assume that that there is alignment in fact. I’m glad you’ve done your research because there are many, many outreaches that happen where people have not done their research. So let’s double click on that and say, right. Is that, but maybe we shouldn’t assume it. All right. You have to, you have to make sure that you’re aligned with the work of the foundation. You better you better you better flesh that out for us. Many foundations will share that they when they have open calls for proposals for example and so this is just the numbers we have to give us an illustrative example open call for proposals, maybe 25% of the proposals they receive do not meet the basic criteria. So then we can assume that that research is not always happening or that we’re not always sure what alignment means. And so, So that we have this piece under control before we move on, I’ll share a few things that we always need to double check. One, obviously thematic alignment, 2, obviously geographic alignment. Right, so are they working on the top, you know, do they fund the topic you work on? And do they fund in the area that you are working in? Also, are they funding where you are registered, so they might only fund organizations registered in your state or your country or not. But then also things like. Are they looking for something scalable, innovative? These are really loaded terms and You need to understand what they mean to that funder. To that funder scale might mean replicate in some additional counties in your state, or it might mean we want to reach 10 million people across the globe. They might use the same language to say we want something scalable and replicable, but you’re not actually gonna know what that actually means and if you align until you look at the kinds of things they’ve been funding until you look at their website or their 990, the 990 might be the easier place to look for a private family foundation, um. And you can see who they funded before and you can see if the kind of scale those organizations are are having reflects what you’re doing or what you’re looking for similar thing for innovation. So there’s, there’s the more concrete checklist you need to have, but there’s also that sixth sense. So that’s some initial guidance on making sure you’re right fit before you’re reaching out, otherwise you’re just gonna kill yourself reaching out to a million and 1 foundations that aren’t gonna be the right fit. Yeah, or, or even not a million and 1, but you’re, you’re squandering your time anyway. Right, all right. Uh, OK, thank you. We’ve done that. We’ve we’ve done it, uh, successfully appropriately. Uh, now what? I don’t know anybody. I’ve, I’ve given the list of board members of the foundation and employees of the foundation to my board and nobody knows anybody. What. What do we do? Well, the fact that you have a list is a great starting point because those people can be found in a couple of different ways. One is LinkedIn. They’re all individuals, probably a lot of them will be on LinkedIn, and you could send them a, a connection request always with a message, right? You get I think 200 characters on LinkedIn, uh, message requests, and you can send something like hi, uh. It is so and so from it’s Shoshana from Social Impact Compass. I’ve, I’m really inspired by the work of this foundation. I’m seeing some synergies and would love to connect, can write more once we’re connected on LinkedIn. So you indicate a little bit that you’re a real person, you’re writing to them very intentionally, you see some opportunities. And you were doing your homework and you’re willing to put in the legwork to share some more once they connect. It piques some curiosity too. It makes them more likely to to accept your invitation and then once you’re connected you can send them a follow up message or uh there are some great, um, before you, before you leave LinkedIn, I wanna say that uh. Before we started talking, I sent you a LinkedIn connection request without a note. I figured you would know who I am. So I, so I didn’t, I didn’t include a note. So I hope you’re not gonna turn me down because I didn’t include a note. I promise not to, Tony, but we’re existing. This is existing relationship, different situation. We, that’s true, but you still, I don’t, I don’t know how hard and fast you are about the, uh, sending a note. I think it’s a very good idea to send a note, but you know, I was, I was thinking about what we want to talk through and I thought, oh, we should connect, make sure we’re connected on LinkedIn because that’s our preferred social. So I just, I did it without a note. So don’t, don’t turn me down. I promise. OK, thank you. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money, but also supports you in retaining your donors. A partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location so you can grow your impact faster. That’s Donor Box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services, and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability your organization needs, helping you help others. Visit donorbox.org to learn more. Now back to your grant maker relationships. Beyond LinkedIn direct messages, where were you gonna go? Yeah, there are some great free services online that will let you look up people’s contact information. Um, Hunter AI, for example, is one of them, hunter.AI, I believe it is, um, there are a couple others. They give you maybe 25 free searches a month. Other than that, you can pay a subscription and you put in the information you have on that person and you can often get their email address, particularly if you know what uh foundation they work at or if uh you know what company they work at, and then you get their email address. And then you get to send a longer message than that 200 character LinkedIn uh outreach that some people may or may not see because some people have a LinkedIn account and they haven’t been on there in 2 years so uh we may need some alternate strategies and. That email Is going to want to do a few things. One, similarly, it’s gonna want to pique their interest. 2, it’s gonna want to show you’re a real person, and 3, it’s gonna want to um So you’ve done your homework, and 4th, a clear call to action or a request for a next step. Now, one of the things that’s really important in these outreach emails, it’s cold outreach email is To make it more about them than about you. Oftentimes in the nonprofit space, we are so in love with our work and we’re so passionate about the impact we’re having that we focus on Our organization and the amazing things we’re doing. Hopefully we’re also focusing on the need that we’re addressing the problem that we’re solving. Unfortunately, that’s not enough when we’re reaching out with a cold contact because we’re humans and all humans, it’s about me, me, me, me, me. And so that means that this email needs to talk more about them than it’s gonna talk about you. It’s gonna talk about what made you catch, what caught your eye about their work and their foundation. You’re gonna wanna talk about other work that you know that they fund that’s similar to the work that you’re doing. You might wanna talk about some commitment that they’ve made or a place where they spoke recently or something you saw the the family speak about in the case of a family foundation if maybe they gave a talk at a Rotary Club and you found the, the uh recording online. You want to show you’ve done your homework, you wanna show that there’s alignment, you wanna show that what you are doing. Offers the potential to get their mission further faster. Basically you’re positioning yourself as a great ally to them. Now, in the case of a family foundation, it might be a little more on the touchy-feely side than if you were talking about a Ford Foundation, a Kellogg Foundation, um. Where they have very clear theories of change and indicators are trying to meet and these sorts of things which you should talk to in that case. In the case of a family foundation, it might be a little more on the touchy feely side of things about the change you’re you’re making in the world and how you’re helping. So you also wanna talk to the try to speak the language of the person that you’re you’re writing to. So that email might sound something like. Hi George, hi Nancy. Um, I am Shoshana, the founder and CEO of Social Impact Compass, and I am reaching out because I was really inspired when I saw the, the change that you are driving on. Ending hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. I was particularly mot motivated by your. Collaboration with XNGO and the way you’re supporting innovation. In the region. Here at Social Impact Campus, we are also working on that issue. And doing it in a different way. The reason this, this is unique because of A. Or B and it’s. It’s This is going to be a game changer because. We think there’s a lot of potential for synergy or collaboration here. We would love to hop on a 30 minute call with you. And get to know each other a little bit more, and if it makes sense, explore what collaboration might look like. Do you have time for a 30 minute call in the next month? And then you might choose to sign off with, even if you don’t, do you mind just letting me know you got this email? That’ll really help me know if I need to follow up. Thanks so much, Shoshana. That’s great. You just think that’s outstanding. You just dictate. You put yourself on the spot. I, I would have felt bad if I had asked you, what should it say? But I didn’t. You, you, you put yourself on, you took it on, took the burden on yourself, and you dictated, uh, a template, uh, email. Outstanding. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure on behalf of our listeners. Thank you very much for that. Um, and you included the call to action. OK, could we jump on a call? So this would apply whether it’s a staff person or even a, a board member of the foundation. How, how are we reaching out to staff and board or should we just restrict it to staff of the board? I’m sorry, staff of the of the foundation. I think staff is a great place to start because it’s their job to respond to you. It’s their job to be sourcing great projects. If you don’t get response from the staff, then I think the board is a great plan B. And when you reach out to the board, it’s probably gonna be a little less structured than what I just shared, a little less. Um Um, it’s gonna be a little more conceptual. I see some great alignment. I’d love to know about your engagement with the board, where you see the organization heading, some priorities, um, we think there might be a match, but before we engage directly with the organization, I would, I would love to hear, hear from you, hear about the perspective, um. Here what priorities you see the foundation focusing on and how you think we could potentially engage with the foundation. I love how you edit as you’re as you’re speaking. It’s you’re real, you’re like a real editor. Um, OK, and of course the board member might refer you to a staff person, but that’s fine, right? It’s a it’s. Absolutely. I talk to one of our officers. Perfect. And then that officer is probably going to pay attention to you because the board member told them to. Yeah, I was, I was referred to you by, uh, Shoshana Grossman Krist, uh, your esteemed board member who does real-time editing on podcasts, and she recommended that I speak to you. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, drop a name, right? I mean, isn’t that the way to do it? Absolutely, absolutely. I think there are two things to do here. One is you want to come across authentically. And so this real-time editing made me think of that because I am not coming across as the perfect speaker who has, I didn’t come here with the template written. That I’m reading to you. I’m coming to you live. We are talking through a real scenario. I’m being a real human. It’s allowing you to see me as a real human. I’m not a bot. I’m not AI in this day and age, we don’t even know, um. And it allows you to feel that human connection and be more interested in responding. So, just as you see me editing in real time, feel free to be authentic and human. On your emails. In fact, I had a team member once a couple of years ago who was significantly younger and like just out of college, and she started her emails with high exclamation point to like cold outreach emails. And I was like, that feels very informal and really not that professional. Maybe you shouldn’t do that. But you know what? She got great responses. It was refreshing for people. And so feel free to let your personality shine through in that way. OK, instead of deer. Mr. Miss, miss, you know, something more formal. Hi, hey, like, uh, yeah, it’s like, uh, it’s like a friend. Hey, it’s a friend you see in the supermarket. Hey. Talk to them like the relationship you want to have with them. Yeah, absolutely. And then the other thing is follow up. And this is why I’ve started putting that final line around, if you don’t mind, just let me know that you’ve got this email, because oftentimes those emails do go to inboxes that no one is checking, particularly if you aren’t able to find the contact information of a specific person. So your plan C is just to write the generic contact info at or whatever that email address is, maybe it’s something you find on the 990. And I have found that they might, no one might be checking that inbox. In fact, there’s a case where we wrote to an email address. No response. We wrote to the contact us form on the website. No response. We followed up on both of those. No response. Like 6 months later we decide final final attempt we’re going to call them old school, pick up the phone turns out no one had been checking any of those inboxes. They said, we are so sorry. Thank you so much for letting us know. They ended up review requesting a proposal and approving it. So this kind of persistence and follow-up is critical. It’s the name of the game in fundraising and more so when it’s a cold outreach. All right. Um, Did we talk through your, your advice on uh on questions, getting to know you, get to know you questions? You, you, you alluded to a couple, like what do you, what do you see as the priorities, where is the foundation headed? Do you have some other advice around questions getting around for getting to know folks? Yeah, absolutely. I, once you’re on the call, I would absolutely start at a personal level. Some people won’t be open to this, and then you can read the room and move on. But this is now we’re at the next stage. We’re at the, we’re at the, we’re at the phone call now. Oh yes, yeah, I wouldn’t ask too many questions in the email. No, um, you know, let’s take a step back for one second and I’m gonna give one other tip for that follow-up email, which is You don’t get a response to the first one, very likely. To be honest, in some ways I screen my emails in similar ways. If I get a cold outreach from someone. And I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m just gonna let it sit. If they follow up, I know that they’re serious, I know they’re professional, then I’ll respond. So that may be happening. So always have a system in place to make sure you’re following up on your emails if you don’t get a reply within maybe 2 weeks. That follow up email is great to make it a response over your initial email, and it might look like an RE and then they’ll think they’re already in conversation with you, so they’ll be more likely to open it. So now you’re forwarding your original email to them, your original email. Oh, respond over yours. All right, and then put their address. OK. Yeah, exactly, uh, no, cause you already sent it to them. So if you just click the response button, the reply button, it will just reply to them over your original email that you sent them. No, it’ll reply, it’ll reply to you because you wrote it. No, it won’t, it will reply to them. Oh, I always do that by forwarding the original email, and then that’s how I get the RE. Maybe we’re using differences. I don’t know. I, I use Apple Mail. Maybe you use Outlook. I use Google. Google. OK, OK. I think differently. OK, whatever you need, you want your original email in the in the in the body of yours, uh, of your follow-up and you want the little RE. Exactly. Exactly. And so then your follow up can be really brief, just two lines. Hey, following up on my email that I sent you a couple weeks ago, it’s below, would love to put 30 minutes on the calendar to chat. We just last week had hit a huge milestone with our program, share some update like that, mention what it is. Are you game for chatting? Here’s a link to schedule. Some people ask me, you know, isn’t that too forward? Isn’t that like inverting the power balance if I like share my calendar, my scheduling link? It’s like, no, screw the power balance, pardon my French. And uh, we’ve had much worse than that on nonprofit radio, don’t worry about that. And and reduce any friction. Give them an easy way to schedule a meeting with you. So that would be my recommendation. OK. And how many times would you follow up? You’re not getting responses. How many emails, how many, you send the original, how many follow-up emails would, would you, would you, do you recommend sending? You know, Tony, I have a feeling we might spend this whole podcast episode just on getting the meeting, and I’m not opposed to it. There’s just so much to unpack here. I love it. Um. I like detail, you know, I like action steps that people can take and talk through with their VP or take take if they have the authority themselves, move ahead. Yeah, I would like, I like details. Great. So there’s a term called professional persistence, which I love. Joanne Sonenshein um is the one who I heard that from, and The idea is follow-up works, follow up is important. Don’t feel bad following up if you do it in a professional way. Oftentimes when we send an email, we feel like. I made a personal connection to you. If I call a friend and the friend never calls me back after I left him a message, I might be insulted, especially if I follow up. So by the second time, I’m kind of feeling hurt and I’m not gonna follow up again. I’m taking it personally. That is not how we can think about cold outreach because these people don’t have a relationship with us. So what if we use a different framework and we think about the marketing rule that you need 7 touch points. Before a potential buyer buys. 7 touch points. So essentially, what if we think of buying as giving you a meeting? 30 minutes of their time is valuable. That is giving you, that is buying something. So, maybe you might need to do 5 follow-ups. Now, what that looks like is going to vary. So that might mean that by the 3rd 1, it’s not hey did you get my message, but it’s this article just came out about us, wanted to share. It might be, I know you work in this space. Here’s an innovation that has nothing to do with my work, but I saw it and I thought of you, let me share it. Then if they are not responding after all of that, I would send them a final message saying, Just wanted to see if you’re getting my emails, and B, if this is bugging you and I should just stop, but I would really love to hop on the phone. That’s what I would suggest. OK. And then you don’t move from email to a different channel, you just, you’re just taking that person off your, your contact list. Oh no, I’m using email in a very generic sense, contacting. So in the example before, definitely try to give them a call if you’re not getting a response to an email, you want to make sure your emails are going somewhere that someone’s reading. I think that um trying a phone call is great. I think trying to contact other people on LinkedIn is great. There’s also something to be said for you might not be the fit with that person, even if you’re the fit with that foundation and trying other people I absolutely think it’s a great idea too. OK, and are we doing these all concurrently? So are we reaching out to maybe 34 people at the same foundation? Around the same at the same time, we’re sending our initial LinkedIn DMs or emails concurrently. I don’t do that because it usually feels like some wasted effort. If multiple people respond to you, then I’m like, Oh sorry, I’m already talking to someone else in the foundation. I’ll loop back around if it makes sense to follow up with you or something like that is a way out of it. But I generally find it’s more work that’s not necessary all the time. So I would just do one at a time. OK, OK. Consecutive, not concurrent. All right, um, so let’s say we get the, we get something successful now. They’ve, they’ve, uh, jumped on our call to action. They, uh, they opened up for a 30 minute meeting on Zoom. Now you have some Advice around uh questions, you know, getting to uh opening questions, right? Yeah, absolutely. So just like in that email, you want it to be more about them than about you. In that first conversation, you want to Get to know each other, you want to understand what they’re looking for, what they’re struggling with in their portfolio of grantees right now, and the change they’re looking to see. The way you get there is through asking questions, and I recommend that you start with personal questions if you can. How did you get into this work? Allow there to be a personal connection that is built first. If they’re not open to that, OK, move on. But if they are open to that, it’s going to bear a lot of fruit later down the road. Most people like to talk about themselves. Exactly. Then once you’ve gotten through some general connection questions and oh you both discovered you lived in Kenya at the around the same time, once upon once upon a time or whatever, um you’re both motivated to do this work. From very, you know, for very personal reasons, whatever you’ve discovered, then you can start to talk about what is the organization, what is the foundation looking to do ideally before you start pitching your work, you’re gonna know what they’re looking to fund. And what kind of change they’re looking to achieve? And that way, when they ask you about your work, you can target what you’re sharing, you can tailor what you’re sharing so that it responds directly to what they’re looking for. That, that raises the question. We have to take a little step back. How do we prepare for this 30 minute Zoom meeting? First, read whatever you can read about them. So if they have a website, if they have an annual report, please read it. It’s gonna make you look good and it’s going to allow you to be much more focused in the call and actually get to a useful point by the end of the 30 minutes. Second of all. You want to have thought through based on what you’ve read about them, or learned about them through any other sources, maybe you know someone who knows someone who has an experience there, who’s been funded by them, whatever it is. Once you’ve done that, think about what do I want to share with them. What’s going to excite them, both about experiences, like success stories in the past, and about our vision for the future. Then, Say, all right, if they ask me for money, what is the number that I can share with them? It’s not I’m coming with a proposal, but generally I should be able to talk some numbers of we would love to scale to. One more state, or replicate in one more state, and this is what it would cost. And this is what it it would make possible for the community there. And then I also really recommend you come in with a plan B and maybe even a plan C. So you think that what they’re interested is in early childhood education, but maybe you on in the middle of the call you discover that they’re in the middle of a whole strategy revamp and they’re not gonna be working on early childhood education anymore and now they’re moving into higher ed or they’re moving into economic development. So, what are some other things that you could share if you are able to identify that that initial idea is not gonna be of interest to them? And then ideally, you might have a handful of slides with some visuals to complement this, that’s not necessary. But if you’re someone who um makes a good slide and, and feels comfortable presenting in that way, maybe you wanna have 5 slides that you pull up when they ask you about your work and you’re gonna take 5 to 10 minutes to share an initial introduction about your work and, and what some um what your upcoming programs are and maybe an impact story you might wanna have some visuals on slides that are just gonna make that really hit home and and be more powerful. It’s time for Tony’s steak too. Thank you, Kate. I was crushed last week. 00, we’re recording this on Wednesday, the week before the show gets out, and, uh, you know, so on, on last Tuesday, there was the freeze on federal grants and loans and then Today that they we’re recording. The freeze was rescinded, uh, you know, the, the ups and downs. Just I’m, I’m, I don’t know, I have your back. If this was affecting you. Um, I, I was thinking about you, our community was thinking about you. Um, and, and as of today, uh, I think the international grant making, uh, to organizations doing international work is what I mean like international relief and aid. I think that still seems uncertain. So, I, I don’t really have a solution, a strategy, well, I guess I have a strategy, we all need to stick together. We, you know, if this, if, if these freezes become routine or if they turn into cuts instead of just temporary freezes because this was supposedly a 90 day freeze, it lasted 24 hours thankfully. Then we all need to band together. But the community is stronger when it stays together, when we all advocate for each other or for a segment of our community. My heart is with you, if this affects you. Of course, for nonprofits that, you know, might be affected in other ways with the new administration. Seems like it’s been 6 months and it’s been 2 weeks. We’re here for you. The community is here for you. We got your back. We’ll do what we can for you. That is Tony’s take too. Kate. There’s a lot of ups and downs with change, and right now it’s, it’s only been 9 days and so much has been happening. We just have to have each other’s backs on times like this. That’s right, yeah, because it’s a, it’s a fire hose and uh. In a lot of ways, the fire hose is the is the purpose to just exhaust and distract. So, yes, we do have to have each other’s backs. Anyway, we’ve got Boou but loads more time. Here’s the rest of your grant maker relationships with Shoshana Grossman Krist. What, what, uh, what’s our goal for this meeting? What, what would we like to get out of this thirty-minute meeting? Great question. You want to get the next meeting. So ideally after that 30 minute meeting they would let you, you would have together honed in on there’s some alignment in terms of values, there’s some alignment in terms of what you’re looking to fund and what we’re we’re trying to get funded and you’ve gotten clear on which of the things you do would be of interest to them. Ideally you would have a follow on meeting to hammer out what a proposal whether a project fundable project with them would look like that may not be what they want that may not be their ideal next step and maybe then it’s an invitation to submit a letter of interest or proposal that’s also a totally fine end of meeting one. But the more information we can get before we spend the effort writing a proposal that’s gonna get a yay or a nay, the better. And again, if we haven’t reached this step with them. Still, with, with the assumption that our research is, is done accurately, uh, we, we should go ahead and submit. If we, if we haven’t gotten any response, I’m just reminding folks that you don’t have to be at this stage in order to submit the letter of inquiry or the or the proposal as long as you’re, as long as you’re complying with all their other rules about timing and length and everything like that, you don’t, this is not essential for uh for a funding request. 100%. OK, just reiterating what we said a half hour ago just in case. All right, um. Yeah, so suppose we uh. Well, where, where, where would you like to go? What’s the most challenging step? Uh, I don’t wanna make this an easy process. I want this to be a little, uh, maybe circumlocuitous a little bit. So we didn’t quite, they, they didn’t say submit a proposal or LOI. They said we need another meeting. Now, what’s the, what’s the how do we know what the purpose of the, the new meeting is? is it just to reiterate what we just did or what, suppose we need another meeting. Well, how do we know what to do in the next meeting? You should ask. OK. I think we’re very afraid of the nonprofit sector. We’re very afraid of who will I be talking to? What would we, what would interest her or him or them? Yeah, what would you like to get out of that next meeting for it to feel like it was fruitful? It’s perfect, yeah. Well we focus on you, uh, focus on them. What would you like, uh, what, what would you like to get out of the next meeting? Yeah, we feel like there’s this power imbalance and we’re not allowed to ask any questions. I’ve had organizations uh that I’ve, I’ve worked with say, oh, we had a funer come for a site visit and we never really understood why they came or what the purpose was and they left and we never heard from them again. And I think that was a great, that’s great they came for a site visit. I mean they spent time, they traveled, yeah, even if it was just across town, they traveled. They traveled and I said, well, did they ever share the objective? No. Did you ever ask? No. Ask if you need permission to ask, please ask and funders are listening to this funders, please be up front and please be clear. But if you’re a nonprofit and NGO. Please feel comfortable asking. You deserve to have this information. You deserve to have your time respected, and you deserve the clarity that you can move your mission forward as effectively as possible. So this is me giving you permission if you needed that. You have, uh, you have Shoshana’s uh blessing on your next step on, on being proactive. Um, OK, so then, let’s say it did go well after the 2nd meeting. They said submit a proposal. Uh, I don’t really want to talk about, we’ve had other folks not too long ago talk about the rules of, you know, make sure you use the right font size. They have a page limit, adhere to the page limit. Don’t think you’re special. They have time limits, adhere to the time limits. Try not to do it by midnight of the final day because your, your Wi Fi might go down or UPS might let you down or something, you know, they might have a snowstorm. And then you don’t get there on time and then you have to ask if you have an extra day because of the snow in Oklahoma. All right. Um, But I want to keep the relationship going. We want, uh, naturally, now we’re. We’ve, uh, let’s say, all right, so we’re under, we’re under consideration. We haven’t been funded yet. They have our proposal, we followed all the rules. What are we sharing that? Are we, are we stepping away? So that we don’t oversell and just let them do their due diligence or are we still keeping in touch or maybe somewhere in the middle? What what what what are we doing while during the three months that our proposal is under consideration? Great. So you just indicated some information that we always want to have, which is what does the process look like? We know in this case, 3 months. 3 months is the amount of time where you could let it sit and give them their space. Trust the process, trust the universe. But if something interesting comes up in those 3 months, if you have, um, again, you hit a big milestone or your annual report comes out, or you relaunch your website or Someone awesome said something great about you. There’s an amazing testimony that came through. Feel free to share that. Maybe one touch point with a wonderful update to keep them particularly excited, it’s not a bad idea. What if your CFO was indicted for criminal uh financial malfeasance of uh of the nonprofit’s assets? You want to play that? Why don’t you take us a little bit further along in this scenario, Tony? How would you start playing it out? Do we share that? Uh, well, I think it’s it, it definitely needs to be shared because it’s relevant, uh, it’s relevant to their decision. So even bad news. Yeah, you have to, you have an obligation to share that. Because if they go out, if they go ahead and fund you under, under a failure to failure to disclose something relevant like that, then I don’t know, you might be committing some kind of fraud yourself. Maybe it’s only civil fraud. I don’t know, but, uh, uh, yeah, you have to share bad information. So, I mean, you’re an upbeat person, uh, yeah, everything you said was positive from website to publicity, you know, whatever, but if it’s on the downside, uh, You gotta share that too. I think that that kind of direct and assertive communication is really important. We’re building a relationship and this relationship, even if you do get the money in the short term, it’s not gonna bode well for the long term. You’re gonna have a lot of repair to do. You’re gonna get through this. You’re gonna have a second, you’ll have a follow up CEO. You’ll have your blue ribbon committee that will do an outside investigation and ensure that this never happens again, as we always, you know, as we do. And then when you have your new CFO in place. Uh, you might want to very well come back to that, or that funder, and if you are Duplicitous in your first attempt. Uh, concealing bad information, then there’s no way they’re gonna consider you a second time. Absolutely. And so I think an outrage saying this happened, we wanted to let you know, here’s everything we’re doing to address it, and we would love to hop on a call with you to address any concerns you have. That’s one way to to go for it. You could also just read the room, and if you feel like this is not, this is not going to be successful, given the blow up that just happened, maybe you say, Our recommendation so that you have a chance to get to know us fully and this doesn’t become the deciding factor is we pause our application and we so that we have this year to continue to build this relationship with you and that you consider us again next year and then maybe you go back to your past funders and say here’s the crisis we’re in will you help us fill the gap this year so that we can move forward effectively. Outstanding. OK. All right. I hope folks realize I’m not a negative person. I, I don’t focus on the negative, but I just, it came to mind as you were positing all these wonderful, uh, wonderful news, newsworthy hooks that are, uh, you’d want to share. Uh, what if it’s, what if it’s not so, what if it’s not so positive, but it’s still newsworthy. OK. Um, all right, so. But we, you said we also be OK to just let the process lie, you know, if there isn’t something newsworthy that really merits their attention. It’s OK to let the let the 3 month process go. That’s OK too? Yeah, absolutely. And if it’s longer, if we’re talking like a 6 month process or a 9 month process, I do recommend being proactive about staying in touch, maybe um. Every 3 months you might, you know, maybe it’s just, it’s the new year, it’s the holidays you just send a happy holidays wishing you the best and make it a personal email or maybe it is something relevant to your organization and and your annual report or whatever it is, uh, the idea is not to overwhelm them but it’s to keep them excited and to show that you are professional and you are committed and you are passionate. All right. Uh, the stated time has elapsed. It’s now been 3 months or 6 months or 9 months. We didn’t hear back. Definitely follow up. What do we say? Uh, how long do we give them after this stated period? A couple weeks, couple weeks, 2 weeks, 10 days, 2 weeks. Yeah, sure. And what are we saying now? When did you check in? And you had shared that the uh there’d be a decision around X date. And we would love to know um if there’s anything else we can provide on our side if the decision hasn’t been made yet and there’s anything else we can provide on our side. Let us know. And That’s about it. OK, this, this particular moment is just about not being annoying and getting the information that you need. OK, OK. Could you go be a little more assertive and, you know, wondering about the status, you know, could you please Uh, please advise on, uh, you know, where our application stands, where our proposal stands. Yeah, you can be assertive. You just wanna be kind if they haven’t responded to you, uh, in time, it’s probably because they’re underwater. That’s usually the case. Everyone in the sector, both organizations, nonprofits, and funders tend to be overworked and so we can generally assume that they haven’t responded because they have a lot on their plate. And so we just wanna be that nice person who’s checking in, but we don’t wanna be like, hey, you said it was a state, we haven’t heard, please advise this is rude. Yeah, no, OK. OK, right, we’re polite, but we have, uh, as you’ve said in the different words a couple of times, you know, we have rights in this whole process. Yes, we’re, we’re stakeholders in this process. We have a, we do have a right to know, but you just don’t want to say it that way. All right, and in, in a slightly different scenario where This is a funder you do have a relationship with. Maybe this is even a follow on grant. If they haven’t responded by a date that might really be impacting you because you might be expecting this grant or you might have been, you know, have a team in place from the first year and maybe that money is ending soon and you’re not sure if you can renew their contracts or not. These kinds of things are also fine for you to share with the funder you do have an existing relationship with. You wanna share it in um. Um, in a, an assertive way, but also a respectful way, because they probably don’t have this on their radar. So if you can say, if you have any insight into the process because we will renew the, the, we will renew the contracts of the existing program staff if this is a yes. Or if there’s some significant changes to the decision making process or timeline that will impact decisions we make in the next 2 weeks if you could let us know within the next 2 weeks. That would be, that would be really helpful for us. That kind of thing is absolutely helpful and usually it’s a human on the other side. That person’s gonna respond. OK. Uh, we were successful. We got funded. Now what? Well, because we had the, we had the help of Social Impact Compass and uh Shoshana Grossman Krist advising us. So why wouldn’t we have been successful? What, uh, what now? Pick up the phone? Can you, can you, like, I do plan to giving fundraising. When someone tells us through a checking a reply card or I hear it secondhand from another, uh, from a staff member, uh, when I’m a consultant, my immediate reaction is to pick up the phone and express effusive thanks. Uh, is that, is that, is that not appropriate on the institutional funding side? It’s not quite the same, but it really depends on the relationship that you’ve built so far. So, if it’s someone who you really built a personal relationship with through this proposal process. And you have their phone number, which oftentimes we actually don’t even have each other’s phone numbers. Um, that might be something you do, but honestly, it’s probably gonna be a really excited, grateful email that you’re gonna send. OK, all right, so it depends on, yeah, it is. OK. Depends on the relationship though. All right. That’s why I do plan to giving and not uh foundation work. I’m, I’m, I’m much a, I’m a person to person, not a like institutional. All right. Uh, not, you’re not an institution, but you know, I like dealing with people, uh, people not representing, uh, institutions, people, people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s representing themselves and, you know, their husband, because a lot of the people I work with are women, so. Uh, OK. So right, really effusive email. Thank you so much. Look forward to working, of course. Uh, next steps, if they haven’t outlined anything in there, how do you usually get the acceptance? Is it, does it usually come in paper mail or is it email or it varies? Email. It’s usually an email? OK. Yeah, either email or a notification through the system, but usually it’s an email. OK. OK. All right. Um, we’re complying with everything they said to do to get the, get the funding flowing. All right? The, the payments are coming by ACH. Everything is smooth. What are we doing now? What’s our relationship look like now? That uh maybe a little different than than it was just a few months ago. This is when we sometimes get relaxed and we turn the relationship by we I mean the executive director or the development lead, whoever was managing the relationship before may turn the relationship over to the implementing team, the program’s team, say, OK, now we have a funded project and it’s being implemented by X team, they are responsible moving forward. Uh, that is a mistake, because of that team, their eyes on the prize of implementing their project well. Their eye is not on building a long-term relationship with this funder. That may also just not be their skill set. So as much as reporting and meetings and whatever are going to be through that project team, you wanna make sure that you have someone who’s tagged as responsible for this funder relationship over the long term. And so that might look like. In addition to the mandated reporting and meetings or site visits that this program project team is going to have with the funder, that relationship lead is going to make sure that if the funders open to it, they’ve been added to your mailing list so they’re generally aware of what’s happening in the organization. Be that when things that are particularly relevant for that funder. Come into the universe that they are shared with that funder even if it’s not specifically about that project, even if it’s not specifically even about your organization you’re maintaining that relationship. The other thing I always recommend is that once every 3 months that person who’s leading the relationship sits down and writes a 1 paragraph email to. Eat to the funder. That’s not a huge ask. I mean, how many grant funders are you gonna have in total in an organization? Max 25 in like a crazy making kind of world? Yeah, that’s huge. Yeah. That’s 25 paragraphs that you need to write once every 3 months. You can do that, right? That’s a very feasible thing to do. 25 1 paragraph emails that you need to write every 3 months. So you take one day a month and you do this. Max And that paragraph. Probably it’s going to look something like the following. Hey, how are you doing? How is the transition been going? I know that you guys changed your, you know, the president of the foundation last month. Just wanted to share a quick update about some really exciting things happening over here. First of all, we hit this milestone with our project, or we just heard, I just heard this testimony from a participant last week, or we just entered the field and I, you know, things are now in operation for this project. I wanted to attach a photo. The second thing you’re gonna say is, here’s what we’re looking forward to. Actually, no, take that back. Here’s my editing in real time. So first thing was excitement, something that’s happened. Second thing is, if you want to share about a challenge you’ve encountered in the project. Do that and share how you’ve overcome it or a challenge that organizations recently had and how you’ve overcome it. It makes you more real and it shares anything that needs to be shared but framed in a really positive way that you are resilient, that you are capable, that you are moving forward in this challenging world and then the third thing is something that’s coming up that’s really exciting in the organization or in the project. That’s one paragraph send something like that once every couple of months. If you have multiple foundations funding the same project, you can literally send the same email to each of them, but make it an individual email to each of them. And then you’re good to go. That’s the main thing to do. When should you hop on the on the phone? When should you meet in person? That’s all gonna vary based on the vet vibe you get from them. Ideally, you could have a once a year, you know, 30 minute virtual coffee just to connect. OK, OK, and of course if there are. Bigger challenges than you want to mention in your every 90 day email, right? You need to flag those. Here’s what we, what we intend to do to overcome. If you, if you want to discuss, you know, let’s jump on a, let’s jump on a meeting, right? Let’s have a call. OK, OK. They’re, they’re partners now in this work, so you need to treat them as partners. That’s exactly it. All right, all right. Uh, well, let’s take a step back. Well, even this happens, it’s so rare. Those who are working with Shoshana, but some people do get turned down. Some, some, some proposals don’t get funded. We didn’t get funded. What do we do? Walk away walk away tail between our legs never reach out to them again. No, I know that’s not right, but you flesh out what we should do. So first off, you want to acknowledge that they let you know a response. Some foundations just don’t respond and that’s your no and we wanna be grateful when someone does give us a response. So you’re gonna most likely hear about this through email, so you’re gonna send an email back. you would send it back to wherever you got the notification from. And copy in anyone else who has been part of this process, who you met with earlier on in any of these meetings or who you had been in email contact with um previously. And you’re gonna thank them for letting you know, and you’re gonna thank them for the incredible work that they’re doing, and you’re gonna express all of the good wishes that they, the projects that they did select are really impactful. And you’re going to ask for feedback. That’s the next thing you’re gonna do. If they haven’t explicitly said that they don’t give feedback, you’re going to ask them for feedback and you’re going to say, do you have 20 minutes to jump on a call and share feedback? So really help us know if we should apply to you. In the future, if it makes sense for us to apply to your foundation again in the future or and or to strengthen our proposals to other foundations in the future if you don’t have 20 minutes, do you mind just sending off a line or two with why we were not selected in any feedback you have? You’re giving the option. Mhm, or let’s just do it by email quicker. OK, OK. Um, and then from there, based on what you hear, if you don’t hear anything back, follow up. If you hear back, look, you were so unaligned, you did not do your research. Oh, that’s probably you should let that one go. If you heard, look, we loved your work. It was actually quite well received by our committee, but at the end of the day there were just too many proposals, and this didn’t make it to the very top of the list. There are other projects that offered more bang for the buck, that were, you know, seemed more innovative, bigger scale, whatever it is. And you say, then you respond and say thank you so much, this is really helpful, we’re gonna take it into account. And I would love to keep you up to date. You maybe share an email once every couple months. About what’s going on over here, so we, if in the future it makes sense to collaborate, if in the future we’re a better fit for funding, that that door is open, are you OK with that? So ideally we’re gonna ask for their permission to keep them up to date. And then, and my guess is this is the same in planned giving, right? You, there’s a lot of asking for permission. We need to, it’s a relationship. We can’t just be like bombarding someone who with unwanted things for too long. So, so we’re gonna ask for that permission and then we’re going to keep our word and so just like we hopefully follow we responded to their email within a few days and. Um, we thank them for their feedback within a few days. We’re going to do that follow up and we’re gonna make sure we have the systems in place and the people responsible internally to do that follow up. Maybe it’s something where you use Asana and you put a recurring task in your Asana or your Monday.com or whatever you use to to manage your tasks, um, and so every 3 months it pops up that you’re supposed to, you know, follow up this person. Maybe you put on your calendar that the first Monday of every month. This is what you do. You do follow ups to funders that haven’t responded or updates to funders who um you said you would, you know, keep apprised of what’s going on or your current funders. So there are, there are a couple different ways to do it, but um. But that’s gonna be really important to to continue to have that relationship if you think you can bump into them in person at a conference, for example, if you know that they’re gonna be at a conference that you’re gonna be at, uh, do make that effort before you go to a conference to look at the list of registrants, see who’s gonna be there, think about who you want to engage and and ideally send them in a message or an email beforehand and say, hey, just how you’re gonna be there. I will, I’m gonna make an effort to run into you, or say, hey, I see we’re both gonna be there. Do you want to find time during your coffee, you know, is there a day during a coffee break that you want to have coffee together? It’ll be great to actually meet in person. Conferences are great for building a personal relationship into an existing professional relationship. Excellent, excellent. All right. And uh, my final question. Talk about leaving ego. Uh, out of this, when, when we, when we didn’t get, didn’t get funded. Ego. Where to start? Think the ego can be about us as people, and it can be about our work. We can take it personally that our work wasn’t selected. And At the end of the day, that’s not gonna help anyone. Unfortunately, there is ego in this world, even when our goal is to make the world a better place, there is ego. So, we need to check that. And we need to come from our the place of being our most authentic selves because that’s what’s going to to engage more fully and so you could say in an email if you were rejected you could say thanks for letting me know we’re really bummed we were really excited about this program but I understand that the competition is fierce. And, and, and maybe that’s a way to be true to yourself and your feelings while you are being authentic and respectful and keeping the door open and and and strengthening the bridge, honestly, for the future. Do you have other thoughts on this? No, I don’t even have thoughts that deep. Mine, mine were basically just, you know, it’s not personal. Uh, it’s, it’s not even a professional. Reflection of the work you’re doing, the quality of the work, the, the value of the work, it’s just that you didn’t align with their, with their priorities. I mean they have priorities and you have work. The two didn’t, the two don’t work out. It’s like, you know, it’s like a, uh, I don’t know, you can analogize it to, uh, trying to buy a home, you know, you want a home, you meet a bunch of people trying to sell a home, you make an offer, sometimes they take your offer and sometimes they don’t. It just doesn’t work out. You, you have, you have similar interests. It’s just that this deal didn’t work out, and I’m not a, I’m not a transactional person, but, you know, it’s just some things work out and some don’t, and that. It’s not, it’s not a reflection on your, of your, the value of your work, or certainly of the value of you as a person. It’s just that The two are not aligned and maybe and this time, you know, it’s not even like a house because you get to come back a second time. If the feedback is that it was a very it was very close, but you know the way you phrased it, other, other projects were more compelling or more innovative or scaled faster, you know, you’re welcome to come back. You can’t, you can’t do that usually on a house sale. So I generally agree with you, but I would add a caveat, which is to say it might not be that you’re just not aligned. The fact that you didn’t rise to the very top might be that you still have some growing and learning to do in how you’re presenting your work and how you’re responding to the funder’s priorities. And so there you need to check your ego and say what can I learn from this? How can we improve in the future from this? There’s an organization that I worked with who who regularly for 6 months asked for feedback after every proposal, and they didn’t get feedback every time when they asked for it maybe only 1 out of every 4 requests, uh, turned into feedback, but those 1 out of every 4 requests over the period of 6 months turned into they heard the same feedback 3 times and that told them that this was an area they needed to strengthen. So, See what you can learn, see how you can grow. Don’t take it personally on an individual level or about your work. Understand that some of it is just part of the game and some of it is part of the growth. And see the growth opportunity. All right. So, so it’s not to end with, uh, you know, what to do when you don’t get funded. Leave us, uh, you’re suffering with a lackluster host, you know, the things, things are not organized, we’re over time, it’s a disaster. I’m surprised you’re still with me. Just overall, you know, leave us with some uh some institutional relationship. Uh, inspiration. Relationships with funders can evolve in ways we don’t expect when we build that foundation when we enable it to when we enable it to be a relationship and not a transactional experience they can then be excited and connect us with other funders they can then invite us and put us on a panel where we get. Visibility in front of other funders they can we can you know they can turn to us when they need guidance about a local situation or help mapping other potential grantees and we can play that role for them and in some ways return the support that they’ve provided to us so there’s a lot that is possible when you sit first in that human relationship. And when you treat it like a garden that you really do care for and tend to and water. And not like an human ATM machine or an institutional ATM machine. So there’s a lot of possibility here and it can feel really good. You can feel like it can feel like you’re running into a friend. It can feel like you have a partner. You can feel supported rather than feeling like you’re reporting to someone who’s judging you all the time. So there’s a potential to totally shift the way you’re engaging with the funder and how the relationship feels if you do it from this perspective. The garden is a wonderful metaphor. Thank you. Shoshanana Grossman Quist. You’ll find her on LinkedIn, uh, but if you want to connect, don’t make the mistake I made, you know, send a note. You’ll find her there and you’ll find her practice at socialimpact compass.com. Thank you very much, Shoshana. Thank you, Tony. This is so much fun. I really appreciate it. I’m glad, my pleasure. Next week Yeah, we’re working on it. If you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you. Find it at Tony Martignetti.com. We’re sponsored by DonorBox. Outdated donation forms blocking your supporters’ generosity. DonorBox, fast, flexible, and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit, DonorBox.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer Kate Martignetti. The show’s social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy, and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation, Scotty. Be with us next week for nonprofit Radio, big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out and be great.